Socair – Part 1

It was the eleventh week of Saol and the heat was nigh unbearable even without the fighting. Socair sat on the crumbling ruin of what had been the wall of a house, her brigandine, doublet, and vambraces on the ground in a smelly heap. They weren’t impressive pieces by any means. Dull brown with a solemn green stripe down the left breast and subjected to more patchings and repairs than a poor farmer’s cart. Sweat had long since soiled her underclothes and now all she cared about was finding some relief from the heat.

She’d been among the first through the gates and the heat had taken its toll on near as many of her people as the centaur had. She’d been cut shallow along the cheek in the initial push with the vanguard and at the time she’d thanked the Sisters that the blood somehow felt cool against the skin of her neck. In the heat of the day the blood had turned to a thin, irritating paste and Socair found herself cursing the centaur and the heat as much as her lack of vigilance. Wherever the blame lay, she was uncomfortable and there wasn’t spare water enough to warrant using it to wash. The tip of her left ear twitched as the sound of her name snapped her out of an exhausted daze.

She stood to meet the pair and recognized the male. Crosta, a member of the Binse of the Treorai of Abhainnbaile and leader of campaign against the centaur. He was a capable enough commander, tactically speaking, but he was famously short tempered and uncharismatic besides. The woman was unknown, but judging from the fine dress she wore and the shine of her hair, Socair assumed her to be the Regent of what was left of the hamlet in which they now stood.

“Socair.” Crosta called flatly as they approached. “This is Rún, Regent of the south and a close friend of our Treorai.”

Socair managed a slight bow, her muscles screaming in protest. “Milady.”

“She became indelibly curious when she heard the Goddess of Glassruth led the van and insisted I bring her to you at once.” There was the slightest twinge to his lip that let show an annoyance his tone would not betray.

She spoke before Crosta could start again, a softer, more pleasant voice than Socair had expected of the sharp features the noble bore. “I’m afraid the Binse has the truth of it and I fear I’ve troubled him with my selfishness.”

Rún turned to face him. “If it please the Binse, I am sure I will be well cared for in the hands of such a capable warrior and you may return to your duties.”

Crosta snapped a tight bow, four fingers across his chest in salute. “Then, by your leave.” He turned and hurried away, shouting orders as he went.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Rún heaved a sigh and rolled her head back in resignation. “By the Sisters, I was beginning to think he’d want to stand here and hold my hand. Insufferable twat.”

“Ha!—” Socair couldn’t stifle the laugh entirely and the overburdened muscles in her abdomen punished her for trying. She doubled over and grabbed her side. “Gah!”

“Oh! Are you injured?” There was genuine concern in Rún’s voice. “Sisters, I didn’t mean—”

Socair held up a hand. “It’s fine. I have had worse, I promise you.”

“I suppose I ought to trust you. You are well built, to say the least.” The highborn elf looked her over.

“I… thank you, Regent.”

“There is no need for formality. Not with me. Call me Rún.” She smiled politely.

It was uncommon for highborn to forgo such pleasantries as the meaningless gestures tended to wax their egos. Socair was intrigued by the woman, to be sure.

“Would you dine with me?”

“Dine? In the keep? I am only a sword arm, Rún.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You lead the van of the First Company and you’ve saved my precious city from ruin. I insist upon it. Come, follow me.”

Rún led her across the yard and to the keep. When they had passed into the entry hall, Rún was called away and she informed Socair that attendants would come and see to her. A few moments later a pair of shorter women came and whisked her off to some corner of the keep. Socair did not know the place, though the room was nice enough. If she had balked at the Regent’s request, she’d like to have heard an earful from Crosta when they returned to camp.

The attendants saw to her needs, whether they were truly her needs or not. Her short hair was combed and run through with all manner of things she had never seen put to hair before. Scented waters and powders and finally a sort of wax that made her hair glisten.

