rohesia & holt iii.

Holt

They were hours away already by the time she woke. It's hours again on the way back, and in the meantime the sun rises through the trees. At midday they pause, the stranger -- Holt -- foraging through the forest and returning with a skin of water. He has some hard bread and harder cheese, too, which he shares with his unexpected traveling companion.

Then they're back on the road. Early in the afternoon, Holt breaks away from the forest path, leading the yearling and its rider through the trees. They must be getting near Lord Daw's lands. Perhaps Rohesia even recognizes the terrain. The closer they are to the castle, the more cautious the wolf becomes, until eventually he stops and bids her dismount. Producing a length of rope from his travel-pack, he ties the horse to a convenient tree. They continue on foot, Holt in the lead, skirting the edges of thickets until, at last, the castle is in sight.

At first, little seems amiss. There is the keep, high on its motte; there is the bailey with its thatched cottages, smoke rising from the forge and the tannery. The sturdy wooden walls are still intact. Nothing looks to be afire.

Yet the wolf is instantly tense, reaching out to bar her path with his arm. "Wait," he whispers. "The drawbridge is down. The gates are open. I didn't leave it that way, and I doubt a castle that has just lost its lord would be so lackadaisical about its own defense. And look: the fields are empty. None work the crops. No guards on the walls either.

"I don't like it. It seems the people have fled. And that means they expect an attack."

Rohesia

She is surprised at how far they have to go. She doesn't fall asleep, despite not resting last night other than the unconsciousness wrought by Holt's hands and a stone wall. The bump on her head is already feeling better, which isn't unusual; she's always been hardy, but for that last awful winter.

They have to stop the horse for Rohesia to slip into the woods and relieve herself. That's when they decide to eat a bit, too. He returns with water: she shows him berries she found: small, hard, but juicy, not the almost orange shade of red that marks a dangerous poison, but the pinker shades that suggest sweetness. They break bread and eat cheese, and Rohesia seems comforted. But they have miles to go still. When they rise, she spends a little time walking, to give the yearling some rest. She keeps her hand on the beast's shoulder and neck, companionable, soothing. Of course she does: she's never not been around horses.

She sees Holt growing more cautious as they get closer to the motte and bailey that has been her home since her birth. She steps back as he ties the yearling to the tree, still considering asking him to tie her up as well. But she surprises herself: Ana is dead. There is no more blood to be had for her. Painting herself in ashes will not soothe her ache any more than kicking over milkpails or screaming as a child ever soothed her longing for her mother.

They walk together, her footsteps surprisingly light in her soft shoes. When he stops her with his arm, she stops. She turns to look at him as he stops her.

"Or they were invaded," she says, unable to keep a tremor from her voice. "Without Lord Daw to protect them... someone may have let the bridge down."

Holt

Perhaps Holt should feel a twinge of guilt for his own hand in all this. If he does, it doesn't show. His eyes are narrowed against the sun, scanning the small settlement.

"Either way," he says, "you should stay here. I'll fetch your father. Give me some token, to prove I come on your behalf."

Rohesia

She's startled by the request. It was not something she had thought of. For a moment it seems like she is about to tell him that she has nothing to give him, which would not be a surprise: she has very little, all told.

In the end, she goes to the pouch at her waist, which would carry coins if she had any but mostly carries snacks or thread or shiny rocks she likes. She removes a flat riverstone, not quite as wide as her palm and surprisingly thin, and hands it to him.

On it is the glyph of her mother's tribe, the bloodline he knows by her scent, her dark hair, her intelligent eyes. It is carved into the rock, the edges worn by time and the fretful touch of a child who has grown into a young woman.

"It was my mother's," she says, quietly. "I used to think it protected me."

Used to.

Holt

Holt waits, somewhat impatiently, while she riffles through that little pouch. A man might carry coins there. A girl with a richer family, a prouder heritage

(though he would argue none have a prouder heritage than the daughter of wolves)

might carry crushed herbs, dried flowers to make herself smell sweet. But this girl carries a bit of dried apple; a couple stubs of thread; rocks. Holt is at once amused and oddly touched. He is on the verge of telling her anyone might carry a rock; it is hardly the token her father would seek.

