Border Skirmishes (Damijan)

[Miharu Mindi]

She blinked a little when he smirked at her, and for some reason, in that moment, it occurred to her that she was having an adventure! A roguish, dangerous bad guy was smirking at her! A bright grin burst across her face, full of nothing but innocent, childish delight, and she nodded quickly and began digging through her pack for one of the curved steel needles she kept on-hand for just such an occasion.

"I'm gonna use horsehair," she said, still smiling a little to herself as she got to work, "because silk has to be cut out by someone who knows what they're doing, and horsehair will just dissolve. It might take a little longer, but there's no harm in having a gut-wound reinforced for a while longer."

She threaded one of the long, white hairs through the needle, and then repositioned herself a little closer to him and bent herself over, pinching the wound closed with one hand and beginning to stitch it with the other. She was careful and precise, and if it took a little longer than others might have taken, the stitches were pretty petching straight considering they were done by a ten year old.

She tied off the knot and cut the thread with her teeth, then returned the needle to its proper place. Another ladle-full of water was sluiced over his side, and she washed her hands again before she dug through the medicine kit and unwrapped a packet of powder to brush over the stitches. The trickle of blood that had been steadily drip-dripping from the gash stopped almost immediately, scabbing over as if by magic.

"There. Now, be careful not to twist about if you can help it," she said, a little ruefully, as if she didn't really believe he'd manage that but it was worth saying it. She picked up the bandages that his comrades had brought over and motioned for him to lean up so she could wrap him up properly. "What's wrong with the other one?" she asked with a curious glance to the tent.

[Damijan]

"Nothing, if he wakes up," the mercenary chuckled, sparing a glance towards Donal's bootheels. Unconcerned, entirely. He shifted a little to eyeball her handiwork, and must have been satisfied because he tossed her the ammonium salts and started carefully climbing to his feet. "Get outta here."

No thank you or well done or even a smile of gratitude or encouragement, just a cue to make herself scarce. He might not normally have even offered that prompt, but he'd already decided to spare her the attentions of Short and Tall; frankly, it was an ordeal that he didn't feel like enduring himself, what with Tall having a tendency to squeal mid-coitus and Short being one of those people who must incessantly breathe through his open mouth. No, Damijan had had enough excitement for one morning, best to get the kid gone while they were still cleaning tracks.

His sharp features were still drawn and pale from blood loss, but he straightened to his full height and started tucking his shirt back into his trousers, and relacing his vest overtop it.

Miharu's sensitive ears would've heard the scuffle before Damijan did. In the distance, but unfortunately not distant enough, the crash and shift of the undergrowth heralding the sharp clash of steel-on-steel -- and at that, the mercenary's head lifted.

Blood was being shed in the woods. And the sounds of the fight were headed in their direction.

[Miharu Mindi]

Her head snapped up when she heard the first crackle of branches in the distance, eyes gone wide for a moment, and she breathed "They're coming!" a full second before Damijan heard the clash of steel.

She dropped to her knees and rolled the medicine kit up so quickly some of the bottles clinked together, and then she shoved it and whatever bandages were close into her pack. "Can you run?" she hissed, head snapping around again as heightened senses caught the sound of steel cleaving into flesh. She dragged her cloak off her shoulders, revealing a thick woolen dress tied loosely over one shoulder, and swiftly kicked off her untied boots - making her look even more like some wood nymph, standing barefoot and wide-eyed.

[Damijan]

"Probably not fast enough," he murmured, eyes narrowing towards the sound.

Careful calculations played through his head; how many there might be, versus how many Short and Tall could take out on their own. None of them were particularly advanced in their swordwork, as yet, though among them Damijan could have been said to be the best. If he ran, they'd catch up to him and he'd be too spent to fight.

His hand lashed out as she was kicking off her boots, caught her by the hair, and he jerked her little body sharply over to stand in front of his. A snicker of sound, and the glint of sunlight and snowshine licking steel as the cutlass slung on his hip left its scabbard. As two of the villagers came barreling out of the brush across from them, the mercenary lifted the narrowed blade to kiss the soft underflesh of Miharu's throat.

"Come any closer and I kill the girl," he growled lowly.

