It was impossible to keep ironical distance from battle. Thus, Sir François Villon did his best to keep physical distance. The infantry, himself included, had circled around the camp, marching for positively leagues upon leagues through the mud and much and forest and stinging nettle-grass, until they'd come to rest in the fringes of the forest, not too far from the Baskari camp. Then they were meant to hide. Well, bugger that. He'd show them hide.

François sidled off into the undergrowth, further and further away from his so-called comrades-in-arms (idiots, all of them, bumbling bumpkins, illiterate sots). He was wet and cold and uncomfortable. He bumped into a tree, and droplets showered from its leaves, soaking his hair. Slowly, carefully, and with his face twisted into a painful expression of distaste, he eased his way into the thorny recesses of a bush. Inside, he took the precaution of rubbing his face with--

He started to take the precaution of rubbing his face with dirt, but it was black and crumbly and quite disgusting, so he did not, only slunk back further, until he could feel the press of branches and the scratch of thorns at his back. His arms up, shading his face and, he hoped, hiding him from view, he flung his cloak over himself and huddled, waiting.

Then: noise. Madness. Explosions. Was that what the scientist had been working on! Something with nitre and--François restrained himself. A hideous porcine scream rent the air, but he focused closer in: on the drip, drip of water from the leaves. And then he saw a barbarian face. She was looking right at him. Carefully, François put a finger to his lips and shook his head. With luck, she'd understand, and thank him for not attacking her rather than sounding an alarm--right?

Indar was not in the camp. Damnit, where was he?! Nahia shivered. She could have stepped on his body—some of the dead were too mangled to recognize at this point. But it was Indar, her twin. She’d recognize him, no matter how disfigured he became.

He had to be with the horses, that was the only logical place for him to be. He wasn’t a fighter, but he’d protect the herds with his life. If he was there, then he would be safe. Nahia was of the belief that Indar’s skill with horses was a gift from Eguzki—divine. No one would be able to defeat Indar if he was on horseback.

But if he was with the horses, then she was only risking her life needlessly running around the camp. Indar would be beyond furious with her if he found out that she had been at the camp at all. But no one had seen her, so she should be safe from his (rare) wrath.

She still could flee to the woods, climb a tree and hope that whatever was making those terrible noises was far from her. She had seen one of them go bang—the warrior near it had been torn to pieces. But the woods were safer then the open camp.

Or at least she thought they’d be. She had not gone far into the woods when she saw a face. For a half moment, she thought it was Indar, hiding from the action, but no. The face was too pale, almost like death. Nahia had almost panicked, but then the face held a finger to his lips. Nahia choked on a laugh. What a coward! He wouldn’t hurt her if he was too busy hiding in the trees to fight. She crept near him, smiling wickedly. “Hiding?” She said, using her best accent, almost forgetting the battle going on around them.

François was for a moment taken aback.

"Yes," he said with dignity, lowering his finger from his lips and leaning infinitesimally forward. Then he did a double-take. "Wait, you speak Scalian?--never mind." Reaching forwad handily, he yanked her back into the bushes with him, out of the path of an oncoming Thiasan horseman. The whole area surrounding the woods was a battlefield, but François had, as he had hoped, secured what seemed to be the only quiet area. Inside the embrace of the shrubbery, his heart pounding at the sudden exertion of pulling her into the bushes with him, he took stock.

She now half-lay on top of him, all tangled in branches; he had a crick in his neck just trying to straighten himself out. And she was, unmistakeably, a Baskar.

"I'm François," he said inanely. He added, in his accented Baska, "Don't worry, you're safe in here. I have no intention of hurting anyone today." With the possible exception of his sergeant, but that was beside the point... "Are you all right?"

Nahia blinked. He was a very friendly young man! She had dealt with many different Thiasans, but all of them had been focused on business. Sure, one or two of them may have pulled her out of the way of a horse, but none of them would have introduced themselves like that. “Nahia,” she said, bracing herself on her elbows. “I Nahia! You speak very funny, but very good Baska!” It would be easier to speak in Baska if he knew the language, but Nahia never missed a chance to practice her Scalian.

“I am good! Indar not dead, so I good! You are not dead, so you are good!” Nahia laughed. It was ridiculous, lying on top of some Thiasan soldier in the middle of a battle. But if Indar was safe, she was happy.

Besides, while he looked somewhat like death and had a bizarre nose, this soldier wasn’t too terrible looking.

"Sh! Be quiet!" François whispered fiercely, clapping his hand over Nahia's mouth. It took a bit of thrashing, but finally, with a series of thumps and bumps, they tumbled out the other side of the hedge and onto the forest floor. All was quiet, dripping, and damp. François rolled away from Nahia and picked himself up painfully, dusting himself off and checking to make sure he hadn't broken anything. He hadn't bothered with a helmet;a sign of bravery to some, but he just wanted the full spectrum of peripheral vision, so he could run as soon as he saw the slightest hint of movement.

