A Fine Silver Scar.

[Duarchist 319]

Spoiler

 

 

 

"Forgive me. I didn’t think I’d find anyone else out here."

 

Aelys doesn’t answer, but the habitual smile that lives about her eyes is intentionally undimmed. The sun is low, and the light dappled through the trees onto their trunks orange and red-limmed like fire. It will be nightfall soon — this stranger is close to her hideaway, hidden in the valley of the heavily wooded ridge behind them, though Aelys wonders if he knows it yet. Less then ten minutes walk down the slope in the dark, and the stranger will see this edge-glow of the torchlight that lights the cabin when the sun is set.

 

Aelys' hands are full. A tattered sack full of apples, some whole and edible, some rotted and soft, is wrapped in her left fist while her right hand is closed around the spindly black legs of a live sheep that hangs quite comfortably around her neck, looking at peace here, mindlessly chewing its cud. Aelys does not set them down to loose the greatsword hanging from a leather harness on her back, nor the shortsword that is sheathed at her hip, but the line of her strong shoulders is stiffened a little in readiness.

 

Instead she only runs her eyes along the length of the man’s tall spear, from butt to tip, where a stone catches the halflight. This man is no boar hunter, and the woods have no less darkspawn than the road. Aelys is not a fool; in the slit of the stranger’s helm’s visor, she sees a glimmer of a beast’s tapetum lucidum eyes — but, for the hope of not having to set down the animal she does not fancy chasing later in order to brandish a weapon, she is happy to play the part of a stupid woman. "Your armor will scare away the game, llir. If you are hungry, I can spare a little — to give you strength for the walk back to the road."

 

The sheep bleats loudly, oblivious to the natural tension between two armed figures meeting in a place where neither intended to be discovered.

 

Aelys has a low, deep voice, quiet and full of peace. A voice made for soothing horses. It is well in use to temper the warning beneath her words when she goes on to say: “The woods are not safe at night.”

The stranger grunts. She can see the process of pensive thoughts roll through his posture even through his plate’s bulk. The grip on his spear tightens and he grins the butt of it into the damp dirt with an easy twist of his wrist. 

 

"Are you?" He asks, moving to rise, revealing the small rucksack set behind him. He hooks the spear upon his back in a show of hesitant trust. "Safe, that is. I have little need of food, but a fire I do. I would take no more of your time than is necessary." A face gives more trust than that of a spear being stowed, and so despite the blizzard the stranger lifts his helm off, pushing the sock that covers his dark hair back and holds it all loosely at his side. "Though I do not have much to offer in return but coin."

 

The man steps into a walk close beside her. The wind whips his face and he waits for it to die down again before he speaks. In the growing cold, his breath is a mist. 

 

"And, I suppose, I might offer my name. Call me Thibaud. Truthfully, I saw your lamb from the ridge above and followed the black of her through the storm — like following a star in the dark," he laughs, almost breathless, though the motion makes his empty belly ache as sharply as a stab. "I hope you are not offended when I say so — but I have never been so glad to stumble upon a stranger as I am tonight."

 

He grins at her again, almost boyish. It is happy chance, almost mad, that it has happened. Thibaud, far from home, hunting along the northeastern coast of Norland. Aelys last seen in the Fennic Remnants, not yet old enough to brandish a sword.

 

By the time they reach the cabin the wind is so high that Aelys grunts at the way it pushes back against the door as she goes to close it. Thibaud lends a single hand, and together they shoulder the door of the small house shut and drop the bar across it. A single door, no windows. No one inside but Aelys.

 

Even with the door shut, the sound of the wind comes in a high whistle through the gaps in the building. Thibaud pulls down his hood, only half-up because he held it there against the weather. His robes are soaked and torn crooked and sideways by the blowing wind, his cheeks chaffed, eyes stung.

 

A frown turns Thibaud's mouth and he sweeps his eyes over Aelys. Searching the woman for irrefutable evidence that may reveal a weakness. "What are you doing out here alone? Have you no family to return to?"

