The Road to Heronwall

"She's Usathi, I think. I've not seen any this far north. Or any of their womenfolk at all for that matter, but the style looks similar."

"Usathi..." he mulled it over, "I've heard of them. They live in the south-eastern forests... a barbarian folk, which I suppose would make sense. Something to do with bears, if I remember what I've read."

"Bears are sacred to them, yes. We sometimes met them back home; they would trade furs and mammoth ivory for steel weapons... well, steel-tipped arrows mainly. Very skilled with the longbow, from what I heard."

"She doesn't look like an archer."

"No... and an axe, rather than a sword. They look scary, but they aren't balanced and they're harder to learn to use effectively. Wouldn't be my first choice as a weapon, but she looks like she knows what she's doing."

"Yes..." he said, lost in thought, "very curious."

And he lapsed into silence, his eyes following the short barbarian until her horse moved out of sight again.

***

It was widely believed that the priests of Nyrandos were celibate; the truth was a little more complicated than that.

As followers of the god of knowledge, they were supposed to dedicate their lives to intellectual pursuits, maintaining a mental purity that suppressed baser instincts, marking man's superiority over the beasts. As a result, they didn't marry, and they were, indeed, meant to abstain from carnal activities. So, technically, yes, they were supposed to remain celibate; that was the rule.

Theory and reality did not always mix so well, and ivory tower scholars weren't always the best at remembering that. The problem was that if a priest of Nyrandos actually did have sex, for some reason, they didn't lose their magical powers or suffer any other obvious detriment that marked them out. Which meant that, human beings being what they were, the official rule of the priesthood was not always as strictly observed as it should have been.

The real rule, cynics might have said, could more accurately be described as "don't get caught".

Tyravel was dedicated to becoming a full-fledged priest of the order, a process that took a number of years to complete. He believed in the order's ideals and found the studying and the copying of texts a welcome distraction from the complexities of the world outside. Sex was rarely uppermost on his mind... but "rarely" didn't mean "never", and he was still a young man with all the usual drives.

So Katryn might have been surprised to discover that he was not, in fact, a virgin. Her name had been Perita, and she was another adept at the temple. Of course, the rules being what they were, the female adepts and priests had separate sleeping quarters from the male ones -- with wards in place, no less, since even the senior priests weren't that ignorant about what went on. But, equally, young adepts over the years had found ways around them, and Tyravel was no exception.

She had been about his own age, plump and pale-skinned, but not unattractive. More importantly, from his perspective, she was intelligent and fun to talk to, once you got past her initial shyness. Whispered conversations and sly glances in the library and scriptorium had led to secret kisses in darkened hallways and, in due course, to bed.

Despite their initial inexperience, it had been enjoyable. Even so, it hadn't happened very often, and they both felt comfortable enough with that. She had moved to another temple after a couple of years; there had been a few tears, but they both accepted it. He had moved on with his life, and she with hers. There hadn't been anyone else since, and he found it easy enough to bury himself in his work, holding on to a pleasant memory, but content not to breach the rules again.

It was probably a common enough story for a follower of Nyrandos, even if nobody ever talked about it.

But it was unusual that, that night, Tyravel's dreams were turning towards the erotic.

They started out innocently enough, with him sitting at the back of the wagon, watching the forest go by. It was darker than it had been on the real day, the skies leaden in the early twilight, and none of the fires they had actually lit when they camped down for the night. In fact, the wagon was still moving, as the gloom settled in... travelling, travelling on.

"Come to bed."

He turned at the sound of the familiar voice behind him. His bed at the temple was there, inside the wagon. In the way of dreams, there seemed nothing odd about that to him. Perita was lying in it, watching him, and none of his real-life fellow travellers were anywhere about. She beckoned towards him, and the sheet fell down, revealing that she was fully clothed in her adept's robes underneath.

He moved towards her, and she slipped the robe down over one shoulder. It wasn't loose enough for that, in reality, but now it had no difficulty, exposing her pale flesh to the moonlight. (There hasn't been moonlight earlier... well, there was now.) She made soft, encouraging sounds, wriggling on the bed with a lascivious motion. The robes fell down further, exposing her ample cleavage.

