AN: It’s traditional to read ghost stories on Christmas, so since I happen to have one, here it is.
Enjoy <3
“So, I will tell the story. I wasn’t there, of course, nor have I been there, or I wouldn’t be here now, telling the story. But I heard it just as I’ll tell it, and you’ll hear it as I heard it, and in that way it will be then as it is now, as it was when those there told it.”
“Oh, come on – it was, like, fifty years ago.”
“No – no way – it was way longer because–”
“Because my butt. It wasn’t fifty though, it was longer than that.”
“But then–”
“It couldn’t have been, because–”
“Because I’m telling the fate-fucked story, you bunch of Wulshmen,” Naevn said, only slightly lifting his storyteller’s lilt over the voices of arguing cadets, and returning just as smoothly. “And I say, it’s one of those stories – the ones that happen and happen again.”
The logs popped, and the flames spat, and the Second Years, arrayed like just-scruffed young lions in the best spots around the fire, settled down to let Naevn continue.
Taig, huddled with the other First Years on a muddy log – which half had abandoned as too weak for their combined weight, as he probably should – catty-corner across the fire from Naevn, leaned ever-so-slightly towards Glasan and whispered, “Is there something wrong with the Wulsh?”
Glasan was either too petrified of diverting the gathered Second Years’ attention or thought this question too stupid to address.
“The point is nobody knows exactly how long ago it first happened, but it was just long enough that the Old Gods weren’t yet forgotten, and the kings not yet cowed, and a young woman worked in the forges at the Academy, when these were right within the main grounds. The walls hadn’t been finished – the fields were open and there wasn’t a much in the way of the townspeople – and it was only just starting to be a town – and the cadets meeting at all times of day and night.”
“Especially night,” one of the Second Years said, but his friends jabbed him in the gut and shushed him.
They’d had to learn quite a bit of history and Taig was thinking about how this timeline didn’t make sense, but the fire was starting to seem more like daylight and the fields more like the Academy fields, and anyway, Glasan hadn’t answered his last question so he didn’t have anyone to ask.
“As one might assume,” Naevn continued, “this meant there was a fair bit more mingling, and while there were rules in place to keep the peace just like there are now, it wasn’t considered such a bad thing – after all, the new ways were new enough yet that some of the military and some of the people learning to live side by side again after the Founding could only be good for both ends.”
Snorts of laughter were, by Naevn, slyly acknowledged without dropping his cadence.
“The forge-woman – or, forge-girl, really, for she was as yet between the age at which farm girls submit to town-work and noble girls submit to be known at parties – had a good job, and a sensible father and vigorous mother, who worked for her and her siblings’ well-being, but she herself had no interest in the family life. She liked her work and she liked her reading, and though well enough to look at, she paid no mind to seeing herself as others did, or showing her best side to them – except in one thing.
“The great tumult of her life had been the overturning of the gods. It had wracked her life with guilt and doubt and terror, as she saw the ways the people filled the holes in the world with frightful thoughts, with foolish despair, with drink or sex or love or hate – it was settling down, but such uncertainty had pressed upon her at a young age, and while there were answers, she saw some that didn’t seek them, or didn’t accept them, and the threat that imposed weighed heavily on her mind. So she—”
“Being an idiot,” a second year said. Twisting to put his whole body into it, his seat-neighbor shoved him down and out of the light by his face.
“She,” Naevn let his annoyance show, to cow any further unwarranted interruption, “she decided to investigate what had been lost.”
Naevn’s display only momentarily threw off the expected expressions of anticipation and dismay, which the second years soon all joined in with full throated ‘ooo’s and ‘ahhhs’.
“Now, as I said, it was not so long ago the Founder came and cowed the King, and twisted off the chains of god-fear and tyrant priests, so she was able to get deeper into the mysteries and deceptions once practiced by those believers, who so long shackled our people with ignorance and myth – far deeper, perhaps, than we today can even conceive. And though false and trick-laden, these charlatans had not held power so long without some deeper method, some inconceivable means of turning and taking the minds and hearts of others.
“But she was a good girl, and clever, and these things she studied but didn’t apply, learned but put no stock in. Except…” Naevn leaned closer to the fire, holding up his hand is if to defend or supplicate, “she did sometimes lay the milk by the door at night, or hook her fingers when the cloud-shadow crossed her, and always, perhaps more of habit or liking, knocked in threes or sevens or pulled thirteen buns from the oven, squared any unclosed sets of three she found, and ate apples on a journey’s start.
