Vassal

by Sterling D'Este

  Today she was feeling merciful.

  Today it was spring.

  A welcoming, happy noise came out of her throat. It was difficult to remember speech. It’d been so very long since she spoke. How did she make her tongue form the words? How did her lips shape the sounds?

  It didn’t matter. She hadn’t ever needed words to convey her meaning.

  She stepped closer, looking the male over with obvious interest. Those amber eyes looked like flames shimmering over coals. Hand still outstretched towards him. He need only take it.

  ✶

  Etienne gingerly peeked from beneath his hands at the sound Alphonse made. She seemed… happy? So far, in all his encounters with the shadow, it had been, at best, hungry. Never happy.

  When he looked again, however, it most certainly wasn’t Alphonse standing in front of him. The thing staring out of her eyes looked him up and down, alien and predatory, and held out her hand.

  Etienne focused his gaze resolutely on the very top of her head because, damn him, she was very difficult not to look at. But this was his dearest friend, his sister. And what was worse, she wasn’t even really there.

  “No,” he told the creature. “That is Alphonse’s body, and you cannot just do whatever you want with it.”

  He knew he was going red. He could feel the tips of his ears burning. But that didn’t matter. He was utterly resolved.

  The creature’s smile became a storm-cloud frown, the trees around them seeming to tremble. The change was sudden, terrifying. Alphonse would never have glared at him so. She stalked closer, reaching to take his hand, yanking it away from his body.

  Etienne struggled to pull his hand back, but somehow, even in Alphonse’s small frame, it far outstripped his strength. He could do little but watch in some mixture of fascination and alarm as she pressed the pads of his fingers against the delicate skin of Alphonse’s cheek, the swell of her lips. In her throat, he could feel the pulse of her heart as though barely contained.

  Gods, how much of this could he be expected to endure?

  For a moment, Etienne’s steadfastness wavered. His mind traveled down the possibility of giving in to the creature’s desire.

  She was beautiful. He did not have to have seen the bodies of others to know that hers was perfect.

  He imagined reaching out, touching her skin out of choice rather than the creature’s command, of allowing her whatever desire she asked of him.

  And if Alphonse woke?

  Etienne retched physically, unable to control the revulsion he felt at the thought. She was his fucking sister in all but name.

  With all of the strength available to him, Etienne flung his weight back and pulled.

  ❂

  Her grip didn’t loosen, but she understood the denial there. She stalked after him as he tugged and heaved himself away from her.

  “No?” she repeated, a hiss through her teeth, barely a word.

  Her eyes glinted; the joy was gone.

  If he said no…

  With a swiftness that explained how she had caught those creatures with her bare hands, she took his littlest finger within her own, and with a sudden crack, broke it and released him.

  No one said no to Enyo.

  As quickly as she had dealt him the punishment he deserved, she was heading back to the stream, back to her clothes.

  Somewhere along the line, her thoughts got muddy and…

  Blinking, Alphonse looked around.

  How had she gotten here? Oh no.

  Oh no! It had happened again.

  A little shriek of dismay consumed her as she realized she was utterly nude. Completely bare for the world to see, in some field, her bare feet covered in dirt and bugs and… and… Alphonse spotted her clothes, dropped by the stream, and lunged for them, gasping and sobbing, desperate to redress. To hide her shame.

  “Alphonse!”

  With her underthings on and her shift as well, Alphonse paused in her dressing to look around. Someone was calling her name? Someone had seen her?

  Recognizing the voice and holding her skirts and bodice to hide her modesty, Alphonse turned, looking for Etienne.

  He was kneeling where the meadow met the forest, holding his arm to his chest, pain shrieking over his handsome features.

  The healer gasped and started to run towards him. Towards safety.

  Mother, she was so tired of weeping.

