A Hoard of Lesbians – Chapter 1

            My mother was right. The thought terrified me as it crossed my mind. Mostly because I would hate for it to be the last thing I ever thought, and the second that dreadful sentence flashed in my head, a huge javelin just narrowly missed it. It passed so close that I could hear it whooshing inches off my right ear before it stuck to the soft dirt in front of me. I leapt over it and kept going.

            I was running as fast as I could. Which was faster than I thought I could run in armour before that moment. But there was something to be said about the incentive provided by my pursuers. Two large roaring bugbears swinging weapons at you and yelling about all the things they will do to you when they catch you, most of them violent, a few sexual, and a disturbing overlap between those two. I probably should thank them for helping me realise how much further I could go on my fitness journey if we found some time to talk peacefully. It seemed like an unlikely prospect, though, considering they seemed perhaps a smidge more inclined to skin me alive than hear why it was vital that I move their sacred idol out of the shrine-hut where they had placed it and into the safe of the Merchant-Prince of Valenza. Yet as one of them ducked just long enough to grab a stone the size of a fist—his fist, not mine, mind you—and tossed it towards me, missing but shattering a branch above my head, I realised that maybe we also would be operating under different definitions of ‘vital’. They might see that their whole system of beliefs and the delicately carved sacred idol were more important than my rent.

            “Hey! Can we c-calm down!” I shouted without stopping in my tracks.

            The question was answered—rudely, I might add—with a roar of fury. Not the most polite response, but at least it was clear. Ahead, I saw the forest floor disappear. Was it a cliff, a ravine, or just a steep slope? I suspected that by the time I found out, it would be too late to do anything about it. But it was pretty self-evident that I wouldn’t be able to run fast enough to take a sharp turn either left or right without my pursuers intercepting me through the hypotenuse—I was also surprised to remember that word from Master Hermaticus’ class at the Adventurer’s Academy—of our paths. They were gaining on me as it was. To me, it seemed that either the edge ahead was the start of a slope, or a relatively low cliff or ravine, or I would be dead. And facing those options, knowing what was on the other side struck me as less important.

            “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” I muttered, eloquently even in my darkest hour, as I approached the edge, and more and more it seemed like a cliff rather than a slope. Beyond it, I could only see the very top of the pine canopy. “…Fucking fuck.”

            My armoured sabatons slid down as I was barely able to stop myself. Twisting left my ankle dangling over the edge. My leather and steel gauntlets clenched the bone-carved idol. It was shaped like a tiny body, which was dwarfed by its immense, open-mouthed head. An expression perpetually screaming, showing sharp teeth, and oddly stylised, like a very ugly mask of a bugbear, as it might be carved by someone who never saw a bugbear before, but heard much about them and nothing positive. I was frankly surprised they care so deeply about such an unflattering depiction.

            My longsword was drawn as I turned, and the two bugbears came to a halt around four yards from me. The tree line ended just there. One of them was holding two javelins in their left hand and another in their right. The second had a brutal-looking two-handed axe that I was not eager to become acquainted with.

            “Gentlemen…” I started, before I was crudely interrupted by another javelin being flung in my direction.

            I ducked underneath it, and had I not, it would have struck me right on the chest. I was wearing armour, but I doubt the chain-shirt and gambeson would do much to stop a projectile animated by those long, hairy arms. The javelin flew like a ballista bolt and disappeared in the canopy behind me.

            “Right! Now that you got that out of your system…” I tried the diplomatic route again.

            There was something to be said for persistence, but my counterparts didn’t seem to admire it as a quality in negotiation. All the second attempt earned me was two more spears tossed at me. The first, I dodged by moving my torso to the side; the second, I managed to intercept with a swift cut of my blade, holding the idol under my left arm now so my right could have the sword. I was a bit too proud of the manoeuvre.

            “A-ha!” I shouted, content as I watched the cleaved projectile drop to my feet.

            My self-congratulation was interpreted as a taunt, however. And my less-than-ideal rapport with the two bugbears seemed not to go unscathed by that misperception. The one with the axe growled, and his friend, now out of spears, grabbed a hatchet from his waist. Small as it was, the weapon was sufficiently intimidating in the hands of a furious creature.

