by Stone, C. L.
“I’m not allowed to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not a dwarf.”
I cocked my brow. “You don’t know, do you?”
He ignored me and took another swig from his water skin. When he finished his swallow, his dark eyes, glowing orange by the flames nearby, fixed on my face. “What has the world come to when we let young girls into such battles?”
The protest was on my lips, but instead of answering him, I fired back. “What’s a dwarf without a beard?”
The challenge in his eyes drug up a wavering feeling inside of me. I was ready to defend myself, challenging his question with possibly a personal insult. I was counting on it hurting.
His voice boomed at my face. “If you want to live, you’ll never ask that question again!”
I boomed back. “And if you want to live, you’ll never question why I’m here again!”
The glares we exchanged were insufferable. I didn’t want to talk about how when I was younger, I ran away because I idolized the adventure and to escape people who didn’t want me. Now after fighting for so long, I fought for my brothers. I fought to help them survive. I did it knowing they’d do the same for me. And we all did for our people, to stop us from being prisoners behind a wall.
Girl or not, I did what any citizen should have been doing. None of my people questioned it.
I imagined he had similar reasons to be defensive of his beardless face.
He suddenly reeled his head back, and laughed, long and loud. He swatted me on the back. I wasn’t expecting it, but braced myself to stop from falling over on the log.
He kept his arm around me, a hand on my back and raised his firespit to the sky. “Ade, you’ve got something in you that I like.”
I beamed at this, proud.
And for a year, Thorne and I were inseparable.
I trusted him, up to the day he betrayed me.
CHAPTER TWO: IT’S OVER
DURING THE YEAR I TURNED seventeen, I awoke to a misty morning. I rose from the bedroll that I had laid out a month ago.
We’d been stagnant for ages. Our unit was awaiting word of what to do next, only information had been slow in arriving. But we were far from the capital, at the border near the crumbled wall.
I got onto my knees silently in the very early hours. I finger-combed through my hair to rouse myself. My hair had grown to my waist. I’d thought to cut it, perhaps short like some of the men. Only I usually braided it or pulled it back, and swiftly forgot about it. Today, I did the same, using a small leather strap to tie it away from my face.
I had guard duty. I needed to dress and go.
I rose as quietly as I could, turning my back on Thorne. At some point, since we’d stayed together, he became my tent partner as well. It was just as well. The other men who I’d usually joined in their tents prior, they’d recently started watching me as I dressed. It wasn’t bluntly. I’d punch them where it would hurt if they ever gawked at me.
But often, it was like they forgot I was a woman when I was in uniform, and when I was out of it, they remembered.
I imagined I was hideous, so I kept my uniform on at all times.
Thorne slept through the morning often. He was impossible to wake unless he wanted to be awake, and that was never in the morning. It gave me a chance to dress, without anyone else seeing me.
Except this morning, when I looked over at him, and I caught him up on his elbow as I was finishing putting on the breeches.
It startled me as I slipped them up my waist. “Did I wake you?”
“No,” he said. His eyes remained on me, at my bare waist, where my shirt had rumpled up a bit during sleep.
When I realized what he was looking at, I fixed it. “You don’t have to glare at me so,” I said. “I know how hideous I am.”
His thick brows bunched together until they almost became one. “Who told you that you were hideous? Did one of those brutes out there...” He began to rise and I recognized the anger building up, like when we prepared for battle.
I waved him off, going to him and urging him back to rest. “No,” I said. “No one would dare say it to my face. I could just tell. From how they look at me.”
Despite my push, he got up until he was cross-legged and sitting. He was quiet for a moment while he examined me. “Look, Ade-y-girl,” he said, the name he often called me, and he was the only one allowed without getting my boot in their stomach. “I’ll admit to not knowing much about human appeal, but you’re no more hideous than ice water is ugly to a man dying of thirst.”
His analogy made my mind drift. “So I resemble water?”
He snorted and then laughed, shoving me in the shoulder until I toppled onto the ground, like a turtle on my back.
“No!” he said, shaking with his chuckling as I scrambled to get up. “You’re thick in your vanity.” He stood up, naked, and presented me with a hand to get myself up by his aid. He never hid his own nudity, and I’d not thought twice about it until that morning.
I was comparing his male body to my own at first, wondering how he managed to walk with a branch between his thighs.
But something stirred in me as I was looking up toward his broad chest and shoulders. I thought at first it was jealousy for a shape I would never be able to own.
However, a well formed in my chest that day. I didn’t understand it. I wanted to touch him. I didn’t know why.
I wasn’t ignorant of sex. The men, when near towns, often paid for nightly pleasures. I thought it vile, the dainty woman not to my taste and often didn’t go with the men and volunteered to stay behind. If I followed the men to the brothel, I often I sat outside, the women unable to con me out of coin to go in...most of the time.
