Calithiewren
Captured and enslaved as a young girl, it is only Wren's childlike stubbornness and undomitable will to survive that sustains her through many tumultuous decades. When finally she tastes freedom, it is bittersweet on her tongue and the wide, open world alien to this decidely literal young woman.
Wren was incredibly fun to play and I have the other players of the Neverwinter Nights roleplay server "Talernon" to thank for inspiring such great roleplay.
The Forge
Ha-jollair
Before the Battle
The Promise
A Taste of Vengeance
Freedom
The Forge
Her earliest memory was of the Forge.
Distant, metallic clanking grating on her sensitive ears. Searing heat in the darkness. The hiss of a red-hot blade thrust into a cooling pan and the eerie bloody glow of the forge. The gaping maw of that same forge, horrible with flaming breath and the sour-sweet scent of ebonmoss burning to maintain the fire.
She was aware that she was not alone, curled like a kicked puppy in the corner, her long, coltish legs drawn up to her chest and arms wrapped around her shins. There was the monster at the anvil, beating the spirit of the metal out of it as he bent raw elements to his will. He bellowed at the apprentince boy, one tenth his size and no more than ten years of age, and raged at the metal to assert himself as its master. There was another like her, though despite her keen vision she could not see very well through the dim, smoky, cavern, and she did know who it might be.
Vaguely, in the farthest reaches of her half-dead mind, she recalled a handsome woman with hair like a hearthfire, all golden orange and gleaming in candlelight, who had held her to breast and stroked her own hair to comfort her. Those days were gone, why and how, she was not sure. With dim recognition she found herself fingercombing her own filthy mane of firegold locks, so dingy and caked with grime as to be more gray-black than orange-yellow.
"Brat!" The monsterman at the forge growled. When the other did not stir and she felt the burning cold of the monster's black eyes upon her. She leapt to her feet and nearly spilled to the floor again, weak from hunger and faint with exhaustion. Timidly she half-crawled half-walked, her fingers brushing the ash laden floor to ensure that she did not tumble forward, toward the massive iron anvil. He barked something in some rough tongue and the apprentice, who was nearly as anxious in the monsterman's presence as she, stepped forward and braced himself, taking hold of her. Immediately, she was overcome with terror and though she had no idea what was coming, her arms flailed and she kicked for all her young body was worth.
The monsterman spat a curse and threw his tools down furiously. In an instant he was upon her, her nostrils filled with the thick, rank stench of man sweat, sulfur, and whatever half-rotten meal he'd eaten that day. His hands were enormous, each as large as her head, and when those iron-hard fingers closed around her thin arms, she was sure that he would kill her. He would shatter her bones in his bare grip and then dash her skull against the wall and let the red and grey bits slip down until they made a splut on the rough stone floor.
He slammed his fist into her chin, snapping her head back on her and then tossed her, barely conscious with a mouthful of blood, to the floor. She was crushed beneath the thick, filthy sole of his boot, her cheek mashed to the stone, his heel digging into her spine so hard she was sure it would snap. And then he was howling at the apprentice boy, who returned to thrust a tool into the burning mouth of the Forge. Her tears and screams fell upon deaf ears as the monsterman yelled impatiently and the apprentice cowered, whimpering.
From the corner of her eye she caught sight of the other like her, a vicious scar marring a proud, handsome face. One elongated elven ear was cruelly sliced from its head and the left eye had been put-out by the same blade that left its mark across its face. There was a glimmer of recognition as one fine curl of glimmering firegold slipped down, hanging limply before the terrified hazel eyes. Mother! And the memories flooded her being in that single moment. Home, safety, warmth, love. The stern gaze of her father as he showed her how to hold a wooden sword and the comforting embrace he gave when she skinned a knee in her feverish climbing of trees. The handsome face that was all things to a child, a mother's smile and tender ministrations. She knew only a heartbeat of anguish as she saw what the butchers had done to ravage her mother's face, and recalled in the blink of an eye the chaotic destruction the Raiders had brought upon the tiny village in the trees. Young eyes had seen her father gutted like a pig for the spit, her elder sister raped and then her throat slit and her dead body abused still further. She had watched them dash her infant brother's brains against the Heartwood, the clan's sacred tree.
But in the next moment her young body was lanced through with agony. The scent of burning flesh pushed past the monsterman's foul odor to filled her head. Her vision burst into a field of white, as hot and searing as the branding iron he ground into her shoulder. The pain was such that she could not even cry out, that the tears dried in her eyes and her struggling went still.
Only after the monsterman yanked the iron away, leaving a hideous, red mark in her flesh, did blessed oblivion finally take her.
