Daughter of the Witcher Ch. 06

Gunnar heard something in that and he asked when the last time was that both sorts of these crimes had occurred. What he heard related to him pointed at the ones which were called the undead, to be sure, but when he pressed, wanting to learn of the prevalence or the extent of the threats to his family, both of the people could not tell of a particular time that the 'wolves' had slaughtered anyone and Gunnar took it as a bit of hysteria or the need to tell a tale.

"I will come again tomorrow," he said, thanking them for the information, "I need more than dried grass to feed these horses and the only hay that we have found there which is not rotten is what stands unharvested in the fields."

"What did you take from what was said?" Margit asked her husband as they rode back.

Gunnar shrugged, "Something in there, but mostly nothing. There seem to be wolves here -- as there are anywhere, I guess -- but I do not know how much of a threat they might be. The others -- these undead -- I think that we have seen at least a little of them, or what was left of them. I cannot say, so I will fear when I must."

Margit smiled, "That will be a day that I have not seen yet, the one where you fear anything, Gunnar."

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When they topped the ridge, they saw smoke curling upward from one of the chimneys and as they walked inside the part of the keep that they'd taken to live in, they were greeted by their son, who had the fire roaring and was trying to dampen it back, since it burned well by then. The air was warm and very comforting inside and he rushed to help unload the wagon.

Margit looked around at the table for a moment, "How did you make this meal here? Where did the pots come from? How did you come by the food?"

Koten smiled, "I will tell all once I help get the things brought inside from the wagon."

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They stared at him. "So there were more than just the one girl in the window that day?" Margit asked.

Koten nodded, "A little strange, but there are eighty-seven others living in the large building that we have never gotten to yet. Today, I found that we should not go there -- at least not until you have met our landlords properly."

"What landlords?" Gunnar asked and the couple sat spellbound as they ate a meal such as they hadn't had in all of the time that they'd journeyed, not since before they'd left Finland.

"So these ones," he began, "they are a people of some sort? A tribe? What?"

Koten shrugged, "I cannot say, other than yes and no, Father. They are in many ways like men and women, and yet they are not as well. They do not call themselves people in the sense that we might, because they are not human. They are more like wolves who can walk and they speak their own tongue.

He raised his finger, "Though they can look as humans would, if they have the wish to."

He told them of his meeting earlier in the day. "The ones that I met at first looked to be very lovely women, though at first, I saw one of them, Petra, as more of a wolf and even thus, she was good to look at. They were brought here to be kept as prisoners. Their king was told that they would be protected by the soldiers who came along with the monks, but it was really not like that. They were kept here as prisoners. The ones that I met outside today were born here.

We talked for a time and they asked me to come with them to the part of this place where they live. You were right on that first day. They keep horses.

I was treated well and though a lot of them looked at me with a bit of distrust, they came around soon enough. I saw most of what there must be of them. All sorts I saw, old and very young and everyone in between. I played with a few of their little ones in much the same way as you might play with a puppy, though they are less trusting and bright enough to see through any game that you might play with them. The pair that I spoke to at first, the light-haired one especially, gave me little but their own questions of me in Latin, but, ...

Well, those two, along with their brother, whom I did not meet today, they are the leaders. Most of them could not speak with me, since only a few can speak Latin.

But they said that they wished to have us as neighbors, since to keep themselves apart has bought them little. So we are welcome to live here," he said with a smile.

"They saw it when you removed the wraiths in the coffins. Those ones have been a problem for them and they wish to speak to you to learn what they can of it."

Gunnar and Margit looked at each other as they ate and finally Margit spoke. "Well, this food of theirs is most welcome to my gut, since it has been so long since we have had quite this much to eat. I would want to meet them, if for nothing more than to make my thanks."

She fell silent for a moment and then she said, "Did they say who they were or where they are from?"

Koten nodded, "Only that they come from the south and east. They said that they call themselves -- "

Margit sat forward, "Kurtadams? Do they call themselves Kurtadams?"