"Now then." He took stock of the situation. Here he was, in the woods, in the middle--off to one side--of a battle, with a rather beautiful Baskari girl lying in front of him. He knew what a less-scrupulous fellow would do. He was a less-scrupulous fellow.

It was all a matter of finesse, not force.

"How did you learn Scalian?" He reached forward, one hand gentle on her upper arm, drawing her into a sitting position. His fingers lingered there.

“I am not lou-“ Before she could finish, his hand was over her mouth, and they were tumbling off to the side. Nahia may have bitten his hand; she was not the kind of girl to be quieted so easily.

“You so rough! You rough with every girl?” Nahia said, once they had come to a stop. He was probably wanting to keep out of the way—some of the soldiers would probably be chased into the forest, and it would be awkward to be caught hiding with a Baskar woman. Especially if he was caught flirting with one.

Nahia knew what flirting was. It was the same amongst the Baskar as it was among the Thiasans. She had flirted plenty, she had done plenty with some of the young soldiers who had managed to run into her while she was waiting for one of her clients at the border. It was always so exciting!

The battle behind her seemed to fade in the distance as she leaned in, fascinated by the young man in front of her. She tossed her hair over her shoulder before responding. “I have much practice, I deal, ahh, you call it Jimson weed? Yes, I deal that with many. You know Baska, that is funny. I learn Scalian because no one speak Baska to me. Very hard to deal when you do not speak the same.”

François shook the sting out of his hand, grimacing; she'd bitten him, he noticed. Ah well. He put this hand, too, gently on her shoulder, amazed that she was flirting with him. Well, why not? Better than fighting or raping. He made a faint nose. So ridiculous! How could it be pleasurable like that? It was obviously all those bent-up rigorously religious sorts. The ones who kept crosses in their beds, not women (or other men).

"Ah, datura." He smiled faintly. "It's very good, I smoke it myself, or drink it when I have the time. So you see Thiasans a great deal, then, and I should thank you... so do you find us as fascinating as I find you?" He raised one eyebrow, though half his senses remained spread behind him, on alert, waiting for an explosion or the crash of hooves through the brush.

Nahia cocked her head when she thought she heard him make a noise. “You do speak funny!” She said, feeling a little warm when his hand rested on her shoulder. Indar touched her, many women touched her, and they were almost always warm, but his hand was a different kind of warm, the kind of warmth that induced shivers. Nahia placed her hand on his, interlacing his fingers with her own.

She laughed. “So many things! We Baskar are old, we are stuck in ways that are grandfather’s. Not Thiasans, they have new ways. Not better, but new.” She stood, pulling him up with her.

“I sit on bad stick—we move somewhere better?” She began to walk towards a cave she knew of, never dropping his hand. She knew a cave was somewhere around here—too small and too near the battle for the women and children to hide in. But for them, she was certain it was just right. When they reached the cave, she finally dropped his hand and motioned for him to follow. “Come, no soldiers find here.”

The lighting in the cave was not to Nahia’s liking—she would rather see him in full sunlight, but she was willing to take what she could get. She leaned against the wall of the cave, waiting for him to make his next move. “Tell me, Fransva,” Nahia was not entirely certain this was his name, but it’d do for now, “how you know so funny Baska?”

François stooped to get into the cave, and closed his eyes briefly, letting them adjust. In here, all sound was muffled. Safe. He let out his breath. "Thank you." And it was true--he was really grateful for her help, or as close to grateful as it was possible for him to be. As his eyes adjusted and the quick thump of his heart slowed to a more stately page, he examined the woman before him. She had the long, shining, black hair of most of the Baskar, and a beautifully-sculpted face, all cheekbones and lips and eyes, though those were shadowed in the darkness. Her body looked pleasant to touch, almost as much as the whore he'd had before coming here. More so--Nahia wasn't contrived, even if her clothing was the rough Baskari cotton.

"In my home they have books of it," he said carefully, turning his eyes slowly from an examination of her body to her face. "I've learned many languages, and Baska is just one of them. It has been years since the first Scalians moved across the channel, and a priest, a missionary, wrote a book a long time ago on your people, and he included a grammar and a language dictionary. I learned from that, and from datura traders, of course." He nodded and drew closer to her, ostensibly so he could make himself better heard.

"But there's a battle going on outside, and we're on opposite sides of it. I think there are better things we can do with our time than exchange pleasantries--don't you?" He let one side of his mouth rise in an odd, dreamy half-smile. He reached out and ran a hand through her hair. "We could die very soon, either of us, both of us." Not he, if he could help it. His other hand came to rest on the place where her waist curved outward toward her hip. "You're a little more straightforward about--" He searched for the Baska word. "--sex, aren't you--the Baskar--and you're a beautiful woman." How strange, he thought, how strange. He bent toward her. She might say no, but at this point, he was in no mood to hear it. The careful prettiness of his words covered the fascinated need--not simply carnal, but the need--for conquest.

