OPEN | Blood And Ice

[northcliffpass]

Civil Blood

I. News from the West

The story of why gets twisted and distorted between its departure from the Crags and its arrival in Northcliff Pass, but the town criers maintain consistency on a few points: Althea of House Jessamy, Duchess of Black Rock, has at last thrown down the gauntlet against the Duke of Cliffside, and has called on her vassals to rally their bannermen. It seems there will be war within the borders of Maireglenne for the first time in a hundred years.

Given the state of the roads leading through the pass, it is understandable that the news is a few weeks’ stale by the time armed soldiers sporting Duke Galein’s colours march (or gallop, if they are astride a horse) past the village walls and garrison themselves on the festival grounds. Anyone objecting to this new arrangement is encouraged by the soldiers to bring their objections to the garrison commander (who, rumor has it, personally oversees the flogging of objectors himself).

Like it or not, the regiment is here to stay, at least until they receive orders instructing them otherwise. On the bright side, the soldiers did the hard work of clearing the pass for the season; travel between Northcliff Pass and the city of Cliffside just got a heck of a lot easier this winter.

II. Cold Snap

And it’s highly likely that those orders will be as delayed as the news, for the regiment has hardly been within the city walls a week before the temperatures plunge to dangerous lows. This is not the seasonal frigidity accompanied by blustery blizzards that encourage snowball fights and a bit of ice fishing down by Sands Creek, but a cold so biting and bitter that any prolonged period spent outside in it runs the very real risk of hypothermia and death. This is the kind of cold that leaves the air clean and clear, with nothing to impede the watery white light of the sun for the few hours it spends above the horizon each day before setting again; it cuts the lungs when inhaled and bites straight through to the bone. Many of the village’s poor are brought within the sturdy walls of the Town Hall and the chapel, because the alternative is finding them frozen solid in the streets.

The silver lining to this development is bare indeed; avoiding the cold means that, for a time at least, the village residents and soldiers are too preoccupied hunkering down to endure the cold to be at cross purposes.

III. A Howl in the Night

On the third night of the deep freeze, an animal’s piercing howl shatters the oppressive silence that has settled over the village.

It’s not a wolf’s howl; it is far too shrill and keening, and comes from a great distance away, that much is clear. The few villagers brave enough to risk exposure to the cold will find nothing of immediate danger within the city walls--but should they lift their eyes and look to the gossamer clouds near the summit of Gods’ Reach, they will glimpse the dark silhouette of a massive winged beast circling the mountaintop in search of a safe place to roost.

Comments

[bythegrace]

"I don't," she agrees and it has a note of challenge to it as she peers at him over the edge of her mug. She is uncertain why she feels the need to defend herself, why that statement has raised her hackles, and that uncertainty just feeds that small note of irritation.

"They're fine enough," she adds before he can speak again. "But I don't care for crowds."

That is a lie and a bold-faced one. She has come from a place with a much greater population that this sleepy village. She thrived there and had loved conversing on the street, arguing and chatting with people...but that was in Haugenne. This is not Haugenne and people in Maireglene are not quite as open and boisterous.

She doesn't know how to speak to these people, so she has opted to avoid it when she can.

"Between you and that young mad, I've quite enough friends I think."

[mysteriumtremendum]

He has not wished to speak of it directly, lacking both the experience and the vocabulary for such things, but she has provided him an avenue for exploration and he can't avoid it. Already it wears on him when his mind is idle (which is not often, but it does happen), and if these unanswered questions keep distracting him, it is only a matter of time before his carefully constructed performance for the rest of the village begins to slip.

He turns the mug of mulled wine slowly between his hands, regarding it as he asks his question. "Is that what we are?" When he lifts his eyes to look at her, his gaze is uncharacteristically unguarded. "Friends?" Friends who fuck on a mountaintop after desecrating a saint's shrine.

[bythegrace]

It is not a question she expects and, unfortunately, some of the meaning in it does not register with her all at once. Her brows lift dramatically as he looks over the cup at her and, for just a flicker of a moment, she feels a pressure in her chest, like a vice squeezing her heart and lungs. For a moment, she is concerned that he is breaking off their friendship--the thought lingers just long enough that she starts to answer him.

"Non--non-non--Nous sommes amis--"

She speaks her native language faster than Glennich and it gives her answer a greater sense of urgency than it might've otherwise had. She was correcting him, disallowing him from calling off their friendship, but it was in the wrong language. She caught herself quickly and, as she combed for the words in Glennich the subtleties of his questions registered and she paused. Her expression was tinged with equal parts frustration and relief.

He was asking what they had become and that was an easier question. Unfortunately, Glennich lacked a few of the words she would have liked to use.

"Do you know--paramour?" she asks and shifts her mug to one hand unconsciously, freeing the other to gesture and, in this case, snap her fingers as she concentrated and tried to find the nearest synonym. "Comment dites-vous...? Lover?"

It was not a perfect match, it lacked the illicit thrill, the implied delight and appeal of the Haugenne equivalent, but it was a close as she knew. (That it also let her contextualize them, that it set Adhemar apart from the memory of her husband, was lost in translation.)

"We are friends," she adds with more vehemence, her gaze locking on him again and her finger pointing at him in time. This is not a topic up for debate, whatever they had become. He could demand they cease dallying and she would respect that, but she would openly mourn if he refused to remain her friend. Pathetic as it was, he was all she had here.

"Friends and paramour are not exclusive."