But then he sees what is carved on this particular rock. And he falls silent; his eyes flick to her with surprise.

"This is the sigil of your tribe. Did your mother give it to you? Or perhaps your father?"

Rohesia

They could argue it: there is no token she could give him that he couldn't have taken from her. A lock of hair, a bit of thread: none would be proof of life. But they don't argue. He looks at the glyph, then at her.

Rohesia shrugs slightly. "She died birthing me," she says quietly. "He said she made it for me while I was in her."

Holt

Something in Holt's regard changes; softens. He takes the stone firmly in his palm.

"I'll bring it back to you safe," he promises. "Now find a place to hide. You might see me disappear from view. Don't be alarmed. I'll be back soon, with your father."

Rohesia

She doesn't doubt his promise. It's that instinct again, the one she felt when he offered her his hand earlier. Maybe she is just a very trusting girl. But she lets the stone go completely and cinches her pouch again.

"I will stay near the horse," she tells him. "In case I should have to ride away."

In case the worst should happen, she means.

"Go carefully," she adds, and withdraws, tucking herself away off the path, behind some trees and brush.

Holt

"You as well," he replies, and drops the stone into his own coin-pouch.

They part ways. He shifts again as he clears the treeline, and for a while she can see him in glimpses and flashes amongst the tall summer grass, loping along with his head level with his withers, his tail straight back. A hundred yards or so away, he abruptly vanishes in mid-stride, disappearing headfirst as though stepping through some invisible membrane.

She is left alone, then, with only a horse and the birds for company.

--

For his part, Holt races through the spirit-world, dashing across the bright-lit meadow toward the dim spirit-echo of the keep. Shadows hang around that place, which he did not understand until he met the vampire. New spirits too, blood-spirits and war-spirits, drawn by upheaval and chaos, the promise of blood to be shed.

The walls are hardly real in this world and do not hinder him. He passes right through. On the other side, though, he must be more careful: finds the spot where he knows the stable to be and, hoping for some degree of stealth, slips back across to the material world.

Rohesia

The bailey is muddy: water from days ago is still trapped in the earth, and the days are not hot enough to dry it. Most of the courtyard is deserted. The brewer's sons and the smith's daughters alike cannot be found, nor the brewer. Nor the smith. It is not deserted, because the soldiers of a neighboring lord mill about, mostly near the gate to the castle, a few near the drawbridge, debating whether to bring it up or leave it down for the reinforcements to come.

There are dead soldiers, Lord Daw's guard, laid out in the mud near the gate. And the one who betrayed them all, well: his head is on a pike. The word TRAITOR is on a placard. This was his reward for helping them in.

A few unfortunates have been captured, are being held just beside the smithy while the new lord decides what to do with them.

But all of that is outside, glimpsed through a veil, or a window. Inside the stable, there are no horses left. All were let loose, or, more likely: stolen by people running for their lives. But there is a stableman in one corner, thinking he is alone, clearly listening for the soldiers outside. He is packing a small satchel with bread and cheese, a couple of small apples, perhaps preparing to flee at nightfall. When suddenly there is a man standing in the stable, he chokes off a gasp, nearly dropping the satchel, catching it just barely.

Holt

The scent of blood and slaughter assaults his senses the instant he crosses. He has a split-second to glance through the cracks in the stable walls, see the sorry state of things. Then there are more pressing things at hand.

A stableman, for one. Holt immediately puts up his hands, palms open to show he wields no weapon. A few tense beats of silence. Then he moves one hand slowly. Puts a finger over his lips. Holds his palms out again, still moving that hand slowly, slowly, inching it toward the drawstring pouch at his waist. He undoes the knots. He reaches in. He pulls out the stone, shows it to the stableman before tossing it gently to him.

And waits.

Rohesia

The gesture is almost unnecessary: the stableman has no weapon himself. He has nothing to fight with but two crab apples and his bare fists. The man isn't old, but he has lived a rough life. His shoulders are broad and he has a rangy sort of strength about him, paired with a relaxed manner. One imagines it takes something like this -- his daughter missing, his world trodden into blood-drenched mud, about to go on the run -- to make him tense.

