Rainath, and Rogar's Ghosts

***

Joran came to fetch his father, even before his grandmother was up for the day. Cathon followed him out on light feet into a dawn that was frozen still.

Later Rainath woke in the den, stiff from sleeping cold and slumped in the chair and embarrassed at having fallen asleep waiting for Rogar. With no one to disabuse her, she assumed he'd taken the bed when he came in and his late night accounted for his absence from breakfast. Likewise, who knew how long Cathon, who was absent, had been up with Jade, who sat at the table looking understandably tired and subdued.

No one gave a sign that anything was amiss until Cathon came in from the front door, looking grim, and sat heavily at the head of the table. Rainath looked around in confusion, unsure what his arrival meant.

Jade and Opal both looked expectantly toward Cathon as he sat. He grunted and spooned butter onto his porridge, weighed the pot and poured himself a cup of tea, without looking up to meet their eyes.

"Rogar's alright," he said, to his first spoonful of breakfast more than any of them. Rainath started; she hadn't realized he might not be. Opal immediately turned to her breakfast, assuaged, but Jade seemed more alarmed than ever.

"There was a raid on the lodge," Cathon summarized as briefly as he could, "he's gone to return the bodies and pay respects."

"Gone?" Demanded Jade.

"Bodies?" Rained blurted, at the same time. Cathon gave them a level look, and Rainath fought the urge to shrink away.

"How far are they going?" Asked Opal, pragmatically. Cathon shrugged, without disrespect.

"A day or two, maybe more if the snow keeps up. They were Boar clan." With his report apparently complete, Cathon resolved to eating his breakfast without further chatter.

The other women were able to proceed with breakfast as though nothing was out of the ordinary, but Rainath had questions clamoring to shout themselves in her head.

Opal and Cathon finished their breakfast in equally businesslike fashion and when Opal announced she was off for the shop her son in law said he'd walk her there. She gave no sign of whether she felt it was out of the ordinary for him to do so, but when she left Rainath thought her belt looked heavier than usual.

"Is someone in danger?" She asked Jade, as soon as they'd gone. The other woman gave a short laugh.

"You haven't paid attention out there, if you think anyone's not," she told Rainath, shaking her head and clearing the empty dishes from the table. When she came back she was more cooperative.

"We're safe enough," she told Rainath, sitting back down to the table with the last of the tea from the pot. "The watch will answer for letting them get through, but it must have been a small raid or they would have been seen. We have a good defensible position here, there hasn't been a significant siege in oh, a hundred and fifty years maybe."

"Why are they raiding? And how was he involved?" She wondered aloud.

"We're lucky to have a secure village, with good income from the weaponry guildwork. There's a lot of differences in how the clans get by," Jade shrugged, "if they knew it was a gambling den, they were probably after drink."

"He was in a gambling den? I thought there wasn't anything like that, this far from the city." Jade laughed at her naivete. "Where there's men, there's a gaming den," she told the younger woman sagely.

Rainath's face showed a mix of confusion and worry that tugged at Jade's heart.

"I'm sorry he's gone and left you like this," she told Rainath sympathetically. "It's damn poor manners, even if he's not courting you." Rainath blushed.

"I don't think-," she hesitated, unsure how to explain what was between she and him. "When we came, I thought I'd been hired for mercenary work," she summarized. Jade looked bemused, and a little indignant.

"So you were tricked? What was he on about, bringing you up here, then? Do you mean to say ye haven't been wi' him at all?" She snorted deprecatingly. "Well, if this was his plan for seducing you, no wonder he's a bachelor yet." Rainath's blush intensified, and she shook her head.

"There was once, in Caldeum. I don't think he... liked... me very much." Her lip trembled at the shameful memory. Jade was torn between revulsion and intrigue, trying to forget it was her brother they were talking about.

"Well what are ye doing here, then?" Jade demanded, as though her brother's aspect would appear and explain what he'd had in his head. Rainath stuttered awkwardly.

"I don't know," she admitted, wanting to flee. "I'm sorry, I should have gone already. I just wasn't sure of the way back to the ruins, and-" Jade's face changed landscape rapidly, like ice with warm water poured over it.

"Oh, Rainath," it may have been the first time she'd used the other woman's name. "Forgive me, sister. I didn't mean to make you feel unwelcome," she reached out to touch the back of Rainath's hand, the briefest taste of the casual intimacy she'd watched Jade share with the rest of her family. The younger girl fought the urge to dissolve in tears.

