by P. J. Atwater
in Issue 123, April 2022
On a night in which soft winds rambled the forested hills and bore into the vales the fresh scents of needles, buds, and lofty thaws, the riders of Mutangard caroused about their many fires. Hale and filled with courage on this fifth night away from the hearth, the warriors sang to gods both wild and wise, passing jugs of sweet wine through the blissful redolence of crackling fat and grains. A Huliman band–raiders from the West–were the quarry of this expedition. Yet as the half-moon passed between the signs of the Bull and the Spear, this was a night for feasting and rest. The invader would wait a day; the riders of Mutangard would rest and drink for a night in honor of those gods who sent them plenty. They ringed the fires engaged in contests and boasting, some with cups in their hands and women on their arms, telling jests and tales, waiting for the beans to fry and the barley to roast and the pork to slide off the bone.
One was yet busy at a task, however: a red-haired youth with a new beard knelt near the horses away from the cookfires. A planted torch shone its orange light, dim, but sufficient for his keen eyes and practiced hands. By his side was a pile of saddles, a blunt needle, and a coil of thick gut in his hands. The lacing must be redone, and while the gods commanded the men to be merry and the women to cavort with them on this holy night, the youth was not called to the revels. So the women’s work of the night fell to him.
Hearing his name called, the youth set down the saddle and tools. Standing erect he could be seen for a tall and well-built youth, with robust and defined shoulders and back, accustomed to the hoe and sickle as well as the bow; arms and legs both lean and stout, with the young man’s hardness but without the veteran’s girth; and a chest, broad though hairless, which had never yet been draped in armor. He moved toward the gathering at the cookfire. It was time to stir the beans.
The men sitting round–all of whom knew danger and death as old friends–were boasting; but not, peculiarly, about victories they’d seen or the foes slain, but about the things their fathers had done to them to make them tough.
“Mine would whip us, all eight of us.” The speaker was Dunfalloh, one of the younger of the battle-hardened tribesmen. A hundred times Rød had heard him retell the time he’d killed a mounted Alleenian messenger with a spear thrown from forty paces away; he’d never heard tales of Dunfalloh’s father, so he listened with some interest while he dipped the wooden ladle into the pot.
“Sun or rain, whether we’d been good or bad,” Dunfalloh was saying, “Whip us each, every day. What’s more, I’m glad he done it. Don’t mind a whippin’ now, thanks to that surly bastard raised me. Whip me all day; it’s nothin’ to me, thanks to my pop.”
An older warrior named Joni, whose mane was black with streaks of grey, spoke. “From the day I was six or seven years, my pop would box me if the chores didn’t get done. He’d make me put up my fists–me a little boy and him a great man–and if I could resist him, he’d let me off punishment. ‘Course, that was the punishment, and he’d beat me as hard as if I were a man his size. Broke my jaw more than once; my nose, an arm, teeth–well, s’pose every part got busted at least once in the years.
“But I say, the day in my fifteenth year, when finally I whooped the old man back, that was all the sweeter.”
There was a round of low laughter at this. Joni’s favorite camp girl, yellow-haired, befreckled and fulsome, guffawed and champed on his ear. Rolling his earlobe between white teeth, her gaze caught Rød’s across the clearing. Nyma’s glittering blue eyes roved his youthful form up and down, before Joni with a firm pinch crushed her to him. She kicked and squealed in delight, slapping furiously at his monstrous shoulder. Rød looked on and slowly stirred.
Now Joni took notice of him, looking in his direction, and called out to him, saying “Boy, I reckon next summer you’ll be big enough to ride with the men. Go on, then, and tell us the story of your father. No lies.”
With a sudden flush, Rød noted the gleam in the old warrior’s eye and deflated swiftly from the passing compliment. Joni knew the story, for he had known Rød’s father. Whether as punishment for staring at his girl or just out of idle malice, he had placed Rød on the spot. Knowing he’d be caught out if he prevaricated, he began telling the story in full:
“Every day, father used to wrestle me. On days when it was fair, we did so in the grass, and in winter, right inside the tent. From the day I was big enough to walk, he’d take me down and pin my arms and legs, put me in holds to see if I’d wriggle out. He was very strong, and a fine wrestler.”