  Still, tears streaked down her face as she came to his side, flinging one arm about him, crumbling to her knees. She didn’t have to ask to know that whatever she had done, it was bad. For him to look at her that way. For her to be naked in a field like some… some heathen.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!” She wept into his shirt, sobs wracking her body as she clung to his neck with a strength that was all her own.

  “My finger,” he gasped, shoving her away and leaving her flabbergasted. All she wanted to do was cry into his shoulder and have him make it all better, and instead, he was treating her like a monster. “The shadow—she… It hurts, Alphonse. Fix it, please.”

  Hurt coiled in her breast as she looked at the bent and malformed digit. He said the shadow had done that. It was folded in half, knuckles nearly touching the back of his hand, bone sticking through skin.

  She had done that. No wonder he thought she was a monster.

  Hastily Alphonse held out her hands. Gentle hands that had never, not once, been raised in violence. To think they had done something so gruesome to her friend. Her eyes overfilled with tears once more.

  “I’m sorry.”

  ✶

  Etienne sighed with relief, the tremors in his body slowly easing. He held up his hand. Turned it over. Moved his smallest finger.

  He was whole again.

  In front of him, Alphonse was weeping, apologies dripping from her lips like tears. Etienne didn’t answer. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Instead, he leaned forward and wrapped an arm around her to pull her into his shoulder.

  “I hate her,” he said, his words laced with venom. He didn’t think he’d ever said that about anyone before, but he meant it now. She was awful. Strange and cruel. “I will bind her back to wherever she came from even if I have to die doing it.”

  “You promise?”

  He nodded into her hair, suddenly exhausted, and murmured his answer just loud enough to be heard through her sobbing. “I promise.”

  Chapter V

  Fifth Moon, Full: Thloegr

  Calamity was a constant pressing weight between Delyth’s wings. It was too long to be worn at the waist and so had to be strapped atop her leather jerkin and the grey wolf’s pelt she wore across her shoulders. She couldn’t feel the horrible hunger of the thing, protected as she was by a simple scabbard and the layers of fabric over her skin, but she knew it was there. It was as if the sword was heavy with malice, pulling her thoughts towards it again and again.

  It’s call was heady and thrilling, but she’d proven already that she didn’t have to listen.

  Instead, the halfbreed filled up her lungs with bright, mountain air and watched the landscape beneath her grow more flat and green with each passing hour. She had never flown so long, had never been so far from the village.

  And it was rapturous.

  The whole of Thloegr was spread out beneath her. There were no sounds but the rush of wind in her ears as she coasted on thermals, no people to crowd her, no small spaces to fit herself into. She could stretch and stretch, and there was no direction denied to her except homeward.

  The first night, Delyth slept in a hollow at the base of an ancient pine, a blood rune inked in it’s bark to wake her if anything larger than a hare approached. Despite the chill of a spring night in the Brig’ian mountains, she slept easily, one flight-sore wing draped over her curled body.

  But then, she had always been well suited to the cold.

  Early the seventh morning, Delyth left the mountains behind, their forms no longer visible on the ho
rizon. On the ground, it was a breezy spring day, perhaps windy enough to shake the trees and send hair whipping about her face, but in the air, she fought tooth and nail for every mile, the headwind batting her around as easily as a cat playing with its prey. It tore at her wings, sending her spiraling or spinning back, head over heels. She was nothing in its path, her strength minuscule.

  The sword was another nuisance. She touched the hilt every few hours to check her direction, allowing its desire to be reunited with its mistress to guide her. The regular shots of its feral thirst for blood left her feeling drained and angry. She found herself doubting her own ability to complete this quest. If already the thing was such a burden, how long would she be able to resist its call?

  Perhaps the High Priestess had been wrong to trust her. Perhaps the true champion should have been someone even stronger.

  Who was she to think herself worthy to carry the sword of the Goddess?

  Still, there was nothing to be done, but to keep moving onward. Some mixture of virulent pride and sheer stubbornness kept her from turning away from her task. Delyth would go until she physically could not lift a foot to take a step, though eventually, the halfbreed had to concede to the sky. She was a strong and swift flier, but its power was proving too much. She didn’t descend so much as fall, opening her wings only at the last moment to avoid being thrown back into the sky.

