Needed

Dragan chewed the knuckle of his thumb, pinching the soft skin inside his lip against his teeth and swearing at the sharp sting. It was taking too long.

He had no real confidence, when it came to the test, that Freya could stand in the face of hard questions and keep up her determination to leave. He knew that while he stood with her she could lean on his certainty, but he'd left the decision too long. In doubting himself and in doubting his partner, he had let their chances of survival slide toward inevitable failure. Freya feared failure more than death. To him they were one and the same.

Behind him, the parade ground was clearing. Young men had been gathered into units and marched off to war. The process was swift and orderly but it still took hours, and now those hours had passed. Midday was closer than he would have liked it to be. The mess hall had long been empty, but now the tide was turning as the permanent members of the defense establishment, those who remained in the safety of stone, drifted back in toward their luncheon.

He had no interest in their progress, but he checked the door with each new arrival, anxious for Freya's return. It was no small surprise, then, that the face he saw entering was not one he had expected.

A young clerk, no more than a child, nervous and gangly in his movements, was making a beeline for where Dragan sat, and a young woman followed behind. She was modestly covered, a heavy blue cape pulled in close about her shoulders and a hood pulled down over her hair, shading her face. She looked up, relief rushing over her features as she found him.

The clerk nodded once in silent acknowledgement, and turned away from his client to continue other pressing duties.

Dragan stood, and his guest seized both his hands in hers as she rushed to sit on the trestle opposite. "Lenka. Why are…? Did you travel here alone?"

"Yes, alone, and it wasn't easy, Dragan. I was bad scared." She drew a shaky breath, peering around at the men who sat at nearby tables and judging every one a threat. "I rode the old mare, rickety as she is, but there was no choice. We've been tried, really tried, and I have to bring sad news."

Dragan slipped his hands free, guessing at the news that would drive such an uncharacteristic journey. "My father?" He knew the answer, felt the jolt of certainty hit deep in his chest before he could read the confirmation in the pale blue of her eyes.

She nodded, her hood slipping back over platinum silk. She snatched at her cowl, pulling it hastily back into place, hiding from these crowds of strangers in the shadows it lent. She leaned to whisper, "He's been laid out many a night now and you didn't come. You've got to come now; your mother's been in a terrible state. She's watched for you going on weeks now."

He had left all things too long, waited, when he should have acted. Again the fates laid their accusations at his feet. Too much had moved beyond his control.

"She says you're done with fighting. She says you're coming home to manage for her. Weeks now, Dragan, she's been watching."

"I couldn't come when the season ended. There are things here I had to finish. But today I will know, I hope. Soon. Lenka, I might not be finished with the army yet. I may have to go back out."

The chilly wind had chafed the blush of roses onto her full cheeks, but around the pink, the skin had drained as pale as milk. She shook her head, denying the possibility. "No," she breathed. "You must come. There's no one else."

Here was the weight that had slowed his decisions; the knowledge that this must come, and the responsibility it carried with it. There was no one else to take care of the farm. Lenka was the daughter of a neighboring farm, an orchard with rich fields that lay down along the Iultea River, but for all her strength and skill, the world she knew needed men.

"Don't say you won't come. You're needed."

And needed by his mother not least of all. He knew. She had no need to lay more guilt on him; he knew just what his choices would cost. Or Freya's choices. He needed to see her, to know what she had decided. The wait that had been trying only moments ago, now hung like a millstone on his conscience.

"Soon, I'll know soon." He looked hopefully toward the door, but no one came. However Freya had needed to make her case, it was taking much longer than it should. Too long. Warnings began to tick and click at the back of his mind, unformed and meaningless.

"Have you eaten?" Suddenly the needs of this woman, here alone to retrieve him because there was no one else, broke through his reverie. The mores of a life from which he was too long removed accused him again.

He was in uniform, for all anyone knew he was still in service. With all it had taken, the army could offer some small hospitality to his guest. He stood, glancing once more at the door, and then moved to fetch a tray of food and warmed cider.

"Where're you going?" Lenka snatched at his hand, half-standing in her haste to prevent him from leaving her. "This isn't a place I want to be alone."

"I'm not leaving. I'm going to fetch you some food and a warm mug of cider. I won't be further away than there." He directed her attention to the near wall and the smorgasbord.

"I'd rather you stay," she said nervously, but the thought of food drew her hand back to her lap and she settled slowly back to her seat. "I'm not used to so many men about. Strangers."

Dragan smiled, "Not so many now. This mess can fill three times over with men when they're mustered together. All the fighting men have gone."

Words dropped from his lips, dull with the weight of realization, "Oh no. No." He looked around, but there was nothing to rebut the fear that rushed adrenaline through his system. How many hours had he waited, wasted. No point in moving now, or searching. If she had gone with them, then she was gone. It was done.

Looking down at Lenka's questioning expression, Dragan let the burning ice of frustration, anger, and hurt wash over him, leaving cold sweat on his lip and a dry burn at the back of his throat. For the moment he was too shocked and appalled to think. There would be things he could do, decisions he could make, but in that instant he felt nothing more than a conviction that Freya had chosen the brutal reality of death over the less, he thought, brutal reality of life.

