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

[matkalainen]

II. (closed to Dain & Vervain)

A lifetime of susceptibility to the cold means that Tuo has taken certain measures to ensure that the wagon that serves as his home is properly equipped to handle the worst that winter can throw at him. That was the guarantee by the builder, and for the last several years, Tuo has had no reason to complain.

Even this year, he can't blame the builder. It was his own fault that the damp got into his store of firewood. What good is a wood-burning stove if the wood won't catch light?

No good at all, although he finds he has little energy to spare in chastising himself. Instead, he has nested himself in his bed under as many furs and cloaks as he owns, doing what he can to keep himself and the magpie Alvi from freezing during the night. In the morning, he resolves he will make the trek past the soldiers' encampment to reach the Town Hall. He has no choice.


III.

The howl wakes him up from his shallow sleep. Tuo sits up abruptly on the sleeping pallet that had been set aside for him within the chapel sanctuary, and looks around in alarm to see if he is alone in having heard the noise.

A few other people are stirring where they sleep, but none wake fully. Gathering up cloak, he hastily wraps his headscarf around his head and shoulders, stuffs his feet into his boots, and ventures outside just beyond the threshold of the church to look about outside.

(A fool indeed. Who hears a mysterious animal's cry and decides to investigate it all on his own? This one, apparently.)

III

[pestler]

Though Finian isn't poor, per se, he does live in a decent-size house by himself, and keeping it heated in weather like this is far more effort than it's worth. So he too is in the chapel, and sits up at the same time Tuo does, his eyes wide and his freckled face pale.
"Wait," he whispers, scrambling to put on his gear as well, "don't go alone."

[matkalainen]

Any other sensible adult would probably instruct Finian to go back to sleep, but Tuo comes by his moniker in his native tongue honestly. When Finian comes after him, he merely holds up a slim finger across his own lips in a 'shh' motion, lest they wake the rest of the sleeping bodies in the sanctuary.

"Quietly now," he whispers, eases the door open on its hinges, and slips outside. He holds it ajar for Finian to follow him.

[strumpeting]

Elena was outside stumbling from the tavern to ... somewhere else when she heard the roar. Well, intimidating screech. And in her drunken haze she stopped a moment outside the chapel to consider what it could be, which is where she now stands as the door creaks open. She catches sight of a rather pale person and ... is that Finn behind him?

"Hey, did you hear that shite?" She yells at the pair of them.

[pestler]

Wincing when Elena's voice cuts through the quiet they're trying to maintain, Finian beckons her over.
"It sounded like a big hawk," he opines, "--oh gods, you're sauced." He can smell her from here.

[matkalainen]

Ah, a drunkard. Marvellous.

"A friend of yours?" he asks Finian warily, grateful that the door is already closed to minimize the amount of noise that reaches the others sleeping inside the chapel. He looks from the boy to the inebriated bard stumbling down the path ahead of them, then lifts his eyes towards the mountaintop--and grow rather wide.

"Oh," he exclaims, dropping a hand to the young man's shoulder, and points with the other, "look--" The wide wing span is visible only for an instant as the beast begins to disappear into the clouds fogging the peaks.

[strumpeting]

Elena slings her arm over Finian's other free shoulder, for camaraderie or bodily support who knows, while grinning at Tuo.

"Ah, Finny and I are fab-u-lous friends!" Her voice is still entirely too loud. "He's helped me with herb ... things."

The word 'things,' seems to plop out of her mouth as she stares at the winged creature, eyes widened and heart bursting with glorious inspiration. Even just a glimpse of the majestic thing has her muse ensnared and awed. She waggles her lips like a fish, trying to get words out, before they finally connect.

"Hey, what the feck is that?"

[pestler]

Both of Finian's shoulders are occupied, and he regrets that the moment they see the large, birdlike shadow.

"Oh beans," he gasps, taking a startled step back, "that's not one of Deron's."

[matkalainen]

Tuo, in contrast, takes several small steps forward as though mesmerized. "How beautiful," he sighs.

Someone stop him before he tries to climb the mountain after it.

[strumpeting]

Yes, someone stop him. I know just the someone, who's now got her whole arm looped around Fin's neck and is dragging him forward.

"We have to find it!"

[pestler]

"Oh, no," Finian gasps, buckling forward as the much shorter person drags him, "no no no, no we don't." He focuses first on trying to free himself from Elena's grip.

