Rainath and Rogar, and Karla

"Karla," he answered frankly, for once unashamed. "I think we'd been grieving her husband together, her inside the cabin and me out back, for all that while. When my da died, she'd almost done mourning, and mine was starting again. I imagine she felt sorry for me. She'd come out and offer me a nip, though gods knew I was already half drunk and still two years from making my rites at least." He paused in reflection on his younger self.

"She might've forgiven your debt," Rainath suggested quietly.

"Aye, she might have, but I probably would have just used the spare time to drink myself to death," Rogar admitted.

"Once winter set in, she'd invite me in to warm up, when I'd finished. Pour some kaf into me, to water the whiskey. When spring came I was taking off my shirt while I worked, hoping she'd watch me from the window." He chuckled, face reddening. "Yea, I wanted her badly, by the time she had me," his voice was like sun-heated stones tumbling off one another, making Rainath prickle.

"And it helped?" Prompted Rainath skeptically, for sex seemed to spawn more problems than it solved, in her world. Rogar's laugh was heavy with masculine innuendo.

"Aye" he assured her. They approached the forgehouse and Rogar veered toward the forge itself, pulling a stool to sit in the heat that still radiated from the iron.

"Made me want to stay sober enough so my cock would stand, and gave my masculinity the boost it needed to tolerate Jade's attitude, and later the daily beatings from her suitors." He laughed again. "There was a fair measure of attitude that she beat out o' me, as well."

"Jade?" He shook his head.

"No, Karla." Rainath looked dumbstruck. Rogar gave her a sidelong grin.

"My da stopped beating me, when he got sick. I don't think it seemed fair to him, to expect me to step up as a man and strike me as a boy, both. By the time Karla put her knee in my back and strapped me for mouthing off to her, I hadn't been punished with a belt in most of five years." He grimaced, backs of his legs smarting in sympathetic memory. Rainath gaped, huddling closer to the warmth of the forge.

"Will she beat you now, if you don't..." Rainath trailed off awkwardly, embarrassed for him.

"Och, no. Not since I made my rites, and every beating she gave me, I earned thrice over, I'm sure." He laughed humbly. "She did teach me to hold a deeper regard for women, I have to say," he sobered a bit, "but no. I obey Karla out of respect, and my own honor. Not fear." The defiant, resentful tone they'd set out under had ebbed to a grudging affection. "Though if I'm being honest, her husband does scare the sin out of me. He's built like two of Cathon," Rogar added grimly, shuddering. Rainath could only stare, the twisted sexuality of it enough to make her want to crawl out of her skin.

"I tell ye all this because I think you should know how sordid things can get, when you're snowed in with the same few dozen people year in and year out," he counseled, fortifying himself for the return to collect Karla.

"I suggest ye avoid men. You've been to the lodge now, so you can put that curiousity to rest. Slake your lust amongst your sisters in iron, and ye might make it to spring unmarried," he summarized without heat, or disdain. Rainath's cheeks warmed nonetheless.

"Karla went to the lodge," she pointed out, ever immature, even when she knew better. Rogar's look was flat and impatient.

"Aye, and you've just seen her diddle me like a kitten with yarn, though I'm among the ten highest ranking men on this mountain. Another being Cat, and the two of us together would be hard pressed to put her husband down, if it came to it. Karla enjoys... unparalleled privilege." Speaking her name gave him gooseflesh.

"Did she mean that, about her husband?" Rainath knew her curiousity was vulgar, but she couldn't help herself. Rogar seemed committed to answering to her openly, and she had burning questions. He heaved a sigh.

"Truthfully, she hadn't told me that before. I only just learned that he knew about her and I, back then. At the time I thought it was a secret," he chuckled self-effacingly, "I suppose I wasn't so sly, at that. But I surely felt like it, vaulting out her bedroom window like the trickster Zei."

"I thought you knew her before Tyron," Rainath said, puzzled.

