When the sun was high and the clouds that would soon thicken into storms were yet terse trails in the distant sky, the host of Argenton issued from the gate, led at the head by the banner of the silver wolf and Sir Kamaric, Knight-Lord of the Northern March. Two dozen men-at-arms on handsome steeds brandished glinting lances and shields marked with the county’s coat of arms. The lightly armed warriors tripled that number, archers and spearmen, marching on foot. Then came the baggage train of servants, grooms, squires to make up one-third of the warband. A little further back, lady Galilea rode a pretty roan ahead of her maidservants on a wagon and two horsemen, and Esme. Heads crowded upon the battlements to see the warriors off, wondering what adventures they would return to tell. Little thoughts the spectators gave to the terror of warfare, for all that there had been talks of the fabled barbarians. For whenever Sir Kamaric marched, victory seemed assured, so long had he been a reliable stalwart of the land. Although for even as long no earnest warfare had visited this corner of the kingdom. The inclusion of the lady of the house, first time seen in years, also did much to allay all sense of danger. Only the leader himself sported a grim look under his lifted visor.

As for Cordelia, she was allowed to roam wherever she pleased. Nor did they at all mind her inclusion. Though she had caused their lord many a headache and mayhems, the men treated her like an old friend. Hearty calls greeted her as she rode by, then the jeer and jest, both tactful and not. Nor was she unaware of certain looks among the more base men who made up the knight-lord’s standing retinues, who were neither trained nor honored as his horsemen. They would not try aught, she told herself, for she was their lord’s ward. Yet disagreeable it was to be regarded in such a way. And so to rid herself of this displeasure, she spurred the Hagborn ahead of the train, moving away from the uneasy sluggishness wonted of traveling in such a sizable company.

It was noon and it was bleak, the earth hard and the wind fierce. The blue banner somewhat elevated this band of men and women to a thing in resemblance to the glory of warfare. But otherwise they marched in brown lonesome across vast barren fields where all riches had been extracted before winter. The sounds of their leather boots striking the earth echoed, and as they marched on the road that followed the winding river, their footsteps made more perceptible sounds than the demure water nearing to winter’s solidness. The few birds who had not migrated did not sing but very weakly, the trees that housed their nests had withered down to inhospitable gnarled branches. And once the last cluster of farmhouses had been put behind, all human activities seemed likewise to cease from their vision. For the warband itself, as Cordelia observed, was a single unit that betimes did not appear any more alive than the grim wind rushing by or the immense roof of clouds spreading from the towering distance. They were a single entity that moved to the course of nature and was not man. They had been trained to be a monolith where even the rare murmurs of men and whinnies of horses did not diminish but instead dissolved into another of its silent parts, no less monotonous than the even march, but whose breaths were broken to smaller pieces, whose separated anatomy uniformly acted upon marching orders and uniformly struck the earth by one step after the last. Just as no more peasants were there to observe their rigid gaits, so had all splendor vanished from the glinting spearheads and shields of painted leather. Perhaps when battle commenced and their steel became accented by the enemy’s blood, life would once more rush into their beings like a beast out of slumber. But as of now, Cordelia could imagine very few things more uninspiring than an army on the march.

To set itself apart, the Hagborn fleeted beside and over them all like a specter, cantering and eyeing the docile warhorses with lordly disdain. Its white mane blew in the air like morning mist while the others trotted steadily.

How the rider longed to distance herself from her only allies and protection.

Though but a mere vestige of the ride down the castle’s slope yesterday, she felt again the rush of speed as the horse let itself go. It was the only cure to the suffocation she had been unaware of during the weeks stuck in the castle, self-confined to the dusty library. It was something in the air, that was not exactly foul but foreboding. Something that was the restless monotony of a long wait for danger. Whether her horse felt much the same and was releasing the pent-up stress even as the rider longed to do, she did not know, but that seemed awfully close to the truth. Too often it veered close to the side of the road, verging on a final breaking off from the body of soldiers, yet did not, instead keeping to the edge of safety without conforming itself to the main body of men.

