by Jane Stain
Seeing the overwhelmed and puzzled look on the other woman’s face, Jaelle paused for a moment and really thought about what she was going to say.
For once.
“The short of it is, I live in a different world. Everyone is specialized in what they do, and each of us only knows how to do that one specialized thing. I give tours of a collection of things from this time. My older sister teaches young children how to read our picture drawings. My dad assembles one part of a rod we use to catch fish in our time. There are benefits to this specialization. We have much more complicated tools and clothing and shoes and houses and methods of transportation, communication, and even of applying medicine. But in exchange, I’m pretty much helpless here in your time. I don’t even know how to make a dress, much less wear-in a pair of shoes. Those were things my grandparents talked about, but silly me, I never listened.”
Almba gave Jaelle an amused look at this last bit.
“Well that hasn’t changed in all the years between now and your time. No one listens to their grandparents now, either.”
Jaelle giggled at this, and the two of them shared a companionable laugh.
And then out of the clear blue sky, Jaelle’s mouth popped off again, saying exactly what was on her mind, much to her embarrassment.
“Is it all arranged? Will she have him no matter what?”
As soon as she heard her mouth say it, she wanted to suck the words back in ― more than any she had ever said.
But Almba took Jaelle’s hand and smiled a sad smile as she led her out of the water and over to a large rock, where they wrung out their dresses as best they could while still wearing them and then took clean seats to let the sun dry them the rest of the way.
“I suppose you’ve gone out of your way not to notice what Morna was doing, and I can’t say I blame you. She’s left, Jaelle. She’s gone back to see what she can find of her people. This broch wasn’t the only one attacked, and she fears the worst.”
Jaelle looked Almba in the eye for a somber moment.
“Such a tragedy.”
Almba nodded, but then showed Jaelle the tiniest smile.
“Yes it is. But life goes on.”
Jaelle gave Breth’s mother her tiniest smile in return.
“Yes, that it does.”
They didn’t engage in any more deep conversation, but rather watched everyone playing in the water around them.
Jaelle felt that something had changed between her and Breth’s mother, though. In a good way. She returned to the sacred grove refreshed and much better-looking, in her own opinion, not to mention better smelling. She was relieved to see and smell that the men and children had bathed as well, likely while she slept.
Breth’s eyes lit up when he saw her coming, and he got up from his place amid the other fighters and sauntered up to Jaelle with his chest all puffed out. He smelled like soap, thank the Lord.
“I see you found the bathing pools.”
She gave him an amused smile.
“More likely, you ―smell― I found the bathing pools.”
There it was again, that amused smile that made his whole face light up and become ten times more handsome even than it was during repose. It wasn’t right, for a man to be that handsome. But it felt wonderful to have him giving her that smile.
He gently took her hand and tugged her toward the new shelter.
“Come on, there’s cold roast venison for lunch.”
The food was still laid out on the trays, but it had been covered by many layers of linen. Instead of plates, they used large leaves from a nearby tree. In addition to the venison there was leftover porridge. It tasted okay cold with the meat.
Most of the other people had already eaten, but a few sat with them, smiling and chewing.
Once they were finished, Breth once again turned his intense gaze on Jaelle.
“You held your own pretty well during the battle. Will you take part in our training for the attack on the fort? I know you said you were ready to go attack the invaders right away, but we like to make sure we’re in top shape, and we just spent twelve hours not fighting.”
Everyone nearby laughed at this, a hearty laugh that came from the bottoms of their lungs and pushed out a great deal of noise. Even the women laughed this way, unlike the feminine giggle Jaelle’s father had encouraged.
She looked around at all the faces. They were friendly. There was not an ounce of reproach or teasing or arrogance or any of the negative looks she would expect people to show an outsider when they are preparing for a battle after they had lost loved ones in their home.
Tears came to her eyes, she was so touched at their acceptance of her.
She looked around for Nechtan’s leering face, but she didn’t see it. Her gut told her to ask Breth where the druid was, but she didn’t want to ruin this nice moment when everyone was making her feel so welcome. Maybe he had gone off somewhere too, just like Morna, and she could enjoy Breth’s company in peace.
But she also didn’t want Breth to get too big for his britches — now that he was wearing them. Feminine intuition told her that in order to keep this man’s interest, she had to keep him on his toes. Keep him guessing at where he stood with her.
And so she put on some chutzpah, placing her hand on her hip.
“I figure I can take anything you guys can dish out. Lay it on me. Let’s have some training, by golly.”
She must’ve said the right thing, because everyone cheered.
Breth gave her a big smile and then stood and shouted out a bunch of directions which amounted to the non-fighters and children setting a watch and then all the fighters pairing off against each other in various small clearings in the grove for individual combat with the sword.
Jaelle found herself in single combat with Breth.
It wasn’t a good test of her field abilities, of course. This was a duel, a ‘one, two, three, go!’ kind of thing. Out in the field you seldom got a warning when someone was about to attack.
