rohesia & holt ii.

Holt

When she wakes, her head is very sore and her mouth is dry. Up and down are indistinct; the world is whirling. The world seems to be moving. The world is moving, because she's slung crosswise over a horse's back. She recognizes it: a defiant yearling from the stablings, prone to bucking and biting those it doesn't recognize. Yet here it is, docile and obedient, plodding quietly along.

Up ahead, leading the horse, is the stranger from the bailey. They are on some narrow path through a forest. She does not recognize it; it is farther than her father ever allowed her to ride.

Rohesia

Rohesia was blacked out instantly. It would have been far more dangerous to knock her out like that if her veins weren't swimming with the vampire's blood. One moment her eyes flew wide as he grasped her head, as though she realized he was going to hurt her, and the next,

nothing but black.

--

Actually, the next true moment that Rohesia experiences isn't darkness, but pain. Her head hurts. Her throat hurts. She feels dazed, but again: not quite as bad as she would if she hadn't fed. She is swaying, and good thing there is nothing really in her stomach or she might throw up from the motion. But a moment later recognition hits her, and she's furious: the bastard stole one of her father's horses.

But he is not on the horse. She groans, finds the horse's mane, and with the experience only a stablemaster's daughter would be able to find in her state, she swings herself upright, clutching the horse's mane to keep herself from falling off when the world spins in answer.

Her head is pounding. She has a flickering urge to try and leap off the slow-moving horse and run back to the keep, but... Ana is nothing but ashes. He killed her. Her heart breaks all over again, and then she thinks of her father. And then she wants to know:

"Why didn't you leave me at home?"

Holt

The moment she stirs, the stranger turns his head. He eyes her warily, but when it becomes apparent she won't leap from the horse and try to run back, he turns forward again. Behind him, she swings upright. Her hands are not bound. Neither are her ankles. There's a fairly large bump on her head, but nothing seems to be broken or irreparably damaged.

He scoffs: "Leave you? Your lord was murdered; his counselor vanished into thin air. The entire keep was drugged. And you were hysterical. When they woke and found you tearing your hair and beating your breast, what do you suppose they would have done to you? Like as not marked you a witch and set you to burn, I think.

"Besides," he adds, "no telling if there were other bloodsuckers in that keep. Didn't steal you from one to let another sink its fangs in you."

Rohesia

"You don't know that," she answers, when he says she might've been burned as a witch. Delayed, momentarily forgetting the talk of the bloodsuckers, she asks: "Did you kill Lord Daw, too?"

Holt

"I don't. But I'd rather not chance it."

Barely a pause.

"Yes. He'd been making bad decisions recently. Some of the neighboring lords were upset. Felt he might start a war. Your Ana's influence, I suspect."

Rohesia

Rohesia leans forward on the horse, letting herself slump. The lack of saddle is uncomfortable, but the thick riding blanket helps -- both her and the yearling. She runs her hand down the creature's throat as it carries her, stroking its fine coat.

She knows nothing of what the stranger speaks: neighboring lords, rumors of war. She thought he was always rather harmless. They weren't starving in the bailey, and he didn't abuse anyone's daughters. She is silent for a while, still too dazed to think more than one track of thought at a time. And even then, they all blend together.

Tears are coming back to her eyes. "Why did you kill her? She was kind to me." Her voice cracks; the lack of water, the onslaught of emotion.

Holt

That brings him to a sudden, stark stop. He wheels about, a wave of something dry and blistering and crackling rolling out from him like heat, like lightning.

"Kind?" The word is a singular upsweep of indignation. "You are a daughter of wolves and she has befouled you. She fed you her foul, dead blood and bound your heart to her. She forced your allegiance and your love, and she did it in a way that left no trace in your mind. You don't even feel all the ways she has violated you, let alone understand.

"She was not kind to you. Quite the opposite."

