Chapter 5: In Occupation's Shadow
His eyes were dark and shadowed then,
He seemed to be the worst of men.
But then I saw him with his wife,
Saw his patient, peaceful love of life.
"This'll do nicely." Wil said, as he appraised the ruined building that clung to the tip of the hill we were standing on. It was nearly sundown, and the lighting was beginning to fade, but it was easy enough to see that the building did not have more than a decade left to its name. Walls sagged, doors had crumbled, and a nasty draft blew straight from one end through the other. The roof was long gone, and had surprisingly been cleared away.
"This pit?" Sain replied, aghast. "Can't we find anything better? It's falling apart, man!"
I sighed, and let Wil explain. "The territory here isn't any better off than the mountain villages, Sain. With the bandits, there isn't much coin flowing, and even less food, we'd never be welcome at a local pub. We are sort of a large group, you know."
"It's fine." Lyn pronounced, and dismounted smoothly. I always envied her dismount, she slid as easily off that huge beast of hers as if he was a pony. It usually took me a few minutes to work out the cramps and aches, and even then Peaches tended to help me. Ah, well, can't have everything, can we? "Besides, I much prefer sleeping where I can see the stars."
Yeah, you spent your life in a tent.
"I'm fine as long as I'm with you, Lyn!" gushed the purple-haired pegasus rider. I winced, her voice was as shrill as could be, and the honey that dripped from it wasn't fake. Somehow that made listening to it even worse. She, too, dismounted gracefully, nearly all Ilians were born on horseback.
"And I, Sain, your man-at-arms, shall sleep by your sides, my good ladies, to protect you!"
Sain made as though to jump down from his horse and race inside, but Kent interrupted. "Sain, you and I will be on watch. Come, let Thunder graze over here."
I chuckled when the red-haired knight winked at me behind his cohort's back, and followed the ladies into the building. Wil opted to stay outside with the guards and horses. I noticed that Florina's pegasus followed her inside, and gave him a wary look. He gazed back at me evenly, as if to ask "What, you have a problem?", and I shook my head. Inside, we found more ruins, though the structure seemed fairly sound, what was left of it. I was relieved that our shelter would not be collapsing over my head in the night. Lyn wandered off, and I commandeered Florina to help me lay out the blankets. That blasted pegasus eyed me evilly, but I just stared him down and handed his mistress two bedrolls and got to my own task.
"Florina, how do you know Lyn?" I asked her, as I smoothed out Wil's bedroll. The girl did not answer for a few moments, but I was not offended. She might have been high-strung, and too quiet for her own good, but I knew that was only out of shyness, and out of a certain care for choosing her words before they left her mouth.
"The Lorca tribe sometimes ranged near the Ilian mountains, to hunt for rare pelts and the buffalo herds that run the fields at the mountains' base. We've been trading with each other for years…" Her eyes grew misty. "Well, we had been trading for years, anyway. My father was a trader, and sometimes Mother let him bring me and my sisters along on his trade runs. Lyn saved me from a sandstorm, and we became friends. Even when I was in training, I came to visit her."
I dropped my bedroll from surprise. Little Florina, making clandestine runs down the mountain to visit her plainsman friend? Of all the Ilians to…Oh, I guess I shouldn't be shocked by anything I hear about this crew anymore. But why does she look so sad?
Florina never precisely looked happy, and her face always seemed to have a wistful, dreamy quality, but now her lips turned down and her eyes darkened. "My sisters didn't like it when I flew down to visit Lyn."
Whoa, loads of crud there. Don't touch it, Joe. "I'm sure they were only trying to protect you, Rina."
That time, she dropped Lyn's bedroll. "What did you just call me?"
I blinked. "Rina. Why?"
She gathered up the blanket hurriedly and started smoothing it out again, not looking at me. "Oh, nothing."
And that was the end of that conversation.
"Josef, could you lay out an extra roll?"
Lyn's voice rang out clearly from around several corners. She seemed to be in the inner sanctum of the keep/temple/wreck that we had taken up residence in.
