He sat in the window seat in her room and stared into the emptiness of black night behind thick paned glass. All the day long and she hadn't stirred. Keitlan had come in once or twice to check on her. Had brought him a tray which he had left untouched. She took it away, muttering about the both of them being foolish. He wouldn't leave until he saw her awake and all right. As all right as she could be considering. He was stalled on that notion, to see her healthy and sound and until he did, nothing else seemed to stick in his mind.
And finally, she did wake. Stretched under her blankets and made a little sound of impending consciousness. He padded over to the bedside, dropped to his knees on the thick carpet and waited while she slowly blinked sleep away from her eyes. She focused on him, languidly, dreamily and half smiled. He took a breath of relief -- so much relief flooded through him it was almost a shock. Reached out to push back a strand of her hair that had fallen over her nose. Schneider could not for the life of him form words to say to her. So he just stared, with his hand on her cheek until she drew her brows in puzzlement and whispered.
"What's wrong? You look so melancholy."
What did one say to that innocent question? Stymied again. He let out a little breath of cynical laughter and dropped his head onto his arm. She trailed her fingers down his wrist and arm, and laid them on his head, stroking his hair, still that bemusement on her face.
"Are you talking to me again?" she asked in a little voice. "I don't think I like it much when you don't."
"Yes." He said and rose up a little to pull her closer to the edge of the bed where he could wrap her in his arms and bury his face in her hair. She ran her hands down his shoulders, a gentle, reassuring stroke and murmured against his ear.
"I love you, but we have to be careful of the baby."
Schneider froze, while her fingers lingered on the skin of his back, trying to digest what she had said. What she might have meant. Didn't she know? Hadn't they told her? He wasn't sure he could.
He pulled away a little, staring down at her face. There was a dreamy pleasure in her eyes, in her smile as if everything in the world were perfect. He caught her hands in his, squeezing gently.
"Yoko --- you lost the baby. Remember?"
Her smile faltered a little. Her pupils seemed to expand. Her gaze went right through him, as if he were not even there. She pulled her hands out of his grasp, shifting to sit up, to swing her legs over the side of the bed. She rose, white nightshift flowing about her slender body and stood for an unsteady moment next to where he knelt, then she walked towards the fire and the chair there. There was a basket of sewing on the floor beside it. She sat down and picked up a folded piece of material. She held it up and smiled back at him.
"See? This will be a summer smock. I've got the material for winter ones, but I haven't gotten the chance to start on them yet. It'll be spring before she's born anyway."
"Yoko --" His voice cracked a little. "Yoko, don't you remember what happened? The mountains?"
"I've been thinking for weeks about names. I was thinking of naming her after my mother, if that's all right with you. Thelsa. It would make father happy."
"How do you know," he asked leadenly, in the face of her refusal to acknowledge the truth. "That it will be a girl?"
"I had a dream." She laughed. "I know its silly, but I think it heralded the truth."
The truth. How far had she gone, in her desperation to join that infant soul? Had he not brought everything that was essential back? Had he failed that miserably?
The door opened and Keitlan came in with a covered pot of tea. She stopped in the threshold, taking in the sight of Yoko sitting by the fire, of him by the bed with a look that must have been horror on his face. She walked into the room, a practical, reasonable woman and sat the tea service down on the table next to Yoko's chair. Yoko didn't acknowledged her presence. Schneider couldn't take his eyes from Yoko.
"She should be in bed." Keitlan said, concern in her face. She patted the girl's shoulder, took her elbow gently in her hand and urged her up.
"Put that down now." The housekeeper suggested when Yoko seemed to want to take the unfinished baby smock with her. Schneider rose, keeping the sheet, which he'd sat in all day, about him, letting the woman guide Yoko past him and back into bed. Keitlan cast him a worried look and frowned.
When she had Yoko settled, she caught his arm and said in a voice that brooked no argument. "You come with me."
Numbly, he did, until she shut the door and scolded. "You'll do her no good looking like you do. Go eat. Get yourself together, man."
