Aurie felt the sting of her words. It was the first time that she had a chance to speak to Maud since she and Alden went up on the loft. All she wanted to do was spark conversation, perhaps see what ideas she had about what they could do, where they could go, or otherwise. The girl had proven herself to be a woman, after all. A good woman, Aurie had thought with a smile while she was washing the dress. Thank the gods, the rain had filled the washing barrel to overflowing, or she would have spent most of the day carrying water from the northern river instead of brushing the mud off and pinning the dress to the line before the sun had fully risen.
When Maud came out to help, carrying Alden’s and Balor’s other trousers and shirts, Aurie had slowed herself to be able to take it in. All this time, she thought that she had to tell Maud when to do the daily chores. All this time, she had thought the girl would forget or purposely neglect it. She had missed it by her own assumptions. She had somehow missed that her little girl truly wasn’t a little girl anymore. Not an extra mouth to feed, but an extra pair of hands. Capable hands. A capable woman. Aurie had never felt so proud.
Aurie waited for her to come to pin their laundry before she was going to tell Maud just that. Instead, it was Maud who broke the silence while pinning Balor’s trousers to the line beside her, never a glance in her direction. “I’m not mad,” she said. Aurie’s fingers went numb, her arms locked where they were. “I’m disgusted.”
“We didn’t think…”
“If you had, maybe we would be using my dowry to find me a husband,” Maud turned on her, the very same look that Aurie might have turned on her a thousand times before, “Instead of counting how many months of rents it could pay while father and Alden search for work in a foreign village or city. Perhaps, the offlander, who saved your lives, would still be there.”
“If we had known…”
“Then you would have done differently? Would you?” Maud’s eyes were a mirror of Balian’s in that moment, the torches moving through them. Aurie’s neck stretched. “I saw all of it, Aurie.”
Aurie winced at that.
Maud stepped toward her, looking her up and down as if she were searching for the source of a stench, “They came because father told them about his injury. Injury that I treated because you both forced me to!”
“And we had the worst fight of our marriage for it. I told you, I stand by…”
“And as Balian and the others were…” Maud took a breath, her lips trembling beyond their norm from the welling of tears in her eyes. She stopped them with a glare that made Aurie’s breath stick in her throat, “He still came to stop them, drove them out, barefoot! With no saddle! He leapt at them and stood on that bridge keeping them on their side while the stream took it. Didn’t move, you know. Just stood there, against the entire village, against the fury of the gods for what you’ve both done.”
“We thought it was for the better. If we sided with the village, then we would be able to…”
“You thought wrong. I was embarrassed by what I did for the offlander, how I was being paraded for him. You think I didn’t know as it was happening? All you ever talk about is how I need a good man. Tell me, mother, am I to find one by comparing them to father? Balian?”
“We know you don’t want to…”
“Be embarrassed by marrying men like them? You’re right. One is a brutal bastard and the other’s a coward. Which one is which?”
Maud stiffened at that one. “You better watch your mouth, little girl.”
“That was a good man! You hated him. And don’t say it was for me, either. It was for something else and you nearly got him killed. You pushed father to do all you could without sticking him yourself, at least.”
“You don’t understand what you’re talking about!” Aurie shoved her. She didn’t mean to, but it was all she could do. Maud stumbled back and balled her fists. She has more of her father and uncle in her than she’d ever admit. Her mother, too. Aurie sank, shaking her head. “It was a dream, alright. I saw it in a dream—or vision—whatever, I don’t know what it was, but I saw him, clear as I see you now. Only, it wasn’t him. He was…a northerner…the raiders your great-grandfather fought against. You don’t know what they did, what grandfather said about them. They’re vicious, merciless barbarians. They slaughtered entire villages, sacked cities only to take the women and burn all the rest, their families included. I. Was. Afraid. And to throw our lot in with that? What would you do?”
“A dream,” Maud shook with furious disbelief. “A dream? You sent the village to murder a man because of a dream? Are you plowing mad? He’s never done anything to any of us but tolerate your schemes!” After a haughty breath, she added, “And reward you for them.”
“Maud, please,” Aurie stepped toward her, soothing her voice and her face, “We did wrong, we know that. We’ll fix those things, but this…between us…we have to fix that first. I don’t want you to hate me. I made a mistake, I know that now, and I made your father go along with it. It was wrong. I see that, Maud, please listen to me,” but Maud looked as if she wasn’t hearing a word, shaking her head so violently at her, pushing her away, “We’re in this together. It’s only us now.”
Maud turned her back to her and stepped toward the archway to the road. “In the end you won, didn’t you? He’s gone. And I wish he had taken me and Alden with him. Maybe we would be better off in the north. I imagine they don’t kill each other over dreams.”