Rohesia

The yearling chuffs as they stop, but seems surprisingly unbothered by the abrupt halt and not even stirred by the stranger's anger. Rohesia notices, vaguely, because it feels like thunder to her: she recoils a bit, momentarily stunned. It doesn't last long, though.

She winces as he spits her word back at her. She looks confused when he calls her a 'daughter of wolves'. The wince turns to a grimace with each damning phrase that follows: befouled. Dead blood. Bound. Forced. Violated.

Rohesia looks down at her hands, curled in the yearling's mane. She realizes how tightly she's holding and forces her hands to open a little, though they don't quite relax.

"I was dying," she murmurs, when she finds her voice. "It was winter, and I fell ill. Father could not keep me warm. Soon I was coughing so much I could not breathe. He begged Lord Daw for help, and... Ana visited us.

"She was a healer, where she came from," Rohesia explains, her voice small and almost apologetic. "She cared for me, and fed me a potion, and I was restored."

She looks pale, and a little sick even now. "I knew her blood was in it," she whispers, tears springing anew, all over again, to her bright eyes. "But I was dying. And she saved me."

Those tears spill downward. "Am I going to die now?"

Holt

For much of her sad little story, the stranger stares past her, up the path they're following, scanning perhaps for unwelcome pursuit. He gives little indication of his thoughts or even his attention. Yet at the last, when she repeats it:

I was dying,

his eyes flick to her. Widen at her question, taken aback.

"What? No." A few beats. Then, almost offended: "Of course not. Did you think I would kill you?"

A shorter pause.

"Or perhaps you think you'll die without the creature's blood. You will not. You may suffer terribly as you wean yourself from the vampire's blood. It may be weeks, months, sometimes even years before you are wholly well again. And perhaps the craving will always live in you. But you will not die. And you will never live in thrall to a walking corpse again."

He clicks his tongue at the yearling and begins walking again. Though no rope hangs around its neck, no bit between its teeth, the stolen steed follows obedient as a hound. The stranger is dressed differently now, in thick and durable traveling gear -- heavy boots, rough trousers, linen shirt, unmarked tunic. Though in winter he might wear something heavier, his cloak is of relatively light weave, and dyed a dark grey that might almost be mistaken for the far more expensive black.

Some time later, and without turning, he speaks again. "I don't blame you for what others have done to you," gruffly. "There are those, particularly those of your bloodline, who would say better dead than a vampire's thrall. But I suppose I'm pleased you're still amongst the living. Besides, it is a wolf's place to shepherd his kin, and in that we've obviously failed you."

Rohesia

She did not, in fact, think he was going to kill her. It hadn't occurred to her yet, though even when it did, she might have wondered what he planned to do with her first, since he dragged her from the keep rather than killing her along with Ana.

So when he tells her of course not, asks her what he does, Rohesia just numbly shakes her head, opening her mouth to answer, but not by much, and it's hard to tell when she's crying again.

He goes on: tells her she will suffer when she can't get more blood. He tells her never again, and she wonders how he is so certain. It was so easy to slip into Ana's thrall. Even though her heart still breaks for Ana, even though all she wants is to return to the keep and curl up beside the ashes of her dead master, Rohesia is aware of just how easy it was, just how helpless she was against it. She can scarcely imagine it won't happen again.

She is not sure she could resist, if she were offered their blood again.

He turns, begins walking again. She is silent, at least for now, but only because she can't stop thinking about Ana. About Ana's wrist. Ana's blood. Ana's care for her. Her mind begins circling these thoughts, then spinning with them, and she loses time in them. She is hypnotized for a time, until he speaks again. Rohesia jerks slightly, finding him with her eyes. The back of his head. She's not crying anymore. Not while she was thinking of Ana.

"I did not think you were going to kill me," she says quietly, after a while. "Though you still might. I meant... I do not want to get sick again." The coughing. The chilled, trembling fever. The feeling that she was drowning.

But he seems confident of the continuation of her existence, and so she pivots: "I want to go back to my father." She tries to keep her voice strong. "He will not think me better dead. And he is not a madman, or murderer."