As I stood there, gazing at Thorne’s body, the well inside me wanted something from him I hadn’t yet experienced. But it was more than just having sex with a man, an indulgence I’d yet to experience. The well didn’t form in my loins, but in my chest. It made my breath quicken and my pulse race without prompting.
“Do you think I’m like water?” I asked, the tone of my voice changed into something I didn’t recognize. Softer, and it horrified me. My face caught fire the instant I realized it.
Thorne said nothing for a long moment, his gaze moving downward, but not really looking at me fully, just lost in his own head. He snapped his head back up instantly and waved me off. “Get yourself ready for your guard duty. You’ll be late.”
He was right, I turned away from him to collect the rest of my armor. “What are you going to do? You’re not usually up so early.”
When I turned back, he was looking at me again. There was a change in his eyes, something I didn’t understand. It was like he was seeing me new for the first time, didn’t recognize me, and was studying my face.
He reached out to me, his broad, coarse fingers traced along one cheek.
I held still, and my breath escaped me.
The surged in my chest spiraled out of control. That well, something pooled into it, but it wasn’t water. It was electrified by his touch. On fire.
It was a long moment like this, where I was confused, and he seemed to be just the same. The touch, the delicate way he held to my cheek, it was the only thing I could focus on.
He released me and I could suddenly breathe again.
He said nothing, waving me off as he looked in his pack for clothes.
I finished getting dressed in a hurry, afraid to say anything else. I wound my hair up quickly into a pile on top of my head and then put on a helm to hold it.
The well was still there, in my chest, as I left. It had emptied a bit, but it still felt like liquid fire had covered the bottom, warming everything.
I swallowed, trying to ignore the feeling. How ridiculous. I didn’t need to be making a fool of myself with Thorne.
The brisk morning air bit my face when I left the tent. I stumbled in my boots, righted myself, and then marched my way to the lookout point we’d set up near th
e hilltop, cutting off a main road. We’d surrounded our camp with a rock wall and spikes along the outside. We left only a few openings around it, but needed to guard those spaces, mostly in the last month it had only been wolves and other creatures that got too close.
One of the men was in a makeshift chair. His name was Ivan, and he was one of the tallest and broadest men in the camp. His arms were folded and he was sitting back, straining the chair. He twisted around as I approached. “About time,” he said, his corroded voice thick. He rose and picked up the sword he’d leaned carefully next to him.
“Am I late?”
“No,” he said. Ivan’s beard was growing in marvelously and I was jealous at his ability and for having such a fine one. “But we used to have two men out here on patrol.”
“We’ve split it up,” I said. “One at every...”
“I know that,” he said and he waved me off. “But if we’re going to continue to sit here like babies, then we shouldn’t get lazy, either. We should shorten the amount of time, to keep the one on patrol fresh.”
I had to agree with him. Being here for so long, we were straining for things to do while we waited for our next orders. “Maybe you should tell the Cap...” I paused, gazing out at the road.
The mist was thick further down the road, but not enough to hide the horse and rider coming at us full speed, about half a mile off.
It looked like a boy, maybe a few years younger than myself.
I found an arrow, brought it to my bow and aimed at his nose, ready. The enemy was tricky. Sometimes they sent children to distract us, or got them close enough to spit sleeping darts into the camp. It was odd he was alone. Another trick?
Ivan held out his sword, ready.
When the boy spotted us, he reigned in his horse, holding up a satchel to show us the side of it.
“I come for the Captain,” he said. “Let me pass.”
“Name your purpose,” I called to him. I kept my arrow pointed at his face, but slackened my arm.
The boy looked at me and then at my companion guarding the entry. He kept his hands up as he slid off his horse and approached.
He continued to show us the satchel. He appeared weary. “The war is over,” he said.
My arm slacked more and I lowered the bow completely. “What did you say?”
“The war is over,” he said, coming closer, showing us the satchel, with the seal of the king embedded on one side.
“What does it mean, it’s over?” I asked Ivan. Others who had been nearby were starting to come over from their tents, interested in what was going on. “How is it over?”
“It is when the king says it is,” he said, although he seemed displeased. His dark eyes met mine and he frowned. “He’s made peace with the opposing side. We’re no longer needed.”
Somehow, in the long years spent with the men, the idea of it one day ending never occurred to me.
No longer needed?
We let the boy pass, with one of the men escorting him to the Captain’s tent.
The others remained beside me. I’d put away my bow by then but I remained vigilant of the road. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Where will we go now?”
“Home,” one said.
“To...the capital?” I asked. “Do we patrol? Do we...”
