Broken Shield Ch. 02

Chapter 2

The Last Little War had come to the Midlands with the distant sounds of battle. Blue knew those gurgles and cries and screams from the farm. Men dying didn't sound too different from goats going to slaughter.

Except for the praying. Blood and useless prayers soaked the mud churned fields between her village and the next. Her sisters didn't understand, too young and too sheltered.

That sweaty, red summer in the mending tents, mama taught her to yank a broken leg straight. How stitching flesh differed from stitching sackcloth. And when a sharp knife was mercy enough.

On Lamas Day, instead of breaking bread to place at the corners of their barn, Blue sewed a man's hand back together. Three fingers had been cleaved off, but she told him, "You've kept your thumb at least."

He just cried and cradled the bandaged limb to his chest. His tunic was too bloody to tell its color, but it didn't matter to her mama what side they fought for. Blue wiped at his face. A fox once had got into the chicken coop, torn the hens to pieces. Inside the coop smelled of shit and piss and rancid blood.

This poor soldier smelled worse.

White canvas walls spun. She struggled for breath like wet burlap covered her mouth and nose. Stars exploded behind her eyelids. And she ran.

Blue pushed past her mama, shrugging off her concerned hands, and ran for the trees. She ran and ran and ran until her long legs gave out from under her. Her knees buckled and sent her sprawling into the pine needles. The underbrush soaked her britches and tunic, but away from the sick and dying, she could fill her lungs once more.

Blood crusted under her nails, clung in the grooves of her knuckles, painted the lines in her palms. She pulled the kerchief from her head, braid tumbling free, and scrubbed at the gore. Hands as clean as she could make them without soap and water, Blue balled the linen and chucked it hard into the woods.

A twig snapped. Blue coiled her legs up and under her. Leaves rustled. From the direction of the battle field. The blade of mercy was wickedly sharp-- more than sharp enough to kill, Blue knew-- but its delicate curve seemed far too thin to offer any safety.

Still, she clutched it to her bosom.

Branches shook to the east.

Stab up, whole body behind it, Blue thought, and run.

A white stallion limped into the clearing. Red and black splashed up his alabaster chest like spots of rust. Still saddled, dragging his reins, he chuffed at her impatiently.

Dizzy with adrenaline, Blue sheathed the dagger and approached slowly. "Alright, then, horse, let me look, okay? Hope that's not all yours.

"My name's Bluebelle. I won't hurt you." Lipid brown eyes locked on hers, the horse flicked his ears. He huffed when he caught scent of her bloody apron but didn't spook. Blue stepped into touching distance and he rubbed his velvety muzzle against her cheek. She didn't see any wounds on him.

"Don't worry, horse," Blue crooned softly, lifting gentle hands to his neck, "It's not my blood, either."

"Hardly reassuring, woman." A deep voice sounded behind her. "That is my horse. I'll thank you not to steal him."

Only sheer will and the desire not to be trampled kept her from yelping. She turned slowly from the shoulders, hands still on the horse's withers. "This horse will be lame inside a day, clomping rider-less through these woods."

The voice belonged to the tallest man she'd ever seen. Shoulders as wide as axe handles under finely riveted chainmail. Hair dark with sweat and mud and blood. A finger-wide split in his forehead curtained more blood down his face. He was armed, pike and shield. "Where the bloody hell did you come from?"

She pointed a trembling hand in the vague direction of the tent. And her mama. "Mender's."

"Well, I didn't think you were a butcher." He pointed the pike at her bloody apron. "Rhien's or Lambelin's army?"

"Are those the lords' name?" Which wears yellow tunics and which green, she wondered.

"Don't play dumb, woman." The spear point dipped toward the dirt and his shield drooped. Exhaustion stamped itself into the edges of his mouth.

"I'm from the village. We just don't want more of you dead idiots in our potato fields." Blue kept her words even, but a mottled blush worked up her throat and cheeks. "Or the Wizard's Woods, in your case."

He lifted a hand to his forehead and grimaced. "It's not that bad."

"I can see your skull." Blue clamped teeth down inside her cheek-- I hope he can't see me shaking. Because she was trembling like the pine boughs in the narrow wind. She squinted at the man's wound. "Are you going to stab me and die of blood poisoning?"

"Fine, you, me, and Prince will all go together." He took two steps forward, and promptly blanched ashen white. His knees buckled and he thunked to his ass in the undergrowth, legs sprawled out like he was a pouting toddler. "On second thought, we can stay here."

The pike had clattered to rest against a pine tree. And out of his reach, most importantly. I could run, she reasoned, I could run, and he'd never catch me.

He would die though. Maybe not today, but he'd catch a fever and sweat himself to death alone in the forest. Shit.

"Your name is Prince, then," she cooed to the horse. "What's that fool called?" She loosened the berth and lifted the saddle free. After his bit was out, Prince chuffed and set to work striping a young fern of its leaves.

The man grunted, "Titian."

"Well, Titian," Blue tucked hands into her deep apron pockets. "This is gonna hurt."

After rummaging around in his saddle bags, Blue emptied his canteen and half a bottle of questionable whiskey into a dented cook pot. She scrambled a fire together against the encroaching dusk. After striking a flint with unsteady hands and coaxing the spark into a rosy glow, she settled the pot into the flames, stoking the fire until the water and liquor mixture bubbled.

"What kind of name is Bluebelle?" Titian asked, struggling out of his armor. The mail sounded like rain as he draped it over a fallen log. She grimaced. Her papa had named her after the best goat in the village, which he figured only fair considering that Bluebelle the Goat had help woo her mama. "People call you Belle?"

