She had taken poorly, which was not unexpected. It was, however, inconvenient and exceptionally unpleasant.
Her flight from
Alliria - if it could be called such - had been uneventful, her passage marked by none. She had cleared the part of the city she had been born and raised in that first night, and been to the outskirts scarcely a day later, keeping to the less traveled ways as she saw then. She spent the time trying not to consider the anguish her parents would feel, finding her letter atop her pillow. She couldn't think on it too much, else she would find herself wandering back to the comfortable life she had been living.
Comfortable. A prison, a prison with silk sheets and everything she could want handed to her. Everything except her freedom to choose her own way forward. Mother clung to some sad hope of a future for her daughter, as did Father.
The truth was...there would be no future. Grand ambitions were all for naught; the rattle in her chest warned her the the fleeting nature of life. Even if she seemed hale now, that could change any time. Any time, without warning.
Instead of dwelling on it, Raea - once Elena - forced a smile onto her face. Even when she did not feel it, she still forced herself to smile. The world had enough troubles without bearing hers as well; the bitterness of a life cut short would only sour what remained, and she wished to try - to try with all her might - to make that remainder illuminating. To her, to those she met.
Unspoken, the desire to create some legacy burned bright. A thing reserved for the old...burned in her heart.
Five days out of Alliria, sticking to the back roads, the rain began. Seven days out, Raea felt the first stirrings of fever, and by the morning of the eighth, stumbling into the little hamlet along the traders route, Raea was forced to halt and take a room in the local inn. There, racked by fevers and the delirious dreams they brought with them - nightmares that made her twist under sheets that seemed as parchment - she lie as the wintry weather rolled over the high plains.
***
A door creaked open.
It was early of a morning, and the first time that she had stirred from her restless slumber since she had taken the room the day before, and an unhealthy smell of sickness tainted the air. The shadowy shape in the doorway wrinkled its indistinct nose, and shut the door behind as they went.
The girl lying under the covers, joints aching as if packed full of broken glass, stared at the ceiling in misery. Her chest rattled with every breath, but strangely she was not bereft of her strength this day. Just as well, since the commotion earlier that morning had roused her. Down the hall, towards the front of the inn; the sound of breaking crockery and shouting, the cry of pain. On its own, she might have dismissed it as a dispute between the owners of the inn...
...but the disturbance had been more than here. Out a window, she had seen others, armed and clearly up to no good, moving about.
A fog filled her head, but not enough to dull her wits completely. Bandits, else some other kind of scofflaws, had invaded the town. To what end, she was uncertain; there had been no carousing, no jubilant celebration at their good fortune. Only brooding silence, and an insistence that the denizens of the town remain quiet, and indoors. They had not bothered
her, of course; she had been indisposed by her own problems.
Staring at the ceiling, alone with her thoughts. Somewhere outside, muted by the falling rain, angry screaming that cut off abruptly. Within the inn, hushed whispering. Something was clearly very wrong, and she was irritated that she had slept through some vital thing. With many a stifled groan, the girl pulled herself from bed.
***
Creeping down a hallway was a terribly difficult thing to do in a dress, and even moreso when everything hurt like blazes. It was not only the sound of her own footsteps and clothing that were a concern, but the constant threat that a stab of pain might make her gasp at an inopportune moment.
The scene before her was clear as day, though her mind struggled to keep up with it. The common area of the inn - if it could even be called that - was clear of people. Well, mostly clear; the owners of the establishment, husband and wife, sat against a wall in a a corner. The man was indignant looking, while his was was pale with fear. The reason was quite clear: the man standing near the window at the front of the room, a cocked crossbow in hand. The shutters were only open far enough for him to see a narrow view of the street outside. The room was gloomy and dark, only a single lamp lit on a table in the middle.
The steel on her hip burned. It was out of place given her attire; trousers and shirt were away for washing with a local laundress, so all she had was a dress, ankle length skirts more cumbersome than she was willing to admit. The drab color belied the fine quality, but a dress was nothing to be caught in a fight in.
As she had often told herself, today was as good a day to die as any other. Maybe it would hurt less than her current misery; all she wished for was to make some positive change in the world with her passing. Better than dying in bed, after all.
She stepped from the hall, and started to cross the room, intent on...what? exactly? The owners of the inn both looked up in alarm at her arrival in their common room, the woman shaking her head in negation. Raea ignored them. She was intent on the fellow...
...until the coughing hit. The harsh, wet sound was impossible to hide, and for a moment she was lost to the pain of it. She couldn't help staggering against a table, holding herself up by sheer force of will. She didn't even see the deserter spin, crossbow trained on her in an instant. Blood and snot spattered on the table and floor in front of her, an evil smell wafting from the worst of it.
Eventually it passed.
"You gonna answer me, girl, or am I gonna have to stick a bolt in you?" This was coming from the deserter, his hard face completely and utterly devoid of compassion. Or emotion outside of anger. Raea struggled to stand aright again, trying to catch her breath. She raised a warding hand, speechless for the moment, but the point of the bolt never wavered.
