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Flash fiction: historical fantasy (680 words)

Welcome to The Story Scrapbook, a fiction newsletter by E.B. Howard. If you’re new in town, check out my Fiction Directory for navigation.

FLASH FICTION FRIDAY is an open writing exercise hosted by good friend Scoot. My prompt set of choice this time around, using the Orion-level rules of two prompts and 800 words or less:

• Write about the weather

• a sharp bluntness

• “who do you think will notice?”

• A character who isn’t from here

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The warriors of Vistander the king stood crowded against each other on the river bank, spears in hand and eyes fixed on the clearing opposite which was all that they could clearly see. The forest mist choked the air around them, and sat in large cold beads on beards and ragged cloaks. Many unfortunates held back shivers, as the mist had hours ago sought out every bit of uncovered tunic and soaked through to the skin. The winters had not been so wet, nor so cold, in the countries they had left behind.

In the clearing on the other side of the river waited their chief, the lines in his face heavy with disdain as he regarded the representative whom the locals had sent out to meet him. The barbarian girl—and he would call her a girl, for she did not carry herself with the modesty appropriate to a wife—was white and rough-skinned and gracelessly sturdy. She was dressed warmly in four different colors of bright-dyed wool, every piece trimmed in gold-threaded weaving, with ornaments of worked bronze hanging heavily across her chest. Fine bleached linen wrapped her dark hair, and even the heads of her pins were stamped and beaded. A bareheaded slave stood at a respectful distance behind her, stoic beneath a single thin garment. By his sun-warm, aquiline aspect, he was not the son of her tribe, nor of any neighbor. These people had come up in the world, to buy a man who must once have been a citizen or a soldier—and to break him so thoroughly as to trust him with a maid.

“It was agreed that you would bring at least some token of tribute with you, was it not?” the girl said, meeting the war-chief’s disdain with indifference. “My father will not be pleased.”

“Then, as it was agreed, he should have sent a negotiator,” he said.

“I am the negotiator.”

“You! Men of war do not fittingly deal with soft creatures such as you.”

She laughed behind closed lips. “Does an infant ask its father for milk, or confer with him to set the time of its birth? You will deal with me, or you will be the last of your men to cross those waters.”

Stung, he reached for the knife at his belt, showing her its hilt. “Among our people, it is a grave insult for a female to address a man so.”

“You are not among your people now,” said the barbarian maid. “You camp upon our border at the shallowest breath of the year, when our lands are already stretched thin. If you would secure passage or provisions for any price, you must assure us of your good faith.”

“Of our docility, you mean,” he spat. “What you see behind me is not one-tenth of the force of our king. Run home and tell your father to come out and meet me like a man, lest I first go and meet him likewise.”

The girl made no answer, but held out a hand to her side. “Gregor,” she said, as though calling a favorite dog; the slave approached, head bent, and placed one hand across hers. As the men of Vistander watched, bewildered, she slid a heavy metal bracelet from his wrist onto her own. It was cast in the shape of a torc, a warrior’s collar, and it shone as if plated with silver.

“The negotiations are over,” she said. “There will be no agreement, and no passage. Go and regain the other bank, while you may still do so with your dignity and your thin hide intact.”

The slave’s body was changing. Teeth showed suddenly at the edges of his mouth, his limbs stretched tall, the coarse hair became a beast’s thick fur—and then he was there no longer. A wolf the size of three men stood with its hind feet in his footprints, opening its jaws wide against the invader.

The war-chief drew his knife, unwilling to retreat, and parted his lips to call his men to shoulder spears. Even as he drew a breath, the wolf leapt.

This is actually set in an old storyworld, as Thérèse Judeana and I were talking about werewolves not too long ago…I’ve been taking stabs at putting Gregorius’ story together properly for a while, but I’m hung up on whether I want to go down the path of research (5th c. post-Roman barbarian kingdoms, probably—but there would be a lot of research involved) or the path of fantasyland worldbuilding (but I really want to write some Catholic characters again.) Despite keeping the post-Roman trappings, obviously I didn’t do much research for this one.

Anyway, thanks for reading! If you liked this, you may enjoy my Robin Hood retelling, The Bride-Price. It’s not finished yet, but it’s some of my prettier prose and I’m making plans to jump back in this spring.

The Bride-Price (Part One)