When she awoke, there was no memory left in her head of the tender home she had once known, nor the brutal destruction of it. The loving visage of parents and siblings was torn from her mind by the excruciating heat of the branding iron and whatever hope may have bubbled forth from one so young was smashed beneath the weight of the thick iron slave's collar that coiled around her neck when she awoke.
They had stolen everything from her; home, family, freedom. The girl had nothing to cling to in the steaming, fetid hell they had thrust her into... Nothing except for the name given to her at birth.
Calithiewren.
Ha-jollair
The days were long and brutal. The nights were short and rest was infrequent at best.
Her captors felt it beneath them to leave the sultry canopy to dig gemstones, especially the coverted diamonds, from the coal-laden caves and tunnels beneath the thick undergrowth. So they paid pillagers to raid small encampments whenever their slave population dipped below a certain level - replenishing the supply with fresh, young green elves. They were small enough to do the work and hardy enough to survive the rigorous of captive life, bound in the mines.
She was never sure how many other slaves there were in the mines, though she spent a decade at least toiling there. The slaves were bound by chains, linked at the throat by heavy iron collars, and kept some thirty paces from each other, working silently and unable to communicate well anyway as each tribe has its own dialect and most were so young as to have not fully mastered the more common, High Elven tongue.
Time passed without comprehension. Chained deep beneath the earth in the inky depths of a mine, she did not see daylight and could not judge how long she worked. The captors kept their scarce meals more or less identical and sporadic so they the slaves could not even calculate days based on the cycle of food. She learned their language, with its trilling vowels and strange enunciation, but it sounded strange rolling off a tongue accustomed to the rough, gutteral tongue of her clan.
Her exceptional eyes could spot a winking gem from quite a distance and as the years dragged on, those special finds brought her some worth in the eyes of her masters.
They were a faceless mass of dark skin and cruel eyes, none distinguishable from the rest. For many years she knew could not have matched a single name to any one face, though she could tell their voices apart in the depths of the mine.
As years dragged on, Caliethiewren settled into an adolescent body, which matured slowly but with it brought long, gangly legs and arms. She was no longer as nimble in the cramped quarters and as her captors did not wish to soil their bodies by raping their slaves - she was of no more value. One day was simply yanked from the line and dragged kicking and screaming to the surface.
Sunlight blinded her, hot and warm on her face, and the girl-woman who had lived nearly twenty years in the gem minds, knew that this day was her last. She had grown strong despite the lashings and stood straight and true, scarred as she was by their cruel, biting whips. A body conditioned for hard labor from youth, she was not as spritely as her free kin would have been, but there was a steely strength in her sinewy arms and thighs.
"Ha-jollair!"
Caliethiewren recognized the foreign word as Gemfinder, the nameword they had tried to force her to answer to. Many of the scars that riddle her back were born by her stubborn refusal to give up her own name.
"Caliethiewren." She corrected with a whisper, squinting in the dazzling light, tears running down her soot- and grime-covered cheeks.
"Malii vira naellyameill ki'vy'la Ha-jollair. Caliethiewren. Ii'yah namaeshano'li. Veshaemiir da'rii."
It took her a moment to puzzle through the words, long enough that she got a brutal kick to the ribs that made her cry out. Too large for the mine-work, filthy Gemfinder. Caliethiewren. Stubborn as goat, keeping that name. Useless you are.
"As it please master," she replied in their flighty tongue with its nasal tones and elongated vowels, so alien sounding come from her gutteral, rough voice.
"It does not please Us, Ha-jollair. You are less than the slime on Our boots. You are too unwieldy to serve us in the mines. Your elven blood is murky with the taint of the Thornwood and you are too ugly to serve as whore to Our honored guests! You are nothing, Ha-jollair!"
"As it please Master," she repeated desolately, eyes open only a sliver, anticipating with each breath that a blade would deprive her of her head, or open her throat and that would be the end of Calithiewren.
"Get up, Calithiewren," the slender man growled, his voice as smooth as silk, but hard and unyielding as new forged steel.
Calloused hands grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her to her feet. She was almost as tall as he, a human of maybe thirty years. There was dim, half-buried memory of this man when he was still a boy, cowering from the monster man. The fear was all but tangible on the young woman as the apprentice manhandled her, turning her around to face away from him. Wounded eyes could just make out the hideously large profile of a mountaneous man. She restrained herself, the immediate reaction to scream stiffled by sheer willpower.
The monsterman - she had come to know his name was Gustav Arrayn and that he was a smithy who chose to work amongst the tribe in the sulty jungle for none else valued his particular talents quite as well as these Dark Elves - held a longsword in one of his thick hands. The blade was elegantly curved in an hourglass shape, but tapered to a viscious point and would likely be an effective stabbing weapon in a pinch. Still, its edge glistened, fresh from the whetstone and polished like a mirror. It would slice through flesh and bone cleanly and Caliethiewren took solace in the fact that her death would be clean.
