[Wild Roses] Trickwood Unification
Title: reinforcements
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification; Hernén, Belladonna, Donnel
Prompt: 73F "delivery"
Word Count: 1851
Notes: follows downriver, uphill. Now I just need to figure out where Ruadhan's gotten to. *eyes*
I am apparently currently into long sentences.
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They'd cleared Waycross, finally. He'd nearly burnt the whole region to the ground in the process, had been obliged to flood the low-lying areas, which made the rival families of . . monsters slower but much harder to get at, and conceived a love he'd never expected for phosphorus and magnesium.
He was still angry over losing Pratap, but the stallion had been the only one. They'd come close with a few of the wolves, though, and Niall would have the marks to prove how close he'd been to a snaky, poisonous head taking a phosphorus round directly in the gaping mouth for quite a while to come, but he'd kicked the thing's head high enough, fast enough.
Sapierre had both shoulder-scales from eight corpses, each of them nearly as long as his forearm, and partials from two others. He was apparently planning to see if he could carve armour out of them. Niall and Riika had rolled their eyes in disconcerting unison behind Sapierre's back, but had done their best to salvage scales.
They hadn't bothered with Niall's; heaving the still-burning body off the wolf and getting him treated had taken massive priority.
But Waycross was clear, which meant Ulysse's order of tea could finally go directly down two sets of rivers instead of the awkward portaging route Geoffrey had engineered around Waycross. Belladonna had wandered up with the first of the supply runs to inform him that his crazy mage brother had promptly tripled his order, and wanted to know if he had any of 'that cider, he knows the one' going spare.
Inevitably, she'd done that while he was in the middle of a cold river-water bath, and it was only that he was behind several lines of sentries that kept him from going for the shotgun propped against the stump he'd left his change of clothes on. Once he'd finished shouting at her about it, and dressing, he sat down on the stump, scrubbing at his hair with a rag that had started life as one of his shirts.
When he looked up, she'd laid her head down across her front paws, was watching him thoughtfully.
"What," he didn't really ask, and she huffed a near-laugh, lifted her head to shake it before she inquired "You going to send the cider?"
"Probably," he allowed, "assuming the orchard up Ilmatar way will still take dye blocks in trade."
She stood up, stretched, then flopped back down crosslegged in a jumble of changing limbs. Someone had cut her hair since he'd last seen her on two legs, and she'd tied it back by twisting a couple of leather thongs into her hair along the sides of her head and then knotting them together behind her head.
"Big delivery this time," she told him, but wouldn't explain herself. Just grinned whenever he asked, all long red tongue or pale teeth, depending on her form.
--
Geoffrey had jokingly started calling the harbour Ulysse built Rua da Arvore, once they'd fought themselves enough space to be able to start dropping trees farther upriver. Hernén was nearly certain he hadn't expected it to stick, but it had; it was even marked as such on the current maps.
It was a warm feeling to come back to, after so long in tents or caves, and Hernén sat up straighter in his saddle when they crested the last hill. Blinked as it came into view.
There was a second paddock built, bigger than the one he'd left, fenced off on one side with a set of mapping stakes. They didn't look spelled from his vantage point, just a visual reminder for the horses not to go wandering down to the water or over to investigate the grain-stores. Squinting, he could see Thekla pawing at the corner-anchor post of the roofed stall; she must have tried jumping fences again. At three, she certainly had the legs for it--he'd watched her clear a wall higher than his head before he left--but it was a terrible habit.
There were more horses than he'd expected. Many more horses, enough that once they got close enough he could start counting hides he didn't know, he leaned down to ask Belladonna what in Winter someone had dug up on the horse-breeders.
She laughed herself hoarse, had to pad off to the side of the trail to catch her breath, but once she did, she just shook her head at him, grinning again.
That was getting to be really irritating.
They gradually lost wolves and pillion riders as they came down the hill. He hadn't been in the lead, so he saw Riika hop off and wander down towards the armoury, carrying at least four guns, and they lost Sapierre when he spotted that someone had a forge lit. Belladonna disappeared sometime around the time he kneed Tuija to a halt, close enough to Thekla that she lifted her head, whickered a hopeful greeting to him and her older sister.
She was doomed to disappointment, at least for a few hours. He had too much to do already, and needed a meal before he tackled her again. He promised her tomorrow, and made a note to move her into one of the warded sections so she could work off at least some of that energy in the rest of the daylight. There'd been talk of fitting her with a set of spiked shoes and seeing if she could climb mountains like a goat. He--wasn't prepared to bet against her, but thought it was a bad idea.
