Chapter Four: Rue
A bone-tipped arrow zipped down from the earthen ramparts that defended the little village, passing close enough that the wind of it ruffled Lady Rue's short black hair. Rue did not did not flinch and urged her mount on to greater speed. The shaggy pony's striped legs ate up the icy ground between her and the low wall. Icicles like daggers hung from the gaps where the sod blocks that made up the village's defenses did not quite align. Rue slung her shield over her back and stood in the saddle. Another arrow hissed by to burry itself in the frost and gravel. The wall loomed up, seeming suddenly much higher. Rue leapt from the back of her galloping horse and made a grab for the wall's top. Her gloved fingers scrabbled in a layer of dirty snow for a terrifying half-heartbeat. Then she found a hold. With a grunt of effort, Rue heaved herself up onto the rampart.
At once, an iceman leapt upon her, a stone dagger clutched in his fist. Rue tried to brace herself against the impact, but her assailant had nearly a foot of height on her. Her feet skidded in more snow, trammeled to slush by the icemen's sealskin boots, and they went down in tangle of limbs. The iceman's dagger rent her tabard and raised sparks from the mail beneath, but mere flint was no match for Rivenlands' steel.
Unable to reach her own blades, Rue settled for clapping both her hands hard over her attacker's ears. The noise and pain momentarily stunned the iceman, long enough for Rue to ram a foot up under his ribcage. She kicked out with all the power of her wiry frame. The iceman fairly flew backwards. Rue stood and drew her longsword in a single fluid motion. Before her attacker could recover himself, she lunged across the intervening space and stabbed him through the belly.
Rue felt, rather than heard, another iceman approaching from behind. She snapped out a back kick and was reward with a cry of pain and a crunch of breaking bone. She spun on her heel to find the man on the ground, clutching his knee, which was bent back on itself. Rue cut the downed man's throat and stepped swiftly over his body. With the same brutal efficiency, she fought her way to the wooden gates. Captain Verence was waiting for her there; his battle-axe was a crescent of blood.
"My lady," Verence said, saluting smartly.
"Let's get this door open, Captain," Rue shouted over the din.
"Right you are, my lady," said Verence. Together they lifted the heavy wooden bolt and shoved the gate wide. More soldiers on shaggy ponies, wearing the Greyleon colors under the furs they'd bundled on for warmth, poured through the gap. Hammered now from both sides, the icemen defending the walls did not last long.
A solider passed Rue the reins of a fresh pony and she scrambled up, keeping her sword drawn and unslinging her shield. The uncaring stars blazed down from velvet blackness of the sky. They seemed brighter, here at the roof of the world, and the silver lioness of Rue's personal device gleamed in their cold light. It was a device to command respect, for its bearer was not only Lady Rue, Knight of the Realm, but also Princess Rue of House Greyleon. Soldiers rallied to it, and Rue led them into the heart of village, cutting down fleeing defenders as they rode.
Most of the icemen dwelt in round hide tents with beams of whalebone, nearly as solid as cottages. In the town center however, the local chief had a wooden long house, a luxury in a land with little timber. The icemen were not truly a nation, but a shifting collection of chiefdoms that inhabited the desolate and fjord-riddled island of Selkik. During the summer the Fanged Strait sundered the island from the Rivenland's northern fiefdoms, but in winter the strait was covered with a layer of ice thick enough for horses and sledges to cross. And so, every winter, the Rivenlanders would raid the icemen.
The iceman chief stood upon the steps of his long house, calling out commands in the guttural tongue of his people. He was an old man, his leathery skin wizened like a winter apple, but he carried himself erect. A flaming torch guttered and spat in his left hand and he carried a club edged with shark's teeth in his right. He had arrayed his remaining warriors in a semicircle, two men deep, with himself at the center and cluster of archers at his back.
"Shields!" Rue bellowed in a voice of command, and there was rattle of bone arrowheads thudding against oak and steel. Had the icemen been trained warriors instead of a rabble of seal hunters and fishermen they might have though to shoot the horses out from under the Rivenlanders. But now it was too late.
Rue's forces collide with the ring of warriors, nimble ponies dodging between waving spears. Her sword rose and fell, cutting through furs and boiled leather like wet parchment.
