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azvolrien · 4 years ago

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A Long Walk in Winter - Part Three

Our heroes have some fun to lighten the mood after that conversation. Then things get less fun, and an unexpected face appears.

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Roan laid her hand over Asta’s on the grip of the bow. “You want to hold it securely, but without squeezing it,” she instructed, showing Asta where to place her fingers. “Too tight a grip can throw off your aim. This way, the weight of the bow should rest about here,” she touched the webbing near the base of Asta’s thumb with her other hand, “when you draw back the string. All right, next nock your arrow. No, on the other side of the bow. That’s it. There are different ways of drawing, but the one I use is to have one finger above the arrow on the bowstring and two below it, like this.” She positioned Asta’s other hand on the string. “Now, draw back to your anchor point. Different archers will have different points they like to use – it’s something you only really find with practice – but for now let’s say that’s below your cheekbone, just here.” She helped Asta draw back the string and tapped a thumbnail against her cheek, either oblivious to or politely ignoring her blush. “Use the muscles of your back more than your arms, and keep your bow arm straight but don’t lock your elbow. Aim… and loose.”

The arrow sailed gently into the snow about twenty feet short of the log Roan had placed as a target. Asta looked up at her, met her eyes for a moment, and started laughing helplessly. “I don’t think my arms are long enough!”

“Well.” Roan grinned back at her. “I did say my bow’s a bit big for you.” She gave Asta a quick kiss on the cheek and went to collect the arrow, only to fall to her knees when a snowball burst against the back of her head.

“At least we can be sure there’s nothing wrong with my aim,” said Asta, readying a second snowball as Roan picked herself up.

“Oh, you cheeky- C’mere, you!”

The snowball fight went on until they were both flat on their backs, exhausted both from the epic battle and from laughing about it.

“C’mere, you,” said Roan again, in a very different tone, and dragged Asta into a hug without getting up. “Ah, mo chridhe,” she said, sliding the fingers of one hand beneath Asta’s hat to caress her hair. “It’s good to hear you laugh.”

Asta closed her eyes, resting her forehead against Roan’s for a moment, before she drew back and hauled her upright. “We should be on our way before this all melts and we end up soaked,” she said, reaching inside her coat for Pardus’s summoning stone.

“You are as wise as you are beautiful,” said Roan.

“All right, don’t overdo it.”

With the carcasses of the stag, two ptarmigan, a pheasant and a hare all loaded onto Pardus’s back along with the rest of their gear, there was no room left for them to ride. Instead they made their way across the plateau on foot, forging through knee-deep snow as they walked from cairn to cairn back towards Glen Coll.

“This wasn’t poaching, was it?” said Asta suddenly when the first of the trees came into view on the horizon. The sun had already set, but Roan judged they could make it to the glen before the light vanished altogether.

“No, we’re fine,” said Roan. “Ancient law of the Sea Lochs, one the Empire agreed to keep on the books when they took over – I won’t bore you with all the little details but the highlands are considered common ground, belonging to everyone and no one. So long as they do it respectfully, people are free to hunt up here.”

“Huh.” Asta mulled that over for a few seconds. “So where does the land around Dun Ardech fall? Where you set your traps in the streams and the woods? Is it yours legally, or…?”

“Dun Ardech itself is, by right of all the work I put in making it liveable, but the rest is common ground as well. The highlands, and anything that’s more than fifteen miles from a settlement and isn’t used for crops.”

“That seems a sensible way of going about things,” said Asta. “Down in the Kiraani Hills and the Great Plain, I think just about every square foot is parcelled out to one landowner or another.”

“That must get complicated.”

“It does, very – I think I prefer the Sea Loch way.” Asta rolled her shoulders and pulled the fur mantle tighter around her neck. “But let’s save our breath for walking until we’re back under the trees.”

