rohesia & holt i.

Rohesia

Night has not yet fallen at Lord Daw's castle, but the sky is lush with pink and orange, fading up to lavender against the parts of the sky that are still blue. Rohesia is distracted by the sunset, her hands falling idle on her lap. Wisps of dark hair escape from her mantle around her cheeks. She looks away from the sky she can see past the wall and turns her head. She looks past the courtyard, past the clang of the smithy and the the stables where her father is brushing the horses down for the evening, up to the motte itself. A soft sigh escapes her, and she closes her eyes as she was told to do, taught to do, when the longing overcomes her. There is a tight pang in her chest that won't seem to go away, and a gnawing hunger.

She opens her eyes again and picks up her work again, going back to her sewing.

Holt

She doesn't sew for long before her concentration is broken by laughter, loud voices: a pack of barechested young men passing by, brawny with youth, tan with summer. The brewer's sons, making their weekly tribute to the keep. The heavy, ill-sealed kegs hefted on their shoulders. The smith's daughters are staring, moon-eyed. The smith is watching too, but he's more interested in the ale sloshing with every step.

"Right pity," he mutters to no one in particular. "Waste of good ale."

The last of the crew pauses a stone's throw from the stablemaster's daughter, shifting his load. Ale slaps the inside of the keg; slops onto the ground through a crack in the seal. He moves the keg from one shoulder to the other, and now that Rohesia can see his face, she sees he's not one of the brewer's sons after all. He's a newcomer, a stranger. Here and now -- hundreds of years after the fall of Rome, hundreds of years before the rise of commerce and trade, when most folk live and die a hundred yards from their own birthing-bed -- newcomers are rare enough that his appearance here is immediately out of the ordinary.

He winks at her. And then he trudges on, picking up his pace to catch up with his fellows.

Rohesia

Rohesia knows the brewer's sons, and like all the girls in the bailey, she knows to stay away from them. They all look, to be sure. Even Rohesia used to look. She's not looking right now though. She's staring at the keep, as though that is where her moon is, that is where the stars shine for her. Even if night hasn't completely fallen.

So she doesn't notice that one of them is new, even though the smith's daughters are whispering about it already, sitting not too far from Rohesia herself while they all work on mending and such. She doesn't notice him at all until he walks right in front of her, breaking her eye's path to the keep.

For a moment there's a sharpness in her eyes, a shock like having cold water thrown on one's face, like waking up from an intense dream. She starts, and blinks, and then her gaze focuses on him for a moment. Her eyes are hazel, tinged more green than gold. The hair that escapes from her covering is black, and her skin is pale for a girl who lives down here, and not up there.

He winks at her, and his reward is to see her eyes briefly widen, her cheeks briefly flush. She looks down again, and the smith's daughters stare at her, then each other, then laugh softly behind their hands.

Rohesia's cheeks stay flushed.

--

The horses are put to bed and the smithy begins to cool. Ale is served up at the keep, while down in the courtyard the peasants and soldiers who support Lord Daw eat their hard bread and cabbage soup. It is not yet late enough in the year to slaughter the smaller animals for meat through the winter.

Time passes, and peasants begin to put themselves to bed. There is rustling and in a few huts, grunting and panting, then silence. No such noises in Rohesia's home, for her father has not remarried since her mother died, and that was when she was born. Rohesia lies awake, staring upward, waiting for the bailey to grow quiet. She thinks the hunger she feels will overcome her, make her belly growl, but it isn't that sort of hunger.

After a while, she rises from her bed. She puts her over-dress back on, and her shoes, but doesn't bother to cover her hair. She puts on a cloak as well, as a chill has come with nightfall, but doesn't lift her hood. Her brain feels like it is on fire when she slips out of her father's house, waiting in shadow for the patrol of the soldiers to move out of sight before she heads to the next building, the next group of shadows, making her way towards the rise of the keep.

Holt

No one stops her. No one challenges her. No one even notices her. Lord Daw is not particularly mighty and his lands are not particularly rich. There are choicer prizes for men to guard.

Even so, it is odd to see the gates to the motte standing unguarded; the steep wood-slatted path up to the keep unattended. The keep itself is quiet, too -- a humble wooden structure of two or three stories which is nonetheless the largest building for miles around. No candles burn in the windows. No torches burn on the walls.

Just silence.

Rohesia

Odder still to see the gates unguarded, because one of the soldiers is supposed to be there to wait for her. To escort her in to see Lord Daw's... counselor, for lack of a better word. And the soldier isn't there. No one is there. Rohesia hesitates for a moment, wary, but then glances over her shoulder and continues.

She is so hungry.

Rohesia continues.

Holt

If she were to look in as she passes the gatehouse, she'd see why no one is there to meet her. The men at arms are asleep. Deeply so, slumped over the rickety table on which they've been dicing. Snoring.

The causeway is clear. The keep gates stand ajar. Inside, the servants are fast asleep in the hall, and the fire has burned down to embers. No one, not a single soul, is awake. No one talks softly to a friend. No one stumbles outside to relieve himself. No one sews by the fire. No one fucks in the corners.

