Work Text:
September, 460
It’s late when Dom finds Kel leaning against the ramparts of Steadfast. Finds, or more accurately follows. He’d seen her slip away from the dancing in the main square of the fort and, without thinking too much about it, set his goblet down between the remains of the wedding feast, and went in pursuit.
He joins her side to survey the mountain passes. “What are you doing up here?”
There’s not much to see, on account of it being after midnight, but he looks at it so he’s not staring at her.
Kel’s in a dress. He’d never seen her in a dress before. It’s easy to forget she’s a girl, sometimes, so it’s strange to see her like this, with long russet skirts and a fitted bodice. It could be a romantic picture, the lady on the walls of her castle, except for how Steadfast’s battlements are bundles of raw pine to screen the archers, Kel’s hair is in a sensible short crop, and no woman in a painting ever had shoulders quite so broad or quite so many scars on her hands.
She turns and flashes him a smile, barely lit by the fine crescent moon. “I needed some air.”
“It’s a sad day for Tortall when our knights get tired after just a few dances,” Dom says, although he doesn't blame her for making an escape. Kel, as one of maybe twenty women in the fort compared to a hundred men at the wedding celebration, was in high demand as a dance partner, and hadn't been allowed to sit down since the music started.
“They didn’t teach us how to dance during training,” she says. “Or at least not the women’s parts.”
“Not even the country sets when you were little?”
“The Yamani have very different dances."
“Now that I’d like to see,” Dom says, smiling at her, but she just looks out at the pine trees, face serenely untroubled. He wonders if she wants to be alone. It’s hard to tell, with Kel. He’s fought beside her for years, followed her into battle and treason, would know her by her footsteps or silhouette without thinking, but he doesn’t think he truly knows her.
The breeze ruffles her hair. She tucks it behind her ear, smoothing it out, the same way she does before putting on her helm. “I apologize. I’m not being good company tonight.”
“You’ll have to make it up to me and the realm,” Dom said, pushing up off the battlements and offering her his hand. “Dance with me, Lady Knight.”
She looks down at his hand. “I’ll trample you worse than Peachblossom.”
“You can’t be worse than Wolset,” Dom says seriously. “I need to erase my memories of the last pattern dance. Don’t tell me you can’t dance, I’ve seen you with that pigsticker of yours.”
“Some people wouldn’t think that’s a recommendation in a partner,” she says, but there’s a reluctant smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. The firelight catches the tips of her eyelashes. She puts her hand in his.
Dom doesn’t mean it when he flirts with Kel. He likes her, but it’s just for fun; Dom flirts with every woman as a matter of principal. She doesn’t feel like any woman he’s ever danced with, almost eye-level with him, her waist solid and strong where he places his hand on it.
“I don’t think we have enough room to have a proper dance,” Dom says as he leads her two steps to the other side of the walkway and back. The sentry at the far end of the wall studiously ignores them. Below, the more musically inclined solders are sawing out a rendition of ‘The Goddess Went Walking’ on the camp fiddles and tambourines for the revellers to dance to, though the newlyweds, Buri and Raoul, have long since disappeared.
Kel giggles and her hand relaxes in his. “I don’t think the walls were designed with this in mind.”
“No sensibility to them, these Steadfast soldiers,” Dom says, twirling them and nearly dragging Kel off her feet, so she would squeak and hold onto his shoulder. He’s grinning helplessly. He likes her like this, a little silly and relaxed. He forgets how young she is most of the time. Too young to have so many responsibilities as she does heaped on her shoulders. He spins them around again and then dips her.
“You’re going to drop me,” she says, laughing.
"Sergeants in the King's Own are not allowed to drop their dance partners," Dom informs her, mildly piqued, and proves it by dipping her again, even further this time, and then hauls her back up. She’s laughing as she staggers into his chest. He steadies her, her warm body against his, and she’s flushed and smiling as she looks up at him.
Dom’s gaze drops to her mouth. For a moment he thinks about kissing her. She’s still looking at him, some of the laughter in her face fading in surprise, hazel eyes wide. Dom’s arms are still around her.
Dom recovers from the temporary insanity and twirls her again, letting her spin out to a more respectable distance an arm’s distance away, far enough to please any chaperone in Corus. “See,” he says, and it doesn’t sound forced. “Nothing to it.”
“Of course,” Kel says. She sounds normal too, but her face is shut down, the sparkle in her eyes tucked away. She feels stiff again as they shuffle through the steps of the dance.
Dom rearranges her, guilt and trepidation gnawing at him. What had he been thinking? Worse, had anyone seen? It was a good thing Raoul was very distracted, or Dom had the feeling he’d be sentenced to six months of patrolling the northeastern reaches of the Vassa by himself. There had been a lecture, back when they were building Giantkiller. In the most friendly way possible while they were shingling one of the barracks together, Raoul had made it known to Dom that if he trifled with Kel in any way, nobody was ever going to hear from him again. Trifling with Raoul’s seventeen-year old squire was the last thing he’d had on his mind, at the time.
Dom sways them sedately back to their starting spot and steps away, sweeping her his mostly elaborate courtly bow. “Lady Knight,” he says. “Will you come down with me? It’s not fair of me to keep you all to myself when there are so few ladies here to dance with.”
She looks out, a little wistfully, at the dark pines and rocky crags, but she takes his arm and goes back to the party with him.
October, 460
“Does the lady have anyone?”
“There was that red-headed lad, wasn’t there?”
“Not Merric,” says another man, shocked.
“No, not Merric, one of their other yearmates, Kennan something? One of the ones with the flooding back home. Haven’t seen him on the border in nearly a year, like.” The first man dunks his bread crust in his soup contemplatively.