            “We will boil your eyeballs in your piss!” the larger one said.

            “KILL! KILL!” the hatchet-wielding one replied, making it clear that if his friend was the poet, then he was the intellectual one of the duo.

            “Can’t we be…” I started, parrying a hatchet strike and ducking under the swing of the axe. “… Civilised about this?”

            The blow of the hatchet was mainly absorbed by my shoulder, and the impact rattled my armour and my bones alike. I was glad to avoid the great axe entirely by blocking it. Especially because my dodge placed me between the two, and I tried to slip past them and run back the way I came.

            No luck.

            I had taken but two steps when one of those long arms grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me back. My legs went ahead of my body, up in the air before me, and I, once again moving in unison, was slammed onto the ground. Breath escaped from my lungs, and my ribcage tried to curl into itself like the legs of a dead spider. My head was ringing when I felt it lean down. Past where the ground should be. Panging heavily from nothing. I twisted to the side, in a quick darting back and forth—I didn’t want to keep that large axe too far off my sight for too long—but that was long enough to understand that it was hanging over the cliff’s edge. My long red hair swayed in the breeze as it broke free from my battle braid.

            I looked back in time to raise my blade and stop another hatchet blow meant to split my dangling head in two. The glimpse was all I could afford, but it was enough to estimate the height. The twenty-five or thirty-foot drop didn’t seem too bad for me. But the jagged rocks at the edge of a small creek right below me were not encouraging for the prospect of a safe landing. I was afforded a little more time prone because the one with the bigger frame and smaller axe had stepped in front of the other for his attempt at a killing blow. When I parried it, the great-axe-wielding bugbear shoved his friend aside. His large foot moved to step onto the side of my blade and shove it into the grass, which meant his legs were open wide over my torso. The wind blowing on my hair pushed his loincloth aside, and I learned that bugbears didn’t believe in underwear, and that this one was uncircumcised.

            The axe rose high, and there was no doubt that when it came down, it would put a red smear as the closing line on the story of Matilda of Wendyr—yours truly, naturally, in case that wasn’t clear—which might be fitting for a cautionary tale. But I was, back then, much fonder of being alive than providing stories about my life with satisfying endings.

            “STOP!” I shouted, trying not to look at his hairy and frankly oversized member as I looked up at him.

            “Heh! Too late for mercy, little human…” he said, but he did stop. “But I’ll give you a chance to beg anyway.”

            Well, that was nice of him! Of course, I had no intention of begging, but it was still a considerate offer. Instead, I tossed the idol in the air, towards the cliff. The two froze for long enough that I was able to grab it just above my head. Now both I and the ugly mask thing were dangling at the edge of a cliff, in a metaphorical and also very literal sense.

            “How about parlay? Too late for that?” I said, cocky, which I reckon would make me not a very sympathetic protagonist. I should work on that.

            The two were furious, but I saw the panic in their eyes when they thought the idol was about to fall. And the relief, followed by a frustrated realisation when it didn’t.

            “Drop that and we will do worse than kill you…” the poet of the group said, axe still held up. “Give it back and I’ll make it quick.”

            “That’s… Not a good bargain,” I concluded.

            “You are in no position to bargain.”

            He had a point. But I had the idol. I released it, allowing it to slip a few inches before grabbing it again. I could see those large, hairy balls shrinking slightly as the bugbear gasped in fear for a moment.

            “Stop that!”

            “Alright, so… Here’s what’s going to happen… You two take several steps back. I’ll get up, slowly, and we are going to find out how this situation can end without your precious idol being smashed.”

            “Break it and we will tear you apart limb from limb!” the smart one said, salivating in barely held anger.

            “I still think you’d rather have the idol than a dead human…” I said, and the two walked back. The poet placed a hand on his friend’s chest to make sure he wouldn’t lunge. I got up. “Thought so…”

            That had bought me some time. Not a lot. I stretched my left hand over the cliff, holding the ugly idol, while I held my sword with the right.

            “So… What now, little human?”