“Oh, shit on you for saying that,” Aurie growled under her breath. Louder, “Then perhaps we should go looking for him, have Balor see if he’ll marry you for a portion of your dowry so we can live off the rest without your ungrateful mouth to feed!”
Maud stopped just beyond the archway and turned to her. This time, Aurie felt like she was looking in a mirror. Never before had she seen how much alike they looked until the moment Maud’s cold, callous grin turned on her, “What’s to say I’m not already planning on doing just that?”
Aurie started on a stomping run to put her finger in her face. How dare she? Whether she’s angry or not, she is still her mother! But her feet froze in place the same moment that Maud threw her head toward the rising sunlight. Metal chiming against metal. It was a sound that made Aurie’s heart stick and her blood thin. Soldiers.
Maud put her hands over a beaming smile and turned to her, beckoning her as if they weren’t in the middle of an argument. Before Aurie could reach her, they were passing. Red tabards of Berone hanging over chainmail shirts whose hands gripped spears on their shoulders and shields or bows on their backs. More and more of them marched by in lines. Aurie’s steps were hesitant, slow, but her curiosity made her lean toward them as she shifted through the archway to Maud’s side.
Rimmed iron helmets and bearded faces turned to them with nods and smiles as they marched past them. The spears became shovels and pickaxes. There were long thick iron poles being carried by similarly tall and thick men. Others had sledgehammers. There were even more with bundles of iron pickets on their shoulders. Aurie wanted to blink away the mirage, but it wouldn’t blink away. They were truly here.
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“Have you any damages to your house from the flood?” Captain Gerard, whom Aurie recognized, not only from from the many times she and Balor had gone to Berone for one reason or another over the years, rode up to them along the outside of the marching ranks. Years that were not quite as kind to the Captain as they were her handsome husband. He had a few fresh scars hidden by a face full of weathering. Always clean shaven and his hair cropped short, same as the last they had seen him. He had the Baron’s tabard and chainmail like the rest, but his trousers were chain as well, and he had a sword hanging at his side, a pointed helmet draped over it. His horse was more what she had seen in comparison to the offlander’s. Tall, brown, and black maned, with bulging muscles in its legs and neck that forced the man to look like he were splitting his legs to their fullest just to sit in the saddle.
“To the rivers with the flood, what are you going to do about them trying to murder us?” Aurie put her hands on her hips at him.
“They what?” His horse shifted its hooves at the pitch of his voice. He leaned toward Aurie as if he hadn’t heard her correctly.
“The offlander saved us,” Maud made certain to say. “They would’ve murdered him, too, once they were finished with us.”
“Offlander…well, he seemed to have forgotten to mention that bit. Told us that it had flooded, not much else. Though, that does explain why he requested the men-at-arms along with our engineers,” Gerard turned over his shoulder toward the Offlander’s house, his eyes narrowing across the many more lines of marching men cresting the hill.
“He’s mute, so you may have only misunderstood,” Aurie shrugged at him. “You didn’t answer…”
“Mute?” Gerard turned his horse toward the Offlander’s house with a loud laugh. “Draka’s not a mute, he’s under a vow of silence.”
“Will I ever be able to finish a plowing sentence?” Aurie hissed under her breath. And then it hit her as hard as Balian had. Draka? Her head spun. That’s his name?
“Draka,” Maud said to herself in a way that made Aurie’s saucer eyes turned to her.
“I’m sorry, just a moment,” Gerard dismissed her with a wave and moved his horse a few steps. He called, “You might have mentioned that the village was attacking you.”
Maud looked to be leaping out of herself with tearful joy as Draka trotted to beside Gerard on his white steed with a shrugging grin. Aurie blinked, dumbfounded. He didn’t abandon them, he got reinforcements! And they…listened. And…and…Gerard knows him? And, of course he has a smug, valiant smirk on his face, full of pride in that same dirty shirt and dirty pair of trousers and boots and that sword on the wrong side of his hip while sitting on his smaller, sleeker, more beautiful white steed whose lips were pulled into the same smug, proud smirk. No, not smirk, she realized when the horse chomped her teeth at Gerard’s horse, who jumped back and spun just in time.
“Bloody Vigora! Stop biting my horse, you shit!” Gerard howled as he tugged at his reins and pulled his horse steady.
Vigora, Aurie looked to see Maud’s face when she learned his steed’s name. She was silently saying it to herself, almost glowing with happiness at the sight.
Draka propped his elbows on his saddle and lightly turned Vigora away from Gerard’s horse, who was dancing to keep away from her. Well, at least she wasn’t the only one annoyed with his untamed beast. That smirk of his was aimed directly at Gerard this time.
