>-Chapter 2- In Which Our Hera Gets Her Own Sword-<
It was still snowing when I woke up, and showed very little signs of stopping. But it was daylight, and I could see the falling white-out of snow lit up by the sun. As it was, I felt no urge to get up. So I lay underneath my coat, on the herb scented and moth ridden wool, which was of a very nice quality, if torn and stained, and thought about my dreams. I'd been trained to always examine my dreams. It was right up there with the low magic as part of what I had to learn before they'd teach me anything good. I'd dreamed of good. True good, shining light elves routing evil. And I'd laughed the whole way through. I have nothing against the occasional incidental good. You know if it happens not to inconveniece me, or it's important to existence in general, or is even on my way to do something else. But going out and doing great good, simply because it isn't evil, well, that's just ridiculous. Of course, being evil for the sake of being evil gets the same response out of me. As it is the only real motivators I have are greed, curiosity and boredom, but I'm young yet and maybe someday I'll get some better ones. I doubt it.
The stick of jerky I chewed last night would hold me for about twenty four hours, but at the moment, I was thirsty. And that would reqiure getting up, finding my tankard in my pack, and melting snow. At that moment it seemed a laborious number of things to do, so I stayed on my makeshift bed, and reached out with my mind to poke at the storm that still raged outside. My sense of placement found the Step, and sure enough, the storm was centered on it, and sticking. I smiled to myself nastily, and started shifting the storm, so the Step got more, and where I was, about a mile out, got a bad storm, but nothng to keep me pinned like this was.
After that, I got up and filled my tankard with snow. I placed it by the fire to melt, put a frigid handful into my mouth to help immediately, and picked up the sword to inspect again, as nature rearranged itself messily outside. It was a nice sword, with an excellent heft. It wasn't a rapier, and it wasn't a two-handed sword, but it wasn't quite a longsword either. It felt nice in my hand. I slipped it experimentally out of it's sheath and grinned. This was a good blade, and I'd lay odds on it being enchanted, somehow. At very least to stay sharp, because I didn't know how long that corpse had been there, but the sword was still as sharp as a winter wind. I loved it.
I've had a love affair with edged weapons for as long as I could remember. Knives, razors, swords- anything. I sort of bullied, sort of bribed, one of the soldiers in the Step to teach me to fight, with a sabre, with a rapier and at last with a hand and a half sword. I loved it, I was good at it, and they wouldn't let me have a weapon longer than my forearm. Not to keep. Bastards. I think they were afraid of me. I would have been, I suppose, if I hadn't been the one knowing exactly where my little stinging throwing knives would stick, even if it was a hairs breath from an ear. They really didn't want me to have any weapons, or even magic training. Probably something to do with my parents. But they couldn't keep me from everything, and I was just as talented with magic as I as with the swords, well, maybe a little less, but I was also stubborn, and they decided, and rightly so, that if they didn't train me properly, then I'd figure out everything for myself, and start raising hell. So they taught me magery, even though they got so tied up in preliminary stuff I still haven't learned anything really good. In a fight, I'd have to stick to my fists and knives, because mostly the magics I had were good for creature comforts. But now I could also depend on this sword. I was pretty sure that this length, between my vvarios training, would not be hard to master. I gave a few practice swings and feints, dropping the scabbard to the floor, and gleefully slashed about the cave, cutting down arrogant elf-ears to human proportions in my mind. The world could beware- this Jackal had her teeth capped in steel. Jackal, I stoppd and sniggered at that thought. That's what the armsman had called me, Jackal. I never thoght it was a particularly flattering moniker. But then I didn't like alot of the things they called me. I sat back on my makeshift bed, slipped the sword back into its sheath- tooled leather, I noticed, very nice in and above itself, and stripped off a couple layers. I took up my tankard of melted snow, and regarded the mouth of the cave again as I drank. The snow was getting lighter, but it wouldn't be getting much lighter than it was now. I started packing up my few things, rolling the cloak up and tying it to the top of my meager pack. I grinned at the egde of the sword one more time, re-sheathed it, and hung it on its strap across my back, with the hilt just over my left sholder. It was unorthodox at the best, but cross-drawing always worked best for me.
Then I slipped my pack on over it, made sure that it didn't interfere with drawing, and headed out into the snow, after tearing a thick strip from the cape and fashioning it into a makeshift hat. I could barely make out the sun through the thick snow clouds, but headed steadily south. The faster I got away from that god forsaken snow covered (I allowed myself a snigger) Step the better. To that end I set out at as fast a clip as I thought I could mantain for a good amount of time.