Fia hurried after Gunn, cursing as she tripped on some tussock. She caught up with the long-haired outlaw as he leaned against a tree on the edge of the small copse to light a roll-up, just beyond the fringe of the light of the campfire.
“Why the fuck do you think I’m still ridin’ with you and this crew of rag-tags?” Gunn shot at her, before she could demand what had got his tail in a knot. “Why d’you think I haven’t just turned around and headed back down the trail to wait for Boni and the rest of my crew?”
Fia opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, but all that came out was a muffled belch.
“Because I fuckin’ heard what Gray said about the Vansgrimans, and the deal that Redmond Marr’s made with this Imperator arsehole, the same as you did. I’ve been ridin’ up and down these roads for years, Fia. I told you; I listen to folk––make a habit of it because the rumours, gossip and half-arsed stories they tell have saved my life more than once.”
“I believe it,” said Fia. “As I believe that you haven’t a nature as dark as the shit you’ve done would lead people to believe.”
Gunn snorted. “You can’t do the shit I’ve done without it tinting your soul, Fia Marr, you better believe that and mark it.”
“Maybe that’s the case now. But, I reckon it came on slow. With time. After your loss.”
“Doesn’t really matter how it happened, just that it did. Doesn’t matter, because now any good part of me that might have been is tarnished all to hell and dark as a demon’s riding boots.”
Fia found herself searching the man’s face, what little she could see of it in the glow of the end of his roll-up and the faint light reaching them from the campfire.
“I get why you’ve been runnin’ however long it’s been since… since your brother died.”
“I haven’t been running from anything,” said Fia.
“What’d you call the life you’ve been livin’ if not being on the run?”
“On the run? From who?”
“Not who. What. Grief.”
“Grief isn’t something you can escape, Gunn. Not like a fire. Or a gang.”
“And yet still you run. Run, run, run. Ever since the day you let fly that arrow you’ve been runnin’ from it.”
“I’ve been helping folk too,” Fia said, her voice tight, barely under control.
“But grief doesn’t diminish with the passin’ of a handful of years or the doin’ of some deeds,” continued Gunn. “Rather it grows. It’s very much like hatred in that respect.”
“Ain’t stopped you running though, has it?” Fia retorted, her voice a mite more defensive than she would’ve liked it. “Moving from place to place. Ain’t made you feel any better about your daughter has it? Not even with killing Gray.”
For a moment she thought Gunn might hit her.
“I see Mae in everything; in the fallin’ leaves, in the quiet before the dawn, in the dying fire. Everythin’. That don’t ever change,” he said.
“So, what the bloody hell are you telling me, then, Gunn?” Fia asked impatiently.
“There’s something comin’ down the race the likes of which none of us have ever seen before,” Gunn said, his voice low and fervent.
“Who gives a fuck?” Fia said. “Why do you? You don’t owe this land anything.”
“I owe this land everything, girl, as do you. I owe the people who call themselves the Counts and Countesses––your people, whether you acknowledge it or not––fuck all, but the everyday folk the nobles refer to as ‘lesser’, they’ve come to look to me to act as their champion.”
“You rob the nobles and kill their soldiers,” Fia levelly. “That’s what you and your band of cut-throats do. Don’t go breaking your arm patting yourself on the back for acting like some kind of hero when you ain’t one.”
Gunn shook his shaggy head and breathed smoke out into the air.
“I’m no hero. Maybe you ain’t either. But you’ve the chance to do somethin’ good for this world. To do somethin’ rare––somethin’ selfless and right.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s obvious, ain’t it?” Gunn said, his voice becoming unexpectedly soft and earnest. “You’ve got to step up to the position you were born to take, Fia Marr. Your brother, and the Imperator, whoever he is, is going to bring ruin to all of Fallaros if you don’t stand up, claim your place and stop him.”
Fia looked at Gunn for a long while. Her drink-sodden mind struggled to cope with the truth of what he was saying.
“But I didn’t want any of this,” Fia said, her words sounding piss-weak in her own ears even as she spoke them. “I didn’t want to have to ever confront Redmond again, I didn’t––”
“You didn’t want what?” Gunn said sardonically. “You didn’t want your brother, Arlen, to die, did you? You didn’t want your half-brother, the Viscount, to try and knock you off to make sure that you wouldn’t go inconveniently raisin’ your head and fuckin’ up his plans for becoming the next Warden of the High Seat, maybe? Or you didn’t want some arsehole from over the sea to come lookin’ to strike the mother of all bargains with Redmond fuckin’ Marr, or spoiling for the mother of all wars with Fallaros if that deal falls through?”
