Formido et Gratia

[Toffee 2843]

 

 

Your mother is a witch, and witches are burned.

Flames licked up the castle walls, searching and hungry, devouring wooden rafters and support beams, searing the stone until it glowed. Adalfriede’s lungs burned. Smoke and fear, scorching her from the inside out.

She ran blindly, tears streaking down her cheeks and evaporating before they could even drip from her chin. A young girl of eight, but she already knew.

I am going to die here.

Arms, strong and wiry, snatched her up and threw her over a bony shoulder. The world jolted upside down in a haze of orange grey.

“Leave her, Malcolm! She’s dead weight.” Her brother Wulfram, soot smudged on his face like the beginnings of a beard. Not a boy, but not quite a man, either.

“She’s your sister.” Ser Malcolm’s gruff voice rumbled through her. “Family is everything.”

He dumped her at the bottom of a boat, little more than a dinghy. He and Ser Hodrick worked the oars until Hexenwald—their home, their family, their legacy—disappeared as embers into the night sky.

 

 

Three weeks.

Three weeks of rain and dirt and endless trees, canopies crushed so close that day turned to night and night turned to nothing but blackness and the distant howl of wolves. Adalfriede huddled by the fire, Ser Hodrick’s fur-lined cloak draped over her narrow shoulders. A rabbit turned on the spit.

Rabbits, pigeons, rats. Berries and mushrooms, roots pulled from the earth and brushed clean. They had been reduced to foragers, like the smallfolk living on the isle of Nebelheim. 

“How long must we live like this?” Wulfram tossed aside a pheasant’s bones, picked clean of meat.

Ser Hodrick hacked and spit into the bushes. “Your father didn’t raise you to be soft.”

“He didn’t raise me to run while peasants sacked my family home, either. I should be splitting skulls, not roasting rabbits.” He kicked the edge of the firepit, scattering glowing embers through their encampment.

Adalfride shied away. In the heart of the woods on the ragged edge between autumn and winter, fire was survival, salvation. Yet it had brought her family such death and destruction, her parents, all of her siblings, burnt to nothing.

Except for Wulfram. Wulfram was all she had.

“You would have been put to the sword, Adalfriede with you.” Ser Malcolm turned the rabbit, browning its other side. His Daelish accent skipped over consonants and lengthened vowels into long, rolling plains cut with deep ravines and lilting rivers. “Far better to retreat, gather your strength, and strike when the time is right.”

Wulfram scowled. At the edge of the firelight, where unknowable woods loomed, the shadows on his face lengthened and distorted until he was a monstrous thing, a creature of the night.

“I will rebuild,” he vowed darkly. “In the name of my father, Wulfhard Rademacher von Hexenwald, I swear our family name will not perish to the flames.”

It would be many years until Adalfriede shared his fierce loyalty to the name of their forefathers. That night she could think no further than the ache in her belly and in her feet, the bite of autumn near-winter finding her even beneath the heavy cloak.

But when that loyalty did awaken within her, a small spark burning to life in her chest, there was no task too great, no length she would not go to, to protect her House. A gleaming white skull on a red field, teeth bared in a rictus grin. 

 

 

They saw the steeple before they saw the church, a wooden Lorraine cross standing in stark relief against the pale grey sky. Milky light shone diffused and weak through the trees, the air hazy like the pre-dawn, although it must have been midday.

Adalfriede’s feet stung, wet and sticky with open blisters, but she did not complain. Rademachers did not whinge.

“A convent,” Ser Hodrick muttered, pulling a branch aside so they could peer, unseen, at the nuns in full habit drawing water from a well.

As one, Ser Hodrick, Ser Malcolm, and Wulfram turned to look at her.

“Exile is no place for a girl.” Wulfram’s eyes darkened, the chips of emerald green appearing more like a midnight sea, deep and unpredictable. His thinking face, machinations turning themselves over and over in his mind. “You will stay here until I find somewhere to settle, to rebuild.”

“You can’t do that!” Adalfriede’s voice, rough with disuse, came out thin and whining. “I belong with you.”

“Your brother’s right, lass.” Ser Malcolm dropped to a knee, taking her by the shoulders. “We’ll be on the road for months, if not years. They’ll take care of you here.”

“You’re supposed to take care of me.” Adalfriede looked up into her brother’s face but it was as hard and inscrutable as a cliffside. Angry tears stung the back of her eyes and lodged a stone in her throat.

Wulfram’s face abruptly shifted, filled with a depth of passion that could shake mountains and divert the course of rivers. He nudged Ser Malcolm aside and knelt in front of her. “I will send for you. When I am settled, when Rademacher is poised to be a name worth heeding once more. Do you trust me?”

Adalfriede nodded. She drew Ser Hodrick’s cloak from her shoulders and handed it back to him, her skin pricking to gooseflesh in the sudden cold. If Wulfram’s resolve could be strong, so could hers.

I am Adalfriede Wulfhild Rademacher von Hexenwald. My crest is a white skull on a red field. We have no fear, for we are fear itself. Formido et Gratia.

She told herself she wouldn’t look back. It was a weakness. But as she swung open the gate into a courtyard, grass growing unchecked and wild through the cobbles, she turned, eyes roving along the treeline. They were already gone, not even a broken branch or bootprint to mark their presence. Like they had never been there at all.

 

 

Dead weight she may have been, but nine years later, Wulfram sent for her.

Kingdom of Aaun… Lord Captain of the City Watch… engaged to be married… ennoblement…

The words blurred, for she was already packing, meagre belongings thrown into a battered travelling case. She had stolen it when she accompanied the nuns to market and stored it under her bed all this time. A talisman, a prayer. She tucked a sliver of quartz into her pocket for protection and slipped through a side door into the decaying courtyard.

“Adalfriede? Adalfriede!”

This time, she did not turn back. The life of a girl raised by nuns faded in her wake, eclipsed by the story of a girl called to reclaim her birthright. She raced against the rain and summer storms until the great tower palace of Whitespire rose high above the landscape. A needle, a beacon, a white flame reaching towards the Seven Skies.

She reached the safety of the gatehouse just as the heavens opened, washing the city clean of refuse and bootprints muddy from the march of war. A land ripe with opportunity… if one knew how to reach out and take it.

 

Spoiler

A little introductory post to my character Adalfriede! Thank you to SimplySeo and TN_Turkey for reading over and their feedback xx