Among The Gods 01: Cardinal Sins

Among The Gods 01: Cardinal Sins

It was a beautiful morning in the sprawling nation of Irnu. This was not a surprise: every day of every season was a beautiful one. Spring days were bright and bracing, the sun rising into a cloudless sky over dew-bedecked fields. Summer days dawned bright and hot, the heat of the day warming and tanning bare skin, warm breezes wending their way even into the cool shade. Autumn days were cool and damp, the trees gilded in all the colours of a sunset. Even the winter days were delightfully chill, snow and ice sparkling in the sunlight, the icy wind driving people inside to curl up together before an open fire.

It was no surprise because this was Irnu, the nation of the Old Gods. Other countries followed philosophies and idols, distant stars and veiled deities. In Irnu, however, the old gods still ruled - ancient gods of earth and wood, of storm and river, of pain, pleasure, sex, and blood.

Mia was having a nightmare, stitched together by her sleeping mind: a village - her village. Simple, inoffensive - a cluster of small cottages, centred around a circular yard. In the middle of that space, on a carved stone dais, the obelisk - a nine foot tall pillar of stone, carved with the tenets of the Litany of the Monolith, by which all good men and women lived their lives. It was market day, subdued crowds wending amongst quiet stalls, wares being fairly sold and exchanged. She stood on a blanket, singing - a simple childhood song, lilting and melodious.

The sky darkened. Cookfires became wildfires, licking up the sides of the buildings, turning wooden walls to smouldering rubble and soft thatch to black ash. Laughter and song became shouts, screams, wracking sobs. From the dark edges of the village, there came tall men in dark armour, cloaks and shields marked with the sigil of a rampant dragon. Wherever their feet fell, blood was spilled. The village ealdorman fell, hands up in peaceful supplication, a spear piercing his chest. A farmer tried to fight back, swinging a wooden work hammer, but was lashed across the chest and stabbed in the stomach. A boy, standing protectively in front of his younger siblings, was cut down without mercy.

A hand on her wrist, pulling. Cold wind, freezing feet. Sorrow, despair, grief, rage. Fatigue, weariness. Desperation. Pushing on through dark and light - the taste of tainted water and mouldy fruit. Cool wind and warm arms around her. The faintest glimmer of hope. Firelight on the horizon.

Mia spasmed awake, heart hammering in her chest. She rolled onto her back and took a few long, deep breaths, clenching her hands on the soft blankets that covered her. It had been more than a month since the Navian soldiers had come to her village. It wasn't the first time the village had been in danger - the village had been close to the borders that divided her home nation of Thusea from other countries, and the villagers sometimes saw squads of men marching down the road. This time, though, they had come with intent, slashing and burning and killing with a will.

The door opened and Mia sat up, rubbing the last of the sleep out of her eyes as Eli walked in, carrying a tray.

"You should have woken me," she said.

Eli shrugged. "You didn't sleep well." It was true - she often didn't. He sat on the foot of the bed, laying the tray on the blankets between them. Breakfast: warm bread, sliced apple, a small pot of honey, two small clay mugs of milk. She gratefully tore a chunk off the bread and spooned on a modest amount of honey, enjoying the sticky sweetness on top of the warm, earthy loaf. The meal was more flavourful than either had been used to, although they were both becoming accustomed to the richness of town food.

"I'll take this," Eli said, collecting the tray after they had finished. "You should get dressed and come down."

"What's on the chore list for today?" she yawned.

Eli shrugged. "Woodcutting, dusting, sweeping. Dina was talking about going to the market."

She nodded. "Okay - I'll be right down," she said, as she watched him close the door behind him. She stood up, casting off the blanket, and began to get dressed. Not that she was by any means undressed - she wore loose trousers and an equally loose, ragged tunic shirt, which with the blankets she slept under put several barriers between her and her bedfellow. It would have been beyond scandalous, back home, for her and Eli to share a bed, even while both were dressed. It seemed that things were very different here, though, and their hosts had seemed to assume that they would be sharing a room. Given that they were already being so kind, Mia hadn't wanted to press the issue.

