Vol.6, Ch.4, P.9
“Heavens! ye are all safe,” said Her Highness, who’d at length appeared alongside Raakel and Lord Hugo. “Mine heart is glad.”
“Princess! Glad be I, too, to see you sound. Your two vassals are proven!” replied a deep, rolling voice, as Lise’s own party came nigh whence they’d been hid. The answerer was the largest of them: Alban, the chief of the Himmel, and the very sire to the dagger-wielder afore me.
“Yes,” said our princess, as she signed to me to sheathe my sword. “Their chivalry hath shielded me well. Yet, there doth be one to whom my life is owed…”
“For true,” Alban replied, similarly urging his daughter to stand down. “But, sad to say, Princess: that saviour is missing, as you see.”
Indeed, Rolf was nowhere to be seen. The Nafílim party comprised just that: Nafílim, with Alban, Lise, and their two officials. ’Twould seem they were just as few and lost as we.
“Alas…” uttered Her Highness, who then became sombre. Such a breed of soul she was, our princess, who would lament to miss thanking whomever has done her some good, to say nothing of saving her life.
But, as with a gust striking a delicate flower, Lise said to her impudently, “He was hoisted, mayhaps—far, far out of the tower.”
Our princess’s eyes widened. “Out…!?” she gasped with cupped mouth. I stood no less aghast. Though a nasty tongue she was, Lise’s revelation was nothing I could ignore: Myrd’s failure in throwing down all of the steeple tower had allowed us a possible, if not safe, descent—that is, us save for Rolf.
Inly I shuddered. An iciness crept down my back. Dark omens brewed in my mind. Rolf—’twas he who’d mitigated the bombing, putting Myrd as far from the rest of us as he could with that kick of his. But in so doing, he’d also placed his person nearest to the fires themselves…
What’d become of him thereafter I couldn’t tell aught. So utterly choked with dust, smoke, and wreckage had been the steeple and lectitōrium that we were all of us practically blind and groping. And because of the explosion, my ears had rung so terribly that never could I have heard Rolf, even had he been beside me screaming all the while. If Lise has spoken true, however, such would’ve been long impossible… for Rolf was already gone by then, “hoisted far out of the tower,” as she has said.
Blasted, thrown… and made to fall from ahigh. It all seemed too terrible to imagine or even accept. With a desperate effort, I shook my head and cast away its increasingly grim thoughts.
Lise, on the other hand, merely shrugged. “No matter,” she said. “Ahead somewhere may we meet him, I’m sure.”
There was something about that demeanour of hers: aloof or unconcerned she seemed—even indifferent. And oh, how it plucked at my nerves.
“And how are you sure?” I pressed her sharply.
“I just am.”
Annoyance swelled at once to anger. “…Have you no heart?” I then remarked lowly. But this moved Lise not a trifle. She only stared back, which did little more than incense me even further. “So smoothly and certainly do you presume his plight,” I continued. “All the more reason to have sought after him when you’d got the chance, therefore. Or—by my troth—you hadn’t even bothered?”
“There was no ‘chance’,” answered Lise. “Full enough my hands were, whether to safekeep whichever charges were at hand, or convey them through that chaos.”
“Rolf was at hand! Right outside the tower!” I retorted, my voice grown harsh at last. All the others here were now turned to me. Even so, such was my vaulting indignance, and so much did this heartless termagant irritate me, that no longer could I restrain myself.
“I had my priorities,” she easily answered, “and they are the civilians you see with me now.”
“Humph,” groaned one such “priority”. “Not so much a dotard am I yet, to must be tended by my own daughter.”
Lise curtly glanced at her unamused father before continuing, “As I was saying: had I pieced the puzzle awrong, then I’d soon have Rolf scolding down my ear to expect.”
I heard then my teeth gnashing behind my cheeks. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d say this jarl-daughter was hinting that ’twas she who knew Rolf the better of us. And that was nothing I could brook.
“Priorities? Puzzle!?” I let burst out. “Why—you think this some game, don’t you? Then put it plain, why not!? That Rolf’s to you but a pawn upon your silly board!”
A pawn she’d lifted not a finger to protect. No, not even after lambasting me for the very same sin at today’s council. How ridiculous!
“Huh?” huffed Lise. And sticking both hands akimbo, and thrusting forth an exasperated face, she then hissed at me, “What’s this so asudden?”
Oh, now were all of my nerves plucked. Her air, her gestures, her tone—every bit of this jarl-daughter was like an insult given form. And that’s to say nothing of how absolutely lacking in compunction she was for Rolf, even as his plight hung all in doubt. Why, I should describe her as some… some bullyragging scamp who knows to treat a jewel only like some common toy. Yes, that’s precisely her!
“‘Asudden’?” I threw back at her. “Are you mad? For all this time has he been… been…!”
Further words stopped at my throat. I could not bear to air them. Where was Rolf now? And was he well? Or was he…
Thoughts thronged once more in my head. And like hundreds of hands, they wrested Rolf away—away from a future where he and I might yet join together again, leaving me behind in a grey and ghostly world. And just the vision of it seized me fast in fear and despair.
