Salt Lotus/Dawn-2
By Munificent Perception Back to /Eclipse
Some days later on the road to Great Forks…
Dawning Daughter sensed something awry when she drew into sight of the next village. Silence hung over the small cluster of houses, and the villagers walked with heads bent, each individual tensed as if expecting a blow to fall across his or her neck. The smoke of a late-morning cooking fire rose from the center of the dwellings, and in the fields, the farmers' nervous eyes turned back towards their homes in furtive glances. A single man in chain mail appeared between two of the small huts and the villagers redoubled their labor until he withdrew.
Tax collectors or perhaps brigands? There was little difference in Dawning Daughter's eyes. However, no houses had been burned and there was a lack of fresh funeral pyre heaps around the town's shrine, so she suspected that if this was a plundering, it was of the legal variety. Curious, she strode forward. The falcon had set her on this road to Great Forks, and she had hoped to obtain food and rest in this settlement. She was no woodsman by nature, and a warm meal and roof overhead would be welcome after weeks of living out of doors. A bath would be priceless.
The farmers glanced up in alarm from under their broad conical hats. One or two made eye contact with Dawning and gently shook their heads as they urged her to turn back. The others merely looked away and hoed at the earth all the more determinedly. Dawning Daughter entered the village and changed course, leaving the road to circle around the settlement's center and approach it in the narrow space between two gray wattle huts. A cluster of seven men in various types of chain mail armor, with a well-maintained variety of arms, sat on low benches in the small, central square. They had bowls and chopsticks in hand, and each faced the alley that Dawning Daughter stood in. She sighed. The village's shrine was nearly two stories tall, and the sentry on its roof had clearly managed to mark her approach . “Welcome girl,” said a red-bearded man. An unsheathed saber lay on the bench beside him. “Passing through just now, or would you care to join us for an early lunch?”
Dawning took a knee on the packed earth of the small alley. Each of the soldiers-for-hire looked at her with an eager interest that was muted by wariness. She knew what it was they saw: a coffee-skinned young woman in a voluminous, knee-length buff jacket, with the twin handles of crossed hook swords protruding up from over her shoulders. She also knew what it was that she saw: mercenaries who were made uneasy by her lack of fear. A well-developed sense of caution prompted their leader to speak politely, even as they attempted to discern any aura of vulnerability about her. One never knew, especially here in the Scavenger Lands, if the stranger on the road might be a god, demon, or an exceedingly desperate mortal.
“I’m passing through on my way into Great Forks,” Dawning Daughter replied, “though in exchange for lunch, I would be happy to spend some small while in your company.”
“Why would a girl like you be on her way to the city of decadence all alone?”
“I am told I have friends there,” Dawning Daughter replied, her tone of voice indicating that more information would not be forthcoming.
The man with the beard shrugged and turned his head towards a barefoot woman of sixteen or seventeen who sat crouched on her haunches at the entrance to a house. The girl averted her eyes, went inside, and seconds later returned bearing a wooden bowl of rice gruel with a thin slice of seared and spiced pork laid across it. Dawning took the bowl without rising and noticed the bruises on the girl's wrists and ankles. The young woman's hands trembled as she withdrew to wait on the mercenaries.
Seeing that, Dawning decided to drive the soldiers from the village.
She tipped the bowl to her lips, sucked the slice of meat off the top and chewed as the man with the beard spoke. He offered her obvious lies, telling her that he and his soldiers were also only passing through. Looking around, it was clear that they had been here for sometime and had enjoyed the hospitality of the village through threats of violence. As the mercenary spoke, ancient memories of Essence manipulation rose up in Dawning Daughter's mind, and a meaning hinted at within the falcon god's battle instructions became clear to her.
When the bearded man had finished his false explanations and Dawning Daughter her meal, she hurled the wooden bowl at him. It struck his chest with a satisfying crack, even as she came to her feet with a piercing shout. Her twin swords flashed out of their scabbards, and she cut through the air in a short, furious kata. The motion gave reality to recollection and wove invisible flows of Essence from within Dawning’s body into an elaborate mandala. She became as light as raptors' wings, and her gaze so focused and supernaturally intense that those who beheld it lost their coordination under the force of its power. She came out of the alley in a gliding leap. Her first blow clubbed down the nearest soldier, striking him with the reverse blunt backside of a sword between his eyes. She parried the spear thrust of the next man with the arced motion of both swords; then spun past him. Her Essence-fueled predator's glare slowed the bearded man as she faced him, knocked aside his saber with one hooked sword and decapitated him with the other. The rest of the mercenaries broke and ran. Dawning followed close on their heels. Her battle cry and blazing gaze turned the mercenaries' flight into a panicked route. Weapons were dropped and all pretenses of martial discipline vanished in a fearful, headlong retreat as each man attempted to save himself.
Dawning Daughter came to a halt at the edge of the woods and listened to the terrible clamoring of the men, each running apart from his fellows. An abrupt jolt of fear washed through her, and the hooked swords nearly fell from her hands. She had attacked seven men by herself, without thought and without planning. She had not lured them into the alley where only soldier at time would have been able to approach her, nor had she thought to wear them down in a running battle through the village. Instead she had flung herself into their midst and won only on the strength of a mystic Charm recalled from a distant, previous life.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” She hissed to herself and then slammed the pommel of one sword into her thigh, bruising the flesh there. “Never again!”
On her way back into the village, she turned her glare on the shrine's roof. The sentry who cowered there lost his ability under the force of her gaze, and his arrow shot astray — flashing past Dawning without any need for her to take further action in her defense. The man managed to flee before she reached the shrine. She discovered that he had left only his sleeping roll on the floor and the burnt remnants of modest sacrifices that he and the other mercenaries had made to placate the small god whose humble temple they had occupied. Among the traveling gear left in the village square, Dawning discovered papers. She could not read — aside from recognizing a few common words of Riverspeak, and among those, the word for woman appeared several times on one page.
On the next page, the blank-faced sketch of a lady with a golden Caste Mark on her brow did not require literacy to understand. A half hour later, Dawning Daughter was on her way towards Great Forks with fresh food in her rucksack and the terrified blessings of the villagers at her back.
Next: /Zenith-2 Back to: /Eclipse
Back to: Salt Lotus
This is a work of fan fiction set in White Wolf’s Exalted fantasy setting and is no way meant to challenge White Wolf’s copy rights or trademarks. The characters Joyous Gift, Mirror Flag, Ribbons of Sorrow, Shield of a Different Day, Spinner of Glorious Tales and Weaver of Dreams of Victory, as well as the city Great Forks are trademarked White Wolf Property.