The owners of the Cardinal Inn had scoffed when the notion of payment had first been mentioned. Mia and Eli, however, had been raised on the philosophy of the Monolith, Thusea's state religion - a faith with no god, only a long list of strict rules to govern proper behaviour. The obelisk in the centre of their village had been carved with the one hundred and one edicts of the Litany, not that anyone usually read them - the villagers could recite them all by heart by age fifteen. Edict number twelve stated: I am without worth; through labour in the service of others, I am given worth. So, they sought worth in the eyes of their hosts in the only way they could: helping with the chores. It was not hard: Eli had grown up on a farm, and was used to much harder labour than the wood chopping and heavy lifting the inn required, and Mia had taken over care of the household when her mother had died three years before, so was well used to cooking and cleaning. Both found the work required of them here to be unchallenging, but rewarding, and the owners seemed grateful. It was a small payment for all the kindness they had been given, but they did what they could.

After changing into her day clothes - ankle-length skirt, a high-necked chemise with woolen tunic, and comfortable hide shoes - she headed downstairs. In the taproom of the inn, the day's work was already well-begun. She could hear the steady thud of the wood axe in the rear yard, wielded no doubt in Eli's capable hands. Dina, the mistress of the inn, was already prepared for her trip to the market, empty basket slung over one arm. Their other host, Roth (who Mia assumed was Dina's husband) was busy at the fireplace, cleaning the narrow flue; his bare arms and face were already streaked with black soot.

"Well well, and good morning!" Roth called cheerfully.

"Good morning, master Roth," Mia replied, curtsying neatly. "How does the day find you?"

"Oh, fair," he replied. "Though I have been putting off cleaning this flue for too long, so I guess this is my morning now. You know what they say - avoid work, and the deities laugh!"

Mia blanched slightly. "I am sure that Eli wouldn't mind helping," she offered.

"Oh most kind," Roth said, waving his sooty hand. "But it is only a small fireplace, so just a one-man job. And anyway, he's busy out chopping wood to make it all sooty again!"

"And Mia is coming along to the market with me," Dina said. She had a thin slate in one hand, covered in a scrawled list of items.

"Then I suppose I'll be seeing both of you at lunch. Don't forget, more soap, love!" Roth added, waving his soot-stained arms in her direction.

"As if I would, with you looking like that!" she sniffed. "Come along girl," she said to Mia, "let's leave the menfolk to the dirty work." She led the way out into the mid morning light, basket - and hips - swaying as she did so.

The day outside was bright and beautiful. It was approaching late spring now, and the market was busy, carts and stalls weighed down with seeds and farming tools. Dina pressed herself through crowds of people to haggle and trade with the market traders, slowly filling the large basket that she had left in Mia's care. Mia herself mostly stood apart, keeping out of the crush as much as possible, observing the bustling street around her, reflecting how different it was from the small village where she had grown up. Her home had been severe and unadorned, the clothing conservative, the people reserved and stiff: polite conversations were held from a safe distance of two or three feet, any unexpected physical contact or collision was immediately followed by a flurry of heartfelt apologies.

The town of Settle, though, was the exact opposite. Walls and stalls were painted and hung with coloured weaves and curtains, and flowering plants grew from cultivated beds on every corner. The people, similarly, were colourful - bright, loose clothing, loud voices, light and cheerful conversation. The atmosphere seemed cheerful, almost festive. This merry demeanour, however, seemed to go hand in hand with a certain... indecentness. Clothing was revealing and scandalously cut, conversation was loud and raucous, and no-one kept a proper distance from each other, instead apparently preferring to touch all the time. Friends greeted each other with warm hugs, conversations were punctuated by grasp arms and squeezed shoulders. Once, Mia had seen a trader end a conversation with Dina by giving her a swift, playful swat on the rump as she turned away; far from being mortally offended (as Mia thought she should have been), Dina had seemed to find it funny. It got worse in the the more out of the way places: Mia had learned not to look to closely at the shadowed alleyways between the buildings, after she had seen a young couple - not much older than her and Eli - embracing in the shade, lips locked together, arms wrapped around each other, hands wandering indecently, even slipping beneath the layers of loose fabric in some places. Mia had refused to answer Dina's questions about her scarlet face that morning.

They finally returned to the inn shortly after noon, sweating and huffing as they carried the now-heavy basket between them. Roth and Eli were waiting for them, both clean but damp, having finished their work and washed. Roth took the basket as soon as they were through the door, carrying it to the kitchen to unpack while the two women sat down at the table; a generous lunch was already waiting for them.