She lifted her chin proudly, to face the afterlife with what ever honor a slave was allowed, and awaited the blow.
A heartbeat. Another. Her head remained upon her neck and she opened first one eye, then the other. To her surprise, Gustav held the blade out to her, one mailed hand gripping the base of the blade so that she may take the grip.
"Take it, Ha-jollair."
"Calithiewren," she insisted dumbly, reaching for the blade.
There she stood, a longsword drooping in her hand, bewildered at the circumstances, with a circle of the Masters standing around her, the muscled apprentice and the monsterman watching with his burning cold black eyes.
"You are useless to us in the mines, Gemfinder," the same man hissed as the apprentice, already armored in dull gray mail, lifted a second sword and a small boy - likely his own apprentince, or a squire of sorts - strapped a steel round shield to his forearm. "But we can appreciate a strong arm, so we give you one chance to prove that your life is worth anything. If you can draw blood against Henri, you have proven you may yet be worth the price to feed and clothe. If you cannot - then you will die, as you have no value."
Calithiewren swallowed thickly and turned her wrist, gripping the blade with a firm but loose grip. It was the way she had been taught some twenty years before by the father she no longer recalled consciously. Her left arm dangled free, but she held it out for balance as the dance began.
Henri was ponderous, his thick muscled arms and torso designed for slamming mallets and tempering swords, not controlled, precise swordplay. As they circled, her tired muscles, tense from having been hunched over so long, began to warm to the motion.
The blood sang in her veins as he swung and she parried, swung and parried. The longsword felt as if it belonged in her hand, moving of its own accord to block each mighty stroke. Henri's strength was not to be denied and when drew back to delivery a full-arm blow - it reverberated through her body.
He held the shield before him, his hard blue eyes peering just over the rim of it, and she scowled, her untrained eyes seeking an opportunity. Henri swung, she dodged, rolling to her knees. It had been a wild swing, sending him off balance and in that instant, she saw her opening.
The tip of her blade caught his knee and the large man howled. It should have been the end of an honorable match, but mad with pain, Henri dove at her again. His blade sliced a chunk of firegold hair from her head, nicking the ridge of her ear.
Calithiewren was on her back in the dirt, the apprentice looming over her with fury in his eyes. There was hate and hurting on his face as he planted his foot on her chest and tossed the steel shield aside. Both hands wrapped around the hilt of his sword as he lifted it high above his head.
It came down.
Blood sprayed hot and frothy, slippery on the hilt of the sword, his life spilling onto her hand. She blinked, her eyes focused in unbelieving horror. Her blade was buried to the hilt in Henri's belly and he twitched violently.
The blade slipped from his nerveless fingers, falling harmlessly to the underbrush. Calithiewren let out a high-pitched groan, pushing her dead foe away. He toppled like a redwood tree into a limp, lifeless heap. Her sword's bloody tip emerged like a steel horn from Henri's back and she scrabbled to her feet, wiping his blood from her mouth. The taste was copper and salt and her stomach rolled, bile threatening expulsion.
"Calithiewren."
The impatience of his tone suggested this was not the first time he had called her name and she dropped to her knees instantly.
"As you please, Master," she whispered in her gruff, throaty voice.
"Do not leave your sword behind, it is worth more than you. Report to Aigallam in the barracks. You will be a warrior."
Obediantly, she had gripped her sword and pulled it as gently as possible from Henri's gut and followed a burly slavemaster toward the squat stone building.
Her hazel eyes turned up toward the sky for a moment and caught sight of a brown and white bird as it circled, graceful against the deep blue skies. She was free of the mines now, it was true, and her life had been spared. But with each step she grew closer to the barracks where the enslaved militia trained and bunked and in time she would come to realize that it was nothing more than just another prison.
Before the Battle
"Again!"
Calithiewren set her jaw and drove forward again with her blunted sword. The ring of steel meeting steel echoed across the stone room. Her sparring partner was a huge man with inch-long, deformed tusks jutting from his lower jaw. His orc blood allowed him a fiercesome visage, but despite his size and speed, he was slow in the head. That was all the advantage Calithiewren needed to best him.
The flat of her practice blade struck his right shoulder and he snarled, dropping his defensive guard to come at her full-tilt. She found the armor they'd bound her into too cumbersome in the early days of training, and had taken to wearing only the chest, shoulder, and shin pieces. Her Master-at-Arms, Aigallam, alternatively raged, rebuked and ridiculed her for her choice - but if nothing else, Calithiewren was stubborn and in this, no matter how they whipped or beat her, she would not be swayed.
She had consented to the shield and now brought it up, centering herself behind it, shoulder thrust into the blow. The force of Thakrii's charge knocked her backwards, stumbling off-balance as he hurled his blade toward her neck. In a heartbeat she cast off the shield and slid a hidden dagger of live steel from the lip of her boot.
