[OOC: I copied this here from the Front Gate Thread since it is Aidanna's background leading up to her involvement with Clan Elkhorn]
Part I: The Raven's Return to a Burning Roost The bittersweet smell of wood fire smoke rose from the valley, tainted by the sickly sweet smell of carrion and burning flesh. Aidanna, crouched beside an outcropping of rock, stared down at her former clan's holdings.
Crom, what happened?! She thought. What has that coward Torin done since I've been gone?
She watched Moragh kinsmen milling about below. Most of the men were heavily armed and armored as if against immanent attack. Some of the women were as well. The very old and very young were fetching water in leather jacks and buckets, forming lines toward homes recently set ablaze to dowse the flames. One of these burning shelters was once Aidanna's own. The whereabouts of her blood kin was left to her whirling, horrified imagination for now. She rose from her hiding place, drew her great sword and made her way down the path to the village below.
Torin, Chieftain of Clan Moragh, stood with several other men near the breached east gate of the village pallisade. Aidanna, fear for her kin and anger for this man warring in her heart, quickened her pace toward him.
"Crom, Ymir an' all the little dwarf devils of the Mountain!" she seethed. "What has happened here?!"
Torin Chieftain turned his head, his somber eyes studying the armed Cimmerian woman approaching. He didn't speak. Doing so would be an acknowledgment of this, in his estimation itinerant bratling. He frowned, further ignoring the young woman and continuing his instructions for rebuilding the holding's defenses.
Aidanna had been born second after her brother Auldrich of their mother Camdyn, sired by Udrich Feaglsen. She had left the Moragh clan holdings in Connal's Valley nearly five years before in her sixteenth winter. Her father, although a caring Cimmerian man to his wife and children, respected the old ways and sought to better his blood kin's standing within Moragh through a strategic betrothal of his daughter to a sword smith of Conarch; a man long respected among the clans for his skills and the quality of his blades. Upon meeting the man of Conarch at a festival gathering of the clans, Aidanna was instantly repulsed and rebelled against her father's wishes. Aidanna's rebellious attitude against this betrothal caused hot enmity between her and her father, although secretly, the man did respect his girl for her fierce spirit. He simply did not feel it was a woman's place to make war for her clan and kin, and a warrior's life was exactly what Aidanna intended to pursue.
After her elder brother was killed defending the Moragh burial mounds, she left Connal's valley, heading south to Aquilonia and Zingara where she fell in with a band of pirates terrorizing the coasts of Zingara and Argos from the Barrachan Isles. For two years the adventure and plunder was enough to hold her to that crew of lusty scoundrels, but by the depredations of Strom the Red Hand, her pirate captain was slain along with most of the crew. She and a handful of others managed to escape back to Zingara from Tortage.
There she traveled north to Aquilonia with a Stygian woman thief having a background similar to Aidanna's own. The two women fell in with another Stygian, a male fancying himself a bard. The trio Ended up east of Tarantia plundering the camps of Nemedian mercenaries which were causing trouble for the legions of King Conan I. Aidanna became enamored of both her comrades and the three of them grew close. She lost touch with the Stygians when an altercation in an Aquilonian town brought the local magistrate and his soldiers down upon Aidanna. She was forced to go into hiding, and by the time the Aquilonians had forgotten about her in the chaos caused by neighboring Nemedia, her companions were nowhere to be found.
Aidanna's mind wandered from the past to now. She'd come home at last to find it in ruin, one of the latest battlegrounds in the Vanir invasion.
"Where's my pa?" She inquired of the men, her black eyebrows furrowing. She wasn't about to hold her tongue, not with the smell of battle so fresh and her home in flames.
"He's gone off." The Chieftain of Moragh fixed her with his gaze at last. "Best you find your mother and aid her in tending to the wounded.
"Like hell I will!" She spat back, her fury choking fear. "Gone off where, by Crom?!"
Torin stared at Aidanna, his visage radiating displeasure. "He's gone off alone to find that half-giant outcast and join his fool's crusade to burn the Vanir camps."
