Near the end of the snow season, Preinon again called upon his fledgling army, and began to drill them again, in expectation of the first thaw and the advancement of the Knights of Darkfire in the marching season.
Adria saw first hand how the mood of the Runners’ camp changed, as Preinon spent his days in a distant glade with room for a hundred Hunters to maneuver into different shapes. Some among the Runners even went with him once or twice, when they were not busied by other tasks, but none fully joined their ranks for any length.
Adria now felt torn between her loyalty to her uncle and her affinity for the Runners, and she divided her time accordingly for awhile, in an attempt to find some balance.
Unlike the Runners, fighting in rows with blade and spear and bow held some appeal for her. She was already somewhat adept at the styles Preinon taught, having grown up within the citadel and trained a little with Hafgrim, and then alone, and finally when allowed by Brother Rodham. Mostly, she simply enjoyed being treated as one of them.
Preinon showed no deference or slight towards her, and there was a comfort in knowing, as she drew her bow or set her spear, that there was a whole line of comrades doing just the same. When she released, when she braced to meet the charge of still only imagined horsemen, she was not alone.
And this same assurance grew among the others, Adria could see, though not as surely or as swiftly as it did among Aeman Knights, who lived a life of order even beyond the battlefield.
The Aesidhe are accustomed to freedom, Adria realized. It is more difficult for them to move and act in imitation.
Still, Adria felt that she learned more from the Runners’ way of life than from Preinon’s adopted Aeman tactics. They hunted often, both for themselves and for the Shema Ihaloa Táya, and sparred with one another frequently in moments where no critical tasks need be completed, much like the young boys of the citadel in Windberth had.
Adria often found herself the recipient of challenges, and though she knew her opponent was holding back the greater part of their ability, slowly she felt her own skill with blade and spear and fist and foot grow.
Such contests were always informal, without expressed rules, though for some time, each time she fought, their blades remained sheathed, their spear-tips wrapped in hide. Still, she usually remained bruised and battered for days, both in body and in ego.
As her martial training advanced, she was challenged not only to fight Runners, but also to try and avoid them as if they were an enemy, or to seek them out. All her skills came into play for such challenges, those she had gained hunting and fighting and following Mateko.
Adria found herself scrambling up pine trees, trying to keep the snow from falling from their branches. She looked for signs of passage and for places to stage an ambush. She sometimes remained out long enough to need food, fire, and even shelter. She rested without sleeping, tainábe, letting her mind and body still, but remaining alert to any motion or sound which might betray a Runner.
When she prepared to fight, hours from camp, she knew she might need to return with sore or even broken limbs. Sometimes, she felt a blade at her throat, when her alertness failed her utterly. Often, her hunter found her more at ready, but then her fighting skills were no match, and she was obliged to surrender, but with honor.
Rarely, Adria found her prey first and gained the upper hand. Once, she was able to return unwounded, her battered quarry limping behind her, and felt a first true sense of victory among the Runners.
“Oh, you must have fallen from a tree,” Mateko teased the loser, Kseku, as he welcomed them back into camp.
“It is true,” Adria answered for him, smiling. “I was going to catch him, but he just looked so heavy...”
Several around them laughed at her good humor, and Adria was congratulated more than once.
About this time, she was asked to go on a few short scouting patrols, and she welcomed the opportunity. They usually went in pairs, which made Adria a little uncomfortable, for her confidence was not yet great.
What if she is wounded? she wondered as she walked a few paces behind Ihanila. I cannot carry her, and might not even know how to return for help.
When she went out with Shísha, Adria was mostly obliged to stay quiet, which was just as well, since watching the Holy Woman’s movements was as fascinating as a conversation to Adria.
No one would claim that Shísha was the swiftest among the Runners. Nonetheless, she made her way with surprising ease, and over time Adria developed some idea of the ways in which Shísha sensed the world around her.
Her sense of balance was perfect, so that she knew how the ground was likely to slope in any direction. Any leaf she touched seemed to describe the entire plant or tree. When the wind blew, the animation of the sounds and the scents it carried painted a picture.
And where other Runners used the sounds of animals to communicate with one another, Shísha used them to communicate with everything. When other senses failed, Shísha made the sounds of squirrels or of woodpeckers, and the faint echoes which returned told her the locations of obstacles around her.
Alone, Adria tried some of these, with only limited success. Still, she could imagine how, when perfected, they might combine to show a world not so different from the one she knew.
“Do you see colors?” Adria asked, once they had built their camp together that night.
Shísha seemed to think about this for awhile, and finally she resigned with a shrug. “I am not certain,” she admitted. “I know the smell of green — of grass and leaf and frog. I know the feel of the yellow sun and its blue sky, and the gray of rain. I taste the red of berries and the greyblack of smoke. It is hard to say what I see and do not, even with the memory of eyes.”
Adria nodded thoughtfully. “Did the Runners rescue you from the camp... the camp of sickness?”