"Yield!" They shouted in unison, his massive sword hovering above her shoulder, bumping her throat and her tiny dagger, gripped tightly in her off-hand, at his kidneys. She was on one knee, he towered over her. For a moment he was bewildered, then, pulling his weapon away, Thakrii began to laugh. His rich, bellyborn laugh filled the practice chamber and she felt her face break into a grin.
"Dat is da smart way, Wren," he said as his mirth bubbled away into a wry chuckle. He offered a hand down to her and yanked her easily to her feet.
She only grinned in response and bent to retrieve her shield. It is worth more than you are, they would only remind her if she left it in the sparring room. Calithiewren knew that if ever she met battle for true, and fell defending the Masters or their property, they would remember to retrieve the armor, the weapons, the shield, and leave whatever remained for the ravens and other scavengers."
Together she and Thakrii took their seats at the edge of the room and accepted chilled (and watered) wine from their concubines. Another pair took to the ring, with Aigallam shouting his criticisms and cantankerous commentary.
"May I wipe your brow, Might Warrior Wren?" the young woman asked softly, her eyes downcast as she knelt at Calithiewren's feet. Soft blond hair fell over her milk-colored shoulders. With a sidelong glance at Thakrii, who now engaged his woman in a more lustful manner, she sighed and then nodded.
"Oui, Lannai, you may."
The battle in the ring continued as the young elven woman patted at her forehead, daubbing away the sweat accumulated from the work-out in the yard. Thakrii chuckled and made some jovial comment, nudging her arm. She laughed and enjoyed the comraderie, but continued to feel guilty as Lannai took to massaging her calves for lack of other instruction.
It had not always been this way. She found that she was the only female currently in the guard, though there had been some in the past, and the brutish males of assorted races were not particularily welcoming to the adolescent elven woman. It was her own particular luck, not only that she was too angular and proud to possess the delicate, round beauty most sought after, but that her Masters had long ago solved the problem of rape and pregnancy amongst their slave militia.
They awarded each full member of their standing guard a nubile female servant of his own.
For the first six months of training, the drilling had been non-stop and even the heartiest of the demi-human men found themselves too exhausted at the close of a day to consider seeking out sexual favors. After that, those who were deemed worthy, were accepted into the barracks permanently - until they were killed or injured so greivously as to be of no further use and summarily slain - and were given a concubine.
Calithiewren had stubbornly tried to refuse Lannai's service when the girl, who was only a few years younger than her own thirty-nine winters, was presented to her. She could still see the bitter, smirking look on Aigallam's face as he shoved Lannai into Calithiewren's arms.
"You fight like a man, Ha-jollair." Aigallam had spat at her. "Now you will fuck like a man."
It had been terribly awkward those first few days, with Lannai petrified of displeasing her master and ending up slaughtered, and Calithiewren adamantly refusing to give orders for things she could do herself. The other warriors bedded their conquests noisily and frequently, ordering them to shine their boots or tend their other needs with easy leadership. She mumbled instructions and felt horrendous guilt about it, but it was easier to try to fit in than to resist.
Calithiewren had taken her fair share of bruises and abrasions and even a broken rib after being clubbed by a fat hobgoblin who felt it better to beat up a woman than to fight at her side. Once she was accepted and became a full member of the guard, and had shown her natural worth with a blade, most of the attacks and bullying came to a halt. Aigallam made it clear that in-fighting would lead to the deaths of all involved, no exceptions. And they all believed him; he kept a string of heads on pikes around the courtyard as a reminder.
"Is there nothing else, Mighty Warrior?" Lannai's soft disrupted her thoughts. "I have made your gear ready for the march on the morrow."
Calithiewren nodded politely and settled back to watch the matches. It was an unusual band of brothers; the whole milita was four hundred strong, but there was rarely more than an eighth of that in the barracks at one time. The tribe had enslaved humans and elves, half-orcs and hobgolins, there was one intelligent trollspawn berserker and a handful of bugbears to round out the army. In the forty years she had spent guarding their caravans and mines, she had not been in any major battle.
Within a fortnight, that would change.
The mines at this encampment were nearly spent; the Masters were going to take possession of a freshly discovered mine by force. Ripping it from the small clan that had discovered it, they would enslave them and force them to work their own mines to line the Masters' pockets. This battle would be her first true one and though she was more nervous than she would let on, the anticipation of testing her skills warmed her blood.
"We will eat hearty tonight and sleep,"Calithiewren decided, and with that, punched Thakrii's shoulder with a laugh and bade him enjoy the evening with his woman. He winked and told her to do the same. Lannai blushed and kept her eyes down, while Calithiewren made a suitably dirty reply and left the group of guardsmen in peals of laughter.
