Rogar, Saying Goodbye

"D'ye know that Karla and Rogar weren't known to each other until after Radok was dead?"

"No," Jade answered truthfully.

"And d'ye know that it was your da that took your brother over there and put him to work for her?" Jade shook her head, blushing.

"D'ye know why?"

"No-" she admitted, kicking her foot moodily.

"Because he was turning into a drunk and a brawler, trying to get himself punished to death for what he'd done," Cat informed her, voice steeped with sympathy. "He was just a lad, Jade. A few years older than Jo." Jade bit her lip to stop it trembling.

"Karla could ha' chopped her own wood and had a dozen men to fix her roof, but the guilt was killing your brother, and your da knew that. He took him over there to give him a channel for his torment."

"Then my da died." Jade said flatly.

"Aye, and how old were ye? And Rogar?"

"Thirteen," she answered, "he was nineteen."

"Nineteen, now w' two widows to keep," Cathon observed, "and you. We all know what you were like," he rolled his eyes, drawing a wan smile from his wife.

"It's no wonder that he was a teenaged drunk. And Karla would ha' been nearly your age, by then. D'ye not think you would notice a young lad drownin' his sorrows and tryin' to chop himself to death, out back?"

"Aye, she did notice," Jade muttered, attitude flaring. "She took his virginity," she spat, one of the juicier tidbits of her morning recon.

"Well I meant d'ye not think you'd let the poor lad off the hook, if it would do him any good to be free of ye," muttered Cathon, "but if that's what she did for him, then a mercy it was. I'm sure it eased his mind more than filling her woodshed," Cat snorted, fishing his pipe from his pocket. Jade shot him a dirty look.

"Don't be so prudish," he scolded with a frown, "you like sex as much as any man. If she was bedding him, ye know just as well as I do it was probably the only joy he had back then."

"Aye, he probably fell in love w' her," she sulked, "and she waited all those years, then married Tyron just before he could make a proper claim."

"But he didn't leave then, did he?" Cathon asked reasonably.

"No, he still had mam and me, and the forge."

"And when I got to this side of the mountain, he still had Karla, too," Cat pointed out, pulling her onto his lap. He undid the buttons at her chest and pulled the soiled shirt off of her.

"Aye, I remember it by then," Jade agreed. "Everyone expected her husband to drag him into the pits and break his neck, any afternoon. It made me mad that he'd keep on seeing her, knowing Tyron was going to kill him when he found out."

"So ye punished him by picking a different man to drag him into the pits every afternoon," her husband summarized. Jade fell into shamed silence.

"If he was blooded by her husband and bedded by her, he'd already made two of his rites, Jade, and laid them both at her feet. He would've had no power to tell her no, and she the keeper of his manhood."

He pulled her back into his shoulder and propped his feet on the bed, enjoying the feel of his wife on his lap, even if her waters were troubled.

"I realize that, now," she pouted testily. "But isn't that why she did it? So she could control him?"

"Would it be so bad to think that the two of them were hurting, and cared for one another? That she offered him comfort when he needed it, sorely?" Her husband asked, his hand resting comfortably on her thigh. She didn't answer.

"When I met ye, your brother was a damned fine young man, Jade. But the weight of all his burdens was crushing him. I would ha' married ye and taken ye back home to live among my own clan, but for him, and the shadows in his eyes. If ye want to blame someone for him goin' off the mountain, it's me that struck off his irons and freed him."

"Are ye sorry I did?" He asked near her ear, his voice warming in tone.

"No," she admitted, tilting her head toward him.

"Well then maybe ye can find it in your heart to forgive Karla for her sins, because it was her that sent me to you." She pulled away and looked at him with narrowed eyes, searching for jest.

"She and I came up together," he told her, "I stood for her when Radok made his claim, which everyone considered an ill match because they were of an age," he added half under his breath. "I beat him for her, but she accepted him anyway."

"You've never told me that," she accused.

"Wasn't your concern," he answered, unapologetic.

"When I came over the mountain years later, we crossed paths, and she told me about you." He said simply.

"What did she tell you?" Jade asked, hackles beginning to rise.

"That ye were a spitfire, and w'out a father to keep you in line, you were running your ma ragged and bound to get your poor brother beat to death, besides." He growled it in her ear, making it unclear whether it was quote or opinion he was voicing. Gooseflesh spread down his wife's back.

"Aye?" She asked, arching her back in subtle challenge.

