***Ok, this is one chapter that I'd direct you to take a look at the tabs.
It's not a major part of this, but there's a scene with some gay interaction in it. I also move the main girl and guy pair closer together in this too.
Well, for a bit of a slightly stuck-up and yet accomplished female warrior and a blonde Danish barbarian, they're getting closer.
If nothing else, I think it shows just how tough it can be sometimes to get her attention. 0_o
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"I cannot get this one out," Kōichi hissed with effort through his teeth. He'd been trying for a few minutes now to remove Valdemar's arrow from the back of the last of the four men.
Valdemar looked over as he placed the flat of his palm against the shoulder of the first man that he'd shot and tightened his grip on the arrow protruding from the corpse's chest and he grimaced as he wrenched the projectile free.
"Then leave it," he shrugged, "I can see from here that it is probably ruined anyway. He fell from a running horse. The tumble cannot have helped my arrow. I'll just break it off."
He stood up and walked over, seeing Kōichi shake his head, "Do not leave such a strong sign as that to tell that you did this."
Valdemar nodded, "I guess you're right."
But as he looked, Valdemar could see that there might be hope after all and he rolled the body onto its side and pushed through instead. Other than the wet and bloody fletching, there seemed to be no damage. He carefully tried to clean it with a little snow.
They dragged the corpses off and rolled them into the narrow gap between a pair of boulders with some stunted shrubs growing nearby and they kicked some snow over the bodies. They left then, deciding that being in a place with four dead men who likely took orders from someone was likely not the best place to be found. Kōichi led Valdemar away, but the Dane noticed that it was in a different direction.
Before he could remark on it, a doe stopped in front of them coming in the opposite direction. She looked back at something but it was too late, since Valdemar was carrying his bow in his hand with an arrow held against it loosely just as a precaution.
She turned her head back only a little at the soft creak of the bowstring being drawn and she froze. Then she was down and struggling, but Kōichi's knife ended things moments later.
"I thought that she was going to remember her feet and run," he said in almost a whisper, "I have seen it before. Hurry Valdemar-san, pull out your arrow and then we will need to be gone from here. I worry that something caused her to run this way."
The Dane nodded and with the arrow out, he knelt and draped the carcass over his shoulders before he stood up. She wasn't large and he'd noticed that the deer seemed to all be smaller here. They walked off in a bit of a hurry, though they were quiet about it. Kōichi led them along a shallow stream for some distance, crossing quickly three times before moving away on the opposite side.
"I thought that we were going back to the village," the Dane said in a low voice.
The youth turned to look back a little and he nodded, "Do you plan to eat what you carry in a day? There are others who could use a little of it."
Valdemar understood and he smiled, "I was not prepared to actually shoot a deer today. But is it far? It's always best not to leave the work of it for too long."
In answer, Kōichi led them under a thick canopy of evergreen boughs in a place where the growth had been carefully managed so that those boughs never died back in the normal way as the trees grew taller. That way, they always hid the entrance to a bit of a grotto. Beyond that, Valdemar found that he was being led into a cavern.
As they walked, Valdemar could see people, most of them working at everyday tasks. Kōichi was recognized with smiles and quiet calls of greeting, but each time, the next instant, the eyes were on the Dane and the people stood and stared as he strode along with the doe over his shoulders. Some people even bowed, confused by the topknot and deciding that it might be best to play it safe by showing respect.
They stopped next to an old woman who looked happy to see the meat, even if it was still on the animal and she greeted Kōichi with a pleased bow. Then she turned to look up at the stranger for a moment with a little wonder on her face. She bowed deeply again and began to speak. He caught her respectful greeting and that she called him 'kuroi yajirushi hanshu' and after that, he didn't get a thing out of what she said.
"These people are the poorest of the poor, the ones who do the lowest and dirtiest of tasks," Kōichi said, "They do not even have homes to freeze in, so they live here. There are only maybe a dozen here at the moment. Can you spare the meat for them?"
Valdemar nodded, smiling at the faces around them, "Please tell them that they are welcome to all of it, only have someone show me where I can lay this down so that I can butcher it for them. What did the old woman say?"