Betimes she still felt her thoughts steered the beast even more readily than her rein. And after the incident yesterday, the beast had proved its reputation of docility. Even so, many curious looks she had received upon choosing to stick with the unruly creature. But that the beast had the eye, she could not deny. Or else a strange nose for danger to sniff out feys, somehow. For no mistake, it had done so at the moat, having singled out the einheri on the far wall for a threat, and no less had demonstrated this strange ability even ere Cordelia’s sharp senses could react. A fey thing that. Nor had she neglected to inspect the beast’s nature, in case it was really a fey in disguise. In the end, even Mastema must conclude the name was the only thing fey-like about this creature.

The feather of Huginn she had bound to a leather strip around her neck. The better toward her mind and heart from unnatural influence. Her rusty sword she had whetted keen, the leather scabbard oiled. It was no Excalibur, but then again, she suspected the pathetic duel with Sir Kamaric would prove the last time she drew a sword for a long, long time. These, along with the Hagborn, were her outward equipment for the coming battle. But queer as these possessions were, they would play no big part in her battle plan. For her strongest weapons lay elsewhere within. Her main tools would be the allies she had obtained: Sir Kamaric and his band. Not that she might wield them like a sword, striking with her inept hands and endangering herself with a lack of experience. But they could be steered readily enough, like a horse, so long as a weak link could be exploited, a throbbing string tugged. Lady Galilea had been such a one. And even now, they all of them rode to the fulfillment of her concocted plan, even if another object had led them out of the castle’s gate.

That is not to say she had been over the unsavory nature of mind manipulation and temptation. So long as it would not harm too gravely, she would wag her forked silver tongue to move allies and foes alike, but that was still indirectly. Spells to bend the mind she dreaded to use. She hated such things for she knew it well. Long and hateful had been the period in her past life when her mind had been mazed by those who would not have it crystal clear. Even now she stood on a chess board whose pieces higher beings moved for the sole purpose of slaughtering her and her charge, or else damning both to eternal miseries.

Thankfully, mind manipulation was not her only tool to make use of powerful allies. Far from it.

As anticipated, her senses picked up a sharp presence. The chimeric einheri, no doubt. A presence tasted like boiling anger touched upon her subtly thrust-out tongue. She could sense it maintaining a distance away. Where it hid she was not sure. Mayhap the clouds, or the underground, for the empty fields afforded no hiding places for an easy ambush. Only the distance was obvious, almost to the point of perfection. Neither Kamaric nor Esme seemed to have noticed this presence. But she had, and was aware, in fact, of everything more than ever, especially since she had left the town behind. The town, and its barriers.

All day long the einheri followed them, keeping an unaltering distance and perfectly mute presence. She kept this knowledge for herself and own calculations only.

By afternoon, the clouds had gathered thickly in the sky, and a shiver was sweeping over the land, that early sigh of winter. The ladies huddled together in the wagons now, donning cloaks so thick they seemed shadowy figures behind lanky horses. The Hagborn had long settled to a more demure pace, keeping with the women in the back and occasionally whining her complaint to the world at large. Esme alone seemed to relish this downcast weather. She did not bother with donning one of the thick cloaks even Cordelia was draping herself with, but rode with her eyes sweeping over the woodland with interest. Her stallion scorned the rangy horses and exhaled from its nostrils as though wanting to keep pace with the company ahead.

They were entering the woods for shelter at night. There were no nearby settlements on their route headed straight towards the border. The knight was anxious to get the trip over and his wife back to the safety behind the walls of his castle, compared to which her comfort was a secondary concern.

Even with an Agathos Daimon’s Endurance, Cordelia was having a hard time remaining on horseback when the outriders finally returned. With them came the reports of a safe clearing ahead. And so they put up camp for the night.

The wind howled that night, and Esme sat her watch outside the tents. Several times Cordelia came out to check on her, as much for her well-being as for aught sign that the einheri might betray expectations and mount an assault in the night. It did not, and the dawn found only some minor incidents had occurred. The rolling thunders had frightened the lady, prompting worrisome talks among the attendants, for thunders this time of the year oft omens a harsh winter. A man threw a handful of grains in the fire and muttered the name of the thunderer to ward off this omen. That, and the physician’s sighting of a strange shadow at the camp’s edge just before dawn break.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Cordelia confirmed her thought. The einheri had vanished during the night but with morning had returned to its usual distance.

