Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga

by Regina Watts

  “She’s a gentle one,” Branwen told me, a faint smile on her lips as she gestured toward the stabled horse. I nodded, guiding the stallion into the empty space beside them.

  “They all seem very well-bred—a testament to the family who loaned them to us. Would we had a bit more in the way of gold! I’d leave them a tip for their fine expertise.”

  “We could have more gold, you know.”

  “Branwen.”

  I knew what she was getting at right away and hoped the stern tone of my voice would ward her off from the subject, but she continued nonetheless with her eyes wide and her tone emphatic.

  “You think those durrow aren’t planning something much the same with us, Rorke? You think they won’t just use you to acquire that ring you all keep talking about, then leave you behind—or, worse, enslave you again?”

  “They would have a hard time enslaving me up here, with me the picture of health and El’ryh farther away all the time.”

  “Who knows what spells or potions these cunning dark elves could produce. You can’t trust them, Rorke. They live beneath Urde and away from the light of the sun for a reason.”

  “What an absurd thought! You don’t know the first thing about them, Branwen. The durrow are just like you—surely you can see that by now, especially after last night.”

  “The people of Klexus have nothing to do with slavery,” she said tersely. “Nor do we engage in breeding programs, nor do we consort with chthonic deities. We are happy, healthy people, well-balanced and fair-minded.”

  “So fair-minded that you would write these women off based on nothing more than the failings of their cultural environment. The ways of the durrow as a species may be distasteful to us aboveground, but our friends are not to be held accountable for the sins of their people.”

  “Really? None of them? Not the queen who ruled them, or the slavers who sold you to her?”

  Very well! So she had a point—but I was still by no means ready to concede that ethical failings such as the tacit support of slavery signified anything about their individual inner nature. “Had they been born in another place and time, they would abide by different standards. Not a one of them knows anything truly different. Slavery and all the unfortunate problems that come with it are normal to them.”

  “Normal! “Unfortunate problems.” You mean like beating and murdering and raping slaves? Those kinds of unfortunate problems?”

  While my nostrils flared, my back against the proverbial wall, Branwen folded her arms.

  “The durrow are different from us. They can’t be trusted, Rorke, no matter how seductive they are—in trusting them, we hamper ourselves by being forced to travel at night. We’re risking our necks for some ring when all you want is the scepter.”

  “You’re a fine one to speak of trust!”

  Realizing the volume of my voice, I forced it to lower while I told the elf, “You shot at me with a crossbow. Then you left me for dead just as much as Hildolfr and Grimalkin did. The durrow, meanwhile, have done nothing against me that was not quickly resolved or clearly ordained by Weltyr.”

  “Oh, yes…very convenient that Weltyr ordains you to do whatever you please, up to and including keeping a harem of women around.”

  “We keep telling you, durrow culture is different—are you jealous?” Her expression transfigured at my question and I almost laughed, catching myself at the last second lest my mirth bring her rising rage to the surface. “You are, aren’t you? You know, Branwen, these durrow are exceedingly reasonable. They are not the least bit jealous of you. Did you not enjoy yourself with Valeria last night? Did she show you any ill will or unkindness? For that matter, have any of them?”

  “Well.” Branwen fell back upon one foot, her weight shifting with the stance to make her appear somewhat off-balance. “Well, no.”

  “That’s right. It would seem to me that they’ve treated you as one of their own—whatever the normal standards of their culture would be. The fact is, Branwen, they are not among their own culture anymore. They left it. If they were the types of women who truly fit in there, don’t you think they would have stayed?”

  Her nose and ears pink with a combination of frustration and embarrassment, Branwen said nothing. My tone gentler now, I advised her, “I am disappointed to see that you have yet to change, Branwen, and I hope that you will soon. You know you don’t have a valid argument against these women, which is why you can’t say anything to their faces. Instead you would rather run away with me; risk facing Hildolfr and Grimalkin without their help. Perhaps you ought to investigate in your heart why such danger is preferable to you.”

