Roll Call
A chill rode the breeze that rose with the sun, tearing shreds of fog from their billows across the tarn and tugging them toward the high stone porticos of the fortress.
Freya stretched, yawning, and bunched the furs up closer around her chin as she watched the young soldier's movements: strong, confident, unashamedly naked. Youth gave him no cause to hide. His skin was perfect gold, unmarked, moving smoothly over clean flat muscle as he gathered his clothes together. The hard training of the past months had polished away any adolescent softness, showing the man he had become, and fitness left him clenched, eager for action.
As a lover he had been exactly as she'd expected. Keen, athletic, persistent. What he'd lacked in finesse, he'd made up with enthusiasm, and the memory brought a small smile as she studied him in the growing light.
Seeing her awake, he smiled, quickly tying and belting his cloak around his hips, intentionally low so his abdominals were shown to their best advantage. He moved to kneel beside her pallet. "Good morning." He leaned to kiss her. "Are we going down to eat? We're mobilizing this morning; we need to get to the dining hall."
"You go." She stretched again, yawning as she spoke. "I'll be down shortly, there's time. I promise you, they won't go to war without us."
"But…." He hesitated, looked uncertain, childlike for the first time. "I thought we would team up now." Petulance and doubt crept over his tongue. "I want you with me. I watched you for so long, I never thought I'd… we'd… you know. Will I see you again?"
She reached for his cheek, stroking a finger down its faultless plains and across his soft, full lips. "This campaign will be long, and cold, and bloody. We'll be huddled in wet tents, sleeping on rocks, and hacking our way through flesh and blood for months. If the gods are kind and you see me anywhere, chances are it will be a long way off and you, like me, will be fighting to stay alive." She leaned across to kiss his cheek. "Don't wait around for me. Live. Live fast and live well, because there's no way to know if you'll live for very long."
He stared hard at her, a frown spoiling the smooth brow, and she met the plea in his eyes with calm conviction. At last he stood, snatched up his things, and stalked from the room without a backward glance. Young hearts bend far before they break, or love and lust would cause more carnage than wars.
Cold ached into the scar on her shoulder, stabbing and burning deep inside the joint where the tissues had fused roughly. Rolling over flat, she twisted her spine slowly, letting the cracks and pops ease some of the stiffness from her back. Mornings, cold damp mornings, just weren't as easy to shrug off as they'd used to be. Sighing away any curses she might have uttered, she swung her feet onto the flagging and pushed back the tangled mess of her hair. It needed cutting.
Behind the stonework of the fireplace was a small washroom, its cistern filled with water heated overnight by the fire. It had cooled as the fire died, and Freya worked the hand pump, drawing water warm enough to bathe into a narrow stone trough. She lowered herself in carefully, lying back so the meager warmth covered her shoulder, and let it work the knots out of gnarled flesh.
Eventually she sat up, pushing hair and water back from her face, then pressed her left hand onto her shoulder as she tried to move her sword arm through its full range of movement. No amount of warmth was going to free the jag and tear or the crunch of cartilage in every rotation. Neither was the liniment she poured into her hand to rub over the scar, but she did it anyway, rubbing until a snarling altercation in the corridor outside dragged her out of her tub.
She slipped into a soft flannel tunic and moved through the door, searching the gloom for the source of the noise. Dragan sat against the stonework, knees drawn up, his head down, resting on crossed arms. He looked up as she approached, and then put his aching head back down into his hands.
"Did someone trip over you?"
He grunted, lifted his face and rubbed his forehead, but gave no answer.
"You look awful. And you smell dead." Freya almost smiled. All the red from the wine flagon beside him had pooled in his eyes, and his whole forehead flinched as he squinted through the dim light. "You'd better come inside and get cleaned up."
Slowly he twisted, supporting himself against the wall as he stood, stooped, then forced his cramped back to straighten. At full height he towered over her, seeming to fill the passageway of the ancient citadel. Resting a hand on her shoulder, he limped painfully into the room, cursing the glare, looking for a shaded place to sit.
"By the gods, what did you do last night?" This time Freya did smile. In all the years she'd known him, she had never seen the big man in this state of devastation.
"I don't remember. I started out at the graduation feast for the new recruits. I thought you were there." He rubbed at raw eyelids, clearing his vision or smearing away memories.
