Chapter Twenty Two

Ever since passing through that fishing village, Cinna hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. So many details of what she’d seen there didn’t add up. Sir Cole had been present. Cinna hadn’t seen his face, but the man she’d fought had worn the same heraldry on his armor as was displayed on the tower’s flags. Even if it hadn’t been Sir Cole himself, that had to have been his armor, which meant he’d returned to his village at some point.

But it wasn’t evacuated. On top of that, he’d been inside of his home with two of his men-at-arms at the time the village came under attack, and had died there after the undead broke in. So why had no one else been in the tower? Had Sir Cole locked himself within and entirely abandoned his people? Did he not even attempt to buy them time to flee?

Cinna couldn’t fathom the idea of any Selkarcian knight being so cowardly. Such cowardice ran against the fact he’d been there at all, though. Why not flee on his own or evacuate the village as ordered if he did not wish to fight? There were too many questions and not enough answers.

“Are you…really going to eat that?” Lilia asked, breaking Cinna out of her fugue. The princess looked up from the pot she’d been stirring to find Lilia staring down at it in disgust.

“It may not be fine cuisine, but it is filling,” Cinna replied, giving the porridge another stir. On her way through Sir Cole’s village, Cinna stopped only long enough to pilfer a meager amount of supplies including a pot and some of the knight’s rations. She’d filled the pot with creek water and boiled it, then added some hard biscuits which the water had slowly broken down into an edible form.

“I think I’m fine with my berries,” Lilia said, edging away.

“Your uncanny ability to locate fruit-bearing trees and bushes has served us in good stead, but berries do not make a complete diet. Since the local wildlife has also been devastated by the undead invasion you may just need to grow used to hardtack,” Cinna replied. She understood the aversion; she’d had much the same reaction as a child when she’d gone from sumptuous palace meals to the shipboard rations carried by the Selkarcian navy. By the time Cinna grew in rank enough to be afforded the more limited amount of magically preserved fresh food, however, she’d gotten used to such food.

“Soldiers eat fresh food all the time! Even I know that. My parents said the army is where most of our taxes went,” Lilia countered, nodding and crossing her arms confidently. When she said taxes, she likely meant the portion of the harvest collected by the government rather than coinage. Cinna saw no reason to doubt her when she said her parents were farmers.

“That’s true for those stationed in Selkarc, but there hasn’t been a war in Selkarc proper since the unification many centuries ago. Before the undead attacked, most fighting occurred at sea, on islands, or by the shore, so hardtack and fish were more common. Fishermen sometimes eat hardtack while stuck at sea, as well,” Cinna explained. “Fishing villages have been struck particularly hard recently as most of their catch turns out to be undead. Few wish to eat an animal that continues to move after being gutted and filleted.”

“It still looks gross.”

“Perhaps, but it’s not flavorless. I did mix in some wild herbs I managed to scrounge up,” Cinna noted as she lifted her ladle and tasted the porridge. Not the best she’d had, but far from the worst.

“I’m good, thanks…oh, how about I show you how to play feuding villages instead!” Lilia volunteered, trying to change the subject. She fished around inside her back and soon pulled out a box of lacquered wood. Frankly, Cinna had been expecting some sort of crudely crafted local game, but she recognized the board on sight. Her suspicions were further confirmed when Lilia opened the box to reveal forty game pieces made of onyx and white jade.

“That is a grand strategos board,” Cinna identified. The game had come to Selkarc from her father’s home country many generations ago, but it only ever caught on among the well-off because sets were so expensive and few outside the wealthy ever had a chance to even play it. “Where did you obtain that?”

“I don’t know what grand stratigoss is, but this is Master’s feuding villages set!” Lilia insisted as she began setting up the board. Cinna watched closely as Lilia proceeded to place every single one of the white pieces in the wrong spot.

“You insisted on remaining in his basement as he instructed, but made off with his, ah, Feuding Villages board at the first opportunity?” Cinna questioned with a frown. She still hadn’t quite worked out the girl’s strange code of honor. Although she frequently quoted things her parents had told her to do or to avoid, it didn’t appear that she’d ever developed a sense of morals as a result of their teaching. It made her unpredictable.

“He had it in a drawer in his basement. It didn’t seem like something he cared a lot about,” Lilia replied, looking away guiltily. Ah, so she did know it was stealing. “I’m just…borrowing it until I see him again. And then I’ll give it right back.”

“That aside, I have no idea what you’re doing with the pieces. That’s not how you place them,” Cinna pointed out, setting the matter aside.