When they had gone, Socair looked down at the ill-fitting finery she had been stuffed into. Rún was a nice enough host, but formal dinners were… well they were foreign to Socair. She didn’t know anything of polite society. It hadn’t been her way. Raised among boys in a family whose sole pride was their martial prowess, they were insular and strict. She’d lived in the hand-me-downs of three older brothers until she outgrew the lot of them, standing half a foot taller than any elf she’d ever met.

Now here she was. In some town or other, in a keep she’d only vaguely known existed until she was told to march there. Socair was anything but cultured. She knew the lands well enough and their histories, but its inhabitants were another thing.

The situation was not entirely miserable. At the very least, she’d avoided frillery and gowns and the like. She’d never so much as held a dress up to look at and to her great relief the keep’s servants couldn’t find anything close enough to her size to alter in time for the dinner. As it was, she wore basic tan trousers, a white shift, and red waistcoat of crushed velvet that had been quickly altered to fit her length and allow for her breasts and hips. Her shoes were her own, cheap leather things she wore when sabatons wouldn’t serve. Even the shoes had been oiled and polished.

She was fretting over the buttons on the vest when there was a knock at the door. “Ah! Uh, come in.”

Rún opened the door holding a greatcoat. At the very least it was understated, Socair thought. Rún, on the other hand, couldn’t be more excited. She practically tackled Socair in her excitement.

“Absolutely gorgeous!” Rún was clearly pleased.

Socair sighed and worked at the buttons. She felt clumsy and horribly awkward.

“Oh, let me.” Rún lightly slapped Socair’s hands away and began to work the buttons on the waistcoat. “I know, I know. It must seem ridiculous to you.”

“It does,” Socair admitted, “It’s just… this is no place for me. I am a soldier.”

Rún finished with the buttons. “And a soldier cannot be a guest? Would you wear your armor at the dinner table?”

“I would.” The waistcoat was tight on her chest. It wasn’t the comforting security of her brigandine. Her breasts were too pronounced. She was too exposed. She was not herself.

“Well, had I not smelled it earlier, I might have even let you.” Rún paused at that. She frowned and looked up at Socair. “But I am a selfish Regent and I wish to feast the savior of my people. And if I was forced to have a meal alone with Crosta, I’d likely fling myself from a balcony.”

With that she smiled and left, reminding Socair to put on the greatcoat before dinner. Socair did as she was bid and left to find her way to the dining room. She lost her way twice, though the keep was small, and had to be escorted to the hall by a maid in the end.

The doors opened into a beautiful room of marble and stone, lined with busts of former Treorai and luminaries of Abhainnbaile culture on pedestals. It was smaller than rooms in which Socair tended to take her meals and far less noisy. She missed the noise now as the sound of the door drew the eyes of the assembled party to her. Sisters, she was uncomfortable. She reached for the comfort of the hilt of a sword that wasn’t there and placed the hand at her side instead.

Rún approached with the half dozen nobles and Crosta. Introductions were exchanged and the announcement was made that dinner was to begin. The lot made their way to the seats, Rún at the head of the table. She insisted Socair take the seat to her right with Crosta to her left. They were the guests of honor, after all. As they sat, the servants took Socair’s greatcoat. “Why even have me put it on?” she wondered. “For show?” They weren’t even her clothes so why show them off?

For all her consternation at the pomp of the evening, the food was the best Socair had ever tasted. The most amazing soup. They’d called it some name she’d never heard and didn’t bother remembering but it was fresh and rich and tasted of tomatoes and spices she didn’t know. Salt and pepper were luxuries for soldiers and most who added strange greenery or seeds from the roadsides ended up sick for their troubles.

After, there was roast of snow pheasant. A bird from the north, she’d heard of it vaguely from the yearnings of some foot soldier. To her it looked of the prairie grouse she’d chased on long training retreats her father had taken her on, but the taste was much more succulent. The grouse were wiry things and tough. Built to spend their lives fleeing. She was considering what sort of lives the pheasant must live to end up so juicy when she chanced to hear her name punctuate the sentence of one of the guests.

