lined up nearly perfectly with the wounds.
“About my size then?”
“Little smaller, about two inches I’d guess. But basically just like that. Only, well, closer. Um, obviously.” Tor had to fight not to duck his head in shame, just saying something like that, but made himself hold steady.
She went back to washing and started in on her short hair, which wasn’t in a military woman’s cut at all, but was even shorter, a true fighters cut. She faced away while she washed and Tor struggled to not stare at her behind. Her body was interesting. Muscular and a little blocky looking, compared to say, Sara, but still very worth looking at. He just didn’t want to make her feel uneasy. She may be a royal and used to communal bathing, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be ogled in particular while she did it.
“That sucks. Um, no pun intended there.” The girl grinned at him as the water fell around her shoulders. “Well, I promise that if I’m ever doing that with you, I won’t pull a knife.”
A lot of things ran through his head then, the first being to mock himself and talk about how inadequate he was, but frankly, he realized, she already knew that. As in could look across the room and see for herself. So if he wasn’t good enough she wouldn’t have said it that way. It wasn’t really an offer either, not exactly. Was she testing the waters? Ursala and Sara had kind of hinted at something like that before. Putting out a signal they called it. Or was it just an offhand comment? What was it he was supposed to do then? Ah, right, give one back that was slightly more explicit, but not outrageously so. Because going in too strong could kind of force the other person into a corner. You flirted, but didn’t make people do anything they didn’t want to.
“Right, definitely sticking with my friends from now on for such things. It made sense at the time, I mean, all the women seem so nice… But one of them wasn’t apparently. I need to get to know people better first.”
The woman her hand rubbing over her stomach, stopping just before she reached the thick brown hair below her flat stomach shrugged.
“Oh, well, we don’t really know each other all that well do we?” She said, actually sounding a little sad about it. Either good acting or a verbal cue.
He took a half deep breath. About what he could manage without too much pain. This was the hard part for him. That could mean “We don’t know each other well and you were misinterpreting an innocent comment” or “reassure me here”.
“I don’t know… If I woke up to find you in my bed I wouldn’t assume you were there to kill me or anything like that, so I’d guess good enough friends.”
As soon as he said it he knew he’d gotten it wrong. He’d been trying for something along the lines of telling her that he trusted her, not that he wanted to have her perform sex acts on him. He didn’t take it back though, because she smiled warmly at him instead of acting offended.
“Well… Good! I guess when you’re feeling up to it you should go and ask Kolb if we can get together then? It’s a strange rule. Talk about putting a crimp in the social life. All the military guys seem to think Kolb will kill them if they even look at one of us funny or something. Does that even apply to you? I mean this is kind of your house and all, right?”
Did that apply to him? He didn’t think so, because they already knew each other. Shrugging he told her that, but then decided that he’d ask Kolb himself. After all, if everyone else had to shouldn’t he? Otherwise it would be like him getting special privileges.
Her look was a little coy and she actually finished faster than he did, since all his moves were slow. On her way out she called back to him, looking over her shoulder.
“It’s a date then. Don’t forget.”
Well, that went well. He’d really have to work on this stuff fast. Right now all he knew about that particular act was what Trice had said just before the stabbing. Don’t grab her head, and don’t get too thrusty. Check. Now what that all really meant, he had no clue.
Over the next week he carefully built the palace shield template, which went up faster the way he was doing it this time, mainly because only two parts of it were new. The rest he’d had from his second shield build. The big part was making smaller fields that would link and could be turned on and off from the inside remotely.
Then he made five hundred of the little fields. It took less than a day, to his own amazement.
Doing things in large batched was so much better. Harder, but still… He kind of wanted to kick himself for not trying it sooner, but what could he do about it now? Tor just kept working, and on the eighth day started making himself get up and walk each day. Not run, just walk the outer wall, over and over again.
The rest of the time he ate or worked. If he could keep it up for a bit, he felt like he might even eventually gain some weight. Maybe.
It was nearly two weeks later when Rolph came, using his flying rig, along with Tovey. At first Tor didn’t recognize his friends. Tovey looked like himself, except that he wore the uniform of a fairly low ranking officer in the army. A captain, which was only one step up from the very bottom for the upper ranks, if Tor had that right. There were no particular marking’s on the uniform he wore, just a light gray splotch on the shoulder, which was for safety he told Tor. No officers were wearing normal insignia, since about two weeks before a number of highly placed generals had been attacked. The attacks came over a two day period, with Tor’s being the third in a line of fifteen.
It wasn’t funny, but Tor chuckled slightly anyway, his side only just tolerating it now without pain. “Hmm. Well, a bit of a mistake on the Austrans part then. No one sane would mistake me for a general. I’m not even in the military at all. Really, I doubt they’d let me in. Too short. Wrong haircut too.”
Tovey laughed.
“Well, not everyone in the service is tall Tor. You’re just used to seeing what amounts to elite forces. Even the people stationed here building furniture are all handpicked. Those groups have a lot of nobles in them, people that can afford their own gear or have had years of training and schooling already. The regular forces tend to be a lot shorter on average. As to the Austrans making a mistake, I don’t think so…”
Behind Tovey came a familiar dark laugh. The man doing it wasn’t anyone he recognized though, a guard for Count Thomson it looked like one of two in the room. The man was obviously of royal blood, huge, about the same size as Rolph and hard looking. He had a short military haircut, barely a dark brown fuzz on his head the same length all over and dark skin that would have looked about right on Count Ward. The complexion was smooth, but something about him was familiar.
After a second he got it.
“Rolph!” Tor grinned looking at his friend. It took a lot less effort now than it had before, so Tor got up, a little stiffly and walked over to look at him.
“Is this make-up? You look good. I wouldn’t have recognized you at all if you hadn’t laughed you know…” Reaching out, Tor rubbed at the brown hand that clapped his shoulder. Tried to at least. He had to drop his shield to make contact.
“It’s a skin dye, so it won’t come off too easily. I figured I might as well do the whole thing if I was going to do the hair up. Blame Varley though. She kind of forced Karina’s hand, so I had no choice but to follow suit. Couldn’t let the girls show me up by that much, now could I?”
Varley, it turned out, had accepted Karina’s challenge and had all her hair cut off. Shorter than what Sara had even, Rolph informed him. In turn, Karina grudgingly dyed her own hair and had it cut to about shoulder length, so she looked a proper kitchen girl. Even the Queen cut her hair in a show of support for the girls, and for the military, which started a trend.
Count Thomson got a serious look on his face then.
“It’s… almost scary, really Tor. You walk through the streets of the Capital and almost everyone looks like their ready to run off and join the military. Man, woman and child. Even your friend Debbie cropped her hair off to show her support for the war effort. It’s certainly effective! If I were the Austrans I think I’d seriously consider calling off the war about now. If we could get them shields and weapons, I think that the school kids of Noram would seriously be starting their own offensive about now.” The smile Tovey gave him was proud and spoke of a deep patriotism. Not just the normal royal sense of things, but like he’d personally back up those school kids. Tor didn’t know if he could get them enough weapons and shields, but after he got the military squared away he’ give it a try.
Stupid Austrans.
Who went around declaring war anyway? It was about as dumb a thing as you could do.
As they all sat at the table in the central area Rolph explained how the attack on the generals, and Tor, was
