I felt compelled to write this while working on something "totally unrelated".
It's really stupid. Like, really.
Oh also there's some blood-n-guts but it's not all that explicit.
"Are you awake?"
For the moment, I could not answer. The voice was distant and dreamlike as the vestiges of sleep ebbed from my heavy limbs, but it unmistakably belonged to a woman. As consciousness slowly flooded back, I became aware of the bristle of some sort of pelt underneath me, and a suffusive, savory smell surrounding me. I opened my eyes and rolled my head towards the sound of the voice—the room I found myself in was flushed with a soft morning glow, filtered through the heavy canvased ceiling.
The source of the voice was stooped over a pot, pouring what looked to be stew into a small earthenware bowl.
"Where am I," I said, and found my voice hoarse from disuse.
"I found you unconscious on the plains," she answered plainly, kneeling beside me with the bowl in hand. "Here."
I sat up to accept it and nearly doubled over from the pain that flared from my side. She moved to catch me; her grip was surprisingly strong, yet gentle.
Oh, yes. I could remember, now. This was the doing of those Sacaen barbarians who mugged me—the ones who answered my panhandling with a ferocious mugging. I was not well accustomed in dealing with lawless churls.
Yet this was a Sacaen who stood before me—her eyes took on a hint of the shape, and her hair a sheen that brought to mind a glint of sunlight off the rolling oceans.
Compared to her thuggish countrymen, there was a clarity, a resoluteness in her eyes that bore so heavily into me with its forceful influence that I was compelled to look away, despite my near-starvation.
"I'm fine," I murmured quietly, accepting the bowl without meeting her gaze. "Thank you."
"You're fine now, at least."
When I next lifted my eyes to hers, she was smiling.
"I am Lyn, of the Lorca tribe," she said, extending her hand for me to take. I reluctantly accepted it, taking this opportunity to feel the calluses that lined the padding of her palm. The mark was unmistakable.
"You're a swordfighter?" I said. Then I caught sight of the blade leaning in the corner. Idiotic.
"I am." She followed my line of vision and chuckled, crossing the small room to retrieve her weapon. "Don't worry," she said, lifting for me to examine. "You're safe here, erm… you didn't tell me your name."
She ended her suggestion with another laugh. Unlike the laughter of most girls I'd encountered, hers was honest, if not a bit awkward.
"Or…" Her smile fell. "Can you remember your name?"
I could very well remember my name.
On the onset of my journey, it was one of the many facets of me I had intended to discard. In that way, the barbarians' attack on me had been as much of a blessing as a curse. As a stranger, I had been stripped of my name, my identity, and finally, my meager belongings.
However, there was some parts of me I could not simply wash away.
"Mark," I said.
"That's an… odd name," she said uneasily.
"It's not that uncommon in Lycia."
"Yes, but you are…" She trailed off and I saw her eyes wander, then fix back on mine. "You are Lycian? I had figured you for a traveler."
"Of sorts."
"I see. What brings you to the Sacae plains, then?"
Before I could come up with a sufficiently evasive answer, I was interrupted by a distant, unidentifiable crashing noise outside.
Lyn shot to her feet.
"What was that?" I said.
"I'm not sure. I'll go out and take a look. Can you wait here for me, Mark?"
Though some alien upsurge of sentiment for the woman urged me to protest—the thought of her leaving filled me with an overwhelming sense of dread of whose origin I could not place—I nodded.
She was, however, startlingly perceptive.
"I'll be back," she assured me, giving my shoulder a quick squeeze. "I promise."
I dumbly nodded again.
And then she left, sword in hand.
A minute must have passed before I began to worry once more. Something was certainly amiss.
I ducked under the loosened flap of the hut and emerged to not the endless plains, but what looked to be a settlement. Or what once had been a settlement.
The Lorca, I remembered.
A figure appeared from around another ger—Lyn again, to my relief—and rushed up to meet me at the front of her hut.
"There's trouble," she whispered, ushering me back into the room. "Bandits, it looks like."
"Bandits?"
"Possibly scouts for a raiding party. Mark, I'm going to stop them."
I'm going to stop them. Not I must or I should, but I will. Despite the naivety, I had to admire her resolve.
It was an attractive quality, but not worth risking my savior's life over.
"If there are multiple men, perhaps it would be wiser to flee."
"Perhaps it would be wiser." She smiled with a gentleness that I hadn't anticipated. "But it would not be right. Mark, will you stay here in the meantime?
"No." I had said it too quickly; bemusement passed over her chiseled features. "Please let me join you."
"You can fight, Marked?"
I gingerly touched the aching spot on my side, and shook my head.
"Not in this state, no. I am a strategist by trade, however."
