+ Daggerfall +
+ A little story set on Lamb's World; hope you enjoy. +
“To roll one-handed, never the knack I found.” His voice was apologetic. Husky.
“Pass it here.” The man shrugged down the pouch and papers from the arecwid, and his companion haltingly rolled a stick, shielding the thin paper from the rain. “No lho?”
The man shook his head softly, the motion causing gathered rainwater to trickle from the brim of his hat briefly. No lho. No rations. She knew. It was an affectionate tease, in its way. Affectionate, but weary, worn thin. They had been moving on for days. His arm showed no signs of healing. She didn’t seem to have the nous to hunt. They hadn’t eaten.
The stick sputtered as he touched the taper to it, his eyebrows drawing together unconsciously; as though he could keep the rain off with a furrowed brow. He may not have had the ovi-hyrdr’s knack of rolling sticks one-handed in the saddle, but he could at least light one. Drawing in a lungful distractedly, he looked out across the skyline, blued and blurred by the rain. His shoulders were cold under the maud-shawl, as were his eyes when he blinked. He had been looking into the distance for a long time.
He gave the arecwid a gentle chuck with his heels.
“Move on.”
The rider and his companion pulled their shawls closer, and turned into the downpour.
+++
The peat farted. Outdoor fires on Lamb’s World sputtered fitfully at best. Their flames were nearly invisible, and their heat negligible, but the smouldering sward would keep the chill from the hollow as they slept. The companion knew this, and the rider knew this from childhood. He lay uncomfortably on his hip; she with her knees tucked to her chest, and eyes on the flame.
“Kernel?”
“‘Colonel’, it is.” he replied, not taking his eyes off the horizon. She looked at him with the indignation only a child can muster. They sat in a silence broken only by the hiss and ugly arrhythmic sounds of a mountain woodland in the rain. The arecwid, sleeping, flickered a whickering ear up and then back over its eye, dismissing an irritant. The long-limbed, fleecy creature didn’t have a name. Arecwids weren’t given names, not on Lamb’s World. Names were precious things, and not to be given to soulless beasts. The colonel was an Emperor-fearing man, and he wouldn’t dignify a soulless arecwid a name. The name he hadn’t given her was ‘Ollanine’.
“Kernel?” Her voice held the mellifluous lilt of the Myrrfn.
His eyes stayed tracking the horizon as he replied, his voice terse and edged with fatigue. “Yes? What do you ask?”
“The Walkyr. Is it coming?” He looked across the hollow at her.
“It will be here, the Valkyrie, beloved.” His voice was still rough, but the gentle admonition seemed to have picked up some of the warmth of the peat. “To fear it won’t is a fool’s game.”
She turned. Her eyes met his. In the un-dark of the peatfire, her wet eyes glittered redly.
“Of the yrk, I am afraid.”
+++
He woke with his head resting awkwardly on his forearm. The hunger was not present, and he was glad. He shifted, and blearily rubbed the heel of his hand over his face. The black and gold leafmould stubbornly clung to his cold hand. His face felt hot. He hoped he wasn’t becoming feverish. He rolled over, unconsciously favouring his injured arm. Awkwardly, trying to expose as little of himself to the damp air, he pulled his uniform from the bottom of the sleepsack and dressed. Pinching the sleep from his eyes, he grunted a greeting to his companion, who was tending Ollanine, running her chilled fingers through his sodden mane like a makeshift brush.
The rider, moving slowly to spare aching muscles, collapsed his paratent, then stepped over to the remnants of the fire and stirred it with a nearby branch. He had placed a pyre-charger in the fire last night. The device was metal. Placed in a fire, it gathered heat into itself and – somehow, though the rider knew not – succoured las-magazines placed into it. There was space for six lasquivers; each compartment recognisable to the rider as kin to the underside of his rifle. He snagged the pyre-charger with the branch and drew it out. Before it started to cool, he blew into the recesses to remove stray dirt and began palming his las-charge magazines into the waiting sockets. The casings of the magazine were cold and wet as they slid into the machine. He murmured a litany under his breath to the strength of the spirits.
It was good that they were cold. He remembered that. The tech-anchorite attached to the regiment had intimated to him during additional training devotionals that the machina-penates of lasgun magazines were – as he had grown to understand it – stoic and required ‘little beyond careful handling’ to serve a man, but they were best succoured indirectly through the ugly pyre-charger than dropped naked into the fire. The little man’s clockwork eyes had been unnerving. The rider had tried to conceal his distaste of the anchorite; his cloying oil-stench, his indoor pallor, his nearness and thin, clever fingers.
‘The magazine will charge in a fire’ the little man had said in his strange, toneless voice; and indeed, the rider’s experience told him the machina-penates would grow strong in little under an hour – but it made them lazy. Repeated immersions in fire might lead to their sloth during a tight spot. The rider had fought in many places. He knew tight spots weren’t important in the grand scheme of things. No cynings were crowned with tight spots. Tight spots didn’t hold the stars in the sky. Nonetheless, no sense getting stuck in one if you could avoid it. Tight spots got your head turned inside-out, if you didn’t keep your wits about you.
+++
The kernel was staring at the pyre-charger, lost in thoughts. Siramie didn’t lose herself in her thoughts, as a rule. Nevertheless, Ollanine’s hair felt delicious under her fingers. She missed her own hair, sometimes. She knew the name the kernel had given to the arecwid. She knew its true name, too. She knew a lot of things most people didn’t know; and, sometimes, things people didn’t want her to know. Pragmatism – and a reserved nature – helped such children, growing up. Ollanine bleated wetly into her ear, and she smiled in mock revulsion as he push-pulled his head into the crook of her neck. His wool was matted, but too soft to be unpleasant. Siramie liked mornings. She looked up happily. The rain was, as always, present; but in the daylight it wrapped the woodland comfortably, reassuringly.
+++
Ill, exhausted, he dozed; fitfully. He found himself back in training.
‘The sounding of an obstruent when the anode and cathode are touched to a conducive surface’ – and here the anchorite touched the nubbins of the magazine against the outer housing of the rifle, resulting in a fizzing click – ‘indicates the procedure has been followed correctly and the magazine is fully charged. The rifle can be brought to term by inloading the magazine to the housing while reciting the placatory verses...’ The sound of ten thousand rifles being loaded inexpertly had been accompanied by the susurrus of ten thousand tongues stumbling over the unfamiliar words of one of the numerous litanies of loading. Hard clicks, as the weapons were made ready, overlaid each another in the muggy cantonment.
The blade being unsheathed – inexpertly, far from silently – was enough to snap him back to the present. He spun to see his companion crouched next to the arecwid, the saddle half-secure, her head tracking back and forth, her knife clutched in damp fingers.
+++
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