Cut Scene II
Ezri's Night
“We can take our time.” The sound of a buckle being loosened was unmistakable. Ezri swallows and replies. “I suppose we can, yes.”
“So let me tell you the plan.” Another buckle. “I will find out why you’re so desperate to have me stay Once I know, I will leave. We will both have had a little fun, but you won’t get what you’re hoping for.” Ezri raises her chin, staring out the window into the darkness through which Caius now travels. She says: “Or maybe you will find out that what I said is true. And then you will stay.”
The sound of leather sliding over fabric. “I know it's true. I know what you you want me to do. I’ve heard it before, from those who want us to fight for free. They don’t lie. They don’t reckon any cost to others because they’re willing to pay the price themselves. Heroes.” She chuckles “No. I want to know why you want me to stay when you know I won’t fight.” Ezri clenches her jaw. “Maybe I will tell you. In the mean time, I have my own plan.”
The Sword chuckles again. “And what would that be, beast girl?” Mimicking the tone Kitria used before, Ezri drawls out her response. “I will find out why you’re so desperate to leave.” With that, she loosens her own first buckle, face carefully turned away from the firelit interior of the room.
---
Some time after the Sword’s squire has come and gone with a meat pie and a flagon of ale, Ezri leans against one of the tall bedposts, arms held up, forehead resting against her crossed wrists. The room is warm, and a loose curl of sweaty hair sticks to the side of her neck. Nothing has been said for quite some time, though the room has not been quiet. A callused finger lifts the sticky curl free. A cool breath raises goose bumps where the hair lay. “It makes sense that you would stick together in order to get back topside,” the Sword says, “But why stay after that? Don’t you have family to go back to? Or even that girl?” Ezri shrugs, then shudders at the stinging sensation across her shoulders. “I am needed here. There are many good carpenters in Waterdeep. There aren’t many defenders of Bogdown. And I can see my family later. Vayana too.” The Sword sighs in response, then steps back into her previous position. She reaches into a small chest. After considering, then putting put aside a sizable jade cinder, she picks up a bundle of braided leather cords, held together with a wood handle. It seems heavier than the one she used before. Air swishes when she moves it.
---
Ezri runs her fingers along a muscled thigh, catching a moment to relax her jaw muscles. Her thumb comes to rest along the hip crease; fingers on the mound. She casts her eyes up; looks along the impressive length of body. “Don’t stop now, beast girl.” the Sword says, eyes closed. Ezri hides her smile in the short, dark curls in front of her, then says “So why do you leave? Do you have a family to go back to?” “Hm? Yeah.” Frustration and pleasure in equal parts. “Some to take back before they get killed. Some to get back to before they get someone else killed.” Ezri wants to stretch this moment; ask another question. But the Sword’s strong fingers land gently on her head. Run through her hair in a way that says ‘Please. Or else...’ She likes that thought and decides to give in.
---
It’s hard to tell where the body ends and the furs begin. Where she ends and the other begins. It’s late and early, and fully winter-dark and still warm from the dying fire. Ezri arches her back; pushes into the wide pelvic bones behind her. In response, the arm over her chest tightens. Raw skin and tired muscles protest at the force. She turns her head until she can see the other from the corner of her eye. “I’ll tell you why I want you to stay.” She can feel the low hum of laughter run through the body behind her. Good. Make her think she has won. “I’ll play. Tell me.” “Because none of us do what you do. Make sure we do not get killed. It’s the one thing we’re bad at. Your brothers especially, but the big guy as well, and I’m not half sure about Kais sometimes either.” Ezri lets her body deflate. Curl in on itself as if relieved from the weight of the truth.
The Sword rises up on an elbow, leaning over to look Ezri in the face in the last glow of the embers. She frowns. “That’s what everyone wants me to do.” She sounds exasperated. The frown deeply and the knuckles of her fist grind against Ezri’s ribs. Ezri bites down. Kitria continues. “It’s the one thing I’ve never been able to teach either of them. Caius… by Tempus’ beard I don’t know how often I beat him half to death. He just kept coming back and just stand there, waiting. Like he thinks that you can get better at getting hit! He’s smarter than me and Vulheim and mom put together but when it comes to fighting, he acts like his skull is massive bone. Not that Vulheim is any better, losing his head and just charging in. Nor, for that matter, is your godbothering giant friend, by the sound of it. Heroes!” She spits the word out like it is poison. She lets herself fall back among feather and fur, fist still clenched in a hard knot against Ezri’s sternum. “Used to be that I could count on mom to keep things going when I had to leave. But now I can’t. I come back, she may well have sacrificed half the students, or have them all set on learning circus tricks.”
“I’m tired. I don’t need more people to protect. Certainly not a bunch of half-cast adventurers and a town full of hallfsized, hairy-footed pastoral numpties.” The Sword of Reckenmark sounds bitter now. It’s not hard to imagine that voice, those fists turning to viciousness. Anger. Rage against perpetual obligations; against weaker people that in need of something that is in desperately short supply.
