the Leathermines

The first warnings of the raiders came too late.

The Castle of Lord Salam-Dir would fall to the merciless bandits before the night was over.  There was little that could have been done as plans made long ago were not to be stopped.  There was a Festival and Tourney being held by a Lord several day’s journey from the Salam-Dir castle.  Less than forty people were left to defend the keep because of it.  Most of the people left in the mains were too old or frail to travel to the Festival and so did not defend the huge castle and keep for long.  The only warrior there was the Lord Salam-Dir himself who had stayed to see to his recently deceased wife’s mourning vigil.

Moonless night was covering the approach of the raiders.  It was only as the wave of men battered against the first gate that anyone knew anything was wrong.  Peace had been across the land for over a generation.  There was just the old man, who had been the gatekeeper since before the last conflict in the land, at the outer courtyard gatehouse.  He was the first to die.

The raiders attacked as the Lord Salam-Dir was preparing to vigil the night over his wife’s body.  The still form of his wife was draped with a simple pale linen shroud on the altar. The jewels he had given her over the years glinted through the thin fabric in the candle light, bright against her grayed skin.  The Chamber of Death was in the lower part of the main tower below the noble family’s apartments.  It was mid summer and even the inner stone of the castle radiated the heat of the cloudless skies, but to Vami Salam-Dir, the cold of winter and death had settled into him even before he heard the scratch on the door.

The person to bring him the news of the first wave of bandits was a dancing girl, a slave.  She wore a scant skirt of a pinkish color and sandals and nothing else but the flush of fear on her face.  “My Lord...” the girls’ voice wavered as she told her master of the men pushing their way through the fortress.  She had never known of such things happening in her short years.

“My wiseman had...warned me of such a thing before he left.  If he is right, I shall not survive the night.”  The Lord Salam-Dir got up from kneeling beside the still form of his wife and turned to the slave.  “You are of no shape to be a warrior, but I have little choice.  My wiseman said that perhaps the person to bring me ill news shall defend my honor and revenge my death.”  The girl did not hear the sarcasm.

“Me, my Lord?” the slave cried out before she could stop herself.  She cringed, head down, eyes on her feet as she waited for the blow to silence her that never came.

The Lord nodded.  “You.  What are you called?”

“Well, I,” the slave girl stammered, “m-most people call me Peach because of the color the Dance Master dresses me in, but I-”  A loud, thunderous crash sounded through the walls.  Another gate had just fallen.  The slave involuntarily jumped and blurted, “My mother named me Laun.”

Lord Vami blinked in the candle light and recognized the slave before him, his wife’s favorite.  He nodded to himself and turned.  “A good enough name. Come with me.”

The Lord Salam-Dir led the bemused dancing girl from the Chamber of the Dead to his study and library several levels above.  Under the shelf with the Lord’s twelve books was a small writing space.  A parchment with beautiful calligraphy on it was there.

“Do you know how to read?”

Laun’s eyes went straight to her feet.  “My Lord, it is forbidden for slaves to know how to read.”  She put her hands behind her and stood meekly in front of her Master.

Lord Salam-Dir brought Laun’s face up with his hand under her chin.  “I know that, Laun.  But-do you know how to read?”

A sudden flush went across Laun’s face.  Her dark hazel eyes darted to the side as she said, “Yes, my Lord.”

Her Lord smiled.  “Good.  Read this to me.”  He handed her the parchment that was on the writing space.  He knew that his wife had taught some of the slaves to read over the years to make it easier to keep the accounts straight.  A pang of heartache clutched at him, but he did not have the time to mourn for his wife if he was about to die himself.

The slave wiped her hands on her thin skirt, smearing remnants from a vinegar marinade.  She had been helping in the kitchens before the household had been attacked and had not had time to clean before running to warn her Master.  Laun carefully took the parchment from her Master and found it was heavier than she thought it would have been.

Laun strained in the twilight of candles in the room but she could make out what the scroll said.  “The bearer of this missive - there is a blank in the scroll - holds the lands and titles of Lord Vami Salam-Dir until and beyond the revenge of his wrongful death.” Laun looked up at her Master.  She went to touch him, but stopped herself.  “You have no heirs, my Lord?”

“None that I know of.”  The regret he felt, always thinking there would be time and another chance was easily heard by the slave.  “I need to put your name in that blank and then sign it.  Can you sign your name?”

The dancer shrugged and shook her head.  She handed the slightly greasy parchment back to her Lord.  “I do not know, my Lord.  I have never had to do so before.  I shall try.”

“It will have to do.”  Something broke through one of the glass panes high in the wall and bounced onto the floor.  The smell of heavy smoke and burnt meat started to drift in through the broken arrow-slit window in the thick stone wall.  “We will have to hurry.”

