The Road to Heronwall

"Oh, oh, oh! This is so terrible!" She saw Feribel walking towards them together with a similarly aged gnomish woman that she took to be his wife. "My people, all dead! How could this have happened?"

"It's not good, sir," said one of the guards, a slightly older-looking man who might have been their leader, "but it could have been worse. Thanks to these two," he nodded towards Katryn and Merialeth, "and the healer. I don't think we'd be standing here without them."

"Yes... yes... the healer," the little gnome looked to be in shock, but was now grasping at whatever straw of hope he could, rushing over to the dark-skinned elf, "can you save them?"

"This man is fine now," she said, helping him to his feet. The driver nodded in agreement, dazed to discover that he was still alive. "I can't do much for the others tonight, not magically. But I can apply bandages, splints if we need them. And I can do more in the morning, once I have rested. But..." she looked downcast, "I am afraid it is too late for some."

"Feribel!" said the gnomish woman, "we must leave!"

"Yes, of course, you're right my dear." He visibly pulled himself together, taking charge once again, "we're moving out! Now, don't wait for dawn! Everyone who can drive a wagon, do so. Gather everyone up, injured or dead; we're not going to leave anyone behind here. As soon as that's done, we leave. If we keep moving straight on now, we should reach the Leaping Fish by nightfall. We can regroup there. Come on, everyone, get on with it!"

Some of the guards and men still seemed to be mourning for fallen comrades, but they nonetheless moved into action. Everyone helped out, even Tyravel coming out of the wagon they had been riding in to help the injured. He looked pale, clearly unused to this sort of action or to the bloody brutality of actual combat. In comparison to him, Katryn was used to it, but it was never quite the way it sounded in the sagas and bardic tales of adventure.

And it was never easy, even for her, dealing with fallen comrades.

At one point, the Usathi guard clapped him on the shoulder, giving him a wide grin and saying some words that Katryn didn't quite catch. The scholar smiled back, a little awkwardly the paladin thought, but whatever she had said seemed to lighten his mood. They seemed to be getting on well, although she didn't know what he might have done to deserve it.

Eventually, though, they were back on board the wagon, kicking out a dead orc that was lying in the back, its own scimitar sticking out of its side. She raised an eyebrow at Tyravel at that, but he didn't say anything. Somebody must have helped him; probably the barbarian.

In fact, it had turned out that the casualties were lower than had at first appeared to be the case. Ariawyn's healing had been decisive in that, and the orcs didn't seem to have wasted time finishing off any of the animal drivers who had been shot and then played dead, focussing instead on taking out the more dangerous guards first. But they were still grim and, if Merialeth hadn't turned out to be reasonably capable at handling horses herself, they would have had to leave one of the wagons behind.

"Is this what we came here for, do you think?" asked Ariawyn.

"Orcs haven't done anything like this for years in this neighbourhood," Katryn replied, "small raids, yes, but as Purslane said, not attacks on large and properly guarded caravans. So, yes, I think something has changed. This specifically... I don't think it can be why we were needed; it has to be for something bigger than this. But this... this is probably part of something bigger. Something has the orcs riled up and becoming braver."

"I think you're right," agreed the elf, "but I suppose it's a question for later. For now, on to the Leaping Fish. What is that, anyway?"

"I'm hoping it's a fortified inn."

"That," agreed Ariawyn with a sigh, "would be very welcome indeed."

***

After all the events of the previous night, Tyravel had found it impossible to sleep.

The caravan had, by pushing forward at a faster pace than usual, and travelling for more hours than usual, to reach the Leaping Fish at around sunset. This, it turned out, was located where the forest path crossed a fast-running river at a ford. Understandably, many trading caravans and other travellers preferred to stop at this point in their journey, leading to the establishment of a well-defended trading post and the eponymous inn.

Unlike most inns, it was surrounded by a palisade, complete with lookout towers, which also enclosed guard barracks, a smithy, a wainwright and other facilities useful to long-distance travellers, as well as ample space for trading caravans to meet.