Her son smiled, "Yes! Why Mother? Do you know of them?"

Margit clapped her hands together with a delighted laugh, "Know of them?

Koten, you have found my neighbors!

Whenever we went to their lands, I knew that I would always find a playmate there when I was a girl. My father traveled very often and I usually had to go along. Other Kipchak or Cumen children were always about who I was and what I was doing there -- as if it had been my notion to go and visit them in their cold little yurts. Me; the daughter of a khan!

Most often, it fell to me to apologize for putting them in their place. There my father would be, talking matters of importance while I had to listen to their headman's children speak as though the tribes were under their command. They would stand there respectfully for a moment until they saw that no one wished to be bothered by them and then they would begin with their tearful mewling over how the nasty girl from far away had blackened their poor little eyes for them and twisted their thin little arms so cruelly.

They would fall silent after my father bellowed at me not to waste my time by wrestling in the dirt.

'Where is the knife that I gave to you and why have you not used it?' he would yell, and I wanted to kiss him for it every time."

She looked over and saw Gunnar's smile.

"Well it got to be a little much after a time, so I would show them that they were wrong, that was all. You cannot be a khan's daughter and act meek for very long -- though I suppose that I would have had more suitors later on if I had been."

By then, Gunnar was straining not to laugh out loud and holding his tears of restrained mirth back as he pictured it. Margit didn't appear to notice.

"But the Kurtadam children were the best friends that a girl like me could ever have," Margit smiled, "No fights, no arguments, only fun and adventures by the barrelful. If I was not high up in a tree when he called for me to get ready to leave, it was only because I had already fallen out of it and more than likely twice by that time."

She sighed a little, "Until this moment, I'd forgotten how much I missed that. Back then, there weren't many of them, maybe only a few hundred to control all of their lands. I wonder how many are left now.

They were truthful to tell you that they are not human," she said, "I think that in some ways they are better than human. With a Kurtadam, you always know what you have. They do not lie or cheat, and to have one at your side is to have a powerful friend."

There was a knock at one of the doors in the chamber -- one which until then, had never crossed the minds of the family of travelers. Koten stepped over to open it and he saw Petra and Jenna, standing as young women.

He asked them to come in and introduced them to his parents. Both of them wore rather tight-fitting breeches and high boots. Jenna wore a simple jerkin over top which was cinched in a little at the waist and Petra was in a white shirt. Gunnar was a little confused.

"Why have you come to meet us when you look to be dressed more for a fight or a journey, as lovely as you are like that?"

The pair blushed furiously and Petra looked down at herself with a frown, "Please forgive us, but we do not have much clothing that is not for being outside in."

Margit tsked at her husband, "Oh, think a moment, Gunnar. Kurtadams do not have the need for clothing since they have fur. It is only a thing thought of at times like this and even so, you cannot expect even the princesses to own gowns for a ball."

She stood up and went over to re-assure them, "I met Koten's father for the first time without a scrap of clothing on me at all. It is nothing."

She thought for a moment as she smiled and then she began to speak to them in her own dialect, which was not far off their own speech, aside from the growls, and the young women smiled to hear it. Margit introduced herself and she made a pair of friends on the spot.

"You -- you are Kipchak? Mother told us of a khan's daughter who she met a few times when she was little," Petra gasped and seeing Margit's nod, she beamed, "Then you are as a khan to us, only because you come from people who love horses. We have such trouble here with ours."

"You have no troubles any longer," Margit laughed, "I will help you in anything about horses."

Jenna turned toward the door, "Margit, your friend lives still. Shall I go to bring our mother here?"

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It was a long and pleasant evening for them all. Gunnar and his wife decided that they had surely been introduced to every single Kurtadam at least twice over, but they enjoyed it all, even though most of them couldn't understand what was said just as Gunnar and Margit were forced to nod and smile just as often. Margit and Tirga, the mother of the pair of girls were over the moon to have met once again after so long.