This was more like a game, and she enjoyed it.
The two of them fought ten practice bouts. Breth won the first one. Jaelle the second. Breth the third, and so on. Jaelle won every other time.
They were both sweaty now, and they sat down in the wild heather among the trees, to rest and drink the water some children brought them.
After she downed most of her water, Jaelle gave Breth an ‘I’m onto you’ smile out of the side of her mouth while wrinkling her brow at him. And then she waited to see if he wanted to know what she was thinking. She was thankful that she didn’t have to wait long, that he was genuinely interested in her thoughts.
“What makes you smirk so?”
She downed the rest of her water and handed the empty gourd to a passing child, who handed her a full one, which she also half emptied.
“You shouldn’t have gone easy on me. I don’t get the training I need unless I have to try my hardest, and I wouldn’t have been upset if you had won every time. I expected you to, being much stronger than me and all.”
He drank down his second gourd of water and chuckled.
“That cuts right to the heart.”
She dipped her chin quickly.
“What does?”
He shook his head, giving her a wide grin.
“The fact that you beat me five times and you weren’t even trying your hardest.”
“Oh come on. You weren’t trying your hardest either.”
He leaned in closer, until his face was only a foot away.
“I was trying as hard as I could and not hurt you.”
She scoffed.
But he cut her off, gazing into her eyes with admiration.
“You’re an amazing warrior, Jaelle. Each time I figured you out, you changed the way you moved. Used new tactics. And most of your moves, I’ve never seen before.”
Hm, maybe he was telling the truth. She did have the benefit of two thousand years of progress in sword fighting techniques, let alone SCA sparring pa
rtners from all over the world.
But she wanted to keep the mood light.
And keep him on his toes.
“Well I’ve never seen your moves before, either.”
She playfully shoved him by the shoulder.
But this backfired.
Because his fighting reflexes were at least as fast as hers.
Gently but firmly, he grabbed her wrist and used her momentum to lie her down, pinning her the way a wrestler would, with her wrist on the ground and him leaning over her.
His eyes asked her a question as old as the mountains that surrounded them.
She wanted to be coy, but she knew she’d better give him a definite answer. Feminine intuition again.
“I want you Breth, but not like this. Not without a promise of faithfulness. And it’s too soon to ask that of you. We’ve only just met. Let’s give it some time, agreed?”
He slowly backed off, lifting her up so she was seated again on the flowers and greenery between the trees of the forest.
“Do we have time? Do you know when you’ll be going back, or if? Deoord made it sound like the fae could take you at any moment. I thought we just had to enjoy the time we’ve been given. I would love to have more time with you. Much more. All your time…”
She was tempted to take this as a throwaway compliment, but he was sincere. It showed in the yearning gaze of his blue eyes and the set of his jaw, and she could feel it in the caress of his hand in hers. He was offering just what she wanted, and she needed to be honest with him. And forthright.
Gazing into the depths of those blue, blue eyes, she spilled her most vital secret.
“Deoord was protecting me when he implied that only the fae knew how long I would be here.” She tapped the helmet in its bag. “I have the means to leave at any time. But I keep wanting to stay. And anyway, I’ve never used this before, so I don’t know for sure, but I think I can probably leave and come back as many times as I want, so long as I have this. As for whether I’ll stay here with you most of the time? Like I said, it’s too soon for me to make that decision. I would need to spend at least half a year with you, before I would make that kind of commitment.”
The wheels turned behind those blue eyes as he mulled this over, absorbing all that she had said. While he did so, a warm and joyful smile slowly but surely took over his whole face.
Before long, they were beaming at each other.
Not long after that, he once again had a question in his eyes. This time, it wasn’t such a big question.
This time, her answer was yes.
Their kiss was electrifying, it was so full of chemical attraction. But he was also tender, even as his kiss promised her passion in their time to come.
“Dinner! Everyone come to dinner!”
Once they heard this, they smelled the delicious venison stew and helped each other up and walked over to the shelter arm in arm, to cat calls and whistles and smiles from all who gathered there for the joyous group meal that was a celebration of their clan’s unity.
Over the next week, Jaelle trained with each and every fighter in the clan, teaching them all different moves. But she gave most of her time to Breth.
Marcus sighed an extra heavy exaggerated sigh for the benefit of his generals, who were sitting on top of the stand with him in their comfy chairs, watching the men drill with spear and sword the way they had been doing for a week straight. The way Roman soldiers had been doing all his life.
He turned to the general on his right, a man he thought of only as his first general. In fact that was the man’s rank, and that was what he called him.
“First General, do you think the men have done this drill enough times today?”
The man made a show of thinking it over, but Marcus knew he was just going to agree with him, and he appreciated that about the man. He had sense enough to defer to his better.
Sure enough, First General nodded at Marcus.
“Yes. After all, they do still need to eat before they sleep.”
Marcus turned toward second third and fourth generals.