"She doesn't know." He said. "I tried to tell her, but she ignored me. She talks as if she still carries the baby."
Keitlan drew her brows, glancing back at the closed door. She took a breath, a long, uncertain one. "Its -- its not uncommon for a woman who's miscarried to deny it happened. I've seen it before. She's had a terrible shock. Gods know she's had a terrible shock. Give her a little time. That's all she needs."
Schneider felt as if the fates were conspiring against him. The disorientation clung stubbornly, his mind reeled with the image of her dreamy smile and her declaration that they had to be careful of the baby. I love you, but we have to be careful of the baby. And he had thought for so fleeting a moment that she was all right. That everything would be okay. As if anything, since he had come back to the world had been okay.
He went to the only other place he knew to find solace, when he felt so lost. He went to Arshes. He found her polishing armor in her room, her newly oiled sword out of its scabbard on the bed. Her war armor. She hadn't worn it since she'd come here.
"We're leaving in the morning." She said, to break the silence when he only stood leaning against her doorframe.
"Where?" he asked. She frowned at him.
"To search the mountains. Kall-Su left this afternoon with a party. Gara and I leave in the morning. We'll find whoever did this."
"Oh. You didn't tell me."
"We did." She said slowly. "You were -- upset."
"Angelo did it." He was so very certain of that.
"Probably." She agreed. She carefully laid the piece of armor she'd been working on down. "How is Yoko?"
"I don't know." Complete honesty there. "She seems to be --- in denial."
"Darshe, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. For her. For you." And there was honesty there as well. She held out a hand to him. He went to her, sat on the edge of her bed amidst her armor and weaponry while she scooted over to wrap her arms about him, hugging him. He sat there with her weight and warmth against his back and thought about all the deaths he would bring down upon Angelo's head. He wondered if in his rage he would be able to prolong the Prophet's life long enough to inflict the pain he wanted to inflict.
"It'll be all right." She said. "We'll make it better. We'll find him and make him pay for what he did to her."
"It was because of me. He hurt her, but it was aimed at me."
"And he'll suffer for it." There was righteous indignation in her voice. She would, no matter what offense he gave her, defend him to the death.
"I love you, Arshes."
He felt her sigh against him and whisper. "I know."
Arshes and Gara left with a contingent of Sta-Veron troops who were well versed in the ways of the mountains. For two days Schneider watched Yoko drift aimlessly about the castle, for the most part hearing only what she wanted to hear, seeing only what she wanted to see. People spoke to her and she stared through them as if they were ghosts. To her they might have been. She stared at Schneider half the time, as if he weren't there. Only occasionally did she deign to see him and then she might only smile dreamily at him, almost in welcome, as if she hadn't seen him in weeks or months, and remark about some trivial matter. Or comment on the baby. He wished he hadn't had Kall bury it. Maybe if that pitiful little corpse were here -- if she could see it with her own eyes -- she might be forced back to the reality she belonged. Keitlan had said give her time. Keitlan was beginning to frown and wring her hands in dismay now when Yoko roamed the castle.
When he asked her what she recalled of her journey to the mountains. Of who had hurt her, she went all the more vague. It was like he had missed a piece of her soul, when he'd brought her back. She was not complete.
The wrath began to build. He had told himself he would see her well before he abandoned her to seek his vengeance, but he was not so certain she would get well. A black, seething frustration built inside him. A regret that ached with all the persistence of slow death. He had a need to see Angelo writhe. He had a need to destroy his foe that ate at him and became an all consuming passion.
Two days and he had stayed by her side as long as he was able,
without doing something. His Shitenno were out hunting his enemy and
he could no longer endure not having his own hand involved. He found
Yoko before he sat out, hoping she might look up at him with clear
recognition in her eyes. With reason and grief that she had not so
far shown. She leaned against the sill of the window in her room,
arms wrapped about her, face pale from the pale morning light that
shone through the panes of glass. He put a gloved hand on her
shoulder, brushing back hair and she hardly flinched. Only stared
outside at nothing.