He would have wondered more at Belladonna's absence, but she tended to make horses nervous, and he had most of a herd to divest of saddles, travois, and riders before he turned them loose.
Without knowing if any of the new horses were sick, he wasn't going to risk his tired ones, so they were eventually turned loose in the old paddock with a couple of bales of hay torn up in the dry area. Tuija stuck close, nudged him in the chest until he'd scratched both sides of her neck the entire length of her mane--which needed trimming--and rubbed the bases of her ears to her satisfaction.
Once his horse had dismissed him, he went looking for Geoffrey. Came up empty, found out from one of the quartermasters he'd left Tall Pines to take a look at Silver Needles, whatever that was, and wasn't expected in for a while. Ulysse hadn't been in, but had sent Navy-sized crates of the components for shells in payment for the tea he'd already received, in addition to everything else that had arrived in his absence.
Trying to discover what Belladonna had meant about the delivery eventually led him past the cooking areas. He escaped an hour later half a loaf of Oanez' bread, seven sausages, a roasted tuber the size of his hand and two vegetables he didn't recognise heavier, and was pleasantly buzzed on good cider and better conversation. He'd been missed, but not needed, and it felt good. Like progress.
He was pacing the borders, half-absent, when he saw Usoa down in one of the beaten-dirt arenas with a stick and someone he didn't know on sight. Mildly curious, he wandered closer, still couldn't recognise the dark-haired man half-knelt in the dirt, watching Usoa sketch something with a stick.
She obviously felt pretty comfortable with him, had a skirt wrapped over her trousers even if it was kilted up at one side, and was pointing with the stick even as she kept sketching. He was wearing a dark sweater that looked borrowed, too short for him in the sleeves so he'd shoved them up around his elbows, and as Hernén got closer, meaning to offer his name, the man looked up, and stopped being a stranger.
Hernén stared. Stared for a second more, then shook his head, trying to jar the shock loose.
His brother, Donnel Sabaey, who he'd never so much as seen away from hot running water, was sitting half-knelt in the dirt, watching as Usoa drew a map with a stick, wearing a borrowed sweater.
And grinning, mostly with his eyes, as he raised a hand in greeting.
Usoa glanced up, nodded to Hernén, then went back to sketching, poking Donnel in the knee with the dirty end of her stick when he didn't pay immediate attention to something she'd said.
"Sorry," he was saying as Hernén got within hearing range, and Usoa flicked her empty hand at him, not really grumpy.
"You were the one wanted a map," she groused, and he held up empty hands in mock surrender as Hernén came up level with them, saw she'd sketched from Rua da Arvore into Tall Pines and Waycross in wavy water-lines and crosshatched ridges.
"You're right, I did, and thank you for sharing," he said, then looked up at Hernén, smiling again in a closed-mouth way that Hernén would have sworn looked practiced not to give offense to wolves.
After a second's thought, he realised it was. Donnel kept company with wolves, at least when he wasn't living in the Keep, and even then he tended to have at least one around. He'd never had reason to particularly notice that, before the Sandovals had depth-charged his career options, but now that he did he wondered.
"Hernén," Donnel said, nodding and gesturing for Hernén to pull up a patch of dirt of his own. "I asked where you were and Usoa said that needed a map."
"He got here," Usoa pointed to the circle she'd used for Rua da Arvore with the stick, "but only had the Arvore up through the Widow's Shawl in his head."
Sinking down into his own half-kneel, Hernén snagged the stick as it went past--lightly enough she could fight if she wanted to--and began to add the new overland routes through Waycross. "Not surprised he needed a map, then."
"Huh. You lose trees through there?" Usoa cocked her head at one of the paths, then blinked when Hernén agreed with her, sketched the extent of the fires and the possible new marsh from the flooding. "Bad one, then."
Hernén nodded. "Got 'em all, though. Lost one of the horses, and nearly Niall."
She and Donnel both blinked, but while his was confused, hers was concerned. "Would you mind if--"
"Last I saw he was holed up under the raised meathouse." Hernén pointed with her stick. "I think I can manage with what you've laid out here, if you want to go."
She glanced between them, dipped her head in Donnel's direction, then didn't quite trot off. Hernén honestly wasn't sure if she'd be shouting shortly, or just haul over one of the felt rugs for the wolf to sleep on.
Once she was out of earshot, he glanced over at his half-brother, who quirked up one side of his mouth in a wry smile.
"Ulysse said you could use a hand."
Oh. Oh-- "--that could come in useful," he admitted, and Donnel laughed.