“I didn’t want responsibilities,” Fia said, swallowing. She looked defiantly at the shadow of Gunn’s face in the gloom. “I didn’t want enemies.”
Gunn tilted back his head and laughed in the face of the stars.“What are you cryin’ about, eh? You’ve got enemies? Well, let me tell you somethin’: a woman like you should have enemies. Means you’ve raised some hell, stood your ground to someone or somethin’. Embrace it and let it fuel you! Use that enmity!”
“For what? To save the fucking world?” Fia said ironically, though she felt a leaden thrill settle in the pit of her stomach as she said the words, nestling in with the meat and the spirits. “Or change it?”
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“Why not both?” Gunn said.
Fia shook her head and looked up at the sky, which had been daubed in black over purple over blue, but there were no answers forthcoming from that quarter.
“You ain’t no longrider, McCrae,” Gunn said. “You’re smart. Smart enough to know when you need a hero, and smart enough to know when that hero needs to be you.”
Fia screwed her eyes shut. The drink was warring with her common-sense.
“I dunno…” she muttered.
“Otherwise, maybe I’ll steal that pretty horse of yours,” Gunn said, his tone flat. “Ride back down the trail, find my crew, and go kill Redmond Marr myself.”
Fia actually laughed at that. Felt strange, she hadn’t laughed for so long.
“You don’t think I could?” Gunn asked, clearly a little nettled despite his cool hauteur.
“I don’t think stealing my brumby is something you could do,” she said, actually stepping forward and patting Gunn on the arm. “Not a good idea.”
“Why wouldn’t you think that’s a good idea?”
“Well, for one, because you do. Second, because any horse can feel a drop of rain land on its back—you think an animal of that temperament ain’t going to notice a halfwit like you climbing all over him? Because the only way he’d abide you is if he never knew you were there.”
Gunn’s head tipped to the side. Fia saw the faint white glow of teeth in the dark as he smiled. “Alright, then,” he said. “I’d take my horse.”
Fia reached out and pulled the roll-up from between the outlaw’s lips with the speed of a snake. Took a drag and breathed out. “Back-pedalling, Torsten Gunn? Are you fucking scared of a horse?”
“You might be lucky enough to make it to an age where you realise that you can’t trust a man who says he fears nothin’. Even more so a man who actually doesn’t.”
“Sounds like old man excuses.”
“Hmm, could be,” Gunn said, stepping forward and trying to get his smoke back off Fia, his cold grey gaze running over her face, taking in the swirling Kynnish tattoos along her scalp, before fastening on her unsettling eyes. “I ain’t that old though, woman.”
“No,” Fia said, returning Gunn’s stare with interest. “No, you ain’t.”
Gunn was very close. Fia could smell the man’s breath; baccy and red-eye. Comforting smells.
“That horse really like hell on legs, like she looks?” Gunn asked.
“Yeah,” said Fia, holding the man’s gaze, trying to foresee what was going to happen next.
“You wouldn’t give me any advice on stealin’ her, then? Seeing as I saved your life and all.”
“Try go off the side of her when she dumps you. Let her flick you out the backdoor and chances are she’ll kick your head in.”
Fia reached up, grabbed Gunn by the back of the neck and pulled him to her. Blood pounded in her ears, her usually measured breathing hurried like she’d just been running for her life. The orange glow of the campfire a stone’s throw from them, the prickle of icy stars above, the dying ember that was Gunn’s dropped roll-up, all became abstract colours as they kissed; smearing and dimming.
Fia bit Gunn’s bottom lip and pulled on it, and Gunn responded. One hand went to Fia’s waist, the other to cup her face. Without thinking, Fia slapped the longrider’s hand away from her belt where her dirk hung, jerked away from the hand reaching for her face.
They broke apart. Stood a foot away from one another, panting hard, grinning like wild dogs. Gunn’s eyes were nothing but a glitter of silver in the dark, like a couple of coins sitting at the bottom of a well. He snorted.
“Spooky thing, ain’t ya?” he said.
“Just… not used to people trying to touch me without wanting to hurt me,” Fia said.