The two villagers were simply that -- regular men, one holding a pitchfork and the other a longsword that looked covered in more rust than blood. There must have been more of them at the outset; at least Tall and Short had evened the odds a little. Damijan was quickly taking their measure; one bore a wound to the leg that was rapidly festering, no doubt a remnant of that morning's raid, and the other, weilding the pitchfork, looked more terrified than he did determined. The mercenary's fingers loosened their grip on the little girl's hair, as if to let her know he didn't actually plan on slitting her throat.

"How do we know she's not with you?" asked the man bearing the longsword.

"Do I look like a petching babysitter?" Damijan muttered.

"She's just a kid, Merl," the sniveling one whispered, as though nobody else could hear him.

"She's in their camp," Merl insisted. "And she's not from the village."

"But we can't let her kill him," Snivels whined.

"He's the one we're after! He's using her to slow us down!" Merl snapped.

"I -- I'm not comfortable with this, Merl."

"You've got to be petching kidding me," Damijan sighed.

He released Miharu's hair, but only to plant his palm between her shoulder blades and shove her roughly forward, hurtling her directly into Snivels, who let out a yelp and dropped his pitchfork to catch her.

The mercenary quickly struck forward towards Merl, cutlass lashing through the cool morning air on a flicker and bounce of sunlight. Longsword met cutlass and the two men blurred into a pinwheel of slash-and-stab; the fight only lasted seconds, though Damijan was counting them in his head. Counting down to the moment his strength would give out in favor of the mending wound in his side. He felt stitches rip; Merl swung a fist around and punched him square in the side, and a white flash of pain struck his eyes momentarily blind. The pain was all he needed to really piss him off; he loosed a gutteral growl and swept the cutlass up and across, ripping its point in a streak of crimson and flesh across the front of Merl's throat, from ear to ear.

The villager collapsed, gurgling, and the mercenary dropped exhaustedly to one knee, but held himself poised to dispatch the other one and twisted to see what had become of the little girl as well.

[Miharu Mindi]

When Damijan finally looked over to see how his little friend had fared, it was likely a completely different scene than the one he'd expected.

Instead of girl and man, tangled or fighting or anything else, he saw something else entirely. Snivels was pinned to the ground on his back, and laying atop him with a paw on each shoulder was a slavering wolf. Not full grown, but its silver pelt was still thick and shining from its winter growth. Sharp teeth were only an inch away from his face, and the growl that poured out of its throat was menacing enough to have cowed the man into panicked, pants-wetting submission.

The wolf snapped its teeth at him once, and the man clenched his eyes shut and turned his face into the dirt. Satisfied that he wasn't going to be anymore trouble, it lifted its head and looked over at Damijan - and those golden eyes were startlingly intelligent, and strikingly familiar.

Miharu gave a final snort of disgust at the cowering man, and then backed off of him. She'd no desire to kill him; he was, after all, the victim here, and if he could pick himself up she was perfectly happy to let him run home to whatever Damijan's little band had left him. He had, after all, tried to help her.

But that just left Damijan, kneeling and bleeding again - she could smell it, the layers of his blood beneath the poor farmer's - and now he knew her secret. And he might just be the type to try and put a collar on her. Golden eyes watched him, head lowered and cautious as she planted herself between the two of them, and even with a wolf's face it was easy to tell that she was waiting to see if he was going to try to attack either her or Snivels.

[Damijan]

A dark eyebrow cocked curiously upward when he saw the wolf growling the man into submission; his mouth threatened to turn in the scythe of a smirk, but the expression didn't quite take full purchase. Just a breath to turn willpower into wits, and he moved.

The mercenary hurtled himself towards the wolf, the blood-slicked edge of the cutlass gripped in his fingers slicing up and across, but it was his knee that slammed into Miharu's side, not the blade. He figured she'd bite him for his trouble, but could see no reconciliation for it in the moment, his momentum too complete, so that no matter what she did he drove the vicious point of the cutlass straight through Snivels' chest in the same moment the villager had lurched to his feet with the pitchfork, its tines aimed at the back of the wolf's neck.

The pitchfork fell from the villager's lifeless fingers, hit the dirt at his feet with a resounding thud, and Damijan put a heel on the man's thigh to shove him roughly off the end of his sword and to the ground.

