the Leathermines

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There was a drip that was intermittently falling on Laun’s forehead.  It was cold and the trail down her face made her shiver.  There were bird sounds and a small rustling in the leaves near her.  Laun opened her eyes to a grey light filtering through the trees and bushes around her.  The small animal near her shoulder bumped into her, squeaked and ran back through the leafmold.

Laun carefully stretched in the cloak and felt where her wounds had stuck to her clothing.  The shoulder cut tore open as she moved and Laun could feel the blood trickle down her skin.  Her feet were still in the boots, though some stones and twigs had worked their way in making it painful to move until she was able to pull them off and shake out the intruders.  The linen socks were soaked with sweat and some mud, but they made the boots work better so she left the soiled things on as she pulled the boots back over her sore and slightly swollen feet.  The drops from the leaves overhead whenever Laun shook the surrounding trees was cold on her exposed skin, making her shiver again.

Braving the shower from above, Laun pushed aside some of the branches to look outside her little safe place.  It was misty gray outside with a vague light that comes with a morning after a well needed storm.  There were bird sounds and more leaf movement, but all from small animals.  Laun pulled out a small journey cake from the backpack and sucked on it as she looked through another part of the foliage.

There was only nature that morning.  No sign of the bandits.  Laun gathered up herself and carefully pushed through the weak spot in the bushes.  She tried to pull herself through as the cloak became stuck on something and she was afraid to rip the fabric.  Pushing herself back, she found what she was caught on and decided to take the cloak off.  The backpack, cloak and sword were pushed out of the copse before Laun followed them.

It was slippery.  There were still drops coming from above, but the rain had stopped and changed to a mist that dulled most of the woods around her.  Laun put herself together and headed, carefully, down the slope of the mound and away from the bandits.  She was able to glimpse several bundled men at the hole entrance as she slipped past, through the fog and trees and towards the road.

Laun did not know what she was going to do.  The aches that she had told her that she was foolhardy in her actions of the night before.  But she had more information that she could use.  As Laun went through the woods towards the road, she went over what she knew, and what she needed to know.

More than Lord Salam-Dir and Lord Helmic had been raided and killed.  Laun remembered seeing a crest in passing the weapons pile that matched the one that the noble in the Inn had on his tunic, a bird perched on a wavy line.  At least four other lands raided during the Festival with the different crests she had seen on some of the things in the cave.

Having it happen during the Festival...  The Festival.  That was very sudden when it came to such things.  Laun remembered several Festivals over the last few years that the household would get ready for starting at least a month before.  This Festival was announced less than two weeks of the open.  And that news had been brought by Lord Vami’s wiseman who had been visiting the noble that was putting the Festival on, not an envoy of the Lord himself.  And then Lady Hellon took sick within three nights of the wiseman arriving, died within five.  What was his name?  Laun thought to herself.  He came and went, bringing news and little gifts for the Lady and sitting in conference with the Lord for hours, looking like a plain noble, yet an oddness about him that led to a different deference from the servants and other nobles when he was around.

Bregnan.  That was his name.  He never watched the dancing when there was a gathering, but he seemed to like to pull different entertainers to his chambers on the last night he was there.  He hadn’t done that the last time he was there, just there for dinner with the Lord and Lady and then gone again.  One of the chamber maids had come down to the servant’s hall with a bruise on her cheek and a sobbing story of Bregnan trying to haul her into the room he usually occupied, but, by refusing, caused the wiseman to become enraged and beat her before he rushed out of their Master’s keep.

Laun sat on a stump a few trees into the woods from the road and rested as she thought.  The wiseman left in a rushed manner and did not have his...entertainment.  Rushed plans put the household to preparing to go to the Festival.  By the time the Lady Hellon succumbed to her illness, Lord Vami had sent a message to the host confirming that his entourage would be there.  The household sent most of the servants and wardmen to the festival with Lord Vami staying behind to grieve and sit vigil over his wife.  The plan had been a brief vigil for a few days before he would follow with a few more of the servants.

Laun had yet again stayed behind because she had just recovered from some sort of bad food when the household was packing to leave.  She could not learn the steps that the dance master had come up with for the household presentation to the host of the Festival, so she had to stay behind.  Bad luck had followed her for years and she had never been off her Master’s lands to go to a festival.  Something always seemed to get in the way.

Not many people had been in the household when the raid attacked, about 20... 30...  Laun could not count that high, but tried to remember the people briefly before it was too much.  What would happen to the people from Salam-Dir that were currently at the Festival?  They were being led by the head wardsman Edgar and chatelaine Orgia, trading for goods and foodstuffs and entertaining other noble families and giving largesse to those who seemed needy.

