The twisted, heartless soldiers had swarmed through Fieldhaven like angered wasps…how was it possible that Tellan would have survived?
Reya squeezed her eyes shut when another wave of anguish wracked her body, convinced within her misery that she would never see her Uncle Tellan again, in spite of his promise. “I’ll find you” he had sworn so fiercely…but holding onto such a promise was so difficult an endeavour when Reya’s hopes lay in tatters at her feet.
Asgard shifted his hooves with a quiet whinny and Reya wiped the tears from her cheeks as she turned to grip his reins. She smiled weakly and when she stroked his mane with the meek hope that she could somehow find comfort in its softness, Asgard’s nose bumped roughly against her shoulder. She laughed in spite of the heaviness of her heart and with this temporary reprieve granted to her bruised soul, Reya took a deep breath and marshalled her thoughts.
It’s just a city, a bigger version of home. She rationalised with a firm shake of her head, It’s only scary if you let it scare you.
She smiled at the advice her uncle had given her so many years ago, when she had just been a child. For some reason she had convinced herself that a monster had snuck into her room and she had sat up screaming in her bed, howling for her life. Her uncle had rushed into the room then and as he had comforted her, he had told her that the only thing that truly frightened a person was fright itself. If Reya had the inclination she would have laughed darkly at the sage advice now; perhaps she could have still believed him if she hadn’t just witnessed the devastating murder of her father, and the violent destruction of her home.
A smattering of conversation tore her from her thoughts abruptly and with cautious eyes, Reya led her horse further down the lane that had brought her her temporary sanctuary. But in spite of the trepidation that bubbled uneasily within her stomach, she blinked and set her jaw with grim determination; a resolution within her that she was her father’s daughter and would show him how strong he had raised her to be. Tellan had given her a task, an important one, and the name of her contact blazed a line of shining light across her mind: Jenko. She clung onto the name with a desperate tenacity as she led Asgard on, swiping tears from her cheeks even as she fought to build the newfound confidence from within her heart that still quivered with fear.
When she came to the end of the lane, Reya stood still as she cast her eyes along the gloomily lit street; she knew nothing of this city, of course, but she couldn’t help but feel that asking anyone where she could find the man she had been told to seek would be most unwise. But she also couldn’t ignore how heavy her eyes had become in the aftermath of her exhaustion and she knew instinctually that her body needed sleep. She all but gasped out loud in undiluted relief when she caught sight of an inn further down the road; the braziers that burned brightly by its doors the only source of invitation within this city that seemed so dull and unwelcoming. With a gentle tug on Asgard’s reins she walked tentatively towards the inn, very much aware of how exposed she felt without so much as a coat to keep her warm, or a hood to hide her face.
But still Reya continued on, her eyes resolutely focused on the cobbled ground three feet beyond herself so she wouldn’t attract any unwanted attention. When she reached the inn she breathed out a lengthy sigh of relief that she hadn’t been accosted and looped Asgard’s reins around the nearby post with shaking hands. Reya glanced up at the inn’s sign with wide, fearful eyes, suddenly unsure of whether or not the torches that burned so brightly were a welcome to travellers, or a warning to intruders. The Fighting Angel…She thought as she read the faded gilding on the weather beaten sign, what a peculiar name.
She chewed her lip nervously as she climbed the steps slowly and the tremble of her legs bade her grasp onto the stair rail with sweaty palms. She pushed the door open as gently as she could manage for fear of causing aggravation to anyone who may have been on the other side, and even as she walked into the busy warmth, she kept her eyes firmly glued to the floor. Reya swallowed her instinctual squeak of fright when she heard the lively music from a fiddler somewhere die down abruptly and when the conversation within the room followed suit, her face trembled with barely suppressed tears.
But still she bunched her fists with the stubbornness she had inherited from her father and forced her feet onward; even if it was an uncertain shuffle, it was still better than simply standing in fear. A vague instinct was within her from the knowledge she had garnered from Uncle Tellan’s stories that she should seek the bar, and whispers hissed in ill–concealed curiosity as she haltingly made her way across the room. It wasn’t until the toes of her boots bumped unexpectedly against the beams of the bar that Reya finally stuttered to a halt and she realised frightfully she could no longer keep her eyes fastened to the floor. She looked upwards warily, a fearful expectation within her that she would see the torn and cloudy visage of a surly man who had no love for any traveller such as herself. But when she saw the smiling, open face of a pretty, freckle–skinned woman, Reya gasped in shock and gaped mutely.
