Strangers

nly Lindsey remained silent.

She sat near the fire with her bow untouched across her knees, exactly where she had settled when they entered the cave. She had not cleaned it, had not examined the torn skin along her fingers, had not defended herself when arrows became part of the argument or reacted when Joshua mentioned saving her. Her eyes remained fixed upon the flames while the voices moved around her.

Neil noticed her hands tightening around the bow.

Kenneth had already returned to the matter of Gregory’s magic. “All I’m asking is that if the wizard intends to loose lightning over my head, perhaps I ought to know about it before my beard becomes part of the weather.”

Gregory rested his staff across his knees. “Sure.”

The dwarf looked at him. “Truly, a scholar.”

“I am conserving breath.”

“Try conservin' spells next time.”

Gregory’s eyes narrowed slightly. “If you are referring to the lightning—”

“I am referring to the lightnin' that passed close enough to make my beard stand up!”

“It did not touch your beard.”

“That is not the reassuring argument you believe it is, boy.”

“Was nowhere near you...”

Ashley’s voice drifted from the far wall. “For what it is worth, wizard, I thought the lightning was rather pretty.”

Gregory looked toward the elf. “You threw a goblin into it.”

“And it hit a goblin," she winked.

“It was intended for a hound.”

“Then I improved it.”

Joshua gave a humorless puff from his pipe. “The spell wasn’t the problem. Blind casting was. I spent half the battle compensating for the five of you.”

Gregory turned slowly toward him. “You are becoming tiresome, ranger."

Joshua shrugged. "Well. Carrying five people is tiring."

The young wizard stood. “Do you not have some wounds to lick? Or should the elf teach you another lesson?”

A soft warning came from the back of the cave. "I cannot keep healing stupidity, by the way..."

Ashley chuckled. "Trust me. A lesson from a rogue is pleasant compared to a lesson from a wizard."

Kenneth groaned softly. “Gods save me from people who think every sentence needs to be a challenge.”

Gregory gave him a tired look. “Coming from you?”

“I challenge people efficiently.”

“You shout.”

Kenneth’s eyes narrowed. “Says the man who needs a damn speech before his magic works.”

Gregory stared at him. “Neither your face nor your beard was ever in danger, dwarf. I own the spell!”

“And I own the beard upon this majestic face!"

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!”

The words struck the cave so hard that every other voice disappeared.

Lindsey rose abruptly, her bow sliding from her knees and striking the stone unnoticed. Tears shone in her eyes, but grief had been overtaken by an anger so fierce that for a moment even Neil did not recognize his sister in it.

“What is wrong with... with all of you?” she shouted. “You have been sitting here arguing about a fucking beard! Over spells and arrows and who moved where, who was useful, who almost got hit, who fought better—are you even listening to yourselves?”

Kenneth opened his mouth, and she turned on him before a sound emerged.

“Don’t. Just don’t.” She pointed toward the cave entrance, toward the black country beyond it and the tavern they had left behind. “There are people back there who are dead right now. Their bodies are lying inside that place while all of you sit here trying to decide whose fault it was that somebody almost got singed. Men died tonight. Women died. People who had nothing to do with us, nothing to do with Orath, nothing to do with any of this. They were sitting at tables. They were drinking. They were eating. They were talking to each other.”

Her breath caught, but anger forced her through it. “Gods, there were children in there! I heard them screaming while we were running out. I heard people calling for help and I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see anything. There was smoke everywhere, people were screaming, those things were everywhere, and I kept shooting because it was the only thing I knew how to do. I didn’t know where Neil was. I didn’t know where Gregory was. My own brothers. All I have left. I didn’t know where any of you were."

She looked toward Joshua, her hands shaking at her sides. “You want to know where everyone was? So did I!”

The ranger lowered his eyes.

“And you’re all sitting here arguing about which one of you fought better.” Her voice climbed again, filling the chamber until there was nowhere for anyone to escape it. “Who cares? Who cares which spell almost hit Kenneth? Who cares where Ashley went? Who cares whether Joshua thinks everyone else moved wrong? What does any of that matter to the people who died?”

Kenneth stared into the fire.

“We didn’t do any good tonight,” Lindsey said, turning toward Neil. “We made it worse. We did it again. We ran from those things and brought them somewhere people were safe. Again. Then they followed us and we couldn’t protect anyone. Again.”

“Lindsey,” Gregory began softly.