"Now then - is this warm porridge I see? Has Roth been at my kitchen again?" Dina said, beginning to dish the warm food into wooden bowls.

Roth laughed from the kitchen. "All Eli's doing, my dear. And not a single burned pot in the lot!"

Dina raised her eyebrows. "Wood chopper and a halfway decent cook. You'll need to keep a tight hold on this one, girl!" she said to Mia with a rich laugh and suggestive wink. Mia's face flushed a deep pink, but she said nothing, instead focusing all her attention on her food.

Lunch was a jolly affair, like most meals in the Cardinal. Dina did most of the talking, sharing all the gossip she had somehow managed to acquire between the bouts of haggling. After they had eaten, Mia excused herself, returning to the attic room she shared with Eli to rest. The summer was hot, and the heat seemed to have leached the energy out of her all at once. She dozed for a while as the afternoon light poured in between the slats of the shutters, filling the room with a golden aura.

After Eli had pulled her into the shadows of the buildings, they had fled blindly into the countryside. They had no destination, no towards - only away from the carnage behind them. Their only supplies were what they had had to hand at the time: their conservative woolen clothes, a basket of soft pears she had been carrying, Eli's wooden hammer, a bare handful of cheap copper coins. Deeply certain that the soldiers would be coming for them, they had moved every moment their bodies would allow, surviving on the increasingly mouldy pears and the water from what streams they found, resting only when their bodies gave out and they could move no longer.

With no clear map of the area, they quickly became lost. They both knew, however, that they had three possible destinations. If they were lucky, they would stumble upon another Thusean town, where perhaps someone would deign to take them in. If they were unlucky, they might stumble across one of the nearby borders, and find themselves in a Navian village, where they would be quickly apprehended, and - who knew. If they were truly cursed, however, they would stumble across the other nearby border, into the blasted and lethal hellscape of Irnu.

Everyone knew the stories about that debased and debauched place: indecency, slavery, cannibalism, and narcotics - a land where filthy base desires ruled, driving despotic leaders and corrupt priests to prey on the flesh of young women. Worse than all of that, however, were the awful and demonic monsters that ruled it - ancient gods of blood sacrifice and visceral horror. The nations that surrounded the corrupt land would have wiped Irnu from the face of the world if it hadn't been for its immortal masters, who fell upon any military force that dared cross the border - cutting, burning, flaying, eating the soldiers alive. Irnu, as everyone knew, was the only earthly land of pure evil.

After more than a week of panicked flight, they had come upon the edge of a sizable town, at the edges of which they had collapsed - battered, bruised, exhausted, starving. There, people had quickly found them, carrying them to an inn where two very kind people had given them food, medicine, and a bed to sleep in. It was almost two days before they thought to ask where they were. "Why, you're in the Cardinal Inn," Dina had said, gesturing at the brightening coloured wood cutting of the butterfly above the bar. "In the town of Settle," she added. "In Irnu."

Mia drifted back into consciousness, warm light all around her. Stretching, she turned to find that she was not alone: while she slept, Eli had come up, lying down next to her. He was still asleep, face peaceful in the afternoon light.

She did not much mind sharing a room with him, despite how improper it was. Eli was one of her oldest friends - her oldest living friend, now - and she didn't think she would have made it through the last few weeks without his calm, solid presence. He had grown up on his family's farm on the other side of the village, and the two children had regularly met in the market, and at town meetings and festivals. She smiled as she remembered him, as an unusually serious ten year old, asking her to marry him. She had thrown her cup of milk at him and run away, as she recalled. Better days, long gone.

Since their journey together, they had become much closer. Their old life of propriety had been forgotten as they ran, huddling close together under the boroughs of trees when they couldn't run anymore, pressed together for warmth and comfort. There had been a lot of crying on both sides. After that, sleeping on the same bed didn't seem like such a big thing. Sometimes she woke from a bad dream to find him gone, and she lay in the dark, shaking, holding back tears, until he came back. On those nights, he would chastely hold her warm hand in his, his presence soothing her back to sleep.

