Blaire

Barefoot, bleary-eyed and bed-headed, Blaire swung her sword with very little accuracy but a great deal of sleep-deprived fury. She could barely tell the darkly clothed figures apart, but she knew anyone that was not dressed for bed was most likely an enemy.

She hacked and slashed and jabbed messily, but it was enough to defeat those few charging at her directly. The wounds she inflicted were shallow and haphazard but after enough hits they all went down. The muscles in her arms complained in small pulses of strained ache. Blaire had been taught to swing accurately, with power behind each strike, but she could barely remember her own name and age with her body still awaking so she did her best with muscle memory. In terms of injuries, she sustained -miraculously- only a tear to her leggings and a few nicks to her knuckles.

Once the tide had turned and their combined group was felling men and women in all directions, a few stragglers broke away in an attempt to flee. Dani picked them off smoothly with her crossbow. She was the only woman from their group wearing appropriate attire.

The difference in their lethality when combined with Matilde’s women was a mite terrifying. They cut down every mercenary in the time it took for the sun to rise fully, filling the grove with light that burned Blaire’s crusty eyes.

As the last man fell, Kali’s spearhead glittering out of the back of his neck, they moved into a huddle without command or hesitation.

“Is anyone hurt?” Eudora asked breathlessly. Her bow was slung over her shoulder and she had a fistful of arrows clutched in her left arm armpit.

“A few scratches,” Kali announced gleefully. Apparently, these scratches were not causing her enough pain to sour her mood.

“I have a cut on my thigh.” Lowri lifted her leg to present the cut to Eudora as she spoke.

Eudora leant in close to look and nodded. “It will need cleaning and covering but you will be fine.” She ordered her to the stream to clean it and then to return to Eudora’s tent for a bandage.

Perhaps an overreaction but Blaire would never dare say so. It was most likely just as unnerving for Eudora how well they had disposed of so many attackers without any member of their group taking serious damage. But then, that was the advantage of riding with Matilde: she was particularly vicious when fighting her fellow humans. Folk tales often told of warriors ‘strong as ten men,’ but Blaire believed there were such people that existed with that level of power - that Matilde was one of them. If only she would take as much time to learn the weaknesses and soft spots of other creatures, she would be unstoppable. Unfortunately, the imps that had ambushed her group had been a clear example that Matilde was built for fighting men, not animals.

“Gods, Dani, I have never heard you holler like that before!” Kali chuckled, breaking Blaire’s strange path of thought she was meandering along. She often found her thoughts took little journeys of their own, wandering through her memories of their own accord.

Kali’s words echoed inside of her head a second time and Blaire blinked as she slowly processed the notion that the barked order of “Everyone get the fuck up. Now!” which had awoken them all… came from Dani. She had made the immediate assumption upon grunting herself awake that the demand had been made by their approaching enemies.

The short woman shrugged, uninterested in the comment, and returned to the low fire that remained in the centre of their camp.

“I would not have thought that the owner of that old, decrepit mine could afford so many well-equipped mercenaries,” Blaire wondered aloud.

Magali was far too quick to offer, “Perhaps it was not the mine owner. Who knows what plethora of enemies our new friends have attached to them.”

“Do not blame me,” Kali gasped with faux innocence in her voice and a hand clutched to her chest as though she were offended by the notion. “I have never known anyone to consider me an enemy.”

“I have considered you an enemy to good sense since we met,” said Magali.

“Let us search the bodies before we begin flinging accusations,” Eudora advised as she pulled a navy woollen shawl from the floor of her tent and slung it across her shoulders, covering a large chunk of the skin that was left bare from her under-clothes. Matilde did not bother to hide hers; she wore only cloth leggings and a brassier and she wore it well. It was a slight shock to see so much of her old friend after such a long time. Blaire had forgotten the extent of the labyrinth of scars that dug their chalky paths through Matilde’s fair skin. In full armour the only visible mark was a thick line that ran from the right side of the throat, just below her earlobe, down into the collar of her leathers where it crept to her left shoulder blade.

She had learned her skills through hard work and pain, not the magic of a folk lore tale.

The women split to rifle through every pocket, pack and satchel attached to the fallen group once they all had covered their feet.