            “Can I convince you two to somehow take the idol back and not gut me?”

            “Yes,” he said, clearly lying.

            I couldn’t blame him, of course. We had not started our relationship on a basis of honesty when I stole this from their shaman’s hut.

            “Well… I don’t trust you.”

            “Smart girl,” he said, while his friend started to move.

            He was going to my left. The other one to my right, slowly. Of course, eventually one of them would be in my blind spot. I would pick one to track and the other would lunge. I could try to run, but I would not make it past the reach of those hairy arms.

            “Stop that!” I shouted, to no avail.

            Swinging the sword tip in their general direction didn’t dissuade them from the flanking tactic either, and as I took half a step back, my heel found itself stepping over nothing. They would grab me and kill me. Or worse, take me as a prisoner and argue about which weirdly specific violent thing they would do to me first.

            ‘Your big mouth is going to end up getting you killed, Tilly,’ I heard my mother’s voice in my head. ‘You are clever, but you think you are cleverer than you are. And that will get you killed too,’ she continued.

            Yep. My mother was right, and that was a dreadful thing to have in your head as a last thought. I looked back towards the cliff and the water below. A terrible thing to be my last thought. I slowly sheathed my sword, and the gesture caused them to stop their flanking motion to look at me closely and try to guess my next move.

            “Alright… Alright…” I said slowly, holding their full attention. “I can see how we started this on the wrong foot,” I told them, and then motioned with my arm, preparing to launch the idol far into the forest behind them, from where I had run.

            I put my whole torso into the throw, bending low as I swung. They turned around to track the trajectory of their precious regalia. It was, of course, a feint. Clutching the idol in both my arms, crossing them over my chest, I flexed my knees and, unable to resist having the last word, I said:

            “…But you’ll have to get over me.”

            They turned. They lunged. Arms closing around where I had been a moment before. But I was no longer there. I was flying, if very ephemerally, away from the cliff’s edge and hoping that I had not misjudged my blind backwards jump and that I would land in the water. And that the water would be deep enough to absorb the impact. If not, at least I would die doing something I loved: flipping off a jerk who showed me his junk. I extended the middle finger on both hands, crossing them around the idol in a moment that seemed to last forever.

            And then my very temporary push upwards halted, and was replaced by a very definitive pull down. My eyes closed, and I braced myself for either a cold, wet splash, agonising pain, or death.

            My personal preference at that moment was for the wet splash.

            I got it. But not without a side of agonising pain.

            The creek was deep enough, it turned out, to make the fall less lethal. But less lethal didn’t mean it couldn’t break a leg. And that was exactly what happened as my right leg arrived at the rocky bottom of the creek slightly ahead of the left one. The bone cracked, not in half as much as splintering, judging by the noise I could swear I heard echoing inside my body. The pain that radiated from it was so intense that I forgot I was underwater. I screamed, only to be greeted with a lungful of murky forest river water. Clutching the idol for dear life, I found myself tumbling down the stream.

            I had not considered that if the water were deep enough to save me from a fall like that, it would likely be deep enough to drown me. It didn’t seem like an important consideration when I was entertaining my two friends up there. Still, as the mouthful of murky water filled my lungs and I reached up to the surface, only to find it drifting away, suddenly the oversight started to feel pretty meaningful. Perhaps drowning was a gentler death than being gutted by a bugbear, but it was hard to find a bright side. The gambeson was starting to fill with water, weighing me down like stone, and the pain in my chest prevented even the most timid attempts at threading up. Not that they would have been sufficient. For some stupid reason, one arm still clung to the idol as the other reached for the rippling light of the surface. I touched the bottom, and my sinking got slower. My vision of the dancing light above was growing blurrier. If that was me losing conscience or just the effect of more murky water coming between me and the air I had taken for granted for so long, I couldn’t say.

            Darkness. No, not death. It didn’t last. Just a shadow flickering over the light. Was it a vulture flying overhead? Last I knew, vultures would not dive for prey. And that one had to be flying pretty close to the water to block the whole surface for a brief moment. Perhaps it was a hallucination. I felt my hips touch the rocky floor as my chest weighed me down. The shadow passed over again. It was not a hallucination. It was… Something else.