Shísha shook her head, frowning. “It was before the Runners,” she said. “It was Sisters who rescued me.”
Adria shook her head, thinking she had misheard the word as Aeman. “You have sisters? Were they not in the camp?”
“No, Pukshonisla,” Shísha answered in Aeman. “It was women of the Sisterhood who rescued me.”
Adria’s head was still shaking, even more confused.
“This was when they were newly arrived,” Shísha explained. “Before your father’s wars, before your birth, before the War of Scars.”
“I thought that my father brought Taber and the Sisterhood to Heiland after the war.”
Shísha shook her head. “They were not called the Sisterhood then, and Taber did not yet lead them. They were an older church, but became what they are now during the wars, and after your Matriarch.”
Adria nodded her understanding. She knew the Sisterhood had existed in another form, but she had thought it was only in Kelmantium. She had not realized they had come to Heiland.
“They sent missions all over the world, alongside the other temples of the old gods. They were not overly welcome in Heiland. But they were strong in medicine and in learning. They studied the Aesidhe culture and language, lived among them. They took in the People’s children who had survived diseases and famines that had decimated tribes, and they put them into schools to teach them. They meant it as a kindness.”
“That is where you learned Aeman?” Adria whispered.
Shísha nodded. “They taught me their language and their ways, and would have made me forget my own, but I left.”
Adria had many more questions about this and about Shísha, but by the set of the Holy Mother’s face, she new that this particular discussion had ended. Still, Shísha did not retire, and so Adria continued with other conversation.
“Do you think Uncle’s plan might work?”
Shísha simply shrugged.
“He thinks they will come at us in force soon, and chase us into battle in the open,” Adria continued.
<
br /> “He is shaking their bees,” Shísha said.
Adria laughed, then, for the phrase sounded strange even in Aesidhe. Shísha seemed to realize this as well, after a moment, and smiled. “You don’t know this expression yet?”
Adria shook her head again, before remembering the motion might still be too subtle for the woman’s senses. “I have not heard this.”
“When Mateko got your honey, did he move slowly, and did he make the bees sleep with smoke?”
“He did,” Adria answered, still smiling.
“Then he was not looking for a fight,” Shísha said.
After a moment’s consideration, Adria nodded. “I understand, Lichushegi.”
As they drifted to sleep soon afterward, Adria imagined, or maybe dreamed of, Preinon picking up a castle full of Knights. When he shook it between his hands, black and violet striped honeybees swarmed out of all the gates, doors, and windows, covering him in a cloud of violent smoke.
When spring crept its way in from the ocean, through the forests and to the pine-covered foothills, the distant scouts again returned, bringing word of movement in the north, and Watelomoksho and the Runners began preparing their counter-motions.
Adria was resigned to the talk with Preinon she knew would come, deciding her fate for the summer, but even as she packed her things to remove to the Shema Ihaloa Táya camp, little was said.
“Do you think this will be a difficult summer?” Adria asked Preinon as she helped him to dismantle and pack his own tent.
“They are all difficult now, I think,” he said. “A little worse each year, and yet... I feel as if the Knights have been holding back, even still. They have been waiting for the chance to escalate their efforts against us.”
“Do you think that this will be the year the Hunters take the field?”
He sighed, frowning. “I cannot say. There are new forts, a little nearer — but this is always so. The deforestation from the west, the north, and the east has brought their borders closer, and will allow for new settlements in many places. They will find some second and third sons of Heiland nobles and offer them knighthood if they form estates and pledge themselves to the Sisterhood.”
“What of the nearby fort to the northeast?” Adria asked, remembering the camp and the Knights from her first hunt. “Has it increased its strength, or established any more outlying camps?”
“It does not seem so yet,” Preinon shook his head, but added after consideration, “But... it is good to be safe. There is a little time before we leave. Take Mateko and go and check. Given what has happened before, we should not be too careful.”
Eager to be of further service before their parting, not to mention pleased to spend the remaining time with Mateko, Adria nodded, trying not to smile and betray the sobriety of the task.
Mateko still proved more than her equal as they traveled. Where snow shaded into mud, Adria had trouble keeping her footing and finding the solid path, especially since he had insisted they wear their full packs, tents and bedrolls included.
There was more life about, at least, more noise to mask their passage, and Adria welcomed the change. Still, they were obliged to skirt or wade through the groves of pine, whose needles provided more cover than the leafless limbs of oak and ash grove.
Although he still led, Adria was careful to learn their path, should she need it again. She now began to distinguish the landmarks he used to navigate, and appreciated the uniqueness of certain trees, the height and slope of hills, the paths of creeks and rivers.
They did not approach the fort itself, to Adria’s disappointment. She had not yet seen any of the Knights’ frontier fortifications, and her curiosity was considerable. Instead, they skirted the periphery, where any signs of expansion would have become apparent, but they found nothing of concern, only the empty paths and blinds of Aeman hunters — obvious even to Adria’s eyes.