“I was going to stop here for the night,” said Roan when they reached the top of the trail down into Glen Coll, “but it’s not all that late.” She conjured a witchlight and waved it ahead of them to float above the path. “If you’re up for it, we can carry on until we get to where we camped that first night.”

“I think I’d rather get a bit further than this, yes,” said Asta. “At least until we’re somewhere sheltered enough that the tent won’t blow away.”

Roan nodded. “We should make decent time from here, anyway. Downhill all the way home, and we shouldn’t be digging through snowdrifts from here either.”

A little snow dusted the ground in the glen, but still the trees and the lip of the valley had saved it from the worst of it, and they walked single-file down the track in companionable silence. Always Roan’s witchlight floated ahead of them; it was brighter and steadier than a flaming torch would have been, for all that it still made eerie shadows of the surrounding trees. As Roan had predicted, they moved much faster through the glen than they had across the plateau; they passed beneath the fallen tree with the clawed bark and were soon at the spot where a little of the track had tumbled away down the slope.

A twig snapped uphill. Roan stopped walking and held out a hand to halt Asta in her tracks.

“Another deer, probably?” said Asta.

“Mmm…” Roan slowly turned to look up the hill, where the trees were silhouetted in black against the evening sky’s dark blue, and lifted the witchlight higher, feeding it more power to brighten its glow.

A pair of eyes reflected the light. Something huge, shaggy and black leapt from the hillside above, but if it was meant as an attack, the creature misjudged its aim and landed heavily on the path in front of Roan in a confusion of shadows and with a bellow of pain. The hard-packed, frosty earth quaked under the sudden weight – quaked, and gave way altogether. Whatever it was, the creature was gone in seconds, its own roars drowned out by those of the landslide it had triggered. Roan whirled to face Asta and shoved her back with all her strength, so hard that Asta almost fell to the ground altogether. Asta caught one glimpse of her horrified face before she was gone as well, the witchlight vanishing with her.

Quiet, again, and Asta was left staring blankly at the little she could make out in the dark – a fresh wound in the earth ahead of her, severing the track completely and tearing a deep scar down the steep hillside towards the distant sound of the river. While Pardus stood at her back, completely unperturbed, Asta sank to her knees on the edge of the path. Where before it had snaked away beyond the glow of the witchlight, now it just ended inches from her knees. The landslide would have taken her as well, if not for-

“Roan! Roan!” The scream ripped from her throat with no conscious thought at all. “ROAN!” There was no reply. “No. Please, gods, no…”

There. Down the hill – how far down, she couldn’t quite tell. A light, another of Roan’s little golden witchlights, and a raised hand outlined against it. Asta made a sign of thanks to Siraki, the protector of travellers long before she was the goddess of trade, and reached up to grab one of Pardus’s horns to help herself back to her feet. “Stay – stay where you are!” she shouted. “I’m coming down! Somehow…”

With Pardus following loyally behind her, Asta edged, scrambled, wriggled and slid down through earth, frost, dead bracken and rotten wood until, finally, she reached a rough, shallow bowl where another tree had fallen. Roan sat with her back propped against the broad disc of its roots, one hand clamped over her side and one eye crusted shut with blood. Her other arm hung limply at her side, but she waved its fingers in greeting.

Asta grabbed the first aid kit from Pardus’s saddlebags and fell to her knees at her side. “You’re hurt!”

“Hahh… That’s a yes.” Roan gritted her teeth, hissing, as Asta dampened a cloth with wound tincture and gently cleaned the cut above her eye. “’S not as bad as it looks. Shoulder’s popped out. Ankle went pretty far sideways. But… don’t think ’s broken.” The cut on her forehead had bled profusely as scalp wounds did, but it wasn’t big and whatever had struck her there had not cracked her skull. Even so, her voice was thin and tight with pain.