"Be steady."

The second voice came from behind him again, outside the wagon. He ignored it and moved towards Perita, who leaned forward, eyes wide.

"Be steady!"

He turned, this time, looking back with irritation. The Usathi woman was there, hanging on to the back of the wagon, her face serious, bare tattooed arms holding onto the edge of the canvas frame above her.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She didn't answer, and instead made a sudden motion to plant her legs apart, glaring at him intently. He couldn't help but notice how muscular her arms were, and fancied that the rest of her body must be the same. She looked more of a warrior than Katryn had, an aggressive and unwanted intrusion into his comforting dream.

"Can't you see that I..." he began, but then looked back into the wagon to see that Perita was no longer there, and neither was the bed. "I don't understand," he told her, "what do you want?"

The Usathi woman took her right hand off the frame and moved it down in front of her body. He soon saw that she was unfastening her belt and the top of her leather trews, a flash of white undergarments showing beneath. Then she thrust her hand down inside the clothing, rubbing herself - although the details of her motions were concealed by the linen.

She grunted, a harsh sound like a bear, and began to rotate her hips.

Then, without any obvious reason, she immediately pulled her hand back and glared angrily at him again. There was a loud thudding sound and a woman's scream from somewhere nearby.

"Attack!" she shouted, "attack!"

Tyravel woke up. And realised that somebody was still shouting.

There was also an arrow embedded in the planks of the wagon floor, just inches from his head. That jerked him fully awake immediately, as he looked around in panic, hearing more shouts and screams from outside. It was, he suspected, the early hours of the morning, well before the sunrise, and the perfect time for an ambush.

A number of other arrows peppered the floor, and he could see holes in the canvas where someone had fired randomly into the wagon, hoping to hit someone. If he hadn't been so close to the wooden side of the wagon, on the side that the arrows had been fired from, he would likely have been one of the victims. Merialeth had not been so lucky.

She lay on her back, another arrow projecting at an angle from her upper chest, blood welling up around it, soaking her tunic. He could actually see a bubble welling up in the viscous fluid... a punctured lung, but probably not through her heart. She was gasping, eyes wide, body twitching, face deathly pale. With mounting horror, Tyravel realised he was going to watch someone die right in front of him, and there was every chance he could be next.

Instinctively, he pulled himself up as close as he could to the wooden barrier that had so far saved his own life. He even saw the head of an arrow sticking through it nearby, where it had punctured the wood, projecting through about half an inch. Not a perfect shield then, but it would have to do. He had no idea what else he could do -- he was no warrior, and the archer he had been with was ironically the one now bleeding to death next to him.

Ariawyn was scrambling across the floor of the wagon. She had been lying on the same side of it as he had, and was similarly unharmed, so far as he could see.

"Go!" she shouted, and it was a second or two before he realised she was talking to Katryn. The paladin was already a blur of motion, dashing towards the back of the wagon, sword unsheathed. She had been sleeping in her armour -- getting undressed hadn't really been an option, given his own presence -- but he couldn't tell whether that had protected her, or she had just been lucky.

Ariawyn, pressing herself down to the floor to offer at least some minimal protection from a second volley, took the other elf's head in her hands. The archer's eyes were still wide and staring, her face etched with pain, her mouth working but no sound coming out as a spittle of blood appeared on her lips.

A pulse of greenish light came from the healer's hands, and Merialeth's expression eased just a little. Ariawyn said something in elvish and the other woman nodded. Then the dark-skinned elf took the shaft of the arrow in both hands and yanked it free from the archer's chest. Blood sprayed everywhere as Merialeth let out an involuntary scream of pain.

Tossing the arrow to one side, Ariawyn pressed her hands into the gaping wound, blood now soaking everywhere, staining the boards as Tyravel looked on aghast. There was a second pulse of green light, stronger this time, and Merialeth breathed heavily, hyperventilating as colour returned to her cheeks.

The three of them were still for a second, Katryn already having left the wagon as sounds of what could be hand-to-hand fighting echoed from outside. Ariawyn was watching the other woman anxiously, bright red blood covering her hands. Then Merialeth sat up and reached for her bow and quiver.

