CHAPTER 1.31 - VILLAGE LIFE: I

The frozen moment crawls forward.  Hugo feels as though he’s been caught doing something illicit, that Atheran and Thae can’t know he’s as surprised as they are.  Their expressions reflect horror at the scene onto which they’ve stumbled.

Anuk looks at them flatly, turns back to the keening man.  “This...Dolf.  What’s his interest in us?”  The man is flail-pulling at his restraints, falls into a chant of “…don’t know I don’t know...”  As the nightmare just keeps carrying on.   Atheran looks disgusted, furious.  Thae, usually gracious, looks appalled, horrified.

The holy healer begins “Anuk, torture is...”  Hugo sees his friend mentally switch gears “...ineffective.”  He knows Thae shifted away from ‘WRONG’, diverting to a message that might reach the woman.  He sees Atheran’s lip curl further.  Boy, this shit spray is spattering everyone and just keeps on spreading.  Hopelessly, Thae persists: “A torture victim will not tell the truth, they will say anything they think might stop the pain.”  He can see that it’s costing Thae, this compromise, senses the water weakness of its diluted impact on the pale girl.

The bandit continues to bleed, to mutter about how little he knows.  Hugo thinks he sees Anuk’s eyes soften momentarily.  He marvels that she might really care about how Thae sees her.  In an instant, though, her eyes flatten, deaden.  Poor choice of terms, he thinks, as Anuk slots her dagger into the side of the dazed man’s head.  He feels a little betrayal that his brain feeds him the headline ‘cleric’s intervention destroys temple’.  The man snuffs out like a candle, the light also dying in Thae’s and Atheran’s horrified looks.

Anuk looks them up and down, her face blank.  “He didn’t know anything.”  No great inflection, he thinks, unless you count an edge of rebellion broader than that of a teenager. 

She turns, dagger abandoned, heads for the door to the village green.  As she strides out, Hugo scans the faces of those assembled.  Predictably, Thae is staring at the dead man.  Atheran’s looking after Anuk, although her focus seems through the woman, past the horizon.  Rian, he sees, is mirroring his own expression, confusion and indecision.  Their eyes meet, full of questions, and Hugo’s intent solidifies.  He must see that book.

Stuck trying to communicate his apologies and his own inner conflict, Hugo mutters a lame “I’d best go after her.”  It feels better, at least, to pursue the furious Anuk than to stay in the moral quandary of the Hall.

-x-

“Anuk?  Anuk!...ANUK!!”  She’s already partway up the hill to the overhang before he can catch up, swings round to glare at him.  She’s spoiling for a fight, anticipating his disapproval.  He sees her re-assess, confused, as he instead frames a plea.

“Look, I’m...I’m trying to put a crew together.  Fuck, I probably need an army, but...”  He runs out of words, curses how vulnerable he feels asking for her help.  Her face, momentarily empathetic, clouds again, brows knitting. 

“I have my own shit I need to do.”  Simple, unvarnished.  But not entirely a ‘no’.  “Listen, it’s not like that, Anuk.  We’d be looking to sort whatever each of us needs.  Just...together, not alone.”  Her frown lightens fractionally, Hugo imagining she’s reaching for a flat refusal.  Outcasts, the bunch of them.  “The Diamant city, yeah?  You said you’re headed there?  We’ll have your back for whatever’s there, as long as you have ours for our...stuff.”

“And just what IS your stuff, since you’re here begging?”  Gods, she’s spiky.  Maybe in the hope that he’ll just kick off, justify her telling him to cram it.  He tries humility instead.  “Thae and I don’t want to be seen in Caladria for a bit, yeah?”  She nods.  “So?”  Her tone’s still challenging but he can feel her curiosity.

Hugo takes a deep breath, hating the wobble in his voice.  “Well, for me...my life’s in danger there.  My dad…”  He looks her in the eye, firms up his focus.  “Well, he needs to die.”