“He did this as punishment?” Joni prodded. He knew the answer. Rød’s flush deepened.
“No,” Rød admitted. “If I would cry, he would relent. But I rarely cried unless it hurt. It was simply play.”
“And if you could not escape, what happened?” Every man and woman was silent, intent on the coming answer. Rød wished they would all find something else to do.
“He would… tickle me.” Rød’s ears were aflame.
The soldiers laughed mightily at the frivolity of a tickle fight.
Wiping off his cheeks, Joni stilled the uproar with a mirthful wave. “Enough, enough. I knew Rød’s good papa, and he was no less the valorous, for his tender heart. I rode by his side on many raids in youth; it is a shame how he was lost last year. How did he go, lad?”
“He went hunting in the hills with his horse and dogs,” Rød said simply. “The dogs returned home, but my father and his horse never did. The elders went searching and found them both. Said they’d been eaten by bears. Having no brothers, and my ma gone too, I’ve been cared for by the elders.”
“It must have been no black bear,” said Joni. His tone was serious, but his eyes still sparkled. “Even the young whites can rip a rider from his seat without trouble. It must have been that.”
“Yes,” Rød nodded. He and everyone there knew that white bears never went into the hills.
There was a moment of solemnity, as is always proper at such a revel when one mentions the dead. Again it was old Joni who broke the stillness. His nose curled and he cried, “By the Bull, boy, mind the beans! They’re burning!”
After that, the revels continued as before. Joni smiled in satisfaction as Rød presented him with a steaming bowl, his thick, freckled arm tight around Nyma’s midsection.
Five nights later, the scouts returned with news that the Huliman had been sighted. All week the signs had increased, and the riders were eager. They marched through the night, silently navigating the familiar highlands by moonlight; and when the sun rose, they made a camp. Knowing the invaders were now within reach, the best warriors rode off, leaving the whelps behind to watch the women. Rød was watching the hills with a spear in his hands when a feminine call pulled his attention to a warm spring where a yellow-haired woman was alone scrubbing greasy pots. It was Nyma, the camp girl from the other night. He approached.
“What is it?” Rød asked, attempting to sound officious, planting his spear in the stony turf. “You know I must watch the hills.”
The woman made a great display of craning her neck to peer beyond him. “Yes,” said she; “It is as I thought: the hills can be seen from here.”
Rød could not contain an unmanly, barking guffaw; for coolness in the face of an attractive woman’s not-unpleasing freshness is a skill some men learn only late in life. For her part, she did not outwardly comment on the foolish chortle, nor the deep red shade his face had taken. She let him stand over her for a space, watching her work; this near in the daylight he could see she was somewhat older than he, though still quite pretty; seasons of marching had weathered away the girlish features of her skin and limbs while preserving the womanly shape.
“I wish to offer you a word of assurance,” said the harlot. She did not look up from her work as she set aside the pot she had cleaned, and dipped another into the steaming water. “The night of the gods’ feast. It was unseemly for an older warrior to make sport of a youth in such a way. Embarrassing you because of your father.”
“Oh, that? I had already forgotten,” said Rød. He hadn’t.
“Indeed.” She went on scrubbing in silence. Rød watched the hills–when he was not watching her.
“My mother was a wise woman in Eldgard,” Nyma said at length. “She was widowed by my father, who slew her first husband and took her in a raid. They were wed as soon as they returned to Mutangard. I don’t know how she learned to love him, but she did.” Setting aside the now-clean pot, she began to ring the soiled bit of coarse wool she’d been using. “The gods have a will, I suppose.”
Rød watched her carefully, unsure why she was sharing this with him.
“What do you know of the Huliman?” she asked him.
“They are outcasts from the tribe of the Varden,” Rød answered.
“They have no fathers. Their mothers are just like mine. But the Varden keep only pure blood among their tribe. Some of them stay in the West; but the westerners don’t like mixed blood, either. Some are lucky enough to find each other and form bands.”
“Are you saying,” said Rød, more defensively than prudent, “that our people are alike to the Vardenkind?”
