I'M FINALLY DONE!!!

Yay! So, I finally finished this dumb story. Don't comment on the end, because I know it's horrible. I come up with better ideas later. Have fun reading!

“Captain Izaak Lamb,
You are to deliver a message very quickly to the King of the Isle of Thelen. The letter is enclosed in this bag. You have 168 hours to complete this mission. Once you have delivered it, go immediately to the Governor. Do not return to headquarters. The Governor will alert us of your safe return, and then you will be sent home.
Thank you, General K.”
Izaak slid the paper back into his brown leather satchel. He was finally going on a mission by himself. Nobody would escort him, watch him, distract him, or help him. He was alone.
The sound of horse hoofs thudded on the powdery dirt path mixed with the steady heaving breath of the horse was slowly making Izaak drowsier and drowsier. He shifted his weight uncomfortably in the saddle and wished for night to come. It was only five in the afternoon.
The beautiful green countryside slowly shifted into brown wasteland. Ragged mountaintops loomed in the distance to the West and a dark forest to the East. Izaak could see only one small trickling stream in all the miles ahead. He stopped, dismounted, started to fill his canteen and wash his chestnut horse. As he was sitting there, splashing his feet in the cool, clear water, he heard a sound. It wasn’t very loud, but it sounded like a baby whimpering. Izaak looked around until he saw movement on the other side of the stream. A tiny black thing was slowly crawling away from a large puddle.
Izaak jumped across the stream and carefully picked up the black thing. It was a little kitten, soaked to the bone and clearly malnourished. As Izaak jumped over the stream, back to his horse, he heard a scream. He whirled around, just in time to see a young girl darting towards him. He rushed behind the horse, which looked at the girl wide-eyed but stayed put as it was trained to do.
“What do you want, girl?” asked Izaak, trying to keep any panic from his voice.
“What did you do to my kitten?” shrieked the girl, quite enraged. She was skinny and had long, dark red hair. Her clothes were dark, all tattered and torn, and much too small for the girl, even though she was less than five feet tall. Around her neck hung a small leather pouch, just big enough to fit a couple apples.
“This thing? Here! Take it back!” Izaak walked back around the horse and shoved the sopping kitten into the girl’s dirty face. He was not exceptionally fond of cats. The girl carefully, but firmly snatched the kitten away. It mewed and snuggled up against her chest.
“What is your name, girl?” Izaak asked. His loud voice made the girl cringe, and she turned and started to leave. “Wait! I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you. Please, what is your name?” he asked, with a gentler tone of voice.
The girl slowly turned back around, stroking the shivering kitten. “My name is Elisabeth,” she said. “Why do you care, Captain?”
“Because I…” Izaak started. How did she know he was a Captain? “Well, Elisabeth. You seem to be a rather smart girl. How did you know I was a Captain?”
“Oh, my daddy was a Captain a while back. I can tell because you always talk so loudly.” She smiled innocently as she rubbed her kitten with her black tunic.
He thought about interrogating her, but decided against it. The lack of sunshine reminded him of how limited his time was. “Well then, Elisabeth the Captain’s daughter, good luck and see you in the future.” Izaak remounted his horse and started to head off. As the horse started to walk, though, Izaak felt a bump and something against his back. Startled he turned his head and let out a stifled yell. Elisabeth had mounted the horse from the rear and was sitting on the rump of the horse, smiling.
“Hello, Captain. I hope you don’t mind if we come with you. It’s frightfully boring out here in the desert with only bears and snakes as company.” She looked at him as a puppy would look at someone with food.
“Oh, dear… Well, I’m going to be doing dangerous things. I have to deliver a message to the King, and I wouldn’t want you to get hurt,” said Izaak, willing himself not to look at her face.
“Oh, the King? I know a short cut to the King’s castle! You don’t have to go through this frightful desert either. It’s so dry out here. Please, take me. I’ll show you how to get to the castle in four days!” Again, she threw him her puppy dog eyes.
“No. We are definitely not taking any shortcuts.” He shuddered as he remembered his last shortcut, which had ended injuring nine out of ten of his party. “I’ll go the way I know, that way I won’t get lost. You must stay here. Please, go run off to your parents.” Then, the thing Izaak least expected happened. Tears formed in the corners of the little girl’s eyes and one slithered down her cheek. “Oh, no. Please don’t cry.” He looked away awkwardly.
“No…” the girl sniffled. “No, I just wanted to go on an adventure. My daddy and my mum were… “ She drifted off into a thoughtful silence.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder and trying to console her. “Listen, where does this shortcut lead?”
“It goes through the mountains! It’s so very pretty up there, and you can see all around!” she said, her bright smile returning to her little round face. “It only takes a day or two to go all the way up and all the way down. It gets frightfully cold up there at night, so I try to go all the way up and down in one day. I only did it once, but I had a donkey. It should be easy with a horse as big as this one.” The kitten clambered up onto her lap.
“Listen, I’ll take you with me, but we’re not going to take any shortcuts,” he said sternly. “Also, you have to keep quiet. I’m on an important mission, and I can’t be disturbed.”
“Whatever you say, Captain!” She threw him a quick salute and placed the kitten into the little pouch around her neck. “But I definitely recommend the shortcut. There’s a frightful amount of robbers in the woods, and if you run into them, they’ll take you and string you up by a pine tree.”