"Yoko. I'll find him. I swear it." He promised. She began humming. A child's song. A lullaby mother's sang to put their babies to sleep. He withdrew his hand, shutting his eyes for a moment, at a loss with her. Helpless to repair something so fragile as a mortal mind.
Then he clenched his fists, and whirled away from her, letting the anger flow back to wash away the moment of weakness. Weakness and pain were no longer an option. There was only relentless revenge.
Snow coated peaks and valleys. Trails that were indistinguishable to the untrained eye as anything other than one more patch of white covered earth, treacherous and deadly if one took the wrong step. Air was that was gray and frost laden, producing flurries of snow at a moment's notice. Trees that bent like old crones from the weight of powder and ice on their limbs. Wind that blew through the mountains like a banshee, obscuring their own trail moments after they'd passed, much less tracks days old. All this they had against them and yet the mountaineers and trackers in the Ice Lord's service seemed undaunted.
Gara began to develop a healthy respect for those men who made the cold mountains their home. He had lost track of how many days they'd been out here, looking for trace of an enemy on their doorstep. Perhaps a week. Maybe less. How many miles of mountainous landscape they had searched he could not begin to fathom. They had begun at the campsite Kall-Su and Schneider had found and worked their way outwards from that point. The trackers found traces here and there of the passage of men, but no solid trail. It was easy to hide in the mountains in the midst of winter, Captain Kiro had said, when they had all convened in the base camp, coincidence bringing them back at the same night. There were a dozen search parties combing the peaks and gullies and all the rocky ground in-between that could be traveled by man. Kall-Su had made it clear to his men that if the enemy was discovered, none of them were to engage, but to follow discreetly and send word back to either Gara and Arshes or himself.
The men understood. Having heard rumors of the nature of the enemy. Tomorrow they would move the base camp further into the mountains and expand the search. They sat in a tent, Gara, Arshes, Kall-Su, his captain and the leaders of the various search parties, studying a meticulously drawn map of the mountains. Witchlight illuminated the interior of the tent casting them all in a cold, bluish light. Kiro and Kall-su discussed the area's they had already covered and contemplated the likeliest places to send parties out on the morn. Kall-Su traced a route with his finger to the west and Kiro agreed that it would be a probable course to follow. They mapped other routes to follow, assigning them to the weather bitten men under Kiro.
Arshes bent over the map, her armored shoulder brushing Gara. One slim finger tapped an area to the south west of where they sat.
"What's this?"
"Impassable." Kiro said. "No reason to bother, horses nor men couldn't travel it."
She drew her brows, her ears twitching in thought.
"What?" Gara asked, recognizing the look of contemplation.
"I don't know. A feeling." She said. "I want to look there."
"It's a waste of time." Kall-Su looked up at her.
"Perhaps." She agreed. "I'll go anyway."
"I'll go with you." Gara said. Arshes stared at him a moment, dark eyes unreadable, then inclined her head in acceptance. Kall-Su gave them both impatient looks, before expelling a breath of air and continuing to arrange the search patterns of his men.
In the morning, not long after the sun had begun peeking over the tips of the mountains, casting its bright rays over a landscape of gray and white, men started to leave camp. Gara and Arshes set out on their own. Slow traveling. The horses seemed to intrinsically know the places that offered the best footing, even through deep snow. They trusted in the wisdom of their mountain bred mounts and let them wind their way up and down the trails at their own pace and their own discretion. A great vista of white slopes spread before them. Steep, snow covered mountain that plummeted down to a valley thick with dense forest. It was a crater shaped vale, with jagged ridges along all it's sides. No easy route down. No route at all for the horses. They were at the low side and it was still thousands of yards down to the forest. To the west, a great field of uninterrupted white ran up to a cloud obscured peak overhead. The wind whistled down from those heights, bringing with it the occasional swirl of blown snow. Other than that the vale was stilted in silence. The jangle of tack and armor as they shifted in the saddle to observe the valley was a foreign intrusion upon the quiet.