"I should go," protested Rainath, feeling vulnerable and embarassed. "Will you give your mam back her axe? And thank her for me?" She pulled the weapon loose from her belt and laid it on the table between them, much as Opal had when she gave it to her.

"Oh," said Jade, looking down at the axe as though everything suddenly made perfect sense to her. Her hand went to the hilt, familiarly, and her shoulders dropped as she considered it.

"This is my old axe," she said to Rainath, taking it up and testing her wrist in a deadly arc beside her. It was a minimal demonstration, but the easy grace with which she did it made her proficiency clear.

"I'm sorry," faltered Rainath guilty, "she let me borrow it, I didn't know-" Jade waved away her apology and laid the axe back where it had been.

"Aye, she let me borrow it too. It was hers, first. The one I use now is modeled after it," Rainath stared, Jade seemed lost in a moment of private recollection with the weapon, her fingertips still touching it lightly.

"I fought Rogar more than anyone else, with this axe." She finally said, quietly. Rainath thought it looked an awfully deadly tool for disputing sibling rivalry.

"It was a bit duller then," she allowed, as though Rainath had spoken, "but he was six years older and ten stone heavier. He'd have died of the shame, if I hurt him badly. Though he still wears a few scars I gave him," she chuckled wickedly.

"Why were you fighting?" Rainath wasn't sure it was her place to ask, but her curiousity was piqued.

"Oh," she paused, thoughtful. "Because I was a teenager, I suppose. My da was gone, or all but, and mam taking care of him all the time. I ran a bit wild," she grinned ruefully at Rainath, who had no trouble believing it. "He wanted me to learn, or he would have just strapped me. He usually did, after."

"He taught you to fight?"

"Och, no." Jade laughed at the notion. "My mother taught me to handle weapons as a babe, at the forge," she held her hand low to indicate a toddler's height, "and I started formal training young. By the time I was in fourteen, I was awfully big-headed." Jade grimaced in awkward reflection.

"Rogar knew a thing or two about being wild, and it was mostly him who kept me in line, once my da got sick. When my teenage attitude came in, I think he feared it would get me killed. It probably would have," she admitted with another sidelong grin at Rainath. "So it got to where he'd let me fight him, when I had a beating coming." Rainath didn't see where the learning came in, and her face must have read as much. Jade laughed at the memory.

"Oh, I learned," she assured Rainath, blushing faintly. "It would usually start here," she nodded at the table between them, "w' me running my mouth, wanting to be sent from the table so I wouldn't have to do my chores." She rolled her eyes, her feelings on chores having changed little in the time gone by.

"Rogar would let me go with a look and a warning, but I'd never leave off, once I started. When he'd lost patience, or my mother had, he'd take me out back," her head jerked in the direction of the back door.

"He'd tease me until I was mad as a wet cat and I'd fly at him in beserk fury, screaming, in my mind already sharpening the pike for his head," she put a self-conscious hand to her face, grinning. Rainath was faintly horrified.

"And then he'd push me in the mud." Jade concluded flatly, surprising her. "Trip me, take my axe and swat me with the broad side of it, gods- he could sink it into a tree so high I had to climb to reach it, and I'd nearly fall out wrenching it loose..." she shook her head at the memory.

"But what did you learn?" Rainath blurted, confused. Jade raised her eyebrow, suspecting they were things the younger girl hadn't yet been taught.

"I learned to hold my tongue and curb my temper, or there'd be hell to pay," she told her, eyes twinkling because it was a price she obviously still accepted from time to time. "And that rage is a poor battle-mate. Mostly that a bigger man was likely to beat me easily, n'matter how handy I was among girls. That one was hard to learn," she admitted sincerely to Rainath, "but it probably saved my life to teach me some manners." Her countenance relaxed once more.

"Not that I respected him for it at the time," she laughed. "Once he'd burned up all the rage in me as a brother, he'd turn me around and strap me w' our father's belt, and send me in to wash up and do my chores, all tear-streaked and filthy. I hated him for trying to be a da to me," Jade admitted, without venom. "It's easier to see now, what he was about. He made me better at fighting, too. It was damned embarrassing that I could best anyone the warmaster put against me in the training yard, boys or girls, but my bloody brother could take me fully armed and drub me by the woodpile with his bare hands."