"Why?" I called out loudly.
"I'm not going to scream across five walls and a door to talk to you! Just do it!"
I grumbled, and Florina hid a grin. A few moments later, I heard heavy, irregular footsteps, the gait of a cripple. I frowned, wondering who Lyn was intending to put up for the night. She came into view a little after that, looking irrepressible as usual, and a pretty woman who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties limped in behind her. I took a look at the woman's legs and sighed. There was no peg or cast or boot to help her walk, and that meant that she'd been born with a deformity. Magic could do nothing for a disability like that, healing magic could only return wounds to their former healthy state. If the leg had never been whole to begin with, nothing short of wondrous surgery would fix her walk, and she would never be able to run.
"This is Natalie." Lyn said, and the woman smiled at me warmly. I returned the gesture with a little bow, and she blushed very slightly, little spots of pink appeared on her cheeks, and were gone before I blinked next.
"Pleased to meet you, Natalie."
"Natalie, this is Josef. He's the reason I'm here today."
"Oh, so we're going to forget about the two ugly bandits?"
"Don't interrupt!"
Lyn punched at my arm playfully, and I made threatening gestures toward her ponytail. Natalie laughed, a husky noise that belied her fragile exterior. She spoke with a country accent, but her words were well-formed, and there was only a tiny thread of the pile of horse manure the bandits had been spewing at our ears. "Honored, sirrah. Hope you don't be a minding, I know it's a mite hard to feed extra mouths these days."
I shook my head. "No trouble. We aren't far from our destination, and we have plenty of food. We'll be happy to break heads…er…bread with you."
The woman's eyes widened slightly at my slip, and I grinned sheepishly. Lyn glared and Florina's mouth dropped open. "Sorry, we've run into a lot of bandits on the way here. That sort of thing tends to make a body bloody-minded."
"It's all right." She told me, after a few moments of awkward silence. "Me husband would understand, I'd be thinking. Man's had to rescue me more than once from those rough types. Too many of 'em these days. Too many."
Oh, you don't know the half of it, lady.
"What's your husband like?"
"Oh! Here be a picture of him, if you do be wanting to see it."
The painting was done with cheap paints, but there was talent there. Something about the way that she gazed at it told me that she had painted it. The man in the picture was not a handsome one, he was too serious looking and far too muscular. He had red hair that was darker than Kent's, more the color of blood. His clothes were…
"Yellow?" I couldn't help it, the word rolled out of my mouth before I could stop it. Natalie just laughed, though.
"Oh, those clothes. 'Cas uses 'em to work in. First set I ever made for him. Meant to make 'em a light brown. You can see how they turned out, eh?"
Lyn and I looked at the painting for a few moments. It showed Natalie's husband cutting wood, his sleeves rolled all the way up. The axe he held looked like it had been made there, she'd somehow captured an ease with weapons in the faded watercolor. "Was your husband a warrior before he married you?"
"Aye. Heavy axe. Never talks much about it, though."
"He looks like a kind man." Florina put in, and Natalie beamed.
"He do be, at that, lass. A very good man."
She loves him. I thought, and smiled. So few married for love, and it seemed that these two had done so. I started to ask Natalie what had brought her here, but then I heard the sound of metal clashing, and shot to my feet. "What's that?"
"Bandits!" Wil cried out from the entrance.
"Oh, for the love of…Lyn?"
"I'll take the side entrance."
The girl was already on her feet, her hand resting on the hilt of the Mani Katti.
"Exactly what I wanted. Florina, you'll protect Natalie."
The purple-haired girl nodded, and the pegasus, who had been chewing on a treat of carrots until that moment, nodded as though he approved.
"Go into the inner room, there's only one door, and the walls there are sound at least. None of them should make it in here, but I want you to be ready, just in case."
"I understand. Come on, Huey. Let's help the nice lady get to the back room, then."
Lyn nodded curtly, and we made our way to the side of the building swiftly.