Dom, who shouldn’t let the boys discuss Kel like this, focuses on his own soup with feigned obliviousness. Wolset, unencumbered by his own repressed feelings, snaps, “Don’t you dogs have anything better to yap about than milady?”
They clearly did not, but decide to make a strategic retreat in the face of Wolset’s glare. He turns it on Dom after they leave.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Dom says mildly.
“Running their mouths about her like that when she’s twice the soldier any of them will be,” Wolset says, and then adds, “Do you know if she’s got anyone, sir?”
“No. And I wouldn’t be talking about it if I did.”
“She could have someone if she wanted," Grossner, one of Dom's new corporals, decides to add, leaning over to address them.
Both Wolset and Dom stare at him. Grossner places his fingertips on the table, a well-known precusor to a lecture. “She may be unconventional, but she is a superb example of a warrior maiden archetype. Any noble would be lucky to have her. Especially given these troubled times. It is not often a man finds unity both of unquestionable warrior spirit and the delicate of features that the lady possesses.”
If Dom was a year younger, and maybe not the commanding officer, he would have dumped the rest of his soup over Grossner’s head. Instead he looks at Wolset and quirks his eyebrow. “Don’t you two have somewhere to be?”
After he successfully dispatches his corporals by giving them somewhere to be (supervising a surprise inspection of the latrines), Dom sets off to find Raoul to discuss the next day's orders. Third Company was stationed at Fort Mastiff in anticipation of a late-season push across the Vassa from Maggur, but so far things have been quiet.
Raoul mentions sending out Dom's company on a patrol. “I was thinking we’d send scouts as far as New Hope,” he says.
“Perhaps an overnight patrol, then?” Dom says innocently.
“If Vanget approves it,” Raoul says. “They’ve been getting their share of raiding parties, and it’s an obvious route to bypass the forts on the border. I’ll come along, see how the new recruits are doing.”
The fact that Buri was staying in New Hope surely meant nothing. The Knight Commander of the King’s Own often came along on routine patrols. Across the table, one of the other sergeants raises his eyebrows at Dom.
Apparently General Vanget did approve of the Commander attending routine patrols, or has a very well-hidden streak of romance in his withered soul, because the next evening finds them ensconced within the formidable gates of New Hope. It’s a chilly day, with a few flecks of snow blowing down from the grey sky. New Hope has acquired a more lived-in character since the last time Dom was there. The doorframes on the barracks are painted different colours, there’s a roughly-hewn wooden statue of the Mother in front of the building that served as a chapel, and in the corner there’s an autumn garden, a few brave tendrils of squash trailing out across the hard dirt, busily attended by a staff of kitchen girls. It's starting to look like a home.
A pretty older woman hands Dom a cup of water when he dismounts and removes his helm, smiling up at him. He takes it with a brief thanks, drains it, and hands it back, turning to order the junior soldiers to take the horses to the stable.
Grossner and Wolset are both staring at him like lumps. “What?” he asks, handing over his own reins to one of the young Bazhir replacements.
In unison they look at the departing woman. “Are you feeling all right, sir?” Wolset asks, hushed, like Dom’s on his deathbed.
“Your cousin is here if you need healing,” Grossner says.
It would do no good to encourage them in their little jokes. The woman was pretty enough, but there's something missing in her figure, perhaps a certain lack of height; besides, Dom doesn't flirt with women in front of his men. Not lately, anyways. Dom ignores both of them and directs the men to pitch tents below the cliff that shelters the small town. A small group of archers are drilling at the range not far from it, supervised by Buri, who does not abandon her changes but give Raoul a speaking look from where she stands. Raoul holds his hand against his leather jerkin over his heart.
Amused by this unforgivably mawkish display, Dom catches Kel’s eye as she comes out from her offices to greet them. She’s in practical clothes, breeches and a warm tunic with a touch of Yamani-style embroidery at the throat. Kel probably wouldn't be hailed as the pure ideal of feminine beauty, but Dom thinks she looked just right.
He nods to her, which she returns, no signs of any awkwardness or constraint on her side. They haven’t talked since the wedding. Relief unfolds in him and he goes over to her.
“Dom,” she says, offering her hand. “How have you been?”
Dom shockingly bungles the handshake. He takes her hand like he’s meaning to kiss it, like she's a courtly lady, but then remembers she’s the acting commander and has to flip her hand around for a firm handshake. Kel’s expression remains friendly and calm even as she radiates confusion. “Good to see you,” he says lamely. “How’ve you been keeping? You—New Hope looks wonderful. I have to go and get the men settled.”
Kel must confer with his infernal corporals, or the horrific hand clasp scares her, because he does end up compelled to see Meathead in the infirmary. Neal grabs Dom’s head between his two hands, shoves a wave of impatient healing through him, and says, “There’s nothing wrong with you beyond the obvious, which is beyond my capacity to cure, so stop malingering. I have actual patients to see, you know.”
“I didn’t ask you to heal me,” Dom says, trying to muster a biting tone, and ending up somewhere near blissfully content.
“Kel said you were acting strange,” Neal informs him. “And your corporals let me know that you didn’t even flirt with Rayna and this was an urgent medical issue.”
Then Neal stops, his winged brows drawing together.
“Don’t think too hard, you’ll hurt yourself,” Dom tells him, and runs away. It’s a lot easier than it would have been that morning. His knees haven’t felt this good in years.
-
“Are you feeling better?” Kel asks him later that night. They’re all swapping information over drinks in the main office, her and the clerks and Merric and Neal. The last two have done nothing but glare at Dom all evening. Clearly Neal had passed along his suspicious thoughts.
“Much, thanks,” Dom says, bestowing a particular smile on her, seeing Neal glower out of the corner of his eye.
He sees her notice it too, a brief frown ruffling her forehead before it smooths out again.