The warband trudged miserably along that day under the rain. The more optimist souls believed it to be a good sign, for the barbarians, if it was really them they were pursuing, did not like rain aught better. Their foes might have been long gone from the land by the time they reached the border if this kept up. And keep up it did.

Another wet night came. This time, Cordelia did not bother to crawl out of the bear skin rug she was sharing with a maidservant. All the dangers of the world, all the einherjar, and all the fey lords paled in comparison to the biting cold beyond the warm rug. The relentless downpour drumming on the canvas of their tent added another dimension to the coziness. At the height of her tucked-up luxury, she imagined the einheri being extra miserable without shelter and was glad for it.

She did wake up, however, when Esme entered the tent, having been at last relieved from her watch. The tent was not big enough for another person, what with the marchioness and two of her handmaidens and Cordelia already lying outstretched. But it was not proper for her to share a tent with the men. So she had to contend herself with bundling up at a corner by the entrance.

Not that laying so close to where the rain splattered and the soil flooded and swelled made for pleasant sleep. Cordelia had oft noticed the girl dozing off on horseback at day. Knowing this, she quit, regrettably, the rug now. Ignoring the maid’s muffled complaints, she shuffled by Esme, forcing the blonde to make space.

“What’s wrong?” the blonde asked.

“Just thought you would be miserable enough by yourself.”

Indeed, the oiled coat the blonde had used as the least bit of shelter during her watch might as well have not been there at all. Soaked to the bone under her blanket, she was shivering, a fact which belied her sober expression.

“Betimes I thought you had forgotten your role as my servant,” she said like complaining. But she was not. Neither the lack of sleep nor the cold had relented her appetite for actions. There was that spark in her eyes still even as at the start of the journey or when she was picking her horse. It was as though she drew upon the reserve of pent-up energy accumulated in the weeks spent holed up in the keep of Argenton.

The marchioness and the maids were soundly asleep, judging from their soft snorings that Cordelia had come to know so well she could tell each of them individually apart.

At length, Esme got up to join her friend. And the girls sat shoulder against shoulder, hugging their knees as the rain beat outside.

“It’s been a while since I got to save you,” Esme said. “But you have been there for me.”

“We both faced a knight in combat for each other’s sake, didn’t we?”

The blonde chuckled. “You know why I never said thank you? Not properly, I mean.”

“I did little that was not incidental,” Cordelia said. “I nearly had us killed, remember?”

“You would have me believe it all to be a stroke of luck, that by chances and fortunes Sir Kamaric happened to appreciate your foolish display.”

“Was that not the case?”

“Crazy, I know. Sometimes it feels as if you are more than you let on. That everything happening is all within your control.”

“I would thank you if that was really your thought. Only it was not. And I never appear so impressive, quite the contrary, even.”

She smiled, “I would not grudge you a compliment, at least not aught to do with appearances, you know that. It just doesn’t sound like one to me. Almost as if to say you are to thank for everything would be closer to an insult.”

“Is it?” Cordelia asked guardedly.

The blonde seemed to be saying, almost out loud even, that she did not understand Cordelia, that rather than a lie the latter was a mystery. But the blonde kept her peace, and did so in a manner that was slowly dawning upon Cordelia to be her wont. More than a mere habit, it was Esme’s nature to leave secrets as they were.

And she remembered their first private conversation, a lifetime ago, on their shared pallet in that dingy house in the forest.

But Cordelia was feeling mean, or desperate, or both. And if she did not understand the girl’s heart, she knew how to strike back, how to hurt it specifically. “You know,” she said, “You never did tell me much about yourself.”

It was only fair, after all, because the blonde had come as close as spelling out loud that same question. But it was also incomparably unfair.

And the girl recoiled. As expected, a look of alarm crossed over her eyes, one of which twitched.

“Well, there’s nothing much to say,” she said lamely.

A bad liar, yet an impenetrable defense of inner secrets.