Under most circumstances, it appeared, Feribel would simply have parked the wagons inside the palisade and everyone would have stayed in them overnight. But today, he was feeling so grateful for his survival and for not having lost any of his goods that he had decided to reward his passengers with a paid-for night at the inn with fine beds replacing the boards of the wagon. Tyravel wasn't sure why he had been included, since he didn't feel he had done as much as the three women, but he wasn't going to argue.

So here he was, in a darkened room that was much more comfortable than how he had been expecting to spend his night for the next few days, unable to sleep.

He climbed out of bed and loosely threw his robes back on, before sitting down on the room's solitary chair, which sat before a small table next to the shuttered window. Lighting an oil lamp, he pulled his journal out of his travelling pack, deciding that, if he couldn't sleep, at least he could try and write down his observations of the trip. The god of knowledge, after all, always welcomed written information, which he could copy into the library when he reached the temple at Heronwall.

Unfortunately, writing didn't come much more easily to him than sleeping had.

It wasn't that he couldn't think of what to write. There were plenty of things it would be useful to record while they were fresh in his mind, from descriptions of the Leaping Fish itself to an account of the local geography and even what he had observed of the orcs' clothing, weapons, and other accoutrements.

The problem was that his mind kept drifting back to the fight. And, from there, it inevitably wandered to the Usathi woman.

She was a barbarian, with a thick accent and lacking even a particularly strong grasp of the Common tongue. She would undoubtedly have been illiterate, and she was clearly a ferocious warrior, with about as little in common with him as it was possible to have without actually belonging to a different species. Physically, she was wiry and muscular, rather than pleasantly curved, and her outlandish hair and tattooed arms all emphasised her foreign and uncivilised nature, quite far from anything he would normally consider attractive.

Yet he felt a powerful fascination about her, unable to shake his mind from this remarkable and exotic woman, somebody who was everything he was not. Thinking about her now, in the semi-darkness of the room... the tribal tattoos on her bare arms, the half-shaven head, the fierce look he had seen in her eyes, even the way her oddly accented voice sounded... he was beginning to develop an erection.

Which was certainly not conducive to dispassionately writing about his scholarly observations.

To his surprise, as he was trying to get his thoughts back on track, there came a knock at the door. Puzzled, he adjusted his robes, which he hadn't properly secured while throwing them on, and went over to lift the latch.

"Hello...?" he began but, before he could say anything further, the door opened and she pushed herself inside, shutting it behind her.

'She'. As in, the Usathi woman who he had been trying to get out of his mind.

"I want to thank you," she said, simply.

"Uh, sure," he said, feeling very self-conscious.

"I be dead if you had not hit orc."

"Well, I would be dead if not for you, so I think I owe you just as many thanks."

"Good," she said, with a broad grin, "it seemed so."

She took a step forward, and he took one back before they stopped again.

"I don't know your name," he said, "I'm Tyravel by the way. I'm a scholar and adept of Nyrandos."

"Rrehdkaz. Far-travel warrior."

"Redkaz?" he tried, not sure he had got it right and suspecting that 'far-travel' made more sense in her native language.

"Rrehdkaz," she corrected, stressing the first syllable, which seemed to have too many 'R's in it, "but everyone call me 'Red'. Is good."

She took another step, and he backed away again, trying to look as if he was just casually placing his hand in front of his crotch. Although, to be fair, the loose robes probably hid his current state anyway.

"We thank well now."

"Sorry?" he said, "I'm not sure I understand."

She gave a grunt of frustration, walked forward and gave him a shove so that he stumbled back onto the bed. Tyravel spluttered in confusion, wondering who was misinterpreting who and whether he should feel a lot more guilty about the thoughts currently going through his mind than he actually did.

"Simple," she said, climbing onto the bed after him, and pinning his legs beneath her muscular, leather-clad thighs, "I like you; I see you like me. We many thanks for each other. So we fuck now."

"Wh...wh...what?" he had difficulty getting the words out; the first time he had literally been tongue-tied in years. It was partly because he didn't know whether to be excited or terrified.

"Yes," she said with a confident smile, as if this was a definitive answer.