He doesn't say a word. Wouldn't. The men out there would kill him.

All he can do at first is wait, and hold his breath as the stranger opens his pouch. He sees the stone and his eyes fly wide. "Where is she?" he hisses, as quiet as he can, taking two steps forward, a sort of raw desperation in his voice.

Holt

"She's safe," Holt whispers back. "She's in the woods, waiting for you. She insisted we come back for you."

His eyes flick to the stone.

"Do you know what that symbol means?"

Rohesia

Rohesia's father goes silent. He has little choice but to believe the stranger: if his daughter were dead, what good would it do this man to come back? There is nothing to steal. There would be nothing to gain.

He sets his jaw. His eyes are flicking about: he has no idea what is going. Why his daughter is with this stranger. Why his life is falling apart around his ears.

And then he is asked a question. One that takes the fire out of him. He leans down, picks it up, cradles it in his hand as gently as one imagines he would touch his daughter's own head. "Kept saying it was the mark of her people, she did," he murmurs, thumb running over the symbol. "No crest that I ever saw. Bit of a pagan, she was."

Holt

That tells him what he needs to know: chances are Rohesia's father would panic as much as any man at the sight of his warform.

"We'll have a talk on the way back," he promises. "Right now we need to get out of here. I'm going to walk out the stable doors and create a diversion. You'll hear screaming. You'll hear panic. You must ignore all of it and run. Leave out the back. Run toward the gates, and don't look back. I will keep them away from you and meet you outside. Do you understand?"

Rohesia

The man looks at him askance for a moment, wary.

"Did she send you?" he asks, after a moment, quiet.

Holt

"Your wife?"

Holt considers a moment.

"Not exactly. But we are cousins. Distantly."

Rohesia

"Cousins," he repeats. Shakes his head a moment later. "You are like her," he says, perhaps only meaning: the secrecy. The oddity. The strange sense he has.

But he moves closer. He nods. "I understand. You will take me to Rohesia."

Holt

"Yes. And along the way, we'll talk more."

With that, Holt throws open the doors to the stable. He strides into the sunlight. He sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles, sharply, and as the soldiers whip around and begin to shout,

he becomes something demonic.

--

Possibly Rohesia's father remembers very little of what happens next. Only a blind panic in the bailey, soldiers running for the walls, the captured few bolting in whatever direction their feet can carry them fastest. Perhaps Rohesia's father tries to run for the gates, and perhaps he even manages a straight enough path -- but perhaps he's not quite fast enough for the stranger's taste, and all of a sudden he finds himself picked up, tossed over a very large, very furry shoulder like a sack of grain. The ground drops away dizzyingly. The beast doesn't run out the gates; he leaps the walls, barely touching the wood he scales, hurtling himself over to land jarringly on the ground outside.

The castle is still in a panic as they leave it far, far behind. The great beast runs in leaps and bounds, clearing twenty feet or more in a single stride. As they attain the treeline again, he slows at last. He sets Rohesia's father down, and shifts, and waits for whatever panic may or may not remain to fade.

--

When the stableman's head clears, he finds his wife's 'cousin' patiently watching him from several feet away. Seeing that his senses have returned to him, the stranger approaches, offering a skin of water.

Rohesia

Rohesia's father is shocked at the audacity of it. The thrown-wide doors. The whistle. And then something crackles in the air, and he has a brief flicker of recognition, of memory long repressed, and then he starts running. After the first step or two,

he has no choice.

--

When he is picked up, he is screaming. He isn't even forming words, just shouting, flailing, trying not to fight the beast but to get away. Then he's soaring, and his heart is in his throat, and his panic blacks out most of everything else.

Later, in the woods, he is still screaming, clambering to get away, scrabbling over the ground. It's only when he thrashes, head turned over his shoulder to see if the beast is closing on him, that he sees the stranger watching him instead.

"You have to run!" he gasps, his hands gnarled, grasping at his face for a moment. "You must -- it --"

He looks around, and perhaps the reason that he stops is because they both hear the thudding of hooves.

The yearling is galloping towards them, Rohesia clinging to its back despite the lack of saddle, the lack of bridle. She looks faintly terrified, and she also looks furious, and her father is calling to her and she's pulling on the horse's mane, trying to get it to stop, and trying not to fall off.