It’s not serious, of course. Dom’s been up north too long. The only women up here are camp followers or already married, for the most part, so of course he’s a little fixated on the only eligible woman around. It’s a passing infatuation.
Kel’s a lady, anyways, for all that she’s a knight. Dom can flirt with her, but there are lines he shouldn't cross. There are actually multiple reasons why Dom can’t get involved with her, beginning and ending with at least half the realm’s most formidable warriors coming for his throat if they thought he was seriously pursuing her. It’s not worth it. He barely even feels a pang riding away from New Hope the next morning.
June, 461
He doesn’t see her again until the spring. His company is recycled south, recruiting to pad out the Second, and then posted near the City of the Gods to toughen up the replacements well away from any real danger. He lets himself hoard the few the few scraps of information he gets from the front. There’s scarcely any danger to it, not when distance and freezing weather would dampen the most ardent of affection. He hears Wyldon moves Kel to leading a company, with the administration of New Hope passing to the newly-elected headwoman Fanche, and that Kel does brilliantly, routing a major enemy offensive at the Vassa. That’s about all there is to hear. There would be no reason to inquire after her in his reports to Raoul, so he doesn’t.
Dom hunts spidrens and killer unicorns with his raw recruits, and strikes up a one-sided flirtation with one of the battle mages, a lovely woman from Tusaine who takes every opportunity to depress his pretensions but ends up saving his company during a skirmish, and tries to not let his mind wander while he’s huddled in his cold room in the barracks at night or doing sums in their shared office with Qasim. A handshake and a dance. Nothing he should be dwelling on.
In May they get orders to move to Frasrlund, which is more or less across the country, and they set out on the Vassa Road for the long trudge west. Spring is in the valleys, full of rain and mud, but the mountain passes are still thick with snow. The journey does not pass quickly. A sunny spell proves disastrous when several bridges are washed out by a great rush of meltwater, and they end up finding and capturing a bandit camp in the diversion. Fort Mastiff is besieged by raiding parties by the time they arrive. Two men in the company are killed, and two others die of disease; three are promoted, in the grim math of war.
In June they finally reach their destination, saddle-sore and tired, but with a good deal more fighting experience under their belts, and Dom sees Kel again.
It’s two days after he gives his report to Flyndan, who is the commanding officer for the Own in Frasrlund; he’s stopping into the quartermasters to beg for more supplies for his company when he almost literally runs into her into the hallway. He catches her by the arm before he realizes who he’s touching.
“Dom! I heard you’d been posted here. I was hoping to catch you,” she says, smiling up at him.
A thousand unimportant details filter in around the edges of the massive and unavoidable realization that he hasn’t managed to stop dwelling on her at all. She’s in a padded gambeson, streaked with sweat and mud, and reeking of horses. Her usually practical hair is neatly braided back along her head in two rows, almost like a Scanran, and the beginning of summer freckles are coming up on her face. She looks perfect to Dom, strong and steady and flushed with health. Dom stamps down hard on the urge to pull her into an embrace.
“We just dragged in two days ago,” he replies. “We finished rescuing those degenerates at Fort Mastiff and thought you all could use help here.”
“I heard you’ve come by way of City of the Gods. I don’t envy you that journey.”
“We took our time with it. I thought I might have seen you at Mastiff. Has Wyldon decided to let you out, now that you’ve been behaving yourself?”
“Excuse me,” a man says peevishly, coming up to them with a whole armful of battered staffs sliding out of his grasp. “Perhaps you two can catch up in some place other than the doorway?”
Dom is still holding Kel’s shoulder from where he’d grabbed to her to avoid bowling into her. He drops it and removes himself from the doorframe, sketching a bow to the man and then raising an eyebrow to Kel, who is clearly holding back a smile. “He’s right. Have you dined yet? Can I stand you a drink?”
“One drink,” Kel says, falling into step with him. They leave the quartermaster’s office and walk out into the damp evening air. Frasrlund isn’t so different from any other fortified town along the Vassa. In peacetime, it was a timber town. Now it bristles with soldiers and hastily assembled new buildings to house them.
Kel shoves her hands in her pockets and scans the other side of the river. “I only just got back from patrols. I’m meeting with my seconds to talk strategy on the hour. You’re welcome to join, if you want to hear more about the situation here.”
Dom accepts with alacrity. His ploy to get Kel on her own fails, though. The inn she suggests is packed with other knights, who join their table, and Dom, who normally would be quite happy to see former companions and friends, swallows his resentment and attempts to look interested in the news from the front. It’s as good as having a whole pack of dowagers watching over them.
The meeting with Kel's seconds, two lieutenants under her command who are pleasingly attentive to her opinion, is much more satisfying. They discuss their schedule for the week and plan their scouting patrols along the river while Dom listens. The town had been besieged over the winter and the two sides were still locked in a stalemate, but the whole situation groaned like river ice, on the verge of breaking up into a tumult of activity.
“Have you heard anything of a summer offensive?” Dom asks, walking Kel back to her rooms once the meeting concludes. The sun is fully gone now, stars cloaked by thick grey clouds, and they pass a few buildings lit only by oil lamps, barely enough to catch a sliver of her face.
“No. Orders still stand not to cross the Vassa. They’ve lost the edge they had, without the killing machines. Vanget thinks defensive action will wear them down and eventually Maggur will lose control of the different tribes.”
“Sensible man. Boring way to fight a war, though. I’ve never heard a song about properly provisioning a fort for a siege.”
“Perhaps they’ll write one about us,” Kel says.
“I’m sure it will be a hit in Port Caynn. They do so love tales of requisition orders,” Dom says, gratified to hear her short laugh, as they come to a stop in front of a barracks.
“This is me,” Kel says.
