Anne cowered in fear, literally at the end of her chain, feeling its obdurate metal digging painfully into her tender neck as she shrank back from the swordsman who approached her.

Just as certain doom seemed imminent in the form of a sharp, pointy sword, the man suddenly froze and stood perfectly still, tilting his head as if listening.

Then Anne heard it, too, a cheery whistled tune that sounded exactly like the opening notes of Billy Joel’s “The Stranger.”

Anne looked in the direction of the whistling and saw yet ANOTHER Renfair type coming down the path. At the sight of him, the man standing above Anne completely forgot her, turning around abruptly and walking over to stand near his companion, who also stood facing the oncoming stranger, spear in hand.

Anne lay in the grass, shaking with fear over her narrow escape from death and also in fury at the men who had nearly killed her for no reason. They had to be demorats.

The stranger paused a few yards away from Anne’s would-be murderers and the three of them started in with the gorga-gorga-gorga stuff.

Anne recovered her wits as they spoke, realizing that her only chance at escape, and hence continued life, was while the Renfair thugs were distracted by the stranger. She scrabbled over to the rock and began furiously yanking and pulling at the chain and the hasp that held it (and by extension her) to the rock.

The hasp and the chain, not to mention the rock, showed no sign of yielding to Anne’s frantic efforts but Anne kept at it out of a persistent feeling that breaking free of them were her only chance at life.

She was disturbed from her efforts by the loud ringing of steel striking steel. Anne looked back and saw that three men were fighting with their swords, and not in that showy yet careful Renfair way, but with serious intent to kill one another.

With two attackers, the stranger was doing a lot of retreating, but even to Anne’s eyes, the stranger appeared notably faster and more skilled than his adversaries, and more importantly, he was a lot better looking than them. This encouraged Anne: she KNEW the two Renfair guys were planning to kill her, but she didn’t KNOW that about the stranger. Still, she returned her full attention to breaking free because she was pretty sure it was a bad idea to be at the mercy of ANY of these Renfair guys.

Anne heard a scream and looked back to see that the battle was now one on one, with the young blond Renfair guy sprawled in the grass. This made the Viking-looking Renfair guy redouble his efforts to kill the stranger, mounting a furious attack against him, forcing the stranger back toward Anne, though he blocked all of his attacker’s sword strokes with ease.

Suddenly, the Viking-looking Renfair guy ceased his attacks and ran as fast and hard as he could toward the trees on the opposite side of the meadow.

The stranger did not give chase but stood and watched his opponent run for his life until he disappeared into the shadowy depths of the forest.

The stranger was panting from his efforts, but seemed to recover his breath by the time the Viking guy reached the trees.

He looked back at Anne who was still standing near the hasp, hoping the stranger wasn’t a murderer, too.

The stranger walked over to where his former opponent lay bleeding in the grass, still moaning. He sheathed his sword and bent over the man.

“Good!” Anne thought. “He is showing mercy. He’ll show mercy to me, too.”

But the redheaded stranger did not show mercy to the fallen man. Instead, he carefully inspected the man’s body, taking his coin purse and inspecting his weapons closely, taking the man’s dagger and sliding it into his belt, but leaving the rest.

The stranger walked over to Anne. His hair was flaming red and he was quite handsome for a redheaded male. Like the other Renfair types he was quite muscular and hard-looking, too.

The stranger started with the “gorga-gorga-gorga” business standing nose to nose with Anne as the previous Renfair guy had, as Anne pulled back to the end of her chain, distrustful of Renfair types due to the recent assaulting and attempted murder of her.

“I don’t speak gorga-gorga-gorga,” Anne said, stifling the impulse to say, “Speak English you big dumb lunk,” out of a desire not to be stabbed.

At the sound of Anne’s words, the stranger looked disappointed. But did not attack her. Instead he walked over to the hasp her chain was attached to, pressed a length of chain against the rock, stretching it tight against the hasp, and began hacking at it with his sword, short, powerful strokes that rang against the rock. In a few moments the relatively soft metal of the chain had yielded to the very hard metal of his sword, and he was holding the end of the chain attached to Anne in his hand. He had freed her!

“Thank you!” Anne said, “I was really getting tired of this joke.”

The red-headed stranger ignored Anne’s words and pulled her chain, dragging her forward until she was standing right next to him.