Ezri feels laughter bubble up and considers it. Should she? Is it worth the risk? In her mind’s eye, Caius nods. She lets the laugh escape. The muscles under her head tense up immediately. She responds by rolling onto her belly, half onto the larger body below hers, exerting enough force to hint at her own, less obvious strength. With a genuine smile, Ezri puts her nose against the nose of the leader of all of Reckenmark’s forces and whispers. “It sounds to me like you need someone to take care of you for a little while. Someone who can keep a secret. And…” she reaches blindly to where she saw Kitria put that jade cylinder earlier; feels for it; finds it. “...someone who knows their way around both sword and sheath.”
Caius' Night
Caius stands in the hallway of his ancestral home. The ancient timber arches overhead, the moonlight drips through cracked stained glass and pools onto the inlaid floor. “Rat and cat and bear and bird...” he murmurs, recalling the childhood rhyme once invented when he skipped around the silver runes. The stone staircase rises behind him. Up-right to the library, or up-left to Kindralkorter. His mother’s chambers. Or would Kitria have taken them once she took command? He’d not asked before he left. Would probably have been sneered at; if he was so clever, surely he could figure it out for himself.
Right. The fastest way out of this all-forsaken mess was to find the Paeliks and ask them to make the split, then get them ready to march before dawn. Rouse half the troops and ride, be far away by the time the appel started. With a sharp turn on his heel – see, not all those drills were wasted – he turns to the right, through the salon into the wing that houses the officers. Once in the hallway with the Paeliks’ chambers, he gets an eerie feeling. It’s too quiet. With so many people, many of them large and male, really, the walls should shake with the snoring.
Further down the hallway he sees doors that stand ajar. A peek inside confirms his suspicions: no one is in bed. Nighttime training, perhaps?
He swiftly sweeps through the rest of the wing, finding that all officers and those in training are out of quarters. Not just training then. Something big. Maybe that had been why Kitria had been reluctant to act. Had the troops been committed elsewhere? Vulheim hadn’t said anything, but then again, he may have had orders. At the same time, Kitria had assumed command, because of some apparent illness of his mother’s. Held not disturb her unless he had to.
He crosses back out of the officer wing into the family wing of the manor. First downstairs into the sitting room where Vulheim and Kitria spent their days. In the corner sits the wreckage of a library chair that Vulheim had thrown at a younger Jaopaelik who broke an academy sword in practice. At the rear of the room, next to the sleeping chambers of Kitria and Vulheim there is the door to the stairway that leads up to his room. The bottom panel of the wood, though an inch thick, is cracked, bulging out of the frame. Kitria had kicked it once after a particularly frustrating sparring session with him. He’d never wanted to fix it. It could stay there. A fitting reminder.
Without thinking, he climbs the stairs. At the small landing between his mother’s sitting room and bedchamber he feels a breeze. Mother… well… grandmother, technically, had probably kept the door open while she slept. Big fan of fresh air, his… grand ...mother. Especially when it was freezing, like tonight.
He climbs the second staircase more quietly, getting closer to the familiar scent of dry, crumbling rushes underneath the terracotta roof tiles. There, in the low, nooked space under the hand-hewn, black-tarred roof beams of the house, Caius relaxes his shoulders. Being back here is strange. Uncomfortable, at least until now. But this is his room. Even in the pitch dark he can navigate it. A candle is quickly found and a spark struck. He eyes the row of books that behind so as not to arouse suspicion when he left. He picks up the small wood pieces of his own dragon chess set. Not as beautiful as the piece his father had left with him, but painstakingly handcarved. One corner of his mouth curves up. He’d gotten the wood for these from a stave Kitria had broken on his shield when he was twelve. It was the first time he had managed not to drop the shield when she hit it and so she’d given him the pieces to do with as he wished. It wasn’t much for toys, but it beat the little figurines she’d tried to give him for use on the big maps in the library. War games, she’d called that. Kitria. For whom war was a game and assault a pastime. He shakes his head, trying to rouse himself from the maddening carousel of memories and feelings that run in front of his eyes like decorated, wide-eyed horses. Horses painstakingly carved out of wood that.. well.
A horn call cuts through the assault of familiar and alienating sensations that keep Caius entrapped. He shoots upright from the narrow bed, instinctively swaying sideways to avoid the joist above his head. It sounded like it came from just below. His mother’s chambers. Grandmother’s. Whatever. He swears under his breath, moves down the stairs with years of practiced, family-avoiding stealth. At the bedroom door one level below, he pauses. He hears Mordread clear her throat. When she starts the ritualized address of the troops, he uses the cover of her augmented voice to slip past her bedroom door.
