[Deaths] the Morrigan
Title: old feuds
'Verse/characters: Deaths; the Morrigan
Prompt: 74D "confrontation"
Word Count: 1927
Notes: expanded from the spark "wolves and plaid"; warnings for the Morrigan being herself. Will be continued, as apparently 156 words of sketch becoming 332 words of better sketch becoming 450, 740, 1084, 1647 and currently 1927 words of proto-chapter means I need to look at this period a bit more. O.o;
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There was nothing dignified in the attempt, not even a bit of subtlety to give her a spark of interest. Just men, crashing out of the undergrowth in front and behind her on the way-road, and screaming as her companions saw the ambush.
If they had a crossbow among them they hadn't bothered to use it; the Morrigan ducked beneath a too-slow swing with a disappointed caw echoing in her ears, and came up face-to-face with a man half-again her height and three times as broad.
She automatically punched his face with her hand curled tight around the handle of a sickle she couldn't consciously remember drawing, ducked his own as-automatic return punch, twisting to set herself up for a good slice at his side.
The slice didn't land, not because he was fast but because she could suddenly smell him and she'd hopped backwards a good couple of paces before she even realised what she was doing. Giving her own hand a horrified glance, hoping to see it clear or at least smeared with red, she found black grease shining up from her knuckles.
Holding her hand as far away from herself as she could manage while still committing a mockery of a proper guard with the blade in that hand, she stared incredulously at the man she'd punched. "Ew. Ew--" she said again when she got a good proper look at him. That was a great kilt.
That was a great kilt that looked like it had been stripped unwilling from a dull-dyed sheep and draped around him a long, long time ago. She couldn't even pick out the proper pattern of the weave beneath the grease and ground-in mud and dried blood. Woad-blue, maybe, once upon a time, in a lattice beneath other colours.
Quork, something remarked inside her head, and that wasn't a crow's voice.
Pressing down a mild surge of interested hunger, she pointed her clean hand's blade at the man, curved point aimed at the ground, and demanded "Have you been hiding out here since before the first Crusade?"
He stared at her blankly for a moment--she wouldn't have been prepared to wager whether the blade in her hand, the demand, or that it was a woman who'd handed him his freely bleeding nose had been more confusing--then reached up, touched his upper lip, then dropped his now-bloody hand to his sword again and took a swing at her.
She hopped out of the arc of the blade easily, found herself closer, and took a slice at his kilt's tie, regretting her deep preference for short-range blades with an intensity she wouldn't ever have guessed at, even a half-hour ago.
He was no cleaner than his kilt, which somehow didn't surprise her in the least. That he nearly went down in the released folds of his kilt didn't much startle her either, though that he didn't bother to try to salvage a scrap to cover himself with before he took a faster swing at her did, just a little. She ducked fast, felt the whistle as much as she heard it, and took a few quick steps to give herself a little space.
The smell told her she'd chosen the wrong way, but the new one still had his kilt on, and screamed when sickle bit, loud enough it distracted the naked one long enough she got her three paces of breathing space.
Her travelling companions were either down or down, but she couldn't spare the attention to know for certain, not with his friends circling in like the wolves old proclamations had called them, wolf's heads wondering what to do with a too-noisy crow in their midst.
"When was the last time you washed that?" she demanded of the now-nearest clothed one, ignoring the naked one, who was staring down at the dead one, watching the sparks fly in something like shock.
"Washed?" one of the others replied, his accent thick but the confusion plain, and her restraint broke.
Her left hand opened without her willing it so, letting the blade drop to the ground, and she threw what else was in her hand full in the face of the man closest to her.
Lightning crackled, mixed with a laughing raven in her head, and she felt feathers settle over, around her, as old, old rivalries rose as they hadn't in centuries.
If she'd had breath for it, she knew she'd be singing, but she was too busy trying not to be caught and crushed beneath bodies long since accustomed to working together if not in such close quarters.
Blade against a thick neck, point dragging sharp across the vein, and her hand was filthy with blood and blue fire as she twisted to put her empty hand up to catch and pull, dragging his life threads out like ravelling a knit pullover, fast and ragged and burning in her hand as he faded. Threw the new rope at another man's eyes as she kept twisting, bending desperately to avoid a hacking slash, gasped in a breath as she did, and put her foot into a man's clothed gut, knocking him off-balance enough that his nearest companion had to check a swing to avoid hitting him.
She could hear a woman singing, laughing between stanzas, sweet and low and nothing like a crow's laughter.
The Morrigan spared a thought--as lightning she hadn't caused directly hit a man's sword, strong enough he couldn't let it go--that she hadn't meant to spend the day fighting.