"Before, and after," he clarified, tucking his hands into his cloak. "She married him the same summer I made my rites, but she wouldn't stop hounding me, all the same." A look of disgust crossed his face. "My hands were shaking so bad, I didn't think I could get her wedding regalia laced back up before the drums started." Rainath recoiled in shock at what he was confessing to. Sickened though Rogar was, his thoughts of Karla were growing steadily fonder... and firmer.

"You'll go to her?" Rainath asked unnecessarily. He nodded, striving to be less shamed, as Cathon had ordered. Rainath was deeply uncomfortable, she was another for whom shame came too readily.

"You can trust her," he ventured, mind back at the lodge, "if you have issues w' womanhood, that y'don't want to take to my mother, or Jade. She isn't the devil they think she is, though sin comes naturally enough to her, for truth."

"Your mother doesn't think she's a devil," Rainath corrected absently, growing sleepy, "she said going to her would be good for you."

"Did she?" He asked bemusedly. "Funny, after having my head torn off by Tyron, my mother finding out that I was carryin' on with a widow ten years senior to me was about the biggest fear I had, back then. It's a wonder what trouble I would've had time for, if I'd known I wasn't fooling any of them anyway," he shook his head, chuckling.

He made his final goodbyes to Rainath and saw her to the door of the forgehouse, listening for the bar to drop, before he retraced his steps to fetch Karla. Rogar didn't make it back as far as the treeline before he met her on the path.

"You took an awfully long time," she pouted to him as she had Tyron, that week that felt like a lifetime before. It was persuasively erotic, and his cock jumped duly.

"I'm sorry," he told her sincerely, offering his arm. She accepted it and snuggled in to his side, shivering.

"She's a pretty little thing," she told him, ever stirring the pot, "are you sure you want to leave her to the wolves?" Rogar winced at the harsh metaphor.

"If that's the opposite of claiming marriage and putting a babe in her, I'm afraid so," he muttered. She laughed in response, and they spent the rest of the walk to her cabin fighting the dead-cold grasp of winter, come to claim their bones.

"Were you speaking truth, about Ty seeing me as your husband?" He asked her later, when they'd gotten inside and the kaf was in the pot. Karla was huddling near the hearth to get warm, so he stoked the coals and added some wood, bringing it to life.

"Aye," she muttered, shivering. When her cup was ready she wrapped her chilled hands around it gratefully, curling into her seat like a cat.

"You should have waited," he chided gently, feeling guilty that she'd gotten chilled. His concern drew a sweet smile from her. The room was beginning to warm, and the cold was easing its grip on their clothes and flesh.

"Aye," she repeated, drinking her kaf, "Tyron's clan law had me as your wife when Radok fell, rites or no." Being told you had a wife when you thought you'd avoided that particular sack of cats all along was a queer experience for Rogar, something like being punched in the gut when you didn't see it coming.

"Why didn't he just challenge me for ye?" He asked, bemused.

"It's not his right. By their law you have to call for it, as the first," she held out her cup to have more hot added to it. Rogar scoffed humorously at the idea of his twenty year old self dueling Tyron for the right to her. Or himself then, for that matter.

"I think he was relieved he wouldn't have to kill ye," she told him, mirthful. "You were such a nice looking lad, and everyone felt real sore for ye. Ty would have looked a right ass, if he beat ye and took me from you." Rogar rolled his eyes, as though he would have dared face Tyron to claim Karla then, or over the last twenty years. If he'd called a challenge, Rogar probably would have fled the mountain that much sooner.

He had to redraft his opinion of Tyron a second time in as many weeks. Being told that Karla negotiated for the right to keep seeing him was queer and disturbing, but it wasn't the same at all as learning that Ty had accepted a marriage where he'd be rightful second to an unrited manchild.

"Why didn't ye tell me? Every time ye had me in here I was convinced he was going to knock the door down and tear me limb from limb at any moment," he accused, and Karla laughed wickedly.