Her face coloured as she realised she felt moved to touch him - to run her fingertips over the contours of his sleeping face, tracing the strong line of his jaw, losing them in his soft brown hair... she twitched slightly, the movement waking him up. His eyes flicked and he smiled at her (and oh how beautific his smile looked in that moment) and she almost thought in that moment that he was going to lean in closer to her...

He rolled over and sat up, yawning, stretching his arms above his head. "Sorry," he said. "I got tired after lunch as well, so I thought I'd come up and sleep. Just for a little bit."

"It's... okay," she said. She wondered why her voice felt thick in her throat. She also wondered why she felt suddenly and unexplainably disappointed. "We should go back down, anyway - I still have all the sweeping and dusting to do."

"I can help with that," he offered. "I'm done chopping for the day." She nodded and they both rose, heading downstairs back to the main room of the inn, both still yawning. Any lingering drowsiness was instantly dispelled, however, when they saw the tryst underway in the taproom.

Eli gaped at the scene, while Mia clamped both her hands over her mouth in silent, shameful horror.

Dina was sitting on the low workshop, the hem of her long skirt lifted up and pushed back around her waist, spread out behind her. Beneath it, she was apparently unclothed: her bare buttocks rested on the worktop, flattening slightly against the smooth, dark wood. Her shift, already scandalously low and loose around her shoulders, had been pulled down, freeing her ample breasts. Roth was with her, shirt still on, but trousers down around his ankles. The pair were face to face, and Dina's bare, generous thighs were wrapped around his hips, locking them together. Roth's lips were pressed against the side of Dina's neck, his hands busy cupping and squeezing her breasts, rolling her hard nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. She was moaning softly, gasping every time the movements of their hips brought them together.

They were distracted when Mia let out a small, sudden shriek of shock, breaking their kiss and turning to look at the pair. "Afternoon, all!" Roth said amiably. Dina giggled with amusement, face flushed, but not any more so than she had been before she noticed the pair. Mia and Eli, however, had more than enough embarrassment for all four of them, their faces burning a deep, hot red.

"I'm sorry!" Mia squeaked, mortified. Her hand clasped tightly around Eli's arm, dragging him behind her as she positively sprinted for the door. "I'm sorry so sorry we'll leave you alone okay bye!" Mia's words were only cut off when the door slammed shut behind them.

Out in the summer hair, she fell against the stone wall bordering one of the yards, panting. "That - we - they -!" she gasped. Her face was scarlet with embarrassment, her body shaking from sudden adrenaline.

"I know," Eli acknowledged, eyes wide. His face was also bright red, although he wasn't shaking like she was. He put her hand reassuringly on her shoulder, and took a deep, steadying breath. "Let's go for a walk."

She nodded mutely, falling in beside him as they set off through the bright streets. Mia's mind, however, was now racing. Everywhere she looked, she saw Roth and Dina's lewdness reflected. She wondered if all the women were bare naked beneath the skirts. She thought of her own underwear, undeath the loose skirt - did all the men who saw her assume she wasn't wearing proper undergarments?

Mia gradually shifted ahead, instinctively taking the lead in their long, meandering walk. As they went, she couldn't help but think about Eli, and how she had led him out of the Cardinal. She had always considered him a friend, but even then they had rarely touched. People hadn't, generally - it was considered improper, the first step on a slippery path to corruption. My hands are disloyal; I will not turn them to wanton actions (Edict seventy three of the Litany). However, after the attack, their week-long flight through the countryside, and several weeks recovering, sharing the same room, well... There had been nothing indecent, of course. He wouldn't ever do that to her, she knew. But she had grabbed his arm without asking, and he had touched her shoulder without thinking. Touch as a reflex. This place was changing them both.

Suddenly overwhelmed by the bustle of the town, Mia cut across the cobbled street to a stone archway that led into an area of green, seemingly wild land. They had heard of parks, of course, but had never been in a town big enough to warrant one. This one was lovely: tall trees with drooping branches, cascades of vibrant leaves tumbling from them like waterfalls; wild hedges with dark leaves, dotted with small clusters of deep purple fruit; rows upon rows of flowerbeds. Mia frowned as she stopped by a particular bed: tall, complex buds of interlaced scarlet petals. They were beautiful. She was more interested in the wild flowers that grew around the bed, though.