For the Love of Honor, Chapter 1
Disclaimer: She-Ra belongs to Filmation, not me, and I make no money from this whatsoever.
Note: I will doing a rewrite, and because of some lapses of memory, will not be able to put in every single detail.
"What do you plan to do with the child?" asked Shadow Weaver in annoyance. The newest member of the Horde was demanding attention in a way that none of the members of Horak's council could manage, let alone get away with.
The little girl was crying.
Hordak looked at the tiny child, who was now about three days old. He had put her in a crate, largely because there was nothing else he could think to do with her. There was a bad smell coming from her, one that he didn't know what to about. He had placed her and the large box beside him. There were few that he would trust with his prize.
Hordak was back in the Fright Zone, sitting on the throne that he had been his for generations.
Below him, in a loose ring at the base of his throne, stood his "loyal" soldiers.
Those that stood below him, while useful, were about as loyal as hyenas. Only those that he let within reach of himself where considered "trustworthy". It was one of the mostly widely sought after desires of any of his officers to be allowed within speaking range.
"Honestly, don't you know anything about babies?" said a voice, and Hordak was confronted by one of his generals.
Her name was Silver Wolf, and she was standing on the dais with him, only a few feet from Shadow Weaver.
Hordak trusted Shadow Weaver, largely because their relationship went far beyond what was customary between ruler and subject. Only Silver Wolf, however, would ever speak to him like an equal
Silver Wolf was a brilliant tactician. It had been she that had planned the attack on the palace after he had decided to assault it, and it had been she that had held the stunner on the queen while Hordak had stolen the babe.
"I do not think that such a thing would be needful for me to know. Odd, isn't it, that one of my greatest generals would have such, unnecessary, knowledge."
For a few moments, she represented the wolf that was her namesake, with her silver white hair and ice-blue eyes. A wolf, the Horde leader thought, with her hackles up.
"You need to change her diaper, and get her fed."
"I, uh-" snorted the dreadful leader.
Anger crackled through the room.
"Who are you to admonish me?! Your strategy wasn't enough to get us both twins, and we lost the battle for Eternia!"
"I was the one who told you not to trust Skeletor."
The two stared at each other, until it was Hordak that dropped his eyes.
A thought lit the Master of the Horde's face. He thrust the whimpering infant at the startled general.
"Here! Since you obviously know what you are doing, then you will raise her!"
"Me?!"
"Yes. You are due for retirement, are you not?"
"I-" the surprise in her voice was enough to convince Hordak that this was what he should do. It never occurred to him doubt her sincerity. Nor would he have ever thought that she would have an agenda of her own.
Only Shadow Weaver saw the strange look that crossed the old general's face when she hugged the infant to her chest. Only she thought, even briefly, that someone might have plans of her own.
Silver Wolf, as she was packing to go, looked down at her new charge.
Now that the girl-child was fed, cleaned, and no longer feeling like she was about to be stepped on, she was sleeping soundly.
"Well, little Adora, you will have one heck of a fate awaiting you."
A large wolf bitch sat on Silver's bed. Gently laying the girl next to her, the wolf squirmed in next to her, and nuzzled the infant.
"She doesn't need to nurse again," Silver told her old friend.
Silver had befriended this pack of wolves when she had come to Etheria. They had given her the name that she used, and she had protected their range as best she could.
Sitting down again, Silver picked the baby up again, and cuddled her. Adora yawned, and opened her amazingly blue eyes.
Smiling, Silver said again," Yes, one heck of a fate."
Adora was in trouble.
She ducked, hearing one of the enemy missals barely miss her head. Adora retaliated, throwing one of her own snowballs.
It hit her best friend, Sundar, in the chest, and he went down with a groan.
"You won't win, Rebel scum!" he screamed out at her, as the other children went after her outnumbered forces.
"We will fight to the death!" Little Adora proclaimed, launching into a speech, which, for five years old, was quite good.
"I will never surrender!" she said as she made her last stand by the flag of her snow fort. Adora had barely gotten this out before she was hit by two snowballs in the face.
She went down screaming and moaning. Sundar came up and piled her "dead body" along with her other friends together and they did a victory dance.
It was one the rare snow days in the outskirts of the Whispering Woods. Aunt Silver, who taught school to those children whose parents would allow, had let them out today, saying that it was only fair.