She watches him calmly.  Coldly.  Pauses, stretching the moment.  Finally: “And that...”  She points back towards the Hunter’s Hall.  “...was me passing a fucking audition?”  She’s relentless, desperate to cast him and everyone else as a bastard. 

He holds her gaze, frowning slightly.  When he speaks again, it’s even but firm.  “We split evenly.  Everything.  The danger, the responsibilities, the victories and failures.  Each of us gets the others’ support.  And that sometimes means getting called out for being an arsehole.  I don’t know what you’ve got going on, Anuk, but I need people I can trust at my back.  I’m sick of snakes.”  He starts up the hill.  “Come on then, those kids need their folks.”

He passes her as she stands frozen.  No idea of the look on her face, but he doesn’t care.  He needs her help, and there’s nothing more he can do to obtain it.

-x-

As they arrive at the overhang, Durn’s wide awake, bow levelled in their direction.  The children are curled up together like cats.  Anuk, all business, urges the man to waken them.  Hugo muses that she’s neglected to give him the all-clear as he stares at the target of her earlier spell.  The flickering, pulsing blast of electricity she summoned has made an untidy job of excavating a rectangular section of the featureless white rock.  In amongst the dirt clods and vestiges of roots, Hugo can clearly see edges.  A huge stone, carved and fitted nearly perfectly.  Practically airtight, he thinks, even with the dirt blasted away. 

He pulls himself out of his reverie, focus drawn back to the assembled people.  For some reason, Durn‘s staring at him, Anuk glaring at the hunter.  “I’m sorry, what?”  He murmurs.  Is that horror on the young man’s face?  It’s surely contempt on Anuk’s.  Same shit, different day.  Then again, he’s grateful HE’s not the recipient this time.

The pair begin to speak at once, the words drowned, the tones clear.  The man’s radiating fear, all right.  Anuk’s done with him.  “You heard what, Durn?”  The hunter eyes Anuk, as intimidated by her frost as by the message he’s failing to deliver.  “After y’left…there was noises, like pacin’.  Then silence.  Then scratchin’.”  “Pacing?  Scratching?...”  Hugo feels ice trickling down his spine as he thinks about the last time he was underground.  The hunter’s nodding, slightly feverishly, but Anuk butts in in the most surprising manner.  She’s all smiles as she says: “Great, that’s agreed then!” 

Hugo looks to her in confusion, sees her eyes flicking to where Erin and Joral are waking, looking up at the adults.  He joins in the act.  “Yes, Anuk.  Let’s get these two back into the arms of their parents, shall we?”

-x-

They’re shown to a room, finally, one of the ones on the middle floor which wasn’t used as a prison.  Anuk was offered a chamber of her own but waved off the idea.  Hugo supposes the ability to wash magically while fully dressed assists that decision.  Still, he marvels at how the woman’s spikiness has altered.  Seemingly in the past few hours.  Despite the length of their day, they all seem too energised to sleep.  Besides, dawn passed in the interim.

The more he thinks, the more he’s certain that Anuk hasn’t changed at all.  Instead, he’s maybe become better at reading the nuances within her all-encompassing air of ‘get-the-fuck-away-from-me’.  And, of course, he has witnessed the occasional flashes of absolute warmth and empathy she’s capable of projecting.  Rach and Jeran, on seeing their children returned unharmed, had flooded Anuk and him with praise and thanks.  Despite being Hugo Hughold, accomplished receiver of compliments, he had quickly begun to drown in their adulation. 

Anuk had handled every iteration of the couple’s emotions with grace, gently shifting focus away from their heroism to centre the children.  How closely Erin had tended to her brother, how brave Joral had been in such a strange place.  And all throughout, Anuk was re-framing the language.  He would have tripped up, accidentally mentioned danger or threat.  Instead, he watched Anuk masterfully navigate an account free from details, phrased for the adults as a grand adventure.  An adventure in which their offspring were just the most polite and resourceful little guys.  And heavily implied that these qualities derived directly from their parents.  He thinks about the power of narratives, how Anuk entering this account into the family lexicon might actually shape the way the kids’ resilient brains carry the event forward.