            I tried to cough, and more water filled my lungs. My leg burned, but even the pain started to grow dull with my senses. I could hear my throbbing heartbeat filling my ears with the echoing, rumbling sounds of the current as my back finally touched the rocky ground. Like red river kelp, my hair danced in front of my face as the light of the surface was now barely there.

            Lying at the bottom of the river, I didn’t have time to make peace with my mortality, but the expedited circumstances allowed us to reach, at least, a begrudging agreement. My eyes were closing on their own. Or perhaps the light was just fading. I looked at the distant, blurred ripples.

            And then that shadow covered them again. But this time it wasn’t just a flash. It stayed. Dark. Growing darker. Growing… Bigger? And closer?

            The sound of it breaking the surface of the water was like being inside a lightning bolt when it went off—I imagine, but can’t speak of it firsthand—and I saw the storm of glinting scales, immense claws, and… Wings. Gold? Golden eyes? Something.

            My last thought, it turned out, was not about my mother. My last thought was about how they had described death to me as a Pale Lady, but now it came for me like dark maws in a whirlwind of distortion, with a faint hint of gold.

            Fitting.

            For anyone who has not had the distinct displeasure of waking up to a coughing fit of murky river water, let me just say that I sincerely envy you. For those that have, I am genuinely curious to know if you found the burning in your lungs and throat as you convulse to be the worst part, or if it was the taste, which I could only describe as having tried to clean the gutters near one of Valenza’s stables with my tongue and then washing it down with a nice tepid tankard of troll piss. Again, no firsthand experience with either, but yours truly nearly died, so I wi ll be excused for the poetic license.

            As my senses returned, I felt two firm hands pressed against my pained ribcage, pumping. Once. Twice. Three times. The third time brought forth a new gasp of river water, nice and warm from my body heat, spilling from my lips. I coughed. Violently. I am yet to meet someone who looks good coughing, but even by the standards of a regular cough, that was a poor spectacle. I wish I could say the first thing I saw when I woke was the golden eyes of my saviour, but to be perfectly frank, that wasn’t it. The first thing I saw was the sky. And then muddy grass as I rolled from lying on my back to lying on my front, trying to lift my torso and more effectively cough up all that water inside me.

            I only saw those eyes later, when a hand that was assertive and firm and yet gentle, brushed my soggy red strands aside, to pull them back out of the way of my fluvial expulsions and hold them, along with my battle braid, behind my head. For a moment, I recalled the tail end of the first night I tried elven mead, not believing the tales about how strong it was. But instead of a latrine of the Gilded Cauldron, it was the riverbank. And instead of my best friend and future ex-girlfriend, it was someone with honey-tan skin, a faintly golden glint to it, and bright yellow eyes. Eyes that, for a second, seemed almost reptilian.

            “There, there… Let it all out…” I heard as she patted me on the back.

            ‘Is that what I should be doing? Well, geez, thanks,’ I thought. But I didn’t say it. Not because it would be rude to say it to someone who saved your life, mind you, but because I was still too busy in the process of expelling what felt like a city cistern’s worth of water. My broken leg throbbed, and I was vaguely aware that when I turned, I had set my foot at an awkward angle. But it wasn’t until I tried to move it to a less awkward one that I felt the jolt of pain.

            “ARGH!” I graciously said, collapsing on my face from the pain alone.

            The secondary pulses were not gentler than the first, and each throb after felt like a blacksmith trying to fix my bone as they would a piece of steel, hammering it rhythmically and without any kindness. I didn’t turn to lie on my back on my own. Instead, those surprisingly firm hands proved also to be remarkably strong as they grabbed my shoulders and rolled me back.

            “I think your leg is broken,” the voice said.

            ‘You think?!’ I considered saying, and again, it was not common courtesy, but my mouth, being preoccupied with screaming, prevented me from lashing out.

            The voice that spoke to me was deep. Feminine but with a profound, throaty, and resonant characteristic. Like what an opera singer’s voice might sound like at rest. It was an effort for her to speak without melodically shouting and holding a note. She spoke a little too quietly, as well, which reinforced that idea of controlling volume.

