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skelffricat · 4 years ago

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Uppa (Mother)Hoods

I have never given birth, yet I have made three children. At the cosy NCT* group in the Ormeau Library, where I went with my first child (when I managed to get up early enough) I felt ashamed of this. The mothers there were Proper Mothers, with scars in their vaginas; tits out for milking; organic rice cakes for snacks; and great pride in their beautiful birth stories. They were horrific to me (the stories, not the mothers). I couldn’t talk about my birth experience without crying. I even made my GP cry, telling her about it. My eldest was whisked out of my unconscious middle in a now-derelict hospital in South Wales, while my legs were stirruped up (I once made the mistake of visiting the Erotic Museum in Amsterdam- the Sex Museum is better- whilst very stoned. One tends to be stoned, in Amsterdam, I suppose. The floors were confusingly slanted, giving me a sinking feeling, and the top floor’s “sexy” scene was a hospital one. Mannequins in stirrups do NOT turn me on. I had to immediately leave. I may have wept.) There was a student in the hospital room, with horror on his young face, gawping between my legs, and a nurse was urging the doctor to wait for me to go fully under the anaesthetic before he sliced my layers open with the scalpel. My eldest’s father had already been bade to leave. I think he signed something as he left. Signed our lives away?

I learnt later, whilst perusing my eldest’s little red book**, that her lung had collapsed. (I asked why they hadn’t told me. Oh, but it’s fairly common, they said. One in ten thousand. Not worth mentioning, really. Wtf?!) She had pooed in my womb (how rude!) and inhaled some of her own meconium. Meconium. Meconium. I had already learnt that word as a teen, from the band James, in their brilliant song, Gold Mother.

Then I had three friends- well, six, really- who had had stillborn children, at full term, and stopped feeling ashamed of how my child had made her clumsy entrance to the world, and merely relieved that she was alive and kicking, and proud of her. The biggest, reddest, loudest, baby in SCBU***. (“How will I know which one is mine?” I had croaked. Then, it was so obvious, I’d laughed.) I can also feel smug about not pissing myself on trampolines, or every time I sneeze, like most of the women I know who’ve had natural births. Perhaps I’ll start an Unnatural Childbirth Trust. Do your pelvic floor exercises. Now.

TRIGGER WARNING: I am going to talk about teenage suicide.

Now my youngest child has died, by suicide, just short of her 15th birthday, and I try to feel relief that she is at peace, and that I got 15 glorious years with her. If I think about birthdays like the Chinese people do, I can call it 16****. Almost a woman.

I found her. She arranged that I would, I suppose because she thought I could cope with it better than her father could (she was right, of course. She was usually right. She was very wise. I miss her wisdom, and her unfailing ability to open any jar I couldn’t. She was strong.) I don’t know how to feel about that. People keep telling me that I’m strong, but it seems strangely shameful to be strong at this time (and I still can’t open jars). Perhaps the anti-depressants are working too well? I wonder. I worry that my blasé attitude to death made her decision easier (though I understand that it is pointless to worry about these things now. It won’t bring her back.) We tended to talk about death a lot. Some of my friends had died by suicide, and I would discuss with my mother, her granny, around the children, how suicide was no longer a shameful thing. How you shouldn’t say “committed” in front of it, because it hasn’t been a crime in the UK since 1961. It shouldn’t be a crime anywhere. We went to funerals in brightly coloured clothes. I celebrated dead people’s wonderful lives with them.

She was hanging from the trapeze I’d had built for her, in our quiet back garden, from a hammock that I had bought for her. I had wondered about the hammock being out there in winter, and thought it was tied in a funny way, a few days before, but not done anything about that. I try not to regret that either. My logic comforts me thus: at least these things could be taken from the garden, and destroyed (the hammock) or used again (the trapeze) and I didn’t have to cut down any trees. I said to myself- she would have done it anyway, somewhere else, at some time. She did it with her things. She used to do amazing things on them. She could soar and swoop gracefully from that trapeze, and even the hammock got strung up high and spun from.

I had been drinking the night before with my lovely Scottish lover. We watched Wild at Heart, and drank red wine. I thoroughly christened the new bright yellow carpet with a full glass of it, oops. Tried to clean it with a sock. My youngest child was baking in the kitchen. She made a vegan chocolate cake. At one point I went in to her and she was sat on the floor, looking at the cake in the oven. Her head was practically in there. When I was a child, we had electric, not gas, and I thought that people who killed themselves by putting their heads in the oven were cooking themselves to death. How did all the heat not escape, I wondered? How long would that take?! Those thoughts went through my head as I looked at her. She had attempted suicide before, around a month ago. We had been to the hospital. She convinced them (and me) that she wasn’t suicidal, and was sent home. I am not angry at this. What is the point in being angry? She is gone. She was a good actress. A cry for help? She had been to CAMHS that very day. I felt hopeful. She was making cake! She was going to try school tomorrow, in her own comfortable clothes. She hadn’t been for ages. She was too anxious, about uniform, about what to learn, about the future. I asked her what she was doing and we laughed about her proximity to the oven.

He and I ate the cake, later, with natural yoghurt. It was delicious. We called her to join us and she wouldn’t. The last time I saw my youngest daughter alive I was thinking about her killing herself, in a jocular way. Then she did. In a jugular way. Fuck, sorry. I find myself saying the most inappropriate things.

Sometimes I imagine her last breath. Or dream of disembodied heads. I wonder did she change her mind at the last minute, or feel resolute, and pleased with herself, her escape? Did she make a noise? Did she call out to me, to anyone? I guess you probably can’t call out...? At first, the shock was so severe, I couldn’t think about it without feeling a massive surge of pure panic. I saw my face in the mirror that morning, and it was ashen grey. Later, my eldest described the sensation as a perpetual feeling of dread. Impending doom. Yes, I said, like we’re waiting for something horrific to happen! Then we would realise it already had. My heart thumped so viciously hard inside of me, it felt like it was going to jump right out of my chest. Proving its aliveness. Until I calmed it with (mostly) legal drugs. In the next few weeks, I liked to listen to hearts beating, breath flowing. People being alive, alive- oh.

My lover had left that night, as he was to go on a walk early the next day. I am so relieved that he had. He has his own demons. He never went on that walk, of course, but at least he didn’t have to find her. He left at around 3am. Her bedroom door was closed.

I awoke just before 6am. I’m not sure why. I expect I needed water, because I’d been drinking wine. Her door was open. The light was on, and I could see her bed was empty. I got water, and went to her room and saw there was a note on the bed. It was written in green biro, on an A4 file page, folded twice. There was a little cheeky red smiley face with its tongue out on the outside. It was a suicide note. Full of love. Was it a suicide note? So much love. It can’t be a suicide note. I started to look for her, around the house. It was still very dark. I was switching on the light in a room and looking around it and switching the light off and looking in another room. I couldn’t find her. I looked in some rooms twice. I even opened the compartment under her bed. I looked in the cupboard under the stairs, like Harry Potter’s room, that she and her friend had once shut themselves into, to see each other’s glow-in-the-dark bicycle helmets. Where is she? I thought. This is the worst game of Hide-and-Go-Seek ever! Perhaps it’s not a suicide note. Perhaps she has run away? I got dressed.

Then I found her, in our dark and silent back garden. As she was on the far side of the trapeze to me, her feet were level with the safety mat under the trapeze. I thought for a second that she was just standing there, very still. I was still hoping it was all a joke. A mistake. One of our white garden chairs was beside her. When I realised she was hanging, I swung her slightly. This movement haunts me. Her face... her face was distorted. Her tongue lolling out. I hope you never have to see that on anyone. Especially not your child. My friend hanged herself years ago and my daughter’s face reminded me of her dead one. So, I was thinking, she is dead, in one layer of my mind, and in another, I was thinking, I shall save her. I was calling her, and caressing her freezing face. She was so cold. Dead cold. I ran into the kitchen, got a serrated knife. I am unsure of the order of things. Had I already phoned 999? Was I trying to talk on the phone whilst doing all of this? I cut rapidly through the hammock- it was easy. She flopped into the muck. It was so mucky. I was trying to pull her by the arms onto the trapeze mat, away from the cloying mud, but she was a dead weight. Dead dead dead. No help there. I couldn’t move her. She was so ungainly. I felt inept and weak. I tried to put her in the recovery position. Then I thought, oh wait, no, I need to do chest compressions- I can’t do that on a soft mat anyway. I kept dropping the phone in the mud, and the man on the end of the line was almost shouting at me.

I put her on her back and was doing chest compressions and he was asking, “is she breathing?”

She seemed to breathe when I pressed her. I thought, oh! She’s alive? I kept pressing, and dropping the phone in the mud, and I was all mucky too, and she wasn’t breathing- I was just pushing air through her- but I had a glimmer of hope, and the 999 man was counting with me through my mucky mobile phone, and I heard the ambulance coming, and I said to him, I have to let them in! and he said, NO! Keep pressing! I said, I have to, my garden is inaccessible, and I let them in. Two ambulances, filling my dark quiet street with noise and lights and hope.

They took over. They asked for towels to kneel on in the muck. I’d never thought of that- I got them, as quick as I could. I paced, and watched, and walked away then watched again, and the cat jumped and wheedled around everything. Did he see her die? I wondered? Why didn’t you come get me, cat, like Lassie, or Skippy, or fucking Flipper!? She must have shut the kitchen door and kept him away. They tried and tried, and I paced. They did the defibrillators. Then her breasts became visible and I baulked at the indignity of it, whilst knowing it was entirely necessary, and just... human. They did the adrenaline shots. Four of them, taking turns. Is there any hope? I asked one. Not really, he said. We’re trying because she is young. She’s been there a while. At least I could feel less guilty about getting dressed. I kept thinking, why did I get dressed? I got dressed to go find my dead daughter.

Was it starting to get light? It was going to be a beautiful morning, I thought, what a pity she can’t see it. I changed out of my mucky clothes. Layered up. It was so cold. There was time, while they tried to save her.

They tried for 20 minutes before they pronounced her dead. There was mud everywhere. They put the mucky towels in a shopping basket I had outside to light fires in. The ambulance people all told me they were very sorry for my loss.

I don’t like euphemisms for death.

Saying I’ve lost her implies I could find her again. I suppose I find her in my dreams. Though I dreamt of different, unknown, children last night. Two little mixed race boys that I was minding in the (huge dream version) of the Carnival Centre. They kept running away and messing about. At one point we were all on top of a huge concrete topped lift (elevator), that lurched away from beneath us so that we flew into the air. It was falling faster than us. How is that possible? We couldn’t catch up with gravity. Griefity? We weren’t falling fast enough. I keep dreaming of losing children. Not children dying. I dreamt I lost my son the other night too. He was led into a room I wasn’t allowed in. I could see him through the window of the door I couldn’t go through. Then he went out of my sight and I woke up, shaking, horrified.

I recently found my daughter alive again, in a dream. She was very wee- three or four. Before her first haircut. She was being really bold and naughty. She kept running away from me, and she had pooed herself a little, and was rubbing the poo on things, half on purpose. I was trying to catch her and clean her and her hands. We were on holiday? Maybe on a big ferry? I think we had to catch a flight. She had run into a swimming pool room and climbed into a pile of boxes and upset the boxes, and pulled another little girl on top of her and hurt her too. I was trying to pull them out, without hurting them, without losing my temper. I was really trying hard to keep my temper. I was thinking as I woke, if this keeps up, she'll be taken off me. It was so vivid that as I came to, I thought, I must text the Woodcarver; I must text my youngest daughter, to see if she's ok. It was quite a while before I awoke properly and thought, of course she's not ok, she's dead. She's already away. Then I got upset, and cried, but I was glad I got upset because I've been taking anti-depressants and not feeling anything much, so it was a relief to feel sad. I accidentally hadn't taken any for a couple of days at that point.

Saying she has passed annoys me more. Passed what? Her exams? Wind? (That’s always funny.) She has passed tense? She is past tense.

It wasn’t until she was pronounced officially dead that I phoned her father, the Woodcarver. I thought, there is no point in giving him false hope like mine. He made a loud guttural noise, like a wounded animal, on the other end of the line. It woke my son, who was staying with him. He thought his father was dying. Wrong relative.

It was a brightening cold morning by now. The police came. Her father came. He kicked the white chair she had used, and broke it. This satisfied and disturbed me in equal measure. He hit his head off the sink. I was frightened by him, despite the police presence. I was frightened for him.

