Medieval Rain

by J. D. Sonne

  “Your idea of a walk-away does sound appealing,” Saruah said. “But if we are going to do it, it had better be soon—but you! You have been so sick. I don’t think you are up to it just yet!”

  At the beginning of this shift, Rane had faked a little spell where she reeled a little so that Saruah had to help her to the waterwork, but truthfully, she was feeling back to normal. If she had still felt sick, there was no way she would saddle Saruah with dragging an invalid friend around out in the wilderness. But by then, Rane wouldn’t have to fake anything as Saruah would be in on the truth. Rane sighed. That would be a welcome change. It was difficult in the extreme to keep all of this to herself, and she desperately wanted someone to help her vent.

  “Oh, I’m up to it, I assure you! My little stumble today was unusual. Why don’t we arrange to leave tonight? Let’s tell our mothers after our shift.”

  “All right,” Saruah said, still sounding a little uncertain. “But we had better make it one night—two at the most. With everything that is going on right now, especially with your stuff, I don’t think we could swing more than that and get away with it. My mother has been really crabby lately and I don’t want her mad at me.”

  “Same with mine!” Rane agreed. “Let’s meet at the lake path, right beyond the pipehouse on my estate. And bring Flywood.”

  “We’re going by horseback. Why?”

  “Yes. We’ll be able to cover more ground that way,” Rane said, not thinking.

  “What do you mean, ‘cover more ground?’” Saruah asked, “Isn’t this a walk-away? When have we ever taken horses on a walk-away? I’ll answer my own question: never!”

  Rane cursed to herself. The very nature of a walk-away was not to reach a destination; it was more to commune with Maraquan and her demigods: the trees, flowers, animals, waters, mountains, hills, and even the grass and shrubs. And, one didn’t commune with such delicate beings by pounding over pristine mountain and meadow paths with horses. But, she needed to get to her old camp if she wanted to show it to her friend, and if they only had two days, they would need horses. She decided to tell the truth, well, at least a partial truth.

  “There is a beautiful crystalline escarpment that I saw on my—adventure. I think you should see it.”

  The bell rang for the end of their watch, and Rane used the descent of the stairs to cleanse her face of guilt. She didn’t like tricking her friend into going on a walk-away for her own ulterior motives. And it could be a very dangerous journey, not only because of the normal wilds of Maraquan, but also because of the renegades that could still be in the area, and although she still thought of them as friends, she doubted they returned that sentiment. She waited at the bottom of the stairs for her friend.

  “Well,” Saruah breathed, bouncing off the last step to the ground, “This walk-away idea of yours sounds very enticing! I’ll talk to my mother when I get home and you do the same. And now that I think of it, the idea of horses is a good one. If either mother misses us, we can just tell them that we went riding. In fact, the idea is better than good! It is capital!”

  “All right, then,” Rane said, relief filling her. “I’ll wait for you beyond the pipehouse, at the end of the third watch!”

  ******

  Rane had to circle Treefall incessantly, the horse was so impatient to get into the woods. Rane guessed that the groom, Otter, hadn’t been as faithful as he said in exercising her horse while she was away, or the horse wouldn’t be skittering like this around and around in the dust. Finally, they heard hoofbeats in the direction of the pipehouse and Saruah appeared on her beloved mount, Flywood. Treefall actually reared in his excitement at seeing the other horse and rider.

  “Late, you’ll never tame the waters!” Rane yelled, mimicking Titled Nooro’s oft heard admonishment to tardy students.

  “Yes, Titled! It won’t happen again, Titled!” Saruah gasped as she sawed at Flywood’s reins, her horse ploughing to a halt.

  Rane waved the dust away from her face and chuckled. “You are assigned a troughlength of lines, Lead! They are due by the end of the day!”

  It wasn’t that funny, but the Leads were so intoxicated with the free air of their wilderness that they laughed, an insane sound similar to the trilling of archeraptors on the hunt.