“Let me look at your side,” said Asta. “You’re bleeding there too. Then I… I’ll see what I can do for the rest. Pardus, lie down here.” Pardus did as it was told and lay on the ground at Asta’s back. The spell-flesh of a construct had a lower temperature than the body of a natural animal, but Pardus’s elegant, catlike frame still provided a little extra warmth and shelter.

Roan undid her belt with one shaking, bloodstained hand and hitched her tunic up to her ribs. A broken branch had torn through just above her hip; thankfully it wasn’t an impaling gut wound, just a deep gouge through skin and muscle, but there were still tiny splinters embedded in her flesh and it started bleeding anew as soon as Roan took the pressure off it.

Asta bit her lip. “You can’t put weight on that dislocated shoulder,” she said. “But I need you to turn as far onto that side as you can bear so I can clean this properly. All right?”

Roan nodded without speaking and shifted her weight to give Asta a better view of the wound. She held still to the point of rigidity, teeth bared in a death’s-head grin and one hand clamped around the wolf carving beneath her tunic, as Asta painstakingly picked the splinters out with a pair of tweezers, cleansed the wound with more of the tincture, and secured a thick pad of gauze over it with a bandage wound around her waist.

Asta glanced up at the witchlight as it wavered almost in time with Roan’s haggard breathing. “Fire. We need a fire.” She stood, kicked a bare patch in the leaf litter, and rummaged in the saddlebags again for tinder and kindling. Roan found the strength to summon a few sparks among the dry grass and crumpled paper, though the few loose logs Asta could find in the surrounding gloom were damp and smoked terribly before they finally caught enough to properly burn.

Roan’s ankle was definitely sprained, and badly; ugly purple-black bruises were already flowering both above the joint and along the side of her foot. “Middle of winter,” she said with grim humour, wiping the blood from her hand and face as Asta re-tied her boot for support before her ankle swelled too much, “and nothing resembling an ice-pack in sight.”

Asta gave her a reproachful look and propped her ankle on top of the first-aid box for her before she dragged the tent and bedroll down from Pardus’s back. There wasn’t enough flat ground to pitch it, but she laid out the tarpaulin to sit on, propped the canvas up in a rough lean-to, and arranged the blankets around Roan in more of a nest than a proper bedroll. “We’ll get you off the hill in the morning,” she said as she sat back down at Roan’s side. “Bring you to a proper healer. I don’t – I don’t know what else to do for your shoulder.” She had tied a sling to immobilise Roan’s arm, but the joint was still misshapen beneath her tunic and the sealskin.

“Do you not?” said Roan, holding her close with her good arm. She was still pale – paler than usual for her – and drawn, but she could speak a little more easily. “Would’ve thought it’d be in one of your books.”

“It is, often,” said Asta. “Authors like it because it’s,” her voice cracked and she swallowed twice to steady it, “it’s very dramatic, but won’t do a character too much lasting harm. It happens to Jarl Eyvind in The Gull Road, and they just pop his shoulder back in and go on their way. But what looks exciting in an adventure story isn’t always actual best practice for first aid. I don’t want to try to help and end up making it worse.”

“Aye. That’s fair.” She gently pressed a kiss against Asta’s temple. “Thanks for looking after me.”

“It’s nothing you haven’t done for me.”

“I’m not keeping score, you know.”

Asta looked down at her hands with a small laugh and tucked half of the woollen cloak over Roan to go with the blankets. “We’ll make room for you on Pardus’s back,” she decided. “I don’t want you walking on that ankle yet. We’ll just – leave the tent here and come back for it later, or something.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Asta nodded and set two of the dried fish they had carried from the broch to heat over the fire before she huddled closer to Roan beneath the cloak, staring into the dark. “What… what was that thing? The thing that attacked? A bear?”

“No… No, it wasn’t a bear. I didn’t get a clear look at it, but its forelegs were much longer, and I could swear it had horns.”

“Horns?”

“Like an aurochs, I’d say – but it wasn’t one of those either. No, it was nothing I’ve seen up here before.”