Setting down her finished chore, she stood and looked at him. “Certainly not,” she said, calm. “We are right to keep our borders free of invaders. Had my mother’s people been so vigilant, and Fate bent to my mother’s will, I might be an Eldgarder today. But the gods willed that I should be Mutangarder, and so I am.
“What I mean to say is–no man chooses who will be his father.”
“I am not sorry for who my father is,” Rød replied.
“Of course, you aren’t. Men like Joni, they confuse might for cruelty. They do not understand that true mercy lies in strength; for the weak must spend every ounce of power to do what the mighty do without thought.”
Rød considered these words for a long time, leaning on the pole of his spear. The blush had gone from his face. He could not be sure why such words should comfort him, but they did. Then suddenly he smiled and said “I did not think there should be such wisdom among the harlotry. You ought to go into Tutaros, and work as a philosopher.”
Gathering the freshly cleaned pots and wool, she returned a smile just as radiant. “If you think they would not work me as a harlot in Tutaros, it only shows you have never been. Even their priestesses are whores.”
Rød laughed, although he knew too little of the world to be sure why the joke was funny. Nyma stood, fumbling the cookery in her arms; he obtusely neglecting to offer aid, which she would have declined anyway. She was about to bid him farewell when a distant sentry sounded his horn.
With a sharp turn to the hills, the unfeathered youth saw a sizable force descending the hills on horseback and foot. The Huliman closed with the camp, loosing on the scattered sentries with arrow, javelin, and sling. While the seasoned riders were off in pursuit, the enemy had sent a skirmishing force to double back and ambush the camp. The element of surprise was won in their favor; even as Rød faltered–for never had he been this close to battle–he saw surprised striplings cut down under the first volley, with the remnants scrambling to organize. Shocked, Rød floundered in search of a weapon–before realizing the spear was already in his hands.
He was jolted from behind by a sharp elbow. “Raise up your weapon, fool!” the woman scolded him. “Go to your brothers! Move your feet!”
He glanced at her only briefly, grateful for the reprimand. His was a warrior’s blood; the sight of the woman reminded him of his duty to her and chased away all fear. “Go and hide,” he told her.
“Go, yourself,” she said and was gone into the camp, leaving the cookware behind.
Scanning the encampment, Rød made out a good-sized force of defenders who were gathered at the edge of the tents. He began to make his way toward them. Just then, two thundering riders crossed his path, each wielding a spear in one hand and a blazing brand in the other. The nearest of the pair marked him and thrust out his spear as he passed. Rød stumbled away, raising his own spear awkwardly in moot defense, and the point narrowly missed his breast. The two riders went on, torches wailing in the wind. Each tossed his brand into a tent as they passed, and the structures began to smolder. Riding deeper into the camp, they trained their attention on a blond-haired form as she darted and wove her way between the tents and trenches. Abandoning all thought of joining the formation of spears, he bolted in pursuit.
In short order the two riders overtook the fleeing Nyma, and were hemming and herding her with menacing spears, intent on taking her alive. Muscles tense, veins throbbing with the ardour of the gods, Rød closed with the nearest horseman, who had his back to him. The young Mutan’s spear thrust upward and out, powered by steely and furious sinews to pierce the Huliman’s light jerkin and transfix his kidneys and lungs. With a rattling groan the Huliman slid across the saddle; startled, the dappled horse kicked out blindly with its rear legs. Rød dodged the flailing hooves, keeping hold of the spear as he stepped aside. The chaos of motion widened the spear’s entry point, and blood and bile ran forth from the Huliman’s side in great, rushing gouts. He slid further, limp and senseless, but a foot entangled in the crude stirrup kept the corpse aloft, as the panicked horse bucked and twisted. Foolishly, numbly, Rød clove with stubbornness to the buckling shaft, attempting in vain to draw it loose, even as it bent under conflicting forces like a drawn bow. The impaled Huliman at last tumbled from the saddle with a splatter on the red-stained ground, and as he did the shaft of the spear snapped in two. With the sudden release, the long sliver in Rød’s grip sprang back like a trap, the splintered tip slashing his lower lip–a scar he would bear into old age, and the first of many. And thus it was that the first of many men perished while twisting on the end of the spear of Rød, who would come to be known as Lanseritter.