  A footfall alerted us both. We turned to find, shielding their eyes from the torchlight positioned upon the outer walls of the stables, the subjects of our current discussion.

  “Ho, Burningsoul!” Odile’s hair was drawn up in a bun that left her neck and collarbone attractively exposed within the confines of her light leather armor. “We were just looking for you. Ready to give us our first lesson?”

  “Certainly, if you three don’t mind a walk. Come along, let me show you how to introduce yourselves to the horses, first…Branwen?” I looked at her in as genuine a welcome as I could muster in that moment. “Would you care to come with us to the base of the mountain?”

  “I think I’m still feeling a bit tired tonight.” Baring teeth in a forced smile of her own, Branwen passed me, then the durrow on her way from the stables. “Perhaps next time.”

  While she disappeared, the durrow paid her no mind. Only I looked after her. Instead my lingering companions hurried into the stables with a series of delighted noises to be surrounded by animals that were to them so very strange.

  “Phew! They’re awfully smelly.” Indra laughed and wrinkled her nose while Valeria delicately sneezed.

  “That’s only the stables,” I assured them, drawn out of my reverie by the charming sound of the Materna’s allergy. “Once we’re out in open air, you’ll hardly notice.”

  That much was true…if only because there was so much more to focus on when one was learning the art of horseback riding for the very first time. Somehow I didn’t realize how much there would be to explain until I found myself out there at the base of the mountain, demonstrating the mechanics of saddling, mounting, and riding the beasts. In the Temple I had been responsible, after a certain age, for helping teach new students the basics of sword-fighting, so I was not a terrible teacher—and Odile, praise Weltyr, was delighted by how quickly her vague familiarity with the act of riding returned to her in the blue light of the wisps arranged around our field. She proved a competent assistant to me after the first hour.

  Valeria and Indra, however, were not quite so fast when it came to learning. I soon found myself cursing Branwen for her refusal to come along. Such an absence meant that, until we were all comfortable with the idea of more independent and unsupervised riding, the two most unseasoned trainees would be forced to take turns and thereby extend the lessons. Nevertheless, it was exhilarating to see the delight on the women’s faces as they gradually grew adapted to the act of climbing astride the beasts; glorious to see the bounding of Valeria’s flowing white hair as she urged her horse into a canter about the field.

  Were it not for the bat—for Gundrygia—it would have been a fine night, indeed.

  It may have been a plurality of bats, actually. I still to this day am not sure. All I knew then was at one moment, when Indra was taking her turn practicing a canter, something swooped down upon her from the dark. Crying out, Indra ducked her head while looking up, her whole body cringing and her heels digging into the flank of her mare. The horse whinnied and, at this familiar command, tore off at a gallop while Indra cried in surprise.

  Odile cried out after her friend, frightened by the sight of the mare’s charge into the brushes and through the high boulders. Trees grew plentifully throughout much of the mountain’s lower quadrant. If I did not move fast, Indra could easily have found herself lost—at the merc
y of the horse and its familiarity with the region.

  “Stay here,” I commanded Odile and Valeria, urging the second stallion into motion in pursuit of the unpracticed rider. The beast, obedient to my command, galloped off into those same brushes, around the same boulder, and far off from Valeria and Odile in a matter of seconds. I was confident that catching up with Indra was a matter of choosing the right path through the trees.

  What a fool I was to still dream that anything could be so simple!

  The light reached my eyes a second before the forms did—regular torchlight, not the blueish tinted kind produced by my comrades’ inborn magic. I attempted to slow the horse, but too late. A pair of gimlets leapt from the darkness and, with a surprisingly practiced arm, lassoed the beast about the neck to provoke its fearful rearing. I was only barely able to hang on and keep myself from being thrown to the ground. By the time its hooves were again upon the dirt, a few more baleful little imps had leapt from the darkness to jab at me with the tips of primitive flint spears.

  “Enough,” called a woman’s voice. “Enough! Leave him alone.”