Everyone sleeps. One of the castle hounds is greedily eating leftovers off the lord's own trencher. No one stops it.

Rohesia

Rohesia is now so close to her goal that she doesn't look at the gatehouse. She walks quickly, furtively, until she reaches the door. She peeks in and sees sleeping servants, which makes her frown, but she slips past them easily enough, past the kitchens, heading for the set of rooms where her patron -- again, for lack of a better word -- makes her home.

The hound, as usual, briefly snarls at her.

Holt

The days are warm, but the nights are cool. With the gates ajar and the fire burnt out, it's cold in the keep. Her breath frosts in the air, and the corridor is dark.

No one stops her, though. No one leaps out to frighten her. For the moment, she has a clear path to ... whoever it is she seeks.

Rohesia

Rohesia finds the familiar door and glances once past her shoulder again before she slips inside.

The room is cold. The room is pitch-dark, windowless. No fire burns in the hearth. No fire ever does.

She exhales, her breath steaming. "Ana?" she whispers. A few moments pass. Then she feels a velvet touch, also cold, against her cheek. It may as well be the darkness itself. Rohesia shivers and relaxes at once, sighing with something like relief. Like pleasure.

"Are you hungry, my dear?" comes the low murmur in her ear.

Rohesia whimpers. She's so hungry. It's been a month. All she can do is let loose that helpless noise, nodding her head.

"Shh," her patron hisses. "Not so loud."

She doesn't think to ask why the sound she made was too much, when everyone is apparently asleep. She doesn't think to ask why the guards were asleep, why the keep is so... still. She cannot think of anything, right now, beyond her hunger. So she silences herself, immediately, obediently.

She cannot see what Ana does, but as soon as the cut is made, she can smell the blood. Her mouth is saturated suddenly with saliva in her longing. She leans forward, eager for it, but Ana has her held tight somehow, and Rohesia does not think of how, or why, the frail counselor's hands could be so strong. They grip her wrists and feet at once, though, as if she had multiple limbs, but all of this flies from her mind,

as it always does,

when Ana's cold skin presses against her lips, her thick, viscous blood dripping into Rohesia's mouth. She cannot help herself, again: she groans aloud, louder than her whimper from before, sealing her lips around the delicate little wound and sucking as hard as she can, drinking whatever Ana will give her this time.

Holt

Whatever other experiences she has had in this life -- if she has tasted the sweetest honey, if she has sampled the finest mead, if she has raced on the back of the swiftest stallion, if she has fucked the most handsome boy in the village -- it all pales to nothing in the face of this. Everything else drops away utterly. All sight, all sound, all sensation; everything but this singular, exquisite addiction.

One might forgive her, then, for not noticing the single muffled thud overhead. One might forgive her for not caring. Her patron notices, though, and her patron cares. And abruptly,

far, far too soon,

her patron is gone. The source of that sweet, sweet blood is gone. All that remains are the last few drops, coppery and cold, that precious flavor already dissolving into her saliva.

A stranger's voice behind her:

"What--?"

Rohesia

Rohesia has done almost nothing sweet in her life. She once tasted honey, and asked her father for more, and his crest fell a touch because it was her birthday, it was a treat, but he had no more to give her. He hid it well but she noticed, and tried not to ask for things he could not give her. She has had ale but does not like it. She has seen those of higher station drinking wine but thinks it might taste like ale, so she is not terribly interested. She has never heard of mead, or thinks it is the same as ale and wine. She knows how to ride a horse but her father does not let her go far, or fast, or alone. She lives a rough, mundane little life.

She has never fucked any boy at all, even.

But there is this. Once a month for the past six or so, Ana sends a soldier to the gate to escort her inside, and gives her this. It eclipses the beauty of sunsets or the exhilaration of a flying dream. It fills hungers she never knew could be satisfied. The world is dark around her, but it doesn't matter: it would be invisible to her, lost in a haze. She cannot even feel Ana's cold flesh anymore. All she tastes is the blood, as she laps at it, sucks to squeeze the miserly drops from her master's wrist.

And in these moments more than any other, Ana truly is her master.

Rohesia is being ordered to be quiet but she can't: she moans hungrily, whimpering, and then it's pulled away. She heard nothing. She jerks forward but is held back, and begins to cry. Sob, really, tears flooding her eyes as she wails for more. It isn't enough. She has forgotten, for now, that it is never enough.

Ana has jerked away, wary. She knew someone was here, but not coming for her in particular -- she thought. She hid in the darkness, hoping they would do whatever nasty business they came to do and then leave. Now she thinks --

and then she is right. That someone has come through her door, and she hisses as she withdraws from her ghoul, who is trying to crawl after her. Tendrils of shadow follow Ana back from Rohesia's arms and legs where they had her pinned, and if he is wary enough, he will see them beginning to creep along the floor towards him.