Dom looks at her, for all he can barely make her out in the gloom. “Kel,” he says, in a different tone of voice.
She stands there silently. Dom knows her, placid and unruffled as a lake, and knows that beneath the surface are deep waters. He loses his nerve. “I’ll be seeing you.”
“Good night,” Kel says calmly.
-
There are many good reasons that Dom should not pursue a courtship with Lady Keladry. His extremely daunting great-grandmother, the reigning head of the Queenscove clan and one of the realm’s highest sticklers, would need to be persuaded not to cast him off for aligning the family with the first Lady Knight in over a hundred years, let alone a single-generation baronetcy. Any courtship while they were both stationed on an active battlefield that stretched hundreds of miles would necessarily be complicated. Raoul would have his head, if Wyldon and Lady Alanna didn’t temporarily align to dispose of him first. These were all very good reasons to to quash his tenacious feelings, but they could not weigh against the simple fact that he did, in fact, want to pursue Kel quite badly.
Dom has had his fair share of flirts, but he’s never seriously considered marriage before, though he’s almost thirty and his mother, having dispatched his older brother into the bonds of matrimony, is beginning to make noises about Dom’s perpetually single state. Marriage is the only thing he could offer Kel. She’s a nobly-born girl, for all that she’s one of the best warriors in the realm, and he has no real desire to offer her a slip on the shoulder or to trifle with her affections.
So it would have to be marriage, if it turned into anything; at first it was one of the reasons against pursuing anything with Kel, but the more he thinks about it, the more he likes the idea. He would have to leave the Own, but he’d have to do that at some point anyways, and there was work at Masbolle or for soldiers along the border with the regular army. Raoul had mentioned as much when Dom had embroiled himself in a bit too serious of a flirtation with a local earl’s daughter when they were stationed in Port Caynn one winter.
He's spend all winter ruminating over these various issues, but now that he actually sees Kel he realizes that they're really not so insurmountable after all. The real problem is whether Kel wants to be courted by him at all.
-
Dom finds that attempting to win a lady’s favour is made significantly more difficult when they’re both beholden to obligations to the crown and more often than not fighting for their lives at different postings. As if he needed enough reason to dislike the Scanrans.
Instead of being discouraged by the winter and the failure of the siege on the City of the Gods and slinking back to their harvests, the Scanrans seem to be focusing their efforts on desperate measures to break through at Frasrlund. And far from sternly disapproving of Kel and sequestering her away from combat, General Vanget gives her command of a roving strike force, to deploy as she sees fit, which she does with alarming frequency. The area around Frasrlund is impossible to defend adequately; the Vassa branches into numerous small tributaries that are fordable in the summer months, and the Scanrans make frequent use of them. Dom’s company too often comes to burned hamlets miles from Frasrlund after the raiders had already struck and departed. Occasionally he meets Kel there, streaked with soot and looking almost dead in the eyes, calmly taking the refugees into order.
“If they would offer us a real battle, we would crush them in the field,” she tells him after a particularly grim mass burial at one of the hamlets. “So of course they won’t. Our tactics aren’t working. We need to draw them out.”
“You have the General’s ear,” Dom says, offering her his water skin.
She drinks and splashes a little on her hands to wash up, tidy as a cat. “I can’t contradict his orders like that. I've barely started my first command. I can suggest, but...”
“What about Lord Raoul?” Dom says. “The Own could function more like your roving team. He could drop a word in, if we could present a plan to him.”
Kel turns to him, eyes lighting up for the first time that day. “That could work. I know it’s not typically the Own’s work, but if we had a counter against these smaller raids, we might be able to repulse the attacks better. A mounted company would be perfect for that kind of work.”
“I’m sure Raoul will forgive you if you win this war for us,” Dom says, for the sole purpose of trying to get her to smile. It’s not really flirting to convince a young lady to work on a proposed battle plan with him, except for in this case, it is.
It takes them two meetings to sketch out the plans and solidify them. Part of First would turn into roving teams similar to Kel’s, with the initiative to seek out and engage the Scanrans at will. Their first discussion is held in the corner of the mess hall, with their heads bent together over some scribbled sketches on the back of scrap papers, while Sir Owen Jesslaw, newly knighted and eager to see combat on the border, pipes in with surprisingly helpful suggestions while devouring his bread. Eventually Kel sits back, looking over the papers. “We need to refine how these units communicate, or they’ll still be in the same position of chasing and potentially missing raiders.”
“What if they waited by the river crossings?” Owen said.
“There’s too many,” Kel says, rubbing her hand behind her neck. “Drat, what time is it? I need to finish a letter to Wyldon and get to bed.”
“Tell him I said hello,” Owen says eagerly.
Kel grins. “I will, since I know you’re not writing to him as you should.”
“There’s too much to do here to be writing letters! Besides, you're much better at it than me."
Dom sits back as well, plate long abandoned, and enjoys just looking at Kel. When she turns to him to ask if he would find her tomorrow, he readily agrees. She gathers her own dishes and leaves the mess hall with a nod to both of them, Jump trotting at her heels.
“It’s a famous plan,” Owen tells him. “What do you think about having knights involved with these Own teams?”
“It could work. I wouldn’t turn another sword down,” Dom says, watching Kel go and running a hand over his chin contemplatively.
Owen doesn’t reply, and when Dom looks at him, he’s studying him in turn, looking amused.
“What?” Dom says, more sharply than he means to.
“Kel’s a great one,” Owen says, and takes a huge bite of his bread.
Dom gathers the scrap papers and his own plates with as much dignity as he can muster. “She is,” he tells Owen loftily, and beats a speedy retreat.