Tyravel managed to find his voice, "you understand that I'm supposed to be celibate?" He wasn't going to explain that he hadn't been, because that would complicate matters far too much. And there was a difference between a quiet, introverted, scholar like Perita and... well, a muscular and aggressive barbarian.

"Sel-i-but," she tried the word out. "No, I not know that one. Not hear it before."

"It means that..." the words dried again in his throat as, completely ignoring him, and still pinioning him by his legs, Red pulled off her tunic, and threw it dismissively to one side.

Being naked from the waist up did not make her look any more vulnerable, or less fearsome. There was very little fat on her, just the muscle that he'd expected from the shape of her arms. Her abs were taut, offset by a small decorative piece of what looked like ivory in a navel piercing. He might not even have noticed that had it not been revealed first, for his eyes were inevitably drawn upwards, towards small but shapely breasts with reddish-pink, decidedly perky nipples.

Red leaned over, and Tyravel absently noted that her breasts were too small to sag much as she did so and began to unfasten the belt that held his robes up. That suddenly brought him back to himself again.

"Um... it means that I don't have sex. I mean, really, it's not a thing that we do."

"No worry. Be calm," she said, and he had to reach for her hands to stop her removing more of his clothes and revealing something that might make it hard to feign disinterest. "You thinking-man, not warrior, and men of my tribe say city-men all have small fuck-sticks, so I not expect much. But I am small woman, and happy-thrust matter more than size, yes? So, you not feel shame, yes?"

Honestly, Tyravel had no idea how big his cock was. He'd had no complaints from Perita, but it wasn't as if she had had anything else to compare it to, and he wasn't in the habit of measuring it himself. Nor did he go around trying to catch a glimpse of other men naked to form an opinion as to its relative size.

Red, however, didn't quite seem to understand this.

She gently, but firmly, batted his hands aside. "No, that's not what I mean! I mean that I'm not supposed to... you've misunderstood what I..."

Before he could finish his attempt at explanation, the barbarian woman had the lower part of his robes apart, and pulled down his shorts, exposing him completely. She leaned back, out of the way, looked at his hard cock and then up at his face. She grinned.

"No," she said, "I see I understand. And..." she looked down at his cock again, "the men of my tribe are liars."

Well, that was good to know. Possibly. He could hardly write it down as new information in the temple archives even as an example of anthropological bias of hunter-gatherer societies towards the inhabitants of urbanised communities. At the very least, somebody would ask how he knew, and they'd probably ban any phrasing he could come up anyway.

As he pondered that he realised that he wasn't putting up any kind of struggle against Red working at the rest of his robes to get him naked. By the time he thought to do so, she was already pulling his arms free from his sleeves and clearly had no time for any further prevarication on his part.

"No more speak," she said, "your language ugly one and it hard to find right words sometimes." He tried to say something else, but she but a finger to his lips. "No more speak," she repeated, and ran her hands down his body.

Tyravel was not, of course, in any way muscular. On the other hand, he wasn't fat, either, and knew that his body was skinny, probably very different to what she was used to. If so, it didn't seem to bother her in the slightest, and he felt her rough hands stroke his chest, run over his ribs, circle his nipples and then dart lower towards his slender belly, rubbing, stroking all the way.

She stroked the inside of his thighs, then slid a hand up to cup his balls as the other encircled the base of his cock and slowly slid upwards, evoking an involuntary gasp of pleasure from the scholar as she did so. Goddess, she was good! If only she hadn't been so... so... everything!

He tried one last time. "Look, it's like a religious thing. A rule of my order that..."

Red raised herself up on her knees and began to pull down her leather trews. For the second time, Tyravel's undeniable fascination with her body cut off his thoughts in mid flow.

In the dream he had had the previous night, she had been wearing a linen undergarment much as civilised women did. In reality, it turned out that she wasn't even wearing a loin cloth beneath the trews. He barely noticed the muscles on her thighs, or the small knotwork tattoo over her right hip. What more caught his attention was that she was, in fact, a natural redhead, even if it didn't match the more vibrant shade of the dyed hair on her head... and that, down here, she didn't shave.

