by Liv Savell
Still, doubt colored his thoughts. Was there any way they could be sure it was Allee? He looked down at his cup, thought of the admonition to take better care of himself. How would Delyth have known if Alphonse had not told her?
⫸
“No!” Meirin snapped. “I am no more an expert than you are because, as you told me, you only traveled with Alphonse and Enyo when they weren’t bound yet. That was why you had to get to the basin in the first place! Once she got her artifact, she was truly incorporated with the body! As Maoz is with Gethin. As—what did you say that other God’s name was? As with Tristan! You didn’t know he was a God that entire time!”
Frustration and fatigue were coloring her temper, and Meirin struggled to rein it back in. “You’re both being illogical! You know nothing about Enyo now. Only what she was before the basin. And from where I stand, she is nowhere nearly as dangerous as her son. Mascen—we have to warn our people! Enyo is a child having a tantrum, Mascen is a true God, tearing apart our home.”
Swallowing, feeling her chest tightening with the rush of shouting, Meirin turned away from Etienne and Delyth and started taking down her tent. This was ludicrous. They had no weapons; Mascen had ruined Delyth’s sword and taken her spear. Etienne could barely do rudimentary rune magic.
They needed an army. They needed more bows and spears.
They needed a plan that was more than just “find the artifacts, stop the Gods, hope Mascen doesn’t destroy Thloegr.”
“And what do you propose we do when there are three Mascens? Or five or ten?” Delyth demanded, standing up so quickly that she turned over the pot of porridge, spilling the thick grain into the fire. “While we run off to let people know about the one God, the situation would be getting far worse.”
“Or better!” Meirin turned on Delyth.
Delyth took a deep breath, seemingly trying to calm herself, to control her anger. “Look, if you’ve given up, then go. Run along home and tell your people about Mascen so you can all huddle together and hope he doesn’t come. I’m going to Esha’s temple to get her artifact and stop the Gods from becoming any more powerful.”
Meirin couldn’t just return to Mynydd Gwyllt. Not alone. If she returned by herself, spouting frantic warnings about dangerous Old Gods, she’d be dishonored. She had been ordered by her War Chief to assist Delyth and Etienne. To find Gethin and bring him back, safe. If Delyth and Etienne went on without her, and she returned alone… No one would believe what she had to say, and she would be considered a coward—a title worse than murderer to some.
“Maoz didn’t seem dangerous or deranged—Only your Goddess. Perhaps having the Gods back would be better! If you haven’t noticed, it’s not as if Thloegr is thriving. His people—” Meirin jabbed her finger towards Etienne, who was watching uncomfortably, “ still have their Gods, and they are doing just fine! Not broken into clans always at each other’s throats, struggling to tend to their farms.”
“Enyo had her good moments too,” Delyth snarled, her voice suddenly very dark. “Quiet moments spent gazing at the moon or wildflowers. Sometimes all she wanted was to sit with Tristan or eat good food and look up at the stars. Then, the next day she would set the side of a mountain on fire, call a three-day blizzard on a summer morning, or yank the still-beating heart out of a poor farmer’s chest and try to force me to eat it. And all of that was before she had control of Alphonse’s body. Mascen is her son. Do you really want to face more of him? Gods more powerful still?”
The truth of Delyth’s words struck Meirin and irritated her more, though her retorts died in her throat.
As badly as she wanted to go back to her clan and warn her friends and family… if the other Gods were as mad as Mascen seemed to be…
Her anger was fading as quickly as it had sprung up, leaving her hollow and mute. With an insulting jut of her chin, Meirin resumed tearing down her tent and stowing it in her bag.
Delyth turned away. “I’m going to look around. To make sure we don’t run into any of them. I hope you’ll have come to a decision by the time I get back.”
And with that, she leaped into the air with a few thrusts of great, black wings, leaving Etienne alone with Meirin. “What are you going to do?” he asked after a long moment.