The next day is pouring rain, and his company rides out to engage in a minor skirmish against yet another Scanran raiding party at the closest point on the river, a location Dom is heartily sick of fighting at. His mare strains a hock tendon slipping in the mud, and he has to walk her back in his full armour. Back in Frasrlund he takes her to the animal healers, cares for his other mount, joins his men in an archery drill, meets with his corporals to discuss the skirmish, joins the other sergeants for the general’s briefing, and then spends a good while talking with Flyndan about shoring up the town defences. It’s well past dinner and fully dark by the time he knocks on Kel’s door.
Her hair is down and she’s in soft clothing when she opens it. A candle is burning on the desk of her small suite of rooms. “Dom!” she says, stepping back to let him in. “I wasn’t sure if you were coming or not.”
“It was a busy day,” he says. “You’re not staying up, are you? I brought over the notes. I was thinking of some of the communication options, I wanted to know what you thought.”
Her quarters are austere, but he would have know at once they were hers by looking around; her glaive rests beside the door, easily to hand, and several sparrows fly in and out of the room, perching on the high windowsill. A few of them apparently recognize Dom, and wing to his shoulder; grinning, he strokes the breast of one, rewarded by a friendly-sounding cheep. Jump comes over to say hello as well, and then Tobe barges through the door, trailed by a pale blonde waif. “Hello,” Dom says to Tobe. “You’re looking fit as a fiddle. And who’s this?”
“Onra, this is Domitan of Masbolle, one of the sergeants in the King’s Own,” Kel told the girl, who dips an inexpert curtsy, looking up at him with wide eyes. “Would the two of you be so good as to fetch us some refreshments?”
“Aye, milady,” Tobe says, and then importantly to the girl, “Let’s be off sharpish then.”
“Another stray?” Dom asks Kel as they dart off.
“Sit down,” she says, dropping into a chair herself. “She’s one of the Scanran refugees that came over when the Sawtooth clans broke with Maggur. She’s the one responsible for the braids. I was never any good at it myself, but they’re useful when I’m in the field for days on end and need my hair to stay out of my way. I want to send her Lalasa. She’d make a good lady’s maid.”
“I like the braids,” Dom says, and dares to add, “They’re quite pretty.”
Kel occupies herself shuffling some papers on her desk, not looking at him, and Dom wonders if that was a step too far. He offers his own papers to include in her organizing. “About the communication. What do you think about using the birds?”
They’re deep in discussion by the time the children return, bearing apple cider for Kel and ale for Dom, and after a few minutes Kel sends them to bed when she realizes Tobe is settling into the corner to repair of a piece of tack, pointing out that he needs to set a good example for Onra. He seems quite struck by the argument, and hustles them off to their pallets in Kel’s room.
Dom watches them go, faintly amused by Kel’s firm hand, and thinking about both how there was no privacy in Frasrlund and how good of a mother she would eventually be, something that sparks a dangerous longing in him.
“We would still need to work out fallbacks,” Kel tells him, making a few neat notes on the bottom of the page. “I don’t like relying solely on the birds. But I like the idea of setting a few baited traps. The more wary we can make them, the better.”
“It should be enough to take to Raoul, in any case,” Dom says. “Do you know how long you’re stationed here?”
“Until Vagnet sees fit to move me,” Kel says. “Wyldon is still technically my direct commander, but he told me he wants me to get more experience under different commanders, working with army groups, so I'm reassigned here until he recalls me. What about you?”
Dom spreads his hands out eloquently. “Who can say? It’ll be hot work all summer, by the way things have been going. I wouldn’t mind staying here for longer.”
Kel sips from her goblet, an expression of polite interest on her face, but Dom can tell she’s suspicious. He takes a steadying breath, unaccountably nervous, and says, “I’ve liked seeing more of you.”
She doesn’t say anything for the longest time. Dom meets her searching gaze, the candlelight burnishing her hazel eyes, his pulse hammering in his ears. Abruptly Kel stands up and takes a turn around the room, then stops, looking at the birds, who have settled sleepily on the sill. “You’ve had too much ale.”
“One cup is hardly going to set me beside myself,” Dom says, standing up as well and gathering his papers. It’s not an outright rebuff, but he doesn’t want to press her, not when she seems so entirely unenthusiastic about it. “I should go.”
“You like pretty girls,” Kel says under her breath.
“I do,” Dom says, and dares to reach out to touch her cheek with two fingers, softly, dropping his hand the instant her gaze flies up to meet his. He smiles at her. “Good night, Kel.”
So it’s not exactly a victory, but he feels buoyed, like he’s just taken his plate armour off after a battle, as he strolled back towards his barracks.
-
Dom doesn’t flee the scene, exactly, but he does jump on the opportunity to find a replacement mount in Mastiff. Trying to woo Kel is trying his most delicate nerves. He rides over to Mastiff for the week as part of Vagnet’s staff, leaving his company under the dubious protection of his young lieutenant. There he finds Raoul and presents the reports from Flydan, as well as Kel’s tactical plan, neatly written out by one of the scribes.
Raoul calls him in for a private dinner later that day. “I see you and Kel have had your heads together,” he says, pouring out a glass of cider for Dom. “It’s unusual. This would be turning the Own into a company more like the Riders.”
“We think it’s necessary,” Dom says, accepting the glass with a brief thanks. “The Scanrans aren’t fighting as a conventional force. I would take the Riders for this, if we could spare them from down south.”
“And you want me to propose this to Vagnet,” Raoul says, looking over the report again. “With little birdies and all.”
“We’ve had great success with the little birdies, sir,” Dom points out.
That makes Raoul grin. “True enough. I’ll have a word with him. Tell me about how it’s been at the front. How are the recruits integrating?”