"Acharn!" she said, or something that sounded like it, "now it is my turn!"

So saying, she scrambled to the back of the wagon, still keeping her head down and, after a brief look around, threw herself over the back panel and down onto the ground. Tyravel could see very little of what was out there, with just a few glimpses of light from the campfires glancing against the trees. They must still have been lit, to keep away wild animals, but now they were pinpointing their position to what he assumed were human attackers.

It was essentially impossible to know what was going on, with even Merialeth out of his line of sight now. He could hear the sound of arrows being fired, and remembered that elves had excellent night vision, something that must surely be useful right now. But there were also yells and the metallic sound of blades clashing. Somebody, at least, was right here among them.

But he was a scholar, unarmed, and wholly untrained with any weapons even if he had any. There was literally nothing he could do. He had spells for mending and reconstructing texts, for finding misplaced objects and the like... but even if he had had the more potent divination spells of the senior priests, they wouldn't have been much help here.

He looked across at Ariawyn, fresh blood now soaking the cuffs of her sleeves and spattered across the pure white of her dress. She looked a lot less scared than he did, even though she was hardly a warrior herself and was similarly unarmed.

"I have to see if I am needed," she said, "Katryn and the others..."

"But it's..." he began, the words gushing out, "they're right out there... you can't deflect a sword..."

"I'll be all right," she said, sounding more confident than he thought she had any right to be, "and if I can put somebody back in the fight, it might just make all the difference. Just keep down."

Without giving him any chance to respond further, she followed Merialeth out of the wagon, leaving Tyravel on his own. He supposed she was right, and he could hardly deny that there were likely people out there in more need of her assistance than he was, but it didn't make him feel any better. He just hoped her time with Katryn meant that she knew what she was doing.

It frustrated him that he felt so useless. What good was he, hiding in here while three women -- and quite a number of men -- put their lives on the line on his behalf? Yet, here he was, almost paralysed with fear, and unable to do anything except listen to the sounds from outside the wagon. He couldn't even tell who was winning, but, given the ferocity of the assault, feared that he could be very well living the last few minutes of his life.

He wondered if he'd left much of a legacy for the rest of the world. Probably not.

There was a loud thumping noise immediately outside the wagon, causing Tyravel to flinch in response as it shook a little on its wheels. At least they'd stopped firing arrows, but that was... there was a scream of pain, a loud grunt, and a hacking sound followed by a second scream suddenly cut short. That had been right next to the wagon!

Hearing somebody come around the side of the vehicle, Tyravel instinctively crouched up by the front end, where a wooden wall prevented him from escaping in that direction. Eyes wide, and now more fully adapted to the darkness, he stared towards the rear.

A huge figure leapt up and obscured his view. It took a few seconds for him to fully register what he was looking at; an orc.

He had never seen an orc in the flesh before, just pictures, most of which weren't terribly good. He admittedly, seen a very few half-orcs, but most of those had looked rather pitiful, and the full-blooded version turned out to be very different indeed.

He had to be well over six feet tall, with a powerful muscular body dressed in what looked like reasonably well-crafted leathers. His chest was bare, crossed by a few straps that seemed to be designed to carry something when he wasn't traveling light in order to fight. Tyravel couldn't get a good measure of his skin colour in the darkness, although he'd heard that true orcs were a much greener shade than the more grey-skinned half-orcs.

But two things immediately sprang to the focus of his attention. The first was the bestial face, with large boar-like tusks springing up from the lower jaw, a pug-like nose, gleaming red eyes and dark hair tied up into a topknot. A spray of blood had splashed across the orc's cheeks, probably recently, but he didn't seem to care, his expression a mask of mindless aggression.

The second thing Tyravel noticed was the heavy scimitar, pitted and notched (did orcs keep better care of their clothes than their weapons?) and dripping with fresh blood. It was raised and pointed straight at him.

"No! Wait! I..."

The scholar raised his hands in surrender, but it evidently had as little effect as his words, which the orc probably couldn't understand anyway. He screwed his eyes shut, fear and shame overwhelming him.

He didn't die.

Instead, he heard some clattering and banging sounds and a deep-throated cry from the orc. Realising that he had somehow been saved, even if only for a few moments, Tyravel opened his eyes again.