Aidanna stared agape at Torin. "And you stand here, cowering from the red-beards after what they did? Crom damn you, Torin!"
His own eyes flashing with anger, Torin snapped to the men with him, "Get this bratling she-wolf out of my sight before I tear her head off with my bare hands!"
Two of the other men of Moragh stepped forward to sieze Aidanna. She slapped one's outstretched hand with the flat of her blade, snarling. Her action opened her to the other's lunge and he took her in a bear hug, lifting her feet from the ground. With the others laughing, the man carried the spitting, snarling woman to the stream.
"This ought to cool you down, lass." He twisted, flinging her into the cold water.
Aidanna came up cold and sputtering with curses on her tongue. As she waded up out of the stream to retrieve her sword, she noticed her mother standing nearby, watching her. The older woman's eyes seemed sad, defeated, and her face held a care-worn expression.
"Not the homecoming either of us expected, is it, my daughter?" Camdyn regarded her daughter.
Aidanna clinched her jaws, sheathing her greatsword in its scabbard worn across her back. She moved to stand before her mother, uncertainty joining anger in her eyes.
"Father's gone off to find Kern, has he?" She asked of her mother. "Didn't any of the others go with him?"
Shaking her head slowly, Camdyn replied, "Not a one. Torin Chieftain forbade it. Your father had spoken of sending word for aid when the Vanir came down into the valley. The Chieftain gave orders that none were to leave the holding, but prepare to defend it."
"Damn him to the frozen mists of hell!" Aidanna's fury strengthened again. "He intends for us to cower here, waiting for the invaders to burn all the village around him? He's a fool, mother! A cowardly fool!"
"Hush child!" Her mother hissed. "Whatever you may think, he is Chieftain of your people, and you'd best remember that!"
Rubbing her hands together, Camdyn continued, "Your father's been gone a week now, Aidanna. We had word that Wolf-eye and his band were close in the foothills east, just north of the Vanir war camp, which isn't an hour's walk from here."
She turned, walking slowly up the path toward the remains of the family's still smoldering home. Aidanna followed close behind.
"He may have been taken, he may be with Kern Wolf eye's band right now. We know not." Camdyn continued. "Someone needs to find out. Someone needs to get word to Kern about what's happened here."
Aidanna nodded curtly, "Aye, I can do that."
Camdyn turned to face Aidanna, the sadness in her eyes welling, "You...mustn't be seen. Not by the Vanir. Not by Moragh.
Aidanna said not another word about it. Instead, she assisted her mother in rummaging through the remains of their home looking for anything salvageable. There was not much; a few bronze and steel dagger blades, their handles of bone or wood consumed to charcoal or ash in the fire. Also a sack of wild oats, buried soon after having been gathered in preparation for winter. A few other odds and ends which were near the relatively undamaged rear of the dwelling. Aidanna and Camdyn gathered these bare necessities up and took them to the tavern, where communal supplies were being gathered for storage. She kept one of the dagger blades, slipping it into her right boot.
When the sun sets and it is dark, I will go find Wolf eye and father. Aidanna told herself.
That evening, she slipped past the sentries and pickets, disappearing into the gloom of night to find her father.
Part II: To the Wolf's Den
Aidanna clung to the rocks of the cliff wall, crouched on a tiny ledge outcropping little more than a foothold. Her arms ached with the tension of holding her body thus for hours. Vanir patrolled the valley some sixty forearm lengths below her position. Although her mind was weary with a night of pain and exhaustion, she retained enough wits to surmise that the red beards had ceased searching for her. Her legs were cramping. She shifted, feeling the ache bite into her arms and the searing, stabbing pain of the arrow lodged in her side.