Holt

The sounds drew him here. It was both curiosity and pragmatism. He thought he'd drugged everyone, laced all four kegs of ale with sleeping herbs. If someone was still awake, he had to know who. He had to know if he needed to silence another.

He was not prepared for this. Not prepared to find the stablemaster's daughter inexplicably here in the keep. Not prepared to find her wound up in shadows, drinking black, brackish blood from a nemesis mostly unseen. He uttered that one word before he could stop himself, and now the shadows are alive, living tendrils sliding from corner to corner, at once retreating from the girl and extending -- threateningly -- toward him.

And the girl, pitiful tearful thing, is trying to crawl after the bloodsucker. She's scrambling after her master and all of a sudden something has her by the ankle, something far warmer than the vampire.

"No!" the interloper roars, and it's a roar indeed: guttural and shot through with snarls, not even remotely human. The grip on her ankle isn't human either, has expanded and grown, has become a furred handpaw that easily encompasses her entire lower leg in its grasp. The thing drags her back, kicking and screaming if need be, dumps her unceremoniously outside her master's door -- jarred, a little bruised, but mostly in one piece.

The door slams in her face. The noises inside are unfathomable: roars and thuds and bangs and crunches and shrieks and more thuds, more roars, something shattering, what sounds like the entire bed breaking.

Rohesia

Rohesia kicks and struggles, but note: she's a skinny little thing. She isn't voluptuous, though her body would try to be if it were better fed. She kicks, and she struggles, and despite being a skinny little thing, she is surprisingly strong. There is still a stain of blood on her lips, and her eyes are bright with the strength it's given her, but all the same,

it's not enough. It couldn't possibly be enough. The nature of what a ghoul is would never allow her to be stronger than her master, so of course she isn't stronger than a wolf in warform. She screams when she twists, seeing him. Shrieks, horrified but not -- not panicked. Not as she would be if she were truly human.

The next thing she knows, she is outside and the door is shut, the bolt thrown. Dazed, perhaps struck on the head slightly, Rohesia tries to get her bearings before she stands. She feels warm again, powerful again, herself again -- though she is far from that. She tries to open the door but can't get through. All she can do is listen.

Holt

The door is solid. No amount of trying will open it once it is shut, the bolt thrown. Not for her, at least. Perhaps not even for him. It is perhaps the strongest door in the keep, stronger than the main gates. No one has ever questioned that before. No one ever questions the Lord's counselor, and no one ever thinks to.

He wondered about that, coming here, blending here, learning about the land and its lord. He wonders no more.

--

The commotion, mercifully, is soon over with. There is no hideous death-shriek, no hiss of victory. There is no roar of triumph -- or agony. There is only the brief cacophony of battle. Then silence.

Then the door unbolts. And opens. Then the brewer's not-son barges out. The room behind him is, in a word, wrecked. The bed truly is broken. The heavy tapestry -- one of the finest pieces of art in the entire keep -- hangs in tatters. The wooden logs that make up the wall itself are chipped and splintered, and here and there raked with enormous claw-marks. The bloodsucker is nowhere to be seen, though there is a patch of dark, dark ash on the floor.

The stranger does not look back at the room. He looks for the stablemaster's daughter, and if he sees her, he seizes her by the wrist at once and begins towing her from the keep.

Rohesia

Rohesia is sitting against the wall across from the door. Her knees are drawn up. Her hands are scratched up from beating on the door. She looks up at him, her face tear-streaked, her hair uncovered, and she has licked her lips to get the last traces of blood from them.

She yelps when he grabs her, fighting him. "What did you do to Ana!" she cries, and punches him hard in the shoulderblade.

Harder, really, than she should be able to.

Holt

He grunts. He's winded by the fight; there's an ugly purpling bruise around his neck where the bloodsucker had tried to choke the life from him. Almost successfully, one might add. The smack on the back isn't helpful.

"Killed it," he says, and doesn't loosen his grip. "Now we have to go."

Rohesia

She's crying again. Perhaps he understands, perhaps he knows it isn't her fault, it's the blood, it's the addiction, it's the way it makes you love that thing like you love nothing else: not food, not air, not your father, not yourself.

Rohesia doesn't know. She doesn't understand. She loved Ana: more than anything. More than her own father. More than her own life. And this stranger killed her.

"NO!" she wails, the sound choked, grief-stricken. She begins to attack him in earnest, digging in her heels, shrieking as she strikes him again and again with her free hand. She'd kill him with these little blows, if she could.

Holt

He does understand. He does know. He's encountered bloodsuckers before, enough that he has some inkling of their power and sway. It doesn't make her interference any more convenient, though, nor his need to flee the scene any less urgent.

So he drags her in his wake. And when she begins to attack in earnest, when it becomes quite clear she will not stop, when it becomes rather dangerous for her to scream like that while he pulls her past a hall full of sleeping servants, whose dose of spiked wine might soon wear off --

he turns on her. He grasps her head between his hands, controlled and brutal, and smacks her head into the wall.