“Come, good my Lady. Comfort thyself,” came Her Highness’s reproval. “This is nary the occasion to quarrel.”
Aware of the unseemly conduct I’d shown in her royal presence, I felt my nerves cooling at once. But that lasted little, for there to fan the blaze back up was Lise, sticking out her tongue before mocking me with a brazen, “Quibbling, babbling bird!”
“Peace, Lise!” Alban groaned at her. “Small good it does to bark at birds.”
This sire’s disciplining hand had for long been lax, it well-appeared. My own seemed in order, then. Nay, ’tis not my custom to pick fights. But this slimy vixen—she was a special case.
“Better a babbling bird than a baboon,” I spat at her, my voice grating with annoyance. “A blind and bumbling baboon!”
Wasn’t she a commander in her own right, like myself? The reins to an entire army, heavily there in her grip? Yet it seemed to me that she’d got nary the wit for it, expecting the best, yet preparing so little for the worst as she was. Nay, that’s more the mind of a sodden fool than a commander, by my measure. And ’tis a right measure indeed, for I, myself, had been such a fool once.
Painfully I recalled the nightmare at Godrika. At that time, I’d believed my plans infallible, even as Rolf advised me otherwise time and again. And to my shame, he was proved utterly right, as droves of knights were consigned to a vain demise by my blind optimism.
But this pouting virago… I wholly doubted if ever she’d tasted so bitter a medicine. Here she was, with not a care in the world for the very same man that’d so enlightened me three years past… a man who very well could be in grave danger at this exact moment. Who was I to restrain my ire afore such ignorance, such flippancy?
But like the baboon that she was, Lise only went on barking her absurdities. “Now see here, you,” she snapped. “Why waste time wallowing in worthless worries? Rolf lives! If dumb of ear or wit you weren’t, you might’ve guessed it just by the bang from the buildings yonder! For that was his doing, no doubt!”
“Again with the proofless prattle!” I snapped back. “He was flung from a tower! Thrown by a blast of many bombs! But look at you: so confident he came away entirely unscathed!”
“Quit squawking nonsense, can you!?” hissed Lise sharply, as she came and thrusted herself imposingly unto me. Did she really believe I’d be cowed aught by it? Sorry to say, but compared to the thought of losing Rolf, she emitted all the terror of but a bat springing in surprise. Yes, that’s right: Lise was naught to me but a despicable pest. Or better yet: even lesser than one, for surely may even a bat prove some use to something. Say, as a morsel for a hound, were it famished enough. But nay, not this surly, foul-mouthed scourge—who, sure enough, let fume another reek. “Never have I said he’s unscathed!” she shouted. “Yes! Mayhaps at death’s door he is, for all I know! But still!”
Straight into my eyes she glared. How unpleasant she was. How utterly offensive in manner. But more revolting again were the contents of her words, whose fallacy I at once pounced upon, whilst my head grew light from all the blood boiling up to it.
“‘Death’s door’…? Oh, how dare you!” I growled back. “Here you are, auguring more ills upon him, even as you’ve guessed his grim plight!”
“Grim, yes, but not in the grave yet!” she returned. “For true: much more than cheap tricks it takes to bury him! And that’s the point! Yet here you are, snivelling over nothing! Why can’t you guess that!?”
Words, all upside-down, all impetuous and stupid. And being only too fain to give her that piece of my mind, I hissed out, “Stupider words never spoken. You are a frothing fool, if blind and idle faith be your idea of friendship.”
“Wh—!? How dare you!” shrieked Lise with a bristling stamp of her foot. So proud and sure had she seemed a moment ago. But seeing her now steaming veritably out of her nostrils, I admit I felt then a trickle of vindication. Still, in such urgency as we were, I dared not puff about it. What needed consideration instead was Rolf’s well-being.
“Save it. You’ve made it very clear how much you ‘care’ for Rolf,” I said more coldly now, and then declared in Lise’s face, “Londosius shall therefore look after Rolf from here on.”
Green eyes narrowed at me. “He’s not some babe to be passed about!” Lise spat. “Rolf’s full-grown! Fighting blood and sweat! Unlike you!”
She knew not one bit how far back Rolf and I went. The endless hours that we’d spent together, the days that we’d seen—none of it. And yet look at her, insisting upon him as though she matched him more than me. At this point, I sensed my wrath for the jarl-daughter taking on a murdersome bent.
And whether she saw it in me or no, Lise then pushed herself against me, jabbing a finger repeatedly at my bosom as she exclaimed, “Yes, you! A sop who but depends on powers lavished upon her! Who mistakes borrowed might for self-made merit! You don’t deserve to care for him! Not since the day you dared look upon him as some dog in the mud!”
Dog! Why, the only dog I see is…! Is…!
Fine enough. Yes. Yes, I’d erred. And yes, I knew it. All too well did I know it. But even so!
“Hence do I make amends,” I said back, before thoughts and passions came gushing confusedly out of me: “For we are amendable, Rolf and I! And don’t you dare come between us!”
But Lise, weathering that tide, remained stiff as she glowered into my eyes. I returned the gesture in full. And for a while, we stood there, staring each other down with not a single blink between us.
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