When they came upon the camp that Adria had stumbled upon during her first elk hunt, they found that it was not rebuilt. The stumps of the trees they had cut — likely intended as the beginning stage of a new fort — were half hidden by undergrowth and new saplings.
Did they decide it was too dangerous? Adria wondered. Or are they only baiting us? Either way, she realized she was complicit in the outcome, and it would be some time before the anxiety and guilt would diminish.
Either way, it is a response to Preinon’s new army, and does not bode well for the future.
Mateko was quiet, typical for when they were beyond the relative safety of a camp, but he watched her to see her reactions, and she allowed herself to show them, and after a few minutes spoke herself.
“Have you ever slain a man, Mateko?” she asked, just loud enough for the words to cross the distance.
He nodded, smiling grimly to show his empathy. “Some, yes.”
Adria nodded along with him, kneeling beside a stump where a patch of wood violets already bloomed.
“Does it get easier?” she asked hopefully, dreading the answer.
He knelt down beside her, and she could tell he wondered if he should touch her or not. But he remained still as he thought about it, despite her attempts to will him to do so.
Finally he nodded. “It does. I wish it did not… but it does.”
She understood his meaning, and it brought her some comfort. She cleared overgrowth and snow from around the violets, smiling a little at the obvious symbolism, wondering, Do I look for such things, without even thinking?
When she raised her head, her eyes were blurred a little. At the far end of the clearing, upon the snow and in the shade of the treeline, she saw the shape of a wolf, its fur unmistakably pale.
“Mateko...” she whispered, but even as she blinked her tears away, the figure was gone. She frowned, but could now see Mateko’s hand, restless upon his leg, almost with the will to reach to her.
Putting the wolf from her mind, whether it was a sign or reality or the myth of a poorly rested mind, she smiled again and said, “I will miss you while you are away.”
“No, Púksha, I don’t think that you will.”
Adria turned her head and frowned. Is he trying to be humorous or callous?
He only shook his head, without much expression. “You are not going back to the tribe this season. We are going to meet with the Runners at First Camp.”
Adria nodded slowly, even uncertainly. She might have hoped for this, and yet her training did not yet seem enough to join the Runners. There had been no ceremony, no proclamation — nothing whatsoever on the part of Preinon.
But he does not truly lead them, she corrected herself. Perhaps it is a decision they all make, or none of them. Perhaps Mateko simply brings me along, hoping nothing will be said in objection...
She didn’t know the truth of it, and did not ask. She was thankful and anxious, resigned... many feelings mixed. She looked back at the flowers in their nest and nodded silently.
Then, hesitantly, she reached over to place her hand nearer Mateko’s, and they remained for awhile, still, without words, as Adria watched the tree line, the mountains beyond, and the skies above, all filled with ghosts and memory.
It took more than thirty beats of her heart before he found the courage to touch her hand.
It was ten more before his lips found hers, and by then, her eyes had already closed in expectation.
The Novice spent more time on deck in the coming days. At first, she seemed to do just as Adria had done, roaming in a circle as the sailors went about their tasks, carefully avoiding interrupting their work.
She spoke seldom, even when spoken to, but neither did she seem to ignore them outright. A vague and airy smile, perhaps a tilt of the head to show that she had heard, but no comment, no answers even to questions.
After a time, the sailors assumed she was mute, and treated her with appropriate deference.
She ig
nored the Knights completely, who likewise did the same, but such was not unusual between Knight and Novice. Adria knew that any disagreement between a Knight and a member of the Sisterhood, even a Novice, would inevitably fall in the female’s favor, and this tended to breed some division between their orders.
The girl lingered near Adria on occasion, at the fore, but still said nothing, and Adria determined to wait her out as a test of intention, awareness, intelligence.
With interest, Adria gradually saw that it was Captain Falburn the Novice most favored, and after growing bored in her rounds, her green robes could most often be seen lingering on the aft deck near the helm.
The girl and the captain seemed to speak a little, but Adria could not make out the words from across deck.
On the second evening of such, Adria idly wandered aft herself, taking her place on the covered coil of rope she had half claimed when it was not in use.
The Novice turned back a little as Adria sat, but said nothing, but Falburn favored her with a long, low nod, his hands still at rest on the wheel, and smiled through his ample blond-gray beard.
“Ma’am.”
“Good evening, Captain.”
And that was it, for quite some time. The Novice returned her attention to the distant horizon along with Falburn.
“Tell me of that one,” the captain said quietly, after a time. He nodded his chin toward one of the sailors manning mid-deck, port side.
“I already have…” the girl nearly whispered.
Falburn smiled a little, Adria could see, even in profile and bearded.
“Aye,” he agreed. “Tell me again.”
The Novice sighed distractedly. “Tertius Aufidius Quadratus, son of the same. Called Terti by most. Not from Somana, but Pentaros, a fishing village west of Periton. He was a thief and a drunkard in Propolus when you found him.”
“And now?”
Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Page 47