The Usathi woman had joined them in the wagon, her axe as bloody as the orc's scimitar. The two were fighting, the cramped quarters making it difficult, suiting neither the creature's long arms nor the woman's hafted weapon. The orc's back was towards him, a long gash cutting across its bare flesh, and one of the straps hacked through. Either one of the metal studs on it had deflected the full force of the blow, or the barbarian hadn't been able to get a proper swing in from her vantage point.

But she had evidently tried to slay it, and failed.

As he watched, the orc managed to wrench the axe from the woman's grasp but dropped his own scimitar in the resulting tussle. The two were wrestling now, the orc grunting loudly and lunging towards the human, making motions as if he were going to bite her in the face with his tusks.

Fortunately, she was simply too short for that to work, her eyes about level with the middle of his chest. She was kicking his shins hard, but it didn't seem to be making much difference. They moved around in their scuffling, and now the orc's broad back almost totally obscured his view of the embattled barbarian, preventing him from seeing what happened next.

Whatever it was, it wasn't good, for suddenly, they both crashed to the ground, making the wagon shake and creak alarmingly. But the orc twisted as he fell, until he was now lying on top of the human woman, pinning her down. With a grunt of triumph and a vicious grin, the orc managed to free his right arm and clamp his meaty fist around the barbarian's throat.

He reared up into a half-kneeling position, right arm outstretched as he squeezed and squeezed, muscles bulging. His other arm held her right wrist, and the Usathi woman tried to reach for his face, perhaps to gouge his eyes or cause him other injury. But she couldn't reach, fingernails scrabbling uselessly at thin air as her face began to turn purple.

Tyravel didn't even think. He grabbed the thing that was closest to hand, which happened to be his bag, containing the heavy bound volume he used for recording his notes, and smashed it over the back of the orc's head as hard as he could.

It turned with surprise, apparently having forgotten he was there, or at least ruled him out as insignificant. It reached out to bat a fist at him, but released the woman's throat in the process. Tyravel dropped backwards, out of the way, but with enough presence of mind to kick the orc's scimitar with his foot, sliding it across the floor towards the woman's hand.

Perhaps some gods were smiling on him that night, because it worked. The Usathi woman grabbed the weapon and swung it upwards, hitting the orc on the side of the neck. Blood sprayed out from the severed vein and the orc fell onto its back, giving her the chance to hack at it twice more, the blade biting deep into its flesh.

The orc was still.

The woman was panting, her face a mixture of relief and exhilaration.

"Thanks," she said, looking towards him with a wide grin. "Kustefa ko san! We good."

The she grabbed her axe and vaulted out of the wagon again. Tyravel realised that he still didn't know her name.

***

Katryn lowered her sword, satisfied that the last of the orcs had fled back into the woods. They had clearly faced stronger resistance than they had expected, but even so, it had been a close-run thing, and could have gone very differently. As it was, the caravan camp was a scene of carnage.

She looked around, seeing that Merialeth was still eyeing the trees, another arrow notched in her bow. Thank the gods for the night vision of elves, she thought, which was as good as those of the orcs. Ariawyn was the only other person she could see standing, looking through the bodies, as she was.

"Over there," the paladin told her, seeing one of the wagon drivers moving, lying at an awkward position with an arrow sticking out just under his ribcage but clearly still alive. The healer nodded and headed to him, kneeling down and offering words of comfort before she began her magic. Which, Katryn reflected, must be nearly exhausted by now, since she wasn't used to helping such a large number of people at once.

She saw movement from behind the caravans, and instinctively darted into a defensive posture, raising her sword again. But they were all human, wagon drivers and guards, some of them bloodied, but all still standing. So it had not been such a complete disaster as she had thought at first sight.

She noticed that the barbarian woman was among them, a grim grin on her face and a wild look in her eyes. She had heard some bestial shouting in a high tone during the fight, but had paid it little heed, thinking, if anything, that it might have been a female orc. Now she wondered if it had been the red-headed warrior, for the Usathi were known to be berserkers. And, despite the sweat and blood on her body, she looked as if she might actually have been enjoying herself.