The second Huliman rider had dismounted, intent on Nyma as she backed away. She tripped over a tent stake, and the invader was upon her, transferring his long spear to one hand to wrap her in a burly, bristling arm. With brutish speed, he slung her like a rag across the saddle, then climbing in behind her, kicked into a gallop. By the time Rød was finished reeling, all this was done, and the horse bearing the savage and his captive were many paces distant.
Without pause, Rød grabbed for the reins of the riderless horse, who but for the luck of the gods would have bolted forthwith. Muscling himself astride the unwilling beast, he drove his soft-heeled boots into the horse’s heaving flanks, and after some fumbling with the reins he was off, unsteeled, in the direction of the escaping rider.
Already the raiders retreated before a hasty defense. Their havoc was wrought, their hands filled with the loot of opportunity. Rød’s narrow vision was trained only on the pursuit; the Huliman had made good gains speeding away while he was distracted, but riding is in a Mutangarder’s blood, and by strenuous gradations, the distance closed. Weaving between smoking carts and ruined tents, the riders cleared the camp. They leapt over a narrow stream that ran swiftly from one of the many springs. The pursuit climbed into the hills, under the shadow of a peak with its shrinking dome of hanging ice.
The wind grew dense and cold in the umbra of the mountain. Rød’s bare knuckles burned with numbness, and his torn lip throbbed with each gallop, timed with the beating of his heart. The horse, forgetting all past enmity, responded to his will like one of his own limbs. They sped along a crest above a steep crevasse, past pockets of hard ice hidden from the late spring sun. A sharp rise gave way to a plateau carpeted in sling-sized pebbles and dotted with steaming springs, in the shade of toothy overhangs of glistening silver. The pursuit drew nearer.
Had a scout or wayfinder been present, he’d have warned Rød against galloping through this lofty vale, for the earth was brittle, and the acidic springs fed into subterraneous streams which corroded the rock. The Huliman made a sharp turn around an embankment of black, porous stone, eliciting a groan from the woman slung across his saddle. The sound of her cries impelled Rød onward, and he kicked on, deaf to the crackling of subtle fissures spreading in the thin shell underhoof.
Following his quarry around the embankment, he spied a wide stretch surrounded by cliffs, which narrowed into a low canyon some hundred paces away. At the mouth of this canyon, some Huliman raiders regrouped in a band. They saw their companion with his prize across the saddle; saw too the stripling pursuer, and raised their slings and spears.
Then the earth beneath the Huliman horseman opened suddenly, the black rock caving before the thundering hooves to reveal a nighted abyss that swallowed horse and invader and woman. Rød tugged the reins with all his might, digging his heels desperately into his mount’s ribs. His horse reared up, kicked against the stony earth. It slid across the shale, bellowing its affright, grinding grey dust into the air that swirled like smoke around its whistling nostrils. The momentum was irreversible, and the widening expanse came up to meet them. Before the eyes of the battle-ready raiders, Rød and the horse skidded and tumbled into a yawning pit that roared with blackness.
The young Mutangarder woke painfully after successive plummets through dizzying abysses. The initial drop, culminating after some forty paces into a stony slope, and subsequent series of chutes smoothed by antediluvian rivers, and final, terminal drop into a giant chamber, were but a single, dim memory in his roiling brain. With the return to awareness, he came to the gradual realization that his breathing was restricted, and his legs were in agony. He was being crushed.
The channels above filtered just enough grey light to reason that the horse had landed atop him. Just as this reality dawned on his swimming senses, the beast woke with a start, braying painfully and giving a wild thrash, which increased his own pain but opened enough space for a scrambling extrication. After pulling himself free on his elbows, as the injured horse flailed amid the rubble, Rød took stock of his own condition and praised the gods to find that his legs were not broken. He was deeply bruised about the limbs and midsection, and large, bleeding scrapes were already starting to clot; but no injury grave enough to limit his ability was extant.
Now rising to his feet he gave his focus to the horse. The poor beast had fared much worse in the fall; at least two legs were horribly mangled, and already its vain protestations subsided into a whistling, shallow panting.
