Joel Shepherd - Haven

Perhaps that was not all she'd lost in Tracato, came the more alarming thought. Perhaps she'd also lost the ability to care, and to feel.

She glimpsed movement. Barely more than shadows in the mist, down by the reeds. Lean shapes, all wielding bows. The Hadryn steadied his arm, lifting himself for a good aim. Sasha felt a stab of alarm that the man was about to shoot at serrin. And then a further alarm at herself, for even being here. Why had she volunteered to rush out here in the hope of hunting serrin at a possible river crossing? What had she been thinking? She loved the serrin. And now, as Lenay honour commanded, she fought them. But that did not mean she should volunteer to rush headlong into a fight. Her own actions baffled her.

The Hadryn's crossbow thumped. Amidst the reeds, one of the shadows flailed and fell. Sasha heard the rush from her left before the others, and leaped to her feet with a warning shout…but the Fyden man sprang up into her path and brought his blade flashing at the shadow that came at them from the trees. Sasha danced back for space as steel clashed briefly, and the Fyden man fell with little drama, just a face-first thud on the turf as an evil-sharp blade tore him open.

The figure that killed him wove sideways, slim like a woman, and tall for one, spinning a silver blade. Sasha glimpsed snow-white hair beneath a tied black scarf, and emerald eyes that blazed in the night like green fire. Familiar eyes, widening now with recognition. Sasha's heart, recently accelerated, nearly stopped.

Rhillian swung first, or nearly first, as the svaalverd forbade hesitation. Steel met steel and slid fast. Sasha, reversing that first cross into the low second, met firm defence, and pressed on that contact, just a little. A small slide of the front foot, a pressure of wrists, and the blade angle changed, and Rhillian took a step back to adjust. A moment's balance, a moment more time. Sasha led with the left shoulder for the high cut to follow, and altered the angle viciously at the last moment…and Rhillian abandoned defence for a desperate spin beneath, and out of trouble. Sasha's blade took off her white braid in passing.

Rhillian spun into the path of the Hadryn man, who had abandoned crossbow for sword. Sasha yelled warning even as he attacked, not that a Hadryn would have listened. Rhillian recovered to a near-perfect up-slanted deflection rotating into an utterly perfect beheading, in barely the time required to blink. And stood above the fallen, headless body, staring at her old friend past the bloody edge of a silver blade.

Sasha stared back. Her strokes had been all reflex. Had they stood further apart at the moment of recognition, she doubted she could have swung, had Rhillian not attacked. But she had. They had. Another moment between them, nearly the last.

Sasha had seen the ruthless precision of Rhillian's technique before. In battle, Rhillian feared little, because in style, she had little to fear. Her expression now was not fear, but rather…acknowledgement. She'd have been dead, had she not abandoned the contest. Perhaps, had she not known precisely whom she'd faced, she'd have shown more confidence, and died. She acknowledged that now, with her eyes. A wary, sombre green blaze.

“Don't do it,” Sasha wanted to say. Her lips could not move. She had to watch Rhillian's centre, where her vision could catch the entirety of any rapid motion in hands, feet, and balance, but her eyes were drawn back to Rhillian's face. Those familiar eyes, that expressed so much in friendship, but not in battle. Only now, beyond the recognition of death barely avoided, there was anger, and shock, now all settling to a brooding, grim fatalism.

Her eyes flicked to Sasha's boots. Always the feet, in svaalverd. Sasha knew her old friend well. Selfless to the last, she was sizing up the threat, and wondering how many of her own comrades would die at Sasha's blade if she did not attempt to remove this threat now. An impulse seized Sasha to throw away her blade, and kneel, and have Rhillian be done with it all. But her hands did not twitch upon the well-worn grip, for Lenay honour could not conceive of such a thing. She wondered if Rhillian would still strike, should she kneel, unarmed. She wondered what could have possibly gone wrong, that they should arrive at this moment.

More footsteps were running, but softly, from the river. Sasha took a step back. Rhillian did not follow. Another step. For a moment, Sasha thought Rhillian might call to those approaching, and tell them to stop, and buy time for her escape. But Rhillian's face barely twitched, her stare intent, her weapon ready. When Sasha took another step back, Rhillian tensed as though about to pursue.

Sasha took off sprinting, through the undergrowth and between the trees, hoping against hope that her foot would not catch and trip her. It did not, and after a short, mad dash, there were fires ahead, and lines of Lenay soldiers crouched low and peering into the gloom.

“It's me, I'm coming back!” Sasha yelled in Lenay, so that her men could hear her voice, realising too late that many serrin attackers were women, and spoke Lenay flawlessly. Luckily her Lenays erred on the side of caution, and she hurdled their crouching line, and stopped to lean her back against a tree.

A Fyden man came to her. “The others?” he asked.

Sasha shook her head. And slid down the tree to crouch on her haunches. “That was stupid,” she muttered. “I shouldn't have done that.” Two men dead, because she'd had some crazy urge to purge her demons, or whatever that had been. And suddenly she was furious at herself-here she was, scared of the personal trauma of fighting a friend, and two brave comrades were dead by that same friend's blade. She should have killed Rhillian in an instant, to avenge their deaths. Lenay honour trumped all, wasn't that the decision she'd made, in leaving Tracato to come here in the first place?

“That was brave,” the Fyden man corrected her. “Did you kill any?”

“Our Hadryn friend hit one,” said Sasha. “ He was brave, fighting serrin in the dark. And your man.” She, at least, had some confidence of surviving such a fight. Spirits, she'd been stupid.

She got to her feet, and ran back toward the vanguard. Her progress was met with some cheers and approving gestures from those about. It made her angry at her own people, that they so easily confused stupidity with bravery, and thought it good.

Yasmyn greeted her with a flask of water by a tent, and Sasha took a long drink. “Crazy woman,” Yasmyn told her, surmising well enough what had happened without needing to be told. “You must be blessed, to still be alive.”

“I'm not blessed,” said Sasha, after a hard swallow, “I'm cursed.” She felt dizzy. “I need a moment.”

She pushed past a tent flap, into the privacy of lordly quarters. From outside came calls of an all-clear, and a trumpet to tell the column. Damn trumpets, everyone was using them now, she'd never liked them. She sat on the edge of a cot, and put her head in her hands. The moment she closed her eyes she saw Rhillian, but it was not their recent meeting she saw. She saw emerald eyes asparkle with laughter, teasing her over some misunderstanding of the Saalsi tongue. She remembered the feel of Rhillian's hair in her hands, braiding it as they stood before the windows of a talmaad mansion, contemplating the view across Petrodor Harbour, and talking of their childhoods. And she recalled Rhillian's arms about her, when she'd once felt miserable, and thinking herself alone in her homesickness had leaned in a doorway and dreamed of Lenayin…only for Rhillian to approach unbidden from behind, and embrace her, and rest her cheek against Sasha's head.

“Unlike a stone,” she'd murmured in Saalsi, “the burden of sadness can be lifted with a smile.”