The topic of Gunnar's trip back to the town for horse feed came up and he was assured that he didn't need to go on that account. "We know how to plant little here," Jenna said, "it is something that we hope to learn from you, but one thing that we plant well here and more than enough is food for horses, from oats to hay. Why not just go for more of your own food? The kinds that you like. We seek to learn as much as we can if you do not mind it. Meat, you do not need to buy. Do you like ale? Why not buy a barrel of that? We do not know how to make it, though we make a wine out of berries that we turn to brandy.

And you will not go alone, Gunnar. I will send four with you to help and to guard."

As the hours passed and the fire began to burn low, the talk came around to what they'd seen Gunnar do to be rid of the things which had lived in the caskets and tormented the Kurtadam people so much.

"Why did they beset you?" Gunnar asked, "Or were they set there to watch?"

Petra nodded, "I think that there was some of that. But also, they tried now and gain to catch one of us."

She shrugged, "It did them little good. It took a long while, but slowly we were killing them off. They tried sometimes to drink our blood, but they are very stupid. They do not seem to understand that it cannot work for them for the same reason that we are still here and none of us fell ill to the sickness.

We are not human. To try to drink our blood is to poison oneself. Likewise, we cannot be turned into whatever they are. None of that works.

How was it that you could kill something which does not live? Does this come to every, ... Suomalaiset person?"

Gunnar explained quietly that he was a witcher and then he had to elaborate on what that was. "Margit knows a little of what I could teach to her, but one has to have some ability from birth. Koten can do more, much more. She is not here, but we have a daughter far away that we miss very much. She is the most like me and has great ability."

"Where is this daughter?" Petra asked and Gunnar replied that she had spoken of going to Iceland. "We do not know just where she is at the moment, but we all miss Louhi so," Gunnar said a little sadly. "Wherever she is, she makes her own mark. That is a surety."

"I wish that she was here as well now," Jenna said, "It would be good to see if we could make yet another friend. This day has been a glad one for us and henceforth, you are all three lords to us, to be respected by one and all."

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The next morning, Gunnar had four mostly silent Kurtadam males with him as he went. Two of them wore clothing and looked like men and the others roamed the pathways ahead as large wolves who never seemed to grow tired at all.

At first, it was a little disquieting to the witcher, until he motioned to them to speak to each other, and by the time that they'd arrived at the village, he had the beginnings of having the sound of it make some sense to him. Only one of them could speak Latin and Gunnar would give that one a verb, for example, and armed with the translation, he'd want the Latin speaker to conjugate that verb fully as he followed along, trying to get the many throat inflections to sound correctly from his throat.

They didn't stay very long and then they were off on their way back.

"Did you mark the man standing with the young girl who waved to us as we passed by, lord?" the one who could speak Latin asked, and Gunnar nodded.

"Wampyrshi," the male said in a disgusted tone after spitting over the side onto the road.

"The people there do not know it when one of them is there. They do not feel it. By tonight, that girl will be dead -- or worse."

"Why was he there today?" Gunnar asked, "It is daytime. I thought that they could not stand it."

The male grunted with a curt nod, "They cannot -- usually. But the day is so dark and rainy. Why? Do you wish for us to stop? Nothing would make me happier than to kill that one."

Gunnar thought about it and then he nodded.

The male barked once in a low tone and one of the ones running was beside the wagon in an instant.

"You are sure about him and the girl's fate?" he asked, "I can sense them, but it takes a little time."

The other one nodded, so Gunnar did as well.

With a whistle, while tossing a sharpened stake to the runner, it had begun. Gunnar pulled the reins to stop the horses and he turned back to watch.

The smiling bloodsucker's grin vanished as he saw a man striding toward him. He turned to be gone, but there was a werewolf standing there. The vampire screamed and stumbled backward, grasping at the oak stake in his chest.

The next second, the vampire's twitching corpse flared brightly and as the flare died away, there was an old man's twisted body lying there with a stake through the chest into the ground.

The young woman decided that it was long past the time for her to scream, so she got on with it. The villagers stared at the remnants and then looked around for the ones who had done it, but they saw nothing.