With that thought in mind, they only achieved a shallow, fitful sleep at best, curled around each other in the nest. Pain kept Roan awake for most of the night, and when Asta woke just before sunrise it was to find Roan watching her with a strange, tender look in her eyes despite the deep shadows below them.

“Wh-why are you looking at me like that?” asked Asta after a few seconds of disoriented blinking.

Roan eased her fingertips beneath Asta’s chin and tilted her face up to kiss her slowly. “Because you’re amazing,” she said, brushing her thumb across Asta’s lips, and smiled. “I’m trying to get better about saying it.”

Asta trailed her fingers across Roan’s cheek, tracing the outline of the water horse tattooed there, and down below her jaw. The pulse there was even and strong despite Roan’s injuries. “And I’ll try to be better at believing you,” she murmured as Roan slid her good arm around her back and breathed in the scent of her hair. They stayed like that for a while longer, huddled close under the tent canvas until the sky had lightened a little more and Asta drew back. “We need to get moving,” she said, and looked up the slope towards the trail. It was less intimidating in daylight, even the shadowy kind before the sun crested the hills, and she could make out enough level spots that neither she nor Pardus would have too much trouble climbing back up. “Right.” Asta stood, moving stiffly after the uncomfortable night, and squared her shoulders. “First we get you on Pardus. Then we’ll see what else we can pack on.”

Despite Asta’s fears, they weren’t forced to leave anything behind; with Roan in the saddle, her spear and bow slung in a rough holder along Pardus’s flank, and the carcasses secured behind her, the tent and the blankets could drape across rather than being rolled up and tied in bundles as they had been on the ride out. Asta stood back to inspect her handiwork and rearranged one of the blankets to better protect Roan’s back from the stag’s antlers. She nodded, satisfied, and took hold of the reins. “You’d better hold on.”

Roan clutched the saddle pommel and tried to grip with her knees as Asta led Pardus in a slow, steep zigzag back up the slope to the path. Several times Asta had to drop to all fours to scramble across where the way forward was slippery or uneven and once she fell flat on her belly in the frosty bracken when a foothold gave way beneath her, but after half an hour of careful climbing they reached the trail with no worse injuries than a few scrapes and bruises.

“I’m not used to keeping my balance up here without you to hold on to,” said Roan as Asta leant against Pardus to catch her breath.

Asta patted her knee and straightened up, tucking a few hairs that had escaped her braid back behind her ears. “Keep it for a few more hours,” she said, still gasping from the climb. “Just a few more hours. Until we’re back safe at the broch. Then… We’ll see. Have a rest. Get you comfy. Can see if… any of my books have proper instructions for helping with that.” She gestured at Roan’s shoulder. “If not… We can… We can ride to Auchtertan in the morning. Get a healer for you. Should get one to look at you anyway. Fix you up properly.” She took the reins again and led Pardus down the trail. Her breathing evened out as she walked, until another hour later when she led Pardus around a kink in the trail, skirting the foot of an outcrop of stone, and stopped dead. Roan had been looking down at her grip on the pommel, but she raised her head when Pardus swayed to a halt.

Something was sitting on the path, blocking their way, but the only name Asta could put to it was ‘creature’. It was, perhaps, more like a bear than it was anything else, with a stocky, powerful build and a coat of shaggy black fur mottled with patches of dark brown, but the resemblance beyond that was not remotely close. From the path to the top of its head was more than seven feet even with its forepaws on the ground, and its muzzle was longer and more pointed than a bear’s, its forehead less rounded. A pair of long, sharp horns curved out and forwards from the sides of its skull.

Even with only a glance to go on, it could only be the creature that had triggered the landslide the previous night. It shifted its weight back onto its haunches, but Roan reacted before it could do anything. She bared her teeth and grabbed for her spear, her eyes growing wide and black and the tendons standing out on her neck.