She wheeled toward him. “No! Don’t tell me we did our best. Don’t tell me there were too many. Don’t tell me we couldn’t have known. I know that, Gregory. I know.” She struck one hand against her chest. “Maybe none of this is our fault. Maybe there was nothing we could have done differently. But they are still dead.”

She threw her bow.

“I don’t care who almost hit who. I don’t care who ran. I don’t care who was right. I don’t care about the stupid spell or the stupid beard. I care that people screamed for us and we couldn’t help them.” She wiped uselessly at the tears on her face and stared at them as though begging someone to understand what seemed so obvious to her.

Her brother said nothing.

“They are still dead!” Lindsey shouted, and the words rang back from the stone. “We get to sit in this cave and complain because we made it out alive. They don’t. They don’t get to complain about anything anymore. They don’t get to be angry. They don’t get to be scared. They don’t get tomorrow.”

The fury finally began to buckle beneath the grief that had driven it. Tears ran freely down her face as she looked around at them. “They were just people. That’s all. They were sitting in an inn eating dinner. They thought they were safe. They were probably talking about what they were going to do tomorrow morning.” Her voice failed for a moment, and when it returned it was quieter, rawer.

“But then we came.”

No one dared interrupt her.

The cave fell silent.

No one rushed to correct her. Joshua remained near the entrance, his expression hidden within his hood. The edge had gone from Ashley’s posture, and for once the rogue seemed to have nothing prepared. Kenneth stared into the fire with his elbows resting on his knees. Gregory held his staff loosely across his lap and looked at the ground.

Neil crossed the cave and drew his sister against him. Lindsey shook her head when she saw him coming, ashamed now that the anger had left her exposed, but whatever protest she intended never arrived. She folded into his chest, clutching at the cloth beneath his armor as the sob she had held back finally escaped.

He held her until her breathing began to steady.

No one spoke.

The silence stretched long enough that their argument seemed to belong to different people, petty and distant and embarrassing in memory. Kenneth did not look toward Gregory. Joshua made no effort to resume his criticism of Ashley. Even after Lindsey’s sobs had quieted, no one seemed willing to be the first person to speak.

At last, the stranger near the edge of the firelight drew a small breath. “I...”

Every face turned toward her, and she immediately looked as though she regretted making the sound. Her hands were clasped tightly before her, fingers worrying at one another as her eyes found Lindsey.

“I’m sorry. I do not mean to interrupt.” She hesitated. “You said you could not save anyone.”

Lindsey wiped at her face.

The priestess swallowed. “You saved me.”

For a few seconds Lindsey only stared.

“I would not have left that tavern. Your brother told me to go, and I refused him. I would still be there if you had not come. Likely a feast for one of those hounds.”

Ashley’s eyes passed over the priestess’s slight frame. “More of an appetizer..."

The woman nodded. “Perhaps.”

A tiny, unwilling sound escaped Lindsey. It might almost have been a laugh.

The stranger offered her a faint, uncertain smile. “I would have remained beside the wounded until I could no longer help them, and when I could no longer help them I suspect I would have stayed anyway. I would be dead now.” Her eyes lowered briefly. “I cannot tell you that tonight was a victory. It was not. I cannot tell you that the people you heard are alive. But I am. Thanks to all of you.”

The words settled into the chamber without argument. After a moment she drew herself a little straighter and folded her hands formally before her. “My name is Ria-Shara. Priestess of the Light, of the Church of Ria.”

Though she addressed them all, her eyes lingered on Neil for a moment longer than the others. Gregory noticed. The ranger seemed to notice as well, though neither commented.

Kenneth squinted at her. “Ria-Shara?”

“Yes.”

“That whole thing?”

A tired smile touched her lips. “Yes.”

The dwarf considered it. “Seems excessive.”

“It has served me well enough.”

Lindsey wiped at her cheeks.

“Shara,” she said quietly.

The priestess looked toward her.

“Can I just call you Shara?”

The warmth in her expression was the first Neil had seen since finding her inside the tavern. “Yes.”

Kenneth nodded approvingly. “Much better.”

She returned to the fire. Ashley remained against the wall and continued watching her with an attention that no longer seemed casual. Neil noticed the scrutiny and stored it away without understanding it.