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification; Hernén, Belladonna, Donnel
Prompt: 73F "delivery"
Word Count: 1851
Notes: follows downriver, uphill. Now I just need to figure out where Ruadhan's gotten to. *eyes*
I am apparently currently into long sentences.
---------
They'd cleared Waycross, finally. He'd nearly burnt the whole region to the ground in the process, had been obliged to flood the low-lying areas, which made the rival families of . . monsters slower but much harder to get at, and conceived a love he'd never expected for phosphorus and magnesium.
He was still angry over losing Pratap, but the stallion had been the only one. They'd come close with a few of the wolves, though, and Niall would have the marks to prove how close he'd been to a snaky, poisonous head taking a phosphorus round directly in the gaping mouth for quite a while to come, but he'd kicked the thing's head high enough, fast enough.
Sapierre had both shoulder-scales from eight corpses, each of them nearly as long as his forearm, and partials from two others. He was apparently planning to see if he could carve armour out of them. Niall and Riika had rolled their eyes in disconcerting unison behind Sapierre's back, but had done their best to salvage scales.
They hadn't bothered with Niall's; heaving the still-burning body off the wolf and getting him treated had taken massive priority.
But Waycross was clear, which meant Ulysse's order of tea could finally go directly down two sets of rivers instead of the awkward portaging route Geoffrey had engineered around Waycross. Belladonna had wandered up with the first of the supply runs to inform him that his crazy mage brother had promptly tripled his order, and wanted to know if he had any of 'that cider, he knows the one' going spare.
Inevitably, she'd done that while he was in the middle of a cold river-water bath, and it was only that he was behind several lines of sentries that kept him from going for the shotgun propped against the stump he'd left his change of clothes on. Once he'd finished shouting at her about it, and dressing, he sat down on the stump, scrubbing at his hair with a rag that had started life as one of his shirts.
When he looked up, she'd laid her head down across her front paws, was watching him thoughtfully.
"What," he didn't really ask, and she huffed a near-laugh, lifted her head to shake it before she inquired "You going to send the cider?"
"Probably," he allowed, "assuming the orchard up Ilmatar way will still take dye blocks in trade."
She stood up, stretched, then flopped back down crosslegged in a jumble of changing limbs. Someone had cut her hair since he'd last seen her on two legs, and she'd tied it back by twisting a couple of leather thongs into her hair along the sides of her head and then knotting them together behind her head.
"Big delivery this time," she told him, but wouldn't explain herself. Just grinned whenever he asked, all long red tongue or pale teeth, depending on her form.
--
Geoffrey had jokingly started calling the harbour Ulysse built Rua da Arvore, once they'd fought themselves enough space to be able to start dropping trees farther upriver. Hernén was nearly certain he hadn't expected it to stick, but it had; it was even marked as such on the current maps.
It was a warm feeling to come back to, after so long in tents or caves, and Hernén sat up straighter in his saddle when they crested the last hill. Blinked as it came into view.
There was a second paddock built, bigger than the one he'd left, fenced off on one side with a set of mapping stakes. They didn't look spelled from his vantage point, just a visual reminder for the horses not to go wandering down to the water or over to investigate the grain-stores. Squinting, he could see Thekla pawing at the corner-anchor post of the roofed stall; she must have tried jumping fences again. At three, she certainly had the legs for it--he'd watched her clear a wall higher than his head before he left--but it was a terrible habit.
There were more horses than he'd expected. Many more horses, enough that once they got close enough he could start counting hides he didn't know, he leaned down to ask Belladonna what in Winter someone had dug up on the horse-breeders.
She laughed herself hoarse, had to pad off to the side of the trail to catch her breath, but once she did, she just shook her head at him, grinning again.
That was getting to be really irritating.
They gradually lost wolves and pillion riders as they came down the hill. He hadn't been in the lead, so he saw Riika hop off and wander down towards the armoury, carrying at least four guns, and they lost Sapierre when he spotted that someone had a forge lit. Belladonna disappeared sometime around the time he kneed Tuija to a halt, close enough to Thekla that she lifted her head, whickered a hopeful greeting to him and her older sister.
She was doomed to disappointment, at least for a few hours. He had too much to do already, and needed a meal before he tackled her again. He promised her tomorrow, and made a note to move her into one of the warded sections so she could work off at least some of that energy in the rest of the daylight. There'd been talk of fitting her with a set of spiked shoes and seeing if she could climb mountains like a goat. He--wasn't prepared to bet against her, but thought it was a bad idea.
