Vol.6, Ch.4, P.10
The silence between us throbbed on. All the others stood quiet. For her part, Her Highness must’ve been painfully uneased, I imagined, whilst Alban was closed of eyes and folded of arms behind his daughter, alongside his two officials whom I could hear were shivering in their sandals.
But at length, the silence broke. “Make… amends?” Lise snarled, her stare now sharper upon me. “As good as dead, that idea of yours—one to be killed by your own countrymen, none other.”
And I, loathing to back down, honed my gaze right back at her as I slowly shook my head. “Nay, they shan’t. Not if I leashed them in,” I returned. “Rolf’s oppressors, past and present—upon my word, I will sit them all aface him after he returns, and set straight their every soul.”
“Before, you mean?” Lise snarled again. “Or might be that the custom of you realmers? To only tame your hounds after they’ve harried your guests? To bid another bend the knee before ever you lift for them a finger? Hamph! I never knew heroes to be so backwards.”
I jerked, rueing more acutely at that acrid tongue of hers.
“And you, Lise: your fangs you have bared for longer than ought a frau,” her father grumbled. “Mercy, now!”
Even so, his daughter relented not one bit. Ever did her menacing eyes vise me, as mine did her. A look at us, and I confess, anyone might’ve fancied us two rival knaves at daggers drawn. But before this second hush could go long, Lise once again opened her mouth. And the breath that issued was her subtlest and iciest.
“‘Amends’ start with a ‘sorry’, need I remind you,” she growled at me, “—a word you’ve forgotten to give Rolf all day.”
“All of Londosius has given it, need I remind you,” I threw back at her. “Or were you nodding away at the meeting, perhaps?”
Lise scoffed. “You dare pretend the fool?”
Answering a question with another—oh, how puerile of her. Although that’s scarce to be wondered at, being so addled as to hint that I’d better “put aside this reconciliation” and “go and say sorry to Rolf right this instant.” Indeed, did she truly think me vain and unrepentant in all this? For I should say: I wasn’t. Very much the opposite. Why, I would beg Rolf his forgiveness. But given my station and the decorum expected at the council, I hadn’t got the chance to do so. As mareschal, as Her Highness’s high vassal, scant freedom is given me to speak and act as I please. Nay, not scant… rather, none at all!
“I see the fool here,” I said back at Lise. “Over long days and deep nights have I lamented this matter—more so than anyone else! Yet here do you yip and yammer as if you knew aught!”
Without question she didn’t. Nevertheless, yammer on she did, and very brazenly so, in her insolence. “Careful, now. That would enrage Rolf, had he heard it.”
Oh, what vapour! That must be all that filled that thick skull of hers, I suppose! Stinking, reeking vapours! But still, she blew on:
“Everyone laments. Everyone is in loss. My mother—I miss her still to this day.”
“…”
“So yes, I know: that afore me stands a bother of a babe! Screaming for comfort she dares deem ought be hers alone! Weeping and wailing, that she might stir the mothers in our hearts!”
“Harlot, you!!” I shrieked.
’Twould be the very first time I’d aired such a curse. And as though impelled by it, my hand lurched for the hilt at my side—an act mirrored by Lise, whose hands, too, vanished behind her back whence her two daggers were girt.
“…hh!”
“…gh!”
This seemed the final straw. The both of us teetered at patience’s end. But at the last, no weapon was drawn, nor finger laid upon grip. Rather, we but stood wrothly aface one another, hands trembling, brows rumbling. The others about us, I sensed, were all of them frozen, and even coldly asweat.
“…Your loss,” taunted Lise. “I’m the faster of us.”
Words spoken as if true in the absolute. Though, ’twas anything but. To be clear, I’m never one to blow my own trumpet… but not in one and a thousand years should I lose to so slimy and despicable a vixen.
“But not the mightier,” I answered, waning in restraint. “You’d be ashes by now, had I bared both blade and wrath. But hunted as we are, I merely thought it ill-advised to so brilliantly be rid of you.”
“So gloats the corpse in its grave,” Lise muttered back. “‘Dumb and dead’, its headstone says.”
“Oh, very rich,” I grimly sneered, “coming from a fool who flaunts her flesh so freely—as if to hide the hollowness of her head.”
“…”
“…”
Another silence fell as glares deepened. Our faces now were poised very near, breaths veritably rolling against each other. Any nearer, and our noses might’ve clashed. I wished then from the bottom of my heart that looks really could kill.
“…That is enough.”
“…Let it be, Lady Emilie.”
Thus chastened us the jarl and the princess. One voice rolled like storm clouds above. The other tinkled clear like a windless rain. Both were calm but forcible all the same.
“…Forgive me, Highness,” I said. And breaking away from Lise, I turned, put some distance between us, and cooled my nerves with a long sigh. Behind me, I could hear the jarl-daughter doing much the same.