“Pack my tent,” she replied as if that was what Etienne was asking. She knew full well it was not. He wanted to know what she would do once Delyth came back. What she would do when the time came. Continue on their original quest, or run back to her people to warn them of the unspeakable dangers arising in Thloegr.
And truthfully, she didn’t know what she would do. One way, she felt like a coward, the other a fool.
“Is it better to be foolish or gutless?” Meirin asked, pausing in her furious packing to stare at Etienne across the fire. Breakfast spilled in the embers, where Delyth had left it to burn. Her attempt to prove she had ‘spoken’ to Alphonse.
Which was impossible. Wasn’t it?
✶
Etienne watched her at a loss for a long moment, uncertain. Which path was foolish and which gutless? Neither continuing trying to stop Enyo or trying to convince the Mynydd Gwyllt would be easy routes to take, and though he saw the faults with both, neither seemed purely foolish either.
It all depended, he supposed, on what you were trying to do: survive the situation as it was or keep it from getting any worse.
There wasn’t any guarantee of a good outcome either way.
“I don’t think that’s the right question,” he said, still standing stiff and useless. “I don’t think loyalty to your people is cowardice, no matter what Delyth says. But then, neither do I think stopping the Old Gods is foolish.”
Foolhardy, maybe, but that was beside the point.
Meirin’s gaze held Etienne’s for a moment longer before her mouth twisted in a smirk. “So you stand in the middle? The wise mage, seeing both paths—how Ingolan of you. But you didn’t answer my question. Which is worse? Cowardice or stupidity?—I would suspect a man of education would say stupidity, but you’re not much for war either, are you?”
With her packing completed, Meirin dropped her bag containing the tent and swallowed down the rest of her tea.
Etienne considered her question a moment, swirling the contents of his near-empty teacup around, so that leaves swept up its dented sides. “Once I would have said that stupidity was the worse option, but I’ve since changed my mind.” Etienne put down his unfinished drink. “Horrible things can be committed in the name of cleverness and stupid ones in the name of bravery. Better to have both, I think. Or, if you have to have just one, then better to be dumb and brave. The brave idiot can do less damage than the clever coward.”
The mage raised a hand to run through his hair only to stiffen with his arm still in the air. He hadn’t meant to insinuate that Meirin was either of those things. Or that it applied to this situation.“In general, I mean,” he stammered. “As like a— a thought experiment.”
“Of course. A thought experiment. Do you experiment on your thoughts often, Etienne?” She grinned, the warpaint already applied to her lower lip, pulling her smile into something fiendish. Her temper seemed gone now, replaced with her usual rhathymia.
The fire crackled beside them, and the clearing was quiet. Delyth gone.
Etienne moved to pack his own tent if only to give himself the air of surety that Meirin nearly always left him lacking. He didn’t understand her question—it had the ring of something nonsensical. Was she teasing him?
He shrugged, feigning a casual attitude. “Don’t you?”
Shoving her dark hair over her shoulder, Meirin’s grin only widened. “I mostly experiment on others' thoughts. It’s more entertaining.” Coming forward, she moved to the opposite side of his tent and started to take down the canvas covering the poles.
Her hands moved smoothly, confident in the task and her dark eyes strayed to his face often. Each time Etienne looked up, and Meirin caught him looking her way, she would chuckle. “Shall we
spar while we wait for Delyth to return?”
Experiment with other’s thoughts, indeed. For all his cleverness, Etienne felt as though he was always a step behind the warrior, and now that she had moved closer, he found it even more difficult to concentrate. His fingers slipped once, twice on the rough canvas, Meirin’s laughter echoing in his ears.
It seemed to take him an age to process her question, and even when he did, he looked up with his face twisted in confusion. “But you lost your spear…”
“Your hand to hand is terrible. You could stand to practice.” She shrugged as if she hadn’t just insulted the mage and nodded her chin towards the clearing across from the fire. “Call it an experiment, eh?”
Etienne closed his now-full pack and wiped his palms against the rough cloth of his trousers. Hand to hand sparring sounded too close. Meirin was confusing enough at a spear’s length.