Gunn’s teeth glittered, reflecting the light of the not-so-distant fire.
“I ain’t goin’ to hurt you, Fia Marr,” the outlaw said.
“I’d like to see you try,” Fia said. Grinning back, she launched herself at the man.
Gunn caught her in the air, picked her up, her legs wrapped around his waist, and pivoted as they kissed and pawed at one another, teeth clicking as they crushed their lips together. Fia had a handful of Gunn’s dark hair, one of her small hands gripping the back of his neck, as their tongues investigated each other’s mouths.
Fia hung onto Gunn as the longrider stumbled forward, almost going head over biscuit as his boot caught a tree root. She gasped and growled as the man pressed her clumsily into the trunk of the offending tree. She pulled Gunn’s face forcibly back so that she could try and make it out in the dark. Saw there was a hunger written across his features, the same hunger that she felt in her. His lip was bleeding where she’d bit it and his chest rose and fell.
Fia wriggled from Gunn’s grip and dropped to the floor, desiccated leaves and twigs crunching under her boots. They kissed again, a little slower and a little deeper this time. Fia could feel Gunn’s prick pressing against her through the cloth of his breeches, could feel it hot as a brand rubbing up against her own crotch, crushed up against the insides of her thighs and rubbing up against her belly.
She gave a little excited laugh, pulled away. When Gunn tried to pull her back to him she fended him off with her boot. Grinning. Grinning with the booze and the lust. Grinning as she hadn’t grinned for longer than she could remember, at the absurdity of what she was doing, who she was doing it with, and at life in general.
Gunn reached for her again and Fia spun nimbly around his outstretched hands.
“Are we goin’ to fuck or not?” Gunn said, sounding equal parts excited and exasperated.
“Might as well,” Fia said. “I can’t dance, my singing voice is terrible, and it’s too dark to ride.”
Again Gunn reached for her and this time Fia’s fending boot sent him stumbling backward so that he sat down hard on a moss-covered boulder.
“Gods-damn, woman,” he said.
Without thinking, laughing softly at the big, bad outlaw’s discomfort, Fia strode forward and came to stand in front of Gunn’s legs. Awkwardly, inexpertly, she kicked off one boot, unbuttoned her breeches and nonchalantly wriggled her trousers and drawers down her thighs, stepping out of the one trouser leg she was able to get off thanks to the removal of her boot.
She looked down at Gunn, her mirth fading, settling into something else. Something hard and hot.
Fia’s lips parted as Gunn’s hand ran up the inside of her thigh, seemingly of its own accord, his calloused fingers slipping with surprising gentleness inside her. She gasped, gave a little moan, then reached down and started fumbling with Gunn’s sword belt and breeches. With the red-eye feeding her lust like logs in a furnace, she had them open in a trice and grabbed Gunn roughly.
For a little while they played with each other, breath hissing in the darkness, kissing more slowly, tongues dancing across lips and teeth. Then, Fia’s blood surged. Holding Gunn, she crouched down, pressed the tip of him against her and slid hard down onto him, making the longrider emit a low little cry of surprise and longing. Fia could feel Gunn inside her, could feel his hot liquor breath on her neck. She closed her eyes, letting the world fade away; taking with it her fears for the future, the crushing knowledge of what she had to do next.
Nothing existed but the physical connection and the primal animal need for fulfilment between the two of them. They fucked selfishly, crouched and hunched like gargoyles on the boulder, Fia’s knees pushing through the soft moss to graze themselves on the rock beneath. Then, Gunn rose and was holding Fia as she bucked down on him, before he turned and crushed her up against a tree trunk again. The breath burst out of her, a whooping, wheezing cry of near silent rapture, and there was an emphatic crack as a branch gave way and they fell backwards into the brittle grass, a tangle of limbs and clothes.
“The fuck was that?” came the faint, intoxicated voice of Darach Lees.
“Just animals would be my guest,” Cleric Vass replied, his deep voice resonating from over by the fire. “Pay them no heed, Lees.”
Fia grinned in the night. Kissed Gunn hard and slapped him gently on the side of his bearded face. She moaned as she straddled him, rocking and grinding, feeling the gathering sticky wetness that was building between them. She looked up at the superb arch of inky sky and, for just a little breathless while, she forgot who she was and what she was going to have to do, as the frosted, dying stars burned overhead and beneath her the world moved towards morning.