"No safe path down." Gara observed softly.
Arshes didn't say anything. She swung down from her horse, tossing the reins up to Gara. Her cloak fluttered around her, her hair obscured her face. She readjusted her sword on her back, so it wouldn't get in her way and stepped over the ridge. Her foot slid down into deep snow and she whispered a word and the wind seemed to gather around her and buoy her up. When she moved thereafter down the slope, her feet barely broke the crust of snow. Gara cursed under his breath.
He followed her, albeit by more natural means. His descent was more destructive to the pristine covering of snow. He left long, ragged tracks, but it was a controlled decent. Almost graceful; he utilizing all the balance and deftness of foot a lifetime of training had ingrained within him. She was quite a distance ahead of him. Halfway between the ridge and the treeline below.
High above there was a distant crack. A boom that echoed down over and over into the cone shaped vale. Gara stopped, knee deep in the snow, eyes drawn upward at the sound. An explosion of snow billowed out, spitting chunks of rock and ice in an arch over the vale. Not magic. He would have sensed that. Just sudden destructive power that seemed to come from nowhere. The pelting of debris didn't come near them. Just thunked into the slope a thousand of feet above.
Silence. A breaths worth of intense silence and then the mountain side seemed to crumble. High up where the explosion had originated the snow started to slide downward. A gradual, lazy degeneration at first, that quickly culminated into a roaring, frothing avalanche of snow and rock and dirt. He cried out Arshes name, but was too far behind her to do anything but scramble pell nell along the slope away from the avalanche.
He ran, sliding and slipping and the monster was behind him, flooding the valley with a roar so loud it was deafening. It didn't matter how fast he ran, it would catch him. Bits and chunks of snow hit his back. He cried out and drew the Murasume as he stumbled up the slope. Lost his footing and went down to his knees, twisted onto his back and stabbed the blade out before him, calling forth its power in desperation. A gust of wind swept past him. A lacing of force trembled under his hands and the blade expelled a seismically jarring wave of power that cut into the wall of tumbling white crashing down on him. The onslaught of snow didn't slow, but it veered around him, cut in two by the power of the Murasume. But only the brunt of it. The edges came pouring down, smothering him with snow and ice and weight. The insulating whiteness buried him and cut off the rumbling sound of the avalanche's fury. Cut off the gray of day light. Gara ceased for a while to know anything.
Then came back to awareness with a panic and growing sense of claustrophobia. His body was immobile, trapped beneath snow the depth of which he could only imagine. He couldn't breath. His fingers still clutched the hilt of the Murasume. It felt hot all the way through his glove. The forces within it trembled and he willed them to release.
Snow exploded outwards, clearing a space where sky glowered balefully down. Gara had never been so happy to see dour, snow threatening clouds. He clawed his way up out of the pit the Murasume had created and knelt on the new, uneven landscape of white. White littered with the gray of stone and the brown of dirt. There was a bald spot on the mountain where the explosion had stripped it of snow. The resulting avalanche had filled the vale with what had rested on the slopes of the mountain. It had covered half the forest at the bottom. The trees bent at awkward angles or uprooted entirely, snow half way up their trunks.
Gara scanned the lower slopes desperately for some sign of life. He was too short of breath to bellow out her name, so he began to slide down slope to search for her. Something blazed bright in the sky. An arc of energy that sizzled through the air like a comet and hit the earth some two hundred yards from the edge of the wood. It flared so brightly, Gara had to shield his eyes. When he could see again there was a faintly glowing sphere of power where the blast had hit. A crackling growing haze of energy that indicated a power there that did not take kindly to being attacked by both nature and magic.
Arshes was alive and defending herself then. But where was the attacker. He scanned the heights. The sky itself for sign, but saw no one. Then from the woods behind Arshes Nei movement drifted across the snow. Gara started running as quickly as he could, calling out for her to beware behind her.
