by RW Krpoun
“You look like a cat on a warm stove,” Arian grinned at her as he sat at the table. “One with cream on her whiskers, in fact.”
Despite herself Janna smiled, something she rarely did as the scar made most facial expressions grotesque; much of her reputation for steel-hard calm and utter cold-bloodedness came from the disfiguring stroke of the Void-Dwarf’s axe: with so much muscle and nerve damage, she was forever denied a normal range of physical expression. Arian never seemed to notice, though; he rarely referred to her scar, and then only to say that it set off her eyes, or some such absurdity that never failed to warm her heart. “It’s nice to get out of Oramere now and then, especially after a long winter cooped up with the same old faces.”
“None of them are getting any lovelier, are they? Present company excepted, of course,” the monk grinned. “I’ve finally haggled that bastard up to a workable price and unloaded the Goblin carvings and leather work, and the smith over on Walnut Street bought the fittings from Gradrek Helleth, which wraps up my bulk items. How about you?’
“The last of the ingots changed hands this morning; I’ll sent the four rankers home with the money and a written report to Durek today. We’ll sell off the stones, hire the kids, and go back ourselves in the next few days.”
“Not in too much haste, I hope; we could dally about the luxury of Imperial culture for a day or so, as befits our exalted rank and positions. I had hoped to buy you a dress and take you dancing.”
The Silver Eagle cocked an eyebrow at that, a gesture she hadn’t been able to do when her face had been whole. “Really? A dress and dancing is an interesting idea. But I thought you liked it when I wear trousers.”
“Tight ones especially,” the monk leered. “But I would like an evening without all the hardware and rank insignia, without the weight of a sword on my hip and Rosemist’s pommel hitting me in the side as we dance. There’s something about spring that takes me back to when I was a lad and the dances we would have after the plantings, the whole village out swirling and jigging in torch-light. I must be getting old, but lately I seem to spend a lot of time thinking back on the days before I had killed anyone.”
“We’re both getting old, but it’s a nice idea. Let’s stop by the orphanage and then see what the tailors in Teasau can offer.”
The times before he had killed anyone, that was a phrase only a veteran warrior could appreciate, Janna mused as the two walked through the muddy streets of Teasau, dodging the dripping eaves and melting icicles. She had been the bastard child of a rich landowner and a serving woman in the western Empire; the big estate had been a happy place, the servant’s quarters comfortable and full of love, the work far from onerous, and the staff just a big family. In her teens it had shrunk somehow, gotten so small that she threatened to explode from within if she didn’t go somewhere or do something. She had ended up as an assistant to the game keeper after being a spectacular failure as a serving maid, messenger, and water-tender. There on the eastern slopes of the Mondschien Mountains the job of gamekeeper was a dangerous one, and (besides becoming her first lover) the poacher-hunter taught her the ways of the forest and her first weapons-use. When the game keeper was called up with his Militia cohort for the Second North War and didn’t return, she had gone to the temple of Beythar to gain assistance in joining the Imperial Legions in order to seek out revenge for her lost love (it wasn’t until years later that it occurred to her that wanderlust, and not battle, might have kept her game keeper from returning), and she was recruited for the Silver Wardens, the temple Guard, later rising to the ranks of the Silver Eagles.
She looked at the people passing her on the street with a new interest; the men were tradesmen or artisans who worked at the same place and the same occupation day after day, returning home at the same hour each evening to their wives and children; other than service in the Militia or Legions, they would not know the heft of a weapon or the grip of armor. Most of the women would wear nothing but dresses, trousers being a garment of necessity for women in some trades or for riding, but not something they would wear in public. Janna watched a woman close to her age and nearly as tall walking down the opposite side of the street in a somber wool dress, a colorful shawl around her shoulders, talking animatedly with a similarly-dressed young woman who was obviously pregnant and just as obviously her daughter; a young man, the older woman’s son and the younger woman’s brother, followed the two with an expression of good-natured boredom, lugging a wicker basket piled with purchases from the market. For a moment the older woman looked up and met the Silver Eagle’s eyes and the two looked at each other across an unbridgeable distance of past choices and experiences; then the moment passed and they moved on by each other.
“You’re pensive today,” Arian observed as they paused to examine street signs at an intersection.
“If I hadn’t followed the sword, I would be a grandmother by now, or would be so shortly,” Janna mused.
“If I hadn’t followed the sword I would be living in the same village that my father and grandfather did, making barrels with my brother or fixing wagons like my uncle,” the monk shrugged. “Every time I walk past a cooper’s or wheelwright I think of that. Whenever my father and his friends got together and drank, all they talked about was the places they had been and the things they had done when they served in the Legions, because that was the only time in their lives when they had been somewhere other than our district. I wanted something more than that, something other than the same job, the same place, the same dull days. My brother’s still back there, shaving slats, ageing wood, bending hoops, building barrel after barrel. Not for me, that life. I like a bit of action, travel, some sense of things accomplished, and red-haired swordswomen with flat tummies.”