Her stories had put Rainath in mind of the first time she'd met Rogar, the things he'd said to her about having manners, and what would happen if she raised a weapon to him. She shuddered, skin crawling with goosebumps at the recollection.

"It was probably hard for him, but he did it because he cares for you," she told Jade, heart twisting enviously, hoping she'd forgiven the man her brother had strove to be.

"Aye, and you," Jade countered, meeting her eyes steadily.

"No," Rainath protested, confused. "He hasn't-, we don't..."

"No," agreed Jade, smiling cryptically. "You're not his type, I suppose, but he wouldn't have brought you all this way if he didn't mean it. Coming home is always hard for him." She spared a sympathetic grimace, imagining how hard it was for him just then.

"I don't know what he could have meant by bringing me here," muttered Rainath resentfully, losing patience with Jade's duplicitous riddling. The other woman rose and cleared their teacups away, her mood seeming lighter than it had all morning.

"He means you to be an apprentice," she told Rainath, when she returned with a cloth for the table.

"Apprentice?"

"Aye, with mam," she told her, as though it were foregone. "Put that back on your belt, now," she told her, nodding at the axe that still lay on the wood and beginning to wipe around it. "We're late getting tea started- say, how are ye in the kitchen, sister?" Rainath grimaced, and Jade laughed.

"Well that makes two of us, then," she told her cheerfully, taking Rainath's arm and gliding toward the kitchen.

Later while Jade eyed the soda bread in the oven with dubious skepticism, Rainath found the courage to ask, "What is, his type?" In a small voice that Jade might have ignored, if she wished. She straightened from peering in the oven and appraised Rainath dispassionately, head tilted.

"Strong," she said finally, reaching for the box of tea. Rainath's brow furrowed for a moment, she wasn't generally considered weak.

"In character," she elaborated without looking toward Rainath, somehow still knowing she'd been mistaken. She chuckled. "He probably gets that from me. All the times I told him to get stuffed, he wouldn't know what to do with a meek woman." She poured boiling water into the teapot, grinning in fond recollection.

"You're young," Jade excused gently, unknowingly echoing her brother's words. "Rogar's women tend to be a bit... more mature," Jade explained awkwardly.

"He's not really my type, either," Rainath confessed quietly, drawing a quizzical look. Before Jade could find out what she meant, Joran came in the back door.

"Da and gram are coming," he warned his mother lightly, skipping to go and wash. She thanked him for his service and pulled the baking from the oven just as the front door could be heard opening.

"It's ugly," she pronounced of the lumpy bread, "but if it tastes alright, they'll forgive us," she gave Rainath a comradrous wink, handed her the teapot, and led the charge to the table.

Rainath was relieved to see Cathon join them at the table, presumably meaning that he wouldn't require private service from Jade after the meal. When she told her as much while they did the washing after, Jade said,

"Eh? Oh, yesterday you mean? Cat didn't make me do that," she handed the drying towel to Rainath, much as Joran had.

"I was just hoping it would soften him up, let me off early," she admitted, shrugging.

"Did it?" Jade gave her a flat, ironic look.

"Do ye see me in my smithing leathers, at the forge today?" She demanded, spreading her arms for inspection. Rainath giggled.

"I'd be mad," she admitted, letting her stubbornness show. "I wouldn't do anything to... soften, him."

"Well he softened me up a bit too, aye? It wasn't for nothing," her chuckle was laden with innuendo, making Rainath flush hotly.

"You could just leave," she suggested, mutinously. Jade barked a laugh.

"Aye, I could. I could mouth off again, provoke him into beating me senseless and smash his skull while he slept if I wanted, too. But I'm fond of him, for one, and for another, he was right. He knew more about it than I did, and I could have saved myself some shame if I heeded him." Rainath fought the urge to gape at her incredulously. Jade laughed openly at her shock.

"He was right about this, too," She told her, towing the younger woman to the den. There was no fire burning, but the day was bright at the window beyond Cathon's seat. "I understand a lot more, now, and I've had fun with ye today. I wouldn't have got that from hammering at the forge, with wax stuffed in my ears." She smiled self-deprecatingly and performed a cursory ransack of her husband's property, turning out pipe, tabac pouch, crystal decanter and a deck of cards in short order.

"Play?" She asked, shuffling.