He would have wondered more at Belladonna's absence, but she tended to make horses nervous, and he had most of a herd to divest of saddles, travois, and riders before he turned them loose.
Without knowing if any of the new horses were sick, he wasn't going to risk his tired ones, so they were eventually turned loose in the old paddock with a couple of bales of hay torn up in the dry area. Tuija stuck close, nudged him in the chest until he'd scratched both sides of her neck the entire length of her mane--which needed trimming--and rubbed the bases of her ears to her satisfaction.
Once his horse had dismissed him, he went looking for Geoffrey. Came up empty, found out from one of the quartermasters he'd left Tall Pines to take a look at Silver Needles, whatever that was, and wasn't expected in for a while. Ulysse hadn't been in, but had sent Navy-sized crates of the components for shells in payment for the tea he'd already received, in addition to everything else that had arrived in his absence.
Trying to discover what Belladonna had meant about the delivery eventually led him past the cooking areas. He escaped an hour later half a loaf of Oanez' bread, seven sausages, a roasted tuber the size of his hand and two vegetables he didn't recognise heavier, and was pleasantly buzzed on good cider and better conversation. He'd been missed, but not needed, and it felt good. Like progress.
He was pacing the borders, half-absent, when he saw Usoa down in one of the beaten-dirt arenas with a stick and someone he didn't know on sight. Mildly curious, he wandered closer, still couldn't recognise the dark-haired man half-knelt in the dirt, watching Usoa sketch something with a stick.
She obviously felt pretty comfortable with him, had a skirt wrapped over her trousers even if it was kilted up at one side, and was pointing with the stick even as she kept sketching. He was wearing a dark sweater that looked borrowed, too short for him in the sleeves so he'd shoved them up around his elbows, and as Hernén got closer, meaning to offer his name, the man looked up, and stopped being a stranger.
Hernén stared. Stared for a second more, then shook his head, trying to jar the shock loose.
His brother, Donnel Sabaey, who he'd never so much as seen away from hot running water, was sitting half-knelt in the dirt, watching as Usoa drew a map with a stick, wearing a borrowed sweater.
And grinning, mostly with his eyes, as he raised a hand in greeting.
Usoa glanced up, nodded to Hernén, then went back to sketching, poking Donnel in the knee with the dirty end of her stick when he didn't pay immediate attention to something she'd said.
"Sorry," he was saying as Hernén got within hearing range, and Usoa flicked her empty hand at him, not really grumpy.
"You were the one wanted a map," she groused, and he held up empty hands in mock surrender as Hernén came up level with them, saw she'd sketched from Rua da Arvore into Tall Pines and Waycross in wavy water-lines and crosshatched ridges.
"You're right, I did, and thank you for sharing," he said, then looked up at Hernén, smiling again in a closed-mouth way that Hernén would have sworn looked practiced not to give offense to wolves.
After a second's thought, he realised it was. Donnel kept company with wolves, at least when he wasn't living in the Keep, and even then he tended to have at least one around. He'd never had reason to particularly notice that, before the Sandovals had depth-charged his career options, but now that he did he wondered.
"Hernén," Donnel said, nodding and gesturing for Hernén to pull up a patch of dirt of his own. "I asked where you were and Usoa said that needed a map."
"He got here," Usoa pointed to the circle she'd used for Rua da Arvore with the stick, "but only had the Arvore up through the Widow's Shawl in his head."
Sinking down into his own half-kneel, Hernén snagged the stick as it went past--lightly enough she could fight if she wanted to--and began to add the new overland routes through Waycross. "Not surprised he needed a map, then."
"Huh. You lose trees through there?" Usoa cocked her head at one of the paths, then blinked when Hernén agreed with her, sketched the extent of the fires and the possible new marsh from the flooding. "Bad one, then."
Hernén nodded. "Got 'em all, though. Lost one of the horses, and nearly Niall."
She and Donnel both blinked, but while his was confused, hers was concerned. "Would you mind if--"
"Last I saw he was holed up under the raised meathouse." Hernén pointed with her stick. "I think I can manage with what you've laid out here, if you want to go."
She glanced between them, dipped her head in Donnel's direction, then didn't quite trot off. Hernén honestly wasn't sure if she'd be shouting shortly, or just haul over one of the felt rugs for the wolf to sleep on.
Once she was out of earshot, he glanced over at his half-brother, who quirked up one side of his mouth in a wry smile.
"Ulysse said you could use a hand."
Oh. Oh-- "--that could come in useful," he admitted, and Donnel laughed.