“Sure it is. You just don’t know the rules yet,” Lilia argued, pointing towards an infantry piece. “This is a fence post. At the start you get to place them around the board and the other player can only go between them with a horse. But the chief can redistribute land, so if you bring him to one, he can remove it! Oh, but he’s old, so he can only move one tile at a time…”

Cinna reflected on the irony of Lilia having actually guessed a piece’s movement rules correctly as she listened to her increasingly complex and sometimes contradictory lecture on how the game was played.

***

“We’re playing again tonight as soon as we stop! I can’t let you win at my game!” Lilia whined, pouting childishly as she followed behind Cinna.

“Ah, so you did make it up,” Cinna noted.

“Wh—that’s not the point!”

“We played your game last night, so perhaps tonight I will teach you to play grand strategos,” Cinna mused, hoping she could get Lilia to come around to the idea. It would still be some time before they reached the Stryk River, so she didn’t see any harm in enjoying herself a bit. After last night’s performance, though, she suspected Lilia wouldn’t provide much in the way of competition.

“Not until I win a game,” Lilia replied stubbornly.

“We’ll make a bet of it, then. If you defeat me at your own game, we will continue to play it. If I defeat you once again, however, you must consent to learning mine,” Cinna proposed, hiding a smug smirk by looking straight ahead.

“You’re on!”

Banter like that took Cinna’s mind off of more serious matters. She had little she could do about her countrymen that had been raised as undead right now and no way of knowing how well the second line of defense was holding up. For that matter, had Gunnarsen even gotten his garrison home safely? She wouldn’t be able to answer that question until she got there herself, so having Lilia around to distract her was a boon.

Just as the sun reached its zenith, Cinna and Lilia encountered a shallow river with a much greater flow than the creek they’d encountered the night before. Seeing it, Cinna decided then was a good time for a break. Days of walking had left her sorely needing a bath, and this river seemed just the right depth for it. She only had to walk a short distance from the main road to find a spot where the foliage provided good cover as well.

“Lilia, would you mind helping me out of my armor?” Cinna asked, setting down Lilia’s pack.

“You can’t remove it yourself?” Lilia asked in turn, regarding Cinna curiously.

“Even had I two working arms available, there are buckles and straps which are difficult to reach with the armor in the way,” Cinna explained. “One of them is…about here,” she said, indicating one such buckle that contributed to keeping her breastplate in position.

“Got it.” Lilia soon had the buckle undone, and Cinna guided her to the next. Cinna had grown accustomed to having any number of people around to help her with this from fellow knights to attendants and squires, so it was a novel experience having to walk someone through it.

Eventually Cinna had her armor in a neat pile, leaving her dressed in just a shirt and pants. One final trial remained. Reluctantly Cinna reached for the chainmail coif that normally sat under her helmet. She’d left it on for so long that some of her hair had escaped her arming cap to become tangled in it. A sufficiently skilled attendant might have been able to free her hair without causing damage, but under the circumstances she had no choice but to do this the hard way.

With one hard tug, Cinna tore the coif from her head, and with it numerous strands of hair. Cinna scowled, but she didn’t allow a single sound to escape her mouth. Lilia, on the other hand, hissed as if imagining the pain herself.

“At least the worst part is over with…” Cinna muttered to herself as she began to strip off her remaining garments. Hearing suspiciously little sound from Lilia’s direction, Cinna paused partway through to check on her and found the woman staring, red-faced. “Is something wrong?”

“Um, well, that’s, ah, you know, I didn’t…” Lilia babbled, eyes not moving from Cinna’s body. More specifically her bare shoulders. Smiling devilishly, Cinna flexed her shoulders slightly, laughing softly as Lilia’s face heated up even further.

“Are you not used to bathing with others? I thought the custom in most villages was mixed bathing,” Cinna commented as she went back to stripping. For her own part, she usually had several ladies-in-waiting to assist her at home. In the field soldiers usually wiped themselves clean whenever convenient, too, which didn’t leave much room for privacy. Such things were common enough that few in Selkarc gave it much thought.

Of course, Cinna also had her fair share of experience with women, so she wasn’t shy about that side of things either.

“I-I am. We do! It’s just, I’ve never, what’s even…agh!” Suddenly Lilia rushed forward and dropped to her knees at the edge of the river, plunging her head straight into the water. She held it there for several seconds. Cinna was so taken aback that she froze for a moment, just watching to see what Lilia did next. Soon air bubble began floating to the surface. Cinna had begun to feel concerned by the time Lilia pulled her head out of the river, gasping for breath.

“Okay. I’m okay now. I’m totally normal. Nothing to worry about,” Lilia said, averting her eyes as she began taking her clothes off as well, clearly overcompensating in her attempt to pretend nothing had happened.

As Cinna sank into the river and began to clean herself, she had to suppress a great deal of laughter for the sake of Lilia’s dignity.