[matkalainen]

"Or at least get a better look at it," Tuo agrees, delighted--but, all evidence to the contrary, he is only a fool, not a reckless fool.

He turns about smoothly on his heel with a hand raised in objection. "But not you," he says, looking directly at Finian. "I think it would be best if you went back into the sanctuary. Better that the guard captain's son does not become a late night treat for," an idle gesture at the mountain top, "whatever our mystery beast turns out to be."

[strumpeting]

Tuo is very kind and considerate of Finian's fear, and for that he is a good man.

Elena is not. She whirls around and slaps both her hands on his shoulders, facing Finian in full with a somber expression.

"Finian. In twenty years, what do you want your life to be? Do you want to look back and realize you wasted your youth away on idle humdrum goings-ons or do you want to remember that, once upon a time, you flew in the face of mediocrity to live your life to the fullest? What would the gods want? You to piss away the life they've given you? No! Come fly with us, baby bird, fly!"

All of this would likely be far more impactful if she wasn't washing a distillery over him with every word.

II.

[shepherddain]

The familiar plume of wood smoke rising past the village wall is missing tonight.

Tuo left abruptly once without warning, and Dain can't honestly hold it against him to do so again, not when they can't speak openly. But he has to check, just to be sure. What if something's wrong? What if he can still catch his friend, still bid him farewell?

At least one of those suspicions is well-founded, because when Dain arrives, the wagon is still there -- just dark and cold. Fear grips his heart and he knocks quickly, uncharacteristically heedless of whether anyone might be watching.

"Tuo? Tuo, are you there? Alvi?"

[matkalainen]

From within the wagon comes an alarmed sound somewhere between a caw and a chirrup; if it isn't Alvi, it's definitely not Tuo. But the soft, chiding, "hush, now," that follows can't be anyone else.

"Coming," he calls--or he would, if the cold hadn't sapped the strength from his voice, and it only gets worse when he disentangles himself from all the blankets and furs and feels the air bite at his skin. He shudders, swearing an oath under his breath, and refuses to part with the last cumbersome layer as he fumbles his way towards the door. It takes a moment for him to flip the latch with such cold fingers, but when he finally manages it, he pushes the door open enough to quickly beckon Dain inside.

"In," he whispers hastily, "before what's left of the heat escapes." From his nest of blankets, Alvi watches the pair of them with suspicious black eyes.

[shepherddain]

A flood of relief, quickly subsumed by even deeper concern. Tuo does not sound well, nor does he look well when he finally manages to get the door open. What little is visible of his face under the blanket is even paler than usual, and Dain could swear he sees a hint of blue in those lips.

"What heat?" he asks briskly as he slips inside. "You haven't run out of firewood, have you? You know better than that. What's happened?"

It's not the first time Dain wishes he could manipulate fire. A quick solution here might save Tuo's life, especially if he's stubborn enough to forego the warmth in the town hall or the vicarage for his own frigid wagon.

[matkalainen]

Tuo shuts the door behind Dain as soon as he is within the comparatively less frigid confines of the wagon, enduring the brief lecture with aplomb--or fatigue and exhaustion. It's difficult to tell.

"Damp got into the firewood," he explains, chafing his slender hands together and blowing on them in a futile effort to get the blood circulating through his extremities again. Instinct has him moving towards the warmest point nearby, which just happens to be Dain; he comes to stand near him, looking equal parts confused and tired. "What are you doing here?"

[shepherddain]

"Checking on you," Dain answers immediately, like that's the most obvious answer in the world. Anything else he might have added to the answer is lost amidst his brief and frankly terrifying assessment of his friend, who looks about to collapse any moment under the weight of the cold.

"Here." Dain pulls Tuo even closer, and folds Tuo's hands into his own, encasing them in as much of his own warmth as he can muster. "You can't stay in here overnight, you'll freeze. Please come back to the chapel with me."

[matkalainen]

The hands that encase his are warm and calloused, and Tuo curls his fingers around Dain's without thinking, like it's the most natural thing in the world. (It is.) He looks up into his friend's dark eyes and finds that he is much closer than he'd originally realized. (It was always very easy to be drawn into Anja's orbit.)

Some things never change--except for when they do.

It takes him a moment longer than normal to find his voice. "What about Alvi?" He makes himself look away from Dain to where the magpie still sits amid the blankets. "I can't leave him here, he won't survive."