“I like the travel, and the action,” Janna nodded. “And the estate drove me mad; I thought I would go insane when I was young, everything moved so slow and just so, even the scandals were predictable and muted. Still, one does wonder what one misses.”
“I visited my brother a couple years ago, as you know.” Arian grinned at the memory. “He was twenty pounds heavier than me, and tearing out his hair over his oldest, my niece, who was infatuated with some nere-do-well. Ten days there and I was begging for an excuse to leave.” He gave Janna a sidelong glance. “Why don’t you come with me this winter, we’ll go spend a couple weeks with him. He’s good for a laugh, and you can change diapers and chase kids until the domestic urge is gone.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Bringing your unmarried, sword-wearing bedmate with you to the old home town, Arian? That would be a scandal they would never quit talking about.”
The monk laughed. “Let them, it would give them something to tell each other the whole winter long. Really, we ought to do it, or go see your family, let Durek run the Company by himself for a couple months; he would probably enjoy it.”
“Nothing much left of my family,” Janna tossed a five-pence piece to a beggar. “My mother and grandmother are dead, along with my father; my brother was killed north of the Ward while serving in the Legions, by the Eight, it’s twenty-two years now. I’ve a few cousins scattered around the district, but none I would care to cross the Empire to see. But I would like to see your village, Arian, and meet your brother; that’s almost respectable, going to meet your beau’s family. You’ll make an honest woman of me yet.”
“Respectable? Why, we’re church people, me a Bother and you a Silver Eagle, decorated heroes and mainstays of the army of the Light.” The monk clapped her on the shoulder. “We fill a function, you and I: like Kroh’s Guardians, we kill what threatens their safe, boring lives; that we turn a profit while we do it changes things not one whit.”
Janna wrapped her left arm around his shoulder and gave him a quick hug, Rosemist’s hilt banging against his sheathed dagger. “You’re right; I get just maudlin now and again. I don’t regret the path I’ve chosen. I’ve enjoyed my life, and I would not trade it for another’s, but sometimes I wonder what it would be l
ike, on the other side of the street.”
“So do I, sometimes,” Arian admitted. “But a month at my brother’s cures me of it, usually after the first week.”
The New Start Hospice had started life as an Imperial barracks dating back to when Teasau had been fifteen miles south of the Ward and an important supply depot and staging area for the Legions watching the Wastes. With the shifting of the Ward north ninety years ago and the military moving with it a large number of buildings had become surplus and easy to acquire from the government.
The founder of New Start had acquired the barracks in the twenty-second year of the Third Age, just ten months after the Ward had shifted north; the military had leased it to the founders of the hospice for the nominal fee of one shilling per month, with a thick list of provisions restricting the hospice staff from altering the building. The Imperial government had moved the Ward north by dint of military force, and they were keenly aware that the Orcs, Goblins, and Void-followers who had lost the land did not consider the issue settled; the possibility that a setback could lead to Teasau being back on the frontier and thus a garrison town again was a real one. Five years of success at holding the new Ward changed Imperial thinking, however, and in the year twenty-seven of the Third Age the government sold the barracks outright to the hospice for a single gold Mark.
The hospice, which was an orphanage supported by charity, no longer looked like the barracks it had once been; decades of hard use and frequent repair and modification had left little of the original structure and none of the original warlike purpose.
The two Badgers learned all of this as they were given a general tour of the facility by its Head Keeper, Sola Vinke, a tall widow of just over forty years of age and severe demeanor, the great-granddaughter of the orphanage’s founder. “We have just over two hundred children here, boys and girls both, ranging in age from newly born through age thirteen. We find homes for those we can, apprentice those we can’t, and feed, shelter, clothe, and educate them while they are here. For most, this is the only home they will ever know as a child. Naturally, we receive no Imperial monies, as orphans are hardly Imperial business; we subsist on contributions from private individuals and Temple assistance.” The sternly elegant woman seated her guests in a small garden that had once been a javelin butt and sent for tea. “We take in children whose parents are deceased and who have no other family fit to tend to them, and children abandoned by their parents. Unfortunately, we are the only orphanage in Teasau or anywhere else close by, and there are far more unwanted children than we can tend.”
“It must be difficult to feed and house such a large number of children,” Arian nodded, stacking ten five-Mark pieces on the low stone table between them. “Please accept this donation on behalf of the Phantom Badgers. Where do you get your staff?”
“Thank you. Temple personnel help a great deal, but most of our staff are unpaid volunteers, nearly all women of my age or older who have raised their own children to adulthood and now have free time on their hands. They work out well as there isn’t much they don’t know about child-rearing, cleaning, or cooking. Of course, all the older children help with the maintenance of the place, and many of our alumni send money to help. Thank the Eight this barracks was built so soundly; relocation would be impossible these days.”