The police were very kind. A man and a woman. The man was comfortingly camp. They had masks on. There’s a pandemic, it is said. They took their hats off, but left the masks on. No-one else really bothered with masks, for the next while. I was fascinated by the police officers’ dark green peaked hats- one for boys, and one for girls- on my kitchen table. I made myself tea and put sugar in it. I never take sugar in tea. I’d heard it was good for shock.

My dead daughter’s father’s brother came. He told me to phone my mum. I said I would wait until she normally got up. What is the sense of breaking your last peaceful night’s sleep early, to find out something that won’t be any less dreadful half an hour later? He had brought my son; my daughter’s father’s mother; my daughter’s father’s girlfriend. This is starting to read like Anna Burns’ The Milkman. My daughter’s grandma was also fascinated by the police officers’ hats. She said that one wanted mending, and she wished she had a needle and thread. I didn’t think to fetch her one. I asked if it is true that pregnant women are allowed to pee in police officers’ hats, but they hadn’t heard that before. I kept checking the time on my phone, every few minutes, and drinking sweet tea. I was waiting for the real morning to begin. Nothing has felt real ever since, though.

When I did ring my mother at 8am, she didn’t wake. My little brother did, though. He went and told her in person, and when she arrived, she was bawling, and had forgotten her glasses. She looked tiny. She was due to see everyone the next day. She had been quarantining as she was not long back from Spain. I deeply regret not bringing the children to wave at her in the garden. She hadn’t seen them for months.

We were flitting between my house and our friends’ house round the corner. My garden was now a crime scene. My daughter’s father didn’t like this. He wanted to hold her lifeless body’s hand. At that point, I thought I never wanted to see her lifeless body again, but I changed my mind a few days later, and that was alright. I saw her in her casket and her face looked... Dead, but not distorted any more. She looked peaceful, I suppose, and very beautiful, in a sad way. She was surrounded by toys, trinkets, food she loved. Dried mango. Finn and Jake. Her elder sister tucked her pride flag around her. She hadn’t seen her for ten months.

There were many people now, milling inside, and out in the sunshine, between the two houses. The neighbours were out and about, too. I had made horrendous phone calls to a workmate and a couple of friends and the word was spreading. I had phoned my eldest daughter in Wales. To spread the word. The bad word. The worst words. I have had Joshua Burnside’s song, The Good Word, in my head a lot, this last while.

“Last night I dreamed

We were running for our lives

From robots in the jungle

Helicopters in the sky

But the ground opened up and I

Couldn't save her

Couldn't save her again

Oh no

No sir

Not this time

Glory hallelujah.”

My lover came down and was of the utmost comfort to me. When the coroner had been and they were to take her away, the Woodcarver’s biggest brother- he that had been there first- came to me in the other house and asked did I want to say goodbye to her body? I said, no, I do not, that is not my daughter any more.

I sought comfort in words. We read poems on her bed.

Various people told us of a humanist celebrant. She offered to help us for free, and she did, and I am so grateful.

A friend gave me valium. At some point, someone went to the offy. More and more people came. The lovely camp police officer returned, with my daughter’s bank card, and people panicked, because of Covid, but he didn’t say anything. He only wanted to help.

The next while was a blur...

*National Childbirth Trust- it was the only secular one. I also enjoyed the ones in churches, with their cream teas, and knitted religious folks, trying not to try to convert you and yours. It perhaps could’ve been called the Natural Childbirth Trust, because they kept banging on about it...

**The NHS issue these red books as personal child health records.

***SCBU- the Special Care Baby Unit. They pronounced it Skiboo, in their lovely Welsh lilts. My doctor looked like a child. She had been working for 24 hours straight, and was still charming and kind.

****Age reckoning originated in China, where it's believed that a baby's age starts from its time in the mother's womb. The practice is also common in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

#suicide #scbu #nct #death #motherhood #uppahoods #teenagesuicide

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beeblackburn · 4 years ago

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Pretender Reads A Little Hatred, Part I, Chapter Two

Forwards and charging onward! Goes without saying spoilers ahead for the entirety of The First Law works beyond the keep reading. Read at your own risk.

Chapter Title: Where the Fight’s Hottest Point-of-View: Leo dan Brock

In battle, Leo’s father used to say, a man discovers who he truly is.

The Northmen were already turning to run as his horse crashed into them with a thrilling jolt.

He smashed one across the back of the helmet with the full force of the charge and ripped his head half off.

He snarled as he swung to the other side. A glimpse of a gawping face before his axe split it open, blood spraying in black streaks.

.. And what Leo is is a Northman in Union clothes. If we’re less generous with him, he’s Leeroy Jenkins. He’s, with respect to FlynnLevy on TheFirstLaw’s reddit, Leoroy Jenkins!!

A lance shattered, a shard flying into Leo’s helmet with an echoing clang as he wrenched away. The world was a flickering slit of twisted faces, glinting steel, heaving bodies, half seen through the slot in his visor. Screams of men and mounts and metal mashed into one thought-crushing din.

With a title like Where the Fight’s Hottest, we were going to get a fight. This chapter’s first half’s all fight and blood, and, man, there’s that crispness and visceral impact of Abercrombie’s battle prose. I make no bones in saying that he’s hands-down one of the genre’s bests, as far as I’ve read. Abercrombie just knows how to make a blow crunch and chop off a limb and make you feel it, be part of the moment.

And this is a great example of it. Just read how claustrophobic this feels, how much only Leo can register hearing because his helmet’s visor won’t let him register any sight beyond the minute glints and flickers of battle. It’s mostly hearing, because Leo himself can’t see past his slit and Abercrombie appreciates a good tightness of voice. All sound and fury in a storm of violence.

A horse swerved in front of him. Riderless, stirrups flapping. Ritter’s horse. He could tell by the yellow saddlecloth. A spear stabbed at him, jolting the shield on his arm, rocking him in his saddle. The point screeched down his armoured thigh.

Riderless, huh. My god, is Ritter another battle-idiot? At least Leo stays on his horse to slaughter the Northmen! Aside from that, let me draw more attention to the way Abercrombie breaks down his sentence structure: short sentences and multiple commas, each carrying their immediate action, because the battlefield’s not a place where long stretches of thought can occur without a man trying to bash your brains in.

He gripped the reins in his shield-hand as his mount bucked and snorted, face locked in an aching smile, flailing wildly with his axe on one side, then the other. He beat mindlessly at a shield with a black wolf painted on it, kicked at a man and sent him staggering back, then Barniva’s sword flashed as it took his arm off.

Stour Nightfall’s standard. So, does this mean Rikke and Leo are going to meet, considering Uffrith won’t predispose her to Stour and Stour won’t be sweetened by Leo’s loving ax to his men’s heads?

He saw Whitewater Jin swinging his mace, red hair tangled across gritted teeth.

1. Whitewater? So Jin’s born near the Whiteflow? Hm, I wonder if it’s a Name like the other Named Men or just a geographical name. I’m hedging on the latter, but it’s an interesting thought. 2. Red hair, huh. I’m not crazy enough to assume that’s Vitari’s Cas (why would he be up North, anyway?) but, given this is a story where the next generation will be focused on, I’m definitely looking carefully for redheads.

He pointed at Stour Nightfall’s standard with his axe, black wolf streaming in the wind. He howled, roared, throat hoarse. No one could hear him with his visor down. No one could’ve heard him if it had been up. He hardly knew what he was saying. He flailed furiously at the milling bodies instead.

Someone clutched at his leg. Curly hair. Freckles. Looked bloody terrified. Everyone did. Didn’t seem to have a weapon. Maybe surrendering. Leo smashed Freckles on the top of the head with the rim of his shield, gave his horse the spurs and trampled him into the mud.

This was no place for good intentions. No place for tedious subtleties or boring counter-arguments. None of his mother’s carping on patience and caution. Everything was beautifully simple.

In battle, a man discovers who he truly is, and Leo was the hero he’d always dreamed of being.

Well! Leo’s certainly no Jezal. He’s a far more wild and battle-hungry shit, and, in some ways, that comparison both elevates and damns Leo. He’s certainly got the glory-hounding that Jezal had, except backed with some legit battlefield competence right away, but at the same time, there’s something terribly more... hidebound about Leo in a way that Jezal wasn’t at the start. Jezal was a noble ignorant pissant because he just wholesale bought into his station and the assumptions that came with it until reality beat him down later.

Leo’s actively killing people and just loving it. Loving being a hero, loving being a leveller of men, loving the simplicity of battlefield politics, one ax swing at a time.

It makes him a more specific character, writing-wise, compared to the more vacuous nature of Jezal at the start, but my god. Leo is no thinking man here. If anything, the remark of heroes and all this battle fury in him makes me think there’s quite a bit of Gorst in Leo before my first thought that he was the next generation’s Jezal (something that I think holds sort of true, Jezal was also an unthinking dumbfuck who thought he was the best ever).

Time will tell if Leo grows past that...

He swung again but his axe felt strange. The blade had flown off, left him holding a bloody stick. He dropped it, dragged out his battle steel, buzzing fingers clumsy in his gauntlet, hilt greasy from the thickening rain. He realised the man he’d been hitting was dead. He’d fallen against the fence, so it looked as if he was standing but there was black pulp hanging out of his broken skull, so that was that.

Hah! I’ve always wondered how axes blades can stay on, despite so much abrasion and blows. I’m glad to see this, for a change. And, man, those beautiful short sections in-between commas, so many quick beats of actions that don’t linger in the moment.

Also, sheesh, Leo. Was there a thought you ever had before you swung.

The standard-bearer was a huge man with desperate eyes and blood in his beard, still holding high the flag of the black wolf. Leo spurred right at him, blocked axe with shield, caught him with a sword-cut that screeched over his cheek guard and opened a great gash across his face, carved half his nose off. He tottered back and Whitewater Jin crushed the man’s helmet with his mace, blood squirting from under the rim. Leo kicked him over, tearing the standard from his limp hand as he fell. He thrust it up, laughing, gurgling, half-choking on his own spit then laughing again, his axe’s loop still stuck around his wrist so the broken haft clattered against his helmet.

A fight’s some messy shit, guys. It ain’t pretty, and Abercrombie gets across that ugliness while writing some really entertaining, quick-paced, in-the-moment battles, another reason why his fight scenes whip.

Leo ached all over: thighs from gripping his horse, shoulders from swinging his axe, hands from gripping the reins. The very soles of his feet throbbed from the effort. His chest heaved, breath booming in his helmet, damp, and hot, and tasting of salt. Might’ve bit his tongue somewhere. He fumbled with the buckle under his chin, finally tore the damn thing free. His skull burst with the noise, turned from fury to delight. The noise of victory.

No one gets out unscathed or without being downright exhausted. When you’re down with where the fight’s hottest, you end up paying prices for being in the middle of war’s forges, hot and spent and full of fire in your throat and body all over. Though, Leo shoves the costs for the victory in the moment...

He almost fell from his horse, clambered up onto the wall. Something was soft under his gauntleted hand. A Northman’s corpse, a broken spear sticking from his back. All he felt was giddy joy.

No corpses, no glory, after all. Might as well regret the peelings from a carrot. Someone was helping him up, giving him a steadying hand. Jurand. Always there when he needed him. Leo stood tall, the joyful faces of his men all turned towards him.

Ugh. He’s worse than Jezal in some ways! Just sees all the glory, the honor, and the victory and doesn’t mind all the dead he made to get it. Admittedly, they were enemies, and their goal’s likely to kill him (Northmen, am I right), but man, Leo’s really got a toxic attitude to violence and the comparison to Gorst only grows stronger from here, given Gorst’s attitude towards loving violence, no matter the butchered meat.

And it certainly makes him a succinct counterpoint to Rikke, who, at least, felt bad for killing someone. That’s practically a unicorn in the Circle of the World. Leo? He’s all for the violence, unthinking violence. He fits comfortably into the typical fabric of the Circle of the World far more. And I don’t think Leo’s coming out of this better than Rikke, personal liking-wise, despite Rikke having tropes I was never predisposed to.

“The Young Lion!” roared Glaward, climbing up beside him and clapping a heavy hand on his shoulder, making him wobble. Jurand stretched out his arms to catch him, but he didn’t fall. “Leo dan Brock!” Soon they were all shouting his name, singing it like a prayer, chanting it like a magic word, stabbing their glittering weapons at the spitting sky.

