The next few days passed too quickly for Kel. She spent her days fairly busy, even though Raoul kept reminding her that she'd once said he shouldn't work over Midwinter. She stuck her tongue out at him, not caring who saw. Her paperwork had to get done, and some small crisis was always popping that required her attention.
She had to go through the stores, to monitor the food and supplies they had, and make sure they were using them at an appropriate rate, one that would see them through to spring. She had to help Fanche mediate a dispute between two men who were fighting over space in the mess hall, of all things. She had to help Neal convince a heavily pregnant woman that she could, in fact, trade her shifts at guard duty for helping Yuki in the newly established camp school.
That last had been the hardest for Kel. She felt for the woman, and had she not been in her eighth month and struggling to navigate the stairs up to the walls, she would have told Neal to leave the woman be and that pregnancy was not a disease. In the end, that difficulty with stairs was how she had convinced Arema that her talents could be used elsewhere. If there was an attack, she wouldn't be able to move quickly enough to be of any use.
On top of all that, she had her weapons practice with the children in the mornings, her own training work, afternoons spent with the clerks and, though her orphans were now spending their afternoons with Yuki and the other camp children at lessons, she still sat with them before dinner, helping with their work.
She spoke to Loey, whose eyes lit up at the thought of joining the Riders. The young girl had several long talks with Buri about the work the riders did around the country, and came back to Kel even more determined. Living in the borderlands, she hated bandits, and hearing that she would get the chance to fight them had made the girl's eyes light up. After that, Kel had started helping her learn to ride. Buri had gotten involved too, happy to show off some of her trick riding to an already awestruck girl. Five other camp children, Loey's age or a year older, begged to join the lessons, so they could go south to the Riders; once they had permission from their parents, Kel let them.
Her evenings were also quite full. She would have dinner with her friends in the mess, then stop in at whatever refugee barrack was playing host to that evening's party, before they would retire to headquarters to talk and while away the long winter evenings. Usually, she worked on paperwork until someone, usually Raoul or Dom, scolded her. Then she would put aside her work for another day.
Buri taught her to play a K'Miri strategy game that was similar to chess, the one she'd been playing with Dom the night he'd forced Kel into having a conversation with him. Then, Yuki had pulled out some string and demanded Kel play with her. Irnai had snuggled into Kel's lap to watch as they played. Cat's cradle existed in Tortall and in the Islands, but the ways you moved the strings, and the patterns you produced, were different, so they'd spent some time demonstrating their version to Buri, who wanted to have a go at the version they played. That had led to a discussion of Tortallan versus Yamani versus K'Miri children's games.
Without discussing it, Kel and Dom were always the last to seek their beds. They certainly shared quite a few kisses, but they also talked, about growing up, little stories they'd never shared over the years they'd known each other.
Kel found herself laughing frequently. "And what did she do when she caught you?"
Dom raised an eyebrow. "She gave me a beating that was made even more memorable by the raging hangover that accompanied it." He sighed. "But I certainly never touched cook's supply of brandy ever again, so I suppose I learned my lesson that once."
They asked each other questions. "Do you know how you came to be scared of heights? Was it a gradual thing, or one incident?"
Kel frowned at the memory. "Have you ever met my brother Conal?"
Dom thought for a few minutes, and then nodded. "I remember him from maneuvers with the Own when I first joined." The face he made said what he thought of the man more than his words did.
"Yes, well, Conal has always been Conal. When I was little, before we left for the Islands, I used to love going to the top of one of the towers at Mindelan, and I'd annoyed him, somehow, so he dangled me over the balcony." She shivered at the memory. Dom looked slightly horrified. "He says he doesn't even remember doing it, but I remember my father being so mad he was nearly disowned. Anyway, my walk down Balor's Needle with Lalasa cured me of the worst of my fear, so at least I don't freeze up anymore, even if I'll never love being far off the ground."
She nudged Dom with her elbow, trying to displace his frown. It didn't work. "He dangled a baby over the edge of a balcony because she'd irritated him?"