"She's been here, and down since yesterday," the woman offered with a tremor of fear in her voice. "Sick. Weather turned on her while she was on the road, reckon, and-"
"Shut yer gob," the man with the crossbow said. "She can answer herself. She a big girl, ya?" There was a mean light in his eyes. No surprise there; given that he had imprisoned the rightful owners of this place in their own home, she could expect no less.
"Just....traveling," she managed at last. She felt - and looked - as though she was only held up by the chair she was leaning against. Not
entirely true, but near enough for the moment.
"What...what was the question again?"
"Dim, or acting it?" He spit to one side. "The fuck you doing out here? All you lot are supposed to stay in your rooms."
"Didn't...get that message," she said honestly.
He opened his mouth to say something cruel, likely, but outside a scream cut through the air. As suddenly as that, the fellow was turned back toward the window, and he began to utter oath after foul oath under his breath, "Don't fucking move, girl," he said. Slammed the shutters open, took aim at something, and fired.
Raea moved. She did not move particularly fast, and she had to fight stumbling on her skirts and from the awkwardness of her joints, but she moved nonetheless. Darting was not a good adjective, but close enough; she closed the distance between the man in the leathers even as he turned away from the window to reload his weapon. The look of surprise, and then rage on his face was comical to her for some reason.
She reached for the rapier at her hip, but the fellow was faster than she was, swung his discharged blow like a club and caught her across her shoulder as she turned into it to save her head from that blow. The explosion of pain was not really worth it, and she crashed into a table with her blade mostly drawn. The fellow reached for his own blade at his own hip. Rather than pick herself up from the shattered chair she'd landed on, she simply thrust at him from a recumbent position. It should not have worked, but rage and haste had made the fellow careless. That, and perhaps, the presumption that she was harmless.
The tip of the thin bladed weapon pierced his armor like a hot knife through butter, and however pained she was, however she labored to draw a proper breath, her aim was as true as ever. All those long hours spent with an instructor honing a skill that was more hobby than anything - back in better days, before things turned south - were paying off here.
Bright red blood flooded his mouth, drowned out his scream so that little more than a gurgle emerged. His lifeblood splashed over her as he clutched at the blade transfixing his heart, tearing his own hands to shreds trying to pluck the blade free.
He was dead before he hit the ground. His weight bore her weapon to the ground with him, and for a long moment she simple lay on the ground, gasping for breath with the hilt in her hand, the basket the only thing keeping it from crushing that delicate hand under his weight. In their corner, the owners of the inn sat, stunned.
And then got up.
Raea felt someone slipping hands under her armpits and lifting her up, and she offered no resistance. She did not release her grip on her blade, and it was with some difficulty that, once she came to her senses, the owners and herself managed to pull it from the locking flesh of the cadaver.
"You shouldn't have done that," the man said. There was some concern in his voice - and maybe later that would grow into fear or anger. Right now, though, he seemed happy enough. "The others, they will come-"
"Listen," Raea said. Paused to regain some composure.
"Fighting. Someone is fighting back," she said, not knowing the full context of the situation any better than they. It wasn't as though the deserters were forthcoming with what they were doing and why.
"You shouldn't worry about that," the nameless woman said. Raea shook off their hands, and struggled back to her feet. "You've done more than you should," she added.
"Got to help them," Raea mumbled mostly to herself. The side she had been struck with the crossbow was starting to ache like blazes, but she ignored the pain. It wasn't her first rodeo, ignoring things that hurt. Hell, that was a matter of every day, to one degree or another.
"You can stay...here, if you like. But...," she continued and put her blade back where it belonged. With a look of distaste, she knelt - carefully - to pick through the dead deserters body, and pulled a heavy bladed knife and the sheath for it off him. This she added to her own kit, and stood again using the help of the chair next to her.
"If we don't, they will kill everyone," she said. Wasn't very sure of that, but then, she also believed the pitched battle was between the occupants of the village and the invaders.
The woman was wringing her hands, but the man shook his head. "You're a fool. Can barely stand. Don't owe anyone anything. You'll die, out there," he said.
Blood soaking the front of her dress, disheveled and knotted hair, face the color of ashes, she turned to look at the owner of the inn with solemn eyes.
"Know," she said shortly. She headed towards the door outside, where the fighting sounded utterly mad, and paused at the door.
"Sometimes....you have to pick your place," she said cryptically, and then ducked out the door into the rain. Took off running towards the mercantile, where her other things had been sent for cleaning. She needed to get out of this dress, into something more suitable.
Cold water sending shivers through a fever-racked frame, she didn't notice the two men tear off after her from one of the other houses. The melee down the road was winding down, bodies lying in the street like discarded puppets. She didn't have time to think of that just then; she was just interested in getting off the street.
One foot in front of the other. The general store, then...everything else.