Holt

Seeing the yearling plunge through the trees at full gallop, Holt lets loose another whistle, high and swooping. The horse reacts at once, slowing to a canter, then a merry trot. He comes right up to Holt and starts nosing through his cloak, his tunic, looking for a treat.

All of which must be somewhat frustrating to Rohesia. Though, one suspects, better than the alternative of horse and rider tripping over a ditch and breaking their necks.

While the girl and father reunite, Holt takes a step back to give them space; some semblance of privacy. For his part, he looks off toward the castle. Past it as well, scanning the horizon for approaching warbands.

Rohesia

Rohesia is not frustrated. Rohesia is sliding off of the yearling when it slows to that easy trot, thudding to the ground, not quite falling. She skips past her father and right up to the stranger, trying to hit him in the chest.

"What did you do to him!" she shouts, beating at him with her fists, though they be small and ineffectual.

Holt

It wasn't as though he expected gushing gratitude. Some sentiment of appreciation, though: surely that wasn't out of the question?

Except apparently it is. Because she launches herself from the yearling, runs right past her father even -- attacks him. Again. Holt is taken aback. Holt is irritated, swiftly thereafter. He seizes one hand, then the other wrist. Holds her still.

"What did I do? I found him. I found him hiding in his stable, enemy men-at-arms all around; I risked my own hide; I got him out and I brought him to you, just as I said I would. The rest of it is him. His reaction to seeing what I am. His mind was not built to comprehend it."

Rohesia

She almost tries to kick him, but she knows she'd end up in the mud. Her father is getting to his feet, still pale, still shaken, tasting bile. He walks toward them, only glancing at the yearling, who almost seems to want to nuzzle the newcomer. Bit at his forearm last week, kicked at the brewer's son who tried to ride him, and now he's looking for treats from a complete stranger.

Rohesia looks like she's about to start bawling again. "He was screaming," she interrupts, when Holt is relaying what he did, what he risked. "Like someone was killing him."

Her father puts his hand on her shoulders and for a moment it seems like he is about to push Holt's hands off his daughter. He is not brave enough, and he doesn't know why. He simply tugs at her, pulls at her, and Holt can feel her arms go softer in his grip.

Neither of them understand a thing Holt is talking about. What they do understand is the same thing, though seen from different angles: the father understands that his only child is not dead, not violated, not bewitched but here, alive and hale and crackling as ever with an energy that always worried him. The daughter understands that her father is unhurt, that he's alive, that she's not all alone in the world again.

So then there is the reunion that Holt fully intended to let them have in private, had Rohesia not flown at him fists flying. If he lets her go, she simply turns into her father's chest, tucking her arms in between her chest and his, shaking as she exhales a deep breath. Her father holds her close, almost crushingly tight, and only Holt really sees -- if he does not turn away -- the way he smells her hair, unconscious of the way he still does that, as if she were still small enough to hold in the crook of one arm.

Rohesia, for what it is worth, does not cry again. Nor, notably, does she apologize for losing her mind when she heard her father screaming like that. The yearling keeps trying to get Holt to pet him, because Holt is the best creature on two legs he has ever seen, and he has the finest smell, and he is the most compatible rider, and maybe if he is a very good horse then Holt will be his partner for the rest of his days. Perhaps even give him apples. Noble, strong, generous Holt.

After a while, Rohesia's father lets her go. He does reiterate what Holt claimed, though in stammers: he distracted the guards. They ran. He tells her doesn't remember screaming, but Holt was not harming him.

Rohesia glances at Holt then, still suspicious, and then...

holds out her hand.

Holt

Well; at least the horse likes him. While father and daughter reunite, Holt turns half away, absentmindedly stroking the yearling's velvety nose, patting his muscular neck.

Eventually, some small motion in the corner of his eye turns him around again. He finds Rohesia with her hand out, which surprises him nearly as much as her flying at him fists-first did. He stares for a blank moment.

Then -- his hands still gloved -- he sets his hand on hers. His fingers close. He grips, gently.