Holt

The stranger barks a sudden laugh. "Is that what you think of me? A madman and a murderer?

"You cannot go back. As I said, there's no telling how many other bloodsuckers live in that keep. Sometimes they exist alone, like cats. Other times they are as rats, swarming in the shadows. I'm taking you to live amongst your own kind. There is a caern three days hence. There are wolves and kin there, some even of your bloodline. And healers to heal you, if again you fall ill.

"Perhaps," he offers this small consolation, "when you are safe in their company, I can return for your father."

Rohesia

"It is what you are," she snaps back, quick as lightning.

She is staring daggers at the back of his head when he tells her she cannot go back. Tells her of her 'own kind', of caerns, wolves and kin, healers. She wants to turn the horse away, but he holds it fast, and she remembers -- though dimly -- his strength back in the keep. Nor does she want the yearling to be choked. Nor does she want to fall.

She knows if she runs, he will overtake her.

"I know not of what you speak. I will not live among wolves, madman. And my bloodline is my father's. I want to return to him now." Adamant now, brave now, she informs him what she will and will not do.

Holt

Again he stops; turns to face her. Again the yearling stops with him, docile as Rohesia has never, ever seen it.

"I am, as you say, a murderer. But I am no madman. And I know you saw me in the keep. The shape I took.

"Tell me true. Have you never, not even for a moment, felt that you were different from the other girls? Have you never looked at the moon and felt wild blood beating in your breast? Have you never scanned the horizon and wondered what lies beyond it?"

Rohesia

"You were no wolf. I know not what you were, what demon or beast, but not a wolf," she says, interrupting again, interjecting when he so much as pauses for breath. That bump on her head doesn't seem to have rattled her brains for more than a few groggy, overwhelmed moments upon waking.

He wants her to tell him the truth about how she feels. About the moon and wild blood. Her eyes narrow at him. She refuses to answer.

Stubborn thing. It's a pity the magics he uses on the horse don't affect her.

Holt

"Very well," it is some measure of surrender after she has been furiously silent for a good half-minute or more. "You will not answer. Shall I prove it then? That I am a wolf, as well as a demon and a beast and a murderer?"

Rohesia

Thirty seconds is a long time for two people to be looking at each other, even if she isn't trying to lock eyes with him, not saying a word. Her lips only grow tighter.

In the end, he asks her if she wants proof.

Sitting atop the horse he stole from her father, she just lifts her chin slightly.

Holt

He takes a step back. Then another.

Then all the distance he's put between them seems to diminish, suddenly and utterly, as he grows to monstrous proportions. It is a quite transition: one form to the next in succession, growing wide, growing tall, growing huge and hulking and furred and muscled, growing primitive, growing smaller again. In the end, where the stranger stood now stands a wolf, rangy and long-limbed, with thick fur in varying shades of grey shot through with black, with brown.

He keeps still so as to not give threat. And after a moment, he sits.

Rohesia

The yearling moves a little step to the side and she strokes it, watching him with daring seldom seen in a human woman, especially a young human woman, one far from home and everything she knows, a virgin, a recent thrall.

Her hand clenches in the horse's mane when he changes. She sets her jaw and holds tight to the horse lest it rear, buck, run. Her can see her throat move when she swallows. He can see how she fights for control.

He can see her chest moving as she breathes, through her nostrils only, as he sits there on the ground near the yearling.

"You're a demon," she whispers, trying to urge the horse back a few steps, turn around, if it will even listen to her at this point.

Holt

Unable to speak, he barks -- a low growl that erupts into a short gruff sound. And, to the best of his limited ability, shakes his head.

Rohesia

The yearling backs up for her, but resists when she tries to get him to turn. She frowns, and considers using her heels to urge it along, but with no saddle, with no bridle, she's certain she would fall. She is in a dress, and she is not experienced enough a rider to flee bareback on a horse that doesn't want to listen to her.