"Aye, by the time she was finished, I had to have a look at the little hellcat she was tellin' me about,"

"And were ye disappointed?" She teased. He chuckled.

"Disappointed, no. But I was fair disturbed by the look o' bloodlust in your eyes, watching the fighting. Never seen it like that in a woman, before."

"I didn't know you'd seen me at the pits, first," she told him.

"Aye, I'm not surprised," he concurred with amusement, "you had tunnel vision for your brother and his unfortunate adversary."

"So what did ye do?" She asked, easing back against his chest and relaxing the spread of her legs.

"I went round and talked to your brother a few days later, like a civilized man," he said, his chest reverberating beneath her.

"What?" She asked, making to sit up again. Her husband's arm clamped around her ribcage like an iron bar, immobilizing her against him. She struggled for a futile moment and relented, laying back on his chest again. His hand on her thigh softened, began to stroke its way higher.

"Before ye even met me, you had words with my brother?" She demanded, voice growing shrill.

"Jade, are ye really going to bicker about events twenty years past?" He asked, cajoling, as though that had not been the very theme of her day.

In response she made a credible attempt to break his nose with the back of her head that Cathon was lucky to dodge.

"Aye, I bought ye from him like a whore," he taunted in her ear, hand moving to claim the cleft of her legs roughly. She made a noise that was only half-protest.

"I don't believe you,"

"Ye shouldn't, it's a lie," he said, releasing her.

"I told him I'd an eye for ye, respectfully, and that if ye rejected me I had no intention of forcing my suit or bringing violence over it."

"And?" She demanded, hardening but not climbing off his lap.

"And, he shook my hand. And I married ye." He pulled her against him again and nipped gently at her ear.

"It was Radok that broke your brother, and he's long dead, Jade. Everyone else was just a victim of circumstance, tryin' to keep their head above the flood. Even you."

Cathon couldn't see the tears on her cheeks but he was well and truly finished with the conversation, preferring to meddle in his own sex life rather than Rogar's, henceforth. He claimed his wife again, more gently, one hand on her breasts while the other explored her dampness, and he praised the ancients that she responded favorably to him.

He hooked his feet inside her ankles and used them to lever her legs open as wide as they would go, propped on the edge of their bed as they were. Pulling his pants down beneath her took a tussle but she rode it out, her reward his erect staff fully seated in her flesh. Jade groaned deliciously, and her husband's hands took their cue from her pitch, tweaking and stroking her most sensitive places in turns.

As she panted and squirmed nearer to her edge, Cathon growled in her ear. "Tell me how many public opinions you'd welcome between us, just now," he ordered, restricting her movement enough to stall her epiphany.

"None," she growled back fiercely, in no mood for his lessons.

"Aye," he concurred grimly, point made to his satisfaction. He gripped her hips and bucked beneath her, setting her off, making her cry out so loudly that he clapped a hand over her mouth and hoped no one else had come home for supper, yet. When she'd finished writhing through the aftershocks of her climax he stood and bent his wife over their mattress, taking her fast and rough to his own ending.

***

When Jade had gone Rogar took his time rejoining Tyron and his wife, heavy with awkwardness. He had his apology prepared in advance, but when he got back to the hearth the two of them were engaged in comfortable marital chitchat, unconcerned as if they moderated hostile family meetings regularly.

Neither of them addressed him, and that was just as well to Rogar. He claimed his cup of kaf and took the seat Jade had edged away from the fire, propping his feet on an ottoman and pulling the ill-begotten pipe from his pocket.

He examined it a long time without drawing their notice, but the sharp crack of the ivory stem snapping drew matching looks from husband and wife.

"Sorry," Rogar muttered, throwing the bowl of the pipe into the flames and pulling his knife from his pocket. He whittled a long time, stopping occasionally to drink his kaf, and thought bemusedly that he was more comfortable there, just then, than he had been since he came back.

After some time he realized their conversation had died away, to be replaced by Tyron's low, rhythmic snore. He looked up at Karla and found her watching him over her kaf. He smiled at her, shyly, and she smiled back.

"Is that for your hair?" She asked softly, as he worked at shaving the sharp edges away.

He nodded without looking up. "Will ye put it in for me?" He asked after a few minutes, offering her the rough-hewn ivory bead on the palm of his hand. It was an inch or more long and he'd preserved some of the carving from the pipe stem in its design. She nodded, unfolding her legs to come around behind him.