            “I can fix that, just… Hold still.”

            Moving wasn’t on my plans, and I kept looking into the blue sky above, vaguely aware of the motions around me. Two hands leaned on my leg. Something was said in a language that sounded like each syllable came in backwards. The Rs rolled and echoed, staying for too long, and the Ss whistled like a kettle. The sentence was short. Repeated three times. And by the third, I felt that familiar hot flash of healing magic emanating from my leg. And I braced myself.

            Anyone who tells you healing magic doesn’t hurt deserves a punch to the jaw and then having their jaw fixed by a spell. Sure, it doesn’t, when it is done. But during it? The process of hearing my bones snap together once, then two more times in quick succession, while flashes of searing white-hot pain burst behind my lids, made me thankful that I had an empty bladder because I would have pissed myself otherwise.

            “Argh, fuck!” I cursed.

            “It hurts, I know, but… It should be better now, right?”

            I needed three seconds before I could give my left foot a wiggle. I expected it to hurt so much that I think I felt a burst of ghost pain just because my leg thought I would otherwise be making too much of a fool of myself. When I looked down, watching my foot wiggling without the mind-numbing pain of a broken leg, I sighed in relief.

            “Thanks… Really,” I said, my voice weak from screaming.

            I adjusted my weight on my elbows as I sat up, and that was when my eyes fell on her. Her. Her skin was the colour of honey on a windowsill at the end of an afternoon. Her eyes were bright yellow with metallic glints in them, and her hair was like several strands of filigree. Her dress was tied at her neck by a broad, golden collar, and the black fabric parted at a diamond window just between her breasts. It was a rather cheeky opening, too, showing well the valley in the middle of her chest and down, low enough that I could tell she had the sort of abs that made smart girls dumb. Me, case in point.

            Another property of her anatomy that was damaging to my good sense was her arms. Not muscular like some of the girls working for the Adventurer’s Guild, who ate raw ox testicles for breakfast every day before running up and down Market Road carrying boulders. It was defined to perfection, with the faintest hint of muscle, subtle yet even and everywhere. She must have known how pretty those arms were, because she had them fully bared; her dress seemed to be only cloth dangling down the front. And as she moved, the afternoon sun bounced off the ink, forming abstract, symmetric patterns on her biceps, shoulders, and hands. It looked like a shade of earthy brown barely distinct from her skin, until movement revealed the gilt nature of it. She had jewellery, and I’m sure, dear reader, by now you have guessed, but allow me to be explicit, it was also all gold. Which should make evident why my next question to her was so fundamentally stupid, I would chew on it for weeks to come.

            “What are you… Some… Forest nymph?”

            She laughed, not in mockery, but instead seeming very amused and more than a little surprised that it was my first guess.

            “No. Oh, Saints, no… I’m Chrys,” she introduced herself, taking her hands from my wet greaves and offering one of them to me.

            “Chrys?” I asked, looking at that hand as if it were a puzzle’s lever in a dungeon, and I would rather let Grigori get hit with the poison darts this time, thank you very much.

            “Well, it’s short for Chrysadora,” she explained, holding the hand there.

            It would be natural to wonder why I was so suspicious of someone who had, likely, saved my life. However, it is essential to remember that beautiful women adorned with jewels in the deep forests or riverbanks often tend to be a trap of some form or another. And the fact that it would have been easier for someone seeking to do me harm not to save my life beforehand took a moment to dawn on me. When it did, I blushed and reached out to take her hand.

            “I’m Tilly. I mean… I’m Matilda. But only my mother calls me that,” I said, not sure why I felt the need to explain it. Probably for the same reason, my cheeks blushed and burned right after.

            “Well… Tilly, may I recommend that next time you go for a swim, you remove the armour first?”

            I grunted. She was teasing me, maybe trying to make me comfortable, but I felt mocked more than any sense of camaraderie. Yet, it would not do to let it show, so I said back:

            “I was told the fish here had swords.”

