Chapter Text
The paladin has, since the first, slept alone on the hill above the riverbank, without a tent or, some nights, a blanket; she sleeps like a hardened old sarth, with her sword at hand. Since Karlach the Demonsbane joined their ill-fated company, they stand and talk together at that end of the camp for hours beneath the stars, and the noise of their conversations always drifts back to Lae’zel’s whetstone.
Tonight they wave Lae'zel over. She is unsure of their intent until the paladin uses one of her combat hand-signals. Very well. She advances.
“Ho there, soldier,” says Karlach, cursing and wrestling out of her leather. The engine in her shoulder steams. “Water looks good, don’t you think?”
"It will be cold,” Lae'zel observes. She has begun to study maps of this realm. The river is fed in spring by snow from the mountains.
Karlach grins. “Fancy a swim?”
“A…. what.”
"In the river,” says the paladin, shucking her own shirt to one side. She’s bigger out of it, heavy and scarred. She takes a knee to help Karlach out of those infinite belts and buckles that lace her skintight leather pants to her legs.
“For what purpose.”
“Cooling me off a little,” says Karlach, “or trying, anyway. Beautiful fucking night, and I’m alive!” She kicks off the rest of her pants and sprints for the river with a huge splash that slams a wave of icy water onto the shore and Lae'zel’s head and shoulders. The paladin tears after her with a dive as clean as a marauding dragon.
Karlach surfaces kicking her legs, waves both hands. “Come on, Lae, it’s not so bad!”
“I have no need of bathing,” Lae’zel announces. Superfluous, after the river was dumped on her.
“It’ll feel good,” says the paladin. Ah. This must be another of their strange and meaningless activities. For the sake of their alliance, Lae’zel strips her night clothing and toes in the freezing shallows. By all the lights of the Tears. Karlach shouts for her to jump in already, she’ll get used to it that way.
Foolishness. She wades in to her waist, and then the paladin’s big strong hand grips her by the ankle and she is pulled underwater. The skin of her body screams in the sudden plunge, and the night air bites her face when she resurfaces, splashing both of the idiots beside her. The traitorous paladin roars laughing and shakes water from her long, long hair like a dog. Lae’zel contemplates murder. Karlach cackles. At her broad red shoulders and hells-cursed chest the river is already bubbling.
“Gods, what a relief!” she sighs. Lae’zel does not waste her breath in disagreement. The stones are, admittedly, cool and smooth beneath her feet; the river bears some dim and distant similarity to the eternal fabric of home.
“That’s the great bear,” the paladin says, raising a dripping hand to the heavens. The sight of them from this alien world aches in Lae’zel’s throat. She cannot fathom how the stars’ fires form a bear. “Her nose is the pole-star.”
“You can see it down in the fires of Avernus,” Karlach says, suddenly. “If you’re lucky.”
“North,” the paladin agrees. “All else will fail, but the great bear walks north.”
“…I do not see a bear.”
Karlach laughs. “A dragon, hey.”
“I see stars,” Lae’zel insists. “It is a star.” It is a beautiful star. “I am not unfamiliar. In my plane the stars burn in colors you could not fathom, in glory, in the great crown of Mother Gith.”
The paladin is watching her with a faint smile on her face. Of the many eccentric fools in her camp, this one is most difficult to understand. Lae’zel has never been overly fond of riddles.
“What in hells are you three doing!” yelps the vampire from the shore. “Can’t a man have his dinner in peace around here?”