"Greyleon!" she cried as she rested a harpoon from a dying iceman. "Greyleon reigns!"
She flung the stolen spear along with her war cry at the iceman chief. The barbed point struck him in the chest and he toppled, his limp body extinguishing the torch as he fell.
A howl went up from those icemen still living and they fled pell-mell into the night. Some of the soldiers were sent to hunt them down, while the rest got down to the real business of the evening: looting.
Besides the shaggy ponies, Rue's company had brought sledges drawn reindeer and huge mountain dogs and they quickly loaded these sledges with the spoils of war. Bales of furs: otter and mink, beaver and bear, seal and snow fox. Whale ivory and walrus ivory. Barrels of fat and oil. Fistfuls of snowflake obsidian from the volcano on the north side of the island. The great spiraling horns of the narwhal, each one worth a king's ransom. These were the riches of icemen.
Rue prowled among her soldiers, keeping an eye on them. Some would doubtless slip off to father half-Rivenlander children on screaming ice women. It was a part of war Rue had learned to accept. Soldiers were not knights, bound by a code of honor, and the prospect of a hot cunt waiting for them made the men more willing to trek across miles of ice to attack barbarian villages in the dark. The main thing was to make sure none of her troops were holding back plunder from their commander.
Rue paused, her path having lead her back to the steps of the longhouse. With a booted toe, she flipped the body of the iceman chief over. The corpse had cooled quickly in the achingly cold air; a trickle of blood that had spilled from his mouth was already frozen solid. Rue just glimpsed the cord of cured leather that circled the dead man's neck, barley visible above his fur-lined collar. Rue reached down, undid the necklace's catch, and pulled it free. It was bulkier than she'd expected, a thick chain of ivory beads cunningly carved into the shapes of sea birds. The ivory had rosy color to it, giving the impression that the birds were flying out of some unseen sunrise. Rue raised her eyebrows, recognizing the hue of mammoth ivory.
"An heirloom then," she murmured to herself. "An old one. And worth far more than its weight in gold."
She had just finished fastening the pink ivory necklace about her own throat, when she heard a noise from inside the longhouse. Rue frowned, her hand moving swiftly to the hilt of her sword. The longhouse had been the first building to emptied of its wealth. No one had remained inside. She glanced back over her shoulder. Some yards away, Captain Verence was overseeing the loading of the antepenultimate sledge. The wise thing to do would have been to summon a squad of soldiers before going to investigate the strange noise. But Rue had not become the most feared lady knight in the Rivenlands by being wise.
She stepped quietly into the longhouse, her hand still resting on her sword hilt, and looked around. A fire pit in the middle of the floor still smoldered redly, giving her enough light to see by. The low tables had been overturned, along with the chief carven chair. Animal hide flaps had been used to partition the verges of the hall into rooms for the chief's household. The more valuable hides had been torn down and taken off to the sledges, but a few remained. It was from behind one of these that the noise issued.
It was, Rue realized as she drew near, sobbing. These were not the keening cries of agony or heartbreak, but the low, wretched sounds of despair. Rue swept aside the deerskin hanging with the flat of her blade.
A young ice woman huddled against the far wall. She stared up at Rue, her canted eyes wide and fearful. Her face was round and lovely as the moon, even marred by the tear tracks that gleamed across her apple cheeks. She was naked, which was not altogether surprising. The icemen had no concept of nightclothes and generally slept bundled in furs. Indeed the ice woman had a white wolf's skin drawn about her, though it did little to conceal her tender body. Her skin was the color of maple sugar and while she was certainly not fat, there was a softness to her curves that doubtless helped to keep her warm. Her eyes were the same deep, seal brown as the hair that hung down in two ridiculously long braids, coiling on the rough floor.
Rue realized that she was staring with her mouth open. Slowly, she knelt down and laid aside her sword. Her eyes were on a level with the ice woman's. God's hooves, Rue thought, she can't yet be twenty.
She reached a gloved hand out towards the girl, palm up. She movements were slow and deliberate, the way she did when she had to deal with skittish horses.
"Hello," Rue said softly. "Hello there. It's all right. I won't hurt you. Do you speak any Common?"
