Title: Hi.
'Verse/characters: Falcons' Feathers; Irina, a smallish horde of Taureg swine! boarding party from a certain tribe
Prompt: 54C "future"
Word Count: 1098
Notes: first meeting! .... It doesn't go well.
Includes an old
comment-size piece.
Vocabulary: dzhenshina is a married woman, dyevushka is a young unmarried one; 'Khenbish' means 'Nobody'.
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"Dzhenshina, dyevushka, I am so sorry," the rudder-man said over a mirror, and she watched her aunt raise her head from her needlework in a sharp jerk.
"What is it?" her aunt said, just before Irina would have demanded on her own behalf and nevermind the look she would have gotten for it. The needlework disappeared into the pocket set aside for such things in her aunt's chair, folded neatly into a godly number first.
"Raiders."
"Boje moi," her aunt muttered, pressed her fingers to her mouth, then dropped her hand, rose, held her hand out to Irina. "Well, we will not fight. We haven't the men or the arms to do it. Have you called?"
"Yes, dzhenshina. I had no answer."
Her aunt closed her eyes, a line appearing between her brows, then opened them, nodded. "I have heard you. Pass the word through the other boats that we will not be fighting, my word on it."
"Yes, dzhenshina."
A half-hour passed in tense silence, before the raiders matched path and moved themselves from horses to the boat, calling back and forth to one another in a barbarian tongue she didn't understand at all.
Six of them who boarded the boat wore bright orange at their cuffs and shoulders, narrow panels that shimmered like silk and caught the light, reflected it back like emergency runners.
She doubted it was anything so innocuous, and looked at them only when none of them was looking at her. She and her aunt kept their faces lowered, eyes on their shoes, to appear meek and uninteresting.
It was hard to keep her eyes low, between fury and curiousity; having her aunt beside her, swathed in expensive-because-it-was-imported fabric helped, because her aunt was furious but intent on something.
Four of the barbarians wore full-face masks, and one of them gave orders in accented Russian, his demands expressed in a priest's rolling tones.
Another one was the one they all looked to, though, though he had yet to speak, and she wondered why, under the fury at the presumption and the little niggle of fear. She thought her father would pay a ransom, but the problem there was whether he'd get them back unharmed, neither frozen nor abused.
The rumours said the barbarians liked to do both, as long as the hostages were Christian and not barbarians like themselves--some sort of complicated honour among thieves, she supposed.
They certainly had no respect for icons--she saw her aunt's beautiful Olga pass from gloved hand to bared as one of the masked men raised his mask, revealed himself grizzled and gray, hair knotted into a rider's short crest and his face shaved just enough to permit his breathing gear to seal properly.
She dropped her eyes quickly as the man glanced over at her, bit her lip from the inside until she tasted copper, so she'd show the proper face.
Their silent leader laughed, behind his mask, and the sound echoed metallic. Her aunt tensed, beside her, and she couldn't help but glance over, wondering what was wrong, and so badly so.
The boat's men were herded into one of the cabins, the door closed and locked on them, but Irina and her aunt were allowed to remain free.
Irina wished devoutly that she'd been given a little gun for her Saint's Day, not the string of pearls she'd gloated over and worn so often she'd had to have them restringed once already as the cord frayed nearly to breaking from her touching and tugging on it. She was only here to keep her aunt company--hadn't wanted to come because her aunt didn't ride and wouldn't let her if she was within her aunt's eye. Unladylike, to go about on a horse instead of a sledge or a boat.
She sneered at the memory of that conversation, and paused as she saw one of the masked barbarians emerge from her cabin. Stared, then clenched her hands into fists, wished again for a gun or a sword or something, then--
"That's mine!" she shouted when she saw the necklace looped around his wrist like a bracelet. Lunged forward to try to take it back, bounced off a wall as he dodged, and grabbed at his arm.
Two of her fingers caught in the biggest loop--the one that his wrist was too big to have wrapped the string 'round a third time but he should have--and her weight pulled the string past tensile strength.
Beads scattered into the air and down the hallway, and she heard him laughing metallically at her as he ran away, catching the loose ends of the now half-necklace as he went.
She growled at his retreating back, her shoulder and hip smarting from the collision with the wall, then knelt to try to retrieve as many as she could. Those were still hers, and she'd have her necklace back complete, damn his laughing barbarian hide.
When she stood up, she found him standing at the lock at the end of the hallway, his mask raised, grinning at her.
The shock of pure fury pouring through her jerked her spine straight, her face composed. If she'd been a boy she would have had a weapon and she'd have shot him, may God the Father forgive her eventually, but being a girl she had nothing but the scattered pearls she'd tucked away into pockets and down her chemise for safekeeping.
He was younger than she'd expected, and maybe that was why he wore a mask. Lightning saints knew her aunt would have torn a strip off him if she'd known he was only just barely older than Irina herself, for all the weapons he and his carried and the manifest power they had in their horses.
He still had her necklace wrapped around his wrist, the ends now neatly knotted together to keep them from scattering further.
As he turned away, perfectly aware that she'd seen him, he raised that arm to wave an insolent goodbye.
She stamped her foot, hard enough to hurt, and shrieked after him "Who are you?!"
He looked back over his shoulder at her, classic rider's minimal movement in every move--and that made her even angrier, because how dare he be able to ride so often when she wasn't allowed to?--a wide grin showing off his white but uneven teeth. "Khenbish," he told her, blew her a kiss, then pulled his mask back down, clipped it neatly sealed against his coat and went out the lock in what looked like a single expertly choreographed movement.