“Leo! Leo! Leo!”

In battle, a man discovers who he truly is.

He felt drunk. He felt on fire. He felt like a king. He felt like a god. This was what he was made for!

1. Welp. There’s that old familiar Jezal arrogance. Leo and Jezal definitely share some character DNA by both being vainglorious nobles wanting to prove themselves for want of glory and honor. 2. Leo dan Brock, huh? That just means we might get Finree and Hal down the road!! Hell yeah, Finree was one of the best parts of The Heroes! I’ll definitely take more of her!

In the lady governor’s tent, they were fighting a different kind of war. A war of patient study and careful calculation, of weighed odds and furrowed brows, of lines of supply and an awful lot of maps. A kind of war Leo frankly hadn’t the patience for.

A problem with every battle: you got to attend to the stuff in-between the battles, the sheer contrast between the simplicity of a battlefield, the quick beats of action sentences, and the longer sentence structures Abercrombie uses here, full of adjectives and attention to the minutiae, and making it clear Leo’s no longer part of a battle and has enough space of mind to deride all the complications of life past a fight.

The glow of victory had been dampened by the stiffening rain on the long trudge up from the valley, doused further by the niggling pain from a dozen cuts and bruises, and was almost entirely smothered by the cool stare his mother gave him as Leo pushed through the flap with Jurand and Whitewater Jin at his back.

She was in the midst of talking to a knight herald. Ridiculously tall, he had to stoop respectfully to attend to her.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, FINREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

I really love the implication that Finree commands enough respect that others have to meet her eye-level instead of her having to crane up at others. She’s done well for herself in the years to come, I’m so proud!

“We don’t need the king’s bloody help!” snapped Leo as soon as the flap dropped. “We can beat Black Calder’s dogs!” His voice sounded oddly weak in the tent, deadened by wet cloth. It didn’t carry anywhere near so nicely as it had on the battlefield.

“Huh.” His mother planted her fists on the table and frowned down at her maps. By the dead, sometimes he thought she loved those maps more than him. “If we are to fight the king’s battles, we should expect the king’s help.”

“You should’ve seen them run!” Damn it, but Leo had been so sure of himself a few moments ago. He could charge a line of Carls and never falter, but a woman with a long neck and greying hair leached all the courage out of him. “They broke before we even got to them! We took a few dozen prisoners …” He glanced towards Jurand, but he was giving Leo that doubtful look now, the one he used when he didn’t approve, the one he’d given him before the charge. “And the farm’s back in our hands … and …”

His mother let him stammer into silence before she glanced at his friends. “My thanks, Jurand. I’m sure you did your best to talk him out of it. And you, Whitewater. My son couldn’t ask for better friends or I for braver warriors.”

Snrrrk. With good reason, Leo. On a serious note, there’s definitely an efficiency of characterization here and you can tell the dynamic between Finree and Leo here, just from this: the sensible mother and the charging-bull heir. A part of me wants to pity Leo because if Black Dow couldn’t budge Finree after she was kidnapped, what chance do his brash and immature words have?

But, at the same time, wait, that fight was just for a farm? I’m getting ASoIaF flashbacks here, and none that suggest anything good of Leo’s sense of priorities. Not that I expected better of his decision-making, but yeesh.

Jin slapped a heavy hand down on Leo’s shoulder. “It was Leo who led the—”

“You can go.”

Jin scratched sheepishly at his beard, showing a lot less warrior’s mettle than he had down in the valley. Jurand gave Leo the slightest apologetic wince. “Of course, Lady Finree.” And they slunk from the tent, leaving Leo to fiddle weakly with the fringe of his captured standard.

Look on the bright side, Leo, at least you’re not the only one who can be cowed by your mother.

His mother let the withering silence stretch a moment longer before she passed judgement. "You bloody fool."

(Winces) I saw that coming too, and Abercrombie’s got a gift for the sharp dialogue. The succinct one-liner.

“Great leaders go where the fight’s hottest!” But he knew he sounded like the heroes in the badly written storybooks he used to love.

Ah, that good ol’ shading of lesser fantasies. And, yes, Leo, you are kind of a dumb, brash hero from a lesser fantasy conceptually, but that’s the thing: Abercrombie’s not gonna let you be comfortable being just that. Finree’s there to make sure of that, narrative-wise, if nothing else. That’s part of why I read Abercrombie: watching him deconstruct, contort, and twist these character archetypes and poking them with sharp steel from all angles.

“You know who else you find where the fight’s hottest?” asked his mother. “Dead men. We both know you’re not a fool, Leo. For whose benefit are you pretending to be one?” She shook her head wearily. “I should never have let your father send you to live with the Dogman. All you learned in Uffrith was rashness, bad songs and a childish admiration for murderers. I should have sent you to Adua instead. I doubt your singing would be any better but at least you might have learned some subtlety.”

Damn, Finree, no pulling punches, I see! All that frankly needs to be said, but I get why Leo feels his courage turn to jelly before the dominant personality Finree is to him.

Also, this does explain why Leo’s the way he is because there is no way Finree wouldn’t have cut down Leo’s growing ego to manageable size, had he still been with her. Though, whoa. Leo was sent to the Dogman?

That. That means Leo and Rikke probably already know each other. Um. Damn, I can’t see them getting along, not with the way Leo is now, but, at the same time, Finree’s already pressed against the walls, military-wise, and Uffrith’s scorched to ash. They might not have a choice, but to work together...

“Won what? A worthless farm in a worthless valley? That was little more than a scouting party, and now the enemy will guess our strength.” She gave a bitter snort as she turned back to her maps. “Or the lack of it.”

“I captured a standard.” It seemed a pitiful thing now he really looked at it, though, clumsily stitched, the pole closer to a branch than a flagstaff. How could he have thought Stour Nightfall himself might ride beneath it?

Yup, ASoIaF flashbacks. Except, where GRRM doesn’t really sell out the better parts of the actors there, Abercrombie here is just pitiless with how much Leo gets dragged for rashness and being drunk on songs and war.

“Listen to what you’re told. Learn from those who know better. Be brave, by all means, but don’t be rash. Above all, don’t get yourself bloody killed! You’ve always known exactly how to please me, Leo, but you choose to please yourself.”

Careful, Finree, you might drag your son away from him climbing Mt. Ego. We don’t want him exercising sensible judgment, god forbid. Admittedly, Finree sounds pretty “my way or the highway,” but, at the same time, she’s hardly wrong and knows her son well enough to cut him down to size.

"You can’t understand! You’re not …” He waved an impatient hand, failing, as always, to quite find the right words. “A man,” he finished lamely.

She raised one brow. “Had I been confused on that point, it was put beyond doubt when I pushed you out of my womb. Have you any notion how much you weighed as a baby? Spend two days shitting an anvil and we’ll talk again.”

SNAP. My god, Finree’s just a treasure trove of cutting quips here. Though, good to know, at least, Leo knew that dismissive remark was lame as shit. Wish he stopped short of saying it though. Masculine egos getting chopped down makes my day, especially since Leo’s basically mini-Gorst now.

“Like your friend Ritter looked up to you?”

Leo was caught out by the memory of that riderless horse clattering past. He realised he hadn’t seen Ritter’s face among his friends when they celebrated. Realised he hadn’t even thought about that until now.

“He knew the risks,” he croaked, suddenly choked with worry. “He chose to fight. He was proud to fight!”

“He was. Because you have that fire in you that inspires men to follow. Your father had it, too. But with that gift comes responsibility. Men put their lives in your hands.”

Had? Is Hal retired or something? He shouldn’t be that old. Maybe he got a war disability and can’t perform his military duties anymore? Where is he?

And, the thing is, Leo, you’re in charge of them. You can’t keep Leoroy Jenkins-ing all over the place and pretend it’s going to work out because...

His mother’s face had softened. That made him more worried than ever. “He’s with the dead, Leo.” There was a long, strange silence, and outside the wind blew up and made the canvas of the tent flap and whisper. “I’m sorry.”

... There’s a price to charging into a fight. Always.

No corpses, no glory. He sank onto a folding field chair, captured standard clattering to the ground.

Another facet of what I love about Abercrombie’s writing? These re-contextualized echoes, always there to pound the POV in the head about how their earlier selves were so naive and foolish until reality snapped its jaws against them. It’s a cleverness of structure I love.

“He has a wife …” Leo remembered the wedding. What the hell was her name? Bit of a weak chin. The groom had looked prettier. The happy couple had danced, badly, and Whitewater Jin had bellowed in Northern that he hoped for her sake Ritter fucked better than he danced. Leo had laughed so hard he was nearly sick. He didn’t feel like laughing now. Being sick, yes. “By the dead … he has a child.”

"I will write to them.”

“What good will a letter do?’ He felt the stinging of tears at the back of his nose. ‘I’ll give them my house! In Ostenhorm!”

“Are you sure?”

“Why do I need a house? I spend all my time in the saddle.”

Okay, I’ll stop ragging on Leo and give him this: he’s got a far bigger heart than Jezal did at the beginning. He’s a bit of a shit to his friends unintentionally, but once he sees he’s fucked-up horrendously with his friend, he’ll give generously for it. Too little, too late, but at the same time, that’s far more than Jezal ever did back at his start. It makes for a nice dichotomy of Leo being a savage, battle-hungry warrior and too much heart. Leo’s that very thoughtless friend who overcompensates when he fucks up and can’t argue out of it.

"You have it in you to be a great man, but you cannot let yourself be swept off by whatever emotion blows your way. Battles may sometimes be won by the brave, but wars are always won by the clever. Do you understand?”

Intense Bayaz vibes here.

“Good. Give orders to leave the farm and pull back towards the west before Stour Nightfall arrives in force.”

“But if we fall back … Ritter died for nothing. If we fall back, how will that look?”

She stood. “Like womanly weakness and indecision, I hope. Then perhaps the rash heads on the Northmen’s side will prevail and pursue us with manly smiles on their manly faces, and when the king’s soldiers finally arrive, we’ll cut them to pieces on ground of our choosing.”

Ha ha, clever, clever, playing onto their prejudices in order to cut them down. However, I don’t think Black Calder, if I’m right on my theory with him as Stour’s father, will play that easily to that game, given he knows a thing or two about playing weak and docile for advantage...

Also, this reminds me of this saying from Stolicus:

“The ground must be a general’s best friend, or it becomes his worst enemy.”

So, just good military sense, or has Finree read Stolicus? I don’t remember her having read any military geniuses by name in The Heroes, but since she’s taking charge, I imagine she had to brush up, if being Kroy’s daughter didn’t already get her used to a military chain of command and tactics.

She had her soft voice, now. “It was rash, it was reckless, but it was brave, and … for better or worse, men do look up to a certain kind of man. I won’t deny we all need something to cheer for. You gave Stour Nightfall a bloody nose, and great warriors are quick to anger, and angry men make mistakes.” She pressed something into his limp hand. The standard with Nightfall’s wolf on it. “Your father would have been proud of your courage, Leo. Now make me proud of your judgement.”

... Wow, I am slow. Hal’s dead, isn’t he. Why else would she say this if Hal could just tell Leo himself somewhere else? Damn. That’s kind of a blow, considering Hal was a pretty decent guy, and this world sorely needs more decent people. How did he die? I suppose illness or was he called out for the Union-Styria War?

Though, this does explain a lot, like why people defer to Finreee on face value, considering Leo’s probably... wait a second. (consults the timeline) He... should be, at the very least, over eighteen, if not twenty. Why isn’t he already Lord Governor?

It’s interesting that Finree uses a similar hot/cold method of parenting as she did with being a wife to Hal. Withhold a certain amount of affection so, when she actually does let it out overtly, it has more power over the beloved one. Also, Finree, that might be true, but the men who worship Leo probably aren’t worth that much beyond a sword hand. I guess, when you’re short of men, you want anyone who can lift a sword though. (sighs)

He trudged to the tent flap, shoulders drooping under armour that felt three times heavier than when he arrived. Ritter was gone, and never coming back, and had left his weak-chinned wife weeping at the fireside. Killed by his own loyalty, and Leo’s vanity, and Leo’s carelessness, and Leo’s arrogance.

“By the dead.” He tried to rub the tears away with the back of his hand but couldn’t do it with his gauntlets on. He used the hem of the captured standard instead.

