[Wild Roses] Trickwood Unification
Title: yelling's done: time to sing
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification (River Barons); Ilne, a sergeant whose name I don't know yet
Prompt: 72F "victory"
Word Count: 1703
Notes: Follows waiting for the yelling to stop (which was originally written in 2009 and tweaked a bit with the context from this one. Biggest jigsaw puzzle, or biggest jigsaw puzzle?); apparently this is Väinä they're tackling. Good to know. I think it's a fortified trading post, not a barony as such, near Ilmatar Ridge.
We're before Baron Black Rocks invites several of his rivals into his spider's den, but in the lead-up to it.
Because there is always more context. Stupid, stupid fractal story. Argh.
---------
Ilne caught another few humans the same way she'd caught the first three. None of them were highly ranked enough to have holdout guns, just knives and bows, and she was willing to bet her reflexes against those. She'd already had a close encounter with a holdout gun that morning, but he'd let the powder sit too long, and it hadn't fired when he tried. She'd pounced while he was still panicking.
The memory of close-range terror made her grin. Even after she'd gotten back up off the man's chest he'd been shaking so hard that she'd left him in the care of two of the pups and one of the humans--he'd known for certain she could have had his throat out and she'd chosen not to go for it.
She couldn't hear anyone else on the stairs for the moment, and rolled up off her crouch to pad the platform again. She could still smell the trail her crazy mageblood had left, two circles around the platform, his hands in the sergeant's coat, and then straight over the edge like he thought he could fly. Even through her flattened human nose she could smell the lingering shock, both mageblood-brought and that she'd created.
Most of her snared humans were no better than the man who'd tried to shoot her; they knew wolves, if they knew them at all, as shapes in the dark. Maybe careful trading partners, if no-one was looking and they needed something. The sergeant was the closest to looking at her like she was people--she wondered if he wasn't local. He'd growled back, even afraid, and the boys around him hadn't. They kept sneaking glances at him, like they were waiting for him to give the word and they'd try to put her over the edge of the platform, or to run.
He hadn't. Hadn't fought her, had almost laughed when she'd threatened to toss the first of her snared humans off the platform. From close range he smelled worried, and it didn't spike when she circled close to him. He was worried because he knew his side was losing, not because she was close enough to leap.
She liked that, a little. Not enough to trust him the way she'd have trusted a wolf in his place, but she liked that.
She'd paced the platform another time, started to wonder if she should leave, should circle down below the platform and try to pick up the crazy mageblood's--the prince Ruadhan's, she remembered to call him out loud most of the time--trail from wherever he'd touched down, when one of the Väinä wolfpack started singing a triumph.
All the humans flinched, and she huffed a laugh. Padded back over to the edge of the platform again, glanced down. She couldn't see the wolf--wolves, now, she could hear other voices joining the first, including one of the Tall Pines sopranos--but by the sound they'd started in the harbour.
Before adding to the chorus, she looked back at the humans, cocked her head to the side, made eye contact with the sergeant. "They're singing victory," she told him, and he winced.
Didn't look away, though, which was why she asked-- "will you fight, if I bring us down to the harbour?"
Wolves wouldn't. Not unless it was personal. But humans weren't wolves, didn't seem to grasp that winning a fight that left three quarters of both sides dead killed everyone.
This pack hadn't even bothered with a token tangle. They'd heard the same rumours as the humans had, and the wolves had guessed what was going on by the second night they'd set up camp on a hill. They'd bared teeth at her, but when she hadn't responded with anything other than a derisive snort they'd given ground. Offered civilised courtesies like the ranges of the local wildlife, the courses of spring rivers, stories, histories. The stories had been small. Losing, ever since the humans had moved in and they'd lost access to the best harbour.
"What happens if we don't?" the sergeant asked eventually. Conversationally, even.
She blinked. "Don't fight? You stop shooting at wolves, even if it's winter--they'll come to your keep and ask to come in, and if you don't have space or fuel to keep them you'll send a boat to tell us that. They'll tell you if there's death on the ridge, and you'll help them kill it, or you'll call for help and we will."
He blinked.
One of the boys--the one who'd been with the sergeant when she found them--said " . . What?"