 

Aelys hums — neither in agreement nor in disagreement. Nor truly thoughtfully. She is not a thoughtful person by nature, and yet the years of solitude have rendered something new out of her old, old, old ways. Like sap to amber, perhaps. Words are sometimes hard, sometimes sticky inside of her. If she lingers too long in her mind, searching for them, sorting them, she struggles to remember what it is she feels, what she meant to say, even how anything can be explained from one person to another.

You were always this way, a voice reminds her. This is why you are so rash. Why you rush to speak first, fight first, flee first. This is why you have so much trouble.

The voice does not tell her if this is a fault or a virtue. These things were always vague. A fault is defined as a weakness and a virtue as a strength. This is what makes a soldier’s morality. The virtue of victory, the sin of defeat. An orderly way of life.

Ah. Now she has left it too long. Tongue thick in her mouth, Aelys exhales through her nostrils, head hanging for a moment between her strong, wide, winged shoulders, like the devil under the weight of his horns.

The way Thibaud suddenly moves at her side is maddening — sudden explosions of power that should be clumsy but are only unpredictable. Aelys tries to find the pattern, but Thibaud one moment charges her like a bull, the next turn a feint nearly as fast as she herself could do it.

Thibaud is lean, but deceptively heavy, like a lynx, light-footed but dense. When finally that weight catches her and comes down, Aelys cannot turn it and is forced, instead, to let it come. She lands on her back, skull bouncing hard against the wooden boards. Thibaud gets a hand around her throat to hold her still for the jagged sharps of his teeth, pressing her to the ground with the weight of his body, seated on her chest.

"You are too heavy with all that wool and steel," Thibaud goads, amused, in the half growl of his quickened breath punctuated by a shout of laughter, "Like a sheep in need of shearing!"

Aelys' face is pink with exertion, sweat beading on her brow. She is indeed weighed down with furs and leathers and thin mail beneath that, layered up as all her kin go. She remembers the cold of Almaris’ craggy hills and the heart of Wyrvun’s winter. That girl is in her still, and when the weather bites her and she feels the tingle of the cold-pain on her skin, her adrenaline spikes. As a dog drools for a bone, suffering sets her mind to readiness. Sharpens her like a blade.

Her hand settles over top of the carved pommel of her sword, and her legs brace on either side of the creature above her.

"No-no, my friend — don’t do that," Thibaud says warningly, sounding as if he would wag a finger. Playing as animals play. Light and dangerous. At the edge of the laughter in his voice is a thread of something evil. 

The inside thigh is a bad place to be cut. Unarmored, and soft. Alias thrusts her weight and flips them around, Thibaud on his back beneath her, now; Thibaud's claws sweep up, the curved shape of them cupping her leg so that the sharpened tips drag her thigh, an even slice through muscle running towards her knee. Blood flows immediately and the pain is clear and bright. Almost fantastic.

Thibaud's eyes hold her gaze hard. He tilts his head back invitingly. Goadingly. Alias pushes her blade hard enough into his throat to crush his windpipe. The rattled, wet groan of dying pain is a needless confirmation. If he rises again, so be it — Aelys will not be here to stand witness.

 

The cabin, dank with the smell of blood, is suddenly silent.

 

Aelys breaks that silence with a soft grunt as she rolls away from the tangle of the corpse. When she sits up, there is blood on her cheek, in her hair, clinging to the sweat on her skin. Blood flows the broad cut on her inner thigh, darkening the wood beneath her, and she knows that it is deep. Deep, painful, but many centimeters too low to have severed the artery that hides in the gap between the hard muscle of her leg and the tender flesh of the very inside of her thigh. The sellsword exhales a held breath.

 

She cuts a thick strip from the tail of her undershirt with jerky motions and binds the fabric tight around her leg, internalizing the breath-stealing ring of pain. Like a wave recedes back into the sea. She knows her rules instinctually. Discomfort clarifies the mind. She will live; the cut is very clean, and, with stitches, will heal into a fine silver scar. Another one of dozens.