PULL ME UNDER - Gung-Ho - Twenty-Eight
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Gung-Ho
Twenty-Eight
Hunched, tense, knuckles into the wood of his desk, elders across from him shuffling maps and correspondence and debating strategy, Rudda and Borga at Ddun’s side helping him weigh choices, Lauren behind him and Tanner was somewhere else entirely—which irritated everyone but it couldn’t be helped just then, they had other things to worry about. Kisku was a morning and a day’s ride away.
“They’ve built up their defenses. Abatisses have been built at the gatehouse, trenches dug, here, here,” Borga pointed at a sketched map of the perimeter of the castle, itself sat at the edge of the city, facing north toward Kaddusk. Looking at the sketch Ddun felt some pity for the poor bastards that had to dig through the frozen ground, only to die by their steel.
A morning and a day, and still basing strategy on what might or might not be illusion.
Borga continued. “The city is populated solely by fighting men. Mostly Peiransi. Everyone else has fled, as we’ve seen by the clan trains that have passed by around us. A few reports with commonalities tell us we outnumber them by nearly three to one… But we haven’t seen within the castle grounds to know for sure.”
Ddun’s army was divided by tens, up to groups of a thousand. Every Dvarri man, born on horseback, their bows in their hands out of the womb, as one or one-thousand or ten-thousand, they would prove a force of nature.
Flags at lances, waiting to be raised and lowered. Ddun’s warhorn hung at his neck, polished and ready, rhythms memorized to each command he would give through the curved copper. On his belt hung his weapons, and his mask would hang there in battle as well, a symbol of his spirits that he would need, atop his head the helmet to complete his battle-clothes, long goat hair dyed red would stream from the top, scales would flow down his neck with a swoop of them that would pin across his face and down his front. His gloves were thick and the leather would creak as he flexed his hands around his lance. His bowstring would pull taut with three arrows at hand. He could barely focus on the maps with all their discrepancies, knowing in his guts to expect nothing ordinary as they arrived in sight of the sandstone walls. He expected nothing but death, half-threatening to toss the maps in the fire while the elders babbled about the terrain or consulted with sheep’s livers to discern the time of the advance.
***
Irynna’s third-eldest brother, Haun, lithe and wiry, was better on horseback than Irynna but just as wild-eyed and irresponsible—stealing himself with them in the cover of darkness, bolting breakneck toward the castle ahead of the main train. Tanner was now convinced the entire clan was insane, for Haun to not even question their reasoning when asked if he would tag along. Ddun would be pissed when he saw they had left, and Lauren too, but hopefully relieved when Haun returned with the best information they’d get before the battle—Haun was the messenger of what Tanner discerned as the truth in the scenery.
Such a sure thing, and the three of them rode hard enough the horses were getting warm and smelled of burning wires, not enjoying the work in the cold, if they enjoyed at all.
“So how do you plan to do it?” Tanner had asked Irynna that day in the cart, hiding away.
“A well-placed arrow, right here,” she pointed to her heart, where the light had fluttered. “Unless she’s sleeping, in which case I’ll slit her throat ear to ear, I’ll listen to her last gasps through the wet hole in her neck.”
He had been taken aback by that bit, eyebrows raised and fingers toying with a little scrap of wool the maids hadn’t spun. Clearly, Irynna had thought about it a lot. “Well then, that part’s settled. But, do you think you can just walk into the castle and find her?”
“Absolutely not. I’m going to sneak in.”
He darted his eyes up from the fluff of wool to her face, a wicked smile spreading across her copper, freckled cheeks, and he returned a grin to match. “You’re not a thief.” And then, “I’ll help you.”
“You’d really want to risk going back there?” Did she have genuine concern for his wellbeing?
“It’s just a big ugly house.”
That’s when she stood and worked the ties of the leather breeches, freeing them from the garter under her coat, and his heart overflowed with pure joy at the sight. A tear rolled down his face. “I think I’m in love with you.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“How is it unfortunate?”
“You know perfectly well why.”
“No, I don’t.” He sat up, extending a hand to her. She took it and knelt beside him, legs free of her breeches, but in that moment it wasn’t about anything but her eyes, her lips, the dimple at her chin. Maybe his head wasn’t on right but he couldn’t help the way he felt in that second. He cupped her cheek, brushed a thumb across her blush. Her face was soft, no falseness, nothing forced, just a long quiet between them. “You can play if you want and say you hate me, but I love you Irynna. I do. I couldn’t lie even if I wanted to right now.”
For her to reciprocate his words with the most tender kiss she had ever given, and to feel her melt in his arms was everything—contentment and relief, to finally admit what had been hidden in his head for ages.
“I don’t hate you, Tanner.”
That was all he needed to light his soul. Irynna had chanted his name like worship, lights flying around the canvas roof as they embraced.
Now they rode with blankets pinned up around their shoulders, tight around their faces, no light but the moon and stars. They’d get to Kisku far ahead of the rest.
***
“Where’s Tanner gone now?” The last time Lauren saw him, he was overly stiff-lipped and aloof as if he was hiding something. Now he was vanished, again, it was the middle of the night, and she hadn’t detected any portals or magic—he has to be around somewhere, the dumb shit. What was he hiding?
“Probably just off having a good lay,” Ddun said. “He was never one for paying attention in meetings, anyway.”
“Huh! Right on both counts.”
Worry for her brother wasn’t her only reason for sleeplessness. It was the same reason half the men that night weren’t sleeping. It was almost the big day, the last day for some of them, and the camp was thick with the sounds of merrymaking and lack of sobriety. She thought on the numbers. The incredible speed at which so many men were found and gathered, volunteering to be there, so proud to be part of something bigger than anything they had seen for a hundred years. Why? So that Grandfather couldn’t crown himself King? There was a religious fervour against the notion of Meired crowning the old man that Lauren didn’t understand. A strange sort of civil war in a place that wasn’t really a nation at all. She supposed there were stupider reasons that people had gone to war, here or in her own world. That didn’t make the thought of death any easier to swallow. The baby fluttered, grounding her for a moment in the present, reminding her what was at stake. Ddun was watching her pace the tent, and she began to cry, not able to stop the intrusive worries that he wouldn’t be there to see the baby born.