In battle, a man discovers who he truly is.

And you’ve discovered you’re a softer heart than you realize, Leo. That’s not really a bad thing. Just means the world hasn’t beaten you down enough yet. At least you know that now...

“Nothing I didn’t deserve.” But Leo managed to smile a little, too. Just for the sake of morale. No one could deny they all needed something to cheer for.

It grew louder as he raised that rag of a standard, and Antaup swaggered forwards, throwing up his arms for more noise. One of the men, no doubt drunk already, dragged down his trousers and showed his bare arse to the North, to widespread approval. Then he fell over, to widespread laughter. Glaward and Barniva caught Leo and bundled him high into the air on their shoulders while Jurand planted his hands on his hips and rolled his eyes.

The rain had slackened off and the sun shone on polished armour, and sharpened blades, and smiling faces.

It was hard not to feel much better.

... Oh, you little shit. Ritter just disappeared from your mind, didn’t he, didn’t he. Were the aesthetics of idealized military really enough to prevent Ritter from entering deeper into your thick skull? Well, I suppose Leo really does share character DNA with Jezal. Two steps forward, one step back!

Like, Leo is definitely an incisive riff on the Original Trilogy because he’s both a lot better and worse than Jezal back then: way more open heart and earnest, less cowardice, classist contempt, and petty humiliating of others than Jezal... also more toxic masculinity and unthinking recklessness that’d make a bull say “whoa, my fellow bull, slow down.”

My god, I’d bang Leo’s head against a wall, if I knew it’d do more than break the wall.

As a conclusion, the first half of this chapter is a treat for the battle-lovers, I’ve went over how Abercrombie’s prose really sinks into you and lets you feel the weight and blow of every swing and crunch, but it’s the second half that shines all the more for me: the dampening cold after the fight’s heat, the messiness after the battle and it makes for a symmetrical structure, compared to Rikke’s first, which was good, but if we’re talking purely chapter craft, I might be more included to say this one’s better.

Though, I will say, I’m not warming to Leo the same way I did with Rikke, even despite how many tropes in her I was ready to be opposed to. Leo’s not a vain cock in the way of Jezal, character-wise. He’s close, but he’s a specific kind of meathead that I just shake my head at. He’s definitely a stronger-written character and he’s not that shitty a guy by comparison, but ugh.

Leoroy Jenkins.

PART I

Chapter One: Blessings and Curses Chapter Two: Where the Fight’s Hottest Chapter Three: Guilt Is a Luxury Chapter Four: Keeping Score Chapter Five: A Little Public Hanging Chapter Six: The Breakers Chapter Seven: The Answer to Your Tears Chapter Eight: Young Heroes Chapter Nine: The Moment

#a little hatred #a little hatred spoilers #the age of madness #the first law #Joe Abercrombie #leo dan brock #a little hatred part I

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laurelsofhighever · 7 years ago

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The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 7

The winter of 9:31 Dragon draws to a bitter close. Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir, hero of the people, has revealed a string of secret letters between King Cailan and Empress Celene of Orlais. The specifics are unclear, but suspicion of Orlesians run deep, and there are always those willing to take advantage of political scandal. Declaring the king unfit to rule, Loghain has retreated to his southern stronghold in Gwaren, with Queen Anora by his side. Fear and greed threaten to tear Ferelden apart. In Denerim, Cailan busies himself with maps and battle plans, hoping to stem the tide of blood before it can start. In the Arling of Edgehall, King Maric’s bastard son fights against the rebels flocking to the traitor’s banner, determined to free himself from the shadow of his royal blood. And in Highever, Rosslyn Cousland, bitter at being left behind, watches as her father and brother ride to war, unaware of the betrayal lurking in the smile of their closest friend.

Words: 3816 CW: Canon-typical violence, battle scenes Chapter summary: Rosslyn swoops in to save the day, but battle is not at all what she thought it would be.

Chapter 1 on AO3 This chapter on AO3 Masterpost here

Fourth Day of Guardian, 9:31 Dragon

Blood fountained upwards with the downward slice of Rosslyn’s sword, but she had no time to check whether the man was dead. Lasan, her horse, lurched beneath her, his hooves lashing out at any pushed too close by those behind, and only the specially designed cavalry saddle allowed her to keep her seat. In the time it took her to rebalance, another soldier pressed in to fill the gap left by his fallen comrade, blade raised to hack at her leg. She killed him. The force of her swing carried through to chop at the arm of a third aiming to strike her mount from under her. He reeled away, only to have his scream cut short when Cuno leapt up and tore out his throat.

This had been the pattern for almost an hour now, her face set in a wolfish snarl as she carved a bloody path through the enemy ranks, the ring of steel and the blood pounding in her ears enough to drown out the cries of the soldiers who fell to her sword. At her side, the vanguard of her force mimicked her savagery, and gradually the line before them grew ragged. Rosslyn saw open space and kicked Lasan towards the gap. The charger roared his fury and was answered by whinnies and shouts as the cavalry thundered back onto open ground, only to prop right towards the enemy’s latest scrambling defence.

She chanced a look back at her people as she steered them round for another charge. At every pass, her ranks thinned, more saddles were emptied by sword or axe, but the flotsam of bodies left in their wake showed the effectiveness of their tactics. The enemy was tiring.

She had followed the detritus of battle for the better part of the day, caution warring with urgency as she read the signs of the field – her father’s army had been met with overpowering force at Glenlough, and when they had tried to fight a retreat, they had been driven south off the road, away from Highever and any help that might come from there. The enemy had not counted on Rosslyn, or the column of horse she had brought charging down out of the sunset to smash into their unprotected rear. In her first pass the enemy’s contingent of archers had been entirely swept away, trampled under hoof or else hacked to pieces as they gawped in surprise.

Since then, she had plucked at the field, puncturing the lines of soldiers again and again like a needle biting cloth, trailing the bright thread of her cavalry behind her until the remaining forces were ground down against the shield wall of Highever’s defensive line. At first, they had resisted. Brutal pikes had been planted into the earth to form a bristling cocoon against a direct charge. Without suppressing fire from the archers, however, Highever had loosed its war dogs from the slips. The beasts had darted between the shafts, and in the chaos of their wake, Rosslyn’s cavalry had cut deep.

For the second time now Highever’s standard waved the flag of truce to offer terms, but from her vantage point Rosslyn saw the enemy’s line regrouping for one last suicidal assault.

“Have it your way, then,” she growled, and set her heels to Lasan’s sides.

The rest of the battle passed in minutes. With no foreign standard to claim, there could be no official declaration of victory, so the fighting sputtered into smaller, disorganised scuffles before dying out completely, a fire robbed of fuel. Leaving her officers to coordinate the search for any injured who might yet be saved, Rosslyn called her vanguard and cantered through the twilight towards the rise where Highever’s remaining infantry was waiting, overshadowed by the steep slopes of the mountain known as the Rothshead.

Lasan tossed his head with a snort when she tugged a little too sharply to check his speed. She forced her fingers to ease their grip on the reins. Ravens already gathered over the dead, swooping like demons through the gathering dusk in the corners of her vision, but her unease came from an altogether different source. The ranks of her father’s infantry parted before her; awed mutters followed her; ahead stood the imperious banner of Laurels on a blue field. Only when she dismounted did she realise how badly she was shaking, with a volatile combination of adrenaline and fatigue that took every ounce of her will to control.

Cuno was not helping. The dog all but threw himself on her as soon as her boots touched earth, wriggling and whistling for joy that she was alive, and reassuring her that despite his mask of blood and kaddis he was too and would very much like a scratch behind the ear, just to make sure. The fog clouding her mind lifted to reveal the reality of the carnage at her feet. She knelt down to wrap her dog in a fierce, one-armed hug, her eyes squeezed closed as her free hand clawed at the chinstrap that secured her helmet in place. When she finally got it off, her lungs sucked in deep, grateful breaths of cold air that brought tears to her eyes and a burn to her throat.

“It’s alright,” she whispered to him. “It’s alright, I’m here, I’m alive.”

A ripple of expectation circled through the waiting soldiers, torches were lit to ward off the night, and Rosslyn looked up unseeing towards the movement in the ranks directly ahead. Her noble upbringing reasserted itself, the need to appear in collected and in control at all times. She swallowed and stood, fists clenched, conscious of the unflattering streak of gore Cuno’s enthusiasm had painted across her cheek.

And from behind the wall of spears Bryce Cousland emerged, his movements the totter of a young foal, his armour no longer at parade shine but stained and crusted with dirt. A gash in his forehead caked blood down the left side of his face, giving an intensity to his expression that turned her father into a monstrous stranger. He stared at her without speaking.

“Hail to His Lordship, Teyrn of Highever,” she called out formally, with a respectful nod of her head. When the silence still pooled between them, thick as treacle, she felt her mouth edge into a nervous grimace. “Sorry I’m late.”

The silence shattered. In three resounding strides Bryce crossed the space between them and gathered her so tightly into his arms she felt the constriction even through the aurum plate of her cuirass.

“Oh, Pup. My darling girl.”

“Father…”

Rosslyn’s knees, relieved of the burden of supporting her weight, began to tremble in earnest as she leaned into the embrace, once more just a child seeking a parent’s warmth after a bad fright. In the unfamiliar dark with the stench of carrion all around, her father’s breath on her hair held comfort, his voice an anchor to the present moment though it was gruff and hoarse from the strain of battle. Even so, she was old enough now to discern the current of desperation that underlay his relief. With slinking precision, dread worked through the seams in her armour and turned her sweat cold.

“Where’s Fergus?” she asked.

Bryce pulled away, the clenched muscles in his jaw providing her with the answer he could not voice.

“When? What happened?” Perhaps if she had been faster, pushed her troopers harder –

“In the first engagement. I…” Bryce sagged, unable to meet her eye. “He couldn’t be reached.”

The onlooking soldiers dropped away; father and daughter stood aloof in the centre of the field, wrapped in the privacy of their grief. For Rosslyn, still rocked by the reality of battle, the loss of her brother existed only in her father’s stricken expression, and when she looked past him towards the rows of soldiers who stood attendance on them, she expected to see Fergus – a little battered, maybe, but without permanent damage – his eyes bright and his kind smile the same as it always was.

But he wasn’t there.

“No…”

The word startled Bryce from the scene that now replayed whenever he closed his eyes. He bunched his shoulders against it, once more shrugging into the mantle of leadership he wore so well.

“Listen to me, Pup,” he said. “There will be time to grieve, but it isn’t now. We’ve cut off the dragon’s wings, but the head is still out there somewhere, and its eyes still move. Right now, we have to decide what to do next.”

Blinking back the sting in her eyes, Rosslyn nodded. “We have wounded. And… I set some of my troopers to look through the – the dead. None of these people had any kind of insignia. Who are they?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed and stood taller. “We can tend the wounded in camp. Billets are being set up as we speak. In the morning we’ll regroup and work out the best course of action. In the meantime, I need you to tell me everything you know and everything you’ve seen on the road.”

“What about Arl Howe?” Rosslyn asked, following after him as he about-turned and marched for where the camp attendants had started pitching the tents. “The messenger you sent to Highever said you sent others to ask for his aid.”

“No word has come,” her father replied. “Either the messengers never made it, or something worse has happened.” He paused and turned to squeeze her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Pup, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Matters moved quickly after that. While Bryce’s adjutants handled the mundane aspects of setting the camp and assigning duties to the surviving soldiers, the Teyrn coordinated the hunt for those chased away by Rosslyn’s attack, and after his squires had stripped him of his outer layer of armour and given him towels to wash with, he retired to his tent with his daughter to plot the army’s next move. She proved alert and well-informed about the strength of their forces, offering astute insights with an eagerness that dimmed as the night wore on and exhaustion began to take its toll. A servant came in and deposited a loaf of bread and two bowls of stew just as a huge yawn caused her to sway against the table.

“Bedtime, I think,” Bryce commented. “Once you’ve eaten.” He handed her the slightly fuller bowl and the larger half of the bread once it had been torn over his knee. It was hard tack compared to the meals served at high table in the castle, but it was warm and would keep hunger at bay for half a day at least.

Rosslyn dug into the stew with only the thinnest veneer of decorum. “I haven’t had a bedtime since I was twelve. I’m not tired.”

“Don’t argue with me, girl,” her father replied, not unkindly. “You need your rest.”