“Like it or no, Lise,” Alban said to her, “joined must needs our hands be, if only for the present.”
“You trust theirs to hold tight?” debated Lise. “Whose was it that sparked the explosion, hmm?”
“Pray understand. I neither did nor do desire any harm upon you,” Her Highness defended.
There was no beating ’round the bush: the Lord Myrd setting himself ablast was a grave indiscretion on the part of Londosius. Nevertheless, this plight of ours was undeniably wrought by some evil scheme, and withal were the men behind its curtains a plain enemy of both Her Highness and myself. Mistaking that would serve merely to benefit them… something that Lise here seemed wholly dim to.
Back to her face I looked, perhaps fancying to see if the princess’s words had knocked any sense into her—only to find her expression changed asudden. Her ears were pricked, her eyes wide. And the wrath that’d once so inflamed her mien was shifted now to a different strain of hostility. At once, I knew what it meant: she’d sensed company.
Lovely. Though truth be told, I suppose all that bickering could never’ve gone unnoticed. And grudgingly enough, ’twas well of Lise to have kept vigilant in her despite. Hither was she looking. Nay, not at me, but behind me. Our eyes then met for an instant, to which I swiftly drew my blade and twisted ’round, finding yonder past my party a group of four frocked men slithering nigh from hedge to hedge, their maces gripped ready. But caught red-handed, they abandoned stealth and charged. Straightway, I lunged thither to stop them.
“Ferum Fulgur!” I incanted as I went, spurring my silversword to brim with odyl. ’Twould be ill to rouse any more of a scene, to be sure. But with Her Highness imperilled, ’twas not to be helped—save for the fact that no longer was I Emilie the reckless, who would count only on her vast odyl, and blindly swing tide after tide of wild levin. No—now did I leash in that odyl as it violently flooded my blade, as though indeed to catch lightning in a bottle. And then the swordtip cackled and flared, surging with such levin and odyl as to lay low an entire company. And raising the bright weapon, I brought it down full upon him who led the enemy charge.
Quickly, he raised his mace to defend. But right as edge met haft, the man perished at once—the levin in my blade having entered and ravaged his body inside-out. And not just him: in its eagerness, the lightning then flashed and fanned, seizing two others at the left and right. With a crack through the air, three men now fell together, their hearts stricken quiet.
“Fie…!” rasped the fourth, who, being a distant last, had been spared the same fate. Cursing his odds nonetheless, he turned tail and began to flee. I stepped forth in pursuit, but stopped, reminding myself of the princess in my care. Drat! I inly shouted. I can’t let him! But I…!
Yet, no sooner had the thought struck than did a crimson gust blow past me. ’Twas Raakel! She’d lunged forth, her eyes flickering by with the zeal of a lion on the hunt. The chase lasted not a few seconds, as once she’d gained the deserter, her silvermaul swung down with terrible force. And after an appalling noise, the surrounding greenery was sprayed with reds and sickly pinks. But her weapon did not cease: pulling back, it then wound about for a heaving sweep. And striking true, it sent the man’s body flying limp like a wet rag.
“Hic…!” someone yelped. I glanced back. ’Twas one of the Nafílim officials, his visage looking pale and aghast. Such was also a power of Raakel’s: her brutality could cow any who witnessed it, especially those far removed from the violence of war.
And so did I turn to Her Highness, worried that she, too, would be in dismay. But there she was, rigid as ice as she withstood the grim sight of slain men. Pain and sorrow darkened her mien, and her lips were tensely pressed. She was directly party to this war, a cold truth from which she dared not avert her eyes.
And following suit, I gazed upon the three bodies lying at my feet—bodies made corpses by my sword.
I have killed on this day. Nay, not Nafílim, but rather those of my own kind. ’Twould mark the very first page in my life so writ in kinsblood. And realising this, I felt then a sudden lurch in my throat, as though some fit of screaming or weeping was desperate to get out. But I gulped it back down. And after a deep breath, I cleaned and sheathed my blade.
I turned next to the jarl-daughter. Nary a weapon was in her hands. Instead, she stood grave and alert afront her three charges… but also near enough to both Her Highness and the chancellor that she might protect them had the need arisen.
She the shield, I the sword—given whence the enemy had appeared, such an arrangement was most apt, one we’d no less settled upon with the glance we’d shared before the violence ensued. Swift and wordless coordination, put simply, though it sickened me green to admit it.
But then Lise grimaced and sucked her teeth indignantly. And without warning, she drew both her daggers.
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Notes
Ferum Fulgur
(Language: Latin; original name: “Fierce Volt”) “Fierce Lightning”. A levin-elemental ensorcellment and bladespell. The sword is imbued with a shroud of electricity. When swung, a fan of lightning is thrown forth, burning and shocking targets caught within.
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