Belle was the baker's daughter, prettiest girl in the village, delicate with silky dark hair and cheeks like roses in bloom. Blue was already taller than her papa and stringy, more beef jerky than girl, with straw-colored hair coarsely plaited away from her freckled cheeks.

"Never." She glanced up and almost swallowed her tongue. He had peeled down to his linens, sheer with sweat but mostly free of blood and grime. The shirt clung to the wide plains of his chest and whorls of dark hair peeked from its open throat. "Most people call me Blue."

"Blue, how...?" he grunted and reached towards his head, only to yank his fingers away with a hiss.

"Don't touch, ya cackhead." She took a deep swallow of the spirit, which burnt all the way down, and thrust the remainder at Titian. "Here. You should have the rest."

"I can handle it." He gritted his teeth and glared. But he took the bottle in wide, filthy hands. "What age are you?"

"Five and ten." Using the end of her leather apron, Blue moved the hot copper pot to a nearby log, squatted next to him in the undergrowth, and dunked his spare shirt-- mostly clean-- into the mixture to rub at muck cloaking his face. "Remember to breathe."

Under the blood and dirt, she found a strong, square face, paler and younger than she expected, with cat hazel eyes blurred on her face. The second she touched the crusted edges of the wound, he chugged three bubbling throatfuls of the liquor and gripped her knee, hard. His fingers pressed like lit coals through the thin cotton of her britches.

"Shit," Titian cursed on a shaky exhale and the whites of his eyes rolled wide.

None of that. I'll never move your giant arse if you pass out.

"Hey, hey. Almost done." Blue pressed more firmly into his side, smoothing a gentle hand at his hairline, and asked, "Where're you from? Past the Big River?"

"Westerport." He gritted out between his teeth. His palm gripped across her thigh now, wide and hot and unlike anything she'd experienced in her tender years.

"Never been." Truthfully, Blue'd never been past the next town, where the big market was held every spring.

"Stinks." Focus came back into those amber eyes, and his lips turned down into the growth of new beard. "Too many people."

"You hate it?" Too many people sounds better than none.

"Better than the fishing boats at least." The qualification rumbled through his ribcage into her hollow belly. "Plenty of shops, thea..." He winced. "Theaters. The Guild is there."

Blue fished inside her apron for needle and sinew, swiped it through the disinfectant gone lukewarm, and leaned closer to his face. One knee braced against the fallen log and the other in the crease at his hip.

At the first prick, he clamped both hands behind that thigh, and a small muscle jumped in his jaw. Thick eyebrows pulled together above his strong nose, and eyelids laced with delicate blue veins creased closed as she marched small black sutures across his forehead.

"Keep it clean, chew some willow bark." Tying the last stitch off, Blue used her blade to trim off the sinew and tucked the needle away before carding nails through his dirty hair so that it would not touch the wound. Her fingertips tingled against his scalp. "You can cut 'em out in a week or so."

Titian squeezed her thigh, once, hard, and released it with a drag of calluses on the cotton. "My thanks."

Easing back out of his suddenly too hot embrace to pull off the soiled apron, Blue flopped into the pine needles at his side. "I'll stay so you don't die in the night."

Titian nudged the bottle into her elbow. "Gracious of you."

She drank from the bottle, tasting his sweat on the mouth. The whisky burnt down her throat and boiled low in her belly. "Why are you so far from home?"

"The Guild calls an army; I'm bound to answer." The sky had gone red where it showed between the summer canopy and painted his face with a dust of rose. He couldn't have been more than twenty.

"How do you pick who to fight for?"

He laughed. "Whov'r paid the guild the most coin."

They fell to silence broken only by breathing and swallows of liquor as the vault of the sky shifted from ruby into purple and the dust grey of twilight. Blue fed twigs into the fire smoldering at their feet. She asked, "Have you killed someone?"

"Have you?" He leaned forward to pull a ration bag from Prince's saddle. Titian offered her of the dried fruits and nuts, expecting the matter settled.

"Aye." Blue picked out an apple crisp but just pinched it between her forefinger and thumb. "Would have died anyway. Guts spilled out like a butchered hog but was my knife that sent him to the Meadowlands."

"Mercy, then?"

"Mayhaps." Blue tried to eat the bit of apple, but it turned to dusty glue in her mouth. She didn't realize that her palms were scrubbing hard against her knees until Titian took her hand and held it. They fell asleep like that. Heads propped against the log and hands clasped between them like a lifeline.

When dawn peeled back the night with its yellow fingertips, Blue woke like a good farm girl should. They'd turned to each other in the night so that she'd slept in the cup of his shoulder, his hand warm on her elbow. Blue sat up slowly in the wreath of his arm, but he didn't stir. Titian's breath was deep and even, his brow cool and without fever.

She let him sleep a few minutes longer as she worked to plait a small braid behind her ear. Tied off with a leftover bit of suture, Blue cut it free and knotted the memento around Titian's wrist.

He woke as she tied it off. He spun the bracelet once. "To remember you?"

"Aye, I need to get back 'fore my parents come looking." Blue shot to her feet, red-faced and bashful.

"You saved my life." Titian stood with her in that eerie quiet of newborn morning, still as broad and big as the day before, but something else now, too. He worked a ring off his pinky and pushed it over her thumb, closing her fist against the loose fit. "Thank you."

Titian pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek. One she felt for days after. Years, after. They left the copse in opposite directions. Him back towards whichever army was richer. Her back to the farm.

Blue never saw him again.