  Much to my surprise, the yipping lizard-men around me glanced in the direction of the sound and hastened to obey. I looked around myself, seeking Indra and her horse anywhere within in the torchlight.

  Instead, I only found Gundrygia.

  The wild sorceress slunk from the dark when her worshipers had settled down and my mount had followed suit. My fury with my captors and fear for Indra leveled into shock to see Gundrygia’s approach. Her furs had been abandoned and exchanged for gauzy garments, semi-transparent things that had been perhaps crafted by magic and were, in the end, no more substantial than those textures we feel in dreams. Still, so far as my eyes were concerned, the fabric was as real as the curves to which it clung. As real as the decolletage whose cut it emphasized, or the leg that peered through its pale pink drapery.

  Gone was the eye make-up from before, and the tattoos along with it—but for all the civilizing effect these things had, Gundrygia’s hair still seemed an indisputable tell of her wild nature. A crown of bright red poppy flowers adorned hair that, though pulled up and back, was still as unkempt as a feral creature’s pelt. Her crooked smile, too, reminded me of beasts, and the stare of her eyes was that of a madwoman, albeit one who had been driven to such dire straits by the insurmountable task of spending her life so painfully beautiful. In her hands were all number of flowers, one of which she dropped at her feet before selecting another.

  “Let him down,” she said, drawing the white petals of a lily across her lips and down the curve of her neck. “Don’t let his stallion wander off.”

  “What have you done with Indra?”

  Gundrygia’s chin tipped up and back. She laughed, shaking her head, then disappeared beyond the torchlight at the slow pace of her swaying, slithering gait.

  Gritting my teeth, I dismounted the horse and offered it but brief comfort. “Don’t harm a hair on this animal’s head,” I told them tersely, looking between the lizard faces and finding perhaps more understanding than I had expected to. With another reluctant glance around, glad I was in the custom of bringing Strife wherever I went, I rested a hand upon the pommel of the blade and walked into the darkness after Gundrygia.

  The trail of flowers dropped one by one marked her path through the darkness. I followed the lilies and the lilacs and the daffodils, each comfortable upon the bed of moss over which I trod with no hesitation. The farther I grew from the torches, the thicker that darkness became. Where had she gone, damn it? What had she done with Indra? It didn’t seem possible that I should have been able to make it this far into the trees without meeting the dark elf or her startled horse. Where, then, were the both of them?

  A soft light gradually edged into my awareness, revealed by the increasing color of the flowers at my feet. In total darkness, they had appeared variations of the same blacks or grays. Now, flower by flower, each was more colorful. So was the mossy eart upon which these flowers lay. I looked up and found the trees through which I’d been walking opened up ahead of me, their space permitting me to step into a clearing that reminded me somehow of the sepulcher into which I’d fallen.

  Yet this space was the polar opposite of that ancient chamber of stone and death. The exquisite clearing, where Gundrygia had arranged her body back upon a bed of moss, teemed with the sweet sounds and aromas of life. Crickets chirped and fireflies glowed softly in the air, calling their lovers to them while similarly hopeful frogs croaked in the pond beside Gundrygia. Seeing me, the hand that had been resting against her cheek trailed over her breast. Her dark gaze slid over my body, my face, and then rested with anticipatory pleasure upon my eyes.

  “Hail, Rorke Burningsoul, Paladin of Weltyr…the hero who woke me from my slumber.”

  “Yet here you seem to have thrust me into one of my own.”

  “This is no dream,” she assured me, one knee bending to permit the slide of a silken hem along her thigh. I struggled to maintain eye contact while the exquisite witch told me, “Though I suppose it’s true enough to say this space does not exist. Not in the conventional sense of existing.”

  “I don’t care about that. Where’s Indra?”

  “Back in the real world,” she said, laughing at me, her impudence incensing my desire. “Yes, by now she should be out of the trees…maybe even with a better grasp of riding. You’re welcome.”

  My hand tightened around Strife’s grip. “So you lured me here. Why?”