"Dragan," she said softly, "I'd eat if you'd fetch some food."

"Yes." He nodded, dragged his feet toward the counter and mechanically loaded a platter with hot food and drink.

His father was dead, and Lenka had travelled all this way alone to bring him the news. She should never have had to take such a risk; he should have been there. He would have been there when the last season finished and his contract expired. Would have. Should have.

His father was dead and he was his mother's only hope, and she had waited for him to come home. Watched and waited. Now the reason he had put everything important in his life on hold and turned his back on his first and greatest responsibilities had vanished. He set the platter in front of Lenka and slid down onto the opposite trestle.

"When will you know?" The words were slurred around an eager mouthful, but were clear enough.

He rested his forehead down onto his hands and rubbed at eyes still raw from the night before wondering how to answer that. He could say, 'I know now'. But then, would he add, 'Let's go home;' or 'I'm leaving now, to try to find the woman I've loved for…'? How long? He didn't even know the answer to that.

"Soon," he said. "What happened to my father?"

"He fell from a ladder, grafting apple slips. He was tired; with lambs coming and drystane courses needing chocks, and the field to be turned, and slurries for the vines. Powerful tired. And your mother on him all the time, watching for you all the days."

Dragan nodded, shouldering more guilt. He should have been there.

"She's in a bad state, Dragan. Moaning alone; won't rise; won't eat. She left me to manage the lambs and such. I'm not crying on it, but it isn't my place."

"No."

"Don't say you won't come."

"No." He watched her eat a while, pushing food into a vacuum and watching him watching her from under her brows. He couldn't refuse, but the image of his mother weeping on her bed bought a tentative hope. There was a place he could check, one small stone cell in all the world that would affirm his fears, one way or another. "Come on, finish up. I'll go now for my answer."

Lenka stood, shoveling a parting forkful and slurping the mug of cider one more time before she followed from the mess hall and through the maze of high stone halls. The heavy skirts she wore slowed her progress, and Dragan paused impatiently as she puffed and struggled up worn stairways and dark halls. Her awkwardness forced him to slow, or else he might have run.

Nearer to Freya's room, his pace slowed and his heart rate rose. It might be empty. She might be there. Both possibilities filled his chest with hard air and left little room for breath.

The door was closed and he stopped dead. If there was a way to prepare for what lay on the other side, it was beyond his ken, so he knocked, quietly at first, then with the side of his fist, and called, "Freya."

There was no answer; he pushed. The door stayed firm, its bolt thrown from the inside and he came close to a laugh of pure relief. Lenka moved the implications of her presence closer to him in the gloom, and the tide of relief ebbed as suddenly as it had risen. "Freya," he pounded the door again, determined that she would speak, and her words would resolve the issues dragging him in opposite directions. "Open up, girl."

When the bolt slid and the door yielded slowly under his pressure, Dragan raised a finger to Lenka asking her to wait as he moved cautiously inward, leaning on the heavy oak for support. The light from her open balcony filled the room and her small fire blazed, hopelessly insufficient to warm the solid block of air that rushed in off the water. Freya sat on her pallet facing the fire as if its flames held a greater fascination than he ever could.

"Well?" he asked as he moved slowly toward her.

"Well," she answered flatly, and shrugged. When she turned her face up he saw the remnants of tears, but they had dried and left her eyes empty. There was no expression on her fine features; her hands were open, cupped loosely in her lap as if she had nothing left to hold.

Dragan felt like an oaf, awkward and graceless. He couldn't stand over her, couldn't sit on the narrow military cot beside her, and could not touch her; his hands were not made for such delicate contact. He needed her to move and to speak. He needed her strength, her grace, and her humor, but he could see none of them.

She nodded, as if she understood all he could not say, and looked back to the fire. "No discharge," she said and he closed his eyes. She moved a fraction, sliding down the cot as if the small space she made was the difference between having someone at her side or not, and he moved to sit beside her. "It's all right, they have plans for me. None for you; you're free to go."

There was a tremble in his fingers and heat in his breath when he spoke. "What kind of plans?"

"Plans," she shrugged again and her hands moved together, her fingers lacing and squeezing as if they were trying to choke the air from some unseen throat. "I'll be here, mostly. They have maps, campaign maps, and I have to revise them. I have to learn the scale of the battlefields and advise the officers about the conditions on the ground. They don't know, you see, they don't go out there in the snow and mud. They stay here with their papers." She turned to look at him again. "And I will have to stay here with them."

He looked hard at her words, trying to find the horror she saw in them. "That is going to be all right, isn't it? It's honest work, useful. And you only have three months."

She laughed suddenly, and snot left from her crying bubbled out. Wiping a hand across her nose carelessly, she said, "Three months with words and papers, and men who know more about words than wars. Three months as one of them, them that you say are to blame for the fighting, them that get rich while they send poor men to defend their gold."

He slipped an arm around her shoulders and she leaned against his chest saying, "I don't think I can ever forgive you for this."

(Editing, with thanks to Essie Holton.)