“No,” Ivan said, and his tired face shook. “No, girl, we go home. You go back to where you came from.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You get married. You have babies. You join us at the taverns and we shall talk of the glory days of battle. We will talk of how we survived, of our fallen, and we will inspire the younger men of the future, when war calls again. That is our role now.”
I couldn’t believe it. In a daze, I watched the road, until someone told me to stop and pack up my camp.
The Captain left his tent, the boy walking off. I wanted to call to him, wanting to ask questions but unsure of how to utter my concerns.
I had no home.
There was nowhere to go to.
The Captain took one long look at me, nodded once and then turned more toward the others that had gathered around. “It’s true,” he said. “We’ve been disbanded.”
All at once, it seemed the men started to move. Some were swift, heading back to their tents. Others remained behind, talking to one another, clapping each other on the shoulder or even hugging.
Saying goodbye. Talking about what routes they would take, getting parties together to travel for the journey back home.
I looked back at the chair. Do I remain here? Didn’t someone need to watch out for...
Ivan beside me seemed to know my struggle. He planted a hand on my back and shook me where I stood. “Go collect your things, daughter of Yousef. By nightfall, there won’t be a camp to guard.”
I moved slowly, my body reluctant to leave a post I was in charge of, but no one hollered at me as I moved.
Feeling disjointed, I skirted around the camp, watching as others were waking up. Word seemed to move faster than I did. They weren’t in a super hurry to move on, but tents were being emptied so everything could be disassembled.
When I returned to my tent, I stayed outside. Our little spot on the outside corner was quiet. The fire pit just outside was cold. The pot we’d used for stew the night before gone, but still sitting next to the log Thorne and I had sat together on. Wood I’d collected last night was stacked off to one side.
I sighed heavily. I had to tell him. But maybe he’d understand how I felt. I was to go back, but had no idea what to do.
I readied myself, and then opened the flap to the tent.
His bedroll was still there, but Thorne wasn’t.
And the whole rest of the inside of the tent was in disarray. Blankets were thrown about. The little bit of food we kept in the tent spilled over onto the ground.
Did he hear before I got back? Did he throw things about in anger?
I was glad of it. He perhaps felt the same as I did. Lost. Maybe I should throw things.
I considered my options but then noticed his pack was gone.
And then I noticed mine was gone as well.
Confused, I rechecked again, sure maybe I’d missed something. Did he pick them up and take them to meet me somewhere? If so, I was hoping to at least bring one of the bedrolls. It’d take a long time to get back to anywhere civil.
I left the tent, scanning the camp, looking for him, expecting he was doing the same. We weren’t supposed to just leave. What about the tent?
I walked through the camp again, and when I couldn’t find him, I walked to the top most point, looking out among the men, hoping to spot him.
No.
He wasn’t here.
Worried now, I ran through the camp, asking questions. “Have you seen Thorne?” “Where’s the dwarf?”
All the answers were the same. “Nope. Didn’t see him.”
I returned to the tent, looking around again, seeking out clues as to what happened. My heart was a scramble of worry.
I was bending over to pick up some of the blankets, hoping for more answers, when Ivan and the Captain entered the tent.
I straightened up as they looked over the mess. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s not normally like this...”
Captain raised his hand up, a palm out. “When did you last see him?”
“This morning. Right before I came out for guard duty.”
He nodded and looked over at Ivan once.
It was the first time he appeared unsteady to me. Captain’s hair had grayed, as had his beard, in the years I’d known him.
Ivan didn’t falter, but looked me in the face with a dark and tired expression. “Word is he left in a hurry to the south. He’s not here. He’s gone.”
“I know he’s gone,” I said. “Something happened. I should go after him. Something’s wrong.”
Ivan frowned and approached me. He grasped my chin and shook me hard, something the men hadn’t done to me in a long time. “Listen, girl, he’s betrayed you. He took your thin
gs, probably what was valuable, and he left. Well before word of the war being over had come to him.”
“No,” I said, the weight of disbelief dropping on me. “No...what? Why?”
“No idea,” Ivan said, but he released me and looked back at Captain. “If it was before the word was called out that the war was over...”
“Technically the war was over weeks ago,” Captain said. “And he was here voluntarily on behalf of their people. Desertion doesn’t really apply here.”
“Theft does,” Ivan said. The anger rising up in him, and he looked over at me. “He took your pack?”
I hesitated in my answer. No. This was wrong. He wouldn’t leave. Not without me. Not...taking my things. I had little but... I looked around again, picking up blankets and looking underneath the bed rolls where I’d slept.
My coin purse was gone.
Ivan and Captain talked, but I didn’t hear them. I sat back on my heels, gazing at the side of the tent.
The well in my heart I’d felt that morning crumbled.
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