She might have heard him. The shield pulsed, and then a slash of power arched out and hit it from the woods. Gara was close enough to see her clearly now, protected by her shield. She lifted her hands and wordlessly cried out the locution of a spell. A lightning ball formed before her and crashed into the abused wood. Trees splintered. Snow melted. A trench of snow and earth was created.
Silence. He was almost to her. She let her shield drop, and he saw her clearly, covered with snow and dirt and as bedraggled as he was. There was a bit of blood running down from her lip. Don't let your guard down, he thought. The first blast didn't come from the woods.
Then he did see movement from above. A moments glimpse of a dark form before light obscured it and between one breath and the next a wave of energy so strong it knocked Gara from his feet and threw him back a dozen feet, hit the spot Arshes had been standing. Gara cried out in rage, horror, regret. Half buried in snow he struggled up, saw a pale flash of face against dark flowing robes and hood. And knew that face. Knew those damned fanatical eyes and that holier than thou expression. He screamed out in fury and the gaze flickered to him. A hand reached out, as if contemplating the casting of a spell. Then withdrew and the airborne form began to sped away, over the ridge to the west and gone in the haze of cloud and mist stirred up by the avalanche.
He couldn't care about that now. He couldn't care about anything but sliding down the slope to the blast area where Arshes had been. The snow was gone from a circular space some fifty yards wide. The earth had been gouged and ripped. At first he didn't see her. She was so covered in mud and dirt and her cream colored cloak and armor was camouflaged. She was whole, at least mostly so that he could see, other than charred armor and tattered cloak and tunic. She started to move before he reached the edge of the spell blast. A man stepped from the edge of the wood. Big man, made even larger by the bulk of winter gear and armor. Spiky brown hair and odd green eyes. Gara knew him. The captain of the Prophet's guard. He lifted sword and hand and something elemental gathered in the air before him, then raced towards the recovering sorceress. Gara cried out and leapt, bringing the Murasume down in a arch that sliced through the speeding elemental force and ripped it asunder. He felt the impact all the way to his bones and hit the ground with less grace than he might have liked. He crouched between Arshes and Sinakha, one hand on the ground, the other holding the Murasume as a shield between them.
"Here to finish the work your master did such a halfassed job at?" He hissed. Sinakha's face didn't move. No emotion crossed his eyes. He stepped out from the trees and the sword came up into a fighting position. So he wanted a little hand to hand, did he? Gara was up to that.
Sinakha made the first move. Came at him so quick that he was hard to follow and sliced low, aiming at Gara's legs. Gara forced his aching body into action, sprang up and into the air, landing in the mud in one movement and launching back up and towards his opponent in the next, slicing from above. Sinakha blocked it. Gara came down and they circled, testing each other's strength and swiftness. They traded blows, steel glancing off of steel and Gara thought that the blade Sinakha wielded was no common sword. The man was quick and he broadcast nothing of his intentions. Damned good swordsman. Damned good. Sixty seconds into it and Gara thought he had never faced better.
Slash. Clang. Reflect the blow. Feint to the left and score a thin slice across Sinakha's arm. No blood drawn. Just a slice through the layers of clothing. Crossing of blades and Sinakha pressed close, using his shoulder to shove Gara back a step. His boot slipped on snow and he lost balance. Sinakha sliced towards his belly and he just fell backwards to avoid it, and found himself at a disadvantage on his back. He called up a burst of power from the Murasume and Sinakha leapt aside to avoid it. It gave Gara the space to gain his feet. But, since he had called magic into the fray, Sinakha seemed content to take the battle to new limits. His blade glowed. Power gathered at the tip, a dozen little spots of energy. They arched towards Gara and he twisted this way and that to avoid them. He couldn't avoid them all. White hot pain lanced through his thigh and along his ribs. His leg gave out and he went down.
Sinakha did smile then. A cold, emotionless twist of his lips. He summoned the energies again and this time pointed the blade towards Arshes, who was barely beginning to shake off the effects of the blast that had taken her down. Gara surged up, raced towards her even as the power was released, slammed into her and bowled her over, protecting her with his own body. Felt hot little fingers of pain lance into him and wasn't even sure if his meager flesh could protect her; if the little orbs of power wouldn't eat right through him and into her. It felt as if they were. It felt as if his flesh were burning up.