“I still say splitting our force is a bad idea,” she told him between mouthfuls. “We routed them – whoever they were. If they had reinforcements surely it would be better to present them with a larger opponent to discourage attack. Why not dig in at Glenlough?”

“That might be a good idea if our casualty list weren’t so long and if Glenlough hadn’t been levelled. It offers us no defence now.” He rubbed a hand down the side of his face so that the last of the dried blood crumbled away; his meal lay untouched beside him. “No. The best course of action is to take an advance party back to Highever to prepare for the arrival of the wounded. The cavalry and the dogs will stay to act as an escort and follow on.”

“A lot of the injured can’t walk. Carts will need to be requisitioned from the villages nearby.”

Bryce hummed his agreement and finally scooped up his bowl, only to find the stew had gone tepid. “I’m sure you’ll be able to manage it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. Her hand stilled with her spoon half way to her mouth as she realised. “You’re leaving me behind again!”

His fist slammed onto the table. “I am not.” His frown softened in apology for the outburst, but his voice retained its hard edge. “You will have your own command. Once the cavalry and the wounded infantry add up, I’m putting you in charge of the greater portion of our army, and I will be counting on you to see them safe, no matter what.” He sighed and ran a distracted hand through his hair. “There’s still a lot for you to learn about being a general, Pup, and one of those things is that sometimes, for the greater good, your own feelings must be set aside to get the job done. We are Couslands, and we do our duty above everything else.”

Cowed, Rosslyn, dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry, Father.”

“It’s alright,” he replied. “And now it really is time for you to sleep. Go on.”

He shooed her off with a wave towards the back of the tent, where a cot had been set up behind a partition to offer privacy. Having been on the road since before dawn that morning, even such a sparse bunk seemed a luxury, but Rosslyn hesitated nevertheless.

“I’m… not sure I can.”

In seconds, Bryce had crossed the tent, his soldiers’ reports forgotten where he dropped them. His padded gambeson squished as he folded his daughter into another tight hug, bringing to light a memory he had not thought about in years: rushing home from a campaign in the central Bannorn; taking the stairs to his keep two at a time, still in war-clothes, frantic with the news; his young wife’s maidservant, fiercely guarding her mistress’s rest, finally giving into his urgency by placing an impossibly tiny, swaddled bundle in his arms.

“I know,” he told his daughter now. “Try? For me?”

He guarded her as she nodded and staggered towards the bed, and helped gather the blankets around her shoulders like he had done during the fiercest winter storms of her childhood. Since that first time holding Fergus as an infant, he had watched his son grow to raise a family of his own, and then his pride as a father had been struck down before his eyes. It would not happen again. As Rosslyn’s breathing evened out and her muscles relaxed, he allowed himself to turn away, his mind already refocussing on the task at hand.

The attack on his troops might have been staged as a random event, but the wider events going on within Ferelden’s borders and the careful planning of the offensive itself suggested a deeper motive at work than simple greed for Glenlough’s wealth. Bryce’s instincts told him Highever was yet in danger, and that the worst of the fighting was yet to come. No doubt their hidden enemy’s plan had been to level the army completely and then to come upon Castle Cousland unchallenged – a plan that would have succeeded, had not Rosslyn come charging to his rescue.

He stared down at his maps once more. Her victory must not be wasted.

The following afternoon found Rosslyn preparing her own departure from the temporary camp. Even though Ser Gideon, the commander of her father’s house guard, had remained behind to assist her, she found it daunting to be the ultimate voice of authority. On the road to the battle, her own fears and training had driven her troopers forward, but now, planning to move a force comprised of so many parts was beginning to prove much harder than her schoolroom lessons had made it seem. She listened as her officers presented their final reports to her, nodding, glad they knew their business and that they had decided to trust the Teyrn’s orders to leave her in charge. As the army prepared to move out, however, she found her fingers worrying at the seal-ring her father had dropped into her palm when he said his farewells. It was too big to fit her properly, so she had donned her gauntlets to make sure it didn’t slip off and get lost, but she could feel it against her skin, heavy with the responsibility required of its owner.

“I’ll have it back off you when you get to Highever,” Bryce had warned her. “So mind you keep it safe.” He did not have to add that with Fergus gone, the official Cousland seal would one day be hers for real.

“Send the signal to the van,” she commanded, and watched the runner sprint to where the first of the carts laden with injured stood waiting to set off. They would set a slow pace, and the hours’ head start her father’s force had taken would lengthen far enough that no help would come if either group got into trouble on the road.

She turned to her horse and tried not to think about it, trusting her father’s judgement like she trusted the groom to hold the stirrup for her while she mounted. Tomorrow her company would meet the road, vehicles, cavalry, and dogs, and from there the journey would be quicker and easier, and this whole business could be put to rest. Lasan woke from his doze as she gathered the reins, answering her direction like any disciplined soldier. Behind her, the three-hundred strong cavalry waited for her orders, with Morrence at the forefront, promoted into Captain Tolly’s place.

“Ware rider!”

Heads turned as the scout galloped past the line to Rosslyn’s position under her banner. The horse’s eyes rolled wildly as he pulled back on the reins, the lather on its withers stark against its dark coat.

“I come to warn you my lady – a massive host on the road ahead!” The rider circled his horse when it refused to settle, waiting for her response.

Rosslyn felt all eyes turn to her. “Where? How far away?”

“More than a day, for now, but getting closer,” he replied. “Me and my partner, we saw them hunting for deserters from yesterday. He went after His Lordship, knowing that he planned to be ahead. I came to warn you.”

“Show me.”

The scout vaulted from his saddle, drawing a crumpled map from his satchel as he crossed the space to where Rosslyn waited. Lasan had picked up on the current of apprehension the scout’s arrival had stirred, and he fidgeted and watched the lad approach with a leery eye.

“The host is three thousand strong, by our estimate,” he said. “They carry no banner we recognised.”

“Mercenaries, then,” Rosslyn surmised. “Do they know we’re here?”

“I don’t know, my lady. They were marching at a fair lick along the road from Glenlough, so it may be they don’t see us as a threat.”

With good reason, she thought, lips pursed.

Three thousand able-bodied men. Had her father kept their army together, they might have made a match of it even with their crippled infantry, but alone, she had no chance of holding off a fresh stand of men with soldiers already shocked and tired from the previous day.

“Where is my father? Can he return here?”

The scout shook his head. “Not in time, my lady. This new force lies between us and him.”

Rosslyn forgot to breathe. Whichever option presented itself to her now mocked her with its consequences. To stay would be to wait for death; to meet this new foe head-on might spare her father some time to reach the safety of Highever, but at the likely cost of everyone under her command; to flee would be to doom the Teyrn and everyone with him.

It was what he had intended all along. She realised it like a punch to the stomach. The vanguard he had taken with him was nothing more than bait for whatever he had suspected was waiting beyond the ruins of Glenlough, his hurried departure that morning part of an act that would fool any enemy into thinking his were the last survivors retreating in disorder from the field of battle. And he hadn’t told her, because he had known she would have insisted against it. He had told her to protect her people, no matter the cost.

No matter the cost.

“What are your orders, my lady?” asked Ser Gideon, the commander of her father’s house guard, his dark face set in stern lines.

“We…” She coughed past the lump forming in her throat, and tried again. “There are logging trails to the west, over Elethea’s Saddle. We’ll go that way and head for West Hill, and Bann Teagan’s encampment there.”

“If you do that, your father’s men will be left open to attack and the city will be vulnerable,” Gideon replied. “And that’s if these bastards don’t set upon our fleeing backs. Can we really afford to take such a chance?”

Startled looks passed between her officers at his daring.

“I was charged with keeping these soldiers safe,” Rosslyn snapped at him. “Highever is no longer safe.” Sighing, she softened her glare and looked past the Guard-Commander, to the rest of the officers counting on her leadership. Some were seasoned men – grizzled veterans she had known all her life – but most were her own, who had not known war until she dragged them into it.

“I trust you to carry out my orders, Gideon,” she said, more calmly. “As I expect you to trust me. We make for West Hill. Let the men know that this isn’t just a leisurely stroll home anymore. The Teyrn of Highever wanted us to live to fight another day, and I intend to use every extra second he can spare us.”

In minutes their train was underway, moving away from the road and up along a muddy track deeper into the hills with the resignation that only comes to those who know they will have a long way to go and no opportunity to turn back. The cavalry was split into three rotating units to act as guards along the length of the march, the idea being that those in front could stop to rest their horses and allow themselves to be overtaken before joining the rear. Every soldier able to walk had been given their weapons, and those not insensate had been told to keep an eye out for suspicious movement, just in case.

As she watched the column trail past her, Rosslyn twisted around in her saddle for one last look north. Her heart thudded in her chest as if it wanted to break out of its cage and fly towards the home she feared she might never see again, but she squashed the urge and settled instead for a prayer of hope. Please, Maker, keep them safe. Then, squeezing her eyes closed, she set her jaw and urged her horse onwards.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #alistair x cousland #alistair theirin #cousland #bryce cousland #ferelden #dragon age fanfic #rosslyn cousland #story: the falcon and the rose

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storybash · 7 years ago

Text

The stranger’s words

seemed to burn in the air for a long moment before the oaf’s face flowered with a hot, angry redness. When he spoke, it was in a harsh whisper. “Lads,” he wheezed, an angry vein throbbing in his forehead, “I want you to make sure this bitch goes nowhere,” raising his voice as he went until he was practically screaming, “whilst I feed this arse-tickler his FUCKING TEETH!”

Cryndal sighed deeply as he raised his thick fists and took a step past her toward the man at the end of the bar, whose laborious prattling seemed to have snuffed out the feeble light of thought flickering in the oaf’s thick skull. She whipped her right arm up and cast the loop of her scarf around his head. Kicking out with her left leg, she caught him just behind the knee and dragged the scarf down. He squawked as he lost his balance and crashed down onto his back.

She stomped her right foot onto his broad chest and stepped up. As she went she reached back with her left leg, hooked her foot under a stool and flung it at the two gawping fools to her left. She let the momentum of the throw carry her off the oaf and over the long loop of scarf still connecting her right hand to his head. She landed on her left foot and aimed a spinning kick with her right into the chest of the man with the red scabs blossoming from his collar. She felt a satisfying chorus of crunches in his ribs as he flew off his feet and crashed through a wooden chair. Cryndal planted her right foot, then pulled up on the scarf and kicked her left foot back, mashing the oaf’s face into her heel and slipping the loop over the top of his now limply lolling head.

The two fools on the left were momentarily put off by the unexpected stool, and the rashy one was lying in a gasping heap halfway to the door, but the piggy-eyed one and his nondescript friend seemed to have at least half a sack of guts between them. They both stepped toward her, Piggy drawing a crude but well-sharpened stub of a blade, and his mate hefting a thick wooden rod capped with a band of black iron.

Cryndal involuntarily started to raise her left hand in a defensive posture. She gasped at the heavy hammer blow of pain that blossomed from her upper arm and shoulder. Four days since she’d landed on it so badly, and she still wasn’t accustomed to it being useless. Mr. Nondescript must have mistaken her gasp for one of fear; his hunched shoulders relaxed a bit and he darted forward, raising the stick over his

Gritting her teeth, Cryndal raised her right hand and whipped it around in a tight spiral, wrapping the scarf around her forearm. She raised her arm, took the blow from his stick on her forearm, then spiraled her arm again, twisting his arm up and digging her thumb hard into the pit. A sharp kick to the knee sent him completely off-balance. She shoved him backward into Piggy, wrenching the club from his hands as both fools fell flailing. She threw it end over end at the one furthest to the left, smashing him between his off-kilter eyes and dropping him like a rock, blood spraying from his shattered nose.

The last one turned on his bowed legs to run and Cryndal leaped at him. Her reaching hand snagged the hood of his tattered cloak. She yanked back on it hard, jerking him off his feet and slamming him down, shattering the stool that was lying on the ground.

She stood there panting and, for a moment, all she could hear was her own ragged breathing and the pounding of blood in her head. As they started to fade she began to register the groans of one or two of the fools who’d escaped unconsciousness, and then another sound from behind her. A clicking rattle, like the innards of the great geared clock that had hung in her mother’s dressing chamber, carving up time into moments, reminding her of her duty to mark the past and prepare for the future. But the clock was gone, as was the chamber, and her mother, their memories and plans both turned to ash and blown away by the cold north wind.