But neither did he feel like he should refuse. She was right. His fighting abilities were paltry at best, and he would need them before this whole mess was over.
“An experiment, right,” Etienne said nervously and trotted over towards the open space Meirin had indicated. He held himself tensely, unsure of how to begin. Should he just try to hit her? Would she let him know when to start?
“Let’s say—” She stood in front of Etienne, knees slightly bent, arms held loosely at her side, ready to spring out and block or smack. “Best two out of three? Whoever knocks the other over gets the point?” Simple enough to remember, if not to do.
There was little doubt in Etienne’s mind who would take that point, but he nodded anyway, stubbornly trying to appear confident. She made it seem so easy, her air of down-to-earth competence. “Alright. When do we start?”
Her little smile was all the answer he got before Meirin was launching herself across the distance between them, palm landing against his chest and balling in the front of his tunic before her free hand grabbed his shoulder.
Perhaps if she had been slower or said “and go” Etienne might have warded her off, but as it was, Meirin was tossing the mage across her hip and towards the ground forcefully in a matter of seconds.
Meirin fought much the same as Delyth in form and yet very differently in attitude. Where Delyth entered battle with a frightening abandonment, Meirin danced around, feinting or tricking. She was, of course, smaller than Delyth but also a less straightforward person. Wily.
She stood over Etienne, who lay in the dirt on his back, and drew an invisible one in the air. One point for Meirin, zero points for Etienne. She never seemed to go easy on him.“Come on, mage. Toss me around a bit. It’ll be fun.”
Air was suddenly a commodity, and Etienne took a gasping moment to gather enough of it to fill his lungs, glaring up at Meirin. He was not certain how he’d ended up on the ground so quickly, the clan woman's compact form moving faster than he could react.
When he caught his breath, he glared at her and climbed back to his feet, brushing himself off. “Maybe if you’d teach me how I could.” After all, their sparring so far had concentrated more on fighting with weapons.
“Grab me. Throw me.” Simple enough. But then, because Meirin wasn’t always the contrary creature she pretended to be, she gestured slowly, demonstrating. She stepped closer and planted her left arm on his chest, balling her hand into a fist with his tunic in her clutches. With that done, she reached for his left shoulder with her right hand. Grabbing the meaty portion she twisted to her left, hauling him incrementally forward.
The further she turned to the left, the more Etienne was off-balance until he was hunched over and teetering to stay on his feet while she kept propelling him down over her hip. Had this been faster and with more force, he surely would have been tossed just as easily as the first time.
Instead of letting him fall, Meirin turned back around and released Etienne’s shoulder and tunic.
“Of course, if you were bulkier or had a good stance, I might not be able to get you so easily. I doubt I could use this move on Delyth, the mountain.” Meirin smiled, her tone teasing but not mean.“Here. Try it on me.”
Only a little uncertain, Etienne nodded and raised his arm to fist in her tunic, studiously keeping his eyes away from her face and her quick brown eyes. He gripped her shoulder with his other hand and then parrotted the motion at speed and with as much force as he could muster.
And it worked. Meirin was off-balance, tumbling over his hip, on her way to the soft earth of the clearing.
Only, he was going with her.
The clan warrior had locked her hands about his wrists and used the momentum of her fall to pull him down so that for a second, all the world was a blur. Then, her foot pressed into the curve of his hip and he changed direction, coming to a stop on his back once more, having been flipped neatly over Meirin’s head.
Etienne groaned. Of course, she couldn’t let him have it.
But he wasn’t about to stay down. He had flipped her, whether or not it had gone exactly to plan, and there was still a point to win—training rounds didn’t count. He pushed himself to his feet, still breathless, and launched back into her direction.
She scrambled to her feet just as quickly and whirled. While he grappled with her shoulders, attempting to flip her again, her hands gripped behind his neck.
She yanked downward, forcing him to hunch over. Her knee came up to bump against his belly, forceful enough to be disorienting but certainly not hard enough to cause long term harm. She twisted, bringing his head to be locked between her side and the crook of her elbow, free hand coming to grip her wrist, completing the headlock.
