I smiled grimly as I caught a glimpse of my mate as the mare turned to keep her rambunctious son in her sight, the black of his armor blending into her body. I could almost see the twist to his smile as he laughed at their antics. The simultaneous movement of all the horses at once, lifting their heads and turning towards the East, had me looking hard at the darkening ground.
A short minute later, the horses all heading to the walled-in overhang, and Shyla and my mate heading towards the stronghold.. the Herd Stallion nipping at the rumps of any slow-moving mares, I heard it. The roar of a dragon off to the East, echoing off the hills.
As I looked around for the dragon, I heard our warning horn sound, taken up by the watch tower, letting all know that they needed to head into the mine or the other tunnels we had dug for safety from the flying menaces. As the roar got closer I looked down and saw that both man and mare were making a heavy time of it. The winter and stress of carrying her foal had made the tendon injury to her right foreleg even worse. This would be her last foal, the next breeding season, we would put her in the barn, none of us could bare the thought of losing her, though we knew time would take its toll.
I next looked at the man, I could tell that his leg was paining him as well and I shivered as I remembered first seeing the injury which caused his limp. The years had taken their toll on him as well, but he was as tough and independent as when we first met.
I narrowed my eyes and recalled the day he returned to us, we had not heard from them in months, not since the day that Kurdan had sent me with his Mothers and Clan to the house of Navitas's friend. The sound of Shyla's hooves striking stone, the birds sounding in warning, many things were the same. The horns had been sounding, letting us know that someone was coming up the path, the blasts for a friend.
The next blast let us know a healer would be needed and Kurdan's Heart mother went back inside and got her bag of herbs and potions, her apprentice had a similar bag. Then we heard the sounds of boots and hooves but could tell that neither was a normal stride.
As the scouts came into view, so to did Shyla, she limped hard, bandages wrapped her right-fore and right-rear legs. I remember feeling the tension, we could all see that only four people approached, one of our scouts leading Shyla and the other two with a cloak-shrouded figure between them. As the figure stumbled over a rough patch of road, the scouts on either side steadied him, but let go quicker than one would have supposed.
As they got closer I could tell that the figure was male, for Navitas had been a full head and shoulders shorter than Kurdan and a head shorter than Marcurio. It wasn't til they were almost upon us that I realized that the male was too thin to be Kurdan, who had been rather wide at the shoulders.
As the Scout stopped with Shyla, Marcurio walked up to her left side and pulled two wrapped packages from her saddle bags. He unwrapped them as he walked and stopped right in front of Kurdan's Mothers and handed his Birth-Mother one of the swords, then he turned and handed me the other.
His voice when he spoke, was not the smooth cocky tones that I had gotten used to on our travels but was rough and barely above a whisper and was filled with pain, both physical and other.
"We had left the Jarl, having just gotten the deed to the property and permission to build a Stronghold/ village, when we heard cries for help from a small mining community. When we got there, a large group of Chiss was harassing a woman to make her tell where she had hidden their gold. Kurdan ran ahead and that soldier's head parted from his shoulders, but it had been a trap. They were ten times our number, with battle mages and some of their elite troupes. " He paused and the wind blew the hood from his head, what could be seen of his face around the bandages, was burnt and still oozing blood. No few of the warriors turned their faces aside, I did not turn, though I fought to keep my stomach from losing its last meal and fought harder to keep my face still.
" At the height of the battle, Kurdan yelled at me to get the woman away and I did, then returned to the fray. I was blasted off my feet and into a snowbank and I knew no more until Shyla licked at my wounds. Lady, Kurdan fought well, your son was a warrior til the end, last I saw he was standing over a mortally wounded Navitas. When I found him, from the blood on the ground, he took out quite a few of them." He looked to the ground.. " I am sorry I could not do more, I..." with his last word his eyes rolled in his head and he would have fallen to the ground had not the scouts caught him.
We almost lost him that night and it was touch and go for the next month.. Infection then pneumonia set in. With the loss of blood and skin and the mental stress, at times I did not think he wished to live. In one of his lucid moments in that first week, he nagged and fretted until we would get the pouch in the saddle bags.
He pulled out one paper and told me to read it, which I did, I did not understand fully what it said and I told him so.
"It says that, Kurdan, Navitas, and I are the owners of the deed and that only our children or spouses may inherit the land. Find a Priestess of Mara and have her marry us Shaimar, it's the only way for Kurdan's family to keep and work the land." In the end, it was not a Priest of Mara, but Kurdan's Heart-Mother that married us.
What had been meant to secure the land for Kurdan's Clan, turned out to be a marriage of respect and love. Marcurio and I adopted Kurdan's youngest brother as a child of bodies and heir, in a tradition that Orcs follow when no male child is born to the Chief, the Jarl had not been up on his Orc customs. It took the better part of a year for Marcurio to heal enough to travel to our land. By then the Stronghold palisade was up and the large main hall, the overhang had been walled in for our horses and cattle.
As Marcurio came even with the Stronghold gate, he looked up, the scarred right half of his face in the shadows of the night, the perfect left side, smiling, with all the warmth and love that I ever wanted from a mate... I did not have to travel far outside tradition, but Kurdan was right, I needed to become my own woman before I became some males mate.
Dragons, Jarls and Chiss, we had taken them all on and won... In memory of those we lost on the journey here, we planted a tree, each year as it yielded it crop, we thanked the person for their sacrifice.