Starting to turn, she heard a high, frightened voice. “D-d-d-on’t move,” it stammered in time with the rattling noise. The boy behind the bar, whose name had fled from her recollection. “I-I-I won the ribbon for shooting at the last festival day,” he said, “and I’m n-n-not afraid to put a bolt in you if you try anything else.” He must have slipped back through the door during the commotion.

Cryndal slowly started to raise her hands, groaned as pain flared in her useless left arm, and let her right hand continue upward as she calmly turned toward the bar. Sure enough, the lad was standing there wide-eyed, training a crossbow at her. From the sound it made as it shook in his hands, she guessed he was learning quick how different it was to take aim at a breathing target.

She forced a wholly unconvincing smile onto her face. “Come now, child, I’m sure that was frightening, but it is settled now. There is no need to spill blood…” she looked down at the fool whose nose she’d smashed, and the maroon puddle soaking into the rough planks of the floor. “Any more blood.”

“I’m not a child!” he responded, fear twisting his shout into a shriek. “This is my father’s place, and that makes it my place, and if you bust up my place and my customers then I’m justified to shoot you if I have to.”

As Cryndal opened her mouth to respond, the man who’d so enjoyed the sound of his own voice cleared his throat in a precise, practiced way. “Of course you’re not a child,” he said. “You’re the man of the hour, aren’t you? Saving a helpless traveling maiden from a gang of ne'er-do-wells.”

“I what?” the boy said, eyes rolling as he tried to look at the man without turning his head away from Cryndal, who nose began to prickle as she stared at the man with an equally confused look.

“Why of course,” the stranger continued, waving his hand across the scene with a flourish. “These rough and tumble privateers were threatening an honest traveler, whose only crime was paying for a room with a gem worth-” his eyes flicked upward for a second as he did a rapid calculation, then settled calmly on the boy, “-about 300 of the old Baron’s gold coins.”

“But I didn’t,” the boy said, his confused gaze now firmly fixed on the man still perched calmly on his stool. “It was her, she-”

“She, my boy, is a road-weary lass whose most endearing features are a lame left arm and a shocking unfamiliarity with the exchange rate in local currency. You, however, are a strapping local lad who was honor-bound to defend your livelihood and reputation, not to mention your new best customer. Why, they’re lucky you didn’t give them worse. As it is, there are only a few broken chairs, which that gem will easily pay to replace, and a few broken bones which, while unfortunate, should only hamper their usefulness in the short term. Unless that one makes his living with his face.”

Cryndal noted the rattling of the weapon starting to diminish as the boy’s hands calmed. “But no one will believe it. They’ll tell everyone I’m a liar.” The prickle in her nose crawled up between her eyes, which started to water just slightly.

“I am confident that, when they limp back to their usual places tomorrow evening, they’ll doubtless be inclined to corroborate that version of events, rather than admit to being so thoroughly disassembled by a member of the - ahem - milder sex.”

Cryndal scrunched up her eyes, trying to ward off the burning tickle in her nose. “I would not usually allow anyone to take credit for my victory, but I could make an exception if it means you’ll stop pointing that bow at me.”

“There, we’re all in agreement. If you’ll just put down the crossbow, the lady and I will retire to our rooms and take all your troubles with us. What do you say?”

The boy opened his mouth when Cryndal was wracked by a powerful sneeze. With her eyes squeezed shut, she heard almost simultaneously a yelp, a twang, a crack, and a thud, and felt a bright flare of pain from her injured shoulder. She unclenched her eyes just a crack, and saw the boy staring at her wide-eyed, the man leaning over the bar with his walking stick pressed down on top of the bow, and the bolt sunk deep into the wood of the counter.

The man swept his stick back, scooped up his book and dropped it into a pocket, plucked a bottle from behind the bar, then hopped off his stool. “There is truly nothing like small-town hospitality,” he exclaimed. Threading between the fallen townsmen, he slipped an arm through one strap of her pack and pushed her toward the door next to the fireplace with the other. As she stepped through the dark threshold and onto the first stair, she heard him pause. The bottle sloshed as he waved it in salute, and then he followed her through the door and up the stairs.

#Cryndal #fiction #fantasy #storybash #story

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readbookywooks · 8 years ago