A swig from the water skin eased the dryness left in her mouth from the journey cake and gave her yet something else to think about.  If she was truly the Lady Salam-Dir, she would need to provide for those who were still left to the household.  And who would she present herself to that would accept that she was the new Lady?  She knew some of the levels of society, but had never seen the King that had been in power for twice her lifespan.  She had been born on the Salam-Dir lands and never had been beyond the border until then.  She knew nothing of the rituals that would bring her to the station that her Master had pulled her to, let alone how to even approach someone who may help her.

To help her.  The people that had helped her had all wanted something.  She had little to give but the information she had.  About the raids.  About the location of the bandits.  Of their methods.  Geralk had shown her ways of using and getting information.  But the information she had was incomplete.  And having the information was not the same as being able to use the information.  The dancer in her wanted to know where the next step and the next turn would be, always thinking ahead, but now with the lives of the household.

The mist was a uniform gray past the trees.  Laun carefully, and tiredly, made her way to the road and started to trudge towards the Inn at the crossroads.  A small gully with cold running rain water made for a good washing place about half an hour away from the bandit’s field.  Laun still had the soap and cloth and tried to wash not just her hands and face but as much of her as she could reach by herself.  It made her shiver under the cloak, but the mud and blood was worse than the cold.  Even her hair had several strokes of the cloth to get some of the muck off of her to make her more presentable. Her shoulder hurt every time she tried to use her arm, but it was necessary to push through the pain.   The hair stick that Marie had given her was in her pouch of money and Laun was able to twist her hair up and keep it up with the stick - not as elegant as she knew Marie could do, but better than having it loose and unsightly around her shoulders while traveling.  As Geralk said, Laun had to act the Lady she now was.

She was not really refreshed, but Laun pushed on as fast as her body would take her.  The mist started to lift as she walked further away from the bandit’s cave and the swifts danced through the moist air above Laun’s head.  They were joyful in the brightening morning as the fatigue of the last week gnawed on her body and soul.  She tried to think of where she was going and not where she had been.  It may take her most of the day to get back to the Inn and the Festival only had another two days.  If only she had been able to steal one of the horses from the Bandits.  That would have made things so much easier.  Just to get to the Inn was a journey - to get to Lord Falmir’s land for the Festival was going to be too long.

Laun almost stopped when it occurred to her who Lord Falmir was.  The King’s first born.  The heir to the titles and lands that held everyone else in check in the Midlands.  The King who had made peace with the nobles and had kept peace for longer than Laun had been alive.  And now, during a sudden Festival his son and heir was holding, those nobles were being cut down one by one.

Laun forced her body to go faster again.  She could feel the strain of just moving taking it’s toll, but she had to move as quickly as possible to get where she needed to go.  She had to stop to rest several times, parceling out the little food and clean water she had to make it last as long as she could.  Her feet were hurting and she could feel when blisters formed and popped, leaving an almost greasy feeling on her skin as she walked along.  Trails of blood from various wounds dried into the tunic, except for the shoulder wound that stayed wet, the stain in the rough weave growing with every shift of the backpack.

About an hour past mid-day, Laun came across one of the small farmers’ huts she had stopped at before to talk to the farmerwife.  Laun asked for some water and the woman obliged, but not as willingly as the first time Laun had seen her.  It took a few minutes of pleasant conversation and Laun being as self-effacing as possible in telling the farmerwife that the rain had caught her in the open the last night and she was just in a terrible state for the woman to open up and say that there had been rumors about strangers and grayworlders attacking people, even killing nobles, over the last few days.

“Ah, I see where I would be put into that category, good wife.”

The farmerwife looked almost shocked and said hurriedly, “Not that I would think you would be such a brigand as that, Lady.  You may have some of the road on you, but you have the presence of one who has never toiled in the fields.”  The woman offered the ladle filled with cold and clear water to Laun again.

Before she took another sip, Laun nodded, “Yes.  That is very true.”

Laun thanked the farmerwife for her kindness and started for the Inn again.  So, the rumors had started to spread.  From Geralk?  From other survivors?  From unwitting witnesses that came across the carnage left by the bandits?  Laun had to push herself even more through the fog of pain and tiredness to get to the Inn.

It was about an hour before sunset when Laun came to the Inn at the crossroads.  She went not to the front door that led to the main room but to a door that was across from the small stable shed they had.  The mud that was at the back stoop was not deep, but sticky as Laun tried the door.  She did not knock but just went in, slipping into one of the smaller private rooms at the back of the Inn.  Laun had just taken the backpack and cape off when Marie and one of the house maids hurried past the open doorway.  Marie almost yelped as she backed up to see who was in the room.