"We shouldn't tarry long," he says. "Surely a warband will come this way soon, if not an army."

Rohesia

That -- their hands joining as if they are intimate friends -- catches the attention of Rohesia's father, and his brow darkens with a frown. He says nothing, though.

For her part, Rohesia holds his hand for a moment, tightens, then lets go. She nods. She looks at her father.

"Holt will not harm us, papa," she says quietly. "He said he knows my mother's people."

Her father's brow tightens for a moment with an inner ache. Then he sets his hand into his own satchel. Withdraws her stone, etched with that glyph. Hands it back to her, in lieu of words of assent. Their home behind them is gone. They can never go back.

Rohesia takes it, holding it closer to her body, then looks at Holt, nodding. "We are ready."

Holt

So they set off again. Three instead of two this time, and all of them conscious: Holt leads them unerringly through the woods until they find that narrow, rutted trail again. From there, he turns east, and they walk,

and walk,

and walk.

A few times, they pass fellow travelers. Holt never exchanges greetings. Keeps his eyes ahead, his face grim; passes them with nary a word, but then looks over his shoulder until they are well out of sight. Eventually, the sun slants into the west, dips below the horizon. It is dark, then, the stars fitfully seen through the trees.

"There's an inn ahead," Holt says, breaking quite a silence. "We can sleep there tonight. You will be father and daughter, serfs to Lord William of Wesford, traveling to visit your kin. I will be the guide hired to lead you there safe."

Rohesia

No one rides the yearling for a while. It plods along comfortably with Holt, while Rohesia and her father walk behind the stranger. Rohesia meets his eyes once when he is looking back at other travelers, silent.

Day passes and it is wearying. Rohesia's father has not slept since he was awoken in the night with the sound of invasion. Rohesia has not rested since being knocked unconscious -- her last true sleep was two days ago, now. They share an apple, father and daughter, though it is small. If he looks back, Holt is offered the other apple they have.

Because as they have walked from mid-morning to early evening, Rohesia has quietly told her father the story: that Ana was some kind of witch, a drinker of blood. She tells him how she was enchanted, and it says something that he does not cast her away from him, shove her onto the path. He listens quietly, and if Holt pays attention, he can hear what father and daughter say quietly to each other throughout the day. They don't talk much, though.

At one point he glances back and only sees Rohesia's father holding his child's hand. Only child. Only evidence that there was ever someone who, he believes, really loved him.

Time comes that Holt speaks, and it actually startles Rohesia a bit because he's been so quiet. She would laugh in other circumstances; in these, her eyes just glint a bit.

Holt gives them a story. Rohesia looks at her father, then at Holt. Her father is frowning.

But she says: "All right," with a nod.

Holt

He walks a few more steps; turns again.

"Two more days on the road and we'll be there."

Another quarter-hour or so, and the inn Holt spoke of shows itself around a bend in the path. They hear it before they see it: human voices, the clunk of rough-hewn mugs, the snorting of pack animals stabled for the night. It is a small, shabby affair, a thatched roof propped on rickety beams, doubtlessly leaky when it rains.

Holt leads the yearling to the stable, flipping the stableboy a coin in return for a stinking stall in the corner. Then, casting a critical eye upon Rohesia, he unfastens his cloak and throws it over her shoulders instead, pulling the hood up over her hair.

"Come on."

The din of conversation greets them as they step into the inn. Ostensibly two-storied, the first is a single large room with hearths are both ends. A large cauldron is set over one fire, the contents of which are the only fare available; around the other fire are gathered weathered, rough-faced travelers -- peasants, itinerants, wandering no-gooders. Between these two fires stretch two long, sturdy tables, half-full. A large open barrel of ale sits square in the middle of room, between the tables. The innkeep's wife serves her customers from it, dipping their tankards directly into the dark, frothy brew. There's a ladder leading upstairs, where a number of curtained alcoves can be seen. Assuredly, when they fill up, remaining guests will simply be boarded on (or beneath) the tables.

No one pays much mind to the strangers as they enter. Only the innkeep, whose livelihood it is to notice such things, marks them. He hustles over, an ugly man, pock-marked and scarred.

"What'll it be, eh? One room? Two?"