“Oh, please … OH!” Anne said as the man yanked her forward and deftly tripped her as she tried to keep her balance. She feel face forward on the ground.

The stranger was on top of her in a second, kneeling atop her with his legs straddling her on other side. Anne found herself once against reduced to screaming and yelling and futilely struggling against a much larger, more capable opponent.

He seized Anne’s wrists and pulled them together, then grasped both wrists in one hand wile he wrapped rope around them quickly and skillfully, in a very practiced manner. Anne struggled as hard as she could but he was just too strong and fast. Her struggles amounted to nothing, and just like that her hands were bound behind her back.

“You bastard!” Anne yelled. “Stop that! Let me go!”

The stranger did not let Anne go. Instead he shoved a leather gall into her mouth and pulled straps attached to it tight and fastened them behind her neck.

“Mmmmgh! Mmmgh! Mgh! Mgh! Mmmmgh!” Anne cried.

The stranger paid no more attention to these sounds than he had to any other sounds Anne had made with her mouth. Anne had been ready to welcome him as her rescuer and respect him and so forth, even if he turned out to be politically moderate, but now she was beginning to think he was a very uncaring person.

Further indications of his lack of caring-ness came when he shifted position so that he straddled Anne, but now facing in the opposite direction, looking at her feet, which he proceeded to tie together with more rope, leaving about a meter of distance between them.

Then he rose from Anne’s body and gave her a casual kick, clearly intended to encourage Anne to get up as well.

Anne was relieved that he had gotten up, as she had been uncomfortably aware of the feel of his large male package against her naked butt. But she didn’t appreciate the kick. Nevertheless, she got up, as she was morally certain that more kicks would be forthcoming if she didn’t.

She was beginning to get the measure of the men around here, and it wasn’t nice, it wasn’t nice at all.

The man walked forward, Anne’s chain in hand. Anne was forced to follow or fall on her face with her hands tied behind her back, so even though she was quite sure she didn’t want to go anywhere with this man, she followed.

She continued almost reflexively to talk to the man as he led her over to where his fallen opponent lay. He picked up the man’s shield and looped it over Anne’s shoulder, so that it rested on her back.

“Mmmphg!” Anne said in protest. The shield was impossibly heavy, a thick sheet of copper or bronze or something with a leather inner liner secured with rivets.

Then the stranger removed his own shield and looped IT over Anne’s shoulder so that it rested on her back.

Anne staggered under the weight of both shields, nearly driven to her knees. The straps dug cruelly into her flesh. The stranger picked up his opponents’ discarded spear and started back down the path, continuing the way he had come, in the opposite direction from the Viking’s retreat to the woods, Anne’s chain firmly gripped in his hand, paying absolutely no attention to her for the most part.

Anne followed along, complaining vocally even though the wadding in her gag kept her from voicing her complaints in a very intelligible form, especially since she was accustomed to using words like “intelligible” in her ordinary speech patterns, long and difficult words under the best of circumstances, but a real trial with a wad of leather filling her mouth, and leather backing behind it, stifling her speech further.

Anne soon stopped complaining because the simple act of walking was so difficult for her with her feet tied together (okay, there was about a meter of rope between them, but still they were PRACTICALLY tied together). She also had her hands tied behind her back so she couldn’t use them for balance, which she needed because there were two heavy shields on her back and she was walking over uneven terrain (OK, it was a well used footpath, but it wasn’t even paved or anything, so there were holes and roots and bumps all along it).

In a short time the inevitable happened and Anne tripped, falling in the grass, unable to use her hands to break her fall. Fortunately, her face broke her fall. She lay there in the grass that fringed the footpath, the breath knocked out of her.

She stayed down because it felt so good not to be carrying those damn shields, finally.

After she’d been lying there for a moment, she felt an explosion of pain in her butt. It was the stranger, kicking her.

“Gorga!” the stranger cried in threatening tones, drawing his foot back for another kick.

Anne scrambled to her feet, sure that another kick would land if she did not, and the first one had hurt more than enough.

Once Anne was back on her feet, the stranger inspected and adjusted the shields then gave her butt a casual swat, which Anne correctly assumed was the signal for her to start moving.

Anne was suddenly in a seething, boiling rage as she walked, an even more intense seething, boiling rage than the seething, boiling rage that was her normal state of mind.