***

The trek into the territory of the boar clan was slow, over rocky terrain and often through driving wind, once they were clear of the shelter of their valley. They dragged sledges loaded with goods and the wrapped bodies of their would-be assassins, frozen solid and padded with snow until there was no telling what was which.

Rogar was content to walk for three days in the miserable cold, with his jaw frozen shut and nothing to hear but the howl of the wind wrapping itself round the mountain. The gruel of the journey numbed the ache of its purpose, somewhat. When they stopped in the evening, the other men would build a fire and have a drink around it, but he just took his whiskey and slept. Tried to, at any rate, though the frozen rock they had for beds was enough to make getting up for another day of marching feel like a blessing.

The scouts that came out to claim the corpses were moderately hostile. They spit curses and gestured with spears, uninterested in explanations or apologies from Rogar or his brothers.

Just as well, the others said. But Rogar wished they'd hear them.

***

Rainath soon found that apprenticeship had less to do with hammering at the forge, and more to do with receiving the brand of tough love Jade's brother had instilled in her.

"Agh, you can do better than that," she taunted, knocking away Rainath's sword easily, for the hundredth time that morning. Though Rainath's tactics had been sufficient for all the demons and undead she'd ever come across, Jade fought as though dancing, with technique that made Rainath feel like an ox up against her. Even when they paired her against younger girls, it was clear they had underlying training that she lacked.

"You have to understand weapons before you can build one," Opal counseled, before Jade took her out the first day. They sparred with every sort of weapon; blunt and sharp, long and short, heavy and light. Jade matched her easily, whether armed with a proper weapon, a wooden staff, or only a buckler to deflect her blows.

In late afternoon she lost her temper and threw down the sword, charging at Jade with a roar of frustration. The older woman simply stepped aside and tripped her neatly, sending her to her knees.

"Ye fight like a man," Jade told her clinically, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. Rainath accepted it, seething silently.

"You're trying to keep your feet planted and swing wi' all the power from your arm, but you don't have the gravity that a man has, and your arms aren't as long." Jade instructed, as they walked home. "Now you're using a weapon that's longer and lighter, it doesn't help you on the way down, like a mace does."

Rainath wasn't disappointed to see the front door and put an end to Jade's lecture. Sore in body and spirit, she excused herself to wash up. Cathon raised an eyebrow at his wife; she just shrugged and rolled her eyes as if to say they'd all taken their knocks, everyone knew the frustration she was going through.

It was a quiet meal, with most of the chatter centered on Joran, and alternating between Opal and Cathon depending on the nature of his report.

"The men who went to the Boar clan returned this morning;" he told his father, scraping the last bite of supper from his plate and holding it out for his mother to refill.

"Aye?" Asked Cathon, without special interest. Jade and Rainath were twin aspects of curiousity, ears pricked like cats.

"Aye," agreed Joran, digging in. "Could see them coming over the ridge at sparring this morning."

"All five, on their feet?"

"Aye," the boy confirmed, mouth full. Cathon grunted, satisfied with the report.

"They should have been here, by now," Jade interjected. Cathon gave her a bland look.

"Aye, if they were on the ridge this morning they would have been back in the village by noon," agreed Cathon patiently, as if another child had said it. Joran took a stack of empty dishes to the kitchen, getting a start on his chores.

"Well, where is he then?" His wife demanded, emotions threadbare after a long day of using her patience. Cathon's expression grew stern and she clamped her mouth shut angrily.

"He'll go to Karla," Opal said evenly, folding her napkin. Jade's eye's bulged, looking from one person at the table to another. Rainath didn't know what she was watching.

"He's a grown man and he hasn't got a wife, so he'll do whatever he pleases," Cathon warned in a tone of finality. Rainath hadn't seen him exert authority with his mother in law before, she wasn't sure where the line of dominance ran. The older woman gave him an even look and said toward her daughter, "it'll be good for him," retiring to her bedroom with dignity before Cathon could be provoked further.

"I don't know how she can say that," muttered Jade, feeling mutinous. "Six days over the mountain and back, the last thing he needs is that woman-" she stopped speaking with a flinch at the slap of her husband's hand on the tabletop.

"Gods, Jade! Can ye not heed me, for even one bloody meal?" He frowned at her, exasperated, and his wife's eyes flashed back, her jaw working furiously. For a long moment neither of them would yield, and then Jade pushed herself away from the table with a frustrated growl, slamming their bedroom door behind her. Cathon sighed heavily, rubbing his face.