Esme looked away. Nor did Cordelia give pursuit. It had been purely a move of self-defense. An edifying experience. One must fully prepare to have their vulnerabilities exposed in trying to expose another.

“Well, no one ever has anything much to say,” Cordelia gave a meaningless reply.

At length the both of them sat in this awkward silence, halfway between the comfort and warmth of the rugs and the bone-biting downpour. As strangers they sat, for strangers they were. They relied upon each other to stay alive, but did not trust one another. Certain things bound them together, yet it was like a dew hanging precariously by the tip of a leaf, poised to fall and splatter at the slightest flutter.

Cordelia was thinking that it would soon be dawn. And at the approach of day the rain gradually died down and eventually was gone completely. The storm clouds had not dispersed but a ghost of a light had suffused across the camp. Cordelia rolled the flap slightly up to peer out at a world that had been washed afresh. She found a camp asleep. In the middle of the circle of tents, and almost out of sight, two men on watch were huddled up together.

It was a fleeting thing, this time of the day, when all the evil of the night has been put behind but the world of man has yet to come back alive. A time hung in balance between fake nightmares and real-world troubles.

And had she not been awake at this time of the day with these same feelings a long time ago? It was in her past life, and it had been a time in-between, whose memory of every second she could still so well recall, as though it was only yesternight when she had been started by the night bus doors sliding open, when the parting clouds had revealed a measure of pale daylight upon the wet pavement.

It was the second to last stop and she could hear her little brother’s soft breath somewhere in the back. They were traveling alone even though there should have been an adult with them. But she had been against it. She had been against everything since the funeral, throwing a fit and demanding to make all the preparations for the move herself. They had obliged because it was actually not too far a ride. Yet she herself did not know why she did it. She wondered even as she packed all the few personal belongings that could have been easily replaced in her new home. Already she had thrown away all the books and cut all connections. But she had been delaying the decision till the last minute. And that penultimate stop proved to be the last minute she had been waiting for. It would be some time yet before the bus would move again. And then at the final stop she would finally leave for her uncle’s house. For now, though, she leaned her face upon the glass, staring out at the grayness pervading the world, not thinking or trying to muster courage. She only looked out the window emptily. Her memory of the landscape was actually faulty. She could not remember much of it save for a great shadowy blob which served no consequence in all the worlds and all the lives but as a backdrop for things insignificant. She saw a white wildflower not yet trampled jutted out from a crack in the pavement. Heavy with dews it hung and her eyes stared affixed to it. And suddenly all the world did not seem to matter anymore. Only the beauty of the small flower did. And all the things that were transient. Her hand had already reached for her bag and another was zipping her jacket. Hastily she did without letting go of the white flower from her transfixed vision. But she paused, froze, when her little brother stirred in the back, still sleeping peacefully thinking his sister would be there when later he woke. And she resented him for it. She forever resented him for that infinitesimal moment in time. For if he had not stirred and started her from it, the trance could have borne her away like a swift wind would bear an unmanned sail to its destined port. Guileless and blameless. All the way to that girl.

But she was awake and did not do so. For how could she? Abandoning her last family, and a child at that, would be unthinkable even for someone so selfish as her. So she just sat there staring at the white flower, perfectly aware of a world and a brother asleep who she did not want ever to come awake. She sat there safely between a destroyed past and a ruinous future, wanting desperately for the moment to last and for the dawn of a new day to never arrive. And the flower was forever white.

“What’s wrong?” Esme asked hoarsely.

“Nothing,” she said. Her face had been buried in Esme's shoulder. It was there because the blonde’s clothes were already wet, and mayhap she would not notice.

Then Cordelia felt a hand on her shoulder, hugging her close to the soaked but warm body. And she left it be.

“Nothing,” she repeated. “It’s just... there was a time long, long ago, when I had wished nothing more than to see another dawn...” the muffled sobbing interrupted her sentence. “Just one last dawn before the end... Just one, that’s all. I never got to see it.”

Esme was quiet, as was her wont.

And perhaps this much was good enough: two strangers comforting each other out of the unsentimental kindness of their hearts. And mayhap that is all one ever needs.