Wide-eyed, she lowered her fork and looked around the table, remembering the alien situation she’d nearly managed to put out of her mind. Much as she hated him, it dawned on her that Crosta had managed to draw the focus of the table for the better part of a half hour. Their curiosity could no longer be shifted away from their strange guest.

“P-pardon?” She sputtered, nearly spitting out a bite of pheasant.

“Hoh!” The laugh seemed to shoot out of the nobleman. Rare to find a creature covered with as much fat and sweat as he was. “It would seem that the food agrees with the lady.” He seemed the jovial sort, but she couldn’t remember his name or station.

Rún moved a gentle hand toward Socair’s shoulder. “No need to be nervous.” Rún’s hand found Socair’s but the gesture did little to calm her. “The good lords and ladies are simply curious about you. How you came to be so fierce and deft. Why you fight.”

“Aye! And what your mother fed you to grow you so big,” the fat lord said in jest. The table joined him in laughter.

Socair waited for the laughter to die down. She had no mind for speaking to highborn folk, especially not about herself. She was confident in her abilities and her mind and her body. But her tongue? That was a whole other thing. She stared down at her plate for a moment, wondering what she could say.

“My lords, I apologize. I fear I am not entirely sure how I should answer.” She started almost mindlessly. “It would be as useful to ask a sword why it is swung or a sharpened edge why it cuts.”

An older nobleman at the end of the table with a large mustache pounded the table. “Hear, hear! Spoken like a true warrior!” There was applause. Socair was just glad to be done with it. She wanted to retreat back to the meat and her ponderings.

“Certainly,” Rún said, “there must be something for which you fight?”

Socair thought on it for what felt to her like an eternity. “When I was a child, my father took my brothers and I to see what had remained of a horde encampment.” She stared down at her plate. “We were happy children, he’d said to us, but we must understand what the world truly was. Inside the camp there was a strange box covered with dirty canvas. When he pulled the canvas away, there were bodies, emaciated and sickly grey. He told me later that he had meant to ask us each how the sight made us feel…”

“But?” Rún interrupted the dead silence of the dining room.

“He tells me I drew my short sword and began to hack at the door to the cage, crying and screaming. When he tried to pull me off, I slashed him across the chest and returned to work on the cage until I fainted.”

“By the Sisters, is it true?” The meek voice of a frail looking noblewoman was a mix of concern and disbelief.

Socair looked up, realizing the entire table was staring at her, mouths agape. “Ah! Oh. I’m not sure. I remember standing outside the camp that day… but I don’t remember much else. I was sick a while after that.”

The gathered highborn just stared at her as if she were on fire. Had she been too honest? Was it such an odd tale? Surely they had seen the true horror of the war. Surely they understood.

Mercifully, the next course arrived and broke the silence. The mustachioed old elf at the end of the table began to talk about his time in the war and the glory of fighting for Abhainnbaile against the monstrous hippocamps. People seemed to brighten up at that, which gave Socair some peace of mind. She realized she hadn’t finished the pheasant and the thought saddened her but there was plenty left to eat.

The other courses passed uneventfully. The nobles seemed to avoid conversation with Socair after her story. So much the better, she thought. After all was said and done, the party retired to a common room with a balcony. Socair could not have found her way onto it more quickly.

Socair leaned on the railing and looked out across the city. To the south some few houses were still on fire, sending orange light and the ghosts of their wooden walls up into the air to join the clouds that dotted the sky. The small, red moon was full and bright in front of her sister’s dim milky crescent and in the north she could make out the fires of the First Company’s encampment. She thought of her vanguard and what they must be doing. Toasting their victories with cheap spirits and reveling their dead with the same.

Socair heard footsteps from behind her and turned instinctively. Rún seemed unperturbed at the swiftness of the move. She walked calmly past Socair and leaned on the railing herself.