Rohesia

From the brightness in his eyes even now, Rohesia wonders if Holt would even stop if not for their obvious tiredness. She doesn't think he would. She saw what he was. She neatly left that out of her explanation to her father.

For her part though, she is glad to see the inn up ahead, for warmth and shelter and maybe even food. Someplace to sleep. Someplace, more importantly, for her father to rest.

Her father is uncomfortable with Holt paying the stableboy for housing his yearling, though in truth the horse always belonged to Lord Daw. Right now he'd be disgruntled about just about anything. And right now, his attention is being diverted again by Holt's continued familiarity with his daughter:

removing his own cloak and laying it over her shoulders, for example. Seeing the way she is looking up at the stranger, with that thoughtful stillness he has seen in her eyes since she was a very, very small thing. The people in the bailey always saw it as a kind of blessed serenity, never recognizing the wildness in that quiet. It isn't the gentleness of a timid or pure soul, he knows. It's the silence of hunters that need no bow, for they have tooth and claw.

But even he knows what the cloak is for: because his daughter is beautiful. The thick dark hair, the fair skin, the bright eyes. Of course he thinks she's beautiful; but he knows men who are not her father think so, too. Soldiers and brewer's sons alike.

Maybe even strangers.

Rohesia is covered, then, and she doesn't ask why. She lost her cloak when Ana was feeding her, when the stranger was dragging her out of the room, and with nightfall has come a chill. She doesn't mind the warmth, or the added sense of protection she gains from having something to wrap around herself as they walk in to an inn full of strangers, travelers, and very likely vagabonds.

She remembers that she is in the company of a murderer, and there's a strange, lopsided smirk on her face when they walk into the inn.

"One," says her father firmly, with an eye on Holt.

Holt

Holt glances at the father. Then he agrees: "One." Again he pays, taking his coin-pouch and shaking out a small handful. "And three full bowls of whatever you've got on the fire. Some ale to wash it down, too."

The innkeep takes the money, making no secret of pawing over every coin with greedy attentiveness. Satisfied that all are real, he nods them toward the cauldron.

"Bowls by the pot. Serve yourself but no straining what you ladle to get only the fillin' bits, y'hear? Room's upstairs, second on the left. Chamberpot's under the bed. Empty it out yourself in the morning. I'll send m'wife up with the ales when she's a moment."

Rohesia

Holt has more money than anyone Rohesia's ever known who didn't live in a castle. She wonders if that pouch of his is bottomless. She wonders how much people pay him to kill someone. She wonders what it is like, killing someone.

Her father goes to get bowls of whatever is in that pot, so only one stands in line. Rohesia hesitates, then -- without asking Holt or anyone what they think she should do -- she heads upstairs to the second room on the left. She needs that chamberpot.

--

A bit later she emerges, pulling the hood of holt's cloak over her hair again, returning down to the main room on the rickety stairs, heading to the seats at the table that her father and Holt have elbowed into existence. When it comes time to eat, with her mug of ale before her and a bowl of stew before her, she discovers hunger that wasn't there with just a small apple to share.

By the time Rohesia is halfway through the bowl, her hood has fallen back and there is color in her cheeks again. There are few women in here: the innkeeper's wife, a frail and anxious-looking wife of some sort of pilgrim, and then Rohesia herself.

It doesn't seem like her father is going to leave her alone here, or with Holt, anytime soon, so while she's eating, he's the one turning to the stranger.

"Where exactly are we going?" he asks, his voice low. "You said you know the way to her mother's folk?"

Holt

The stew they sit down to two parts thickened broth to one part barley to almost negligible amounts of salted meat, but accompanied by the hard heels of bread somewhat grudgingly plunked down by the innwife, manages to be filling enough. While they eat, Holt keeps a sharp eye out for anyone out of the ordinary, anyone who might pose a threat.

Rohesia's father's question brings his attention back to his traveling companions. He looks at them for a few seconds, his own thoughts turning in his head. Then:

"East. In the depths of a forest not ruled by any lord." He picks up his mug, which is a crude wooden thing, just as the bowls are crude wood, just as their utensils are crude wood. "Finish your meals and sleep. We depart at first light."