She snorted derision at them all. "You won't be the Väinä harbour and the wolves of the hills anymore--you'll be Väinä, off the Uaithne, who live near the water and up the hills both. You have ugly four-horned things that shed soft in spring, that you can keep or you can trade for what you want more. You have help going after Death-on-the-ridge, my kind and rifles both. You have Arvore wood to fix your platforms, fix your boats, and if you want help building better you send a boat to Riverbirch and say so, and someone will."
She snorted again, almost growled but swallowed it in time. They were still staring at her, and she paced back and forth a few times, trying to find the right words. Wolves were usually faster than this. So were river-traders. Maybe it was seeing rifles in action?
"My boots are Tall Pines leather and Hadassah rubber," she tried. "I've been to Silver Needles and Riverbirch and Yasen since the winter ended. I helped kill a griffin nest in Yasen--" she couldn't help the grin that curled around her mouth, softer than the challenge that bared teeth, all lip and cheek and eye. "Nobody died."
"Griffin nest," the sergeant repeated, shocked enough that he forgot to be tense, "and nobody died?"
She grinned wider, crinkled her eyes almost closed. "Y'did meet the prince Ruadhan," she pointed out, and he blinked again.
"What's in it for you?" he asked after a while, as the singing started to die down, and she snickered.
"Not getting shot at when I come up the river?"
He flicked his hand in a fair-enough gesture that made her think of the lakes down by Silver Needles or Kayetan. She was almost sure he wasn't local, had grown up somewhere other than Väinä.
"Come down to the water," she invited, nodding towards the stairs. "Find out."
He stood slowly, a little shaky as his legs remembered blood flow, but he stood. Nodded. Started walking towards the stairs, was trailed abruptly as the boys all jolted into motion at once, stumbling over their feet and her proximity, and she snickered again.
DIdn't have to trot to catch up as she padded after them, they were all moving slow. Probably deliberate on the sergeant's part, and she debated if that was because he was waiting for the boys' legs to recover, because the stairs weren't guarded from the drop by much at all, or because he knew wolves well enough that giving them something to chase tended to go badly for the humans involved.
She was hoping for the first or the second--that he'd believed her, at least enough to listen to her crazy mageblood, or Belladonna's. He'd come up from the water while they'd come down from the ridge, the Tall Pines pack at his heels, for all that it'd been one of the Väinä wolves who'd started singing.
They wouldn't have bothered with Väinä harbour yet, she thought. Would have moved the wolves somewhere safer, let the humans fight their own share of the wildlife on the ridge plus the pack's share, except for the fact that Väinä was one of Ilmatar Ridge's cast-off children, and every river trader who came anywhere near Ilmatar harbour wanted someone to take the baron down a peg or six once they'd gotten away.
She'd have left it. Ilmatar wasn't theirs, not yet, they had no reason to care. The crazy magebloods cared, though, for reasons she couldn't grasp, and so here they were.
That really was quite the drop, she noticed again as they turned, started going down a set of stairs that didn't smell of mageblood. The drop from the platform she'd just spent most of an hour pacing was smaller, and it had been high enough she hadn't wanted to try it.
"Don't sneeze," the sergeant called up to her, and she blinked, hopped a half-step away from the edge without thinking about it.
He was grinning when she looked, trying to keep his teeth covered and looking past her shoulder instead of at her face, and she coughed a laugh of her own. "How many do you lose a year?" she called back, and he waved a careless hand.
"We don't let the new kids up here until they've proved they won't fall off the low ones."
"That doesn't always help," one of the boys added, and she had to keep herself from singing laughter, near relief.
She wasn't part of the dark to them anymore. Wolf, yes, none of them looked her in the face, but not monster. "Ever tried ropes?"
"We have to get rope off rigging," the nearest of the boys told her as she slid past him, herself on the outside, "they say we don't have the right sort of fibers to make our own."
"Huh," she mused out loud, slipping past another boy on the stairs. This one turned sideways to give her more space. "The Väinä pack make matting out of a couple kinds of plants--they might know something that would work."
"I'll have to ask one," the sergeant said as she fell in behind him. It wasn't quite a joking tone. She hid another grin as he hesitated over the next step, visibly realising what he'd said.
"Told you we weren't of the dark," she muttered, just loud enough for him to hear. When he glanced over his shoulder at her, she grinned back entirely with her eyes.
