He squeezed through the old gap in the fence and high stepped through the [brigadier]'s overgrown tea garden as if she might storm out of the side door any moment to scold him and his truancy. Standing in the side yard by the practice circle with the smell of the herbs in the air and the calls of the swifts in the trees it all came back at once and he could see her, short and wiry and eager, eyes bright though her body faded, the high cheekbones and the long gray hair wound up and stacked on top of her head and tied off with a broad kerchief of black lace, holding her [wooden sword] in one hand to show him some trick of attack. He saw her turn to face the approaching king's men, to face the long wet pikes that had ripped life from her [valet], the pikes lifting him up and up as his guts went out of him in a slurry of red and the smell and sound of his opening bowels as he fell across the circle's edge, their edges dripping on the ground and their mouths opened and accusing she who'd rejected the [king]. He saw her, the old [brigadier], the downfallen and dishonored, now standing between him and them. She raised her shieldless arm and crossed her [wooden sword] over as if it was edged steel, the grain whispering as it slid across her naked forearm in a kind of salute, its hard fibers marred and marked from ten thousand strikes of wood on wood and wood on boiled leathers. He saw her three paces from the first of the four, her motionless and him drawing up and standing heavily to laugh at the old woman and her orc cub and their play at sticks, and her sighting up the sloping sword at a point Orc couldn't see because her profile occluded it. She would bury that first [pike] in the dirt with a thrust and a sweep of her sword, but now she put her weight forward and bent her knees and sighted up it and her torso hid the bloodied [pike].
He stood in the now and heard her thin voice then call clearly above the [pikeman]’s laughter, "Study my demonstration, Orc."
He heard the voice and saw the dip of her leading knee as she lunged forward and he watched her journey into the [pike] that rose to her sword as the [pikeman] followed her feint, the dainty wrist precise, guiding the [pike] downward as her shieldhand fingered the [knife] concealed in her waistband. He saw it glinting silver and her back foot leaving the dirt as the [pike] stove into a geyser of dust and her lead foot now leaping and the sword rebounding and her arm extending with [knife] two fingered and released. He saw its brightness streaking straight as a line as if the [pikeman]'s neck was the center of its world and his eyes followed until its unwrapped bulwark rested against the soft part of his throat and the man let go of his [pike] and reached both hands to his neck, and the old woman whose eyes had never left the place it entered now landed on her trailing foot at the [pikeman]'s side and drew his steel sidearm in a motion as natural to her as breathing. He saw her standing, [steel sword] in one hand and [wooden sword] in the other, watching the trio ahead as the man beside her collapsed to bleed in the dirt and rattle from the hole in his neck, watching their lowering pikes and shifting feet, her swords raised in a formal salute. And he heard her call to him again. "Come show these men what you have learned."
In the now he remembered how they had finally fought together, for the first time and for the last.
And after the last [pikeman] fell he saw her standing soaked in the sweat of it, the relief coming and the vomit, the back of her wrist drawn across her mouth and wiped on her trouser leg, and the greater relief at seeing him still standing, still breathing, still looking to her for what to do, and he saw her walk the practice circle to sink six inches of steel in each of the king's men who had come that day, just to be sure. He knew she couldn't run to each, not even if one rose with [pistol] readied could she run to him, and he watched her make the round and stop over her [valet] and wipe her mouth again and close the eyes with her hand. He saw her shake her head and press finger and thumb into her eyes then against the bridge of her nose as if she was making a confession, then stand slowly and drag her body back to him with her sad eyes and red hands and sad smile as if she'd seen the coming end of her life and she had no antidote against it.
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In the now the storm began to spit rain and he turned from the memory and moved through a gap between the lion topiaries now overgrown into strange and bulbous beasts and into an archway with its hinged door swinging free and into the residence. As the wind raged outside he walked through its empty rooms. The place had been looted. It smelled of fire and damp and black mold spotted the walls and followed cracks in the plaster from the vaulted ceilings down to the plank framing that separated rooms. Quail scurried ahead of him as he moved from one to the next. In the one in which he had learned to read and write the thieves had burned his old hardwood desk to warm themselves. A rough circle of black ash and charred wood ends and loose nails that were rusting on the floor. On the wall they had scrawled their names in ash and used his name in epithets for her, and where they had urinated on her maps the hard lines of provinces were blotted and bled into purplish and yellow blooms defined by the borders of their piss pools, and the great oil portrait of her astride her steed was slashed from her eyes to its hoof with more gashes at the places defining her sex. At the threshold to her study lay a dead thing. Bones, and desiccation stretched across them. Perhaps a dog. Inside books thrown open and about with pages folded against the floor and the mold beginning its work on their bindings. He toed them away and stood at her desk before the window. Broken glass on the sill and the cold outside air swirling in. Her leatherbound journal resting against the frame of the window wrapped in the black lace kerchief she used to tie up her hair. He took it and walked out of the only place he'd ever been that felt like home.
In the yard between the house and the olives he came. Sun faded laundry littered the ground and fluttering leaves of green grass grew between and over it. Down at the grave markers were four unmarked slabs, each bearing a ruddy stain from where a [pike]'s head had rusted against their surfaces. They had looted those too. Beside them her husband's image rested atop his upraised sepulcher, and the empty place where hers would go, and a grave marker rendered in the shape of a [skirmisher]'s shield and marked with a cross. It had been defaced. If its ground had ever been disturbed he could not tell. He looked about for a [spade] but saw none.
He sat with his back against the nearest olive tree and unwrapped the journal. He let the black lace hang from his hand and he touched it with a finger and smelled it but it smelled only of the leather. He opened the pages and turned to the last one that bore her flowing script. It set to move all happenings around her with her at their center so that she was on paper as she was in life:
Five days ago Donnas made me superintendent of the internment camps. I refused. Yesterday the armiger sent King's Men to collect me. His ambition runs naked before him like the herald of a false god, and his hunger is greater than whatever sustains Donnas' realm. Again I refused, and the cub killed the Men. I slew the cub myself and burned his remains. He was my responsibility. I stole him from his folk because I felt guilty for what had happened. But you can't steal that which by rights belongs to you. Nor should you feel guilt for killing they who are not people. People are civilized. I believed he could be. Now four soldiers and my valet are dead. And the cub. May he find light in his freedom from the burdens of this world. I await my own unburdening. I did as we promised for as long as I could. I am tired.
He read it once in disbelief and then again and again until he thought he understood the message she had left there for him. He looked up at the branches above him as they surged and swayed in the storm, and down at the places where their olives had fallen. Black and purple spots where the fruit laid and decayed between the rows like constellations of the dead stars she had once said outnumbered those still burning. He stood up and tied the lace around his arm and walked the colonnade that paralleled the drive until he came to the fence. He turned to walk along the fence then passed the gate with its beheaded lions and came to stand in the middle of the seaway. It was midday. He shoved the journal in his waistband and gripped the handle of the [Skyshard] and waited for the next person to come down the road.
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> -1 [Rage]: And if there was no peace for him there then I hope he found understanding... (5/10).