She uttered a whispered curse and clinched her jaws, her eyes scanning the forest vale beneath her in the breaking light of dawn. She'd been making her way through the valley from the Moragh holding last night, doing her best to avoid the red beards' pickets. Her Cimmerian senses, honed sharp during a youth of artfully defying her father, had alerted her before she stumbled into the Vanir ambush in the brush to one side of a game trail. Aidanna had managed to sneak halfway around the handful of Vanir crouched in their blind watching the trail. A twig-snap had betrayed her to them, though she had managed to cut the nearest of them down before the others could react. Two more fell as they charged her with their Nordic yells. The last managed to release an arrow which found and pierced her flank before her greatsword found his neck, severing his head. The arrow had missed her vitals, but not by much, nearly piercing her left side completely through a hand's span above her hip bone. The wound slowed her with its pain as she continued through the forest, pursued by a Vanir picket alerted to her presence by the brief battle, and the remains of their dead kinsmen.
Aidanna snapped off the length of the arrow shaft protruding from her side with a stifled yelp of pain, and made her way east and north, hugging the steep sides of the northern foothills. Another Vanir archer fell dead in her wake before the growing numbers of red beards seeking her forced her to climb and hide.
Years ago, she was inclined to run off with the Moragh boys, and other willful girls of the Clan, baiting the local wolf pack in a dangerous game of cat and mice. One boy had nearly lost an arm to a hungry wolf before the rest of the youth had driven the beast off with sticks and thrown stones. A trace of impish humor warmed her bitter sarcasm as she thought how similar the game remained, though the young girl was now a young woman, and the wolves were the dogs of Vanaheim. Sticks and stones of youth now replaced by a massive Cimmerian greatsword, but she had no pack of Moragh to aid her. She was alone.
Breathing deep to steel her fading vigor, she pushed up from her crouch and began to ascend the cliff from her precarious hiding place. The climb was torturous on her exhausted body, but her barbarous resolve stayed her to the task of ascending; twice, thrice, finally five times her height, until finally her hands found the edge of the cliff-side path. Her whole form trembling with fatigue, she hauled herself up, whimpering through her gasps for air as she rolled over on her back onto more secure ground. There was a nagging, burning itch from her right ankle which coaxed her to reach into the doeskin boot. Her fingers found the hilt-spine of the dagger blade she'd secured there from home. The tip had been digging into the flesh above her ankle. With a faint smile she pulled the steel, gazing at it.
One of my father's blades, she realized as she looked it over. The flat of the blade on both sides near the spine was etched with the runic symbol of her father's line of ancestors, and the raven symbol of Clan Moragh. I'll give him this as pledge to follow his will when I find Wolf-eye's camp.
Aidanna loved her father, though the man could be quite harsh and demanding of his offspring. It was he who taught her the basics of wielding a blade, though he later spoke of regretting doing so when she defied his will for her marriage to the weaponsmith from Clan Conarch. Even though it would benefit the Clan, and himself, he had thought he was protecting his daughter in the arrangement, insuring that she and her children would be cared for should Moragh fall to the invaders. But his daughter had inherited much of his own pride, and scorned the proposal.
"Ymir's icy beard, papa!" She spat when he told her of the arrangement. "You'd rather have me tending a hearth an' fat with some lazy Conarch trader's get when I should be wielding a blade at your side with Auldrich? Never!"
"Crom damn your pride, you stupid girl, Aidanna!" He had roared in his anger. "You'll be safe an' provided for! Better than what I can give you now! An' if the Vanir enter the valley, what will your life be then, eh? Bloodshed an' rapine at the hands of those northern dogs?! I'll be dead 'fore I see that as my legacy to ya!"
She swore then that she would run off and become a pirate rather than submit to a handfasting. Her father backhanded her and had tried to subdue her and lock her in the shed he used to smoke meat for the winter, but she bit his wrist as he seized her and ran off, his howls and angry curses haunting her as she left Connal's valley.
A strange, bubbly hiss brought her to the present, her right hand gripping the thin hilt-spine of the dagger, her nostrils flaring with a primal inhale, eyes scanning her surrounds. In a blur of movement she was rushed by a hideous monster, a giant spider scuttling on its eight, hairy legs was upon her from its lair nearby. Her left hand caught the horrid beast by one of its forelegs as it pounced on her, just before it was able to sink its dripping fangs into her breast. With a savage thrust of her right arm, she plunged her father's dagger into the center of its reeking underbelly. The thing shrieked, writhing in its death throes as she withdrew the unhilted dagger from its innards and tossed it over the side of the cliff.