Marie waived the house maid onto her duties and closed the door to let them have some privacy.

With her hands on her hips, Marie said in a calm voice, “Looks like you have been in some sort of trouble, again, Lady.”

Laun just nodded.  She reached for her pouch and pulled out the largest denomination coin she had.  “I hope that this can buy food, water and a bed for a few hours.  And perhaps the loan of a mount after I rest.”

Marie took the coin and held it in her palm, covering it with her other hand.   “Lady, I am pleased you have returned.  Let me see what we can offer you.”  The Innkeepers wife went out and closed the door quietly behind her, though the call to her husband was perhaps not as calm as she had hoped.

Laun sat on the armless wooden chair and tried to take the boots off by herself.  She could feel the skin where it had stuck to the linen socks tearing the scabs as she tugged so she stopped.  There was the chair, a bed and the small table holding the cape and backpack in the room with Laun.  She did not want to get the bedding dirty with her road and other...grime, so she stayed in the chair and let her head tip forward as sleep took her over.  She had always had a bed to sleep in and regular food and cleanliness before her Master had been slaughtered.  In less than a week, Laun had become road hardened enough to find the ability to sleep without a full stomach and through the itch of possible insect riders or drying grime whenever she was not active.

The ability to wake suddenly was not quite with her.  It was good that it was just Marie and her husband Markle that came in, for it took Laun a good five minutes to be awake and aware of others in the room with her.  They had brought in water to cleanse her with and some food to let her eat and Marie had thought ahead and had brought extra clothes for the Lady Salam-Dir to change into.  Laun was too tired to do more than nod and smile slightly at her hosts.

Marie and Markle worked on the boots together, first scraping off some of the mud and starting to rub in some oil to help soften up the leather.  They then pulled each boot off, ignoring the moan of pain that Laun could not keep back.  The linen had shredded where it wasn’t stuck to Laun’s skin, but the socks had protected her as well as they could and had given them selves to do so.  Marie took a cloth, soaked it in water and placed it over the crusted sock and moved onto the other foot.

Markle had started to comb out Launs hair, stopping several times to pick at something living that was not supposed to be there.  Laun’s butt was not in a comfortable position as some of the straps had become very tight, but she did not want to move as the cleaning was more than hygiene, it felt as though the last few days were being scraped off of her soul.

The tears started before she knew they were there.  No sobbing, no crying, just tears.  Tears over her loss of the Master.  Tears over the loss of her friends.  Tears over the frustration of not knowing what was going on to have caused her troubles.  Tears that flowed over the road dirt and whitewash of silt, landing on wounds of blood and wounds of heart.  And, perhaps, a sob once in a while when the pain was just a little too much for her to push into the background.

The tunic was taken off and onto the foot-polished floorboards soon to be followed by the warriors’ arming harness.  Laun had no modesty as she had been a bare-chested slave most of her life.  As she did not object, neither Innkeeper nor Innkeeper’s wife hesitated to tend to wounds and cleanliness of their guest.  The heavy smell of medicinal salves fought with the clean smells of the tallow soap and the slightly bitter smell of warm buttered ale.  The housemaid was brought in to hold Laun as stitches in her shoulder and her hip closed wounds.  Disa did not turn away from the sight, though the look on her face was one of hatred that Marie saw and shook her head at.

Markle left and went to tend the Innbell at the front as the last of the salves were put over Laun’s wounds.  Laun drank when her body allowed her to move without much pain and sucked on part of a potcake while cotton and linen cloths were wound around the cleaned wounds.  She hurt, but it was a different hurt above the fatigue that she had been fighting with for days.

“Please have the harness cleaned and put into a bag.  I cannot see me wearing it again until the wounds have healed some.  Marie-”  Laun put a bandaged hand out to the rotund woman.  “Thank you.  I know that I have bought your services, but without you, I don’t know what I would have done.”

Marie almost looked apologetic as she said, “Geralk took a liking to you, for good reason.  And, as he said about us, I say about him-He is one that I trust with my life, and did at one point.  And the coin he sends our way helps.”  She smiled.

Laun was able to eat some of what was brought to her and drank more water, buttered ale and watered cider than she thought she could drink in a week.  She was not one to drink alcohol and usually she would flush and be tipsy after just a tankard.  That night, it helped with the pain and that was all.  There were a few words between Lady and Freewoman about what Laun wanted to accomplish at the Festival, but the young Lady was weighed down with exhaustion.  She was helped to the bed and fell asleep within moments of Marie closing the door to the room.

Onto Chapter 7 The Salam-Dir household accepts Laun as their Lady

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