"Be careful, Lyn. We're close to the border with Lycia, there might be some decent mercs among the meatheads."
"Don't patronize me, Josef. I can care for myself."
Who was it that asked me to teach her, way back when? I rolled my eyes, but kept my mouth shut. We staked out at the door, waiting to see if any of the bandits would be smart enough to sneak around the building. We were rewarded fairly quickly, a huge man with an axe (which looked like a toy in his hand) stalked up to the door moments after we made it. Lyn gasped.
"Josef, doesn't that man look like Natalie's picture of her husband?"
I called up the memory, compared it to the serene figure coming to slice us up, and decided that Natalie was a damn good artist. "It's him."
"I can't kill him!" Lyn said worriedly. I noticed that her hand stayed on Mani Katti's hilt, though.
"So don't. Talk to him."
"What?"
"Talk to him. Tell him that Natalie is here…"
"Duck!"
She grabbed me by my cloak clasp and dragged me down to the ground roughly. As I prepared to give her a piece of my mind, I caught sight of the hand axe embedded in the wall behind where I had just been standing, and my mouth shut with a click.
"Stay your axe!" Lyn called out, drawing herself up. She put up her hands to show that she did not wish to fight, and the man eyed her warily. He was smart, he did not underestimate her simply because she was a woman.
"What for, lass?" he asked, in the same accent that Natalie had.
"Because Natalie is here! Will you cut me down and slay your own wife for gold? We protect her within this place's walls!"
Lyn's voice was strained, she obviously didn't like the fact that the man had his weapon readied when she could not draw Mani Katti.
"What? Natalie, here? How can you know…?"
"How else, but that I tell the truth?"
He sighed, and lowered the small axe. "You do be right, lass. My axe to your name. I be Dorcas."
"Actually, it would be to mine." I broke in, and the man frowned as though he had not noticed I was there. Lyn nodded, though, and he sighed.
"Let me be guessing: you be the tactician, and she the noble lady in disguise?"
He is smart. "You're close. But there's no time. I'd like the two of you to go out that entrance and come around to the front, taking out any bandits you see."
They nodded and left. Once outside, Dorcas leaned over and whispered something to Lyn, and she nodded vigorously. Just as a bandit ran up the hill, Dorcas swung Lyn up into his arms like a newlywed, and she squealed like a little girl. The bandit, who had had his eye on Lyn the whole time he'd run up, grunted from disappointment and ran past them. He failed to notice that Lyn had a sword sheathed at her waist. The problem was rather well remedied when she slit his throat with it as he passed. Dorcas set her down like she was made of glass, and she beamed at him. Satisfied that they would be all right together, I headed back inside. Wil had come back into the main room to help out Florina, and was shooting arrows at a bandit with a misshapen axe while the pegasus rider kept him busy. But there was something startling about the girl, she was fighting on foot.
Florina? Why aren't you riding Huey? I took a look around, the walls that led into the room where Natalie was hiding were close, and even if the roof was gone, a flier with a wingspan as wide as the pegasus' would be hard pressed to maneuver. Florina was handling herself well, however. The axe wielder had scored a bad hit on her leg, but she fought on, whirling the smaller of her lances like it was a spear and poking at her opponent with it. She didn't do much damage, the man was wearing heavy leather armor, but that wasn't her objective. The fight went on for a few more breaths, until Wil scored a hit to the man's unprotected throat. The bandit collapsed, choking on his own blood.
"How did he get in?" I asked, as I poured vulnerary onto a bandage for Florina's leg. She leaned on her lance to keep the weight off of it and grimaced most unprettily.
"A mercenary broke down a part of the west wall. I took care of him, but then the man with the axe came, and I…"
Her face fell, and she leaked a few tears as I wrapped the bandage around her wound.
"Don't worry, it'll be all right in a few minutes. It's not your fault you have trouble against axes, Florina, that's the bane of any man's lance work. Where is Huey?"