“Roan! Stop!” Asta snatched the haft of the spear and pulled it out of Roan’s reach. She shook her head, blinking; her pupils shrank to a more normal size and her neck relaxed. “If you go berserk now you could tear yourself apart,” said Asta quietly, squeezing Roan’s hand tightly. “Not caring that you’re hurt isn’t an advantage here.” She glanced at the creature – it had not moved any further – and she lowered the spear to the ground. “I… I don’t think we’re in any danger.”

The creature shook its head. The gesture was careful and slow, not a reflex to scratch an itch or deter a fly. Asta stroked her hand across Roan’s knee and studied the creature more closely. With a better look, it was obvious that the creature was injured, if not as badly as Roan. Its once-pointed ears hung in tatters, and blood glistened in cuts across its muzzle and on its forelegs. While one horn swept to a smooth, even point, the other ended in a jagged stump. It also became clear that its shoulders were curiously broad for a four-legged animal; although thickly furred and far more heavily muscled, their conformation was almost human, and its forepaws weren’t paws at all. As Asta watched, it lifted one foreleg – one arm – and uncurled its hand from a loose fist. It was more than four times the size of Asta’s hand, furred along the back, and each of the five fingers ended in a claw that had been cut deliberately short, but the skin on its palm was smooth and pink and the proportions were completely human – as, she realised with a start, were the light brown eyes staring back at her.

“What is it?” breathed Roan.

“I don’t know,” said Asta, “but I think a better question might be…” She stepped forwards until she was only just out of the creature’s long-armed reach. “…Who are you?”

The creature touched its throat, opening and closing its mouth, and shook its head again.

“Oh. You can’t speak?” Another shake. Asta looked back at Roan, who glanced at her spear on the ground, then shrugged. “But you can understand me. Are… Are you human? On the inside?” This time, the creature gave an unmistakeable nod, before reaching out and scratching a word in the frost on the ground. It wasn’t very neat, and Asta had to squint for a few seconds before she could make out what it said. “…Your name is Keith?” Nod. “So you’re a man?” Another nod. “All right,” said Asta shakily. “We’re getting somewhere. I, um. I need to talk to Roan here for a minute.”

Roan had, slowly, awkwardly, and wincing with pain, climbed down from the saddle to retrieve her spear. “So we’ve got his name,” she said, her voice flat. “He still – ahh!” She dropped to her knees, clutching her shoulder. Asta knelt with her.

“I… I don’t think he meant to hurt you,” she said, lowering her voice. “I think it was an accident. Look at him – he must have got caught in the landslide too.”

“Then why did he set it off?” said Roan, still in that flat tone. Her face was almost pure white beneath her tattoos.

“Maybe… Maybe we scared him. Maybe he was just trying to run off, but the path gave way under him.” Asta shot Keith a quick glance. He cocked his head and sat up, laying one hand on his other shoulder in a questioning manner. “Yes, she’s hurt,” said Asta, loudly enough that he could hear her. “Her shoulder was dislocated in the landslide last night.” Even trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, she couldn’t completely keep the anger from her voice.

Keith dropped back to all fours and crept closer. It didn’t feel like a threat, but Asta moved between him and Roan nonetheless. He sighed, sat up again, and went through a series of little mimes: his arm hanging loose at his side, his other hand pressing back on the shoulder joint, then a clear look of joy as he held his ‘injured’ arm back up.

“You… you know how to put it back in place?” said Asta uncertainly. He nodded. “Roan?”

Roan closed her eyes hard, her breath rasping through her teeth. “What do you think?”

“I think… that I want you to be in less pain. Even if the help is from an unorthodox quarter.”

Roan pressed her lips together and took a long breath through her nose before she opened her eyes again. “Then let’s see what he has in mind.”