From behind, looking out through the sheer curtain, he expects to see the towering figure in the familiar dress uniform. The torches on either side of her balcony should send sparks off of polished silver buttons, buckles and of a comb that holds a vice grip on long steel gray strands of hair pulled back tightly. Instead, they light up something that looks like a half-deflated cloud. They send loose silvery threads flying from shoulders that look… well.. not narrow. Not quite. Not yet.
A sense of wrongness plucks at him. And when the voice pauses mid-sentence, faltering right before the ancient motto, he knows he has to act. He sweeps through the door, flinging the curtain aside as if he has just run up. With a move honed by six months travel with companions who are occasionally best very smoothly hushed, he steps in front of Mordread, erstwhile Sword. As he picks up the thread of the words she’s lost, he looks over the edge of the balcony. Through the clouds of his breath he sees a group that is entirely too small. The sense of wrongness flexes its claws. This can’t be all of them. Mind racing, his words flow unimpeded. And when the ritual greeting is over and the clique of mercenaries stares up at him, he pauses briefly. With a mild, but stiff tone he’s heard Autun use many times when plans seem a little unorthodox, he says “This is highly irregular. Paeliks will report to me in the officer’s sitting room in an eight bell for an explanation. I shall attend to the situation from there. Everyone else: dismissed! Get sleep while it is still dark. Marching orders tomorrow at dawn.”
With a snap of his finger he undoes the setup for the troop address. The torches blink out, the voice amplification stops. It was a fine piece of magic. Probably the only one in the place that still worked as it should.
With a sheltering arm, he ushers Mordread back through the curtains, marveling at the level of lace and ribbon on her nightgown. He shuts the door behind them, extends a hand to the bell cord that hangs beside the bed and pulls.
Mordread faces him, eyes moving from right to left, right to left, right to left, with a tiny jerking motion to the head at the end of every pass. It’s unnerving and the sense of wrongness sinks cold claws deep into his soul. He puts on Auntun’s other favorite tone of voice a gentle coaxing voice, used especially with youngsters. “Is there a reason you summoned them so late?” In response he gets a vacuous smile. “It would have been nice to see then once more, lined up as of old...” her voice trails off. She turns towards the wardrobe. “Dinner soon, surely,” she murmurs as she opens the doors and begins to rummage.
A lanky, middle-aged brown-haired woman nudges open the bedroom door. “Do you struggle to sleep, lady Mordread?”, she asks. Seeing Caius, her eyes widen. “Sir. I mean.. Well. Sir. Do you require anything?” Caius smiles at the cook’s assistant, even though he can’t remember a time he’s wanted to do so less. “Something to help my mother sleep seems like an excellent idea, Ruba. As for me, no, but I plan an officer’s counsel in an eighth bell. Perhaps you could arrange for that.” He looks at the maid pensively. “Some questions, though, Ruba. How long has this...” he gestures at Mordread, still engrossed in the contents of her wardrobe “been going on? Do we know a cause, a cure? What has the Sword decreed?” Ruba makes a small curtsy, eyes darting briefly sideways to Mordread, who seems uninterested in being thus spoken of. “It was a sparring injury. Perhaps season ago. Or rather, it was the result of the healing done thereafter. An inexperienced healer. New to here. Milady Sword… I mean, the young lady… sent her packing and has looked for assistance since, but hasn’t found it yet. I have a sleeping draught that will give her some rest. Just for occasions such as these. Should I fetch it?” Caius nods. “Please Ruba.” Whatever was wrong with Mordread would best be dealt with in daylight. And preferably by someone who isn’t him.
The draught is effective and within minutes the once fierce fighter lies dreamlessly among the many pillows of her bed.
Caius makes his way down to the officers in the sitting room. There are precisely two waiting for him. One face he knows. A middling swordswoman called Fredda, promoted for reasons he cannot grasp. The other, a young man who names himself as Saroato. He is a stranger to Caius which means he should not, could not be a Paelik. But he is. After a few terse questions, he pieces the story together. With the ignoble cause for Mordread’s withdrawal from the position of Sword, several of the families still regularly contributing noble sons and daughters, had called home their kin. Kitria had gone to negotiate and had spent virtually all her time on it, but – missing her mother’s strategic sensibilites – hadn’t won what she’d hoped. Once the nobles left, other people had departed quietly. Well, one group of southern bowmen not so quietly. Vulheim had killed two of them on the front steps, calling them cowards and traitors. Then, two weeks ago, the call came from Bogdown. Kitria hoping against hope, had decided to ride out in the hopes of securing troops, or at least cash.
Caius nurses the cup of mulled wine, reeling. He’d hoped to bring half the troops, counting on a total contingent of at least four times more soldiers present. If he’d wanted this all-forsaken excursion to mean anything at all, he’d have to bring each and every fighting hand the Academy still held. He probably could. No one was here to stop him.
He dismisses the Paeliks back to their beds. Time to prepare.
Prior: 27 March 2020, All: Play_Sessions, Next: 10 April 2020