A sound of shifting rubble and formless motion at his periphery drew Rød round in a flash, and the woman Nyma staggered from the shadowed extremity into the soft light. Her garments were tattered and her face smudged with grime, and even in the dim, she could not conceal from his keen sight the way she favored one leg. He started for her, but she stayed him with the authoritative motion of an abraded hand. She came to stand at his side before the pitifully wheezing beast.
“Are you hurt?” Rød asked her. Their voices gave a sharp echo, imparting an instinctive sense of the black cavern’s vastness.
“No.”
“What of the invader who captured you?”
“I did not see him. I was pitched from the saddle, quite far.” She nodded to the horse. “Your mount is tormented by injuries, and shall never walk more,” she said. “Go on, and do your duty–even the basest man knows it is dishonorable to suffer a wounded horse to languish.”
Feeling his person for a weapon he knew was not there, Rød protested: “I have not even a knife to cut its throat.”
“Child!” She scolded. “There are yet ways to be merciful. Crawl behind his neck, and throttle him. Be not irresolute, but find the place where the windpipe is soft, and crush it with all the strength in your arms. I may guide you with my hands.”
Rød nodded. “Watch for the Huliman while I do this,” he bade her, and without further hesitation climbed behind the prone beast. Lifting its head and wrapping his aching arms and legs about its long and thick neck, he found no resistance. As though by ancestral memory, he knew precisely where to place the pressure, and in moments the horse’s passion was turned to peace.
Nyma nodded approvingly as Rød began to slowly draw himself from under the now-still beast. “You have done as a man must do,” she said–and then, with a surprised gasp, found herself clutched from behind; for all the while, the Huliman rider, having survived by his own godless luck, with artful stealth had crept along the shadows, and now he pounced.
Rød pulled himself swiftly free and stood to face the pair. The Huliman had as many injuries as they but held in his bloodied right hand a flint-bladed knife with a handle of fitted bone. He stood tall as a giant, as the youth could see now that they faced one another on foot, with tiny black eyes behind a stone-like brow, and the bulging, hardened muscles that may only be the product of truly savage breeding and a truly brutal life. Glowering with wicked menace at the red-haired youth, he pressed the stone blade to the white of her throat until a red bead sprang at the razor point.
Rød stood, hands open and ready at his sides. Dragging the woman back out of easy reach, the Huliman growled a command in his indecipherable pidgin. The way the invader forcibly held her head seemed to lend Nyma an unwarranted, truculent air. Chin out, neck bared, she looked along her nose at her faltering protector, too proud to implore. She did not wince as her captor subtly twisted the knife. Rød stood immobile with a long breath. Through narrow eyes he studied his adversary with intense care in the dim light. He will make a mistake, he told himself. I will watch until he makes his mistake, and then I will kill him.
Appraising the youth’s indecision, the Huliman gave a triumphant grin. Gradually he withdrew the blade, gauging the response from the others as he shifted. Hurt and weary, they were as hesitant to clash as he was, and he’d return to his brethren with a prize after all. Shifting Nyma with ease into his arms like a babe, he began to retreat with her face buried in the side of his neck.
All at once the woman stiffened and kicked, and with a shout of surprise and pain, the savage lifted the knife. With an arching buck, Nyma tore her face away. Blood flowed from the side of his head to seep into his tattered robe, and twisting aside in his arms, Nyma spat–something black and dripping which splattered at the stones before Rød’s feet–nearly the entire portion of a raggedly excised ear. Rød sprinted forth, intent on stopping the falling knife, knowing the distance would prove too great and the stab too swift.
Fortune saved the harlot, for, in the mad thrashing, the soft heel of her boot struck the wrist that held the knife, and it fell to the stones with a resounding crack. The reeling savage tossed her from him, and she landed on her feet, staggering away with thick blood coloring her nose and chin. Her weakened leg buckled beneath her, and a wide-arcing blow from the invader’s knuckle clipped her brow and sent her spinning onto the stones, where she lay stunned.
Tracing the path of the falling weapon as it passed into shadow, Rod lunged. In a crouch he reached out, gripped the bone handle in the dark; but raising the handle to the light he saw, to his horror, the brittle flint had shattered, and the blade was no more. The Huliman thrust himself upon him.