Text

The Weighing of the Wands

When Harry woke up on Sunday morning, it took him a moment to remember why he felt so miserable and worried. Then the memory of the previous night rolled over him. He sat up and ripped back the curtains of his own four-poster, intending to talk to Ron, to force Ron to believe him - only to find that Ron's bed was empty; he had obviously gone down to breakfast. Harry dressed and went down the spiral staircase into the common room. The moment he appeared, the people who had already finished breakfast broke into applause again. The prospect of going down into the Great Hall and facing the rest of the Gryffindors, all treating him like some sort of hero, was not inviting; it was that, however, or stay here and allow himself to be cornered by the Creevey brothers, who were both beckoning frantically to him to join them. He walked resolutely over to the portrait hole, pushed it open, climbed out of it, and found himself face-to-face with Hermione. "Hello," she said, holding up a stack of toast, which she was carrying in a napkin. "I brought you this....Want to go for a walk?" "Good idea," said Harry gratefully. They went downstairs, crossed the entrance hall quickly without looking in at the Great Hall, and were soon striding across the lawn toward the lake, where the Durmstrang ship was moored, reflected blackly in the water. It was a chilly morning, and they kept moving, munching their toast, as Harry told Hermione exactly what had happened after he had left the Gryffindor table the night before. To his immense relief, Hermione accepted his story without question. "Well, of course I knew you hadn't entered yourself," she said when he'd finished telling her about the scene in the chamber off the Hall. "The look on your face when Dumbledore read out your name! But the question is, who did put it in? Because Moody's right, Harry...I don't think any student could have done it...they'd never be able to fool the Goblet, or get over Dumbledore's -" "Have you seen Ron?" Harry interrupted. Hermione hesitated. "Erm...yes...he was at breakfast," she said. "Does he still think I entered myself?" "Well...no, I don't think so...not really," said Hermione awkwardly. "What's that supposed to mean, 'not really'?" "Oh Harry, isn't it obvious?" Hermione said despairingly. "He's jealous!" "Jealous?" Harry said incredulously. "Jealous of what? He wants to make a prat of himself in front of the whole school, does he?" "Look," said Hermione patiently, "it's always you who gets all the attention, you know it is. I know it's not your fault," she added quickly, seeing Harry open his mouth furiously. "I know you don't ask for it...but - well - you know, Ron's got all those brothers to compete against at home, and you're his best friend, and you're really famous - he's always shunted to one side whenever people see you, and he puts up with it, and he never mentions it, but I suppose this is just one time too many..." "Great," said Harry bitterly. "Really great. Tell him from me I'll swap any time he wants. Tell him from me he's welcome to it....People gawping at my forehead everywhere I go..." "I'm not teiling him anything," Hermione said shortly. "Tell him yourself. It's the only way to sort this out." "I'm not running around after him trying to make him grow up!" Harry said, so loudly that several owls in a nearby tree took flight in alarm. "Maybe he'll believe I'm not enjoying myself once I've got my neck broken or -" "That's not funny," said Hermione quietly. "That's not funny at all." She looked extremely anxious. "Harry, I've been thinking - you know what we've got to do, don't you? Straight away, the moment we get back to the castle?" "Yeah, give Ron a good kick up the -" "Write to Sirius. You've got to tell him what's happened. He asked you to keep him posted on everything that's going on at Hogwarts....It's almost as if he expected something like this to happen. I brought some parchment and a quill out with me -" "Come off it," said Harry, looking around to check that they couldn't be overheard, but the grounds were quite deserted. "He came back to the country just because my scar twinged. He'll probably come bursting right into the castle if I tell him someone's entered me in the Triwizard Tournament -" "He'd want you to tell him," said Hermione sternly. "He's going to find out anyway." "How?" "Harry, this isn't going to be kept quiet," said Hermione, very seriously. "This tournament's famous, and you're famous. I'll be really surprised if there isn't anything in the Daily Prophet about you competing....You're already in half the books about You-Know-Who, you know...and Sirius would rather hear it from you, I know he would." "Okay, okay, I'll write to him," said Harry, throwing his last piece of toast into the lake. They both stood and watched it floating there for a moment, before a large tentacle rose out of the water and scooped it beneath the surface. Then they returned to the castle. "Whose owl am I going to use?" Harry said as they climbed the stairs. "He told me not to use Hedwig again." "Ask Ron if you can borrow -" "I'm not asking Ron for anything," Harry said flatly. "Well, borrow one of the school owls, then, anyone can use them," said Hermione. They went up to the Owlery. Hermione gave Harry a piece of parchment, a quill, and a bottle of ink, then strolled around the long lines of perches, looking at all the different owls, while Harry sat down against a wall and wrote his letter. Dear Sirius, You told me to keep you posted on what's happening at Hogwarts, so here goes - I don't know if you've heard, but the Triwizard Tournament's happening this year and on Saturday night I got picked as a fourth champion. I don't who put my name in the Goblet of Fire, because I didn't. The other Hogwarts champion is Cedric Diggory, from Hufflepuff. He paused at this point, thinking. He had an urge to say something about the large weight of anxiety that seemed to have settled inside his chest since last night, but he couldn't think how to translate this into words, so he simply dipped his quill back into the ink bottle and wrote, Hope you're okay, and Buckbeak - Harry "Finished," he told Hermione, getting to his feet and brushing straw off his robes. At this, Hedwig fluttered down onto his shoulder and held out her leg. "I can't use you," Harry told her, looking around for the school owls. "I've got to use one of these." Hedwig gave a very loud hoot and took off so suddenly that her talons cut into his shoulder. She kept her back to Harry all the time he was tying his letter to the leg of a large barn owl. When the barn owl had flown off, Harry reached out to stroke Hedwig, but she clicked her beak furiously and soared up into the rafters out of reach. "First Ron, then you," Harry said angrily. "This isn't my fault." If Harry had thought that matters would improve once everyone got used to the idea of him being champion, the following day showed him how mistaken he was. He could no longer avoid the rest of the school once he was back at lessons - and it was clear that the rest of the school, just like the Gryffindors, thought Harry had entered himself for the tournament. Unlike the Gryffindors, however, they did not seem impressed. The Hufflepuffs, who were usually on excellent terms with the Gryffindors, had turned remarkably cold toward the whole lot of them. One Herbology lesson was enough to demonstrate this. It was plain that the Hufflepuffs felt that Harry had stolen their champion's glory; a feeling exacerbated, perhaps, by the fact that Hufflepuff House very rarely got any glory, and that Cedric was one of the few who had ever given them any, having beaten Gryffindor once at Quidditch. Ernie Macmillan and Justin FinchFletchley, with whom Harry normally got on very well, did not talk to him even though they were repotting Bouncing Bulbs at the same tray - though they did laugh rather unpleasantly when one of the Bouncing Bulbs wriggled free from Harry's grip and smacked him hard in the face. Ron wasn't talking to Harry either. Hermione sat between them, making very forced conversation, but though both answered her normally, they avoided making eye contact with each other. Harry thought even Professor Sprout seemed distant with him - but then, she was Head of Hufflepuff House. He would have been looking forward to seeing Hagrid under normal circumstances, but Care of Magical Creatures meant seeing the Slytherins too - the first time he would come face-to-face with them since becoming champion. Predictably, Malfoy arrived at Hagrid's cabin with his familiar sneer firmly in place. "Ah, look, boys, it's the champion," he said to Crabbe and Goyle the moment he got within earshot of Harry. "Got your autograph books? Better get a signature now, because I doubt he's going to be around much longer....Half the Triwizard champions have died...how long d'you reckon you're going to last, Potter? Ten minutes into the first task's my bet." Crabbe and Goyle guffawed sycophantically, but Malfoy had to stop there, because Hagrid emerged from the back of his cabin balancing a teetering tower of crates, each containing a very large Blast-Ended Skrewt. To the class's horror, Hagrid proceeded to explain that the reason the skrewts had been killing one another was an excess of pent-up energy, and that the solution would be for each student to fix a leash on a skrewt and take it for a short walk. The only good thing about this plan was that it distracted Malfoy completely. "Take this thing for a walk?" he repeated in disgust, staring into one of the boxes. "And where exactly are we supposed to fix the leash? Around the sting, the blasting end, or the sucker?" "Roun' the middle," said Hagrid, demonstrating. "Er - yeh might want ter put on yer dragon-hide gloves, jus' as an extra precaution, like. Harry - you come here an' help me with this big one...." Hagrid's real intention, however, was totalk to Harry away from the rest of the class. He waited until everyone else had set off with their skrewts, then turned to Harry and said, very seriously, "So - yer competin', Harry. In the tournament. School champion." "One of the champions," Harry corrected him. Hagrid's beetle-black eyes looked very anxious under his wild eyebrows. "No idea who put yeh in fer it, Harry?" "You believe I didn't do it, then?" said Harry, concealing with difficulty the rush of gratitude he felt at Hagrid's words. "Course I do," Hagrid grunted. "Yeh say it wasn' you, an' I believe yeh - an' Dumbledore believes yer, an' all." "Wish I knew who did do it," said Harry bitterly. The pair of them looked out over the lawn; the class was widely scattered now, and all in great difficulty. The skrewts were now over three feet long, and extremely powerful. No longer shell-less and colorless, they had developed a kind of thick, grayish, shiny armor. They looked like a cross between giant scorpions and elongated crabs- but still without recognizable heads or eyes. They had become immensely strong and very hard to control. "Look like they're havin' fun, don' they?" Hagrid said happily. Harry assumed he was talking about the skrewts, because his classmates certainly weren't; every now and then, with an alarming bang, one of the skrewts' ends would explode, causing it to shoot forward several yards, and more than one person was being dragged along on their stomach, trying desperately to get back on their feet. "Ah, I don' know, Harry," Hagrid sighed suddenly, looking back down at him with a worried expression on his face. "School champion...everythin' seems ter happen ter you, doesn' it?" Harry didn't answer. Yes, everything did seem to happen to him...that was more or less what Hermione had said as they had walked around the lake, and that was the reason, according to her, that Ron was no longer talking to him. The next few days were some of Harry's worst at Hogwarts. The closest he had ever come to feeling like this had been during those months, in his second year, when a large part of the school had suspected him of attacking his fellow students. But Ron had been on his side then. He thought he could have coped with the rest of the school's behavior if he could just have had Ron back as a friend, but he wasn't going to try and persuade Ron to talk to him if Ron didn't want to. Nevertheless, it was lonely with dislike pouring in on him from all sides. He could understand the Hufflepuffs' attitude, even if he didn't like it; they had their own champion to support. He expected nothing less than vicious insults from the Slytherins - he was highly unpopular there and always had been, because he had helped Gryffindor beat them so often, both at Quidditch and in the Inter-House Championship. But he had hoped the Ravenclaws might have found it in their hearts to support him as much as Cedric. He was wrong, however. Most Ravenclaws seemed to think that he had been desperate to earn himself a bit more fame by tricking the goblet into accepting his name. Then there was the fact that Cedric looked the part of a champion so much more than he did. Exceptionally handsome, with his straight nose, dark hair, and gray eyes, it was hard to say who was receiving more admiration these days, Cedric or Viktor Krum. Harry actually saw the same sixth-year girls who had been so keen to get Krum's autograph begging Cedric to sign their school bags one lunchtime. Meanwhile there was no reply from Sirius, Hedwig was refusing to come anywhere near him, Professor Trelawney was predicting his death with even more certainty than usual, and he did so badly at Summoning Charms in Professor Flitwick's class that he was given extra homework - the only person to get any, apart from Neville. "It's really not that difficult, Harry," Hermione tried to reassure him as they left Flitwick's class - she had been making objects zoom across the room to her all lesson, as though she were some sort of weird magnet for board dusters, wastepaper baskets, and lunascopes. "You just weren't concentrating properly -" "Wonder why that was," said Harry darkly as Cedric Diggory walked past, surrounded by a large group of simpering girls, all of whom looked at Harry as though he were a particularly large Blast-Ended Skrewt. "Still - never mind, eh? Double Potions to look forward to this afternoon..." Double Potions was always a horrible experience, but these days it was nothing short of torture. Being shut in a dungeon for an hour and a half with Snape and the Slytherins, all of whom seemed determined to punish Harry as much as possible for daring to become school champion, was about the most unpleasant thing Harry could imagine. He had already struggled through one Friday's worth, with Hermione sitting next to him intoning "ignore them, ignore them, ignore them" under her breath, and he couldn't see why today should be any better. When he and Hermione arrived at Snape's dungeon after lunch, they found the Slytherins waiting outside, each and every one of them wearing a large badge on the front of his or her robes. For one wild moment Harry thought they were S.P.E.W. badges - then he saw that they all bore the same message, in luminous red letters that burnt brightly in the dimly lit underground passage: SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY- THE REAL HOGWARTS CHAMPION! "Like them, Potter?" said Malfoy loudly as Harry approached. "And this isn't all they do - look!" He pressed his badge into his chest, and the message upon it vanished, to be replaced by another one, which glowed green: POTTER STINKS! The Slytherins howled with laughter. Each of them pressed their badges too, until the message POTTER STINKS was shining brightly all around Harry. He felt the heat rise in his face and neck. "Oh very funny," Hermione said sarcastically to Pansy Parkinson and her gang of Slytherin girls, who were laughing harder than anyone, "really witty." Ron was standing against the wall with Dean and Seamus. He wasn't laughing, but he wasn't sticking up for Harry either. "Want one, Granger?" said Malfoy, holding out a badge to Hermione. "I've got loads. But don't touch my hand, now. I've just washed it, you see; don't want a Mudblood sliming it up." Some of the anger Harry had been feeling for days and days seemed to burst through a dam in his chest. He had reached for his wand before he'd thought what he was doing. People all around them scrambled out of the way, backing down the corridor. "Harry!" Hermione said warningly. "Go on, then, Potter," Malfoy said quietly, drawing out his own wand. "Moody's not here to look after you now - do it, if you've got the guts -" For a split second, they looked into each other's eyes, then, at exactly the same time, both acted. "Funnunculus!" Harry yelled. "Densaugeo!" screamed Malfoy. Jets of light shot from both wands, hit each other in midair, and ricocheted off at angles - Harry's hit Goyle in the face, and Malfoy's hit Hermione. Goyle bellowed and put his hands to his nose, where great ugly boils were springing up - Hermione, whimpering in panic, was clutching her mouth. "Hermione!" Ron had hurried forward to see what was wrong with her; Harry turned and saw Ron dragging Hermione's hand away from her face. It wasn't a pretty sight. Hermione's front teeth - already larger than average - were now growing at an alarming rate; she was looking more and more like a beaver as her teeth elongated, past her bottom lip, toward her chin - panic-stricken, she felt them and let out a terrified cry. "And what is all this noise about?" said a soft, deadly voice. Snape had arrived. The Slytherins clamored to give their explanations; Snape pointed a long yellow finger at Malfoy and said, "Explain." "Potter attacked me, sir -" "We attacked each other at the same time!" Harry shouted. "- and he hit Goyle - look -" Snape examined Goyle, whose face now resembled something that would have been at home in a book on poisonous fungi. "Hospital wing, Goyle," Snape said calmly. "Malfoy got Hermione!" Ron said. "Look!" He forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth - she was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though this was difficult as they had now grown down past her collar. Pansy Parkinson and the other Slytherin girls were doubled up with silent giggles, pointing at Hermione from behind Snape's back. Snape looked coldly at Hermione, then said, "I see no difference." Hermione let out a whimper; her eyes filled with tears, she turned on her heel and ran, ran all the way up the corridor and out of sight. It was lucky, perhaps, that both Harry and Ron started shouting at Snape at the same time; lucky their voices echoed so much in the stone corridor, for in the confused din, it was impossible for him to hear exactly what they were calling him. He got the gist, however. "Let's see," he said, in his silkiest voice. "Fifty points from Gryffindor and a detention each for Potter and Weasley. Now get inside, or it'll be a week's worth of detentions." Harry's ears were ringing. The injustice of it made him want to curse Snape into a thousand slimy pieces. He passed Snape, walked with Ron to the back of the dungeon, and