What Keith had in mind was for Roan to lie flat on a blanket Asta laid out on the ground and hold her dislocated arm down by her side. From everything she had read, Asta had expected a quick shove and a scream of pain – as did Roan if the tightness around her eyes was any guide – and she gripped Roan’s other hand in preparation, but instead Keith took hold of her arm with a gentleness at odds with his size, bent it at the elbow, and slowly lifted and rotated it until, with only a slight increase in pressure, the head of the bone slipped neatly back into its proper place. Keith let go and sat back again, cradling one of his arms across his chest in a meaningful fashion. Asta took the hint and, once she had propped Roan back up, re-tied the sling to keep her arm still.

Keith let his breath out in a long sigh and turned to walk away.

“Wait!”

He paused and looked back at Asta’s call. She stood, motioning for Roan to stay seated, and untied the pheasant carcass from Pardus’s saddle. “Here,” she said, holding the bird out at arm’s length. Keith’s eyes widened slightly. “You look like you haven’t eaten in a while.”

Keith started to shake his head, but clearly thought better of it and carefully took the pheasant in one hand.

“Thank you,” said Asta. “Maybe you felt obligated, but – you didn’t have to stay and help. So, thank you.”

Keith nodded, passed the pheasant into his jaws, and loped off on all fours up the hill and away from the path. It was not long before he has disappeared completely, lost somewhere among the trees.

As soon as he was out of sight, Asta hooked one arm over Pardus’s back to stop herself collapsing. “Well!” she said, wide-eyed and with something not far removed from hysterical laughter in her voice. “I think we know what scared off the reindeer!”

“That,” said Roan once Asta had helped her back into the saddle, “was the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me.”

Asta screwed her eyes shut and rested her forehead against Roan’s hip. With Roan up on Pardus’s back, she couldn’t reach any higher. “Home,” she said decisively once she had composed herself. “When we get there I’ll make you some willow bark tea for the pain, so you get a better night’s sleep. In the morning we can ride to Auchtertan to see the healer there. In between…” She gazed up the hill where Keith had disappeared, and ran both hands back through her hair. “I think I need to write to Stormhaven. He strikes me as something the wizards will want to hear about.” She nodded firmly to herself and began to lead Pardus along the path once again.

Roan smiled that small, soft smile again. “Do you still feel useless?” she asked, her voice gently teasing, but not devoid of sincere concern.

Asta shot a smile back at her. “Now that you mention it… Not at the moment, no.”

They made it back to Dun Ardech that evening, stored their kills in the cold of Roan’s workshop in the courtyard, and let themselves back into the broch. They had laid a fire in the hearth before they left and only needed to light it. Asta prepared the promised tea, sat beside Roan on the couch, and finally allowed the stress of the last day and night to catch up with her. Roan just held her without speaking that time until she was able to relax again, curled up under Roan’s arm.

“Better?” asked Roan gently.

“Yes. I think so. For now.”

“Good. Because until my other arm’s out of this sling, I can’t hug you and drink my tea at the same time.”

Asta half-sighed, half-laughed, and lay down with her head cushioned on Roan’s thigh instead. “All the more reason to get you to the healer, then.”

“We can ask if she knows any who could help you, as well,” suggested Roan.

“That… might be an idea. The only thing is – I don’t know if there’ll be any near enough to visit on any sort of regular basis.” There were a few minutes of calm, thoughtful silence before Asta sat back up and fished her writing case out from under the couch. “I’ll write to Calburn,” she said, flipping the case open. “Either he’ll be interested about… whatever we saw today, or he’ll know the best person to pass the word to. I can post it from town in the morning.”

One-handed, Roan freed Asta’s hair from its braid so it flowed loose down her back and slowly brushed her fingers through it. “There’s my keen scholar.”

Asta paused with the nib of her pen on the paper and briefly gazed at the fire, before she smiled. “Thank you – I try.”

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Remember those guys?

Despite her deep-seated self-esteem issues, Asta is genuinely pretty good in a crisis; she just tends to go to pieces and cry for a while after the crisis is over, which is really the best time to do it.

#az writes stories

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