"I was nearly four, not a baby. He just doesn't think about consequences to his actions." She shrugged. "We're not close, and we never will be."
Still, she hoped Conal didn't manage to run into the sergeant anytime soon.
Raoul didn't corner her, as she'd expected him to, but she found him watching her frequently. Apparently, whatever he saw satisfied him, or she knew he would have insisted she tell him what had been bothering her. She was glad he didn't ask; while she knew her friends would eventually figure out that something was going on between her and Dom, it was nice to just figure things out, without worrying about what other people thought or expected. It was good that she didn't have to worry that Raoul, a man she thought of as a second father, might be disappointed in her.
Before she thought it possible, the week of Midwinter was over, and her group of refugees needed to get back to their normal routines, as did Raoul. Bidding them goodbye was difficult, especially after Dom had pulled her into a hidden spot between the infirmary and the wall to give her a thorough kissing, but it was necessary. Spring would come soon enough, and with it the Scanrans.
Still, Kel kept busy. She didn't spend her time thinking of the blue-eyed sergeant. She knew that if she didn't want to be a noble wife, breeding heirs, this was the relationship they would have, with long separations imposed by their separate duties. She missed him, certainly, but she didn't mope.
That was how she found herself, a month and a half after midwinter, leading a squad of Merric's soldiers on one of the regular patrols when they picked up signs of Spidrens in the area. She was riding point when Nari and Arrow came streaking up to her, with the rest of their flock trailing behind them.
It took a few moments to figure out which immortals the sparrows were so worked up about, but once she knew, she rapidly hand signaled the rest of the patrol to halt and for the scouts to be brought in. Hoshi had picked up on her riders uneasiness and was shifting her weight from foot to foot while Kel waited for the scouts to return. At last, she had ten men gathered around her.
"We've got spidren sign," she whispered. "Hand signals only, and stay within sight of each other. I don't want to give these creatures a chance to breed in our area. Grestin, I want you to bring word back to New Hope, and let them know where we are." She saw nods all around. Everyone knew the damage spidrens could do. Without a word, the man she had indicated wheeled his horse around and headed back towards the camp. "We track them, determine their numbers. Don't engage unless we must, understood?" Again, nods all around.
The birds led them out, taking them down a narrow game track patrols normally didn't use, which made Kel want to curse. They were forced to travel in single file, and the mountainous terrain and the tree cover, not to mention the snow on the ground, prevented her from putting scouts out to their sides as she would like. At least she had the birds; they could go where men on horses wouldn't fit.
The woods around them were silent, in a way not explained by the hush a snow-covered forest normally had. It put her on edge, even with the sparrows out watching. The forest felt wrong without some kind of animal noise, and knowing that wrongness was due to the presence of Spidrens didn't make it any easier to cope with. Still on point, she heard the occasional jingle of a harness from those spread out behind her. They were strung out enough along the path that they wouldn't be forced to bunch up if they were attacked, but one person could still see the next along.
Kel's breath made little clouds as she rode, her ears alert for any sound and her eyes open for any flicker of motion. The terrain was not in their favor. The path was a very narrow track cut by game into the north wall of the valley of the Greenwoods River. To their left, it dropped away sharply towards the rushing river, and it climbed higher still on their right, a snarled mixture of leafless trees and evergreens, with only the odd stony outcropping to break the cover. Seeing anything in this mess was going to be difficult. Hopefully, the spidrens would be holed up for the day in whatever cave or clearing they'd found, and would come out to hunt at night, when their glowing webs would do them the most good. Still, twilight was fast approaching, and they could have risen already.
She felt thankful for the sparrows on a daily basis, but when they came swirling back towards her, right before one of the spider monsters appeared seemingly out of nowhere, she thanked every god she could think of, before leaping from Hoshi's back to face the first monster.
With the width of the track, she was on her own. None of the other men with her could get close enough to help her, though she was sure they would try. For now, she had to focus on the enemy in front of her. Shouts and the sounds of weapons being drawn let her know they had their own foes to face.
