“I have felt similar things when I was out on the sea,” Vivian said after summarizing for Olvir, “but not as strongly. And I’m glad I didn’t consider it in the mountains.”
“Gods, so am I,” said Olvir with an uneasy laugh. “But those look too lifelike, as though they could move all of a sudden. That’s probably part of the problem.”
So speaks one who knows neither the sea nor mountains well. We live, all of us, side by side with titanic forces, and all our strength cannot ward them away completely. Does it matter what form they take?
“I’m going to have to try and forget this entire conversation if we go back,” said Vivian. She tried to sound amused, even to be so, but the line between humor and unease was very thin, and she wasn’t sure where she landed. “Never make it across the Serpentspine again, otherwise.”
“We should’ve packed more wine, perhaps. Or lignath,” said Olvir, referring to a foul and potent drink of the waterfolk.
“I could simply hit my head against a rock a few times.”
With as little warning as the Battlefield ever gave, the ground turned slippery. Vivian hissed as she slid off-balance, teetering with her hands spread and her footing uncertain.
Olvir grabbed her by the shoulders. His face, suddenly only an inch or two from hers, showed all his concern plainly, but he never faltered as he helped Vivian stabilize herself, and he spoke easily. “It wouldn’t do you much good to start the process now, would it? And this seems a bad place to fall.”
“Yes.” She’d grabbed for him automatically as well. Beneath his armor, his shoulders were granite against her palms. “Thank you.”
“Of course. Are you all right?”
“Nothing broken but my dignity. You?”
He nodded. “Wearing plate during winter battles trained me for this, it seems.”
“I’m glad.” Time was pressing. They needed to let go of each other and start walking again, but Olvir was staring at her, all earnest concern and clean-cut handsomeness even after weeks in the wilderness. Vivianwashuman.
She kissed him: not for long, nor with any demand in it, but lightly, quickly, savoring the moment when Olvir stopped being surprised and started to respond. When he pulled her close, Vivian relaxed against him. She took in the gentle pressure of his lips against hers, each rise and fall of his chest, and the quiet sound he made in his throat, surprised and pleased.
That had to suffice. They each pulled away at the same time, Vivian knowing that they’d lingered as long as they could and that Olvir realized it too.
She’d never thought, before, in terms of first or last, not with any of her other lovers and not even with Olvir. The future was generally clouded. Vivian had always been content to let it remain so, until she turned away from a tall, chestnut-haired knight and set her attention on the strange landscape ahead of her once again.
Then the wordslast kissgrew in her mind, brambles with iron thorns.
As far as Vivian could tell, the Battlefield had neither weather nor day and night. It was a pity. She badly wanted to weep.
* * *
It wouldn’t be a bad memory to take into Letar’s Halls, that kiss, if matters ended badly. Every kiss Olvir had shared with Vivian had been good, granted, and other activities had been better, but that latest had been the sweetest as well, maybe because it had been tinged with sorrow.
Vivian felt the sorrow of it more than the sweetness, Olvir suspected. She walked along silently beside him with her face like a mask. Grief echoed every careful footstep she took.
He couldn’t offer direct comfort without putting them, and perhaps the world, in more danger. Whatever it occurred to him to say as a means of distraction seemed either painful or absurd. Physical reassurance was also out of the question, since they both needed to keep walking and to have free hands in case of an ambush.
Not fair, he thought, glaring up at the phantoms in the sky.
Olvir hadn’t spoken the phrase aloud, not as a protest, since he’d become a squire. He’d tried to keep from thinking it. Life was frequently unfair, which was not the same as unjust. It was the knights’ duty to restore justice where they could. When they couldn’t, complaining about unfairness was petty bordering on blasphemous.
Nonetheless, he watched Vivian march onward, holding herself together with her own duty, and silently raged against the world that had put her in that place. He could have rebuked himself, too, for not keeping more distance from her—for responding to her as he’d done—for not rejecting her for her own good.
But that would’ve been the same error he’d made at the river of fire. Vivian had known her hidden mission, likely long before Olvir had guessed at it, and she knew her own heart. Denying her will to spare her pain would have been wrong. For himself, he didn’t regret a second.
He, after all, would have the easier end, even if their quest went wrong.
Vivian spoke quietly with Ulamir, or the other way around. Sensing that soothed Olvir a little: Vivian wouldn’t be alone if the worst happened. He sent silent thanks to the sword-spirit, though he doubted Ulamir could hear it.
“We should eat,” he said, finally coming up with a halfway useful statement. He also managed not to sound hoarse. “I don’t know how long it’s been, and I can’t say I’m hungry, but it’d probably do us good.”
“Right,” said Vivian and managed a bleak grin. “We’ll be better off if we don’t confuse seeing things from hunger with seeing things because they…sort of exist.”