“Well, I don’t think that’ll be too much of a problem. There are only two of us, so they’re bound to bound to miss us or at least ignore us,” he said confidently.
“Well, I promised I wouldn’t say anything, Captain. The choice is yours,” said Elisabeth, shrugging nonchalantly.
“Good girl, let’s go.” He urged the horse on and it started to walk towards the forest. After an hour or resting, the sun had sunk below the mountain peaks so the light was quickly dimming so Izaak wanted to reach the cover of the trees as soon as he could.
The horse continued at a slow gallop towards the forest for another two hours. Once they had gone ten minutes into the forest, Izaak stopped the horse and was about to dismount, but heard the soft breathing of Elisabeth sleeping against his back. He gently shook her awake, dismounted the horse and assisted Elisabeth in doing the same. She curled up against a fifty-foot pine tree and instantly fell asleep. Izaak draped his faded green cloak over her small shivering form. Then he tied the horse to a smaller tree and lay down next to the pine tree.
Izaak awoke to the sound of Elisabeth shrieking. He heard a hiss, and the scream was abruptly cut off and Izaak whirled his head towards his horse, then Elisabeth. Seven large men dressed all in black and wearing scarves around their faces had surrounded them. Two were holding the horse, two had grabbed Elisabeth, and the other three were standing menacingly behind Izaak. One of them was pressing something against Elisabeth’s neck. It glinted in the moonlight that shone through the canopy of leaves and Izaak gasped. It was a long knife. One of the men standing behind him whispered fiercely, “Don’t move, or we slit the girl’s throat.”
“What do you want?” asked Izaak, masking the terror in his voice. Why did he ignore Elisabeth’s suggestion? He knew perfectly well that there were no robbers in the mountains; it was much too cold.
“All we want is the message. Give us the message, and you may go free,” said the apparent leader of the group. “After we run our little errand of course.” All the men chuckled menacingly.
“Very well,” said Izaak gravely. “Whatever you like. Please don’t harm the girl though. She has nothing to do with me.”
“We will do whatever we like, Right boys?” Most of the men utter a grunt or phrase of approval. He removed the letter from Izaak’s satchel, along with a small bag of dry biscuits and salt pork. “Now, both of you come with us.”
Elisabeth’s face was the very image of terror, but Izaak’s mind was working over time to devise a plan of escape. Three men seized each of them and the other one led the horse. They took them to a clearing that was filled with old empty wine bottles, molding meat, and burnt firewood. In the center of the clearing was a circle of blackened rocks full of ashes. The men shoved Elisabeth and Izaak against a large tree and wrapped a thick cord around them several times.
The leader of the bandits piled firewood into the circle of rocks and started a fire with a flint and tinder. As the fire grew, the other six men crowded around it, rabbits and bottles of wine in hand, and started talking loudly in a language that neither Izaak nor Elisabeth could understand. As the content of the bottles diminished and the fire dimmed, the men dropped off to sleep, snoring loudly.
As the last bandit fell asleep, Izaak whispered to Elisabeth. “Hey, wake up. We need to get out of here as soon as we can.”
Elisabeth opened her eyes and said, “Oh, that shouldn’t be a problem.” Izaak looked puzzled. “You see, my kitten is a mast escape artist.”
Rolling his eyes, Izaak said, “That great, but we need to escape. Not the cat.”
The kitten scrambled out of the little pouch that hung around Elisabeth’s neck and perched on her shoulder like a pirate’s parrot. To Izaak’s amazement, it started nibbling on the cord that tied them to the tree. After twenty minutes of nibbling, one of the cords finally snapped. Izaak pushed out his arms and the rest of them fell about their feet. “Good job, kitty. Alright, Captain, shall we get moving?”
“Yes, but we need to get the message. How do we do that without waking them up?” His eyes widened as Elisabeth pulled the little piece of paper from her pouch. “How did you get that?” he stammered. “You must be… I mean he was… I mean…”
“Oh, it really wasn’t that hard. He took it and gave it to one of the men who were pushing me. They’re frightfully stupid. He put it in a pocket in his cloak. Kitty snuck into his pocket and brought the letter into her pouch.” She smiled and handed him the letter.
The two of them quietly walked around the sleeping men, mounted Izaak’s horse, and swiftly but silently departed the forest. They stopped at the stream where Izaak had first met Elisabeth to restock on victuals and water, and set off to the mountains.
For the next four days they traveled across the mountains. They reached the King’s castle on the seventh day, delivered the message, and then set off in the direction of the Governor. On the way there, Izaak said, “So, I guess you were right. I’m sorry.”
Elisabeth smiled and said, “It’s alright. I understand. Is your mission done now?”
“As soon as we reach the Governor, then I’ll have finished,” he said.
“Great. I have something for you,” she said.
“What is it?” he asked suspiciously.
She reached in her pouch and pulled out a small black thing. “It’s a stuffed kitty! I made it while you were sleeping. I slept while we rode, so I figured I would keep watch at night. It was frightfully boring, so I found some ferns and stuffed this with it.”
Izaak looked at the cat warily, then shrugged. “Thank you,” he said, taking it and placing it in his satchel. “You know, after this I’ll have another mission. Would you like to come along?”
“I would love to!” she said, smiling brightly.