And there went the crows, cackling and chortling and filling her head with noise, drowning out the woman's voice that wasn't hers.
She'd take that, she thought grimly, and spiked the man still shaking from the lightning before she went for the naked man, who wasn't the leader but might well be by that point. She was trying not to trip over bodies before they faded out--which was how she didn't notice the living hand closing around her ankle until she was falling--
All the air in her lungs went out of her in a rush as she hit the ground amid a shower of sparks and the scream of a wrenched ankle. She'd twisted to land on her back, and her ankle would hate her for it for a long, long time, if she lived, but better injured and able to see than the alternative.
Metal rang as she got her remaining sickle up in time to deflect the stab at her torso. Another ring as a second sword came for her, then she was rolling and scrambling, gaining her good foot and about half the injured one in a now-empty space.
The man who'd caught her was still on the ground, bleeding badly, sparks mixing with the red, but the hate in his eyes made her think she shouldn't be getting anywhere close to him if she could help it.
Filthy, uncomfortable, in pain, she gave the remaining wolves a sunny smile. "Bad day, boys?"
"What are you?" the still-naked one demanded, as much bewildered as furious.
Bad question; she bit her tongue, hard, on the litany of names she wanted to sing. Feathers rustled in her head, affronted, wanting to push, to give the full chant, all the names, to strike terror in his heart from long-ago stories, but she told herself that that would only be effective if he lived.
And if he lived, one part of her would be looking for another partner.
A rattle of corvid irritation was the only response to that, and the oddest feeling of painting milk and blessings on her ankle. Ignoring the warmth, she started circling her empty hand, gathering stray threads--she watched the bleeding man shudder, fear mixing with the hate, then another of the men pounced, and she was half-running as she dodged.
Oh, this one was a little better than the others, quick and willing to try to punch with pommel as much as blade, and she was tired. But not too tired.
Never too tired, not for this, not with a crow singing in her head and the man she was fighting reeling back from tiny lightnings clawing at his face like bird talons, guard opening just enough to slip a blade through and then dodge, get out of the way of his falling and go for another man while they were still distracted.
Two more fell before the naked man was on her again, and he and the one still bleeding on the ground might be the last of the wolves. She couldn't spare attention to look around for others, forced to trust to the feathers and the goddess she was sworn to to guard her back because she was refusing to be herded to the bleeding one, refusing to let her bad ankle buckle, refusing to fall over and let her heaving lungs rest a moment, just a moment.
Lightning cracked again, somewhere out of the edges of her vision, and the naked man flinched, elbows jerking his sword a little out of line.
She remembered all over again how the fight had started when she ducked inside his guard and brought her sickle up in a short stab into his belly. He still smelled terrible, long-dead sheep and long rotted oil, unwashed man and a dozen other things she refused to think about as he began to fade around her blade, human body slowly shifting to summer sky-blue sparks until even those faded away.
The bleeding one was still there, somewhat to her surprise. With the sheer amount of energy flying around, he should have been back on his feet if he wasn't going to fade entirely, but there he was, lying in a tangle of filthy kilt and sword and badly-broken bleeding leg.
She crouched down, mindful both of her ankle and his probable reach, frowned at him. "Yours swung first," she said.
"You shouldn't have been able to do that," he replied.
"Doesn't stop the fact that of everyone--including all the people I was walking with--it's you and me left here."
He growled, turned his face away. "Get it over with, witch."
"That, I've never been," she told him matter-of-factly, then sighed. "Yours swung first," she said again, as she began to pull in the threads hazing the road, from the poor dead humans who she'd either have to leave or find some way of burying, and then, finally, from him, drawing out a hissing pained noise with the thread, "and I've never been able to stop myself from swinging back."
He looked back at her, as the sparks began to rise. "What are you?" he asked again, and this time she told him, in the right language, and ended the recitation with "The Morrigan."
He snorted, just a little. "Might have known it would be one of those. We never did get along."
"No, we didn't," she agreed, and watched his pain ease just before he wasn't a human shape anymore.
She let herself tip back onto her bottom, ragged skirt grinding into the dust as she squirmed her bad leg around, and sighed. "And what, precisely, am I supposed to do about all this?"
A crow laughed in her head as she looked around the battle site, the claymores, the humans, the churned-up road from her own light feet and the heavier tread of the wolves.
She muttered "I hate you too," as she caught a whiff of herself as she began to flop back onto her back in the dust.
Dragging herself back onto her feet instead, she half-stumbled before she found a way to put weight on her ankle, and found she couldn't afford to dust herself off because her hands were the filthiest part of her. Pulling a face and holding her hands away from her body, she left the road, looking for the river she remembered from previous trips.