“Do you concur?”
Of course they all nodded yes.
“Yes.”
“I do.”
“As you say.”
Marcus turned to his bagpipers and gave the orders which would put the men in in their barracks for the night, where they would each be handed a bag of field rations consisting of hard jerky and prunes.
Eighteen
Jaelle woke up early in the morning. She was cold, and she soon discovered the cause. Breth had gotten up. He was missing from where they had snuggled together every night under the shelter out of the rain with everyone else.
In fact, all the fighters had gotten up.
Her feelings were torn between feeling left out and being glad that they let her sleep. This week had been thrilling, but exhaustingly physical. She had lost ten pounds and looked almost as svelte as the other women. Amber and Kelsey had teased her about it of course, to the extent that she almost had to beg Amber to call the museum and explain that Jaelle had left on an unexpected vacation and would be out a while. Both of her friends had done the research she requested, but had found nothing specific enough to help.
After running her hands through her hair and rinsing out her morning breath with a mouthful of whiskey ― which served really well as mouthwash even though she couldn’t drink more than a swallow without choking — Jaelle went in search of the fighters and found them by the river bank, thanks to directions from some of the children who ran back and forth everywhere, like lizards.
As she got close, she heard the fighters talking heatedly and rushed to see what was going on.
“Just the fact that they’ve attacked brochs two, three, and four as well means that we need to retaliate now, before they come back and finish us off.”
“No, we need to wait for their runners to come back from brochs five, six, and seven. Help will come, just not as soon as we thought. We have enough supplies for another month here, at least―”
“What makes you think brochs five, six, and seven haven’t been attacked as well?”
“She’s right. The time for waiting on word from those who man the distant brochs has passed.”
“I agree. It’s time for us to take action. The invaders will expect us to wait for reinforcements. If we attack right now, we will have the element of surprise in our favor.”
When Jaelle got to the group, she saw that the runners who had been sent out as messengers had returned. Gest, Uvan, and Dhori all smiled at her, and she returned their greetings.
Breth met her eyes and gave her a welcoming smile, too. He was downright stunning in his role as leader of the fighters, wearing command the way some men wear fashionable clothes.
“Jaelle, you get your wish,” he said. “Tomorrow, we launch a surprise night attack on the fort.”
He held out his arm to her, and she walked into it, where he held her by his side as he explained his plan to everyone gathered there.
An inexperienced woman might have thought his hold was casual, but Jaelle knew better. Holding her like this was Breth’s way of declaring her his, and she knew just the man who this declaration was meant for. Her eyes automatically scanned the crowd for Nechtan, whom she hadn’t seen much in the past week.
When she found the druid, he was looking the other way, rather on purpose, the way it seemed to her. Good. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any more trouble. Jaelle had been called a drama queen before, but she was far from it. She disliked confrontation, actually. It was just that she wasn’t willing to put up with people’s BS. She always stood up for herself, but she never started the drama.
Grateful to have one less thing to worry about, she let her eyes wander back where they wanted to be.
Exuding confidence in his role as the leader of raids, Breth was showing the fighters the model he had built of the Roman fort and the nearby wall out of the wet sand on the riverbank. Using sticks and rocks and leaves, he showe
d them what they needed to do in order to make his plan for their surprise night attack work.
“Lutrin’s group will cut off this gateway in the wall so that the twelve guards on night watch can’t return to their fort. Talorac’s group will take out those guards. Meanwhile, my group will sneak in over the wall on the other side. Any questions or advice?”
The fighters didn’t raise their hands, nor did Breth call out names or use any signal that Jaelle recognized, but even so, only one person spoke at a time. It was a puzzle she worried in her mind throughout the whole conversation.
“You shouldn’t sneak over the wall. It will take too long. Just go in through the gateway that the others will make clear.”
Breth acknowledged the woman who had spoken with a polite nod and then shook his head no.
“They’ll be expecting us to do that. When I say this is a surprise attack, I mean we’re going to do what is least expected. Surprise is our only advantage, so we need to make the most of it. Climbing over the wall will allow us to take most of them in their sleep, and we will need to do that, seeing as how they outnumber us three to one. But I appreciate the advice. Keep it coming.”
From her place of honor at Breth’s side with his arm around her, Jaelle looked closely for some sort of signal to pass between Breth and the next person who spoke, but she saw none. Nevertheless, one man spoke up and everyone else remained quiet. She resolved to notice what the signal was the next time.
“Well then, if we’re going to do what is least expected, then why have groups at all? Groups are expected and more easily seen and heard. Why don’t we just go in pairs?”
Again Breth gave a polite nod, but this time he didn’t shake his head no. Instead, he began adding more sticks and more leaves and more stones to his model, spreading them out all around the outer edges of the fort.
“Excellent point. I agree. Groups are noisier and more conspicuous, and pairs will make it easier for us to surround them and come in from all directions. Yes, I like it. Let’s go in pairs.”