Dom tells him about Frasrlund as their dinner or mutton and peas arrives, and halfway through Buri comes in noisily, nodding to Dom and greeting Raoul with a kiss. “You look surprised to see me,” she tells Dom, dropping into a chair and serving herself some mutton. “I’m officially a representative of the Crown.”
“My wife, the diplomat,” Raoul says, looking at her fondly.
Buri snorts. “Hardly. I’m allegedly representing their interests here. Thayet was kind enough to give me a commission, or else Wyldon would have sent me packing.”
Buri is interested in the plan when Raoul brings it up to her, as much as Raoul was, and offers some advice based on her experience with the Riders and mountain warfare with the K’mir. Dom ends up scratching some more notes on the bottom of the page, trying his best not to smear any food on it.
“You said you wrote this with Kel?” Buri says as he scribbles away. “How is she?”
“She’s doing well,” Dom says. “General Vagnet’s given her a roaming commission. It sounds as though she’s doing it brilliantly.”
“Did you meet her latest acquisition?”
“I met Onra, unless you mean she’s taken in another stray since I saw her last.”
“She may well have, the way she collects them."
“Sounds as though you two have been spending a lot of time together,” Raoul says blandly. Dom doesn’t miss Buri elbowing him under the table.
“I’m riding her coattails to success,” Dom informs him. “I can see the way the wind is blowing. I want the King to bless me with a bonus when she leads us into glorious victory.”
Raoul doesn’t mention Kel again, but when Dom excuses himself, Buri offers to walk with him on her way to the bathhouse. Dom doesn’t particularly think Buri is interested in talking to him on his own merits, and she isn’t; she gets straight to the point when they’re ambling down the pathway towards the bathhouses and the Own’s quarters.
“People gossip,” Buri says after having a quick look around. “Raoul’s overprotective of her. We all are.”
Dom’s heard too many stories about this woman to play dumb or attempt to deflect her. “I’m not trying to cause gossip or to play games with the lady.”
“I didn’t think so, otherwise I wouldn’t bother having this conversation with you,” she says, surprising him. “What are you trying to do, then?”
Dom doesn’t particularly feeling like verbalizing his most sensitive desires to spend the rest of his life with Kel to the legendary Commander Tourakom. “I have honourable intentions, I swear to you. I’m waiting for the right time. The war complicates things.”
Shockingly, she flashes him a grin. “It shouldn’t complicate things too much. Kel deserves to have some fun. Goddess knows she’s had little enough of that in her life.”
They’ve reached the split in their paths. Buri slaps him on the shoulder, hard enough that he has to work not to be pitched forward, for all that she’s almost a head shorter than him. “Think about it,” she says. “I won’t bother threatening you with what will happen if you hurt her.”
“My lord Raoul has made the consequences abundantly clear,” he says flippantly, and after a moment he says, as she’s turning away, “Thank you, my lady.”
“Don’t my lady me,” Buri tells him. “If you have your way, we’ll being seeing more of each other.”
Dom grins and gives her a salute. “I live in hope, my lady.”
August, 461
About a week after Dom returns to Frasrlund, Flyndan announces that Third Company is being reconfigured into smaller, more agile teams, given license to live off the land and engage the enemy at will. Dom is appointed leader of the initiative. The men all complain bitterly about being prised out of the comforts of Frasrlund and thrust into the wilderness until they catch a patrol of Scanrans crossing one of the many tributaries and wipe them out; after that, their enthusiasm for the mission sparks. It’s been a long year of grinding defensive war, and the chance to strike at the enemy first fills them with new purpose.
Dom barely catches of a glimpse of Kel for two months, despite ostentatiously both being stationed in Frasrlund, as they’re both roaming the forests and the river delta more often than not. In late August news of a major massing of Scanrans near Steadfast reaches them, followed shortly by several urgent missives reassigning the majority of the troops to Fort Mastiff. It’s only when he arrives there that he sees her again, standing outside his door of his temporary quarters and talking to Qasim.
“Kel, hello,” he says, sounding almost normal, and bends down to pet Jump so he can hide his face.
“Hello,” she says. “I was hoping to catch you. Qasim, can you excuse us for a moment?”
Qasim agrees, sounding amused—Dom doesn’t look at him either—and Kel follows Dom into his quarters. He’s sharing it with three other sergeants, stacked on top of each other, since Mastiff is fit to bursting, but nobody is inside on such a stuffy day before a major offensive. There’s nowhere to offer her to sit, nor refreshments, and it reeks of old sweat and leather. Dom closes the door behind them anyways and shuts them in alone together.
He takes the moment to drink in her appearance. She’s dressed in travelling clothes, still grimy from the road. Her copper hair is going light from days in the sun and she's gotten tanned beneath the freckles. She’s not looking at him, studying Jump, who has decided to come in as well and is sniffing at Dom’s pouch of trail rations hopefully.
“Leave that alone, you fiend,” Dom tells him, offering him a strip of jerky as a distraction and hopefully a bribe, then looks up at Kel from where he’s crouched next to him. “How has the summer been treating you? The plan worked brilliantly, by the way.”
“We’ve been on the go,” Kel says, eyes roaming over Dom. He stays where he is, absently patting Jump, knelt before her like a supplicant. She breaks out into a rueful smile. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Dom feels he could make a stronger case if he stood up and does so, brushing Jump’s fine white hairs off his hands. He leans back against his bunks, facing her, savouring the way she looks at him. “You don’t have to do anything in particular."
“I know I’m not—” she begins, and then falters. “I’ve seen some of the women you admire.”
“Funny, I have trouble recalling them at the moment,” Dom says lightly, hoping to distract her.
It doesn't work. Her mouth twists. “I know what I look like.”