"All right, you kids," said the kindly voice of Aunt Silver. "Time to come in before you catch your deaths!"
"Aw, Aunt Silver," said Sundar, "We just beat the Rebels!"
While Aunt Silver was technically Adora's aunt, every one of the children of the village called her that. She was the one that they went to ask for advice, to pour out their woes, and to bandage their skinned knees.
She was something of a mystery to the villagers, having shown up nearly five years ago with a baby that obviously wasn't hers under her arm. A huge black dog was the only thing that seemed overly strange about her.
"Adora, now come inside," Aunt Silver again admonished, striding over and picking up the little girl. "You're all wet."
Sundar had started to bury several of his friends in snow, but then, Lobo, the huge dog, bounded out of Adora's snow fort. He pinned the boy, and began washing him with his tongue.
Giggling, it was one of those great memories of childhood. It was something that Adora would use to rib Sundar for years.
Dragging the giggling little girl into their tiny cabin, with the rest of the children trucking in behind her, Silver looked over the girl that had been in her care, and smiled at what she saw.
Adora was a good mix from both her parents, she thought. She had her mother's sense of adventure, and her father's talent for leadership.
And temper, she reminded herself. That showed when she had tried to brain one of the larger boys of the village after he had picked on Sundar.
Silver had just picked up a towel, and was briskly rubbing the little girl dry. "Aunt Silver!" Adora protested as the rough towel ran over her. Sundar started to laugh at his friend, but that was turned around when it was his turn.
" Don't do that!"
Five years later
"Who were my parents?" asked Adora.
It had hardly been the first time that she had done so, but she would get the response that she would always have.
"They were good people, dear. I wish that you could have known them."
"Are you my mom's sister, or my dad's sister?"
"Neither, dear."
"Did they love me?"
Smiling, Aunt Silver ruffled the little girl's hair. "Very much."
This was a conversation that would be repeated several times in the next years, but this was the first time that the question was asked, " Where are they?"
Silver Wolf hated the fact that she would have to lie to her adopted daughter, but it wasn't time yet for her to know. It would be many, many years until then.
"They're dead," she said in a sad voice.
"NO! Aunt Silver, why didn't you tell me!"
Gathering her into her arms, Silver Wolf held Adora while she cried her heart out.
Two years later
"Do you have any idea where she is?" asked Sundar, giving the area a good looking around.
"I have no idea. Sometimes she does this, disappearing for a few hours, and no one knows where she goes," Adora said in a singsong voice. It was kind of cute, but she was getting worried.
"Well, you think we should try using some of that stuff she was teaching us?" asked Sundar, who was now trying to get a good look at the ground to see if he could find any tracks.
"Don't you think we should check the village first?" asked Adora, but she was also looking at the ground.
"I don't- wait! I see her foot prints!"
While for someone who had only been practicing tracking for a few months, it was a very big accomplishment. But, then, Aunt Silver had very big feet, and her boots were unlike anyone else's in the village.
The two children followed the tracks, until they came to something that was just plain weird.
"The tracks keep going, but they turn into wolf paws," said Adora, confusion making her voice low.
"Do you have anything better to do?" asked Sundar, when it she asked him if he wanted to keep on following them.
The tracks didn't get any less clear, but there were more of them. In fact, they got more and more of them, until-
"It's a wolf pack!" shouted Sundar.
All the eldest villagers had spoken to the children repeatedly at the danger the wolves represented to their people. Only Aunt Silver had ever given them any real defense, and years of boogey stories combined with adrenaline to send the tow children flying.
"AHHH!"
They dashed to the village, where they saw something that shocked them even more.
The village had been gutted.
"What, what happened?" Adora whispered.
"It was the rebels, lass," whispered a voice from one of the burnt out buildings.
"Who's there?" asked Sundar.
Adora gave a soft gasp when she saw who it was. It was one of the hunters that regularly went into lands surrounding the Whispering Woods. He had often entertained the children with his stories.
He was sitting in a pool of his own blood, the left side of his body covered in burns.
The elder man had managed to pull himself up into a sitting position. Adora had already pulled off her over-tunic, and was ripping it to shreds to make bandages.
Sundar started checking him for other injuries.
The hunter coughed, Sundar got up from his side to find some water.
"What happened?" Adora asked, wondering how the rebels could have caused such an atrocity.