Within a minute, Lord Salam-Dir had made the young slave dancer Peach into Lady Laun Salam-Dir, his heir.  Shouts and cries floated louder and louder into the chamber.  The Lord looked as though he had forgotten something and was trying to remember.

“My Lord...?”

“You need clothes and a weapon.”  Laun looked down at her bare breasts.  “Only a slave bares her chest so.  And you need the crest-”  He looked around hurriedly at the stone walls and said with a sense of hope that was not in his words before, “You will carry my Warriors Harness.”

“But men-”

A wave of Lord Salam-Dir’s hand silenced the girl.  “You will need this warriors’ harness if you are to be taken seriously.  You will travel to the castle of my ally Lord Helmic the Black.  He will help you.”  Lord Salam-Dir guided the new Lady into another room on the same level through the tower and into one of the connecting corridors of the keep.  Weapons, shields and armor pieces were displayed in this room, many of the racks empty.  The items usually there had been packed and sent to the Festival on Lord Falmir’s land for use of the wardsmen at the small tourney.  Lord Vami looked around, spotting some of what he was looking for.  He shook his head at the lack of arming tunics but he did not have time to find anything else for his new heir as he heard loud voices from below.  He closed the door and swung a heavy board across and into iron hooks to secure it.

The confused Laun was handed an indistinguishable pile of brown leather.  “What is this, my Lord?”

“A warrior’s harness.”  He frowned at the blank look and head shake from the girl.  “You have never seen one being worn?”

Laun shrugged.  “I have only seen your warriors and yourself at peace, Lord.  Dancing at feasts, one only sees the finery.”  The slave heard her Lady’s voice in the words she chose, not knowing why she had used that phrase.

“I shall help.”  The man resignedly helped the inexperienced girl into the leather and brass harness.  It did not quite fit her because of her different dimensions than her Lord.  She had the training of a dancer - Lord Vami had seen to having the best Dance Master he could afford for the pleasure of his guests and wife.  Laun’s muscles were small but tight with a power in her legs that her Master hoped would keep her fast and safe in the coming days.

The leather was new with rough edges and the many sheaths on the utility belt were to be filled with knives and tools.  He had meant to wear it on the tournament field at the Festival, but his wife’s sudden sickness and death had kept him from that pleasure.  The crest that was the top buckle of the harness was polished and glinted as Lord Vami suited his new heir in his harness. Laun tried to help, but had only worn heavier clothing in the deepest of winters and always had the other dancers and servants around to help and be helped.  The leather was designed to have armor pieces of metal and waxed leather strapped to it after being put on the warrior.  The skeleton of leather wound it’s way from her neck down to her knees, buckles tightening on her bare skin in an unaccustomed way.  Loose straps waiting for armor pieces that they did not have time to put on moved and caught on her skin as she moved.  Lord Vami picked up several of the armor pieces, but just dumped them on the floor next to him.  He had Laun hold still as he was using the tip of a dagger to make holes in the straps to tighten the ones that should be tightened to her smaller dimensions.  The light skirt she had been wearing loose was bunched under the leather and metal, still barely hiding that which made her a woman.  The weight of her Lord’s harness was unusual for the girl, but she was too stunned to say anything.

Vami Salam-Dir started to put small things into the pouches on Laun’s new garment from the almost bare supply shelves in the room, including the rolled scroll into a special boiled-leather container amongst the things on the back straps.  Laun teetered from side to side as she became weighted down with more things that she just did not know how to use.

Lord Salam-Dir sized up Laun and gave her a small sword from a display on the wall.  “Can you lift this?”

Laun took the unsheathed sword offered to her.  She didn’t realize that it was so heavy and almost dropped it.  “I am sorry my Lord.  I am not very strong.”

“You can at least hold it.  This was my first practice sword when I was young.”  His eyes went slightly misty for a brief moment before he regained that slight slip of composure.  “It will have to be your battle sword.”

There was pounding on the door.  Lord Vami Salam-Dir spun around, making his loose tunic skirts knock over a candle stand.  Several of the candles fell and were extinguished, one landing and sputtering on the stone.  It was the only light left in the besieged room.

The pounding grew louder and the sound of breaking wood made Laun realize she was about to die.  She sank down on her knees onto the thin woolen carpet on the stone floor.  The sword lay loosely in her hand and she felt as if it weighed more than she did. “My Lord...”

“You will survive.  You have to.  They are looking for me, not you.”  The desperate Lord looked around for a place to hide Laun in the twilight.  He thought he would have a chance to get to the Festival to secure his heir, to fight what was about to happen.  The wiseman had...warned Vami and there had been less time than the Lord of Salam-Dir thought there would be.  Lady Hellon had favored this child since she was born.  He stopped for longer than he should have to look at her, the resemblance to her father more than striking.  If she lived, she would be a good one to carry the Salam-Dir name.  If she survived.