"She knew you as the Black Arrow lord from the talk in the area and said that the world holds many wonders. She is happy to see that not all wonders are to be feared, not matter how fearsome they might seem." He turned to speak to the others.
When Kōichi translated the Gaijin's graciousness, Valdemar found himself being led by the hand by a young girl to a place deeper in where there was an offshoot of the steam which they'd crossed.
Valdemar wasted no time, and the doe was skinned and dressed out in minutes with many hands willing to help him with the work. He didn't understand their quiet thanks to him, and they didn't comprehend his speech to them in a low voice as he worked, but that didn't matter. Once he saw that they had a place there to hang meat, he quartered the carcass and with a little hemp twine, he hung it for them and washed his hands in the icy stream.
When he turned around, he found himself being led to a chamber where he and Kōichi were offered tea and rice cakes. The cakes were not sweetened at all and a lot of the kernels were brown, not having their husks removed. The tea was the lowest grade, beneath what likely anyone in the village would have, but Valdemar didn't care.
"They are a little shamed to only have these things to offer to a lord from another land," Kōichi said, but Valdemar waved his hand a little with a broad smile for them all.
He looked at the faces around him, "Tell them for me that in my life, it does not matter if one has a title or is a lord. My family had only its name, and when I was a boy, most had already forgotten it. One cannot eat a title. I know what it is to be hungry. I am honored by their hospitality and friendliness."
They took their leave not long after. Most of the talk had been between the people and Kōichi, who explained to them who Valdemar was and roughly where he'd come from. On the way out, the Dane felt the hands of several of them on him as they wished him well and a few of them gave in to the urge to slap their palms gently against his shoulder or the leather of his cuirass in a friendly fashion as if to wish him safe travels.
Valdemar found that they now approached the village from a different direction as they walked. "What have you got there?" he asked, looking at the crude package which Kōichi carried, noticing it for the first time.
"A little of the meat from your doe," the boy smiled as he held it up a little, "They would not hear of us leaving without a bit, no matter what I tried to tell them."
Valdemar looked for a moment longer and judged that there was perhaps three pounds there and he shook his head, "Deer are larger where I am from and there are different kinds. What we brought was not that much to have any to spare, once the hide, bones, sinew and gut are cut away."
Kōichi shrugged, "This is what I was given, Valdemar-san. I argued them down from a whole haunch. You do not need to fear. I can say that everything we brought will be used."
After a time, Valdemar looked over again. "What was it that Matsu -san wanted you to tell me? I have waited all of this time, trying to make sense of what I saw."
Kōichi held up those two fingers again, "Not here, Valdemar-san. Wait a little longer."
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The little fire crackled and Kōichi served them both tea to try to drive the chill out as the house warmed up. Valdemar was learning the slightly precarious pastime of trying to warm one's fingertips while holding a tea bowl and yet not burn himself at the same time by holding and not shifting his grip for too long.
Kōichi sat down beside him. "The other girl back there at the little house that we saw was Aiki-san," he said.
He looked down for a moment as he tried to think of the best way to say things. "The way that things are in little places such as this village can make life miserable," he said.
"People only see the things which they might wish to see. I am seen as – at best – only half-Japanese. There is little that I can do to change anything. I am expected to be a low sort of person; the only reason that I am already not a beggar is because of my mother, and that is only because of how she is tied to Maeda-san. My mother and Hoshino-san are viewed a little oddly because they are from the south, but they are afforded much respect since they are Samurai and from a noble family.
This is a little place and the thoughts of the people in it are even smaller. Aiki-san is seen in the same way as I am, and since she is a girl, she can be even less than me in this place.
Matsu-san is the only one here with a chance, because of her father."
Valdemar nodded as he tried to understand, "But where she ends up in life also depends to some degree on who she might marry, or am I wrong?"
"You are correct," Kōichi said, "and the only man around here whom everyone sees as a match is Taro – whom she despises openly. This is what all three of us have known all of our lives.
We were children together," he said, " we met each other while we were not much beyond infants and even then, we already knew. The other children would have little to do with us, so we grew together, us three. Matsu-san and I are cousins of a sort because our mothers are cousins. Aiki-san is really not related to us in any way, but we have always called her our cousin as well because she belongs with us."