slammed his bag down onto the table. Ron was shaking with anger too - for a moment, it felt as though everything was back to normal between them, but then Ron turned and sat down with Dean and Seamus instead, leaving Harry alone at his table. On the other side of the dungeon, Malfoy turned his back on Snape and pressed his badge, smirking. POTTER STINKS flashed once more across the room. Harry sat there staring at Snape as the lesson began, picturing horrific things happening to him....If only he knew how to do the Cruciatus Curse...he'd have Snape flat on his back like that spider, jerking and twitching.... "Antidotes!" said Snape, looking around at them all, his cold black eyes glittering unpleasantly. "You should all have prepared your recipes now. I want you to brew them carefully, and then, we will be selecting someone on whom to test one..." Snape's eyes met Harry's, and Harry knew what was coming. Snape was going to poison him. Harry imagined picking up his cauldron, and sprinting to the front of the class, and bringing it down on Snape's greasy head - And then a knock on the dungeon door burst in on Harry's thoughts. It was Colin Creevey; he edged into the room, beaming at Harry, and walked up to Snape's desk at the front of the room. "Yes?" said Snape curtly. "Please, sir, I'm supposed to take Harry Potter upstairs." Snape stared down his hooked nose at Colin, whose smile faded from his eager face. "Potter has another hour of Potions to complete," said Snape coldly. "He will come upstairs when this class is finished." Colin went pink. "Sir - sir, Mr. Bagman wants him," he said nervously. "All the champions have got to go, I think they want to take photographs..." Harry would have given anything he owned to have stopped Colin saying those last few words. He chanced half a glance at Ron, but Ron was staring determinedly at the ceiling. "Very well, very well," Snape snapped. "Potter, leave your things here, I want you back down here later to test your antidote." "Please, sir - he's got to take his things with him," squeaked Cohn. "All the champions..." "Very well!" said Snape. "Potter - take your bag and get out of my sight!" Harry swung his bag over his shoulder, got up, and headed for the door. As he walked through the Slytherin desks, POTTER STINKS flashed at him from every direction. "It's amazing, isn't it, Harry?" said Colin, starting to speak the moment Harry had closed the dungeon door behind him. "Isn't it, though? You being champion?" "Yeah, really amazing," said Harry heavily as they set off toward the steps into the entrance hall. "What do they want photos for, Colin?" "The Daily Prophet, I think!" "Great," said Harry dully. "Exactly what I need. More publicity." "Good luck!" said Colin when they had reached the right room. Harry knocked on the door and entered. He was in a fairly small classroom; most of the desks had been pushed away to the back of the room, leaving a large space in the middle; three of them, however, had been placed end-to-end in front of the blackboard and covered with a long length of velvet. Five chairs had been set behind the velvet-covered desks, and Ludo Bagman was sitting in one of them, talking to a witch Harry had never seen before, who was wearing magenta robes. Viktor Krum was standing moodily in a corner as usual and not talking to anybody. Cedric and Fheur were in conversation. Fheur looked a good deal happier than Harry had seen her so far; she kept throwing back her head so that her long silvery hair caught the light. A paunchy man, holding a large black camera that was smoking slightly, was watching Fleur out of the corner of his eye. Bagman suddenly spotted Harry, got up quickly, and bounded forward. "Ah, here he is! Champion number four! In you come, Harry, in you come...nothing to worry about, it's just the wand weighing ceremony, the rest of the judges will be here in a moment -" "Wand weighing?" Harry repeated nervously. "We have to check that your wands are fully functional, no problems, you know, as they're your most important tools in the tasks ahead," said Bagman. "The expert's upstairs now with Dumbledore. And then there's going to be a little photo shoot. This is Rita Skeeter," he added, gesturing toward the witch in magenta robes. "She's doing a small piece on the tournament for the Daily Prophet...." "Maybe not that small, Ludo," said Rita Skeeter, her eyes on Harry. Her hair was set in elaborate and curiously rigid curls that contrasted oddly with her heavy-jawed face. She wore jeweled spectacles. The thick fingers clutching her crocodile-skin handbag ended in two-inch nails, painted crimson. "I wonder if I could have a little word with Harry before we start?" she said to Bagman, but still gazing fixedly at Harry. "The youngest champion, you know...to add a bit of color?" "Certainly!" cried Bagman. "That is - if Harry has no objection?" "Er -" said Harry. "Lovely," said Rita Skeeter, and in a second, her scarlet-taloned fingers had Harry's upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip, and she was steering him out of the room again and opening a nearby door. "We don't want to be in there with all that noise," she said. "Let's see...ah, yes, this is nice and cozy." It was a broom cupboard. Harry stared at her. "Come along, dear - that's right - lovely," said Rita Skeeter again, perching herself precariously upon an upturned bucket, pushing Harry down onto a cardboard box, and closing the door, throwing them into darkness. "Let's see now..." She unsnapped her crocodile-skin handbag and pulled out a handful of candles, which she lit with a wave of her wand and magicked into midair, so that they could see what they were doing. "You won't mind, Harry, if I use a Quick-Quotes Quill? It leaves me free to talk to you normally..." "A what?" said Harry. Rita Skeeter's smile widened. Harry counted three gold teeth. She reached again into her crocodile bag and drew out a long acid-green quill and a roll of parchment, which she stretched out between them on a crate of Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover. She put the tip of the green quill into her mouth, sucked it for a moment with apparent relish, then placed it upright on the parchment, where it stood balanced on its point, quivering slightly. "Testing...my name is Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet reporter." Harry hooked down quickly at the quill. The moment Rita Skeeter had spoken, the green quill had started to scribble, skidding across the parchment: Attractive blonde Rita Skeeter, forty-three, who's savage quill has punctured many inflated reputations - "Lovely," said Rita Skeeter, yet again, and she ripped the top piece of parchment off, crumpled it up, and stuffed it into her handbag. Now she leaned toward Harry and said, "So, Harry...what made you decide to enter the Triwizard Tournament?" "Er -" said Harry again, but he was distracted by the quill. Even though he wasn't speaking, it was dashing across the parchment, and in its wake he could make out a fresh sentence: An ugly scar, souvenier of a tragic past, disfigures the otherwise charming face of Harry Potter, whose eyes - "Ignore the quill, Harry," said Rita Skeeter firmly. Reluctantly Harry looked up at her instead. "Now - why did you decide to enter the tournament, Harry?" "I didn't," said Harry. "I don't know how my name got into the Goblet of Fire. I didn't put it in there." Rita Skeeter raised one heavily penciled eyebrow. "Come now, Harry, there's no need to be scared of getting into trouble. We all know you shouldn't really have entered at all. But don't worry about that. Our readers hove a rebel." "But I didn't enter," Harry repeated. "I don't know who -" "How do you feel about the tasks ahead?" said Rita Skeeter. "Excited? Nervous?" "I haven't really thought...yeah, nervous, I suppose," said Harry. His insides squirmed uncomfortably as he spoke. "Champions have died in the past, haven't they?" said Rita Skeeter briskly. "Have you thought about that at all?" "Well...they say it's going to be a lot safer this year," said Harry. The quill whizzed across the parchment between them, back and forward as though it were skating. "Of course, you've looked death in the face before, haven't you?" said Rita Skeeter, watching him closely. "How would you say that's affected you?" "Er," said Harry, yet again. "Do you think that the trauma in your past might have made you keen to prove yourself? To live up to your name? Do you think that perhaps you were tempted to enter the Triwizard Tournament because -" "I didn't enter," said Harry, starting to feel irritated. "Can you remember your parents at all?" said Rita Skeeter, talking over him. "No," said Harry. "How do you think they'd feel if they knew you were competing in the Triwizard Tournament? Proud? Worried? Angry?" Harry was feeling really annoyed now. How on earth was he to know how his parents would feel if they were alive? He could feel Rita Skeeter watching him very intently. Frowning, he avoided her gaze and hooked down at words the quill had just written: Tears fill those startlingly green eyes as our conversation turns to the parents he can barely remember. "I have NOT got tears in my eyes!" said Harry loudly. Before Rita Skeeter could say a word, the door of the broom cupboard was pulled open. Harry looked around, blinking in the bright light. Albus Dumbledore stood there, looking down at both of them, squashed into the cupboard. "Dumbledore!" cried Rita Skeeter, with every appearance of delight - but Harry noticed that her quill and the parchment had suddenly vanished from the box of Magical Mess Remover, and Rita's clawed fingers were hastily snapping shut the clasp of her crocodile-skin bag. "How are you?" she said, standing up and holding out one of her large, mannish hands to Dumbledore. "I hope you saw my piece over the summer about the International Confederation of Wizards' Conference?" "Enchantingly nasty," said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling. "I particularly enjoyed your description of me as an obsolete dingbat." Rita Skeeter didn't look remotely abashed. "I was just making the point that some of your ideas are a little old-fashioned, Dumbhedore, and that many wizards in the street -" "I will be delighted to hear the reasoning behind the rudeness, Rita," said Dumbledore, with a courteous bow and a smile, "but I'm afraid we will have to discuss the matter later. The Weighing of the Wands is about to start, and it cannot take place if one of our champions is hidden in a broom cupboard." Very glad to get away from Rita Skeeter, Harry hurried back into the room. The other champions were now sitting in chairs near the door, and he sat down quickly next to Cedric, hooking up at the velvet-covered table, where four of the five judges were now sitting - Professor Karkaroff, Madame Maxime, Mr. Crouch, and Ludo Bagman. Rita Skeeter settled herself down in a corner; Harry saw her slip the parchment out of her bag again, spread it on her knee, suck the end of the Quick-Quotes Quill, and place it once more on the parchment. "May I introduce Mr. Ollivander?" said Dumbledore, taking his place at the judges' table and talking to the champions. "He will be checking your wands to ensure that they are in good condition before the tournament." Harry hooked around, and with a jolt of surprise saw an old wizard with large, pale eyes standing quietly by the window. Harry had met Mr. Ollivander before - he was the wand-maker from whom Harry had bought his own wand over three years ago in Diagon Alley. "Mademoiselle Delacour, could we have you first, please?" said Mr. Ollivander, stepping into the empty space in the middle of the room. Fleur Delacour swept over to Mr. Olhivander and handed him her wand. "Hmm..." he said. He twirled the wand between his long fingers like a baton and it emitted a number of pink and gold sparks. Then he held it chose to his eyes and examined it carefully. "Yes," he said quietly, "nine and a half inches...inflexible...rosewood...and containing...dear me..." "An 'air from ze 'ead of a veela," said Fleur. "One of my grandmuzzer's." So Fleur was part veela, thought Harry, making a mental note to tell Ron...then he remembered that Ron wasn't speaking to him. "Yes," said Mr. Ollivander, "yes, I've never used veela hair myself, of course. I find it makes for rather temperamental wands...however, to each his own, and if this suits you..." Mr. Ollivander ran his fingers along the wand, apparently checking for scratches or bumps; then he muttered, "Orchideous!" and a bunch of flowers burst from the wand tip. "Very well, very well, it's in fine working order," said Mr. Ollivander, scooping up the flowers and handing them to Fleur with her wand. "Mr. Diggory, you next." Fleur glided back to her seat, smiling at Cedric as he passed her. "Ah, now, this is one of mine, isn't it?" said Mr. Ollivander, with much more enthusiasm, as Cedric handed over his wand. "Yes, I remember it well. Containing a single hair from the tail of a particularly fine male unicorn...must have been seventeen hands; nearly gored me with his horn after I plucked his tail. Twelve and a quarter inches...ash...pleasantly springy. It's in fine condition...You treat it regularly?" "Polished it last night," said Cedric, grinning. Harry hooked down at his own wand. He could see finger marks all over it. He gathered a fistful of robe from his knee and tried to rub it clean surreptitiously. Several gold sparks shot out of the end of it. Fleur Delacour gave him a very patronizing look, and he desisted. Mr. Ollivander sent a stream of silver smoke rings across the room from the tip of Cedric's wand, pronounced himself satisfied, and then said, "Mr. Krum, if you please." Viktor Krum got up and slouched, round-shouldered and duck-footed, toward Mr. Ollivander. He thrust out his wand and stood scowling, with his hands in the pockets of his robes. "Hmm," said Mr. Olhivander, "this is a Gregorovitch creation, unless I'm much mistaken? A fine wand-maker, though the styling is never quite what I...however..." He lifted the wand and examined it minutely, turning it over and over before his eyes. "Yes...hornbeam and dragon heartstring?" he shot at Krum, who nodded. "Rather thicker than one usually sees...quite rigid...ten and a quarter inches...Avis!" The hornbeam wand let off a blast hike a gun, and a number of small, twittering birds flew out of the end and through the open window into the watery sunlight. "Good," said Mr. Ollivander, handing Krum back his wand. "Which leaves...Mr. Potter." Harry got to his feet and walked past Krum to Mr. Ollivander. He handed over his wand. "Aaaah, yes," said Mr. Ohlivander, his pale eyes suddenly gleaming. "Yes, yes, yes. How well I remember." Harry could remember too. He could remember it as though it had happened yesterday.... Four summers ago, on his eleventh birthday, he had entered Mr. Ollivander's shop with Hagrid to buy a wand. Mr. Ollivander had taken his measurements and then started handing him wands to try. Harry had waved what felt like every wand in the shop, until at last he had found the one that suited him - this one, which was made of holly, eleven inches long, and contained a single feather from the tail of a phoenix. Mr. Ollivander had been very surprised that Harry had been so compatible with this wand. "Curious," he had said, "curious," and not until Harry asked what was curious had Mr. Olhivander explained that the phoenix feather in Harry's wand had come from the same bird that had supplied the core of Lord Voldemort's. Harry had never shared this piece of information with anybody. He was very fond of his wand, and as far as he was concerned its relation to Voldemort's wand was something it couldn't help - rather as he couldn't help being related to Aunt Petunia. However, he really hoped that Mr. Ollivander wasn't about to tell the room about it. He had a funny feeling Rita Skeeter's Quick-Quotes Quill might just explode with excitement if he did. Mr. Ollivander spent much longer examining Harry's wand than anyone else's. Eventually, however, he made a fountain of wine shoot out of it, and handed it back to Harry, announcing that it was still in perfect condition. "Thank you all," said Dumbledore, standing up at the judges' table. "You may go back to your lessons now - or perhaps it would be quicker just to go down to dinner, as they are about to end -" Feeling that at last something had gone right today, Harry got up to leave, but the man with the black camera jumped up and cleared his throat. "Photos, Dumbledore, photos!" cried Bagman excitedly. "All the judges and champions, what do you think, Rita?" "Er - yes, let's do those first," said Rita Skeeter, whose eyes were upon Harry again. "And then perhaps some individual shots." The photographs took a long time. Madame Maxime cast everyone else into shadow wherever she stood, and the photographer couldn't stand far enough back to get her into the frame; eventually she had to sit while everyone else stood around her. Karkaroff kept twirling his goatee around his finger to give it an extra curl; Krum, whom Harry would have thought would have been used to this sort of thing, skulked, half-hidden, at the back of the group. The photographer seemed keenest to get Fleur at the front, but Rita Skeeter kept hurrying forward and dragging Harry into greater prominence. Then she insisted on separate shots of all the champions. At last, they were free to go. Harry went down to dinner. Hermione wasn't there - he supposed she was still in the hospital wing having her teeth fixed. He ate alone at the end of the table, then returned to Gryffindor Tower, thinking of all the extra work on Summoning Charms that he had to do. Up in the dormitory, he came across Ron. "You've had an owl," said Ron brusquely the moment he walked in. He was pointing at Harry's pillow. The school barn owl was waiting for him there. "Oh - right," said Harry. "And we've got to do our detentions tomorrow night, Snape's dungeon," said Ron. He then walked straight out of the room, not looking at Harry. For a moment, Harry considered going after him - he wasn't sure whether he wanted to talk to him or hit him, both seemed quite appealing - but the lure of Sirius's answer was too strong. Harry strode over to the barn owl, took the letter off its leg, and unrolled it. Harry - I can't say everything I would like to in a letter, it's too risky in case the owl is intercepted - we need to talk face-to-face. Can you ensure that you are alone by the fire in Gryffindor Tower at one o'clock in the morning on the 22nd ofNovember? I know better than anyone that you can look after yourself and while you're around Dumbledore and Moody I don't think anyone will be able to hurt you. However, someone seems to be having a good try. Entering you in that tournament would have been very risky, especially right under Dumbkdore's nose. Be on the watch, Harry. I still want to hear about anything unusual. Let me know about the 22nd ofNovember as quickly as you can. Sirius

#GobletofFire #HarryPotter

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