'Verse/characters: Deaths; the Morrigan
Prompt: 74D "confrontation"
Word Count: 1927
Notes: expanded from the spark "wolves and plaid"; warnings for the Morrigan being herself. Will be continued, as apparently 156 words of sketch becoming 332 words of better sketch becoming 450, 740, 1084, 1647 and currently 1927 words of proto-chapter means I need to look at this period a bit more. O.o;
---------
There was nothing dignified in the attempt, not even a bit of subtlety to give her a spark of interest. Just men, crashing out of the undergrowth in front and behind her on the way-road, and screaming as her companions saw the ambush.
If they had a crossbow among them they hadn't bothered to use it; the Morrigan ducked beneath a too-slow swing with a disappointed caw echoing in her ears, and came up face-to-face with a man half-again her height and three times as broad.
She automatically punched his face with her hand curled tight around the handle of a sickle she couldn't consciously remember drawing, ducked his own as-automatic return punch, twisting to set herself up for a good slice at his side.
The slice didn't land, not because he was fast but because she could suddenly smell him and she'd hopped backwards a good couple of paces before she even realised what she was doing. Giving her own hand a horrified glance, hoping to see it clear or at least smeared with red, she found black grease shining up from her knuckles.
Holding her hand as far away from herself as she could manage while still committing a mockery of a proper guard with the blade in that hand, she stared incredulously at the man she'd punched. "Ew. Ew--" she said again when she got a good proper look at him. That was a great kilt.
That was a great kilt that looked like it had been stripped unwilling from a dull-dyed sheep and draped around him a long, long time ago. She couldn't even pick out the proper pattern of the weave beneath the grease and ground-in mud and dried blood. Woad-blue, maybe, once upon a time, in a lattice beneath other colours.
Quork, something remarked inside her head, and that wasn't a crow's voice.
Pressing down a mild surge of interested hunger, she pointed her clean hand's blade at the man, curved point aimed at the ground, and demanded "Have you been hiding out here since before the first Crusade?"
He stared at her blankly for a moment--she wouldn't have been prepared to wager whether the blade in her hand, the demand, or that it was a woman who'd handed him his freely bleeding nose had been more confusing--then reached up, touched his upper lip, then dropped his now-bloody hand to his sword again and took a swing at her.
She hopped out of the arc of the blade easily, found herself closer, and took a slice at his kilt's tie, regretting her deep preference for short-range blades with an intensity she wouldn't ever have guessed at, even a half-hour ago.
He was no cleaner than his kilt, which somehow didn't surprise her in the least. That he nearly went down in the released folds of his kilt didn't much startle her either, though that he didn't bother to try to salvage a scrap to cover himself with before he took a faster swing at her did, just a little. She ducked fast, felt the whistle as much as she heard it, and took a few quick steps to give herself a little space.
The smell told her she'd chosen the wrong way, but the new one still had his kilt on, and screamed when sickle bit, loud enough it distracted the naked one long enough she got her three paces of breathing space.
Her travelling companions were either down or down, but she couldn't spare the attention to know for certain, not with his friends circling in like the wolves old proclamations had called them, wolf's heads wondering what to do with a too-noisy crow in their midst.
"When was the last time you washed that?" she demanded of the now-nearest clothed one, ignoring the naked one, who was staring down at the dead one, watching the sparks fly in something like shock.
"Washed?" one of the others replied, his accent thick but the confusion plain, and her restraint broke.
Her left hand opened without her willing it so, letting the blade drop to the ground, and she threw what else was in her hand full in the face of the man closest to her.
Lightning crackled, mixed with a laughing raven in her head, and she felt feathers settle over, around her, as old, old rivalries rose as they hadn't in centuries.
If she'd had breath for it, she knew she'd be singing, but she was too busy trying not to be caught and crushed beneath bodies long since accustomed to working together if not in such close quarters.
Blade against a thick neck, point dragging sharp across the vein, and her hand was filthy with blood and blue fire as she twisted to put her empty hand up to catch and pull, dragging his life threads out like ravelling a knit pullover, fast and ragged and burning in her hand as he faded. Threw the new rope at another man's eyes as she kept twisting, bending desperately to avoid a hacking slash, gasped in a breath as she did, and put her foot into a man's clothed gut, knocking him off-balance enough that his nearest companion had to check a swing to avoid hitting him.
She could hear a woman singing, laughing between stanzas, sweet and low and nothing like a crow's laughter.
The Morrigan spared a thought--as lightning she hadn't caused directly hit a man's sword, strong enough he couldn't let it go--that she hadn't meant to spend the day fighting.