  When they calmed down, patting their mounts’ necks to soothe, Saruah said, “So, I want to see this crystalline thing! Which way?”

  Lifting the reins and leaning forward in her seat, Rane said, “It’s up in that direction, past Mount Termonos. In fact, we will ride in its very shadow by the end of the day.”

  As closely as possible, Rane resolved to follow the route that she and Landman had taken when she had been kidnapped. It was true that she had been hooded for much of the way, but she believed that most of the landscape would be familiar to her. But first, she rode Treefall to the edge of the lake where she had first found Landman and stood her mount as she gazed pensively at the very rushes that had cradled the waterlogged virul.

  “Why are we at the lake?” Saruah asked as she cantered Flywood to the edge of the water. “The horses don’t need watering yet!”

  Rane simply smiled and led Treefall back to the scrabbled trail, thinking about how to broach the subject of Landman and the others and the camp to Saruah. She didn’t have very long, as the journey that had taken her and Landman three days would only take the horses in an alternating trot, walk and gallop one day at the most. She decided to put it in the form of a story and hoped she would do it justice. She slowed Treefall and waited for Saruah to catch up. She began.

  “Saruah,” Rane said, praying to the water gods that her story would hold all the right words to move her friend, “You are my best friend. I have a tale.”

  Saruah leaned over in her saddle and stared pointedly at Rane’s butt. “I don’t see a tail, Lead Rane! Or is it tucked in your breeches?” She laughed and went on, after a comic pause, “Oh you mean a tale! A tale! Go on, please.”

  Rane made a mouth at her friend, but laughed too. “My—‘story’—begins with my finding a virul, half drowned in the tulles of that lake we just passed.”

  Saruah immediately sobered up and her face was alight with the prospect of hearing the story of Rane’s abduction. Rane, of course, had been debriefed by the Titleds of not only their sector, but many neighboring sectors, but this account would be much more fulsome version of the event-- unadulterated facts with a best friend as an audience.

  Their compatibility as friends had Saruah inhaling sharply at all the right places and refraining from asking stupid questions so that the story could unfold without interruption. For instance, it would never have occurred to Saruah to ask, so why did you not tell the Titleds about the fleer virul? or judgments like, what were you thinking? or prurient queries about his looks or equipment. Saruah’s first gasp came when Shukad, suspecting Rane was up to something, discovered the virul in the pipehouse and attacked him, followed by a moan of appreciation and a giggle when the virul clanked her sister in the head.

  She became more silent as Rane described her length of time in the shackles, her eventual freedom after assuming a friendly attitude, fake at first, then a resumption of her fetters after clubbing the insubordinate virul, freedom again, and the evolving friendship as her dealings with the renegades increased. When their horses were close enough, she would rub Rane’s back as she wept when she talked about her confusing feelings for Landman and the rest of the viruls and females in the camp. And it was her turn to cry when Rane described both her yearning and dread at the prospect of rescue.

  But, Saruah could not keep herself from asking questions when Rane spoke of the waterwork.

  “You mean you let viruls work on their own? They came up with ideas? You say it was better built and more beautiful than ours?”

  “Yes, in a rustic sort of way,” Rane said. “They were capable of developing good techniques without my telling them everything, which, of course, I didn’t have time to do.”

  “Yo
u didn’t have to whip them? You didn’t have to kill them when they talked back?”

  It was Rane’s turn to be silent. She had never told anyone about her murder of Murman, not even the Titleds at the debriefing. It was time.

  Saruah’s only reaction was to nod grimly at the account and when Rane was done, she grabbed the reins of Treefall, leaned over and grasped Rane’s shoulder. She said, “It doesn’t sound like you had a choice in the matter. He would have killed you!”

  “He had a wife and children. Everyone just thought he ran away,” Rane said. “I can’t believe I feel bad about killing a virul. It’s not like I haven’t done it before, but it’s different when you are part of a community like that—his wife actually confided in me about him and complained about him being a slob and beating her. But she did miss him.”