The woman behind the bar cocked her head with a bob of her short wavy hair in a silent gesture of encouragement for Reya to speak, but when no sound came from the girl’s open mouth, the woman chuckled instead and said kindly, “Cat got your tongue, honey?”
Reya blushed furiously at her own awkwardness and blinked as she dropped her eyes to the floor once more, “Oh…please excuse me.”
The woman’s head tilted back in a laugh and to Reya’s astonishment, she replied cheerfully, “‘Please?’ Now there’s a word we don’t hear much of these days.” She then gestured at the men sitting at the bar with a flip of her hand, “Take note, boys. This here is what we call manners.”
Reya shrunk like a wilted flower when she felt the scrutiny of eyes upon her and sure enough, when she risked an upwards glance, she saw that three men unabashedly stared at her. The closest to her leered awfully as he sketched his uncivilised gaze up and down her body, a horribly repulsive act that branded Reya with an almost overwhelming desire to scrub her skin clean.
“What can I do for you, sweetheart?” The woman continued in warm tones and Reya shuddered as she brought her wide eyes back to her.
“Um…I’m sorry to bother you, but…” She stammered into a terribly awkward silence when she realised that she had no idea of what she should even ask the woman, so far out of her depth as she was. She then blinked and blurted, “I’d like a room, please.”
There was a rustling of fabric beside her as the repulsive man shifted in his seat and when he opened his mouth with a lecherous grin, the sour, sickly stench of over-indulgence puffed a pungent cloud over her. “I got a room, petal.” He rumbled and the suggestive innuendo within his voice oozed like pus as his companions laughed churlishly.
The woman opposite the bar pointed a finger at him and rapped sternly, “You keep a civil tongue in your head, Saros, ‘else I have you chucked out!” She then sighed and said to Reya, “Of course, love. Ten crowns for the night, if it pleases you.”
Reya balked when she realised she had no money to her name whatsoever and she blushed furiously as embarrassed despair flooded into her face with unbidden heat. Oh no! She thought with a terrified quickening of her heart, What am I to do?
Reya’s mouth gaped before she responded softly, “I…I don’t…”
The man called Saros grinned a brown toothed smile as poisonous as a snake bite and suggested, “I gots ten crowns, Vella. Fifteen if’n you make it a private room.”
The barwoman narrowed brown eyes at his obvious perversity and said in a voice that growled in warning, “What did I just say?”
“I’m good for it.” The man rumbled rebelliously and as he stood up from his stool completely, Reya all but cringed back at how eagerly his eyes devoured her. He then gathered a strand of her hair with a greasy finger and added lecherously, “I’ll take right good care of her too.”
“Please don’t…” Reya whispered with a trembling voice, for the implications of this man’s intentions burn
ed into her admittedly naïve mind like an iron brand.
But Saros’s grin simply widened with sickening lewdness and to Reya’s great relief, Vella snapped, “She’s just a young ‘un and she ain’t interested, Saros. Leave her be!”
“Course she’s interested,” the disgusting man persevered sickeningly, “she just doesn’t know it yet.”
When he slid his foul finger down Reya’s cheek however, her fright became so strong that her head whipped round and she bit Saros’s hand instinctually, sinking her teeth deeply into the meat of the man’s thumb. Saros recoiled with a hissed curse as Reya stumbled back and clutched the bar top protectively, her eyes flashing brightly with indignation even though she cowered in fear. Saros stared at her incredulously as he flexed his bitten hand, so unexpected her reaction was and anger simmered dangerously in his stomach.
“Can’t say you didn’t have that coming, Saros.” Vella admonished with a chuckle. She then shook her waves from her face and added, “You’ve had enough tonight; best be going home before the boss makes the decision for you, aye?”
Saros then brought his arm back, palm flat with the intention of striking Reya across the face in punishment against her audacious refusal, and she screwed her eyes shut with a frightened squeak. But when the expected searing pain across her cheek didn’t occur, she cracked open her eyes and gasped at the sight of another man who stood ominously close behind Saros. How he had even come to be in the room was inexplicable to Reya; she hadn’t seen his entrance or approach whatsoever…but Saros’s offending wrist was somehow clamped in the man’s unforgiving grip and Reya was glad of his timely intervention.