"Well that part of it was fun, aye?" She asked, holding her cup out so he could refill them both. He gave her a sideways look and she chuckled again.

"It was! Knowing ye wanted me so bad you couldn't help yerself, even though you thought you'd be killed for it. Seein' you dive out that window like a frightened hare going to ground-" her voice had started to take on something heavier than humor. Rogar shook his head in disapproval and drank his kaf.

"Everyone on the mountain knew a wife was the last thing ye needed back then, Rogar." She said more kindly, stretching out a foot to touch his knee affectionately. "I married Ty so you'd be free from thinkin' ye already had one."

"But according to him, I did," Rogar countered, not antagonistically.

"Aye," she laughed, "ironic, no? But it suited me, because I hadn't got you out from under my skin, yet. And Tyron was big enough that he didn't feel his honor was threatened by ye, or need to bloody yer pretty face to coddle his own manhood. I liked that about him." Her voice had warmed with affection for her absentee husband.

"I was afraid it was your face that he'd bloody, if he ever caught me," muttered Rogar, channeling the shame of a twenty year old boy endangering a woman's life with his wanton lust. Karla chuckled cryptically, apparently violence wasn't the currency she and Ty dealt in.

"It never occurred to me, that it was me under your skin," Rogar confessed, looking around for the whiskey bottle. When he found it he added a splash to the bottom of his cup, and when she nodded, the same to Karla's. Her cryptic chuckle deepened, and heated, becoming less difficult to interpret. The pour of hot kaf into their cups sounded like its echo.

"Oh, aye," she said languidly, reaching out to accept her refilled cup. "When you turned up at my door to tell me Radok was dead you looked like a whipped puppy, all big eyes and soft curls. I just wanted to take you on my lap and pet ye," she paused to take a drink, eyes twinkling naughtily at him.

"But when you came back that summer with your da, the angst had already eaten that softness away. Your body was harder, but the haunt in your eyes... it broke my heart for ye, but it sent shivers down my spine, too." Her eyes met his, hot but calm and unashamed.

"I was drunk," he admitted, giving in to exhaustion and slouching in his chair. Throwing the axes and having tea with Cathon and Joran felt like another era, not merely twelve hours and a few furlongs removed from where he sat just then.

"Aye, I wasn't sober," she tossed back casually, surprising him into a laugh.

"My poor da," he shook his head, and Karla laughed with him.

"I did know better," Karla went on, sobering to take another drink of kaf. "Knew I shouldn't be givin' ye sips of my dead husband's whiskey, or inviting you in here as a widow alone. But, gods..." she gave him another of her looks over the top of her cup, heating his blood.

"It was hard not to think about ye, w' you out there every day, chopping fit to clear the mountain, w' tears running down your face and the blood freezing on your knuckles," she said in a low voice, eyes steady on his.

"I never knew quite how much ye grieved Radok..." Rogar ventured.

"I didn't either," she agreed vaguely, eyes drifting to the wall, as though her memories were stacked on a shelf, "a wife is destined to be a widow, and I knew he had a recklessness that he didn't carry well..." she frowned gently, recalling the mindset of her former self.

"I grieved him," she concluded, the question of degree unresolved. "He had a mean streak that I didn't miss, but it was a shock to be suddenly on my own, and him not gone to battle or anything that would make me expect it," Rogar fidgeted guiltily, not unnoticed by her sharp eye.

"I suppose a wife feels that way no matter how she loses her first husband, though. I did my share of crying, and drinking. And I railed at his ghost, mostly for what he'd done to the poor lad from the good family that hadn't deserved to have his life broken by a mean, drunk fool." She stopped abruptly and the two of them stared into the fire silently for a long time.

"I had him locked out, that night." Karla confessed quietly, to the flames. Rogar gave her a startled look. Her face was stricken, one of the few times he'd ever seen her less than content. She cut her eyes to him for a moment and looked away quickly, tears stinging.