He was looking at her, examining her body. It pleased Nahia, who knew she was beautiful to the Baskar, but not quite to the Thiasans. Her clothing was practical, not pleasant. It had always bothered her, particularly after once catching a glimpse of Thiasan women in splendid garb, all colors and showy. She had mentioned something to Igone about it, once. Igone had simply rolled her eyes and told Nahia to stop dreaming.

“I surprised that is, ahh,” Nahia’s mind was beginning to get a little to melty, a little too unfocused to speak in her broken Scalian. She switched to Baska almost without thinking. “He lived long enough to send something back, how unusual. Most of the time, we kill them after a few weeks.”

He was nearing her, touching her, running his hand through her hair. Whatever he was saying was unimportant to her, only that his voice kept that rhythm. When he leaned in, Nahia didn’t bother waiting. She tilted her head, pressing her lips to his throat, nipping lightly before moving to press her lips against his own.

The sudden and matter-of-fact viciousness of both her words and her carnal attack suprised him. But he gave in gladly, to both. She was, he found, a virgin, but a singularly aggressive one. Was it their culture? He hadn't learned much about them, but what she had said--the way they fought--all of this indicated it was so. She was stronger than many Thiasan women he had had, and her skin was darker and seemed rougher in patches and smoother in other places, and tasted interestingly of something warm and sweet and foreign. They both drew blood, and though he took care not to make too much noise or let her do so (he suffered another bite on his hand when he held her down and covered her mouth at a crucial moment)--they did thrash around fiercely in the small space.

At last, his leather armor totally discarded, his trousers bunched over the tops of his boots, and his tunic hanging off a rock crevasse, François came back to himself and looked over at her. He could feel his chest rising and falling very quickly, his pulse beating fast beneath the sweaty skin of his throat.

"Best battle I've been in..." He reached across to touch her hair again, then trailed his fingers down to rest at her lips. "You need to learn not to bite so hard."

She was sore. Her back ached, she was certain she had knocked her head against some rock, and that was not saying anything about the soreness between her thighs. She was certain that she would feel worse in the morning. Also, more marks. The scratches were small, and could be easily explained. But there would be bruises, little finger shaped marks on her arms. Bastard. Oh well, it was fun. She almost wanted to start again, but she felt too raw between her legs. Again, bastard. But maybe—he was so good with his mouth. It wasn’t that Nahia was completely inexperienced, she knew more then enough for a woman of her status, but she had not done everything. Now she had… or had she? He seemed to be quite aware of the entire sex thing, was there something else he could show her?

“I think it is the only sort of battle you enjoy being in.” Nahia remarked mildly, taking notice of her attention to her hair. It was long and thick, but too terribly dark for Nahia’s tastes. He did seem to like it, though, always touching it. When his fingers came to her lips, she bit down hard, licking the tips lightly before releasing. “You should grow tougher skin, that sounds better to me. You deserve all your bruises, you know.”

"Oh, no." There was no venom in his tone, though she'd hit at a sensitive spot. "I'm not afraid to fight. But this isn't my cause, these aren't really my people--" He waved one hand dismissively, limp-wristed. "It isn't my choice, any more than you chose to be born with brown skin. I have fought before, but only in my own defense, or to protect my honor." Or for fun, or when he was drunk and aimlessly angry. He was almost always aimlessly angry. Still, the truth had never gotten in the way of defenses he presented to women. This one had bite to her. And not only physically.

"Ow!" He jerked his hand back and tugged, rather hard, at a handful of her hair. "Don't do that. I--"

He paused, his body going rigid beside her, then pushed himself away and started that caterpillar-wriggle, bunched crawl back into his pants that so many hasty lovers have mastered. The bushes in front of the cave parted, and he froze, half in and half out of his pants.

Ow!” She shrieked when he pulled her hair. The bastard, she hadn’t bit that hard! Weren’t men supposed to be tough? She moved to kick him, but he had already squirmed out of range. What, couldn’t handle a little Baskar woman? Renna had never seemed tough, but she had to be something of a fighter to live with Izotz. Nahia had assumed all Thiasan women had their own style of fighting their men. Apparently, by his reactions, none of the women he had wanted to fight. Crawling away to put his trousers back on—Nahia almost pouted. It had taken her a bit to figure out how those came off.

And then she saw the bushes part, and Nahia froze. Oh shit.

It could only be Indar. A very angry, and a very panicked Indar.

