Chapter Text
Tim struggled in vain against the hands holding him down.
Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.
How could he have let this happen? It was supposed to be a simple patrol. Not exactly safe, but then nothing was these days. It should have just been routine, there’d been rumours of unusual movement in the woods near the border, so Tim took some men to go investigate, but the worst he’d been expecting to find was a single scouting party. A few soldiers sent to gather information on the enemy. Concerning, since it could lead to a full-fledged attack, but still, only a single squad. Him and his men could handle that much.
That wasn’t what they got.
It had been an ambush, Tim couldn’t say for sure how many men had been waiting for them, but it was enough that Tim had no chance to even try to retreat before his sword was ripped away from him and he was shoved to the ground.
He hoped some of his men had got away, had been able to raise the alarm, send word of the invasion, because surely that’s what this had to be, but he doubted it. It had been so fast, the sounds of fighting had died so suddenly.
The Infinite Lands were not known for their mercy.
Tim was hauled up from where they had been pressing his face into the dirt, and a gag was tied over his mouth, muffling the threats he tried to snarl at his attackers, the warnings he tried to shout for his people. A pair of hands hauled him into the forest with a vice like grip, not even bothering to make him walk. The men were tall enough that Tim’s feet only barely dragged along the ground. He looked up at the figure holding him and couldn’t supress the flinch.
A wraith.
Shit.
He could feel the boniness, the lack of warmth from the skeletal hand wrapped around his bicep. He swallowed, trying not to actively shrink away.
He’d never been this close to a wraith before, but he’d seen them, he knew people who’d fought them. They had been Pariah Dark’s favoured infantry for longer than Tim had been alive, and there were plenty of old and new soldiers who would show off their scars, warning off the undead minions that would just keep going even with a whole quiver of arrows sticking out of them. They were supernaturally strong, and nothing could put them down without magic short of completely severing the head.
And Tim had no sword.
He was so screwed.
As he tried desperately to come up with some kind of plan to get out of this situation, the wraiths broke through the tree line into a clearing, crowded with what Tim could tell at a glance were enemy soldiers. Some kind of camp. How did they get so close to the border? What did they want?
Before Tim could get a good look around, the wraiths shoved him to his knees in the dirt, forcing him to bow his head. Tim snarled and tried to twist out of their grip, but it was no use. They were too strong, and the gag muffled what little sound he could make.
A pair of large, black boots appeared in front of him, and a harsh voice spoke into the eerie silence of the clearing.
“You were successful?”
One of the wraiths yanked Tim’s head up by the hair, baring his face to the man. Any glare he’d been ready to level at the figure in front of him withered and died, and he could feel the blood rush from his face as he paled so fast that he might have been in danger of passing out. Bone deep terror settled into his chest, and his hands shook at his sides.
No. No way. This couldn’t be happening. Please.
Pariah Dark, dread High Chief of the Infinite Lands, immortal wager of the hundred-year war against the lands of Justria, looked down at him as Tim knelt in the dirt a stone’s throw from the city where his people, his family, were going about their day completely unaware of the threat.
A slow smirk crossed the warmonger’s face. Tim couldn’t tear his eyes away, his whole-body trembling.
“Ah yes. You will do nicely.”
Fuck.
---
Tim was dragged along by the same two wraiths as Pariah’s party packed up camp and marched out of the clearing towards the Gotham border.
He was trying not to panic, looking desperately for a way out of this, or even just to figure out what exactly ‘this’ was.
He wasn’t having much luck. With any of it.
There were countless reasons why an enemy king would capture him. He was a Prince of Gotham after all, and he wasn’t naïve enough to think that Pariah hadn’t recognised him as such.
None of those reasons ended well for Tim, but this was already so far from the Infinite Lands’ normally strategy that he had no idea what might await them.
Pariah wasn’t one for subtlety. He might send occasional scouts, but when he attacked, you were guaranteed to know it. Tim would have expected him to march in with an army. He’d done so before, and it was only thanks to the combined might of their allies that they had been able to withstand the battles in Tim’s memory. He knew there were plenty from before he was born that they had not withstood, territory and countless lives they had lost.
Tim would have expected Pariah, upon finding a Prince out past the border, to lop off his head and send it to Bruce as a grisly warning. Kill everyone he came across and leave no survivors. That had certainly been his strategy before.
But instead, an ambush. Tim captured but not killed, barely even harmed. Pariah asking the wraiths if they ‘were successful’.
Even if Tim couldn’t be sure what Pariah intended to do with him, it was all painting a picture that Tim did not like the shape of. The enemy changing their strategy like this was never a good thing.
Eventually, they emerged from the woods and into sight of the border.
The second the first soldier stepped out of the trees, shouts and alarm bells rang out as the guards recognised the uniform. It got louder as the rest of the party stepped into view.
Pariah ignored the commotion and strode forward, stopping at the midpoint between the trees and the wall, completely unconcerned with the many arrows trained directly on him.
The rest of the party stayed a few meters back, except for the Wraiths that continued to drag Tim behind Pariah.
When the High Chief stopped, the wraiths threw Tim onto the ground before him and moved to take up station behind each of the warlord’s shoulders.
Before Tim could get his bearings, a massive hand gripped his hair and pulled him up to his knees, forcing his gaze towards the horrified guards manning the wall.
He froze as he felt the cold brush of steel settle on his exposed throat.
Pariah’s voice boomed out from behind him.
“Summon your king! Tell him he has one hour to show himself before I cut the throat of his precious son and leave him to bleed out in the dirt!”
Tim tried to hold himself still, tried to control the shudders running through him. He stared up at the guards with wide, terrified eyes. The ones still aiming their bows at Pariah looked back at him with the same.
Pariah leant down, lowering his voice.
“Time to see how much they care for you, young prince.”
Tim gulped, feeling the blade press closer with the motion, and would have curled in on himself if he could.
Bruce would be here, he knew he would. There was no way he would leave any of his children to die like this, not in a million years, no matter what was on the line.
Bruce would come, and Pariah would have the king right where he wanted him. He could kill Bruce the second he showed his face, could sweep through the city ransacking every home, killing everyone he came across. Gotham could fall tonight, unless a father could forsake his son.
He knew Bruce would come, but for the good of the kingdom, he almost hoped he wouldn’t.