She twisted under him, hissing and cursing with disorientation, with sudden awakening to imminent destruction. She pushed Gara off and he rolled onto his back, hurting so bad he saw red mixed in with the dancing spots of light. Or maybe that was blood in his eyes. He didn't know.
"Are you insane?" Arshes was screaming and it occurred to him that she was yelling at him. Sinakha stood at the edge of the clearing, sword at ready. Arshes cried out the words to a spell. The air crackled with it. Sinakha was too close to avoid it this time. He must have been aware of this. He leapt backwards into the cover of trees, disappearing into the shadows with the skill of a ninja trained. Gara lost track of him. Arshes had to have, but she released the spell anyway and it tore through the already ravaged forest. Whether she got him or not, Gara didn't know. His vision was wavering. He rolled onto his side and felt the places his flesh had been pierced protest with the movement. Where was the Murasume? He'd lost it sometime between the time he'd jumped to protect Arshes and when Sinakha's spell bursts had hit him.
He heard Arshes gain her feet. Heard her cursing soundly.
"Gods damn it! How did this happen?" she cried.
"It was a set up." He muttered and tasted blood. Not a cut lip, but coming up from his throat. Punctured lung maybe.
She whirled and hit the ground next to him, her knees pressing into his arm. "How?" she demanded. "How could he have know we'd be here?"
"He called you." It seemed simple enough. Schneider said Angelo was a mind witch among his other talents. He had gotten to Arshes somehow and given her the urge to come here. She'd certainly had no explanation as to why she thought it important to search a place more experienced mountaineers declared a waste of time.
He shuddered, feeling his body beginning to go shocky.
"Gara?" She leaned over him, blocking out the light. "Are you aright?"
He couldn't answer just then, too busy coughing up blood. She cried out at the sight of the red froth dribbling down his chin.
"How bad?" she demanded, pulling him into her lap, running her hands down his front to find the wounds. He couldn't feel her fingers and thought that was a terrible sign.
"Bad enough." He coughed more blood. His head was spinning now, interfering with his thinking.
"You stupid, stupid man. Why did you do it? Why sacrifice yourself for me?" She cried. "I never asked it of you."
Wasn't it obvious to her? It had always been so obvious to him.
"Because I love you." He wouldn't have said it if he hadn't been so lightheaded. She stared down at him in horror.
"I'm getting to old for this." He muttered, to negate the earlier statement. To say anything to wash it from her memory. Fool. Fool. He would die a fool with her looking at him as if he were the greatest idiot in the world.
She bent over him and he thought silent tears ran down her dark cheeks. "How could you?" she sobbed. "What have I ever done to warrant it? I've devoted my whole life to Darshe -- everything I am only to please him. How could anyone ever love me?"
"You -- don't give yourself enough -- credit. You think -- you're nothing without -- him. You're wrong. I don't matter. He doesn't. Nobody does. Do me a favor and learn to love yourself as much as I do and I'll die content."
"You will NOT!" She screamed at him. "How dare you say this to me and presume to avoid the consequences by dying?"
She held his face between her hands and glared down at him. She sniffed back tears. He could see her gathering strength. She was staring down at him as if he were a curiosity in a traveling sideshow.
"You have gray hairs." She whispered in awe. He almost laughed at that observation. Sure enough, over the last year or two he had began to get a peppering of gray. In the crowd he hung with it was an anomaly. But then he was only human. "You've been my best friend, Gara. I never had a friend before you. Somebody who never asked anything of me. . . . Damnit, why didn't you ever tell me?"
"I rather like to avoid - - self inflicted pain -- present situation excluded. Your heart belongs to another."
"And his is as fickle as the day is long. Oh, Gara --"
His strength was failing fast. She had never been that good at healing. "Arshes, find the Murasume."