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification (River Barons); Ilne, a sergeant whose name I don't know yet
Prompt: 72F "victory"
Word Count: 1703
Notes: Follows waiting for the yelling to stop (which was originally written in 2009 and tweaked a bit with the context from this one. Biggest jigsaw puzzle, or biggest jigsaw puzzle?); apparently this is Väinä they're tackling. Good to know. I think it's a fortified trading post, not a barony as such, near Ilmatar Ridge.
We're before Baron Black Rocks invites several of his rivals into his spider's den, but in the lead-up to it.
Because there is always more context. Stupid, stupid fractal story. Argh.
---------
Ilne caught another few humans the same way she'd caught the first three. None of them were highly ranked enough to have holdout guns, just knives and bows, and she was willing to bet her reflexes against those. She'd already had a close encounter with a holdout gun that morning, but he'd let the powder sit too long, and it hadn't fired when he tried. She'd pounced while he was still panicking.
The memory of close-range terror made her grin. Even after she'd gotten back up off the man's chest he'd been shaking so hard that she'd left him in the care of two of the pups and one of the humans--he'd known for certain she could have had his throat out and she'd chosen not to go for it.
She couldn't hear anyone else on the stairs for the moment, and rolled up off her crouch to pad the platform again. She could still smell the trail her crazy mageblood had left, two circles around the platform, his hands in the sergeant's coat, and then straight over the edge like he thought he could fly. Even through her flattened human nose she could smell the lingering shock, both mageblood-brought and that she'd created.
Most of her snared humans were no better than the man who'd tried to shoot her; they knew wolves, if they knew them at all, as shapes in the dark. Maybe careful trading partners, if no-one was looking and they needed something. The sergeant was the closest to looking at her like she was people--she wondered if he wasn't local. He'd growled back, even afraid, and the boys around him hadn't. They kept sneaking glances at him, like they were waiting for him to give the word and they'd try to put her over the edge of the platform, or to run.
He hadn't. Hadn't fought her, had almost laughed when she'd threatened to toss the first of her snared humans off the platform. From close range he smelled worried, and it didn't spike when she circled close to him. He was worried because he knew his side was losing, not because she was close enough to leap.
She liked that, a little. Not enough to trust him the way she'd have trusted a wolf in his place, but she liked that.
She'd paced the platform another time, started to wonder if she should leave, should circle down below the platform and try to pick up the crazy mageblood's--the prince Ruadhan's, she remembered to call him out loud most of the time--trail from wherever he'd touched down, when one of the Väinä wolfpack started singing a triumph.
All the humans flinched, and she huffed a laugh. Padded back over to the edge of the platform again, glanced down. She couldn't see the wolf--wolves, now, she could hear other voices joining the first, including one of the Tall Pines sopranos--but by the sound they'd started in the harbour.
Before adding to the chorus, she looked back at the humans, cocked her head to the side, made eye contact with the sergeant. "They're singing victory," she told him, and he winced.
Didn't look away, though, which was why she asked-- "will you fight, if I bring us down to the harbour?"
Wolves wouldn't. Not unless it was personal. But humans weren't wolves, didn't seem to grasp that winning a fight that left three quarters of both sides dead killed everyone.
This pack hadn't even bothered with a token tangle. They'd heard the same rumours as the humans had, and the wolves had guessed what was going on by the second night they'd set up camp on a hill. They'd bared teeth at her, but when she hadn't responded with anything other than a derisive snort they'd given ground. Offered civilised courtesies like the ranges of the local wildlife, the courses of spring rivers, stories, histories. The stories had been small. Losing, ever since the humans had moved in and they'd lost access to the best harbour.
"What happens if we don't?" the sergeant asked eventually. Conversationally, even.
She blinked. "Don't fight? You stop shooting at wolves, even if it's winter--they'll come to your keep and ask to come in, and if you don't have space or fuel to keep them you'll send a boat to tell us that. They'll tell you if there's death on the ridge, and you'll help them kill it, or you'll call for help and we will."
He blinked.
One of the boys--the one who'd been with the sergeant when she found them--said " . . What?"