"Crom's devils!" she muttered, primitive fear, revulsion and fury pulsing through her, invigorating her sore and tired body. "I've got to find Wolf-eye's camp before the Vanir or more o' those monsters find me!"
With a hiss of pain, she lurched to her feet. After wiping the sickly, yellowish spider ichor from the dagger blade with a handful of grass, she tucked it back into her boot and drew her greatsword. The cliff-side path led up toward the top of the foothills the Moragh had suspected as housing the camp of Kern Wolf-eye and his band. Wolf-eye was shunned by several of the Clans, his own bloodline suspected of the taint of Ymirish giant blood.
Aidanna had never met Kern Wolf-eye, but she had heard he was a huge man with eyes as yellow and bestial as a wolf. Moragh was among those Cimmerian clans which despised Kern and shunned him as a trouble-making outsider. Torin Chieftain had refused to aid Wolf-eye when he'd sent runners to Moragh after the Vanir invaded the valley. She had heard another of the clan warriors say that Wolf-eye confirmed he was working with outsiders, proof positive he was up to no good. When she'd asked about it, the man told her Kern's warriors had said, "Only a fool tosses aside a foreigner's blade when his own is blunted or broken in battle." Aidanna had thought at the time that sounded more wise than treacherous. She looked forward to meeting this Wolf-eye, in spite of the vague apprehension in her bosom.
After another hour of skirting the hideous spiders as she skulked through the underbrush of the foothills, she spotted the tell-tale smoke of a camp fire rising from a clearing in the trees ahead. There were a half-dozen men there at least, with others wandering in and out from time to time on various errands unknown. Her father was not among them. She watched the encampment until the sun was half-way to mid-sky, slowly creeping forward to within ear-shot of the group there. She was hidden, well she thought, in a clump of bushes on a rise above the camp. One of the men was tall, fair-haired and seemed to carry himself with the air of an established leader.
Wolf-eye. She thought. It must be he.
A dark-skinned stranger approached the tall, blonde man. He was dressed in odd clothing, an ankle-long wool robe and sash, and a wool cloak. His accent was thick as molasses. A Stygian! Aidanna felt rather than heard the rumble of a muted growl in her throat. She had met Stygians before, a couple she actually loved as well as respected. But most of that dark land she met had earned her hatred, and no few of those, a painful death by her blade. The arrowhead still imbedded in her side brought new waves of burning pain. She had to get it removed and the wound tended to, and soon.
She shifted her position, creeping up to a nearby tree to lean against its bark in the bushes. When she looked back to the camp the tall blonde man was staring right at her hiding place. "Well, show yourself." His words were more a suggestion than an order. "We know you've been watching us same as we know you're no cur of Vanaheim."
She frowned. She'd been careful not to make noise which could be heard more than a few steps from where she was. How did she give herself away?
"An' I know that you be Kern known as Wolf-eye." she tried to keep the hint of her suffering out of her voice as she called back. "I come seekin' you, an' my father who come to join your war on the Vanir."
She slowly rose from her hiding place, lowering her great sword. Trying to keep a stoic appearance, she studied the blonde man before stepping from the bushes toward the edge of the camp.
"Aye, that I am." The man replied. "But who among my men be your father, lass?"
The others around Kern seemed not to care a wit for her presence. Some glanced her way, but paid her little other attention. She slowly sheathed her sword on her back and strode into the camp, clinching her jaws to keep the growing pain of her wound out of her expression.
"Udrich o' Clan Moragh is my father." She replied, sizing up the tall man before her. It had to be Kern. His features seemed more those of an Aesir than Cimmerian, and his eyes were piss yellow and hard as steel. "He came to find ya days ago after the Vanir first attacked our clan holdings."
Kern Wolf-eye shook his head slightly, frowning. "We've met no such man claimin' that name or clan, little Raven. None from Moragh have come here b'fore you."
Aidanna felt a sliver of fear. Her father didn't find these men? He wasn't among them? Or was there indeed treachery in this outcast holding to be a warrior for Cimmeria?
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