The Promise
She did fight as well as a man, that was true, but to say she could fuck like a man, that would be false. In the semi-privacy of her tiny cell, with a cot in one corner for herself and a blanket on the floor for Lannai, a table for eating and two rough wooden chairs, the two relaxed from the feigned roles of master and slave and became friends.
They had much in common, two young elven women torn from the breast of their families to serve a tribe of ruthless masters. Lannai was younger, but she had been older when the Raiders attacked her settlement and knew much more about the world than her naïve counterpart. In time, they had grown quite close, and Lannai came to share her bed and the closeness was a familiar and gentle reassurance, but nothing more physical.
"You have all our things prepared?"
"Yes, Wren. And in a minute I will bring food from kitchen."
"Good." She paused, smiling at the nickname that had developed because many of the demi-humans and non-elves had trouble with her full name. Usually, once they had returned to cell, Lannai's burden would slip from her shoulders and the chatter was lively and full of laughter. This evening her eyes remained trained upon the flagstones. "What troubles you Lannai?"
There was a long, pregnant pause.
"I fear for you when the battle comes."
Calithiewren chuckled, "Is that all? I will be armed and armored and Thakrii will be at my side. I will not fall."
Lannai shook her head and it was then that Calithiewren noticed her trembling.
"L-lannai?" She dropped her gear to the ground and moved toward her servant, one arm draping over her shoulder comfortingly. "What is it?"
The girl began to sob, burying her face against Calithiewren's shoulder. Alligator tears were warm and moist as they tricked down her naked arm and she wrapped both arms around her friend, holding her tightly.
"Lannai, I will be fine. I promise." She said helplessly, patting the girl's shoulder.
"What if you're not, Wren? What if you fall there? They will give me to another and I will never be able to grieve! My life will be over!"
Calithiewren frowned at the idea of her beautiful friend being used and beaten by one of others. That would never do. She was overcome with a fierce need to protect Lannai, but in the next heartbeat she reealized the truth. They both knew that one day she would die, that was a certainty - the only guarantee any of the slaves, whether in the mines or the barracks, had was that they would die.
"Lannai..." She began slowly and the girl lifted her head, peering up at the taler woman with wide, jade-colored elven eyes. Tears like liquid diamonds slipped down moonlight fair cheeks and she reached up, taking Calithiewren's face into her hands.
"Calithiewren..." Lannai whispered tenderly, fingertips stroking her cheeks.
"Lannai?" Her throaty, gruff voice caught on the name. There was an alien tightening in her groin and her neck and ears flushed as blood surged within her.
The serving girl pressed her lips to Calithiewren's, thin arms wrapping desperately around her neck. "I love you, I love you." She murmured, kissing the bewildered warrior again. "Don't go, don't go. I love you."
She was still shaking as Calithiewren stroked her hair.
"I have to go, there is no choice in that. But I will return, Lannai, I promise you that. I will be back for you."
The girl nodded and then slumped to the ground, weeping into her knees as she hunched over. She was no heavier than a child as Calithiewren lifted her bodily onto the cot and pulled the blanket up over her the way the mother she could no longer remember would have.
"Don't cry, Lannai, I will come back."
But Lannai just rolled over to the wall and sobbed silently into her hands.
The cold stone floor was no place for a warrior on the eve of her first true battle, yet there she lie, listening to the sorrow of her dearest friend and wondering what that simple word meant, that it brought Lannai such agony.
A Taste of Vengeance
Blood trickled into her eye, seeping from beneath a hastily wrapped linen bandage. Didn't forget the sword... its worth more than me... She thought, or maybe even mumbled incoherantly, dragging the blade tip-down through the underbrush. Her hazel eyes were glassy and feverish; a superficial, but long and gruesome looking slash from hip to breast on her left side remained untreated and infection had begun. She didn't know how long the blow to the head had left her unconscious, hours at least, but it could have been days by the stink of the bloating corpses all around her.
The battle had furious, but their small warband was inexperienced and unprepared for the savage desperation of a tribe defending its prize. They had been routed. Much of the fighting was a blur of blood and steel in her memory; she could see the fiesty human called Davvin skewered by a pike, and old Raffy - a dwarven mercenary who was paid instead of enslaved - had gone down, but it had taken three of the natives to do it. For her own wounds, she was not sure how or who gave them. She was fairly certain, woozy from lost blood and dizzy from the crack to her head, that she too should be dead.
Sheer stubborn pig-headedness was all that kept her walking. A promise made fueled her stumbling steps through the jungle, and so grim was her visage that even the wildlife gave her a wide berth.
It was nightfall of the third night when she finally saw the barracks in the distance. Gratitude swept over her and she increased her weary pace, calling for aid as she reached the gates.