However many mysteries Anuk might still hold, Hugo’s glad he seems finally to have broken through.  At least he’s standing inside her camp looking out at a world she seems to loathe.  Or disdain.  They drop their belongings onto the four beds.  They’re narrow cots but look like the epitome of luxury to Hugo now.  Or at least to the Hugo who feels like he’s been sleeping on the ground forever.  He notes that the girl keeps hold of her backpack, book surreptitiously present wherever she goes.  But that’s a consideration for later. 

The woman isn’t his concern currently; right now Hugo’s worried about his friend Thae.  The cleric’s face is a mask of suppressed concern, and the half-elf would make a miserable poker player.  Even as they recounted the liberation of the Hunter’s Hall, careful as they were to steer clear of any mention of the man on the table, Thae seemed the least jazzed of the group.  While Hugo and his new friend Anuk bounced off one another jockeying to display each other’s acts of heroism, the account of the battle downstairs was minimal.  Evasive, even.  Thae began in a leaden voice, “Well, I was outside when Anuk’s signal went off, it was very good…”  Even the compliment rang like a death knell, and Hugo worried Thae was going to jump from there to a discussion of…interrogations.  Or, rather, the idea was placed in his mind when Rian interrupted the acolyte to deliver the least detailed account of how Hugo’s plan had worked a treat. 

This was adulation he could accept, but the moment was doused somewhat by Thae looking ready to burst into tears.  As it was, Rian seemed to be steering things, announcing that he and the half-elf would be heading out to see if they could help.  They had most of the day to themselves, it seemed, Atheran declaring that a feast or something like it would be thrown in their honour tonight.  This was a double-edged compliment, he knew, even without the elder’s discomfort around Anuk.  The bandits’ assault on the village had curbed the efforts to preserve and process the animals spoiling on the green.  Some of that could be salvaged, but probably not smoked or salted in time to last the village the winter. 

Marek was expected to survive his near-death experience, and Durn was in a room with him.  He was instructed sternly to recuperate after his near miss with blood poisoning.  Again, this should have been joyful to Thae, the crucial factor in fending off the infection.  Instead, the news was delivered blankly.  Thae, to Hugo, reacted as though Marek was due to die and Durn would lose his legs and his livelihood.  At least Rian seems to have noticed, the big man’s hand gently on Thae’s shoulder as he ushers the priest through the door.

Hugo sighs audibly, accidentally, sees Anuk turn to examine him as she throws one backpack strap over her narrow shoulder.  He smiles at her uncertainly, realising he has too few possessions for the length of time he has spent contemplating his bag.  “Mad day, huh?”  He manages.  Anuk observes him, face unchanging, and he thinks he would have processed this as contempt a few hours previously.  Now, she just feels like a person refusing to engage in what Hugo thinks of as ‘social anxiety pantomime’.  He’s always driven by a horror of being misinterpreted by anyone, anywhere. 

“Yeah.”  She replies, tone making no attempt to dignify his nothing conversation.  “Anyway…” she says, turns to walk out of the room.  Hugo feels a hysterical laugh bubbling up inside him at the girl’s indifference to coddling him or anyone.  Barely pretending to engage, practically saying “Placeholder” to acknowledge that he had said anything.  Gods he’s tired.

He’s happy that he managed to suppress the nervous tic, the expression of his sleep deprivation, when she stops with the door partially opened.  Anuk turns her beautiful face towards him.  She’s frowning.

“Yes.”  Brevity’s a virtue but Tiamat’s teeth, he needs a little more.  He spreads his hands, responds “Yes?  Yes to what?”

“Yes, I’ll join your little gang.  I’ve some rights to wrong myself.”  She raises her index finger, freezing the smile spreading across his face.  “For now, and only for as long as it seems worth it.  No guarantees.”  Without hesitation she pulls open the door and strides away.

Hugo sits heavily on the bed.  Okay then, a conditional yes.  A moment later he realises what she actually said and he’s back trying to unpeel the mystery of Anuk.