“It was just for safety, or, for comfort, and then by habit, but it gave her cause to pause and look down, so her long neck curved, or up, so her eyes caught the light, and with her natural thoughtfulness, this lent her a deliberation that sometimes seemed like grace in the soot and the sweat and the singed and tangled ends of any hair that came loose from its tight braids in the forge.
“And this was how a cadet came to see her, then watch her, and then love her.”
“Burned hair smells really bad,” Glasan whispered, glassy eyes fixed unmoving on Naevn.
‘Well, so does a forge sometimes,’ Taig wanted to whisper back, but it got lost in the ominous crack and settle of the log beneath him that dropped him down a little lower in his seat.
“This cadet was a farmer’s son, whose family had been freed by the Founder’s war, and so he was filled with a great deal of pride, and a great desire to prove himself, and he had no attachment to the city’s petty politics or to the old ways that fed it for so long. But he was also behind his fellows in everything but physical strength, and had to study hard to keep up. So he admired the girl for her beauty, yes, but when he heard of her cleverness, he knew he should speak to her, whether she favoured him or not.
“Of course, she had no thought of favouring anyone, but the strong young cadet spoke to her, and was not unpleasant, and there was more freedom in that time between townspeople and Academy-folk, so they built first an acquaintance, and then a friendship, and then learned to rely upon one another, as she helped him in his studies, and he lent her surety the changing of the world had denied her since a child.
“But he was a straightforward person, ill-suited to the city, and still learning the subtlety of strategy and leadership the Academy required, and in those days, to be missing subtlety on Academy grounds was dangerous indeed.”
“Where the fuck are your vastlings?”
Another loud crack from the log, as Taig jumped at the voice in his ear.
Like a vast colony of cats in the dark, it seemed as if a hundred glowing eyes turned towards him and his little edge of the fire.
“W-what?” Taig futilely tried to whisper, realizing everything had come to a halt but somehow hoping he could pretend it hadn’t.
His tentmate, in his unmistakeable, accented rumble, started to say it again when Taig’s brain caught up. He continued to stare fixedly at all the eyes staring at them. “Westies? They’re… uh… what – why do you want to know?”
A terse sigh, then, “If you do not have them tomorrow you will be fucked, which means I will be fucked, which means this shit-show will be more of a shit-show than it already is.”
He had a way with words, did Taig’s tentmate. By now, Taig’s confusion had overcome his nerves and he looked over his shoulder, where Dominicus Galen squatted behind him in the dark – Galen, in turn, was alternately staring at Taig, and then returning the gaze of the circle of cadets, as if he weren’t a First Year and they weren’t a group of Second Years that wildly outnumbered him. No, he looked back like a much bigger kind of cat, deciding which of the other cats he was going to eat first. Taig wasn’t sure that the other cats fully appreciated this inherent threat in their observation by his tentmate, but rather hope the whole cat war could be avoided, for there would be much death, which would probably include him.
“But we’re not… they didn’t even warn us to pack them? I don’t think…” but this was a mistake, better to just get to it, “why do you think we’ll need them?”
“Do you know where we are?” Galen inquired in annoyance, which quickly relented before the realization this was just as stupid a question as Taig’s had been. Of course Taig didn’t know. “Three out of five directions we could take tomorrow take us through brush, or tall, wet, grass, because we’ll be up to see the ass crack of dawn. You will want protection for your legs. They will want you to have it. Unless you want wet stockings or ticks in your boots, and to be run around at the end of the day. You don’t have them, I get run around at the end of the day, too.”
Because, even Taig knew, while bivouac was generally a place where suffering was distributed more equally than in any other Academy training, Galen took no chances. Generally, it was helpful, actually; he thought it rather smart of himself to be so accommodating to taking the Midraeic on as a tentmate. Taig often looked much better, and indeed was prepared much better than he would otherwise be.
Not now, of course. Now he might die.
“Are we interrupting?” Naevn asked.
“They brought billhooks,” Galen said to Taig as he rose to stand, eyes fixed on the fireside circle of cadets.