  It was afternoon, clear and windy at ground level. The weather this far south was warm, and around her, bushes and brambles sprouted from the forest floor, uninhibited by snow. The tops of the trees rustled in the same breeze that tugged at her hair. Songbirds twittered in the distance. Delyth took a few deep breaths, and though she was battered from the morning’s rough flight, she found a serenity in the calm surroundings that mimicked that of the cliffs above Glynfford.

  It was a serenity, though, that could not last.

  After her desperate descent, Delyth had little idea of where she was. She could have been blown well to the east or west, though she was reasonably sure she had managed to make more progress south towards the vassal, if less than she would have liked. She was going to have to let the sword direct her.

  Delyth took another breath and wrapped her hand around the hilt.

  The sudden shock of savage desire was becoming almost familiar, but for some reason Delyth couldn’t divine, she seemed to feel less of it. She could still sense the sword’s need to be reunited with Enyo just as strong as ever, but the effect on her own emotions was markedly less pronounced.

  Gods, she wished she knew why. It’d be a blessing to be able to handle the weapon without the full brunt of its hunger beating down on her, but for the moment, Delyth focused on the direction of Calamity’s intent.

  It pointed her west, even a bit north-west.

  Delyth’s belly tightened with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. She must be close now if she had been traveling in a straight line towards the vassal only to pass them. She swallowed.

  Shortly, Delyth would meet her Goddess as well as the person she had chosen as vassal. It was almost too big a concept to grasp. Would Enyo be kind? Cruel? Would she accept Delyth’s service? The priests had claimed that their Goddess was a wise protector of the land, but there was nothing in their teachings about how she would treat a halfbreed.

  What would Delyth do if the Goddess preferred not to have her as champion? Where would she go?

  She took another deep breath. There was nothing to do but continue on. She would not turn away so close to the end of this part of her journey. Without another moment of hesitation, Delyth drew Calamity and flung herself into the air above the treetops.

  Afternoon had not yet passed into evening when Delyth found the road. It was little more than a dirt track carving a scar through the forest, but she was grateful to land and walk nonetheless. Though less severe than flying altitudes, the air above the treetops was still fraught with wind, and Calamity was not improving Delyth’s exhaustion. The malice of the sword had frayed at her earlier peace like a sharp knife on rope.

  Still, she did not sheathe it.

  She was close now, so close that Calamity could tell the vassal would soon walk round the bend in the road ahead.

  Delyth straightened her shoulders and strode forward to meet them.

  ✶

  For Etienne, boredom was by far the worst part of their travels. He found that he did not mind walking, and the heat of the late spring days did little to bother him, especially given the wind that had picked up since that morning. Instead, he found the lack of anything to do or study or learn absolutely frustrating. It was as if existence had slowed around him.

  To combat this, he told Alphonse about the cairns and ruins they passed, about the history of the area, and most recently about the changes in the territory of the two kingdoms after the Great War. Half to amuse himself and half to distract her. Allee seemed tired, her shoulders slumped, and her pace lagging.

  “We’ve actually been in the territory originally governed by Rhosan for days,” he was explaining. “But after Rhosan’s defeat in the—”

  “Etienne,” Alphonse murmured hastily from behind him. She must have slowed without his noticing. “Someone is coming.”

  At her tense whisper, Etienne stopped abruptly, his pulse leaping. He hadn’t expected them to encounter anyone this soon. The roads leading between Ingola and the Wildlands were few, narrow, and poorly kept.

  They should have been empty.

  “We can either hide in the treeline or continue on as if nothing is amiss,” Etienne said finally, keeping his voice low. “I can’t hear them, so I doubt there are many people.”

