Nations on the Brink (storyline)/The Kiss of Dawn (vignette)
Sanguine and angry, dawn crept from its nighttime lair at a stately pace, painting the clouds and ocean in chilling hues that echoed the deep regret and anguish coiled in her gut and heart. Below the crow’s nest, sailors whispered something about red dawns and sailors’ warnings. She ignored them, dismissed them even. Superstitions got you killed.
Her eyes scanned the horizon, as they had through the majority of the night. Her fingers massaged the healed wound at her shoulder, though she knew from the various injuries over her life that it wasn’t healed. Something was still in the wound. Something that burned. She was going to need to have it opened up and the bone seen to, but who could she trust? Vornavis’ family healer had betrayed them. How could she find one to do the work? Growling and shaking her head, she descended to the deck. Why were they back at the port?
Tired faces greeted her, eyes blurry from the wind and lack of sleep. She felt her rage slip from her, draining away and leaving nothing but deepest regret and disappointment.
The captain’s wife approached her. She remembered the woman from their travels from Torre to Seareach, though her name escaped her. Her voice was calm, though it carried a frantic edge to it, and looking at the fatigue and sorrow in her eyes, Jarnsaixa suddenly remembered the look of her Commander on the Demonwall.
Numbly, she intoned what he did all those years ago.
“It is time we recognize that this is no longer a rescue mission, but a recovery mission.”
She turned from the woman, not wanting to see the sorrow in her face anymore and distantly responded to the cantankerous dwarf’s acknowledgment. She followed him onto the ship to begin anew.
Over and over, as the ship sailed back to an approximation of where Sayilla went over, Jairnsaixa replaced the events of the previous fourteen hours.
“You are oddly cold.”
“I will be alright, Steward. I am just tired.”
“The past week has been a heavy strain on you.”
‘Yes, my empathy for the Malwinds and my dread of what it might mean for the hard work we have done is …”
Then, the crash of a shattering window.
She had turned quickly, her back had been discreetly turned away from the other woman as she prepared to lay down.
With a preternatural strength, an elderly woman slammed her body into the Giantess.
Mistress Grenhal?!?!
Instinctively, she pulled her sgian dubh as the healer slammed her into the cabin door. But she didn’t care for herself, she cared for Sayilla. Where was Sayilla?
She spied the other woman, blood on her face and hands, her fingers clinging to the window pane.
Spinning her legs, her weight low, she removed the healer’s grip from her and strode for the window, reaching for Sayilla. But the healer could not be swayed, she gripped the giantess by the shoulders and spun her around, slamming her hard against the cabin door for a second time.
Sayilla lost her grip and slipped from sight.
She heard the cry almost instantly, “Man overboard!”
Good, she thought, they will find her fast.
She felt rage build within her and she turned on the smirking healer.
Quicker than a cobra, the healer spun her around and drove a blade into her shoulder, pinning her to the cabin wall. But Jarnsaixa was not swayed by the pain and drove her blade deep into the other woman’s gut, her now drawn langseax yanking her cloak free from her.
Within a heartbeat the woman was out the window, and on the heels of that the door flew open.
Cursing and swearing, rage and concern warring within her, she yanked the blade free...
The memory faded as the dwarf looked up at her, “Steady Giantess. If you keep rubbing at that you’ll wear a hole in it.”
Glancing down, Jarnsaixa looked at her shoulder where a slowly spreading stain of crimson was darkening her tartan. A scent, sickly sweet filled the air.
She felt the world shift, her legs buckled and she almost laughed.
What good was training with a Nalfein if you couldn’t recognize the poison in your wound?
Her vision went black.