"Yeah, I was there a while." She moved back to the washroom, using the privacy first to pull on her soft suede breeches, cinching her belt in tight over the tunic. Then she called, "I'll see how much more hot water I can draw for you to wash." Her used bathwater had cooled to tepid and hauling up and down on the pump topped it up to little more than half a tub of barely warmer water, but it had to suffice. She clutched out a handful of salts, throwing them, fizzing, into the water, then thought again and emptied the rest of the pot in as well.
"That water's none too warm; I'd get into it now if I were you." Kneeling at the fire, she fanned the embers until they caught, then lowered the kettle to the flame. "I'll go down to your quarters and get you clean clothes. Want me to bring your armor up too? We might as well go down from here."
He nodded, mumbled unintelligibly and stumbled toward the washroom.
* * * * *
Working down through the rabbit warren of the old citadel Freya passed a few stragglers, but most of the company was at breakfast by now. She crossed the open foyer of the main keep, past the doorways to the vast dormitories, and set off upward again in the second wing, tracing familiar steps to her partner's rooms.
Inside his quarters, the bedding was unmade, but apart from a few clothes folded on the shelves, there was nothing in the room to mark its occupancy. Moving quickly, she threw his cloak open on the pallet and tossed his clothes — a jerkin and breeches, his hauberk, cuirass halves, gauntlets and greaves — into a pile and then checked the washroom.
On the washstand beside the tub stood an empty wine flagon and the remains of a bread and cheese meal. There too, was a small wooden box which she picked up and carried out to the main room, shaking it and listening to the rattle as she did. Gathering up the corners of the cloak and hanging it easily over her good shoulder, Freya carried the sum total of this soldier's life back to her own rooms.
From the washroom door, swinging her bundle down onto the floor and holding the small box against her side, she said, "If you want to eat, we'll have to go down there soon."
"I don't want to eat."
She smiled. "You want some tea? It'll ease the head. And if you're feeling anything like me, it'll ease the neck, the shoulders, the hips and the knees."
He snorted, the laugh a little close to self-pity, and called back, "Yeah. Strong. Lots of sugar."
* * * * *
Sitting on the balcony palisade, turning his back on the cold beauty of the early morning tarn, Dragan sipped the mug of bitter tea. It needled at his gut, but after a few moments the soothing effect of the opiates seeped though cramped muscles and cooled the hot pain behind his eyes. The only concession he made to the cold was holding the mug up near his face so the steam curled gently under his chin and across his cheek. Bare-chested he sat, the rough cloth of his cloak tied and belted at his hips, broad back proffered as a single defense against the elements.
Freya paused in the shadows. After twelve years of teamwork, her partner's formidable physical presence could still check her stride. She watched him sitting, silent and still, like part of the stonework on which he balanced, as hard and solid and impervious as rock.
There was nothing in him small or mean: the spirit of the man was what you saw. He was in all things constant. Stable. Firm. Immovable. She smiled; after so many years she had relied on that strength too many times to recall, or chaffed at his stubbornness, or thanked the fickle gods for his patience. He was everything she knew she could not be, and that was good. It served them well. It always had.
He didn't change, or changed so slowly the small erosions went unnoticed. In a world where nothing lasted, where there was nothing she could hold that would always remain, he was her one sure thing. In this world, he was the only one, the only thing she trusted without question.
His hair too, would have to be cut. It fell forward like a wreath of rusted wheat that knotted around his ears and bunched into ringlets on his shoulders. When they'd first met it was long, hanging halfway down his back in a thick, sun-bleached swathe over dense auburn curls. It had been the first thing she noticed, the beautiful hair. Then the shoulders. Then the butt; wrapped in black leather with easily twenty pounds of studs and buckles. Unnecessary weight in battle. Even now she smiled at the vanity. Back then it didn't seem to matter as long as it looked good.
Shaking her head at small regrets, she silently wished for days like those days again. Days when her knees did not crack when she bent and her joints moved without complaint. Her hair had been longer then, too, and the poppy tea she sipped as she walked didn't wreak such havoc on her gut.
"You need a haircut." She threw a sheepskin onto the bench and sitting, adjusted it up behind her shoulder, her own small concession to the cold of the stone. He didn't answer, didn't even open his eyes, so she continued. "Are you going to tell me why you're sitting here like a shipwreck, sipping dope instead of eating at the mess and getting ready for Roll Call?"
He lowered his mug to between his knees, raised his face enough to look at her straight and said, "I'm not going."