She snorted derision at them all. "You won't be the Väinä harbour and the wolves of the hills anymore--you'll be Väinä, off the Uaithne, who live near the water and up the hills both. You have ugly four-horned things that shed soft in spring, that you can keep or you can trade for what you want more. You have help going after Death-on-the-ridge, my kind and rifles both. You have Arvore wood to fix your platforms, fix your boats, and if you want help building better you send a boat to Riverbirch and say so, and someone will."
She snorted again, almost growled but swallowed it in time. They were still staring at her, and she paced back and forth a few times, trying to find the right words. Wolves were usually faster than this. So were river-traders. Maybe it was seeing rifles in action?
"My boots are Tall Pines leather and Hadassah rubber," she tried. "I've been to Silver Needles and Riverbirch and Yasen since the winter ended. I helped kill a griffin nest in Yasen--" she couldn't help the grin that curled around her mouth, softer than the challenge that bared teeth, all lip and cheek and eye. "Nobody died."
"Griffin nest," the sergeant repeated, shocked enough that he forgot to be tense, "and nobody died?"
She grinned wider, crinkled her eyes almost closed. "Y'did meet the prince Ruadhan," she pointed out, and he blinked again.
"What's in it for you?" he asked after a while, as the singing started to die down, and she snickered.
"Not getting shot at when I come up the river?"
He flicked his hand in a fair-enough gesture that made her think of the lakes down by Silver Needles or Kayetan. She was almost sure he wasn't local, had grown up somewhere other than Väinä.
"Come down to the water," she invited, nodding towards the stairs. "Find out."
He stood slowly, a little shaky as his legs remembered blood flow, but he stood. Nodded. Started walking towards the stairs, was trailed abruptly as the boys all jolted into motion at once, stumbling over their feet and her proximity, and she snickered again.
DIdn't have to trot to catch up as she padded after them, they were all moving slow. Probably deliberate on the sergeant's part, and she debated if that was because he was waiting for the boys' legs to recover, because the stairs weren't guarded from the drop by much at all, or because he knew wolves well enough that giving them something to chase tended to go badly for the humans involved.
She was hoping for the first or the second--that he'd believed her, at least enough to listen to her crazy mageblood, or Belladonna's. He'd come up from the water while they'd come down from the ridge, the Tall Pines pack at his heels, for all that it'd been one of the Väinä wolves who'd started singing.
They wouldn't have bothered with Väinä harbour yet, she thought. Would have moved the wolves somewhere safer, let the humans fight their own share of the wildlife on the ridge plus the pack's share, except for the fact that Väinä was one of Ilmatar Ridge's cast-off children, and every river trader who came anywhere near Ilmatar harbour wanted someone to take the baron down a peg or six once they'd gotten away.
She'd have left it. Ilmatar wasn't theirs, not yet, they had no reason to care. The crazy magebloods cared, though, for reasons she couldn't grasp, and so here they were.
That really was quite the drop, she noticed again as they turned, started going down a set of stairs that didn't smell of mageblood. The drop from the platform she'd just spent most of an hour pacing was smaller, and it had been high enough she hadn't wanted to try it.
"Don't sneeze," the sergeant called up to her, and she blinked, hopped a half-step away from the edge without thinking about it.
He was grinning when she looked, trying to keep his teeth covered and looking past her shoulder instead of at her face, and she coughed a laugh of her own. "How many do you lose a year?" she called back, and he waved a careless hand.
"We don't let the new kids up here until they've proved they won't fall off the low ones."
"That doesn't always help," one of the boys added, and she had to keep herself from singing laughter, near relief.
She wasn't part of the dark to them anymore. Wolf, yes, none of them looked her in the face, but not monster. "Ever tried ropes?"
"We have to get rope off rigging," the nearest of the boys told her as she slid past him, herself on the outside, "they say we don't have the right sort of fibers to make our own."
"Huh," she mused out loud, slipping past another boy on the stairs. This one turned sideways to give her more space. "The Väinä pack make matting out of a couple kinds of plants--they might know something that would work."
"I'll have to ask one," the sergeant said as she fell in behind him. It wasn't quite a joking tone. She hid another grin as he hesitated over the next step, visibly realising what he'd said.
"Told you we weren't of the dark," she muttered, just loud enough for him to hear. When he glanced over his shoulder at her, she grinned back entirely with her eyes.