He pushed her to the edge of the room and pulled down a pile of wall tapestries onto her without any struggle from the dispirited Laun.  He spoke to her through the wool, saying, “Remember that you are now my heir, Laun.  You carry my crest and will have to avenge my death.  Go to Lord Helmic-”

She heard the door crash inward.  She heard a battle cry from her Master and the scrape of a sword from off the display of weapons on the wall.  She heard the answering angry calls of the raiders.  She did not see her Master charge at his outnumbering foes to be checked in mid stride.

The bandits looked around the room quickly and took some objects that glittered in the flicker of the one candle.

Laun heard one of the bandits say, “Those tapestries look valuable.  Should we take them?”

“No,” was the muffled reply.  “We have enough like that rotting at the caves.”  There was a clank of metal hitting stone.  “We don’t have much more room on the horses.  Get things we can sell easily, like the last place.  And remember, the person who hired us doesn’t want it burned.”

Laun was terrified.  She felt like if she breathed too loud, she would feel a sword slide between her ribs.  She waited for twenty close breaths, then twenty more before she dared to move.  When she survived the small movement of un-cramping her foot from under her, Laun cautiously crawled out from under the heavy tapestries.

No one was in the room but the body of Lord Salam-Dir and herself.  Laun felt like being sick.  The person who had always been in control of her life was dead.  But even in death, he was the dominant influence of what she did.  She knelt at his side in mourning, and to try to think.

Her world had changed in the time it would normally take her to do one dance at a gathering her Master held every few weeks for his noble guests.  She was wearing an arming harness that she had barely seen men wear when they were going to the practice field outside the keep and had been given a geas to avenge the man who lay dead before her.  She had to find Lord Helmic.

Laun did not know who Lord Helmic the Black was, or where to find him.  All she knew was that she had to find him before the bandits found her.

The sword her Master had tried to push on her was hidden partially under one of the tapestries that had been ripped off the wall in an effort to hide her.  Laun knew that he had intended her to take it, but it scared her.  She did not know how to use it and if she had it, the people around her would expect her to use it.  Laun had to take it, for her Master.

She stepped around the growing blood pool staining the stone floor and shivered at the aloneness that swept over her.  Her breasts reacted to her chill and her nipples became hard, starting to rub against the leather that now entwined her, instantly chapping the skin.  She almost remembered the name of Lord Helmic from one of the gatherings she had attended her Lady at.  He was the Lord of the closest nobles’ castle to the one she had grown in and she thought she knew how to find it.  She listened at the splintered door for any signs of the men before carefully going to the study, awkwardly holding the unaccustomed weight of the unsheathed sword across her chest.

The study was a mess.  The vast library that was there had been torn apart and scattered to the floor.  The inkwells had been overturned, the clean parchment was gone and the quills were broken.  Laun wondered at the waste as she sorted through the wreckage for a map.    The stories had the hero following a map to the treasure, and Lady Hellon would use maps to let Peach know where her Lady needed her in the keep and castle.  She finally found one as the one candle that had been left burning by the bandits flickered at the rim of it’s candlestick.  The map had been torn, but the part she wanted was intact.

A horn was sounded and Laun was startled into remembering that there were still bandits in the castle.  She went to one of the windows, climbing up on broken boards to look through the shards of glass.  Laun could not actually see the courtyard from there, but she heard horses and men and the sound of tired, crying women.

“Mount, you rascals!  We ride...” drifted up to Laun’s straining ears.  She knew that voice would never leave her heart.  One day, for her Master, that voice would be silenced.

Horse’s hooves clattering on stone and the faint clank of steel fading spurred Laun to leave the castle.  She was the only one left alive.

Laun was able to gather a few things from the wreckage of the keep and found a potato sack to put things in.  Some food, a cloth to wrap around the sword, a few other skirts-not enough, but what she could find as she ran through the castle.  She hoped that a horse or mule had been left by the raiders, but she had no such luck.

What the raiders could not take with them had been left in disarray with little regard to what, or whom, it was.  Laun found the smoke that she had smelled when her Master was fighting off the bandits had come from a sheep shed in the main courtyard, the cooking remains smoldering in the last of the hay.  The smell was both appetizing and nauseating.  The smoke smell followed Laun as she went through the courtyards to the keep gate.  There was very little light outside the keep, but all the light Laun had in the keep held death.  With the scantly packed sack, Laun set out for Lord Helmic’s castle.

