Hunger

Part II - Chapter 28 - Divided - Part 1

Dreams flitted through her mind as raindrops in a still pool, rippling out in graceful ever widening circles as the echoes of the drops collided and mixed together.  Slowly, her mind settled and a brief flashes of memory – or dreams? – came back to her.

Piercing green eyes, set in a face she knew she should remember.  A feral warrior with a long braid, beautiful in barbaric brutality as he fought through scores of enemies.  Happiness never before known in her short life ripped away in a heartbeat.

With a shudder that sent tendrils of pain through her scalp, Safaiya struggled to open her eyes, yet the heavy lids would not budge.  She tried to raise a hand to her face, but her hand stopped short with an unfamiliar clink of metal.  At the sound, muddled voices raised in alarm, and as she tried to sit up, a wave of agony stabbed through her and she briefly thought to herself she was going to be sick before the darkness overwhelmed her.

~*~*~*~

Jakim brushed past the boy who had woke him, he went to check on Safaiya.  At a glance, he saw that Safaiya had moved, but her deep breathing assured him she was not yet awake. 

Knowing full well from personal experience the unfathomable power cased in that tiny body, Jakim had not been surprised when a breathless and terrified serving boy woke him unceremoniously, exclaiming that the Valkyr was awake.  Jakim was the only one who was not struck dumb with fear by her proximity, and as D’Vitri had conveniently vanished, the responsibility of tending to her had fallen upon his shoulders—not that he minded, of course.  She was much more amenable while unconscious, Jakim thought to himself with a snort of amusement.  

Jakim hovered over the portable cot, wincing at the twinge in his shoulder that had been dislocated the last time he had witnessed Safaiya’s power in the village of Binyek.  Gingerly, he loosened the bandage about her head and inspected the large gash that extended from her temple nearly to the base of her hairline at the back of her neck. It was a grievous wound, and Jakim felt a stab of remorse, as she had received the laceration by his hand—or rather, by his sword.

After Safaiya had destroyed the village of Binyek, he had stumbled back to the horses and pushed his mount nearly to death riding back to the Stronghold of the Vagrant Gentlemen.  By the time he had arrived, the battle had been stalled and Safaiya was gone.   By the end of the second day, the Chancellor’s army had regrouped and mounted a second assault laying siege to the Stronghold. 

Surrounded, and cut off from the outside world, conditions within the Stronghold had quickly degraded as the food supplies diminished and the dead and wounded piled up.  Having used all the arrows, the Gentlemen had resorted to slings and stones, and whatever debris was available when the stones where gone.  As a last resort, the Gentlemen had surrounded the Stronghold with a thick swatch of tar and anything that would burn.  Once lit, the Stronghold was surrounded by a large ring of fire.  While the fire prevented the enemy from approaching the Stronghold, it also prevented the Gentlemen from escaping.

Five days and five nights the fires burned.  On the dawn of the sixth day, the flames were dwindling for lack of fuel, and the Chancellor’s army renewed the onslaught with vigor.  It was then that Safaiya had returned as suddenly as she had disappeared, her arrival heralded by thunderous skies and the ground trembled beneath her feet.  Lavender eyes ablaze with bloodlust, she had laid waste to scores of men, her bloodied scimitar dancing as if it held a life unto itself.  Her wings, each feather razor sharp and as hard as steel, struck out viciously and blocked blows from those who dared to engage her.

He remembered being struck by her savage beauty, her lithe body adorned in the blood of her enemies, her hair wild and unkempt.  Momentarily distracted, Jakim nearly failed to block a lunge aimed at his heart.