---
”Indar, idiot! Go find your sister before you get the horses killed!” That had been Gogo, desperately trying to control the horses on his own. Indar was of no help to him so panicked about Nahia’s whereabouts. She hadn’t been in the tent when Indar awoke, and he hadn’t the time to find her before Indar had been called by Gogo to the horses.

She was not among the dead bodies strewn around the campsite, much to Indar’s relief, but that only set off a new worry: what if she had been captured?

Indar would kill them all if any harm had come to his Nahia.

He had begun to search the woods, maybe she had taken refuge there in the trees. He was about to lose hope when he heard the whisper of a familiar voice…

But that voice wasn’t alone. The other wasn’t familiar, either. Indar began to creep near, hiding behind one of the bushes in front of the cave. What the hell was Nahia thinking? She couldn’t be, no she wouldn’t have—not in the middle of a battle…

When he heard her shriek, Indar launched himself through the bushes. There was no time for thinking—Nahia was crying and there was only one thing Indar knew to do when some bastard made Nahia cry.

The experience might have been a new one, and one worthy of some bragging (he'd acquiesced to the bizarre situation mostly because of the stories he'd be able to tell--bedding, not raping, a beautiful native woman amidst a battlefield? Even he found it hard to believe). But its aftermath was not. His trousers were barely up around his hips when François lifted his hands from their task of buttoning to cover his sorely abused face. Something huge tackled him, and this Baskar clearly didn't have amorous intentions.

The breath went out of him immediately, and he curled his already-concave chest inward and tried to kick out with his legs to shift his attacker's weight. He met with no success; his trousers, unbuttoned, kept sliding down along his thighs, tangling him up in uncomfortable inertia. Grunting, wheezing, in a kind of parody of his earlier exertions, he squirmed under the rain of blows, trying his best to protect his nose.

One particular blow from his attacker's knee made him wish he'd thought to protect something else, and he spasmodically made an essay at doubling over, his insides and external bits writhing in agony.

"Get--the hell--off!" He noticed only afterwards he was speaking in neither Scalian nor Baska, but Duainian.

Indar didn’t care what the bastard interloper was saying, just that he was still speaking. That would have to be stopped. At first, Indar had thought he would just damage the man so he could never think of touching any woman again without being in pain. But no, there were bigger consequences for molesting Nahia. The man’s voice was annoying him, but Indar knew of a good way to stop that. Indar held the man down with one arm, and wrapped his free hand around the man’s scrawny little neck.

The blow the came to his face was a complete surprise, knocking Indar off the man before he could get a good grip on the man’s neck. Indar howled in pain—it could have only been Nahia, only Nahia hit like that. He looked up to her, stunned. She had dressed quickly, and her face was a mask of rage.

“Indar!” Her voice was a low roar. “I scratched him just as badly as he bruised me, don’t bother about him. And you,” Nahia turned to François, crossing her arms over her chest. “Get out of here before I change my mind. I hurt, and it’s your fault.”

François fell limply backwards when his attacker was removed, rubbing furiously at the red marks emblazoned on his thread. Pain coursing through his body (why was pain the end result of everything he enjoyed?), panting, gasping, he hastily pulled up his pants and grabbed his tunic and armor from their scattered locations, and readjusted his sword-belt. If he'd still been dressed he could have gotten to the dagger in his sleeve, but he hadn't. Damn it all!

Wild eyed, he only nodded at Nahia's proclamation and, still doubled over and breathing with difficulty, scrambled out of the cave and into the red-tinged heat of midday. He heard, once again, the sounds of battle, and quickly zigzagged back and forth through the trees, getting out of range of the Baskari man's wrath--and the woman's. Crazy! The barbarians were just that, it seemed, for all he had studied of their culture. Hastily he dressed himself again and settled his armor, and ducked behind a tree as he caught a glimpse of another Baskar running past through the wood.

Then he followed. François had few martial talents, but he did know how to go silently in the forest--it was helpful for trysting. His body still thrumming with pain, he made his way toward the edges of the battlefield. Today he'd make sure to spread the pain around to someone who deserved it.

The man had left before Indar recovered fully from the shock of what he had just witnessed. He stared at Nahia. She stared back, defiantly.

Holy living shit. How was he going to explain this? Nahia’s fetish had always been troublesome to hide, but she had never gone this far before. She had sworn to him that she wouldn’t risk herself in this way, never risk having the bastard half-breed child of some bastard soldier.

“Stay here, Nahia.” His voice was low, under absolute control. “I will come for you when it is safe. Then we will take you to Igone, and you will cry and ask to be taken to river to wash yourself. I don’t care how much fun you had with that walking corpse, but if Gogo finds out that you were willing, I won’t be held responsible for his actions.”

He left, ignoring what Nahia’s reply was. If he was there much longer, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. Fury was making him wild, and there was no point on taking it out on Nahia.

That’s what bastard interlopers were for.