“I should apologize for putting you in that room for my own selfishness. And I hope you’ll pardon my guests.” Rún’s voice was more solemn than Socair had expected. “They don’t understand the true horror of this war. Nor do they wish to. Even those who have fought tell stories to which they have no claim. Each of them, officers and politicians.”

“Then why surround yourself with them?” Socair was, perhaps, being impolite but she felt Rún was at least different enough from her guests to speak to plainly.

“Ha! I’ve inherited this lot and their ilk.” Rún rolled her eyes. “It’s a game, all of it. They will pretend to like me so long as I am useful and I will do the same. At the very least, I can bear with the ramblings of a few highborn to secure a better life for those that weren’t lucky enough to wriggle out of some gilded cunt.”

Socair laughed, the pain wasn’t as bad now. “Inherited friends, is it? Is that how high society works?”

“Sisters, yes.” Rún scoffed. “Breaking the bonds of noble blood,” Rún put on a mocking tone, “oh, one simply mustn’t. It just won’t do.”

“So you aren’t of noble blood?”

“I am, for whatever it’s worth. My mother’s mother was the cousin of some soldier who was ascended to a knight under some eastern Regent. She was granted a parcel of land and… ugh, it’s such a boring tale. One day, my father came to call on my mother to marry. Mother died, father became a drunk, and a violent drunk after that.” Rún looked off into the distance at nothing in particular.

“She fell ill?” Socair asked, not thinking much of it. Highborn were sickly sorts.

Rún stood and looked at Socair. “You are not the only little girl to see the inside of a horde cage.”

Socair’s eyes widened. She never thought… and Sisters, wasn’t that the problem? How could she be so thick? She grabbed Rún and hugged her tight. Rún let out a gasp, clearly she hadn’t been expecting it. The hug tightened, Socair’s nose filled with Rún’s scent and, for some reason, it made her want to cry.

Rún finally managed a word. “Uh… Socair, darling?” She just managed to get the words out.

“OH! Ah! Fires take me, I’m sorry! I get… I just…” Socair dropped the noblewoman.

“It’s,” she sucked in a big breath, “it’s fine.” Rún laughed, still catching her breath. “You can’t help it, can you? What was it you said at dinner? Why does a sharpened edge cut? What else could it do?”

Socair looked away, embarrassed. Rún teased her and took a step closer. “Come now, Socair. You—”

“There you are, Vanguard!” The voice was Crosta’s. Socair went to attention almost instinctively. “I hope she’s not bothered you unduly, Lady Rún.”

“Oh no, Crosta dear. Quite the opposite.” Rún smiled politely.

Crosta seemed unsure of what to make of the quip, but either way his face showed displeasure. “Well, good. Still, we must retire. There is some way to walk to the encampment and Socair yet has a debriefing to issue.”

“Very good, Binseman. But if you would go on ahead, I should like to have one final word with your soldier.”

“I…” He hadn’t expected that, but what could he do? “Very well, Lady Rún.” He turned to Socair. “Vanguard Socair, you are to return to camp immediately when Lady Rún dismisses you.”

“Sir.” Socair bowed and put four fingers across her chest to salute.

Crosta left brusquely, his face betraying his distaste for whatever secret talks he imagined were going on.

“Didn’t I tell you? Insufferable.” Rún laughed to herself. “Don’t worry, it’s just one little thing.” Socair turned to face her.

Rún motioned for her to lean down. Socair did as she was bid. Socair looked away as not to stare at Rún, expecting her to whisper some tiny secret.

Socair felt hands on her face, her eyes shifted but before she could react she felt Rún’s lips against hers. The warrior stumbled back, blushing hard. “I… I don’t…” Socair couldn’t find the words.

Rún grinned, satisfied. “You are dismissed, Vanguard. And thank you.” The Regent turned and leaned back on the rail.

“But… I… B-by your leave, milady.” Socair bowed and made for the changing room as quickly as she could.

“It’s not possible,” Socair thought as she hurried to return to the comfort of her armor. “I will never understand nobles.”