“A bounty,” Dani declared, lifting a thick piece of parchment to the air. It had two lines of folding marks and a mass of black, scrawled ink upon it.

Eudora and Matilde both reached for the paper expectantly, but Dani handed it to her leader without hesitation. Blaire could feel Eudora’s frustration in her mild frown. Matilde’s hazel eyes skimmed the words.

Matilde read out, “Eudora and company,” loudly enough for all in the clearing to hear.

An unfamiliar expression of infuriated surprise brushed across Dora’s features. “I do not have enemies,” was all she said.

“Yours is the only name on the bounty, but they are offering coin for the heads of your associates as well. A rather high amount for a woman with no enemies.”

“Matilde.” Eudora’s one-word answer was filled with warning.

“It must be the mine owner then,” Blaire said, feigning relief in an attempt to dispel the tight tension tethering the two leaders together like rope. They stood a foot apart, still as stones. “Eudora signs our contracts when we receive them, and her name would have been the owner’s only reference for the group that had been hired.”

“Yes, good work ladies,” Kali added with a grin. “Even in our bedclothes we have proven to be formidable.”

“Fine,” Matilde grumbled, handing the paper to Eudora and stalking away to her tent.

Kali was first to begin stripping the bodies of their belongings and dragging them to the edge of the forest. For a woman who seemed not to own an ounce of shame, Blaire was surprised to see she allowed the mercenaries to keep their undergarments. The others followed suit once they had dressed themselves in light armour, just in case. Kali remained in her blouse, boots and underwear only, until after their midday meal when she also donned her riding armour.

It was… quite the show. Every time she bent over, it felt as though her hind was somehow pointed directly at Blaire. She kept her eyes to the corpses as best she could.

It was during their midday meal that Eudora asked to speak to Blaire in private. Of course, Blaire obliged. Inside Dora’s tent she was shown the bounty. More importantly, Eudora had her focus on the initials signed at the bottom of the page: M K I.

“Those are not the initials of the mine owner,” Eudora whispered. “I know it could be a contractor who drew up the bounty on his behalf but-”

“I can tell you are concerned, and do not mean to worry you further, but have you examined the descriptions closely?”

“The description of the party?”

Blaire nodded and pointed at the fat section in the centre with a general description of the party. “The number of members is too low to be both our groups combined, but that is without a doubt a description of Matilde in the third line.” She slid her finger beneath the sentence: ‘Woman of wide, muscular build with brown-blonde hair, sun-darkened skin, aggressive disposition and half-plate armour.’

“There is no description of Magali,” Eudora mumbled as she scanned the list of women again. “She is easily the most distinct member of this group with her white skin, short hair and fine robes and yet all of these women described are clearly warriors, and only you and Matilde are described as fair.”

“The last time that Matilde and I were the only members of our party with lightly coloured skin was years ago, back when we rode with Joselle and Tay and that woman with the enormous axe.”

They were held in uncomfortable silence for a long time. Watching each other, willing each other not to admit what they were both fretting over in their minds.

“I believe the best way to deal with this, for the moment, is to stay vigilant and alert and hope that this was a one-time assault,” Eudora said carefully. “What do you think?”

Blaire hesitated. Brushing the issue under the rug would not fix it… but they were both so weary after the last week… She yielded. “I agree. There is nothing else we can do for now, but please do not allow this to worry you into sickness.”

“I will try. Thank you for your concern.”

Blaire nodded solemnly, slipped out of the tent and rejoined the group lying about the fire and sweeping up the last of their lunch.

» «

It was gone nightfall when they had shifted all of the bodies far enough away from their camp that they would not lead predators into their midst. They had filled their sacks with leathers and weapons that they would sell at the next town they passed through. The Gods knew they needed the money now that they would not be receiving payment for their work in the mine.

Around the campfire, on what would be their final night in the grove, Kali was raising the spirits of those who were affected by the events of the morning. She was quite the storyteller, even if it was not always clear exactly which aspects of her stories were truth and what was fiction. Her tales were also always filled with vulgar language, regardless of the subject matter. Blaire enjoyed her company though, she reminded her greatly of her original troupe that she worked with as a teen. It had been full of roguish and frustratingly-easy-going characters that Kali would get on handsomely with. That was a very different line of work than what Blaire did now with Eudora, and she was grateful for it.