Then the mercenary himself kind of...sank. Spent. Down to his hands and knees, the handguard of the cutlass loose beneath his hand.

[Miharu Mindi]

Miharu gave a startled yelp when he lunged for her, the barking sound echoing off the trees around them, and dodged to the side to avoid his knee. Couldn't quite manage it, and the glancing blow knocked a little of the wind out of her. She turned to snap at him, got sharp teeth into his calf - and then saw what he'd done, and instead of ripping the flesh from his leg she let her jaw fall open and left him with only a set of minor puncture wounds.

Then she bounced lithely out of the way, staring as Damijan kicked the body off his sword and collapsed. Another low growl rumbled out of her throat, and silent paws brought her over to the farmer. He was still breathing, and the growl got louder a moment as she ripped out his throat, spraying blood across her muzzle. Well, she'd learned a lesson there - if a human attacks you, kill it. Mercy will go unrewarded.

She licked the blood away and turned to stare at Damijan, and a whine of frustration squeaked out of her nose. There was a flash of spinning white light, and between one blink and the next the silver wolf reformed into a now-naked little girl.

"If you were going to rip your stitches anyway, you should have just run," she sighed, wiping at a spot of blood that was drying over her eyebrow. "Shyke. Is there even anyone left alive besides you and the one who got brained? Are you a raiding party or is this it?" she drawled. As she complained, she skipped out of sight, and a moment later reappeared. "Come on," she muttered, slithering under his arm and trying to pull him up. "Get to a bedroll. You're not going anywhere right now. At least your skin'll still be numb enough for me to restitch."

[Damijan]

"Didn't feel like running," he grumbled, blinking as the girl got her shoulder beneath his; he struggled back towards his feet and then steered them both in the direction of one of the tents. "I've mates not far from here. I'll survive. So quit fucking complaining already, I have a godsdamned headache."

He flopped onto the bedroll after ducking beneath the tent's inside flap, slinging an arm across his face like he was just lying down for a nap. Heaved a deep breath, impervious to the scent of blood and death that started creeping through the camp. Couldn't care less of the little naked girl planned on restitching his side or fucking off; she'd afforded him a distraction, that was true, but he hadn't exactly been cuddling her before he knew she was a pup.

"What are you, like six months old? Calm the fuck down, sparky."

[Miharu Mindi]

She growled at him for that, which sounded almost as dangerous as it had when she'd been in fur instead of skin. "I'm almost a year," she said, pride making her prickly as she shoved up his shirt again and sighed at her neat little stitches all torn to hell. "Great," she mumbled.

She skipped out of the tent flap, and was gone a few minutes before she shuffled back in, her pack slung over her shoulder. One hand brought the bucket of water, and the other was covered in blood and held something lumpy and dark.

"You've lost a bunch of blood," she said, plopping down beside his wounded side and setting down the bucket. "You should eat the heart. It'll help give you a bit of strength," she said, extending the bloody hand towards him expectantly.

[Damijan]

"Fuck off, will you," he growled right back at her, unimpressed by her little wolfy noises as he would've been if she'd been in human form tugging on his sleeve. If she was going to rip his throat out as she had ripped out Snivels', she would've done it already, and she wasn't the first kelvic puppy he'd ever kicked for being annoying.

He let his arm slide back away from his face when she came padding back into the tent, smoldering blue eyes watching her progress. His nose crinkled when she held the heart out for him, and he batted her hand away and reached up, unlacing his vest again. No use getting more blood on good leather. He tossed it aside and shrugged painfully out of his shirt as well, discarding that item of clothing alongside the vest. A thick breath hissed through his teeth as he settled back down on the bedroll, and closed his eyes.

"I'm not eating that, I'm not a godsdamned Myrian," he muttered. "Just stitch it up and I'll be fine."

In a pinch, sure, he would've eaten a person. On a freezing night in Avanthal or something, if it came down to him or someone else or starving, yes, Damijan was the sort of man to say: fuck it. But this did not feel like that kind of situation, and there were tales told of men who'd gone mad for eating the flesh of their brethren -- not that Damijan considered himself even in the same planetary orbit as the farmer whose heart Miharu had just urged on him. Nevertheless, eating the hearts of other men seemed kind of extreme, even to him.