"Then what are you!" she shouts at him, and a few nearby birds take flight from their branches, startled by her voice.

Holt

In the next eyeblink he is a man again, rising up from a crouch. Even his clothes are back in place, as though they'd never been replaced by fur, by fangs.

"I'm a wolf," he replies, simply. "And I am a man. And I am a spirit. I'm a shapechanger, but no demon. I exist to rid the earth of creatures such as the one that made a thrall of you. And you, whether you believe or deny, are kin to me. That is why you can look upon me without descending into blind terror. A mere human could not. A mere horse could not either, but this one is -- temporarily -- enchanted."

Rohesia

She looks down at her father's defiant yearling and for some reason, hearing that he is enchanted makes her burst into tears all over again.

"I want to go home!"

Holt

He considers her a moment, his regard cool and impervious to her tears.

"All right," unexpectedly. "I'll take you back. But if there is war or tumult, then you must do as I say. You must wait outside while I fetch your father and whatever belongings we might be able to carry, and then be away again. Have we an understanding?"

Rohesia

She's crying, and he says nothing at first, and she just folds a bit over the yearling. Looks over at him when he makes his offer.

There is only a pause. "Yes," she says quietly. Sniffs loudly.

Then: "I may try to go back to Ana." A pause. "I know she is dead. I cannot help myself. But please take me home. Even if you must tie me. Or enchant me, or... whatever it is you must do."

Holt

The faintest furrow in his brow. A few breaths pass; then he reaches out his gloved hand. It may take a moment before she realizes he's holding his hand out for hers.

Rohesia

Her brow wrinkles. Her face is so tear-stained that it has left streaks in dust. Her eyes are puffy, her nose red. She looks at his hand, then at him, not understanding.

But then also, for no reason she can comprehend: not needing to understand.

It is something inside of her, in the back of her mind or somewhere deeper, this feeling. It's why she didn't try to get the yearling to run when she first awoke. It's why she didn't scream when she saw what he was. Perhaps it is why she never quite feared the darkness, or why -- as he said, as though he knew her most secret thoughts -- she has always looked at the full moon and felt something stirring in her blood, in her heart, in her soul.

That feeling has at least a few words around it now, growing, trying to explain itself: she does not think he will hurt her. Well: the bump on her head says otherwise, but even with her hunger for Ana she knows that the purpose of that violence was to get her away from something dangerous. What she feels, perhaps more accurately, is that he is not leading her to her destruction.

She lays her hand atop his, palm to palm, meeting his eyes.

Holt

Something stirs when her hand touches his. He doesn't have a name for it yet, and perhaps never will, but he feels it: like fragments shifting subtly to become a greater whole; a picture he can't quite see.

He meets her eyes too. For a moment, he quite forgets what he meant to say or do.

Then he remembers. And his hand closes, grips hers firmly. "I don't think you'll try to go back," he says softly; and perhaps it is not so much a belief as a wish, a blessing of sorts. "I think you're stronger than that."

He releases her hand, then. Clicks his tongue at the stolen yearling and turns back, retracing their steps along that narrow forest path.

Rohesia

She doesn't look convinced.

Her skepticism is more of a pout, but it's there: she is not entirely sure she won't try to get into the keep and perhaps eat Ana's ashes, even if she knows she'll choke on them . She doesn't say as much. His gloved hand is warm around hers. And it lingers for a moment, and then he lets go.

She returns her hand to the yearling's mane. He clicks his tongue and the yearling happily turns around, following in his footsteps. It makes her briefly scowl.

On the way back, through the sun-dappled woods that are gradually warming to the day, she finally thinks to say:

"My name is Rohesia. What is yours?"

Holt

Heading back, he seems to keep a somewhat faster pace, perhaps eager to have done with it. He's a yard or two ahead of the yearling; turns when she gives her name.

"Holt."

He keeps walking.

Rohesia

"Well met, Holt," she says quietly,

and they say no more.