“Perhaps all this talk of ritual was too alluring,” one of the other Second Years said, to subdued chuckles from the rest.
“In the bag, thanks,” Taig said quietly, not having any earthly idea if he even had the gaiters Galen was inquiring about. If they were standard equipment, then surely he did. Somewhere. He never had actually gone through his whole bivouac bag after they had issued it to him, not wanting to disturb the obviously intentional and careful packing, dipping in if he thought he needed something or going without, and generally having been happy to chuck it into a corner of his room and forget all about the entire experience each time bivouac ended. That was probably bad.
“Shall we get on with the story?” Naevn said, raising his brows over the fire at Galen and Taig.
Taig was nodding furiously, mouth pressed shut; Dominicus knew he wasn’t invited to sit in. He slipped back into the shadows, leaving the little fire-lit circle to their game, or whatever it was.
Actually, as he slid through the foliage in the dark towards their tent, he contemplated the idea that maybe he could have stayed. He knew what voice was whispering that advice into his head.
He could have stayed, if he was willing to tolerate whatever bullshit they were going to throw at him. He didn’t trust the Second Years. Sometimes the bullshit was violent. His classmates in the circle were also all those too scared or gullible to be of much service in resisting bullshit. It was bivouac, so the Second Years wouldn’t be too audacious, but it was bivouac, so Dominicus wasn’t feeling too audacious himself.
Also, the Second Years were clearly setting up his First Year compatriots to experience, believe, say, or do something stupid. This was evident not only in that it was the Second Years doing something together, but because all the idiots had shown up to listen.
Eha, little voice, not on the side of the idiots, are you?
Maybe. Sometimes. He was an idiot, too. Who cared? Cole wasn’t even here. Why was he even thinking about Cole? What even was that little voice doing? Fuck off, little voice. Galen didn’t need advice from idiots right now and he didn’t know why he was thinking about Cole and didn’t care to think about it.
They were fighting, anyway.
But that just meant a much more familiar little voice – up until recently the only little voice he cared occasionally to listen to other than his father’s – filled his head with his sister, Catillia’s laughter. This was possibly more irritating than even Cole’s little voice, because generally Catillia’s little voice gave him good advice, and she had done a lot of laughing at him lately, while the new little voice of Cole gave him stupid advice.
Sometimes it was right.
Which was why he was, instead of listening to either of them, going to waste his energy returning to the tent and unpacking his tentmate’s stinking, obviously untouched-since-last-time ruck and find his stupid westies or westlings or whatever the hell stupid nickname cadets called gaiters and at least hang them up so they weren’t mouldering off his legs tomorrow.
Taig was at least smart enough to recognize this as a service, which was the only reason Dominicus did it. He was also smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it, which was why, for all of his frustrating thickness, Dominicus was willing to do him any service in the first place. It had only been a month since the last time someone had addressed him as a servant, or city-dweller, and the last thing Dominicus needed was to through the punishment his corrections of such mistakes required.
He also didn’t always win. those fights, Catillia’s little voice laughed at him.
The good news was cadets responded very promptly to overwhelming violence and word travelled quickly when you kicked the shit out of those a year above you, even if the outcome of the fight wasn’t strictly a victory for you.
It made Dominicus tired.
So did his tentmate’s fucking shin-socks.
And so did bivouac.
He swept aside the tent flap and looked at the bag his mulish tentmate had lugged faithfully all this way, only to dump wholesale on the ground to go listen to campfire stories. Like a tick found too late, it seemed slightly swollen. Dominicus asked the Prophet for pardon for whatever he was about to say in unpacking it. For good measure, he asked the Prophet – or, really, one of the Prophet’s lesser servants who would be listening to this appeal and could better phrase it if necessary to the Holy One – to shit on Taig, bivouac, the Academy, and possibly all of Ainjir.
And finally, he asked the little Cole-voice, also laughing at him, telling him it was his fault he stuck around losers like Taig, and congratulating him on abandoning the obviously stupid fireside circle, to entirely fuck off.
Once again, he stared at the bag on the ground.
“Eha! Fuck,” Dominicus said to nobody in particular. He kicked open Taig’s ruck and dug out the stupid gaiters – they stunk, everything stunk, now the tent stunk –
And Catillia laughed at him as he stalked back out of the tent to join the others by the fire.