  Unknowingly, his pace had slowed, evidence of his uncertainty. He looked down at Alphonse and then back towards the bend. Perhaps they ought to do something, just in case. There was no telling what sort of people would be traveling on an old road leading deeper into the Wildlands.

  Etienne pulled his bag off his shoulders and reached into it to grab his cache of supplies. There was so little time to prepare. What could he do to protect them? Put up a shield, summon a weapon, create an illusion?

  The first option was probably the easiest, but even as Etienne began to assemble the supplies he would need, a figure appeared from around the bend.

  The woman was something from a nurse maid’s tale, told to scare children into behaving.

  ❀

  Her heart, which had been thrumming away nervously in her chest, stilled at the sight of the… Creature? Woman? Being, who approached. To Alphonse, she looked massive—black hair braided and wavy and half piled in a messy knot on top of her head. The woman was some sort of Cabot. A mixture of human and creature. Alphonse had seen some in Ingola, but never one with wings.

  Those wings, in particular, caught Alphonse’s attention and kept it. Presumably, they weren’t just for ornamentation but actually sustained flight. But, even as large as they were, how could those wings hold up the weight of the woman? Birds had hollow bones, she knew this from her anatomy and structure classes, and bats were equally lightweight…

  This woman looked to be solid muscle and bone, nothing delicate or fragile. She had furs and leather and blades strapped to her body, and Alphonse added their weight to her estimation of what those glorious wings could carry.

  How did she fly?

  She must be immensely strong.

  The healer, rooted to the spot, stared as the winged warrior approached. Amber eyes flickered over her face, blue eyes, dark paint circling her lashes and tracing lines down her cheeks…

  The warrior was perhaps the most striking creature Alphonse had ever seen in her entire life, and even the sickness within her seemed stunned and silent.

  ༄

  At the sight of the pair of travelers around the bend, Delyth stopped. She had built the vassal up so much in her mind as this epitome of a warrior Goddess made mortal flesh, that she thought the human Enyo chose would be wild and powerful and threatening.

  Instead, she almost fe
lt disappointed.

  Perhaps it was the malicious influence of the sword still gripped in her hands, but to Delyth, both of them looked so fragile. The male was tall and pale with blond hair that looked as though he spent much of his time pushing it haphazardly away from his face until tufts stuck up at awkward angles. He had pleasant enough features, she supposed, but his eyes were wide in surprise or fear. It was stupid to give away so much emotion, so plainly. She could be an enemy.

  With some effort, Delyth sheathed the sword. She no longer required it and it was fogging her senses.

  The girl was standing still, though where her companion had seemed frightened, she stared without qualm. Strange, because she was even smaller than the male, slim and narrow-shouldered. Her face was soft and delicate, her hair mostly hidden behind a veil. To Delyth, she seemed fawn-like, beautiful and wide-eyed.

  They were nothing like what she had been expecting.

  Delyth slowed as she neared them. “Which of you is Vassal to the Goddess Enyo?” They just looked baffled, so the warrior sighed and repeated the question, this time in the common tongue.

  The girl glanced at the boy and then shook her head, eyes returning again to Delyth’s wings. “I apologize, warrior, we don’t know of whom you speak,” she answered, her voice soft and lilting.

  Delyth blinked, struck by sudden and uncomfortable uncertainty. The sword had led her here, to these two. She doubted any others were near, and the High Priestess had been clear; Calamity knew only Enyo.

  Could the vassal both carry the Goddess and be unaware of her?

  Delyth looked between the two in some confusion. The girl stepped closer, prompting the boy to call out a name in some agitation. “Alphonse!” He reached out for her arm but didn’t touch her.

  She, on the other hand, just looked up. Delyth met the girl’s amber gaze and tried to remember the last time anyone had looked at her so frankly and openly. It had definitely been some time, and then it hadn’t been a stranger.

  “It's you, isn’t it?” Delyth said, her low voice a touch softer. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she became more certain as she spoke it. Perhaps, it was the sword. “And you don’t know?”