[shepherddain]

It's not the flat rejection Dain anticipated, which is both a relief and somehow even more worrying. Tuo's hands in his -- they're the slender and steady hands of a crafter, but also much colder and shakier than they should be, and Dain tries not to think about what might have happened if he didn't come, tries not to imagine those hands blue and nearly lifeless. Things would have been alright, he tells himself firmly. Things are going to be alright.

"I'm sure Vervain wouldn't mind having Alvi for one night," Dain answers, sounding much more sure than he actually is. He may need to leverage his authority a little, much as he'd like to avoid it. He breathes out slowly, a plume of warm air over their hands. "And I'll make sure you're both safe until the morning. Come, let's bring as many of those blankets as we can."

[matkalainen]

"...And I'll make sure you're both safe until the morning. Come, let's bring as many of those blankets as we can."

"Yes," Tuo agrees a little faintly, "that's a good idea," and then he proceeds to disregard the sense of his own words and Dain's instructions, and slips a hand free to touch his friend's cheek. That's about all the warning Dain gets before Tuo leans up to kiss him gently on the mouth. His skin, predictably, is almost too cool to the touch, but could grow comfortably warm if he kept this up for very long.

But he doesn't. Sense reasserts itself like a struck match, and Tuo draws back to look at Dain with very wide eyes for only the briefest of moments, before taking a deer-like step past him to gather up the blankets. "Let me--get Alvi."

[shepherddain]

Thoughts of being in a rush, or of the necessary steps in stoking a fire back in the vicarage, or of procuring a hot drink, or of anything outside Tuo's hand-crafted Saaristomeren wagon, lose all purchase in Dain's mind for several quiet seconds.

For him, sense doesn't reassert itself with all the immediacy a struck match -- it seeps in much too slowly like water trickling through a crack in a dam.

"That would... be one way to warm up," he manages. Not the most efficient way. Blankets -- Alvi -- did that really happen, or is it the cold confusing his sense of reality? -- Tuo is still dangerously cold and there cannot be room in Dain's mind for anything else. He leaves Alvi to Tuo, because the bird is more likely not to struggle and hurt itself bundled in familiar arms, and Dain grabs what's left, draping the thickest portion of the furs over Tuo's shoulders on their way out.

A cold wind blows from the north as they leave. Dain shields them as best he can, holding Tuo close, as much to keep track of how hard he's shivering as to keep him warm. If there are other reasons, he'll... look more closely at them once they're out of the cold.

[matkalainen]

Even having one the magpie's trust when he was hardly more than a fledgling, there is still only so much Tuo can do to calm the frightened bird's squawking and flapping as he tries to swaddle them both in protective layers of blankets. It was an easier thing to do before Dain showed up--before Tuo could hear his own pulse racing in his ears, quick as a bird's. Still, he manages eventually, and allows himself to be escorted out into the bitter cold with his face pressed into the side of Dain's neck, Alvi held securely to his chest.

(He tries valiantly not to think of his home, unattended and isolated, so near an encampment of hot-blooded soldiers.)

At some point, he forces himself to squint against the wind and glimpses the silhouette of the vicarage ahead of them in the dark. "Thank the Night," he says without thinking--oh irony of ironies, and quickens his pace to reach the promise of warmth.

[amaurosisfugax]

Though most of the vicarage is dark, its residents both temporary and permanent bedded down for the night, there is--perhaps absurdly--a single candle lantern burning outside the sanctuary door, defying Night and wind alike.

Similarly defiant is the person of the interim vicar, bundled to his blindfold and making his careful way to the chapel with firewood under one arm. Some helpful soul had strung guide cords between the buildings and while he doesn't strictly need them to find his way around, the footing's precarious in places and he's been saved from breaking his neck a time or two by having a rope to clutch at.

Pure happy coincidence, really, that he's just barely in earshot of Tuo's exclamation. ...And that the really stupid (but warm!) hat he's wearing muffles it almost to inaudibility. "Someone there?" Ver calls out, freeing a hand to push the hat off his ears. ...oh, gods, that was a mistake.

[shepherddain]

Dain tenses with Tuo's words, no matter how much he shares in the sentiment -- and then tenses even further when those words are answered, and by the last person he can claim any sort of ignorance to.

In his experience, the best reaction is no reaction at all. Act as if there's no secret to uncover, and most people will question their own senses.

"Vervain," he calls out, "it's Dain. I'm glad you're here, I have someone in dire need of the warmth inside. Are you able to get the door?"