"He had his dander up, and he'd been drinking all damn day..." her voice took a hint of bitterness.

"When the sun went down I barred the door and went to bed, hoping he'd sleep it off in the snow. He took it in his mind that I had someone in here..." she trailed off, pressing knuckles to her lips to quiet herself. When she looked back at Rogar he was watching her, dumbstruck.

"Are ye tellin' me that you felt responsible?" He asked, incredulous. Her eyes welled with tears.

"I'm sorry," she told him softly. "I should have just let him in..."

"And what, have him try to knock your teeth out, instead o' mine?" Rogar demanded flatly. "He was mean as a baited badger that night. If you'd opened the door it probably would have been you buried the next day, instead of him." Incensed by her guilt, he loosed a confession he'd made rarely, about that night.

"I didn't kill him, Karla. He fell on his own blade. The others thought I got scared and stuck him, because I was young, and the knife was small. My da said it was more forgivable to accept the dishonor to myself than to smear the blood of a dead brother, so-"

"I know," she said hoarsely, interrupting him. He looked at her quizzically.

"They brought me the blade that felled him. I knew it was his," the fingers of her left hand went subtly to her right side, where twenty-five year old scars still crisscrossed her ribs. "I tried to tell them that, to save you face," she looked at him regretfully, "but they thought I was just mad w' grief, and confused."

The hour had grown late and they shared the weight of the world between them. Rogar set his empty cup on the hearth and sat forward in his chair, leaning forward to catch her hand and meet her reluctant gaze.

"Ye owe me no apologies, Karla. It wasn't your fault, what Radok did to either of us." She nodded grimly, fighting to keep her composure.

"It's me that should thank ye," he told her quietly, feeling shy, "for saving me. If ye hadn't kept me chasing my cock like a dog w' its tail, it probably would have been my liquored blood poured out in the snow the next winter, or the one after."

"I didn't want your life wasted twice because of me," she confessed, smiling weakly at him. "I worked so hard at savin' ye, it saved me too."

He stood and used her hand to draw her to her feet with him. In all their years she'd been the aggressor, chasing and chivvying him when he was too scared to come on and too stupid to run away, both.

Now they traded roles and he pulled her in to claim her. She came to him readily, warm and pliant, making a pleased sound against his mouth that made Rogar harden instantly and think that perhaps there was something about having a wife that made a man feel potent enough to do stupid and crazy things.

They tugged clumsily at one another's clothes, surrendering in frustration and hurriedly undressing themselves along the few steps from hearth to bedroom.

Because of their status, he'd always yielded and she had taken the lead without fail, directing him, shamelessly orchestrating her pleasure with the experience of a woman who knows her own body, and how she likes to be served.

Now Rogar was surprised to find that he could lay her down and take her the way he would another woman, and that she would accept it from him, purring and spreading herself wantonly, letting him set the pace for the both of them, hungry for her pleasure as much as his own. It was a dizzying sense of power to feel her submit beneath him and in that moment, drunk on her compliance, he understood how Tyron could be so untroubled by the fumblings of a lesser man.

He knew her rhythm well enough to know what she needed from him and it was a heady thrill to be able to withold it from her, to deny her the full measure of his stroke and make her whimper needily, to run her through and hear her satisfied groan when he could get no deeper.

When she finally reached her peak it was off-beat, the tension breaking as he withdrew, making her arch and keen against his shoulder as her nails dug frantically into his hips, desperate to reseat him as the climax bolted through her. He obliged her and she dragged him over the precipice, his moans and sobbing breath muffled in her hair, tangled on the pillow.

"If you had been able to do that when ye were twenty, I might not have married Ty in the first place," Karla praised giddily to the heavens, her pulse still at a gallop.

"If I'd known how to do that to you when I was twenty, I would ha' let him kill me for it," Rogar answered flatly, chest heaving.