She chose a lock and worked the bead onto it, patiently. "I put the first one in for you, too" she reminded him, pensive.

"You put most of them in," he agreed, giving credit where it was due.

"Aye, but the first is the one I always think of," she murmured.

"Because it was Radok's?" He asked, looking into the fire. She was behind him but he could feel her head shake, no.

"Because your hair was fresh washed, and you were so nervous over your rites, I wondered if it shouldn't be your mam doing it," she recounted softly. "Just... the lad you were, I suppose. Knowing there were many to come, yet."

"Aye" Rogar answered grimly, giving his head a shake to make the many that had come rattle against one another.

"I do remember ye helping ease my nerves, and I don't think my mam would have had the same effect," he added to lighten the mood, feeling the traitor with Ty slumped in his chair just across the rug. Karla chuckled huskily, her hands idle on his shoulders.

"You'll be off the mountain, then," she said quietly, without making it a question. He nodded.

***

Cathon usually made supper, but Opal didn't mind taking over when he hadn't reported for duty by the time it ought to be started. She'd just thrown the last of the chopped vegetables into the pot to simmer when the front door opened and shut.

"Sit down, mam, I'll get it" Rogar said by way of greeting, coming into the kitchen.

"Thank you, honey," she told him just as easily, turning to offer him a hug.

"D'ye want tea or kaf w' your supper?" He asked, pulling a stack of bowls from the cupboard and counting off spoons.

"Kaf would be nice" she told him, adding "don't forget Rainath," to his spoon-count. He nodded and tossed another on the pile.

"Joran, take these through to the table, m'good man," he told his nephew, who was making an entrance through the back door. When he'd seen the lad, he wrinkled his nose. "And then go and wash up, ye look like you've been wrestlin' wi' pigs,"

"Might as well," Joran snorted, amused. "The pits were muddy," he added, offhand.

"Aye?" Asked Rogar skeptically, giving him a hard look.

"D'nah worry, uncle, I won," he said, giving Rogar a lopsided grin and touching his neck absently.

"No weapons, I hope," Rogar warned. Joran gave him a mildly disgusted look.

"Well no one's trying to die for a kiss," the boy muttered with a hint of exasperation, moving to take the bowls and uncovering the bruise of a love-bite on his neck. Rogar looked at his mother, incredulous, and she chuckled.

"Boys," she told him with a knowing wink.

"Supper's ready when Cat is," Rogar told Opal, at the sound of Joran's bowls and silverware reaching the table. "Go and sit, ma. I'll bring your kaf."

When the kaf was brewed he took it through to the dining table with a cup and the sugarpot, laying it all before his mother on the table.

"Seeing Karla always had a way of civilizing you," she commented approvingly, taking up a spoon. On his way to take the seat across from her, Rogar froze, sinking into his chair with awkward stiffness.

Opal spooned sugar into her cup and poured from the pot with the poise of a highborn lady. She raised an eyebrow inquiringly at her son but he declined, letting her have the pot to herself.

"That's good," she praised, when she'd tasted his work. "Reminds me of the way your father liked it," she told him, taking a deeper drink.

"Aye, it was da that taught me," Rogar verified, throat tight. When he looked at his mother, she only had a kind smile for him.

"Ty favors it that way too," he added in a mutter, avoiding her eye.

"I always liked Tyron," his mother took up easily, untroubled by the topic. "He was a good match for Karla, as forward as she is. Hard for her to find trouble he can't get her out of, with his size."

"Aye," agreed Rogar vaguely, thinking privately that 'forward' was precisely the word to describe Karla.

"How are they?" His mother asked, upping the ante.

"Ah," answered Rogar.

"I imagine Karla wasn't quite what Jade was expecting," she added coolly, taking a drink. Rogar grinned at the memory, face reddening. His mother returned his smile, rueful.

"She might ha' been a bit disarmed," he allowed neutrally, "...until Tyron came in, then she was fair paralyzed," he chuckled.

His mother's eyebrows gave a small jump of surprise. She might have known about the gathering, but apparently not the order of the guest list. "Can't blame 'er," he added fairly, "I still say my last rites every time I see him," he ended under his breath.

That provoked a full-fledged laugh from his mother, which seemed ill-humored to Rogar. When she saw his discomfort she gave him an impatient look.

"I wouldn't have let Karla carry on with you, if I ever thought Ty would kill you for it," she told him evenly, making Rogar's throat spasm guiltily.