I helped her sit down, and it was actually Wil who answered the question. "You mean her horse, right? He flew off over the wall for some reason."
"Huey know how to fight, Josef. He'll be all right."
As if I was worrying about the blasted horse! "Well, that's good. Wil, you cover Florina until she can fight again, I'm going to catch up with the cavaliers."
"Understood." Wil was all business, nocking an arrow as I turned away. I raced up to the front entrance, where I saw that Sain and Kent had already taken care of their own batch of bandits. Sain was wiping his sword on a bit of cloth while Kent watched for any more enemies. I hailed them quietly and came up behind Kent.
"It's probably safe for you to go for the leader now, Kent. They'll probably run off anyway, but I'd really prefer that we didn't have to deal with them on the way to Lycia. If you take care of it now, they'll be disorganized enough that they won't follow us."
"But that would leave the front entrance undefended. I was taught in my basic tactics classes never to do such a thing."
"You have Florina and Wil to hold down the fort, they'll do just fine. I'd keep one of you, but you work well together, and you'll do better if you can watch each other's backs."
Kent gave me a look of wary disapproval, but Sain beamed like the sun. "Kent, you old rot bucket! Have you no sense of glory? Does your blade not thirst for evil blood?"
"Um, that's not exactly what I meant."
"Enough! Onward, and I shall have no argument!"
And Sain was off. Kent sighed and shook his head, digging his heels lightly into his gelding's flanks. The big horse took off after Sain, and I watched their backs apprehensively.
I put on a brave face, but I'm just as worried as he is. There might still be some stragglers, and Florina's wounded. Potions help, but they don't do everything. I don't want to lose any of them, but…sometimes we have to take risks. I can't roll the dice and hope they won't land on, "Bandits come, kill men in sleep, rape women and drag them off to be sold.". No, this was the best decision.
The two cavaliers met a bandit halfway between the ruins and the boss, but Sain practically rode over him, letting out a deep roar I hadn't thought his cultured throat was not capable of. Again, I turned to go back inside the building. When I got back, Florina was looking less pale and even smiling a little. Wil still had an arrow trained, and nearly loosed it at me out of nerves.
"Peace." I called out, and he eased his arm. "No, don't."
"But…you're here, so we must have won, right?"
"Whatever gave you that idea? Don't let down your guard until I tell you to."
He glared at me and drew back his bowstring. "My arm hurt."
"Yes, well it won't be just your arm if a bandit gets through here."
I heard the sound of heavy feet run down the hall towards me and whirled, just in time to catch the ugly face and breathe of a bandit. I have to tell you, I really thought it was the end there, and I really don't like thinking about how I was saved. A split second after the man raised his axe to cleave me in two, I heard a familiar neigh of anger, and the man went down beneath half a ton of horse flesh and hooves. Huey stamped on the corpse until it was little more than dust and then whinnied triumphantly. I took a step back, and another, and the horse folded his wings neatly behind his neck and looked me in the eye. "You owe me.", those eyes said, and I nodded to show that I understood. He pranced over to Florina, stamping blood away from his hooves neatly, and I sank to my knees, let my arms fall to my sides limply. I closed my eyes, the sight of the pulped barbarian was too much for me to bear, and I had thought that I had a strong stomach. I heard the sound of two sets of hooves and a pair of boots, but could not open my eyes to see what it was. A few moments later, I heard the familiar shush of silk as Lyn knelt beside me. She smelled of sweat and blood, but somehow the scent on her was comforting. Not pleasant, but firm.
"Josef, are you all right?"
She said that even before she caught her breath, with gaps between the words to draw in air. I let a small smile creep onto my face, and she actually threw her arms around me.
"I'm fine, Lyn." I assured her, and she squeezed my shoulders lightly. "We're all fine."
Author's Note: Wow, thanks for all the support, guys. I'll do my best to see this thing through, thank you all for your comments. Sorry this update took so long, my SD3 fanfic needed some long overdue attention. Oh, and about the dialect; I'm trying out something new, hope you all liked it.