The small barbarian woman grinned again, evidently enjoying the way his eyes were feasting on her body. Then, suddenly, and to his surprise, she moved away from him, discarded the last of her clothing and squatted beside him on the bed, resting on all fours, posterior raised.

Tyravel was free at last and immediately clambered to his feet. Finally, he had the chance to explain that, for all his natural biological reactions, small wiry, and frankly intimidating, barbarian women weren't his thing, even if he had had any intention of breaking his vows again.

He looked towards her, taking in the partially shaved head, the powerful thighs, the slightly arched back with -- he could now see -- a large tattoo of a flying bird, and the dampness between her parted thighs.

Without a second thought, he climbed back onto the bed, positioned himself behind the young warrior and eagerly pressed himself inside her.

***

The fight had been exhausting, and Katryn had dozed off on the caravan on the way to the Leaping Fish. When she woke up she realised that she had almost slumped against Ariawyn, which would have been a little embarrassing, but fortunately there had been enough space between them for that not to happen, and from the elf's bleary-eyed expression, she had probably been napping herself anyway.

The problem now was that, having slept earlier, she no longer felt particularly tired. She had undressed and gone to bed, but now was simply lying there, looking into the darkness, going over the day's events in her head. She had had closer fights in her life, escaping death, or at least mutilation, only thanks to Ariawyn's assistance. This time, for all the carnage around her, she had escaped relatively unscathed.

Of course, it was difficult to avoid feeling guilt for those they had lost, even if she didn't know them. Surely, she could have done better? But she couldn't think how, and her life as a paladin had given her enough learning experience to avoid dwelling too much on things. It was probably harder on some of the other survivors, not used to an extreme situation.

But no, what really concerned her was why the orcs had attacked in the first place. The route through the forest was neither the easiest not the safest way to get to Heronwall, just the quickest. There was a reason Purslane had had guards, and caravans taking the longer, safer, route would have been cheaper to run, not needing that protection. But he hadn't been wrong in thinking that his extra expense in hiring muscle should have kept them safe.

Except, of course, that he had been. Orcs hadn't attacked like that in... well, she didn't know how long exactly, but it must have been several years. There were reports of the occasional attack on lone travellers or small groups who fancied they could get through by escaping attention. Sometimes there were small hit-and-run raids, melting back into the forest as soon as they'd stolen something valuable. Even those weren't common, but they did happen; people knew there were orcs in the neighbourhood. But what they didn't do -- normally -- was attack in such full force, instigating the sort of bloodbath that would have been catastrophic had a paladin and a skilled mercenary archer not happened to be present.

Something had riled the orcs up or made them bolder. Something, perhaps, was getting them to gang together more than they usually did. Orcs didn't tend to cooperate much in large groups unless something, or somebody, powerful enough could bully them into doing so. She didn't know what that was, but it surely had something to do with whatever the divinations had sent her to Heronwall to do. Perhaps there would be a clue there, or perhaps she would have to head back to the forest to explore.

These thoughts going over and over in her head were certainly not conducive to sleep. She needed somebody to talk it over with, and there was only one candidate. Hopefully, since she had probably slept during the day as well, Ariawyn would be available. She always had been in the past, in similar situations, a steadfast companion that she could confide in and who often had wise insight into things Katryn hadn't thought of.

She smiled as she thought of the elven healer, the bond of friendship and understanding that they had forged over the years. She had never met anyone quite like her and the connection had only grown over time. The she sighed and eased herself out of the bed.

She wasn't wearing a feminine shift, since that would hardly work under the armour and she wasn't travelling with that much spare clothing. Instead, her undergarments were decidedly masculine, consisting of knee-length trews and a short-sleeved shirt. Even so, and despite the low chance of meeting anybody walking about the inn at night, she didn't think it would be decent to leave her room dressed only in her underwear, and she wasn't going to take the trouble to put her gambeson back on. Instead, and deciding to forego boots, she fished a hooded cloak out of her travelling bag and slipped that on. And then, realising that she was still showing a little too much cleavage, tightened the ties on the upper part of her shirt.

Thus, feeling as sufficiently dressed as she was likely to, she headed out to talk with Ariawyn.