"When Tyron came across the crater, there were only two men here that fell higher than the rank your father left to you," she lectured briefly, as though he were an apprentice. "If he was interested in dominating through force, you were an easy rival to get through. He was sure to beat you if he challenged ye on rank, and you barely blooded. Though he wouldn't have even had to wait for your rites, if he'd just let them kill ye in the pit that day," she said casually, judging the pour of her refill. Rogar looked at her with sufficient surprise to draw a sly grin.

"I was teaching lessons in those days, ye wouldna believe how my students did delight in telling me what my boy was up to," she told him, chuckling.

"Especially when ye were in the pits. When they told me Ty had called you a clanbrother and brought ye out, I knew he didn't see ye as a threat." She smiled a patient, motherly smile, that he'd think his mam wouldn't have his safety in her concerns...

"I thought he might give ye a beating when he made his claim on Karla, to make ye leave off her," she went on, unapologetically mirthful, "but when it didn't come I assumed he knew his business better than I did."

She shrugged, gesturing vaguely at the possibilities, "he might've been battle-wounded, and unable to serve-"

"Ma!" Rogar interjected awkwardly, putting a hand to his face. She chuckled wickedly.

"Ye wouldn't want to know all I've seen, m'lad," she teased, head shaking. When she'd sobered, she told him, "for truth, I think he could see as well as the rest of us that she was the only thing keepin' ye goin' just then. He'd just met ye but I don't think he wanted to see you throw yourself off the mountain, any more than the rest of us."

Rogar stuttered over a response for so long that Joran and his parents appeared on the horizon, and the front door opened to herald Rainath's arrival.

"I'll get the stewpot," he muttered roughly, fleeing.

Jade was uncomfortably surprised to see her brother was serving their supper, after the day's tableau. Cathon had no trouble meeting his eye as a man and saying something appropriately jestful about sleeping through the making, but not the eating. She, on the other hand, averted her eyes and took her seat, grateful to have Rainath as a token comrade.

No one at the table knew precisely everything the others had to feel awkward about, except perhaps Rogar, but everyone had a fairly good idea. Conversation was limited to necessity, until Jade had the audacity to ask with feigned nonchalance,

"Are ye going to stay in, tonight?" Cathon immediately gave her a hard look, but she kept her eyes on her plate, much as everyone else. Only Joran was brave enough to look around the table openly, his ego intact for the evening.

"Ah, no, matter of fact," Rogar answered slowly, without looking around. "Thought I'd set out, after supper. Make it back by daybreak," he served himself a second helping, hungered by the mere thought.

"Already?" Asked Joran, provoking a look from his mother for speaking with food in his mouth.

"Been quite long enough, if you ask me," muttered Rogar cynically.

"Travel safely, my dear," said his mother warmly, unperturbed as if she'd already known his plans.

"Aye, m'brother," concurred Cathon, mouth full as his son's had been.

"Thank ye," Rogar acknowledged, gruff.

When dinner was over saying goodbye wasn't as hard as he'd expected, even Jade came forward to give him a hug and mutter, "I'm sorry for being a monster," though it sounded less than heartfelt. He tried not to let his bruised pride show in his response to her.

"I'll walk ye," he offered Rainath, when he'd kissed his mother on the cheek and been clapped on the shoulder by Cat.

"Aye," she accepted simply, saying her less-complex farewells in a matter of moments.

The walk to the forgehouse was short and quiet, which Rogar didn't mind. If Rainath had qualms she left them unaired, bidding him a simple goodnight and shutting the door behind her.

***

"Didn't expect to see you again so soon," Karla greeted cheekily, when she saw who was at the door. She looked like a cat glutted on cream, after a lazy and untroubled afternoon shut in with her husband.

"Mm," agreed Rogar indistinctly. "I'll have a word w' Tyron, if ye please," her eyebrow took a surprised angle.

"That's new," she sassed, "will ye come in for kaf?"

"Er, no," he answered awkwardly, looking at his feet. "I'm on m' way, I'll leave my boots on-"

"Ah," she said, looking briefly sad. "I'll send him out, then. Travel safe," she bade him, kissing his cheek before she disappeared inside.

"Everything alright?" Ty asked, pulling the door open a moment later.

"Aye," Rogar answered uneasily. "I'm headed off, but, uh... I've learned quite a bit about ye, Tyron, since comin' home this time..."