No one came to help her or bind her wounds and in that moment she realizd well and true that she was naught but a broken tool for the Masters, used up and easily replaced. Gritting her teeth, she made her way into the compound, ignoring the jests and questions by her brothers-in-arms.
"Oi! Wren, where's the rest?" Called one man, a sailor from the Velsh coast whose misfortune on the seas had landed him in the Masters' grasping hands. "You look a damn fright!"
She left a trail of dark droplets behind her, leaning heavily on the stone walls as she made her way to her cell. It was in the mess hall, on the way to the sleeping quarters, that she was finally stopped by one of the Masters.
"Vax na pifvillaem, Ha-jollair, ellisi'vy ne? Veshaemiir da'rii. Wo ni iisahollun? Naelliam yamannae!"
It could only be Aigallam, the ruthless Master-At-Arms who refused to call her Calithiewren as did the rest. She had to stop and decipher his words, then grimaced. You were the coward, Gemfinder, running away isn't that true? Useless, you are! Where are the others? Speak damnable one!
"How...long?" Her mouth could scarcely form the words. "No one...else survived?"
"Thakrii ni Yelm ni Tamak omanae'kyshii a'gushaen! Ha-jollair SHII'kallais."
Her pain-addled brain could barely complete the translation and she slumped against the walls. Thakrii and Yelm and Tamak four days ago returned. Gemfinder is dead, they have told us.
"I am not dead, not maimed. I can still fight... just- just need rest," she insisted. "Lannai will wash the wound, I can still fight. Master, please, I can still fight."
Aigallam's cruel eyes fixed upon hers and he smirked. "The blond bitch belongs to Tamak now, he brought me back the head of the Chief. He is mighty warrior, you are dogsmeat, Gemfinder, you are already dead."
An icy hand gripped her heart then, freezing away the pain, the exhaustion, the hunger. She could hear the fury in her strangled voice as she raised herself back to her feet.
"Where is Lannai? She is mine!"
"Learn your place, Gemfinder!" Aigallam barked in the strangely flighty tongue of the Master's tribe and backhanded her so hard her head snapped back on her neck. "You are nothing. See the blood you spill even now? You will not last the night!"
Hate welled up inside of her. Bitter-tasting rage, anger borne from a lost childhood and a life spent in slavery burst to the surface like magma beneath the quiet mountaintop. Without a conscious thought, she pushed away from the wall and brought her sword up in a wobbling arc. Aigallam's eyes opened wide in disbelief and horror as the tip of sword caught his throat, opening it in a heartbeat and severing the artery. The Master-At-Arms crumpled silently to the ground, only the soft shirring sound of his life pumping onto the flagstone and the gurgle of his dying breath met her ears.
Renewed by this seething madness, Calithiewren lurched down the hall. She threw open the door to her own cell, but it was empty as Aigallam had said. No soft, sweet Lannai there to welcome her home and tend her injuries. Grief matched the fury and tears blurred her vision as they mingled with the blood on her face. She could hear it now, the muffled screams and hysterical sobbing, begging and pleading in a voice so familiar to her. Her mind's eyes supplied unwelcome images of Lannai's fate in the hands of the half-orc Tamak. He was not like Thakrii, her friend, full of lusty humor and enamored of ale and dancing and fighting. He was cruel and viscious and took out his rage at being captive upon the string of servant girls he had been supplied with; a fresh one given when an old one was killed by his lust or his anger.
Calithiewren threw open the door to Tamak's cell, her dripping blade in hand, and was physically knocked back by the scene before her. Her beloved friend was sprawled over the edge of the table, naked to the waist and covered in bruises. One eye was swollen shut, her lip torn and bloody. The half-orc was upon her, even then, yanking her hair so hair he had great snarls of soft golden strands stuck to his calloused hands.
"Leave her be!" She cried, lunging into the room. Startled by this interruption, Tamak hardly had time to look up before she had thrown herself at him. The blade pierced his shoulder and the force of her thrust pushed him clear of Lannai, pinned to the wall by the long-legged elf woman.
"Yellow-hair be Tamak's woman, man-girl!" He growled, gripping the naked blade with his barehand. As he pushed at it, slicing open his palms and smearing his dark blood over the steel, there was a sick sucking sound when the blade slipped free of the wound.
"No!" Calithiewren screamed at him, hacking at his arm futily. Tamak was never without his rusty mail sleeves and leather-backed breastplate and her sword only crushed the tiny chains.
Tamak grabbed for his greatsword, nothing being very far out of his reach in the cramped cell and made an awkward swing in the space, just catching her shoulder as she ducked away. The massive orcspawn kicked her and she toppled backwards, slamming her head against the edge of his cot. He swung again in a shortened arc and she scrabbled out of the way, her sword lost in the scuffle. Snarling and foaming his rage, his tusks flecked with red, Tamak lifted the blade and brought it down, tip-to-the-floor to pierce her guts. She managed to roll out of the way, the edge of his huge blade opening a new wound on her left side.