The cave had settled into a different sort of quiet. Neil remained beside his sister and looked around the fire at the unlikely company gathered there: Kenneth battered and grim beneath the soot, Gregory pale with exhaustion, Joshua still positioned nearest the cave entrance even while resting, Ashley keeping herself deliberately beyond the circle, Lindsey with swollen eyes and dried blood near her temple, and Shara, the stranger whose Light had somehow answered his own.

“We were talking about tonight as though the worst thing that happened was that we fought badly,” Neil said. “It wasn’t.”

No one interrupted him.

“Lindsey is right. We did this before.”

Gregory understood immediately. “The market.”

Neil nodded. The memory no longer needed to force its way into him; he allowed it to remain. “We were stronger tonight than we were there. There were more of us, better weapons, more experience. It didn’t matter. The moment the room fell apart, we stopped being a group and became six people trying to survive six different fights.”

Joshua shifted slightly, his attention sharpening.

Neil gestured toward Lindsey’s bow where it still lay on the cave floor. “She couldn’t see where Kenneth was before she fired. Kenneth didn’t know where Gregory was casting. Gregory didn’t know where Joshua intended to move, and Joshua couldn’t rely upon Ashley being where he had last seen her.”

“No one can,” the rogue said.

Neil looked toward her. “That needs to become less true. Soon.”

The rogue raised an eyebrow but did not argue.

“And now we have Ria-Shara,” Neil continued, turning toward the priestess, “whose first instinct is apparently to remain beside the wounded until someone physically removes her from a burning building.”

Shara folded her arms.

Neil looked at her, then continued. “Listen. Every one of us knows how to do something well. That should make us stronger together. Tonight it made us dangerous to one another because none of us understands what the others need.”

Gregory rested both hands across his staff. “Limitations as well.”

“Exactly.” Neil looked around the circle. “This is not just about knowing where each other is. It's about knowing how to fight with each other when we do. Strengths. Weaknesses. Tendencies. Habits, good and bad.”

He looked first to Gregory. “I want to know how much time you need before a spell is ready, what you can do when someone is fighting beside you, and where everyone else needs to stand when you cast.”

His brother nodded thoughtfully.

Neil turned toward Kenneth. “I want to know where our dwarf is going the moment he lowers his shoulder, preferably before he gets there.”

Kenneth grunted. “Usually forward.”

“Yes, that has become apparent.”

A weak smile moved beneath the dwarf’s beard.

“Lindsey needs to know where everyone is before she draws. Needs to. For all of our sakes. And Joshua needs room to move without the rest of us making his openings smaller." He turned directly to the elf leaning in the corner. "Ashley, being unpredictable to an enemy and being unknowable to the people beside you cannot be the same thing.”

The rogue narrowed her eyes. “That sounded dangerously like advice.”

“It was.”

One long ear flicked despite her.

Neil looked toward Shara last. “And if you intend to run toward every injured person you see, the rest of us need to know it before you do.”

“I do not run toward...”

Neil stared at her.

Shara’s expression remained solemn. “…Every... injured person...”

The paladin leaned his sword against the wall next to his shield.

“We learn each other,” he said. “What everyone can do and what they cannot. How they move. How long they need. When to stay out of one another’s way and when someone needs help before they have to ask for it. We stop assuming everyone else will simply figure it out.”

Joshua stared at him, mouth open. “You mean for us to train? With each other?”

“I mean we stop fighting like strangers.”

The ranger considered the answer before giving a single grudging nod. Around the fire, the hostility of the earlier argument had not disappeared, but it had changed shape. Kenneth no longer seemed interested in proving that Gregory had endangered his beard. The wizard had gone quiet in the particular way he did when an idea had begun arranging itself in his mind. Ashley remained outside the circle, though she was listening now rather than merely watching it. Lindsey had retrieved her bow from the floor and rested one hand upon it without yet attempting to clean the blood from the wood. Neil walked to the edge of the cave mouth and searched the darkness beyond once more.

Gregory’s gaze traveled to the others gathered around the fire. “That will take time.”

Neil looked back at Lindsey. Her eyes were still swollen, but she was no longer staring into the flames as though trapped inside what she had seen.

The group barely understood one another. Whatever skill each possessed had proven insufficient the moment no one knew how to place it beside the rest. If they continued as they were, another tavern would burn, another market would fill with bodies, and sooner or later one of the screams Neil could not reach would belong to someone sitting around this fire.

The paladin lifted his eyes to the night sky outside the cave.

“Then time is what we give it.”