Saros looked behind his shoulder with a glare at the one who had intruded into his business, and Reya gulped at how terrified Saros suddenly became of the newcomer; if he was frightened of him…She thought pensively. The newcomer said nothing, but his blue eyes burned fiercely into Saros’s with such astonishing intimidation that words were scarcely necessary to speak his disapproval.
“Not in my bar, Saros.” The newcomer rumbled deeply and Saros’s face whitened as his grip was tightened in an enforcement of his firm statement.
“But–”
“Were you warned?” The newcomer asked quietly, but within that soft voice there was the instinctual command that his intervention was not to be taken lightly.
“Thrice, boss.” Vella answered the newcomer sternly on Saros’s behalf, her hands on her hips and a flash of triumph within her smiling eyes.
Reya stared in wide eyed silence at the owner of the inn, awed at how his mere presence was enough to capture the focus of everyone within the room, as though he had screamed a demand for their attention. This man owns the inn? She thought with an incredulous sputter as she took in his appearance, for he seemed more brigand than entrepreneur: his long, brown hair was held back from his face by a strip of black string and his blue eyes glinted with an almost cruel amusement. He was medium in height and slender, but there was an undeniable solidity within his upper body that spoke of hidden musculature and the grimace upon Saros’s face was a palpable indication of the strength he held within his firm hands.
“Three times too many.” The innkeeper said and he twisted Saros’s wrist with such incredible speed that he was buckled over with a shout of pain. Reya jumped with a shocked cry at the sudden crack of snapping bone, but as horrifically loud as Saros’s reflexive bark burst from him, nobody else in the inn seemed to have moved even so much as an inch. In fact, Reya realised forebodingly with a gulping clarity, that in spite of how everyone had turned at the initial arrival of the innkeeper, all patrons had pointedly returned to what they had been doing before.
“Bastard!” Saros hissed between clenched teeth, clutching his shoulder in a desperate bid for relief upon his broken wrist as he struggled in the innkeeper’s inexorable grip.
“Tread carefully, Saros.” The innkeeper scolded with a firm shake of Saros’s still captured wrist, his eyes unmoving and unblinking from Saros in sinisterly quiet intimidation. A grunt of pain was elicited from Saros then and the innkeeper growled into his ear ominously, “Don’t think I won’t kill you. There are plenty other purses in this city willing to pay my bills.”
Reya watched on with wide eyes and held breath as Saros was hauled unceremoniously towards the door and when the innkeeper finally released his relentless hold with an ungentle shove, he tossed the drunkard outside as innocuously as an emptied chamber pot. The door slammed shut when the innkeeper came back inside, cutting Saros’s protestations short, and his face was a dark thunderous cloud of irritation. He wiped his hands together as though such a simple act would clean his distaste of Saros from his person and as he lifted his eyes back to Vella, he tugged his grandly embroidered waistcoat down.
“Stick another twenty crowns onto Saros’s tab, would you, Vella?” He asked casually as he ran his hands down the luxurious fabric of his waistcoat, smoothing its wrinkles.
“Twenty?” Vella asked with a smirk, her eyes affixed to the innkeeper fondly as he sauntered toward her.
The innkeeper waved his hand then and squinted in humour. “Ah make it thirty, give the little shit–stink something to think about.” He then clapped his hands as he came to a stop before Reya and asked, “So…what was all that about then?”
Vella glanced at Reya, whose face now shone vibrantly like a red beacon in her embarrassment that she had caused such a fuss. “The young lass is after a room.” She said.
The innkeeper’s eyebrows hiked upwards as he adjusted the fit of his cinched cuffs. “Ah yes, the obvious innuendo.” He retorted flippantly. He then turned to Reya and added with a smirk, “Although the state he was in, he would have passed out long before you could have been disappointed by what little he had to offer.”
Reya’s scorching blush deepened awfully at the lewdness of the innkeeper’s joke and as he made to walk away, he stopped when he caught a glimpse of Vella’s hasty and significant gesture. “Yes?” He asked pointedly.
Vella briefly glanced at Reya once again before she said softly, “She can’t pay.”
The innkeeper looked down at Reya for no longer than a second before he responded bluntly, “No room, then.”
