"You were frightened?" Harlen ventured, already pretty certain of the answer.
She smiled at him. "Terrified." She said, and looked down at her hands. "I had never wielded my hyandai in contest before, and within three days, it was bloodied, and my bow sang deadly notes." She looked up at him. "I have never taken life before, Harlen, not the life of a being who could think, even the foul orcs think, and I had to kill them."
Harlen nodded. "I know, it is ever so for people who are kind and decent." He said. "They try not to become what they must kill out of necessity while preventing that evil from taking their own life."
She stood up and took his hands. "You have killed before, though, I saw that on the first evening with the orcs. You had a look." She said, looking into his eyes. "There was a resignation in them, of having a distasteful thing to do that simply must be done."
He nodded. "I had killed before that day." He said. "I killed a man who tried to kill me."
"Then it was self defense." She said, nodding.
"No." Harlen said. "It was vengeance." He looked from her eyes. "You've seen my scars on my back, I am sure." He said.
"Of course." She answered. "They are unsubtle."
He nodded. "Yeah. Well, those were given me by the sheriff of this land at the order of the duke, for the crime of vigilantism." He said. "I hunted the man down, the same fellow who showed me that cave, for trying to kill me and steal my pelts." His face looked distant. "I killed him right in front of his home, with his wife, and two children watching."
Hyandai gasped. "It must have been horrible."
Harlen chuckled. "I suppose, for them, it was." He looked at her. "He had been a terrible man to them, and she was not overly tearful at his passing." He said. "But he was their breadwinner, and without his hands to work, they had a bad winter." His eyes filled with tears. "One of the children, the younger, died and the widow was reduced to whoring herself to shepherds and soldiers for firewood and food." He finally let the tears fall. "Every month, I send a third of my money I have earned to them, not that it is sufficient, but I send it anyway." He now sat upon the bench and put his head into his hands. "No matter the amount, I will never get his blood off me, and I will never quit seeing that small girl, dying in a cold room, or the widow upon her knees servicing drunken soldiers in alleys for copper pennies."
She just stared at him. "That is much guilt to bear for doing only what would have happened if he had been charged, I deem."
Harlen nodded. "So I was told by the duke's lash." He said. "I was not charged with murder, as he was a criminal, and none contested that he would have been hanged for his crimes." He looked up with his blue eyes wet with tears. "It was that I did it without going through the trials and proper ways, and letters of the law." He said. "My crime was vigilantism for thinking myself as high as the law, and as wise." He pointed at his back. "These," He said, "are not my punishment, they were but a reminder. My punishment is seeing those children as I sleep, and passing the widow when I go to Winlow's Crossing, and seeing the gravestones in the cemetery there." He sneered at himself. "My punishment is living with what I had done to them, not to him."
"But it was not your doing, solely." She said, trying to defend him from himself.
"Please, spare me the justification and the explanations." He said. "I have heard them before, many times." He looked at her with haunted eyes. "The widow is still sucking shepherds, the child is still dead, and the man, who had been a friend, still molders in a shallow grave."
"I even tried to marry her, to bring her here, and take the family on as charge." He said, throwing his arms out expansively. "And she accepted, saying that one man is much like another to her." He laughed bitterly at that. "But the duke forbade it, saying that I had committed a most heinous crime, and not being able to fix all the woes I had inflicted was part of the punishment."
She gasped. "A stern punishment, I think." She said. "And most unkind."
"Perhaps." Harlen said, shrugging. "But it is what it is." He looked around. "I get along fine, I suppose, considering." He looked back at Hyandai. "But I still see them on the ocassion." He looked deeper into her eyes. "You know what bothers me most?" Hyandai shook her head. "She forgave me. Can you imagine that? The widow forgave me." He laughed again, and the laughter was frightening to her.
She looked at him with those golden eyes. "Maybe you should forgive yourself. You were young, and brash, and wronged." She said. "Maybe you did go too far, in killing the louse, a scoundrel who would backstab a friend. But you did not intend to hurt the family."
"Whatever my intent, it is what happened." He said. "But I go on." He stood and took her hand, not terribly gently. "Let us retire to the common room."
As they entered the room, his face changed, as if he left his woes at the door. She worried that he could shift his visage and apparently his mood so handily. She wondered what else lie buried under that idle smile. As they sat upon the long padded bench he asked. "What exactly did your seer say?"
She looked at him a long moment. "She said. 'The Hyandai and the Arrow will gather the Ehladrel to them in the mountains east, their betrothal fresh on their lips and their love in their hearts. She is the Mother Not, and He is the Father Not. They will face down the evil and come to their gain, gathering forth the weapon that was lost.'"
Harlen looked at her. "That's it?" He asked.
She nodded. "Yes. It's not long, foretellings are often is short and cryptic like that." She smiled bitterly. "I suppose its why we do not rely upon it for more mundane tasks."
Harlen looked at her. "It's worse than cryptic." he said. "It's downright confusing." He thought a moment. "I can't make heads or tails of it. What is that business of mother not and father not?
"We assumed it meant they were childless, which Eleean and I were." She shrugged.
"I don't think foretellings work that way. They don't point out the obvious." Harlen said. "If it was in there, and the seer saw it, then there was need for it." He thought a moment. "Also, from what you say, there was little actual love in either of your hearts for one another." He added
She giggled. "Like you and I?" She said, smiling and leaning into his waiting arms.
"Exactly like you and I." Harlen said, and embraced her warm, compact body. "We chose one another, not some fortune teller." He shrugged behind her, making her smile as he tickled her arms. "You can't go ramming the pegs into the foretelling, you mold the words around the pegs."
"What do you mean?" She said, looking up at him. "Mold it to the pegs?"
He looked down and kissed her forehead. "I mean, that you don't force it, you interpret it." He said. "It's not there to be kludged into a working reality, its there to be kludged around a reality that is."
"It's all a bit much for me." She said. "I am just a scribe, as I have said."
"Yes, and I think we might should retire for the day, perhaps the morrow will bring more enlightenment to us and to those words." He agreed, and took her hand and led her up the stairs.
She stared at him as he disrobed and watched with a smile as he crawled between the warm-looking blankets. She then took off her clothes and slipped in beside him. "There is too much room on this bed." She said, snuggling next to him. "I do not wish to be so far from you." She turned to face him, laying one leg over his.
Harlen breathed in deeply and said. "Nor do I want you that far, either." He said, sniffing her hair. He smiled at her gently. "You said you would do that thing for me anytime I wanted?" He asked.
She grinned. "Yes, do you wish it now?" She replied, beginning to push down the covers.
"No." He said, smiling wider. "I just wondered if you were willing."
Send to your friend