This was because she had recognized the kind of slap she had just received. It was EXACTLY the same short of slap she had seen in all the old Ronald Reagan westerns she’d watched as a college student. It was what cowboys did to a pack mule when they wanted it to start moving.

And that triggered a sudden realization that she was being treated exactly like an animal: gagged (horses wore bits but it was pretty much the same thing) hobbled, collared, and led around on a leash, which was what the stranger was using the chain for.

The stranger had never, not even once, made any attempt to communicate with her as one human being to another, in fact, he’d ignored her every attempt to communicate. To him, she was nothing but an animal! Kicks and swats on the butt were the only language he thought she was capable of understanding, just because she didn’t understand that gorga gorga gorga stuff everybody around here spoke.

And while she was at it, she wondered where “here” was. Because although they looked a lot like Renfair types, these people sure as hell weren’t Renfair types.

But what the hell were they. And what the hell was that huge planet doing still hovering in the sky? Shouldn’t the hallucination have worn off by now? She was tired, she was in pain, she was angry and she was chafed in a lot of places, but she didn’t have any kind of muzzy, druggy feeling. She was experiencing everything with appalling vividness. Especially the pain and the weariness and the chafing. So why was that planet up there?

Anne found this line of thought so disturbing that she automatically jumped to another, in much the same way she had avoided thinking about the fact that the Democrats had been elected to office right into February of 2009 by imagining a counter-Earth where Republicans had won the 2008 election and Karl Rove had been able to finish his work of fixing the electoral process so that Democrats could never again corrupt American society by holding national public office.

She now retreated to that fantasy as they walked and walked and walked down the path. Most of the path lay in deep, dark forests, or at least stuff she thought of as deep, dark forests because it wasn’t paved or anything. Tree roots were a real problem on the path, and constantly threatened to trip her hobbled feet. She wondered why he had bothered to hobble her feet. It was true that she could not imagine running away from the stranger bound as she was -- he would be on her in seconds. But with the shields slowing her down and her hands tied behind her back, she would still stand precious little chance of escape, if she could somehow get that chain out of his hands.

But after the third time she slipped and fell, and the stranger had kicked her until she struggled back to her feet, she knew that the stranger had hobbled her because he did not give a damn about her welfare. It had been convenient to him, in his judgment, for her to be hobbled, so he’d hobbled her.

After a couple of hours of hiking under these circumstances, Anne was reduced to a state of near-total misery. Her whole attention and energy was focused on taking the next step, and not falling over when she did so. Everything else was inessential.

After what seemed like an eternity to Anne, the stranger pulled over to the side of the road and sat on a log. Anne immediately collapsed in the grass, too weary to shift the shields to a more comfortable position. It just felt so good to lie there. Bugs were crawling over her, and she just didn’t care, and that said more about her state of mind than anything else could, because normally that would have freaked her out, especially with her hands pinioned so that she couldn’t brush them off.

The stranger walked over to a nearby stream -- probably why he had chosen that spot, Anne decided later. He knelt down and scooped quite a few handfuls of water into his mouth, then pulled a few bits of dried meat from the bag he carried and chewed slowly on it, idly gazing at Anne’s collapsed form. If Anne had had her eyes open, she would have noted that there was just the faintest suggestion of a smile on his lips as he looked at her.

It seemed like only seconds after she collapsed that Anne felt herself being kicked into wakefulness.

Anne stumbled to her feet, completely unaided by her assailant, after he kicked her a second time as she was still muzzy from being unconscious, and hence needed a moment to return to full consciousness.

Once Anne had struggled to her feet, her captor (because that’s obviously what their relationship was, captor and captive) unbuckled and removed her gag to her great relief -- she hated the gag, not just because it hindered her speech although that was PLENTY of reason all by itself, but because it’s leather plug made her drool uncontrollably, and long strings of drool kept landing on her breasts and staying there, sticky and cool.

Anne was just glad that no photographers were around as often as her detractors had called her a drooling idiot. Plus, there were a LOT of liberals and demorats who would take FAR to much pleasure in the sight of her gagged, though most would never admit to it of course.

Anne’s captor lifted a leather bag to her lips. A few drops of water splashed out of a wooden spout onto her lips, making her aware of the raging thirst that had been hiding underneath all the pain and weariness she’d been feeling. She sucked reflexively on the water bag, and her captor let her drink her fill, then went back to the stream and refilled it.

