The rented room was dusty and scarcely furnished; just a wide, hard bed, a worn straw mat on the floor, a small table, and two old chairs under which Mirlín had crammed her saddlebags. The window was open and the previously stuffy room smelled of fresh night air. Mirlín lowered the drooling Fyen down on the bed and Reynaer dropped Desiderius on the straw mat.
"Great, now my ass is wet!" Mirlín exclaimed, peering over her shoulder. She took off her wolf hide and placed it on one of the chairs.
"Yeah, I've wet myself too a couple of times when I was really ass over shoulders," Reynaer muttered and received an odd glance from Mirlín.
"I meant Fyen drooled on my butt when I was carrying her ass on my shoulder, that's why it's wet!" A crooked smile lit up on Mirlín's face. "So, you have been carrying many unconscious girls while drunk, eh?"
"Once or twice," the man replied modestly.
"You want to get some sleep now as well?"
Reynaer shook his head. "Still feeling a bit thirsty actually. You know if we could find anything downstairs?"
"You mean something boozy?" Mirlín laughed, finally admitting to herself she was drunk. How many tankards... well, a few pints never... oh, sod it. She couldn't remember the last time she had been this drunk and, for some reason, she was willing to chug some more.
Reynaer winked at the woman. "Great minds think alike."
"Will you go downstairs and ask?" but he was out the door before she had finished the sentence.
Mirlín sat on the bed and yawned. Well, talk about a strange turn of events. But these people seem all right. There are good people out there too, I just didn't think there were that many in Rodal, she thought and let her mind wander back to the places she had been to.
"Cake... cake... no... mum!" Fyen murmured, tossing and turning.
She looked so young and vulnerable lying there, next to Mirlín, and the woman couldn't help but feel a sting of pity somewhere inside her when she looked at the young girl, caught in what sounded like a troubled, restless dream. Fyen too lost her mother. What an unfortunate kid, another one. Guess we all are.
However, the young man looked rather happy just lying on the floor, deep in slumber with a shoe print on his face. At that moment Mirlín heard a crash downstairs and the sound of someone stomping up the stairs. Reynaer slipped quietly into the room with a wild look in his eyes and three large bottles in his arms. Several feet ascended the stairs as Reynaer dashed behind the bed.
"I'm not here!" he hissed. Mirlín dived under the covers next to Fyen and pretended to be asleep.
A man with a red mustache knocked on the door and peeked inside. "Pardon me, did you see anybody come this way?"
"Uh, sorry?" Mirlín’s muffled voice asked from under the covers.
"My apologies, m'am. Must have gone somewhere else..."
He shut the door and Mirlín heard the men walk away. She pushed the covers aside and reached over the sleeping Fyen to ask Reynaer what he had managed to snatch.
Reynaer presented his bounty proudly. "Took three bottles of wine from those rich bastards. Traveling merchants or something."
"Well," Mirlín grabbed one bottle and opened it, "as you said earlier, ‘I'll drink to that.'"
She poured wine down her throat, wondering when was the last time she had had the privilege to drink fine wine. As she lowered the bottle, a trickle of ruby liquid dripped from her lips and down her chin.
After a long swig from a second bottle, Reynaer reached over and flicked a drop of wine from Mirlín's chin. "So, what do you think about what happened to Fyen's mother?"
Mirlín's initial reply consisted of a hiccup. "Um, it was the Sons that took her away... to the citadel, right? That’s where they take most of the people that... disappear. The soldiers work for them, for the... Sons of the Sun. That's what they call themselves. I've seen them before, taking mostly women... with special powers... if you believe in that stuff, magick."
Reynaer scratched his stubble. "Yeah, a sorry lot though powerful."
"And couldn't they come up with anything more original than ‘sons of the sun'?"
Reynaer chuckled. "Religious zealots have no imagination!" Then his smile faded. "I wonder if she's still alive."
"She might be. Don't those bastards get off on torturing women?" Mirlín snorted.
Reynaer swallowed a large gulp of wine and spat. "They get off on torturing anything, anything that bleeds. Once saw a corpse of a boy, no more than ten years old. Had all the marks that he'd been in the care of the Sons. All four limbs hacked off, genitals missing, stomach slit open, ass bleeding..."