The thin sandals that Laun had on and the bunched skirt under the harness were all that was between her and the night.  Cold seeped into her skin and into her legs as she tried to follow the road in the dark. She shivered as she walked along, her nipples that had started to rub along the leather strapping being the first skin to rub raw from the motion.  The sack over her back and the leather straps barely held in any heat as she stumbled along.  Laun had the torn piece of map stuck into one of the straps across her chest and it crinkled when she moved the bag from shoulder to shoulder.  Noises off of the road and in the woods scared her, but she needed to get away from the death at the keep.  And find Lord Helmic the Black.  And somewhere to throw up.

Laun found that she was on her knees heaving up everything she had eaten over the last day until there was nothing left.  The dry heaves calmed down and she realized that she could see the sick she had just left in the dust of the road.  The stars were the only things to watch Laun in her misery as even the night animals were hunkered down at that late hour.  She stumbled on with an emptied stomach but feeling some better.  She hadn’t realized that she was feeling nauseated among the fear and cold until it was gone.  At least it was one less thing to worry about.

The sky was lightening for the coming of dawn.  The reading of the map was becoming easier for Laun and her pace quickened, though hesitantly.  The map fragment showed the late Lord Salam-Dir’s castle and grounds with a ragged edge cutting off the name.  A road drawn on the map went through prettily drawn trees and past a ripply stream labeled Grey Waters.  The hoof marks from the bandit’s mounts spread out before her as she walked, leading her towards the hoped help across the new-to-her land.  The road split several times and Laun had to check to see which way to go, once having to decide as there wasn’t an indication on the map.  The bandits seemed to turn at one of the crossroads she didn’t and Laun was relieved.

The heat of the day was fully on her in only an hour or so after the sun rose above the horizon, the sun beating down on her and sweat trickling down her back and between her breasts with just a taint of blood.  The leather straps were uncomfortable.  They absorbed some of the sweat and started to slide on her skin as she walked along, not slick but rough, especially on the edges.  A few of the metal fastenings had burrs that scratched across her skin.  Even the thin skirt still stuffed under the straps absorbed sweat turning into a salty dirt against her skin, chaffing and making small heat-blisters as she walked.  Laun slowly went down the road and about mid-day stopped at the shore of the Grey Waters.  This was the farthest she had ever been from her home in the castle.

She was hungry.  Laun had found a few scraps of recognizable food in the hurried look through the kitchen.  She tried not to remember the bodies of the cook and the scullions that had been working on the next morning’s meal.  The crock of vinegared vegetables she had been working on was smashed on the floor near the head of the still form of the young maid she had been helping.  The smell of the blood and the acid had been overwhelming at the time and she had gone through as quickly as possible.

The food was meager and didn’t taste as good as it first looked, threatening to bring it’s self back up.  Laun wanted a drink of water, too, but the stream she was by was aptly named.  The old volcano mountain had many streams coming from it and Grey Waters was one of them.  Laun tried it and choked on the silt-filled liquid.

After a rest by the thickly flowing stream, Laun took out her map scrap to see where she needed to go.  The map showed that Helmic’s castle was just about the same distance on the map from where she was from Salam-Dir’s castle.  There was another stream she would have to cross, but she was sure she could manage, if it wasn’t too deep.  Since this Gray Waters was barely knee deep on her, she did not think it was a problem.

Laun took her thin sandals off for the crossing of the stream.  The silt layered on her skin as she waded through the more-mud-than-water stream.  The cool, if thick, water was refreshing while she was going through the Gray Waters as the summer sun was making even the trees along the road wilt.  It was hard to get her sandals back on and have them stay as the mud was slippery but would not come off easily.

The tired Laun set out again for Lord Helmic’s castle after a short rest on the other side of the stream.  She shook off what she could of the silty water and what she couldn’t turned to a flaky whitewash on her legs as it dried on her journey. The map, she soon found out, was not to scale.  She passed a grouping of farmer’s huts when she thought she would come to the other stream.  No one was in the huts or around, so she quickly dipped her hand into the water barrel to wash and take a drink before walking on again.

She stopped to rest, maybe to sleep, at sundown. The trees made a gloom as the sun turned the top tips of them red and gold with it’s last rays and the heat on the road was more intense as the night cool came through those trees.

She found a large tree that had fallen over and had kept growing.  The branches that had sprouted made walls around the trunk with a small canopy of sapling leaves.  Laun gathered fallen leaves and cut grasses with the sword to make a bed comfortable enough for the night.  Not knowing how to get out of the leather and metal warriors harness, she pulled at the fabric of the skirt still bunched underneath and covered what bare skin she could.  The spare skirts she grabbed barely made a layer against the leaves let alone the cold.  She was able to pull the scroll case around to touch it as she lay in the leaves and silently cried for the Master who had saved her life and had sent her on a journey that she did not know if she would survive.  The tears dried on her cheeks as she fell asleep in the woody bed.

 

Chapter 2 - Presenting herself to Lord Helmic is not so simple