"They, they were looking for someone. We don't know who. They said that since we weren't aligned with either side, then we weren't any better than those that openly were members of the Horde."
"And they said they were the good guys!" yelled Sundar. He had just returned, holding a skin of water. Suddenly, his eyes went wide.
"My family!" he shouted, dropping the water and running.
Adora was able to keep of enough presence of mind to hand the hunter his water before she too went searching for Sundar's home.
Adora was a fast runner, but Sundar had a good start, but when she saw what had happened to Sundar's home, she braked so hard that she slid to a stop.
They were dead. His mother, father, and little sister were all laid out in front of their farmhouse, with their throats cut.
The sheer brutality of it, the lack of dignity, was horrible. The house was burned, the people were lined up, and you could see the order that they were killed in. They started with the mother, and left the little girl for last.
"She had to watch…" Adora croaked in a hushed voice. She had never seen anyone dead before. Sundar was on the ground next to the bodies, crying.
"What do we do?" he sobbed, over and over, in a litany.
"I don't know," cried Adora, sinking to the ground beside him.
The sun had been casting long shadows already when Sundar and Adora had gone looking for Silver, and by now, the sun had disappeared over the horizon, and only one of the moons was up. It cast a garishly pale light, making things look like some sort of black and white picture.
"I don't know. Why would anyone do this? We should join the Horde!" Adora finally ended up howling to the uncaring night.
The night went on, and all they could bring themselves to do was keep up their gruesome vigil. The only thing that disturbed their shock was when a wolf bayed at the moon.
There was some light coming from the smoldering house, and in the flickering light, Adora saw something that made her feel like she had been hit on the head with a plank.
It was pack of wolves. In fact, it was the same pack that she had seen earlier. All the old stories of wolves coming to rob the dead for their bones came frantically to mind, and Adora shook her catatonic friend's shoulder. He looked up, and saw something different.
"Aunt..Silver?" he said in a breaking voice.
Adora peered through the thick night, and saw the familiar outline of her guardian. She was wearing her usual old woolen dress, but her hair was loose and wild, totally out of character, and she had no shoes.
"What happened here?" Silver asked, feeling like she had been run through. Sundar's family had been well respected in their small village. There was no reason for them to have been killed in such a way…
Sundar started to babble, running to her and telling them what had happened that afternoon.
"And then, and then-"
She put her arms around him, and let him cry his arms out.
"The rebels did this," Sundar finally said. He looked into Silver's face, and all the childishness that it might once have held was lost. Now, he held the look of someone that was emotionally dead, beyond the pain, but wanting to make others feel what he wouldn't allow himself.
Taking a deep breath, Sundar said steadily," The Horde academy takes people my age, don't they?"
Silver could see where this was going. It wrung her heart.
"Yes, they do," she answered. It was destiny, and she had no right to interfere. Only, if she could only…
"I'm joining."
"If that is what you want."
The rest of the night was taken up with building a funeral pyre for those that had been slain. Sundar wasn't alone in the deaths of his family.
Those that had survived the attack had gathered around, and they were mourning. It was all that they could do. Right then, they tried to focus on that, and not on the fact that their supplies of food had been stolen, and that they were not likely to survive the winter.
It was only later that Adora asked about the wolf pack.
She felt vaguely guilty about not being with her best friend, who was now packing for his trip to the Fright Zone, but the mystery of the wolves was still very much on her mind.
Her cabin had been spared, largely because it was so far away from the others of the village. She was in her room, looking out of her window at the eerie light that shone only when one of the moons was out.
She heard the soft footfall of her aunt.
"What do the wolves have to do with anything?" she asked softly.
"They are my friends."
Turning from the washed out view before her, Adora faced the shadowed face of her aunt. "I was told all my life that wolves were evil."
A strange smile flit across Silver's features. "Don't believe everything you hear, love. One of those wolves nursed you when you were a baby."
"How?" was all Adora could get out. After all the shocks of the day, you would think that something like that would be mundane.
She wished.
"But, why didn't the wolf eat me?"
Laughter, even though it was slightly hysterical, was the last thing that Adora expected.
"Why would she? She had just had pups herself."
"But-" that was the best thing that Adora could think to say.
Walking over to her, Silver Wolf gave Adora a kiss on the forehead. "If you need to talk about it, my bedroom door is open, you know that. You need to get some sleep, though. We will be taking Sundar to the Horde tomorrow."
To be continued…