“Do you?” Dom asks, and pushes off the bunk, approaching her. She lets him come close enough that they’re almost touching, watching him the entire time. Dom delicately touches her brow, damp with sweat, running his fingers down the curve of her cheek, and then down the side of her neck. She shivers. It’s madness, it’s the eve of the battle, Dom still doesn’t know what she’s thinking, but he bends his head down to kiss her.
It’s sweet to start, gentle, barely pressing their lips together. Dom inhales, leaving his hand chastely against her neck, his thumb resting on the hollow beneath her ear, and angles his head, keeping it soft. He doesn’t want to scare her away.
She makes an impatient noise. “Dom,” she says, and takes him in a firm embrace, pulling him close against her.
Dom, who’s been imagining a slow courtship where he shows her that he can be a gentle and considerate lover in stages, completely loses his head. He crushes her against him, hand tangling into her hair, and kisses her as thoroughly as he knows how, backing her against the bunks so he can press even closer to her. The only consolation is that she seems quite as unmastered as he, hands running over him and mouth opening to him shamelessly.
Dom surfaces in a brief moment of coherence. He rests his forehead on hers, both hands cradling her face, as much to keep her put as to regain control over himself. “Mithros,” he mutters. “I didn’t mean to get carried away.”
“I did,” Kel tells him.
Dom is obliged to turn away in order to keep control over himself. The room is far too hot with the door closed, and sweat is already forming on his brow. “Kel—” he begins, and then comes back to her, running his hand up her arm to rest on her collarbone, just for the pleasure of being allowed to touch her. “Have you ever...?”
Kel flushes, but she reaches out to lay her hand on his chest tentatively. “No.”
“We shouldn’t,” Dom says, because he knows that’s what he should say. “I don’t want you to regret anything.”
“I won’t,” she says. “I want to. Unless you don’t.”
Dom can’t stand the doubt in her expression, and gathers her back up in his arms. “Are you sure?” he asks, looking at her intently, trying to find any traces of hesitancy, any reluctance.
“Jump, go guard the door,” she says without looking away from him.
Jump whines—Dom had completely forgotten about the dog—and somehow paws the door open and goes into the hall. Kel boots it closed behind her. Dom pulls her against him and kisses her again, and again, and again.
-
He can’t bring himself to regret any of it, except for the fact she has to leave almost immediately afterwards, and they’re mustered at five the next morning to ride out to battle in the most singularly inauspicious post-coital experience of his entire life. The battle lasts for two days. On the morning of the second day, the Tortallans are victorious, with the First breaking the Scanrans with a cavalry charge to their left flank that at last turns the enemy back from the battlefield. Dom’s units are left to mop up the few pockets of fighters on the field. On the third day, he ends up under the hands of a red-headed woman in the medical tents.
“You’re the Lioness,” he says blurrily, peering at up at her.
“So I am,” she says.
“Don’t worry, he’s usually this incoherent. This isn’t unusual,” Neal says, appearing beside her, looming over Dom and studying his injuries with a frown. “I thought they taught you how to parry blows in the King’s Own.”
“You know him?” the Lionness asks Neal, and then to Dom, before he can defend himself from Neal’s accusations, “Never mind, I can see the resemblance. Your collarbone is broken, but this,” she indicates the long slash down his left side, “is what worries me. How long did you leave it?”
“It wasn’t urgent,” Dom says.
“Well, you’ve made it urgent,” Neal says caustically, reaching out with the green fire of his Gift.
The Lioness bats him away. “Go tend to you own patients.”
Dom reaches out to catch Neal with his good hand before he makes good his escape. “How is—have you heard from Kel?”
Neal’s expression softens. “She’s fine. I saw her yesterday. Not a scratch.”
Dom nods and lets him go. Purple fire blooms in the corner of Dom’s vision, and he feels the Lioness’s magic easing into the broken bone and down the long, sluggishly bleeding cut in his side. “Are you friends with Kel?” she asks.
“We served in the Own together, when she was squiring for Lord Raoul."
“Ah,” she says. “You must be Sergeant Domitan. You’ve managed to get this infected, well done. Hold still.”
Dom obediently lays still and winces as the magic burns along the ragged edges of his wound. He’d been unhorsed and fighting two Scanrans at once, and one managed to get an axe strike in over his guard. Luckily three of his men had come to his rescue. The battle-fever and then the subsequent tallying of the wounded and dead kept him busy over the next day, until he fainted when one of the standard-bearers helped take off his spaulders, which he sincerely hoped his men would be kind enough to forget about. He hadn’t expected to find a famed warrior like the Lionness serving at the medical tents, much less castigating him for letting a wound go putrid.
“Wyldon told me Kel’s squadron was responsible for a capturing one of the Scanran generals,” she says. “They’ve all been nominated for medals.”
Eyes screwed shut in pain, Dom nevertheless found himself smiling. “She deserves it. I’ve been in Frasrlund with her over the summer. She’s a brilliant warrior.”
“I agree,” the Lionness says. “Stop flinching, you’ll ruin my bone setting.”
Dom meekly submits to the rest of the healing. After what feels like an eternity, the Lionness pats him on the chest. “I wasn’t able to get the bone to knit completely. You've had too many healings. You’ll need a sling for the collarbone for at least a week, and if that wound gets inflamed again, come back. One of the orderlies will bind you up, and then you can leave.”
“Thank you,” Dom says, struggling to sit up. The wound is mostly closed and pinkish at the edges, like it’s been a week instead of a day of healing, but he still can’t move his left arm.
Astonishingly, the Lioness smiles at him. “It was nice to meet you, Domitan of Masbolle,” she says. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Thank you,” Dom repeats stupidly. She gets up to move on to her next patient, leaving him to think fuzzily about how she'd known his name.
Neal comes back while one of the orderlies is rolling a bandage around Dom’s shoulders to immobilize the offending joint. “I can do that,” he says, dispatching the man, and begins ruthlessly mummifying Dom.