He kicked at her again and then crushed her sword arm beneath his heavy boot.
"Tamak say you die now!" The beast spat at her, spattering her face with his rancid spittle and dark droplets of blood from his wound. His voice was ragged with denied pain and those beady black eyes burned red.
He lifted the greatsword again, aiming to drive it like a stake into her abdomen. She stretched an arm down, hoping to retrieve her concealed dagger, fear finally encroaching upon her fury. Then a bloody horn blossomed from the center of the half-orc's chest, its graceful hourglass shape leaving no doubt as to its source. The greatsword slipped from Tamak's grip as he howled in pain, one hand moving to the longsword protruding from his chest, the other reaching round to grab its wielder.
He threw Lannai to the floor and she collapsed like a broken doll, cheek smashed to the floor. His attention on the blond woman, Tamak never saw his original prey heave herself to her feet behind him. The round steel shield he never used was snatched from the wall and met his thick skull with a resounding crack.
The big man groaned, reaching up to touch the wound even as he fell over, smashing the wooden cot as his full weight fell upon it. Splinters flew but in a heartbeat or two, there was no sound in the room save Tamak's uneven, haggard breathing, her own pounding heart, and the barely audible cries of her friend on the floor.
As gently as possible, she bent to pick-up the blond elf, cradling her like a child. The walk to her cell was short, but each step took immense effort and when at last she arrived, it was all she could do to set Lannai down upon the cot and fall to her knees beside it.
"...they ...said you... you were dead," the woman whispered, holding up a bandaged wrist. " ...I tried... to follow you to-" She coughed, bright blood cutting a gory path down her pale chin. "...the afterlife..."
"I came back for you," Calithewren said, choking on the words. She saw with fresh pain the heavy bruises and bite marks that riddled her friend's body. Both of her wrists were tightly bound with bandages; it seemed the quiet blond woman was worth saving where herself, a so-called Mighty Warrior, was not. "I promised I would."
Lannai managed a smile then, one of her front teeth missing, and lifted a hand to touch Calithiewren's cheek.
"...you came back...for me."
Nodding, she tried to swallow a sob, and failed, dropping her head to her friend's chest, her tears pouring forth unbidden.
"I must go back, kill Tamak, for what he's done."
Lannai only nodded, fingertips stroking her cheek tenderly. "There...is talk of a Goddess... she who makes justice" Her voice broke and she sighed the last word, "poetic."
The warrior-woman lifted her head, peering down into Lannai's one good eye, "...poetic."
"Wren..." she said weakly.
"Lannai, you're so cold," she said stupidly, only now thinking to cover the half-naked woman with her blanket. "Let me warm you, you'll be alright. I promise."
There was a chuckle, the breath stained by blood, and Lannai shook her head slightly. ".. you have.. warmed me. You… came back." Her hand fell limply to the cot and her face went slack.
"Lannai? Lannai!" She shook the woman, one good eye staring sightlessly at the ceiling. "LANNAI!"
But there came no response.
With the grief came new rage and she was literally shaking as she bent her head to kiss her friend goodbye.
Her footsteps were determined as she returned up the hall; invulnerable to the pain as the need for vengence filled her. Tamak was slowly regaining consciousness as she retreived her sword from his back. He grunted and cursed, rolling to his side in the destroyed cot, trying to look up at his assailant.
"This is for Lannai," she spat and drove the blade deep.
The half-orc spasmed but did not die and she yanked it free of his ribcage.
"This is for all the others," and thrust her blade again.
Tamak's head lolled on his neck and he stared up at her, disbelieving his own death even as it settled over him.
"The Hells take you for they will be more merciful than I!" She snarled, her voice ragged, and swung the blade one last time. Tamak's great, shaggy skull rolled to the floor with a thud and only then did she slump down against the door of his cell, exhausted. Tears slipped unbidden from her eyes again, washing away the stains of the battle.
How long she sat there, Calithiewren would never know, but after a time, she raised herself to her feet and shuffled down the hall. No one dared stop the wild-eyed warrior, dragging her sword tip-down through the halls. Outside the walls, the Masters' just stared as she stumbled into the underbrush, her limping gait making her easy to catch - though none tried.
It was near dawn and she was resting against a tree when footsteps finally approached her. She was resigned to her fate and welcomed death as a respite from the pain of her wounds, and the agony of loss.
"Dat be you Wren?" A familiar voice asked from the darkness. He did not wait for answer, but plopped down beside her in the dank underbrush and began to unceremoniously tend to her wounds.
"You be free now, like da bird, huh Wren?" Thakrii asked, tightening a bandage. "I go wit' ya. We be friends, huh? Ain't dat right, Wren? Ain't dat right?"