The larger enemy locked his arms about Rød’s body, raised him off the ground, and crushed him backward with force into the debris-strewn floor. Tightening his neck by instinct Rød buried his chin into his own chest, saving his skull from being dashed on the jagged rubble. Wriggling an arm loose, he wrapped his elbow about the Hulman’s steely bicep and began to pry, slowly widening the gap. His other arm came loose and lodged deeply against the attacker’s throat.
All this struggle had borne the two fighters into the deepest shadows; but even without sight, Rød sensed the other’s intentions in the subtlest impulse of muscle, responding before they ever manifested in realized motion. This attacker was no larger, stronger, or more vigorous than his father had been when he’d first won their sport.
The Huliman lay atop with both arms tight about Rød’s waist now, bearing him down into the abrasive stones. In the darkness, he felt the Huliman release his grip with one arm, and the rigidity of his entire frame told him the fist was being raised high. Rød’s father had wound up his fist just this way, to dig his single longest knuckle into Rød’s ribs, eliciting wild laughter from the ticklish boy. Reacting just as he had then, he extricated his own arm from under the attacker’s chin and tucked his elbow tight against his side. The strike came, just as expected; the knuckle delivered an explosive blow against the blocking arm.
Wasting no time, Rød locked arms with the Huliman before he could retract the fist; he now had a semblance of control over his opponent. With surprising speed the Huliman thrust his forehead against Rød’s face, dazing him and sending a fresh stream from his torn lip; but in spite of the white-hot throbbing, he kept his grip on the burly arms. To prevent another strike from that angle, he pulled in tighter, tucking his chin once more against his chest.
They jostled, rolled, and twisted for a time. The Huliman kicked and repositioned, seeking leverage; the flexible sinews of the Mutangarder thwarted him at every turn. As they struggled, Rød felt a nose give beneath his repositioning elbow; allowed his knee to sink into a badly bruised groin; wrenched back a dusky thumb with a pop in his quest to prevent its grip on his arm. How easy this was when there was no concern for the other’s safety! He managed to bind his legs about the Huliman’s; he then gripped the left arm in both of his, locking his elbow beneath the enemy’s chin and forcing him to look aside. The Huliman’s newly-free hand groped after him, but Rød was already twisting out of reach, applying the strength of his entire frame to press back the bound arm and prise an opening to slip aside.
As he loosed the grip of his legs, he felt the Huliman seeking new purchase. He hoped, Rød knew, to roll over onto his back as Rød slipped free, lest Rød get behind him. Like a hook Rød slipped a deft ankle under the ankle of the Huliman, keeping the leg splayed and his opponent prone for the instant he needed to gain the Huliman’s back, and he throttled him with both arms.
He felt the Huliman rising beneath him, relying on brute force to lift him into the air. He must not allow his foe to get to his knees, he knew; so slipping a leg under the Huliman’s thigh, he tensed his abdomen and thews to keep the knee from gaining purchase. He arched his back to increase the pressure on both the leg and the neck. Surrendering the effort to rise, the Huliman instead reached back with a hand, grabbing desperately; but Rød released his own grip with one hand, pinning the reaching elbow under his own. He shifted so his weight was almost fully on that arm; at this angle, all the Huliman’s wild strength could not free the arm to offend him. Then, remembering the fresh injury of the bitten ear, he craned his head forward, grinding his crown against the scabrous nub, and fresh blood flowed into his red hair. The Huliman roared. He kept his one-armed grip like iron about the burly neck. Although he and father had executed this position but tenderly, he knew, in his bones, as with the horse before, how tightly he must squeeze. With the elbow locked under the chin, and all his weight on the arm and neck, the Huliman’s head was perfectly immobile, and all the squirming he could muster would not extricate him, or remove the wounded ear from the tormenting grind. With a desperate jerk, a leg was momentarily freed; with lightning reaction, it was recaptured. In a minute or two, it was over.
Rød rose and returned to find Nyma, who was weak but thankfully not badly hurt. She did not need to instruct him to ensure the Huliman was dead before they sought a way out of the chamber.
“He meant to escape with you,” Rød told her, as they explored the silent cavern. “Which tells me he must have discovered a way out before attacking–or else it was a terribly foolish plan.” Unseen in the gloom, Nyma gave him an appreciating look.