Anne watched in horror as he did. The implication was clear. She had been drinking water that had come straight from a stream. No filtration, no waste treatment of ANY kind, just raw water! She probably had about a bazillion germs and parasites in her already. She’d always been against the nanny-state overprotection of the environment because it was obvious that things like water had to have plenty of chemicals in them before they were safe for human life. The environment didn’t need protection, people did, and here she had been exposed to raw environmental water!

She shuddered. She thought she might throw up, but the water stayed down somehow.

This had to be the worst thing that she’d been subjected to since waking up chained to that damn rock.

ALSO FROM PAT POWERS

At some timeless point her captor left the path and walked into the woods with her in tow. She followed, hardcly aware that they had diverged from the path. They came to a clearing in the woods, where several logs surrounded an old campfire, with a flowing stream nearby. Her captor dropped her chain and she collapsed on the spot, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, falling asleep as soon as she (literally, as her hands were tied) hit the ground.

When she awoke it was too the pleasant smell of a wood fire and a nice cooking smell. Her captor was sitting on a log, eating something or other from a large leaf he was using as a plate of sorts.

Just watching him eat made the damn drooling start up again. She was hungry. And thirsty. And she was still gagged, so the drool puddled in her cheek and then leaked out of the corner of her mouth onto the log she was tied to.

The … log? Yes, her captor had attached her leash to a sapling in front of a log, then had tied ropes to her ankles and pulled them far apart, not parallel so that she was doing a split, but getting there. Her hands were still tied behind her back.

There was a wait as her captor, whom Anne was morally certain was a demorat, finished his food and took a long swig on the water bag.

He got up from his log and brought the water bag over to Anne. He unbuckled her gag. Anne well remembered what kind of water he would give her and winced at the thought, but her raging thirst still remained. Still, she sealed her lips and shook her head “No.” No more of that germ-laden environmental stuff for her.

Her captor looked annoyed again, making Anne’s stomach knot in fear. He seized her nose in hand and pinched her nostrils shut between two fingers, with the rest of his hand covered her upper face and preventing her from moving her head. When her aching lungs forced her to open her mouth, he thrust the water bag’s wooden spout into her mouth and water poured down her throat along with the air she desperately inhaled, sending her into a paroxysm of coughing and sputtering.

He ignored her, keeping her nostrils shut until he had pumped quite a bit of water down her throat. When he removed the water bag, Anne lay on the log, coughing and gasping helplessly.

Once she coughed and gasped her way back to normalcy, Anne’s captor brought a bit of white goop that looked like oatmeal on a leaf, and laid the leaf on the log before beneath her mouth. He pinched off a small amount of it and put it in his mouth, chewing and swallowing almost in pantomime. Then he pointed at Anne.

Anne understood that she was to eat the oatmeal glop. She was not inclined to. She had turned down MUCH better food than this at any number of expensive restaurants.

She shook he head, “No” and did not lower it to the food.

Anne’s captor pinched his nostrils shut, then pointed to Anne.

She knew what that meant. The thought of going through what she’d just gone through again, only with solid food instead of water, was too much. She lowered her head and ate the whitish gruel as daintily as she could manage without the use of her hands. Bits of it got on her face, but she ate every bit of it on the leaf. Not that there was all that much of it, fortunately.

Her captor nodded approvingly when she finished the gruel and removed the leaf. Then he gave her the water bag again, and this time she did not fight it, though she did not drink much.

When her captor removed the water bag, Anne lay her head on the log, relieved that the ordeal was over.

Then her captor lifted her head again, to Anne’s great puzzlement. What was this, dessert? No, he was shoving the damn gag back in her mouth. She was sick of the taste of that leather wadding -- it made the gruel seem heavenly by comparison. But he tightened the straps very thoroughly and there would be no removing the damned thing.

She put her head down on the log in resignation when he was through gagging her. A few moments later her head popped up in alarm. She felt hands on her butt, fondling it. She looked back in alarm, to see that her captor was now as naked as she was, and had an erection. Now she knew why her legs had been tied so far apart.

It looked like a fate worse than death for Anne!

Stay tuned for our exciting Chapter 3. Is Anne in fact about to experience the fate worse than death? Or maybe even a fate worse than a fate worse than death! She certainly does seem to be having a rough time of it. Cards and sympathy notes can be addressed to Anne Coaltar: whereabouts unknown.