  Another mocking laugh peeled past her lips, though more softly. The hand that had trailed over her bosom continued its journey and, at her hip, steadily gathered the fabric of her gown. Higher, higher still, the hem of that garment rose along her thigh.

  “Why do you think?”

  Her question was a whisper, a smirk quirking her lips just barely up past her teeth. I inhaled over my shoulder at the exit of the evidently enchanted grove. Seeing my hesitance, Gundrygia clambered upright upon her knees and threw herself forward. Before I could move she clung to my waist, her earnest yet mad eyes plastered upon mine between fronds of her wild hair.

  “Would you deny me, Paladin? Would you look around this space I’ve made just for us and refuse me the satisfaction of my lust?”

  “Why me?”

  Her smile widened. Kissing my stomach through the fabric of my tunic, she told me, “Because it was you who woke me, of course.”

  “No,” I told her, catching her by the hair and yielding a gasp, “that’s not why. Tell me the truth, Gundrygia.”

  But I had already made a mistake more fatal than following her into that grove in the first place. No matter what touch was lain upon her, Gundrygia perceived only pleasure. Soon I would learn there was nothing with which I could dissuade her from my seduction.

  “Oh, yes”—she gasped as I tugged her by the hair away from me, heavy lids revealing eyes amorously aglow—“yes, Rorke, pull my hair…oh, treat me roughly, discipline me for my wicked ways. Turn me toward your god, Burningsoul! Win me for Weltyr with the raging flame of your passion.”

  “Who are you?”

  She produced another infuriating cackle at the question. I shoved her away from me entirely, ignoring her drama-laden cry as she caught herself upright upon the flower bed where I’d tossed her.

  “So cross with me, Rorke! Whatever have I done to earn such rage?”

  “Using my friends as tools in whatever game of yours this is supposed to be,” I told her, my hands forming fists when I found that the path into the clearing had disappeared. “And mocking me with this secret knowledge you have of my heritage.”

  “Mocking you!”

  Springing upright, the wild woman threw her arms around my neck and caressed my face. I stared coldly as she shook her head, her devious expression a pantomime of cajoling tenderness.

  “No, no, Paladin,” she insisted, her body fitting so perfectly to mine that I had to repress a groan of agonized desire. “No, I would not dare to mock one so m
ighty. One meant for such great things.”

  “How can a man think on the great tasks of his future when the past is a stranger to him? Speak, Gundrygia, or let me go free—but do not continue in this taunting, this lording of your knowledge over me.”

  “What knowledge lies in me that does not already fill your heart? What mother could beget such a great hero as thou, Burningsoul? What father’s seed could engender a savior of Urde?”

  “Damn your riddles!” Frustrated, I caught her by the arms and shook her. She laughed, moaned, showed her teeth in a terrible grin while those eyes clapped upon mine. “Tell me what I want to know. How is it that you know all this? Where was I born, whose son am I?”

  Her eyebrows lifted toward her hairline, knitting her smooth brow with cruel humor. “Art thou not the son of Weltyr, Paladin?”

  What was it about Gundrygia that so erased my sense? I struggled to contain the emotions she inspired through her arrogant manner and the cruel retention of knowledge I had pondered for a lifetime. All the childhood nights spent in the dark, wondering why I wasn’t good enough for my parents—wondering if they were nobles or serfs, kind or cruel. Imagine young boy wondering all of that for years on end, before he finally gave up and decided the issue was better uncontemplated. The inferiority. The isolation. The helpless decades of frustration.

  It was that young boy, still so much a part of me at that age, that guided my hand in the impulsive slap I will forever regret.

  I had never hit a woman before—outside of an actual battle, of course. Weltyr willing, I never again will lift a hand to any creature of his making outside of the proscribed circumstances. But in that grove, so soon after the argument with Branwen and now infuriated to find Gundrygia had endangered my friend, lured me here, and told me nothing, I could not withstand the impulse. My hand cracked across Gundrygia’s face, the sound blotting out her gasp.