The wagon out there on the road rumbled on, the single occupant in it appearing to have been oblivious to what had just happened.

"Why do you hate them so much?" Gunnar asked the one next to him. "I only dislike them, though I think I could learn your way if I had a reason to."

"It is a little difficult to explain, lord," the male said, "You will need to see how you feel about it when one of their high ones comes to tell you that the only way that you will live unmolested by them is to become one of them and swear your fealty to him. Other than that, I think that I hate them because they are nothing and should hold no place among the living.

And yet, some of them do, and they make the lives of the living around them only worse, day by day."

Gunnar nodded his understanding and went back to having verbs conjugated.

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Over the next weeks, Gunnar and Koten had all the help that they could possibly use as they turned a cold and empty keep into someplace where they could ride the winter out with a measure of comfort.

The winter hit with a vengeance and nobody cared very much.

On one of those days when the sky tries to decide what it wishes to do; snowing furiously at times all while often blinding anyone outside at others with bright sunshine glaring right through the flurries, Koten walked outside of the wall of the keep. The air was crisp and cold, but it wasn't as though he couldn't turn back to go inside for warmth at any time.

He was feeling rather thankful overall. His family had a place now and rather than needing to decide if where they were would provide shelter and warmth, they were already near the point where they'd need to decide if it was where they wanted to stay. His parents seemed to think that it might be.

He looked ahead and saw them, and he had to stop for a moment. Koten often wondered how it had happened that the three of them had gone from barely speaking on that first day to where they were now.

He stood slightly shrouded in heavy flurries looking at Jenna and Petra as they stood talking to each other while they waited for him. They spent a lot of time together these days, building on the strange and oddly hopeful friendship which had begun between them all. At first, they'd spent more of the time in human form, out of consideration for him, but he'd questioned it one day.

"Never mind," he'd said to the pair a little seriously that day, "I quite obviously enjoy seeing you both this way, but I know that it's not natural at all for you. You shouldn't do this for me. Just be yourselves," he said as he placed his hands on their shoulders.

He smiled as he looked from one to the other, "I am developing an appreciation for the, .... wilder look to you both."

Koten had only thought to put them at their ease, but in fact, he'd scored heavy points with the pair that day.

He was astounded at how they'd just seized him at the same time to hug him. Their very first kisses to him were a flurry of happy ones.

"Oh thank you, Koten," Jenna had sighed before she went back to it.

"We do not own many clothes," Petra smiled with her cheek against his for a moment, "You cannot imagine the bother of trying to find something which might be put together to look as though it has not been seen before. Are you certain that it is alright? That you do not mind?"

"I do not think that he minds it at all, now that he thinks on it," Jenna laughed as she pulled back to take her sister's hand for a moment and guide it to the swell in Koten's breeches.

Petra had been astounded. "You -- you like us that way, like we are at all other times? We thought that we could only, ... "she glanced down in a rare moment of both introspection and shyness for her and then she looked up into his eyes then and the courage that she'd summoned for it was clear to him.

"You are a very strange man to us, Koten. We have never met anyone such as you. I had only thought that with a little luck, we might have your friendship. I think that it was out of the scarcity of others our own age, but also, we all seem to enjoy anything that we do together."

Jenna nodded earnestly, "It is so. No matter what it is that we three do in a day, I am always a little sad at the end, Petra too."

She blushed a little and felt a bit foolish for it, as she considered where she'd boldly put her hand a moment before. "Look at me and how my face flushes. I can spend hours with you both and it is nothing but the closeness of friendship and fun and a little friendly teasing of you with a touch.

Now, ..." she looked up at the sky for a moment, "So you say that you find us attractive when we are the way that we were born?"

Koten knew that something had changed in that instant for them. He had only a clue what it might be, but for a boy who had grown up in the shadow of his older sister, it had taken him a long time to come into his own. Now he knew without a doubt that he stood on the edge of something else and in order to play this fine game, one had to have come into their own enough to know themselves with confidence.