"That's a strange profession," she said plainly. I was inclined to agree with her. "But it tells me that you are no stranger to battle. But… Mark. Please stay close."
Quietly, she opened the flap of her hut and ushered me out.
"I'll protect you," she whispered as she stepped out behind me. In lieu of a coherent answer, I listened for further sounds from the bandits roving through the remains of the settlement.
"How many do you think you saw?" I whispered, as we crouched low behind an overturned crate.
"Around a handful. I think I can take them."
"If they're bandits like you say, I doubt they'd advance on you in an orderly line."
"I know." She smiled and ruffled my hair; while it was a childish, almost patronizing gesture of comfort, I enjoyed the feel of her touch. "I don't expect that of them. What would you suggest?"
I quickly surveyed the surrounding encampment.
"I suggest we use this environment to our advantage."
I would have jumped straight to burning down with the settlement had these huts not belonged to a tribe. The Lorca had presumably followed the plains animals elsewhere, as was the nature of the nomad, but surely they would one day return.
I noticed that much of it was torn down into its most basic components—almost roughly, as though the previous owners had vacated the settlement in a hurry.
It was adrenaline-fueled idiocy on my part. I would not learn of my mistake until the next morning.
Yes: it should astonish no one that I survived this ordeal. I had seen worse odds, at the time, and would face worse situations to come.
The first foe we encountered sprung on us as we crept down an aisle between the line of tents; as we approached the back side of one, we heard that something, man or beast, had gotten in to rummage through the nomad's abandoned affairs.
But as we drew closer, we could hear that the intruder was certainly human, and he could certainly hear us.
"Col? That you, Col?"
The silhouette through the canvas raised its head.
Lyn and I traded glances of bemusement, and did not respond.
"It's right frightening down here," he continued, with an edge of worry. "Think Batta's gonna need us back with 'em?"
I was afraid Lyn would hesitate. But when I gave her a nod, her eyes were set with the same resolve from before; she knew what needed to be done.
"Col?" the man said one last time.
With a soft, but thrilling grunt, she drove the blade of her sword into the side of the tent and the mark that awaited them on the other side. The bandit gurgled as she gave the weapon a rough twist, then jerked it away; as she stumbled back, part of the bandit flew out with the blade. We listened to his ugly death throes from our shelter behind the tent, and then another call from far off the camp.
"Aye, Wybert?"
The voice was distant, but unmistakably approaching.
"We can't stay here," Lyn whispered.
"I'm afraid we must," I said lowly, and before she could respond, I raised my voice: "Col!"
I held up a hand to cut short her protests and strained my ears for a response.
"Wybert?"
He had heard us, drawing near to the source of the sound. I could hear his lumbering footfalls as he waded over the scattered remains of the settlement. My legs commanded me to flee as he trawled down the row of huts; we heard him stop from time to time, likely tempted by the occasional abandoned dwelling.
Then we heard him reach the tent with his companion.
A strangled gasp tore from his throat.
"Aw, Wybert?" There was a thud as the bandit rolled his companion onto his back; his voice was thin and strained with a gasp of realization, and the rest spilled in a guttural, blubbering mess. "Wybert! Who did this to you, mate?"
Too consumed in the spasms of grief as we came around the front of the tent, he did not seem to notice us as we stood at the flap, casting a damning shadow over his hunched form. It alerted him to our presence.
He slowly rose to spun, but Lyn caught him with her sword before he could as much raise his own weapon. We saw realization dawn in his eyes as life drained away; his trembling lips formed a voiceless, gurgling curse, before he lolled back and slid off the blade angled through his gut.
It wasn't until I looked up at Lyn's face that I saw she was seeing the two off with a short prayer.
"It's a rite of the Lorcan hunters," she explained, taking what looked to be a cloak tossed to the floor of the tent to wipe the excess from her blade, and then spread it over the bandits' lifeless forms. "When we slay an animal for food, we express our gratitude—for the sustenance they provide—and regret."
She glumly regarded the bodies at her feet.
"Though now I only express my regret. I need remind myself how many lives they have stolen before meeting their end."
"Killing is an unpleasant necessity if you make it one," I said dryly.
Her smile was weak, but genuine.
"You seem to take a very… ruthless approach to your strategies. I sense a certain cunning from you that most Sacaens would not employ."
It was hardly the first compliment of that nature I've received.
"An unpleasant necessity as well."
"I do not find that admirable," she said, and it almost drove through me like a stab in the gut. "It's your forthrightness, Mark. I have only just met you, yet I get the sense that you do not check your blows."
My face felt hot, so I turned it towards the corner of the tent and pretended to busy myself with the affairs.
"I can admire a man who adheres to his principles, however dishonorable. It's honorable in its own way."
This went beyond mere flattery. She spoke with a candor that I had rarely recognized with previous clients; she meant her words.
