V-Day Short Story: Before the Dawn of Battle

We can all blame Nathan for coming up with the idea that we write a short story on the theme of Valentine's Day and set in this new world that is being created by the three of us.  I love a good short story challenge, don't get me wrong.  My current project that I'm querying began with a short story scene and exploded from there.  It's just... Valentine's Day?  Ugh.

At least that's what I thought but then I readjusted my mindset.  This was a beautiful challenge.  I rarely like to write romance or romantic relationships (that are outright romantic).  I never feel like I nail them.  While I don't believe I did it this time, I gave it a shot...  It isn't outright romantic but this challenge has shed some light on a relationship in this upcoming story...and it is sweet and challenging and soft at times, and that's okay for two warrior people.  I like it.  I hope you do too.

Before The Dawn of Battle

We had a pile of furs beneath us and I had stuffed a few extra behind my shoulder blades to prop me up a bit more.  Fire crackled off to the side, glistening off the sheen we had developed on our skin. His leg was entwined with mine as our hearts slowed and our breathing returned to normal.  His head rested on my chest, though my small size hardly provided a good pillow.  I toyed with the strands of his sandy brown hair, usually so neatly plaited and smiled a bit.  These loose strands were my doing, however, if it was a competition, he would have won; my shoulder length hair was a mess.  

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Feeling my eyes growing heavy and desperately wishing to stay awake, I pulled myself out from under his bare form.  We both seemed reluctant to meet the cool air that floated around us, but he let me go.  I snagged a rough, woolen blanket with my toe, swinging it in the air and catching it.  As I walked, I draped it around my naked form, feeling like a Greek goddess, even amongst this hard, wooden and fur shaped world that sprinkled snow around me at all seasons of the year.

He watched me, heating up my back, as he lounged in our pile of furs.  He dragged a pewter plate of hard breads to his side and tore off a piece.  His silence was deafening and I pretended to ignore it until I was seated in the curved chair behind my enormous wooden table that served as my desk.  Back home, the desk would have been covered with a computer, notebooks, figurines and my beta fish, but here, my desk was covered with parchment maps, wooden representations of the clans and various other tools I had yet to master.  I stared at them while he, munching on bread, stared at me.


I had never been any good at silences, so I picked up a wooden piece in the shape of a large pony and twirled it about my fingers.  “Hypothetically, what does one do the night before a game changing battle?”  The light played off the wooden horse, casting shadows on the map.

In the edges of my vision, I saw Einar toy with a torn piece of bread, just as I was toying with the figure.  “When my father was Dral, before you, Valktara, he would enjoy his night between the legs of many women.  It was I who sat staring at such a map.”

My head bobbed, my messy curls having grown long enough to dance in my face.  “So what did you do?”

Einar shifted a bit, setting aside the plate and popping the last piece of bread into his mouth.  It was a decidedly less attractive move than those I’d seen in the last few hours but I pushed the thought quickly aside.  He searched for his own woolen blanket and settled on a long enough cut of fur to wrap around his waist as he gathered himself and walked over to my side.  His broad shadow fell across the known world of The Nord and its clans, mingling with my own slender one.

Gently, he lifted the pony from my fingers and set it back into its place.  “I spent every hour until the great sun touched the first blades of grass staring at such a map as this.  I played out every scenario and I threw a great many pieces into the fire.  In the end, I chose the advice of my generals and had only an hour of fitful sleep.”

I let out a long breath through my nose, then smoothed out the edges of the heavy parchment maps.  The woolen blanket fell from my shoulder and into my lap.  I didn’t mind; I let his heat slide from him and into my back.  His lips tickled my shoulder before his shadow and his warmth passed around me.  He went to the fire pit and stoked it.

“Einar,” my voice was soft and trembling.  “Where you ever afraid?”

He didn’t look at me, but he paused in his work.  “Always.”  Then his eyes, the color of the fresh morning sky, seared holes into my soul.  “And you should be too, Torny.”

The use of my name shocked me.  He never used it, always referring to me as my title.  I wanted to beg him to use my real name given to me by my real parents so far away in another world and time.  I couldn’t, of course.  The Clan Mother had proclaimed me as such and so I would remain. 

“Why?  Why should I be afraid?”

His answer was a long time in coming.  “Oma has blessed you, it is true, but for how long?  I have seen many die in battle, including my own father.  They showed no fear until the blade was through their chest.  It was their undoing.  I don’t wish the same for you.  Even a slave can wish his mistress this.”

I held his gaze, though my heart skittered like a rabbit.  “I’d rather a man wish a woman.”

“Then I wish it.”

I stayed where I was though I wanted to fold myself into his lean and marked arms.  “I have to do this.  I don’t get a choice.”

He nodded, tendrils of his hair passing shadows over his face.  “Then I will spend my last moments fighting to ensure that you never feel a blade right here,” he tapped his bare chest where his heart beat and where I had listened to his thump so many times.  “You are not of this world, Torny.  You should not die in it.”

My gaze turned toward the map and then carefully to the warrior-slave in front of me with fur wrapped about his waist.  He was wrong.  I might not have been born into it, but I was a part of this world now.  I loved him and I loved my people.