True to his guess, they soon found an area, far from the sinkhole and behind a smoothed outcropping, that was effused with grayish light. After a brief, half-blind search they found an aperture just wide enough to suffer them. A brief stretch of tunnel led to a cliffside den. The bones of many animals and the tufts of black fur told them what beast had wintered here, but in late spring the black bear would range far into the woods. They stole through the wilderness until they came to a stream fresh and warm, which they followed to a hot spring bubbling merrily among tall rocks and budding foliage.
Without pause Nyma began to strip by the edge of the pool, wincing as the warm water splashed across her scraped skin. When her body was clean, she washed her clothing.
“Will you march to the camp flecked in grime and gore?” she teased the youth, who stood by, bashful. With some reticence, he joined her, wading into the hot pool with his tattered clothing on.
“Well, boy,” she said playfully. “You have your first tale of battle. And what a tale! Two large Hulimans, one with bare hands!”
“Don’t forget the horse, also with bare hands,” Rød said, grinning. Nyma giggled a startlingly girlish sound. Her naked white skin glimmered with coursing droplets. After scrubbing again at her hair, she stepped out, draped her wet clothes on a thornbush, and reclined next to them on a patch of flowery grass.
“The boys will have to look at you differently, then.” Rød detected a trace of disdain in her voice.
“You always go after that Joni,” Rød began, waist-deep as he scrubbed at the violet clots encrusting his strawberry hair; “yet you do not really seem to fancy him.”
The harlot shrugged, gazing at the sky, her curvaceous flesh on full display. “So?”
“So, why do you go after him?”
Now she looked at him and shrugged again. “He is strong. He will give strong children when they come–and he has the sense to protect and provide for them. What else do you want?”
Rød was silent after that. After slowly finishing his ablutions, he found a seat on some stones, a modest distance from the sunning harlot.
“If you keep them on, your clothes will stay wet all day,” said the woman, fully reclined, her closed eyes toward the warming sun.
When he did not answer, she went on: “Mine will be dry any moment. I suppose we’ll be off, then. Back to the boys.”
After another moment of silence, the youth hazarded a look in her direction. He found her looking at him, propped up on her scraped and bruised elbows, her ample chest on display. “Oh, will you come over here?” she demanded.
Feeling his cheeks flush again, Rød sat beside her. She shifted until they were quite close, and covered part of his great hand with her tiny one.
Rød’s heart thrummed as he looked into her languidly batting blue eyes. He leaned forth, bringing their tattered lips close. Swiftly the small, warm hand was lifted from atop his own, and she pressed her fingers firmly against his mouth, pushing him away.
“Hold,” she said, and dug a stumpy fingernail with force between her teeth. This being done, she gave a sheepish grin. “Best if there’s no kissing, eh?” Catching sight of what she’d dug out of there and flicked away, Rød could not disagree.
Before the two reached camp, the returning riders of Mutangard found them.
Had not the harlot been there to confirm Rød’s tale, the men would never have believed a word. Joni, overjoyed at the sight of Nyma, flew from the saddle and crushed her in his great arms. He flung her in circles and proclaimed his love. Setting her down, he clapped Rød hard on the back and called him a hero, and Rød thought it wondrous to see joyful tears in the old wardog’s eyes. Joni hoisted the campgirl up into his saddle and sat before her, placing her lithe arms about his tremendous girth. All Rød saw of her then was a sympathetic look cast over her shoulder before they were gone among the trotting horses.
Rød rode home with the warriors that same spring, and in the summer there was word that Nyma and Joni were to wed. In the last weeks of winter, Nyma bore a child–the first of many she would give to Joni, who was made happy by her company in his old age. All who saw Joni’s firstborn son said it was right and wonderful that the boy had his mother’s blue eyes. None thought it too strange, all considered, that he should have red hair, for one never knows but that a blond-haired Eldgarder may have such traits in her lineage.
© April 2022, P. J. Atwater
P J Atwater is an emerging author. This is his first time appearing in Swords and Sorcery, and his work is forthcoming in Tales from the Magician’s Skull.