  “It sounds like you did the camp a service by dispatching him,” Saruah pointed out. “And if she missed him, she shouldn’t have. Stupid female!”

  “Well, she wasn’t the brightest,” Rane agreed. “And she did say that she would be better off without him, but still. . .”

  And Rane went on. Her words became more rushed as she spoke of Landman. How her innards flipped upside down when he was near. How he would seek her out during the day for her advice and just so they could spend time together. What it was like to work closely with a man as a partner, rather than that of Lead and virul. She wept again, but this time Saruah did not comfort her with a caress or word.

  Finally, Rane ended with the devastation of the earthquake and subsequent argument with Landman and the others, and the even more devastating sight of her, Saruah, at the time of rescue. How Rane was at once happy and anguished to see her old friend approach in the forest.

  Mount Termonos leaned over them, spilling its alluvial foothills under their mounts’ hooves, and the two Leads rode for a long time, both silent with new thoughts, possibilities and anxieties.

  “So,” Saruah finally said. “It sounds like you are sorry that your captors are imprisoned on the Larad estate. It sounds like you almost would rather they were out.”

  Rane closed her eyes. Saruah’s words sounded hard, and Rane knew what was coming. How could you have allowed yourself to become involved with a virul? You are only experiencing holding syndrome. You’ll snap out of it, but better if you snap out of it now!

  Instead, Saruah held her silence until they were almost out from under Termonos’ monolithic presence, and then she only said, “We had better find our camp. The suns will be gone soon.”

  On Maraquan, the place one pitched camp could end up being a matter of life and death, so Saruah and Rane surveyed the area carefully before settling on a nice rise of high ground with a sturdy copse of trees at its back. They needed a high fortress that would protect both from rising waters from nightly storms and the predators that governed these outlying sectors. With the trees at their back and a fire at their fore, they decided that this little mound would serve.

  The trees above them also made excellent posts for their rain awning which they tied over their sleep and fire space. Soon Saruah had a merry fire throwing mischievous darts of light into the trees, and they watched night fall with the satisfaction of having created a camp that even Titled Nooro would approve of.

  They were both so tired that they actually fell asleep on top of their bedrolls, and it was midnight before they awoke, Rane first coming to because of the intense cold of the deep forest. She nudged Saruah and said, “We fell asleep. I can’t believe we didn’t freeze to death before I woke. Wrap yourself in your bedroll!”

  She leaned over Saruah when her friend didn’t respond and at first thought she was awake, just staring up into the vault of stars above them. Then she saw that the eyes were glassed over, seeing nothing. She shook her then, hard, and when she still didn’t respond, Rane put her hands on Saruah’s shoulders and began a frenzy of shaking that should have awakened the dead, but Saruah was still. Rane put her ear to her chest. She almost cried with relief when she heard and felt the faint rustle of breath and a dim heartbeat.

  “Don’t worry,” a voice said from the darkness of the trees. “She isn’t dead. She is just numb to life for a while.”

  Rane sprang to her feet and assumed a crouch. Whipping her knife away from its sheath, she spun around in a defensive maneuver stabbing the blade at the air around her.

  “Who are you?” Rane whispered through gritted teeth. “Show yourself!”

  A form emerged from the foliage and Rane, lowering her knife, gasped, “Shad! How? Where?”

  The Shad before her was not the Shad of the past. This Shad was clothed in heavy buckskin, a heavy leather cuirass draped over her shoulders and cinched at the waist with a heavy leather belt studded with bronze medallions. She looked larger and way more forbidding than the domestic female Rane remembered at the camp hearth. This was a warrior, and, at least in appearance, one worthy to be called a Lead.

  Shad strode toward Rane, but also went into a light crouching stance in answer to Rane’s own. “We mean you no harm, but we had to disarm your companion. We are becoming better at defense, but not enough to fight two Leads from the sector.”