“Why didn’t you tell me? This whole formation is damned if we cross by bridge instead of boats, now. We’re not crusaders, beachhead assaults are not exactly our preference.”
Draka held out his hand with snapping fingers at him. Aurie didn’t even try to take her eyes off of either of the men. Gerard handed him a black stick and a thin board with a paper on it from in his saddle. Draka grabbed the black stick in one hand and the board in the other. Vigora took the opportunity from Gerard’s horse shifting too close and bit it hard. Gerard’s horse whinnied, spun, and kicked with both hind legs, all at once. Aurie put an arm across Maud and pulled her back to give room for the panicking horse.
“What the blazes? Vigora, stop it!” Gerard shouted, gripping to his saddle in a panic.
As if nothing unusual were happening, Draka licked the tip of the stick and began scribbling. Gerard got his horse steady, now far enough away that Vigora’s chomps were out of reach.
Maud nudged her, “He uses a different hand than Balthazar and Pierre.”
“Left-handed,” Maud noted to herself as well. Explains his sword being on the opposite side of Gerard’s.
Draka handed the board back to Gerard.
Gerard rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Fine, very well. But know that if they give me a hint of an excuse, I’ll hang the lot of them.” Aurie gasped at the thought.
Draka snatched the board back and scribbled again, then threw the board into Gerard’s chest with a glare that made Aurie’s blood go cold on Gerard’s behalf. Gerard fumbled to catch it and looked down at it with another eye rolling shake of his head.
“As you will,” Gerard nodded with a sigh. He turned to Aurie with a glance to Maud and tipped his head, “I suggest staying on this side of the stream for the time, until I can be certain order is restored. On my honor, you and your family are safe.” He looked to Draka with a nod that was nearly a salute she had seen her grandfather do when knights were passing by, “Draka.” Draka returned the nod. Gerard turned his horse and kicked it into a gallop down the ranks of the marching men.
Vigora turned Draka toward the hill, her head lowering with her ears flattening back. Draka’s smirk morphed into wide-eyed panic and he quickly moved Vigora toward the other side of the house—opposite the garden, Aurie noticed with a thoughtful grin—and stepped off of her. For a moment, she wondered what had made him look so afraid but then saw the twelve drawn horses near twice the size of Gerard’s with long strands of fur like socks over their hooves, four lines of three, pulling a long wagon filled with metal beams and constructs, followed by another three of the same. Apparently, Vigora would bite each of them if she had the chance and the poor beasts would be caught by surprise with the blinders over their eyes. That little shit.
Draka came to her with that wide smirk returned. She noticed that it wasn’t a smirk. It was full of warmth and thankfulness. He looked her over from a step away and nodded approval. She grinned back just as warmly.
“Well made, Draka,” Aurie gave him a wink.
“You didn’t abandon us!” Alden leapt from the porch into Draka with wrapping arms. “I knew you’d never leave us!”
“I never doubted you one second,” Maud took a step toward him.
Little liar, Aurie narrowed her eyes before taking another look.
Maud’s lashes were fluttering, green eyes were beaming with admiration, and her cheeks were reddening. The girl is smitten. “We were worried when we saw that you had gone.” She added with a sway, “Draka.”
Aurie had to bite her lip to keep from chuckling at the way Draka’s brows pushed together at the sight. The man certainly doesn’t miss a thing. She, too, was admiring him at that moment, though. Barefoot, she had said. He had rushed to chase them off rather than put on his boots or saddle his horse—Vigora, she knew now—with only his sword. Maud was right, she had judged him wrong.
The way Maud looked at him, the way her shaky hands gripped the sides of her dress as if she were fighting with all her might not to leap at him like Alden did and possibly shower him in kisses, made Aurie wonder if her daughter had changed her mind completely. Is this offlander—this Draka—going to be the one who would grant them her first grandchildren?
A part of her began to beam as much as Maud. Another part of her, for some reason, felt…disappointed.
“Offla,” Balor said when he finally arrived, using his spear as a walking stick, and Vigora following behind him.
“Draka, pa,” Maud corrected him happily, “His name is Draka.”
“Draka?” Alden looked up to him, still half hanging on him.
“Draka, is it?” Balor shrugged, smiling widely. “I still kind of prefer Offla, but I s’pose Draka will do.”
“And this,” Maud nearly threw Aurie off her feet to get to the horse, “is Vigora.” She began rubbing Vigora’s neck, not seeming to care that the horse was nuzzling at her skirt, searching for pears.
“Rotten beast,” Aurie frowned. It’ll take more than carrying her hero to charge those bastards for her to forgive all the missing blood oranges and the trampled plants.