“That hurts."
“Good," Neal says. "You deserve to be horsewhipped, like the dog you are.”
“Wouldn’t that be dogwhipped?” Dom inquires, and yelps as Neal ties a vicious knot around his shoulder.
“She is far too good for you,” Neal says. “She is a woman of high principals, with an unimpeachable character. You, on the other hand, are a disgusting old lecher. Have you even thought about this at all?”
“I’m not trifling with her,” Dom snaps, trying to shove Neal away before more bandages can be added, though he's somewhat hampered by his injuries.
Neal puts a sling on Dom despite his best efforts. “That’s even worse,” he says, dodging Dom's elbow. “You do get how that’s worse, right?”
“I’m serious!"
“So am I,” Neal says, and steps back, surveying his work. For a moment his eyes soften. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
Dom reaches out and grips his hand briefly, a wordless thanks, and then drops it. “You’ll see."
“I don’t want to see,” Neal says. “Get out of here.”
“Gladly,” Dom says, but he looks back as he stumbles out of the tent, and sees Neal moving on to the next solider, hands gentle as he peels back a bandage.
-
Dom missed the main celebrations, but they’re serving a slightly better wine than usual with dinner at the officer’s mess that night, and he’s not above taking a glass or two, especially since his injuries are throbbing with a vengeance.
“Is this seat taken?” a familiar voice says in his ear, and Dom shifts to let Kel sit beside him, feeling his brow lighten and heart quicken.
“I heard you distinguished yourself,” he says, looking her over quickly while she does the same to him. “I didn’t even know these Scanran fellows had generals.”
One of his dinner companions, another sergeant in the Own, made some sort of joke that Dom pays no attention to. “Is it bad?” Kel asks, nodding at his shoulder.
“Nothing to it,” Dom says, and has to turn away when one of the men nudges him to get his opinion on something he couldn’t care less about. Beside him, he feels Kel’s hand move to rest against his own on the bench. He moves his little finger to overlap hers.
By coincidence, they finish dinner at the same time, and leave the mess hall together. “Would you like some fresh air?" Kel asks him, nodding to the battlements.
He’s conscious as he limps his way up the stairs that it’s almost been a year since he’d danced with her on these very same battlements. They lean on the wall together, looking out over the valley; it’s a fine clear day, the wind whipping scuttling clouds along the mountain ridges, and the ugly churned mess of the battlefield is only barely visible in the distance.
“We should talk,” Kel says. Dom feels like it’s the same sort of tone as he’d said they should stop, some rote thing they knew they needed to say.
“Do you regret it?” he asks, staring blindly out at the valley.
“No. Do you?”
That draws his eye to look at her. She’s got a placid expression on, apparently studying the stand of trees around Steadfast, but her hands are tight against the guardrail. He could spend an entire lifetime learning her, Dom thinks. It’s only out of the strictest concern for her reputation that Dom doesn’t take her hand in his good one.
“Kel,” he says. “The only thing I could regret would be hurting you.”
She closes her eyes briefly. “I see.”
He used to be able to talk to women, Dom thinks, internally writhing. “Which I want to avoid,” he explains. “That’s the last thing I want. I know it wouldn’t be easy, not with the command, and the war...”
“It would be too complicated,” Kel says helpfully.
Dom gives up on trying to make her a pretty speech, since it’s clearly not going to happen, and he's worried Kel will steer this into a neatly contained and short-lived affair. “I’d like to pay my addresses you,” he says. “If you give me leave.”
Plain speaking doesn’t help. Kel’s staring at him like he’s a lunatic. “You want to court me?” she demands, balling up her fists on her hips.
Dom leans a hip on the guardrail so he can face her. “Yes,” he says, grateful he managed to get that point across, at least.
“Now?”
“Yes,” he says lamely. “Like I was saying, I know it’s not the ideal time, but...”
Kel is apparently still working through the concept. “You want to court me,” she repeats. “As in, for marriage. People court for marriage. You want to court me for marriage.”
“Yes,” Dom says, a little too snappishly. “That’s the general idea.”
“I didn’t think you’d offer to—to marry me if I slept with you!” Kel hisses. “I thought it was just because we were going into battle the next day! I didn’t think you’d get ideas from it!”
“I’ve had ideas for the past year!” Dom says, carefully to keep his voice low as well.
"Of marrying me?" Kel says. “You’d have to leave the Own."
“I was planning to leave when the war’s over anyways,” Dom says. “I need a break from fighting.”
“I won’t,” she says, studying him. “I’m honour-bound to the realm to go where I’m needed. Besides, I want to do my duty.”
“I know.”
Kel digests this, and then moves onto the next obstacle. “Raoul will kill me. Raoul will kill you.”
“I know,” Dom says again. “I’m hoping Buri will restrain him. She supports us, you know.”
Kel passes a hand over her face. “How did you find that out?” she asks, voice admirably level.
“She guessed,” Dom says. “Like I said, I’ve been thinking about this for the past year. I don’t think I was all that subtle.”
Some of the tension in her body dissipates, and she crosses her arms instead, eyelashes dipping to veil her eyes. “You want to court me?” she asks again.
It's what Dom's been telling her, all along, but it's a different question now. The rigidity is gone from her voice, and instead there's a tiny blossoming hope.
Dom almost tells her that’s what he’s been trying to say. “Yes,” he says instead.
Kel lifts her gaze to his face and smiles, a little shyly. “Then yes."
Dom grins at her. It feels like his whole body, broken collarbone and all, has gone limp with relief; the endless grinding pain of the past year washed away, smoothed over like the stones in the Vassa. “Do you know, I have no real idea what do now.”
“I don’t either,” she says. “Maybe we can work it out together.”