Reya’s face trembled in sadness and fear at the dispassion of the innkeeper’s tone, but when he made to move off again with a definitive air that his word was final, Vella darted from behind the bar and laid a hand upon his arm to stop him once more.
“She’s just a kid–” She insisted quietly.
“Not my problem.” The innkeeper replied neutrally.
When Reya began crying in exhausted woe at the thought that she would now be left penniless and lost within a city that would doubtlessly swallow her whole, the two turned back towards her and the innkeeper sighed in undisguised irritation.
“Oh for the love of…” He muttered wearily. He then said sternly to Vella with a finger pointed meaningfully at her, “I don’t give hand-outs, Vella. Get a grip and get her out.”
“Jenko–” Vella protested. Reya’s head snapped up at the sound of the name that had ricocheted through her mind from the moment she had watched her Uncle Tellan run into battle and her heart soared with new, fragile hope.
“Jenko?” She breathed.
The innkeeper and Vella turned as one to see that Reya had come forward slightly, her eyes wet and red as she twisted the sleeve of her dress nervously in her hand. “A–are you called Jenko?” She asked the innkeeper timidly.
“You got cloth in your ears, kid?” He rapped unkindly at her, for her continuing presence was beginning to annoy him as much as her snivelling tears. He then turned back towards Vella and jerked a thumb at Reya, “Why is she still here? No money means no service, got it?”
Jenko glanced down when he felt the pressure of a small hand upon his arm and he frowned when he realised that Reya now stood beside him with unsettling insistence, her eyes wide in hopeful awe.
“He told me to find you.” She whispered to him urgently.
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Jenko hesitated at the tone of her voice, so much gravity within such a quiet statement that he felt compelled to ask in spite of his better judgement, “Who?”
“My Uncle. He said you’d help me.”
Jenko stared at Reya for a moment before he finally shrugged her hand from him. “He told you wrong, kid.” He murmured callously.
“Please…” Reya whispered with pain in her heart at how easily he had dismissed her distress, for her hope had deflated with the brusqueness of his tone that echoed so harshly with emotionless disregard, “I’ve got nowhere else to go…”
Jenko stood upright with a sigh of irritation in the face of the wailing girl’s grief, aware that Vella stared at him with incredulous disapproval that he would leave the poor whelp stricken so willingly. He relented reluctantly then, if only to stop the girl from crying so damn much and, with a hitch of his head at the door, he asked, “Is that your horse outside?”
“Y–yes.”
He set his jaw firmly against the knowing grin that spread across Vella’s freckled face in a slow smirk of triumph and he refused even acknowledging her glance when he finally muttered grumpily, “Not anymore.”
Jenko then walked off without another word and Reya gaped after his sullen, stalking path, entirely unsure of what had just happened. But when Vella took her hand, she beamed happily at the expression of kindness upon the barwoman’s face and followed on when Vella led her towards the sanctuary of the guest rooms upstairs.
Reya roared and pumped her great axe into the sky, her teeth bared with righteous aggression as she pierced her enemy with steely eyes. Inside herself she shuddered forebodingly with the realisation that she had come to this place again, but to her surprise there was a profound calm in her heart. In her peripheral vision she saw Tellan steadfast and resolute beside her, his eyes narrowed and jaw firm as he hefted his bastard sword; his scalding glare never once tearing from the enemy that roiled towards them.
Another person stood on her other side, twin sabres held within an easy grip that belied the incredible skill the wielder waged with them and beyond him, another figure stood with a mighty longbow that looked as though it had been forged from lightning. The line behind the four was perfect; every man and woman true veterans of the Legion of Asgard and Reya’s chest swelled with pride that they stood by her with unquenchable loyalty. For they stood with the Line of Baldur, he and his three warriors of such renown that even the Abyss knew their names, and every Asgardian heart within those steadfast ranks burst with blazing pride. Reya knew that each of them waited for her order, that not one of them would flee in the face of such incredible numbers and all would fight until the Light called the last of their souls back to Asgard. The enemy boiled towards them with their shrieking screams and demonic taunts, but not once did the line falter. The men on either side of Reya breathed almost in harmony, deeply and focused fiercely with intent and when Reya lifted her great axe once more, a unified roar of defiance tore the sky.
The Fallen Page 8