  “We?” Rane asked. “What did you do to her?” Rane stooped and moved her hands over Saruah’s unconscious body. She found it in her neck. A pin arrow from a needlebeast. She pulled it out and stood, shaking it at Shad. She yelled, “Who’s ‘we’?”

  At her question, more forms emerged from the trees, some even trudging up the rise behind her. Rane counted twelve persons and as she turned in a full circle to see the company, she was astonished to see that the group was comprised of some of the females who had tended the hearths back at camp. All of them carried themselves like Shad, fighters that had thrown off their domestic fetters and had become Leads—perhaps untrained and unschooled, but Leads just the same.

  “Winsla! Ashney!” Rane said, recognizing Shad’s two closest hearth neighbors. She was ashamed that she hadn’t bothered to learn the others names, but their faces were familiar. “All of you—you’ve changed!”

  Shad still was defensive and had withdrawn a tiny reed tube from the small leather quiver that was strapped to her left shoulder. She loaded it with a pin arrow and held it near her mouth. “Lead Rane,” she said carefully. “I do not want to numb you, but I will if you attempt to harm any of us. And, again—we mean no harm to you! Stand down.”

  “What about Saruah? When will she—”

  As if in answer to her question, Saruah sputtered and struggled to sit up. Rane dove to her aid and lifted her to her feet.

  “You might want to leave her sitting, at least for a few pours,” Shad said, stepping back. “Needlebeast venom makes one feel quite nauseous for a while.”

  Rane said, “She’ll be all right,” but her declaration proved premature as Saruah leaned away from her in a woozy lurch and vomited. Rane immediately eased her back to her sitting position and held her hands on her shoulders to keep her from pitching over into the dirt.

  Shad sank to her haunches and surveyed the two Leads for a moment. “Why are you here? Have you come back to us, Lead Rane? We could use your help.”

  “Help? Help for what?” Without waiting for an answer, Rane led Saruah back to her bedroll, laying her down and covering her with skins. Coming back to the group, she sprang to the question pressing at her mind. “Shad! I was afraid that they had killed all of the females. How did you get away?”

  “They killed many of us,” Shad affirmed sadly. “But not all. Most of the families did die, it is true. The mothers could not escape with their babies and small children, so they were butchered. But we grouped ourselves in the cover of the forest and tried to make a plan to save them, but the butchery was too fast and final. We were too slow.”

  Rane saw that Shad’s face bore rivulets of tears, which the female quickly dashed away. “So, we resolved to train ourselves so that such a thing could never happen again. We are not good, but most of us can wield quivers of pin arrows—q
uite well,” she said, glancing over at Saruah who was snoring softly. “But we still do not feel able to best anyone, female or male, in personal combat. That is where we need your help!”

  The fire was very weak, its embers casting just enough light to make their faces seem to swim disembodied in an eerie halo. After checking on Saruah, Rane stirred the pulsing coals and beckoned to Winsla for wood from the pile near her. After resurrecting the embers into a decent flame, she sat back down and motioned for the others do join her.

  “You say you need my help?” Rane said softly, not wanting Saruah to hear her in case she was awake. “That I can certainly give you. I can train you—not only to fight, but, if you want, to secure your place in our sector. The Titleds and Leads will certainly welcome you, if not because of your willingness to learn, then on my word alone.”

  Shad looked slowly around her at the others, and said, “We are not interested in joining ourselves to such murderers. We would rather die than consort with such evil.”

  Rane paused. She had brought up that possibility not because she thought the renegade females would take her up on such a proposition, but just to make the opportunity available to them. She had interfered enough with their world that she didn’t feel it appropriate to hide any path from them. But, the appearance of Shad and her cohort did present a sterling possibility for her rescue scheme for Landman and the others. She would still try to convince Saruah to help her, but now even if her friend could not be swayed, these new allies may be the happenstance that could turn an abstract and silly notion into something much more substantial. And, they seemed primed for the suggestion.