This spidren had a face that looked like a Scanran on top of the huge spider's body, and carried a broadsword in one of its forelegs and an axe in the other. With the length of its legs, the creature had about the same reach with those weapons as she did with her glaive. She parried, thrust, cut, blocked, allowing her body to fall into the patterns she'd beaten into herself over the years.
Her muscles remembered what they had to do before her brain could process the minute tics giving away the spidren's moves. Her glaive moved in a blur, blocking first axe, then sword, dipping in to cut at the creature's flanks, trying to find an opening, a gap in his defenses, something to allow her to end this fight. There! She swept her blade inside his guard, catching his axe on the shaft of her glaive, her blade slicing through his sword arm and biting seep into his abdomen. With a twist, she pulled her glaive free, blood spraying across the snow already churned to a mess by their fight. Blood splashed across her face, burning like acid where it hit. The blond spidren shuddered, then collapsed.
She heard horns, in the distance and nearer to hand, as she scrubbed the burning blood from her eyes, then bit back a scream as something bit into her left arm. She forced herself backwards as she opened her eyes, to see another spidren practically on top of her. This one had darker coloration, and only carried a sword, but it had taken advantage of Kel's momentary blindness to slice deeply into her left bicep. Her hand went numb, and her bicep erupted in pain; gripping with that hand was impossible, though she could still shift the arm, if she ignored the white-hot pain.
She shifted her grip on the glaive so she could wield it one-handed. She might have switched to using her sword, but she still needed the reach her pole arm provided. Still, she managed to scramble back slightly, putting this new spidren right on top of his fallen comrade, with the terrible footing that implied. She used the staff of her glaive to swing her shield from her back to her front, shoving her mostly useless arm into the straps and tightening them so it didn't swing back around.
Gods, she thought, just when Tobe trusted me enough to let me out of his sight, I'm going to get myself killed. The spidren thrust his sword at her, and she caught the edge of the blade on her shield, his blade taking a chunk out of the Mindelan owl. She sliced at one of its legs and scored a shallow hit.
Her head was starting to spin from blood-loss; she could feel the liquid dripping down her arm, and soon even holding her shield with her left arm was going to prove too much. She could hear the sounds of fighting around her, but she didn't have any time to look back and see what was going on with the others. They would have to take care of themselves as best as they could; her hands were full. She dipped within the spidren's guard and buried her blade at the point where one of his legs met his body.
The spidren shrieked and lunged backwards. She hadn't been ready for that, and the creature took her glaive with it. She cursed herself and the thing's ancestors as she drew her sword, sending a silent thanks to Alanna for gifting her with griffin.
Now, with her pole arm gone, she had to get closer to the creature, and the look of pure venomous hatred in his eyes was terrifying. Still, she pushed herself closer. She bit back a scream as she took another hit on her shield, the impact on her injury causing the edges of her vision to go white from pain.
She scored a hit, slicing a hit across one of the spidren's eyes. The creature shrieked in pain and anger, rearing on its hind legs to free its spinneret. Again, she lashed out with her sword tip, trying to slice into the sensitive flesh before it could spray web at her.
She needed to end this; a disturbing amount of blood was dripping down her arm, and she was getting dizzy from the blood-loss, but she couldn't get close enough to score a hit that meant anything. Why hadn't she thought to have everyone have bows out? If she'd not forgotten something so simple, she wouldn't be in this mess now!
She caught his sudden sword strike with her own blade, and followed with a furious exchange of strikes and blocks, both trying to get past the other's guard and failing. Suddenly, sparrows wheeled in around the spidrens face, forcing the thing further back, and then Kel gasped as sparrows were replaced by arrows. With a last shriek, the spidren collapsed.
It seemed that the only thing keeping Kel upright had been her driving need to stay alive, because as soon as the threat had been eliminated, she sank to one knee struggling to stay conscious. Her sword dropped from fingers that refused to grip, and the only reason she retained her shield was the long, leather guige still looped around her neck. She could hear voices, but the sounds of fighting had ceased. At least she didn't have to worry about that any longer. With a sigh, she let the blackness take her.
A/N: I've edited the fight and am now happier with it. What do you think?