And there went the crows, cackling and chortling and filling her head with noise, drowning out the woman's voice that wasn't hers.
She'd take that, she thought grimly, and spiked the man still shaking from the lightning before she went for the naked man, who wasn't the leader but might well be by that point. She was trying not to trip over bodies before they faded out--which was how she didn't notice the living hand closing around her ankle until she was falling--
All the air in her lungs went out of her in a rush as she hit the ground amid a shower of sparks and the scream of a wrenched ankle. She'd twisted to land on her back, and her ankle would hate her for it for a long, long time, if she lived, but better injured and able to see than the alternative.
Metal rang as she got her remaining sickle up in time to deflect the stab at her torso. Another ring as a second sword came for her, then she was rolling and scrambling, gaining her good foot and about half the injured one in a now-empty space.
The man who'd caught her was still on the ground, bleeding badly, sparks mixing with the red, but the hate in his eyes made her think she shouldn't be getting anywhere close to him if she could help it.
Filthy, uncomfortable, in pain, she gave the remaining wolves a sunny smile. "Bad day, boys?"
"What are you?" the still-naked one demanded, as much bewildered as furious.
Bad question; she bit her tongue, hard, on the litany of names she wanted to sing. Feathers rustled in her head, affronted, wanting to push, to give the full chant, all the names, to strike terror in his heart from long-ago stories, but she told herself that that would only be effective if he lived.
And if he lived, one part of her would be looking for another partner.
A rattle of corvid irritation was the only response to that, and the oddest feeling of painting milk and blessings on her ankle. Ignoring the warmth, she started circling her empty hand, gathering stray threads--she watched the bleeding man shudder, fear mixing with the hate, then another of the men pounced, and she was half-running as she dodged.
Oh, this one was a little better than the others, quick and willing to try to punch with pommel as much as blade, and she was tired. But not too tired.
Never too tired, not for this, not with a crow singing in her head and the man she was fighting reeling back from tiny lightnings clawing at his face like bird talons, guard opening just enough to slip a blade through and then dodge, get out of the way of his falling and go for another man while they were still distracted.
Two more fell before the naked man was on her again, and he and the one still bleeding on the ground might be the last of the wolves. She couldn't spare attention to look around for others, forced to trust to the feathers and the goddess she was sworn to to guard her back because she was refusing to be herded to the bleeding one, refusing to let her bad ankle buckle, refusing to fall over and let her heaving lungs rest a moment, just a moment.
Lightning cracked again, somewhere out of the edges of her vision, and the naked man flinched, elbows jerking his sword a little out of line.
She remembered all over again how the fight had started when she ducked inside his guard and brought her sickle up in a short stab into his belly. He still smelled terrible, long-dead sheep and long rotted oil, unwashed man and a dozen other things she refused to think about as he began to fade around her blade, human body slowly shifting to summer sky-blue sparks until even those faded away.
The bleeding one was still there, somewhat to her surprise. With the sheer amount of energy flying around, he should have been back on his feet if he wasn't going to fade entirely, but there he was, lying in a tangle of filthy kilt and sword and badly-broken bleeding leg.
She crouched down, mindful both of her ankle and his probable reach, frowned at him. "Yours swung first," she said.
"You shouldn't have been able to do that," he replied.
"Doesn't stop the fact that of everyone--including all the people I was walking with--it's you and me left here."
He growled, turned his face away. "Get it over with, witch."
"That, I've never been," she told him matter-of-factly, then sighed. "Yours swung first," she said again, as she began to pull in the threads hazing the road, from the poor dead humans who she'd either have to leave or find some way of burying, and then, finally, from him, drawing out a hissing pained noise with the thread, "and I've never been able to stop myself from swinging back."
He looked back at her, as the sparks began to rise. "What are you?" he asked again, and this time she told him, in the right language, and ended the recitation with "The Morrigan."
He snorted, just a little. "Might have known it would be one of those. We never did get along."
"No, we didn't," she agreed, and watched his pain ease just before he wasn't a human shape anymore.
She let herself tip back onto her bottom, ragged skirt grinding into the dust as she squirmed her bad leg around, and sighed. "And what, precisely, am I supposed to do about all this?"
A crow laughed in her head as she looked around the battle site, the claymores, the humans, the churned-up road from her own light feet and the heavier tread of the wolves.
She muttered "I hate you too," as she caught a whiff of herself as she began to flop back onto her back in the dust.
Dragging herself back onto her feet instead, she half-stumbled before she found a way to put weight on her ankle, and found she couldn't afford to dust herself off because her hands were the filthiest part of her. Pulling a face and holding her hands away from her body, she left the road, looking for the river she remembered from previous trips.