            Not my cleverest jest, but it was serviceable. I pulled my knees to my chest, feeling my cheeks warming up even further as Chrysadora smiled, lifted her shoulders and eyebrows at the same time, and then, with a hand, gestured for the small space between her index and thumb, showing no more than three or so inches there.

            “Yes, but tiny ones… You’d be fine.”

            The image of diminutive fish knights with their small swords, swimming in formation up and down the river, seeking to stick them on the bum of an unarmored swimmer intrusively crashed through my mind, knocking out my sense of decorum, my caution, and my shame. And I laughed. Loud and heartily. And then I caught myself laughing and covered my mouth as I tried to stop. It only caused me to laugh out of my nose, snort, and break again into it.

            That time I was joined by Chrysadora, and her laugh, much like her voice, was musical, deep, and seeming tense, always just about to boom into something thunderous. Our voices didn’t harmonise, but our sense of humour did. I don’t think there was anything she could have done or said at that moment that would have made me trust her faster than to play on my stupid fish joke and elevate it.

            And as I was laughing and laughing some more, the realisation of how I had come close to dying, so very close, three times in the last few hours, pushed through the open space in my mind that the funny thought had opened. And seamlessly, perhaps with a wider overlap than I would have cared to admit, laughter turned into crying. I sobbed, embarrassed and confused, and hiding my face on my knees, only to feel Chrysadora’s hand moving around my shoulders to comfort me. There was no part of me with enough will to push her away.

            By the time the emotions were done spilling and I, sniffing and wiping my face, looked at her, she didn’t have the look of estrangement I was expecting. Instead, she just looked glad. Glad that I was done crying? No. Glad I was alright. Like she genuinely cared about me, to the point that it made her happy to see I was fine.

            I didn’t like that. Not one bit. I pushed away, more cautiously, and wobbled back to my feet.

            “You should rest…”

            “I’m fine,” I lied, stepping back and looking around. “Where’s the… Shit, the idol…”

            “Idol?”

            “Never mind,” I grunted, moving towards the river.

            “I don’t think going back is a good idea.”

            It wasn’t. But I wasn’t listening. I was unstrapping my armour and gaining courage to dive back into the water. But as I approached it, a part of me that had more good judgment than the one currently driving forced me to take a step back. Something about the water filled me with instant dread as the memory of the sensation of drowning returned. I had to turn around, still undoing my armour.

            “Fuck…” I muttered, knowing I had to go back in, dread or not.

            “The… Idol… Is it this?” Chrysadora asked.

            I looked up. She was pointing at a stump, where my sword belt and scabbard were resting, alongside my coin pouch and the very, very ugly bugbear religious carving. I rushed towards it as if I believed Chrysadora might steal it from me. I think a part of me feared that, I am ashamed to admit. As if she weren’t wearing more jewels than the contract was worth.

            As I grabbed it, though, I became aware of how I must look to that woman. I turned to see her standing, her dress draped exotically over her body, and her posture was regal. Yet, there was something on her that didn’t look noble. She seemed regal in the same way a large hart or a griffon would. It was poise and knowledge of power, more than titles and wealth. Though judging by her accessories, she likely had those too.

            “S-Sorry… I just…”

            “Went through a lot to get it?”

            Gosh, she got me. She got me to a scary degree. I nodded. Chrysadora had no judgment in her yellow eyes, only understanding.

            “I understand. Do you want me to walk you to town? So you can, I presume, deliver it?”

            ‘Yes, please,’ I thought.

            “Whatever. It’s fine if you want to,” I said. I didn’t know why either.

            “I do, yes. Maybe I can… Buy you a beer? Or mead, or mulled wine, or…” Chrysadora paused. “Whatever you wish.”

            “Anything’s good… As long as it tastes better than river water,” I said, pulling my belt to attach it back, feeling the comfortable weight of my sword.

            “I think I can deliver on that… We should just stick clear of the Smiling Ogre’s ale,” Chrysadora said.

            And once again, we laughed together. She gestured towards town, and I nodded, grabbing the idol and taking my first step walking side by side with her.

            I had no idea how far that would take me.