"I advise that we move," I said. She grinned and nodded.
"Col! Wybert! Where'd you get off to, you louts? Batta wants a word with you two!"
We were greeted with the shout the moment we stepped outside the tent; it was too close.
The man stood
"Hey!"
I cursed underneath my breath and reached for Lyn's arm to flee, but she had acted on reflexes and charged outside of my reach.
Her advance was almost catlike in its limberness, sword raised high and the sleek, well-defined muscles on her legs flexing as she bore low to the ground and lunged.
She was a beast of efficiency. She nimbly dodged the man's axe as it came crashing down to her side, slashing at the man's throat on the upswing. It was not a clean cut, but surprising enough for him to stumble away, clutching the wound, while she closed the distance for another stab.
He fell to his knees, and she lowered with him,
"That's three," I said. She did not look up from her fallen mark.
"There's at least one more," she said. "I think he might be the leader. Mark…"
She turned to face me, and placed a hand on my shoulder.
"I don't want to risk you being hurt."
"What?" I snapped.
"I want to seek him out on my own. Mark, if I fall during this battle, I want you to flee."
"That's idiocy," I hissed, but she cut me off with an embrace.
"You have to live through this," she whispered to me. "I intend to make sure of it."
Lyn struck me as the stubborn soft—true to her principles, as she had said of me. There were times where I knew that there was no arguing to be done.
I pulled away from Lyn.
And I let her go.
I saw her off in one direction, before she disappeared round a row of structures. The next voice I heard was not clear and candid, but gravelly, snarling.
"Got you now, son."
I whirled to see a giant of a man advancing slow upon me, his axe raised in teasing menace.
"You can't hide behind your girl forever! Think you've outsmarted Batta the Beast. boy?"
For the briefest instant, I panicked and thought that Lyn had been lost. I needed to find her. If I were to flee, she would flee with me. She had taken me in, rescued me from the brink of starvation—I felt strangely bound to her, and knew that if I abandoned her just then, it would haunt me for the rest of my days.
Batta took another step, and a gleaming shoot of red erupted from a newly-formed slit in his belly; he peered down incredulously as the blade withdrew from his back.
Behind him stood Lyn, shoving the man off the sword of her with her foot. She drove it into him again, this time through his vitals, to silence his moans. An act of mercy.
She studied his corpse for a good while.
And then her eyes found mine.
The sword was discarded and her arms thrown around my neck in a concerned, vice-like embrace.
"Mark! Are you well?"
I did not respond straightaway. My hands awkwardly brushed against the back of her shoulders—they were impressively muscled, rising and falling with her even breaths. Her arms were firm, her chest warm and reassuring, and were she a man and were it socially appropriate for other men of our era to do so, I would have nestled my head there and inhaled the distinctly masculine musk of the plainswoman, an aroma mixed with the spice of her exotic perfumes and distinct yet pleasant smell of sweat from exertion.
"I'm sorry," she said, briefly pulling away. "I said I wouldn't leave you, but I fuck what am I writing
There was a sound of a key fumbling at the lock behind as his roommate returned, tossing his bag towards his bed and barely missing.
Soren quickly minimized the document on his screen and pulled up another one. His cursor had been hovering there at the ready—he was an expert in covert window-switching, after all. Then he continued to type, idly and loudly.
"Woah, you're going to break your keyboard like that."
Ike dropped onto the seat situated across from him; Soren could catch the flash of Ike's grin in his peripheral vision.
"Essay," Soren muttered feebly.
"Must be intense," Ike said, studying the poster of crossing weaponry at the head of his bunk.
"You could say that, yes."
Ike didn't answer, instead absorbing the sudden quiet that consumed their room.
"So, this is your plans for the night?" he said finally, standing to cross over to his side and rest a hand on the back of his chair.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you're going to squander your Saturday away on an essay?" he said teasingly.
He reached down to ruffle Soren's hair.
"I hate it when you do that," he said, hastily smoothing it back.
"First I've heard of this. My bad." There was a beat as Ike apparently gathered his thoughts. "You hungry?"
Not really, he thought, though his stomach wrung so hard that it felt like it was eating itself. He nodded and swallowed away the dryness in his throat.
"How does Indian sound? I'll treat."
Again, Soren almost added.
He'd been tempted to do so a multitude of times, but as always, he instead raised the weak protest.
"You don't have to do that."
"Least I could do if I'm keeping you from an important assignment."
"No, Ike. Not at all. I might even find… inspiration."
He nearly cringed at himself. Ike didn't notice. Ike was not terribly perceptive, after all.
"But don't pay for me. This isn't a date."
At this, Ike smiled; there was nothing false or mocking about it, beyond a hint of amusement.
"Isn't it?"