Mirlín bit her lip as she imagined the boy. She felt sick but it might have been the liquor rumbling in her guts. All the same, the bottle got ever lighter. I wonder if this country has seen better days in the past. But was there a single moment without shadows in my childhood either? She couldn't blame just her dead mother or her father nor the unkind foster parents, they had not made her the way she was. What makes people do terrible things like that?
"Society, eh? Bloody society," Reynaer cursed.
"This is not a society, societies shouldn't work this way..."
Reynaer threw an empty bottle out of the open window and corked another one. "Take all the books, all the science, all the gold, and this is what it all amounts to! Horny priests raping women and children, rich men getting away with whatever the fuck they want because they got the gold and... somebody should just kill the whole fuckin' lot. Every single rotten bastard in the country."
"I couldn't agree more! But... I..." Mirlín slumped her shoulders. "I too feel like rotting. Like my bone marrows are rotting away," the woman muttered, increasingly inebriated.
Reynaer shook his head. "No, no, that's because of them. You are good here," he touched her left breast, "in your heart."
"That's my breast!" Mirlín yelped and jerked away.
"Sorry, I meant your heart... but it is a beautiful breast," the man said matter of factly.
"I know it is! And my heart is good sometimes, like... I felt it was good when I looked at Fyen and thought about how I could help her, how I could make her life easier, you know, ease her pain. And I thought about Desdeus... Desimous... I thought about Des and felt sorry for him too because he's a lost kid as well... even though he's a bit of a douche."
Reynaer chuckled, glancing at the passed out boy. "He is a bit, you know." Then his eyes narrowed. "What if... what if we could get Fyen her mother back?" There was no humor in his voice anymore.
Mirlín stood up and staggered to the open window. She looked to the east. The sun was rising. They must have taken Fyen's mom to the city. Mirlín closed her eyes and imagined the citadel of Rodal. She had never been there but it had always been one of the places where she would be forced to go sooner or later. I think it's easy to travel there but getting inside the fort might prove difficult, she thought. Besides, they could have taken her to the mountains too, into some cave of death and torture. And there's no fucking way I'm gonna ride back to the mountains, that'd be suicide. But the citadel? That's where they would know. Mirlín's hand fell on her father's knife and her skin started to prickle.
She shook off the sensation and turned towards Reynaer, looking deep into his eyes to see whether it was the wine talking. If we tried, if we decided to help Fyen, even though that girl hasn't even asked for our help... hell, she might not even want to go find her mother. But isn't every child ready to do anything to find their family again? And that's something I'd certainly be ready to help with. And if we succeeded, it would restore Fyen, it would restore her mom, and it would restore something good in this world, something that seems to be almost extinct. It might restore a bit of hope for us all. And I'm sure we all could do something good and meaningful for a change. How often do the gods offer you a chance like this?
She realized that this moment might be just that, a second chance for her, probably the tenth for Reynaer, and possibly the very turning point Mirlín had been yearning in her heart for so long. She wanted badly to shake the burden of the last several years off her shoulders and she wanted to progress, move on, but not like she had moved those lonely years, fear following her every step. I'm sure none of these people have been to the mountains. They don't know about my kin, they cannot be that kind of a threat to me... it was a long time ago. So what if I took advantage of having company for a change? One pair of eyes can't catch every danger.
"We should try," Mirlín replied at last. She swayed a little. She didn't like losing control of her body.
Reynaer finished the last bottle. "I'm not just saying you know, you have a good heart, and if your resolution still stands when we come to, you have me by your side when we go knocking on the city walls—"
"Or, we could try the gate instead?" Mirlín suggested.
"—or we could try the gate instead." Then he yawned and looked outside. "Why don't you share the bed with the girl, I'm fine down here. Sunrise is nature's way of telling you it's time to go to sleep."
Mirlín agreed. She dragged her feet all the way to the bed and laid herself next to the sleeping Fyen. With a clang of his sword hitting the floor, Reynaer fell down and started snoring immediately. Mirlín looked down at him. What a peculiar man, she thought as she undressed herself under the covers.
"And you have me by your side... when we knock... on the city walls..." she murmured before falling fast asleep.
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