She was panting as she hauled him about, a smile evident in her voice. “I think you should spend more time on your knees, mage. You look better this way.” Her tone was more flirtatious than demeaning.
Etienne spluttered, his face red from more than just the fighting, but no witty comeback was rising to his lips. He put his hands on her arm where she kept him clamped to her side and pushed, squirming to get free until, with a sudden rush, he had popped his head loose and went flailing back to fall on his rump.
He could feel his ears burning, but his idiot mouth was open in a grin, caught somewhere between embarrassment and humor.
She wanted him on his knees, then?
“Does this mean I’ve lost?” he asked, a little ruefully. “Two points to the mighty clan warrior?”
“A grand victory indeed.” She propped her hands on her hips but didn’t gloat. “Do you feel as though you’ve lost? I taught you a few new techniques, and you did successfully toss me the one time.” Finally, Meirin offered him her forearm to help him back to his feet.
Etienne reached out and took her arm, still smiling. He couldn’t quite bring himself to think of the bout as a loss, even with his pitiful showing. She was right; he was learning. It was just hard to be a beginner in something new after proving yourself a master in something else.
“A victory for us both, then,” he said as she pulled him up. “Because I did toss you that once. Sort of.”
Instead of letting go of Etienne’s arm, Meirin tugged him closer until there was little more than a breath between them. Her grip was firm but not demanding, and a playful smile was curving her lips as a shadow passed overhead.
Etienne’s breath was still coming too quick, his heart speeding up behind his ears. He was too close to Meirin to think straight, a rush of blood blotting out his thoughts.
Or rather, a rush of wind.
“Mascen is no longer near here,” Delyth said as she landed, and the mage flinched, stepping back a little guiltily. When he turned to look at her, he couldn’t read her face. It was impassive, as stone-like as he had ever seen her.
“How do you know?” Etienne asked, recovering, though his cheeks were still aflame.
“His path is easy to follow.” Delyth looked northward, her shoulders tense. “The swath of destruction leads towards Caerthleon, but there is no telling whether or not he has reached the city.”
; ⫸
Meirin released Etienne’s forearm and turned to pick up her pack. Delyth still needed to tear down her own tent, but then they could be on their way. She caught Delyth looking at her in what Meirin could only assume was a questioning manner, and the warrior shrugged.
“War Chief Tanwen told me to help get Gethin back and stop the Gods if possible. While I still think this is a foolish errand, I’m not disloyal. I’ll help.”
And since Meirin didn’t care much for speeches or sentimental moments, she turned away before Delyth or Etienne could say anything on the matter. Leaving their campsite behind, she found the stream and crouched to wash her face and hands, filling her canteen.
If she was perfectly honest with herself, Meirin could admit that her orders were not the only things keeping her with Etienne and Delyth. When her own anger had receded, she had realized that Delyth had made some fair points. If Mascen could nearly kill Enyo, a Goddess contained within a mortal body, then Enyo in her original form must be even worse.
And while Maoz seemed uninterested in harming them, Tristan—Va'al had proven at Mynydd Gwyllt that he was as dangerous, swift, and brutal as his mate.
Who was to say whatever deity they brought back next would not be like Enyo and Va'al and less like Maoz?
Mascen was an obvious problem, but one that was well over her own knowledge or strength to deal with. She didn’t have magic, and she was no legend, to take on a God and survive. Meirin knew her own limits.
It was easier, nicer even, to deal with something she might actually have an effect on.
Plus, there was that intriguing way Etienne stuttered whenever she teased him. He was an interesting man. As thin and devoid of color as she was dark and muscled. Meirin thought of herself as strong-minded and good-natured, but next to Etienne, she felt nearly a dolt. He clearly had a sharp mind and no use at all for his body.
The harsh contrast was new and exciting. All the men she had been around in the clan were much the same as she. Warriors. Brutes.