“I believe our Captain has written you about our needs,” Arian prompted gently.
“I understand you wish to take a number of our orphans into your care, as free labor at your base of operations.” Her tone of voice and the chill in her gray eyes indicated Head Keeper Vinke did not find the prospect a happy one.
“Yes, you see, the Phantom Badgers acquired an ex-Dwarven outpost called Oramere some years ago and an Imperial Charter to develop the lands around it. At about the same time we rescued eight orphans from Void-followers during a winter campaign. We had intended to turn the children over to an organization such as yours when spring came, but by then they had proved to be so useful as support staff for our hold that we desisted. They act as helpers for the cooks, do all manner of chores, and are educated in reading, sums, history, and the like. The problem facing us is firstly, eight helpers are no longer enough to maintain Oramere with its growing garrison, and secondly that the children we rescued have been growing up and leaving their helper role. Of the eight we rescued, one has joined our Company, another has become an apprentice to our Company Wizard, a third has become the castellan’s clerk, and a fourth is directly in charge of the laundry; the remaining four are all entering their teens and will soon be apprenticed out or trained for skilled tasks. In short, we need a new draft of laborers, and from this experience we feel orphans are our best source. After all, they cost us little in upkeep, and they benefit as much as we do. And I assure you they will receive as good of care at Oramere as they do here; they will work hard, of course, but they will be fed well, clothed appropriately, and educated.”
“I would hardly think a mercenary’s camp is the appropriate environment for raising a child,” the chill hadn’t eased a bit in Vinke’s voice. “However, much as I dislike it, your offer will be honored; as I said, we have far more needy children in and around Teasau than we have room to house, and each orphan you induct into your labor corps will mean a bed for a child living on the street.”
“I’m sure you will find that your charges that come to Oramere will not suffer for their upbringing. We require eight children, preferably four boys and four girls so they’ll grow up in the company of the opposite gender, healthy children around age ten so that they are old enough to do chores but not so old that we will have to replace them quickly.”
“Would you be willing to consider half-breed children? So far we’ve found them impossible to place anywhere else, so that each one we receive remains with us permanently.” Keeper Vinke shook her head. “The child is blamed for the rape of the mother, and is lucky not to be drowned at birth.”
“We’ve no objections,” Arian shrugged. “One of our Corporals is a half-Orc, and the Legions have many a mixed-blood in their ranks.”
“The military is the usual destination for those we house,” Keeper Vinke’s expression indicated that she didn’t think much more of the Imperial Army than she did of mercenaries. “We have seven mixed-blood children here of the appropriate age, four boys, three girls. All but one, a girl, are half-Orcish; the seventh has Goblin blood. All are good children who have been with us since not long after birth, well-behaved and desperately eager to please.” The grim-faced Keeper looked away from the two serjeants, blinking. “Despite their young age all are very much aware that they are shunned and despised by much of Imperial society; little wonder so many of their kind spend their lives in the Legions acting upon the basic hope that by such service they will prove to Humans that they are not to blame for their conception. I will not tolerate their being placed in an environment where their birth will be held against them in any way.”
“They won’t be discriminated against,” Arian promised. “That you have my word on. Seven half-breeds is a large number, even for a hospice of your size.”
“We have gained a reputation for taking in mixed-blood children, and so many who would have been drowned at birth are instead left upon our doorstep. The Human children in our care are adopted occasionally, but the mixed-bloods stay here until they are old enough for adult positions. All seven have been here since birth.”
“I see; again, you can count on their receiving exactly the same treatment as the Human orphans we have, which is to say, as good of care as we can provide.”
“Good.” The Keeper was all business again, pulling a small bound ledger from a case at her waist. “The eighth child, a girl...yes, here we are, ten years old, spent the first eight years of her life on a small farm in the new lands, parents and siblings killed by bandits.” Vinke looked up at the Serjeants. “Of course, we mustn’t include a child in your group who has lost her family to Orcs or Goblins, given the origins of the other seven.”
�
�I understand,” Arian nodded. “When and under what circumstances do you feel we should meet with the children?”
“Tomorrow, right here, I should think. I’ll brief them as a group as soon as practicable today, and then speak with each individually as well. Tomorrow after the evening meal will have given them time to get over the initial excitement and concern.”
“What will we need to provide for them?”
“They will require a couple blankets apiece for the journey, and a bag or backpack, or perhaps a small duffle such as sailors often have; all will have suitable clothing and some small belongings but none have the means to transport these items. I do not recommend bringing toys of gifts for them under these circumstances; it is important to impress upon the children that they are entering a business proposition and not a family environment, and that neither of you two will be a primary caregiver. Be friendly but not overly demonstrative for the same reasons, and keep in mind that for most of these children, this hospice has been the only home they have ever known.”