The briefest of smiles crossed her lips and she nodded.
"Oui."
Freedom
Thakrii died peacefully in his sleep of old age; a rare enough occurance for orcspawn. That he was nearly seventy years old was remarkable. He often joked, as the years crept by and he became decrepit while she blossomed into adulthood, that it weren't regular for a half-orc to get so damned old, and the Gods just didn't know what to do with him so they just let him fall apart little by little.
First his joints began to pain him, worn out as they were from the labor of his youth and the hot-headed battlerages of his maturity. His bristly black hair grew thin and was shot through with silver, the small tusks of his lower jaw were worn and one was broken as he gnawed on a leg bone. Eventually, his hearing was so bad, Calithiewren could sneak up on him in her heavy breastplate and grieves and his arms weakened to the point he could no longer swing his greatsword properly.
They had been in the wilds for thirty years; free-slaves eeking out a living as they could. Neither trusted strangers, neither sought out towns or villages for sustenance, relying completely on the natural world for their food, entertainment, and shelter. Except for Thakrii, Calithiewren had not spoken to another sentient being for years. She was mostly content, though sometimes she would waken with tears wetting the cloak she bunched under her head as a pillow. Her dreams were often troubling; she dreamt of vague people called Mother and Father and Yanaia and Themirotir - family she could not recall come morning and she dreamt vividly of Lannai and the loss she felt but could not articulate.
Not that Thakrii was that good of a listener even before his ears failed him. He was more interested in the hunt, the games, the sparring than the emotional turmoil of his companion.
It was the first time she had cried since the night she left the Barracks. Her heavy tears left small divets in the loose soil of his shallow grave and she sat there, rocking gently and stroking her own hair - tangled and matted from years with little care given to it at all.
When she tried to count the years of her life, they fluttered by so quickly and indistinctly - she believed she was about ten when they branded her, close to forty and shooting into adolescence when they put her into their army, and about seventy when she killed Tamak and lost the one thing most dear to her all at once. When she included the thirty summers she and Thakrii had spent in the wilderness, she was surprised to find that she was a full century old.
I am an adult.
She realized suddenly as she sat, humming tunelessly to herself beside the grave of her last friend. Lannai had once told her that - elves lived so many years, their adolescence often stretched for a full hundred years, instead of the decade or two most races had.
I am free.
Calitheiwren flinched at this thought, despite the many years since her slavery had ended in an explosion of violence. The branding on the back of her shoulder still itched and she wondered what it looked like now that Thakrii had spent so many nights painstakingly turning it into a tattoo.
I cannot stay here.
The beasts of the forest smelled their supper resting beneath a few feet of dirt and as sun set, they would be proweling around soon. She was weak and exhausted, having neither eaten nor slept since she awoke to find Thakrii dead in his furs. A chuckle escaped her lips, she knew that he wouldn't mind the shallow grave - I bet dose cats, dey choke on Thakrii's bones! Ain't dat right, Wren? Ev'n dead ol' Thakrii ain't gonna stop da fightin'! Not ev'n when I'se dead, ain't dat right?
She gathered her meager belongings; the battered breastplate she'd carried since the battle at the New Mines, bed roll and kit, a graceful hourglass-shaped longsword that had been seen the whetstone so often its curving lines had begun to even out. There was the gleaming bronze helm she wore proudly that was her only fine effect; Thakrii had spotted it on an itinerant cleric's wagon and snatched it for her one day as she rested trying to recover from a mountain cat's poisonous claws. And there was a single, filmy shift that she had never worn; Lannai had made it for her while she was away on that fateful march and she had found it amongst her things when she at last left her Masters behind. Without Thakrii to carry the rest of their gear - that great, strong packmule of an orcblood - she was forced to leave the non-essentials behind including his massive greatsword, enchanted to the second circle and more expensive than all the other things combined.
Only one thing that was not essential to her survival remained amongst her things. It was a broad silver coin; on one side was a heart, enameled in black, pierced by a strikingly beautiful longsword. On the other, some words written in the Common tongue, which she could not read, but had long since memorized.
The only justice in this chaotic world, is that which is dealt by Our hands. An eye for an eye; the punishment suits the crime. Seek succor with Us, you will never be wanting. 16 Grey Lane, the Village of Thess, 10 Measures South of Haven on the Velsh Coast. Ask for Antanisha.
Calithiewren clasped that silver medallion in her hand as she headed North. Out of the untamed jungles and away from her past. Only sheer luck had guided Antanisha's apprentice Umbrenisar past their camp, only chance let him speak of the Goddess Lannai had spoken of with her dying breaths. And only her thick-headed stubbornness ensured that no matter what came next, this was not the end of Calithiewren…