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Sionnach (closed)

"Not sure how good they'll be, but I can give it a try." Riley said as she moved to his side and started to gather her supplies to make a few knives.
 
Sam paused in his work as she passed by, setting down his hammer and reaching out to pull her against his side in a tight hug. He pressed a kiss to her forehead and gave a long sigh, not saying anything before he let her go.
 
"You don't have to be worried, Da." Riley said, knowing that her father had his own demons that he was dealing with in his head. "Nothing bad is going to happen to us."
 
"You don' know tha', little kit," he murmured as he went back to hammering and then reheating the metal.
 
"No, I guess I don't know." Riley said as she turned to start heating up the metal on the forge in the way that he had taught her. "But you taught me to be young and foolish and Ma taught me to stand firmly in what I believe in."
 
"And tha's a deadly combination when y'get into war." Sam brought the rod and hammer back to the anvil, beginning to flatten it out into what would eventually be a blade.
 
"Well, I can't be anything but myself, Da. Even if a war is going on. That would be lying and you taught me it's terrible to lie if I can help it." Riley countered, knowing that her Da had a lot going on.
 
"I'm no' in the mood t'argue, Ri," he murmured quietly, a side of her father beginning to show that she'd never seen before.
 
"You always argue with me." Riley said, glancing over at him as he seemed so defeated. "Da, this really doesn't change anything."
 
"You 'ave no idea about tha'," he spoke a little more firmly. "Everythin' here... It could be gone in an instant, Riley. We could lose everythin'. We lost it all once, we can lost it again."
 
Riley paused and turned to look at her father, knowing that he spoke from experience on the matter. Her heart broke for the look on his face.

"If you had the chance to fight, not for our home here, but for your home in Scotland, would you?" Riley asked him softly.
 
Sam paused at her question, his arms relaxing as the hammer rested on the red-hot metal. "... I don' know, love... I... I don' know if I 'ave it in me t'fight at all. I'm so tired of fighting an' killing, an' all the loss an' all the normal people forced t'fight an' die fer nothing."
 
Riley moved towards Sam and wrapped her arms around his chest, holding him tightly as he confessed that he didn't want to fight with anyone at all. "Sometimes we have to do things that we don't want to do, though. It's for the greater good."
 
"Is it, though?" He questioned. "Is it worth all th'dying an' killin' jus' to push some people out so others can move in, an' get pushed out again years later? What makes our cause better'n tha' of a normal Imperial man? They're no different than us. How are we any better than th'Empire if we go push back into Scotland an' take someone's farm away? It wasn' even ours t'begin with, our people stole it from someone else generations ago, an' those people stole it before tha'."
 
"Because we deserve to be safe too. Ma is important to you, isn't she? She loves the dragons and they protect all of us in spite of danger. Not to mention the danger that Ma has to live in because of her gifts and what she did during the war." Riley tried to counter, never having seen her da like this before. "I know you're scared and I know none of this is fair to anyone, but we have a lot that we have to fight for if it comes to that."

Riley was quiet for a moment after that, lowering her head slightly before she continued. "I've never seen you like this before, Da. It scares me."
 
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"I know, little kit... I know," he murmured softly, his gaze remaining on the floor. "I never thought I'd be this way again... but I'm worse now. Twenty years o' hidin' here made me a soft coward while yer Ma's conviction grew stronger."
 
"I don't think you're a coward and I don't think I could ever see you that way." Riley said as she watched this new side to her da emerge. "You're my hero. You taught me everything that I could want to know from hunting to tending to drakes to getting into mischief."

Riley was quiet as he continued to stare at the floor and she took a step away from him to let him be for a moment. "So....how many knives should we make?"

She wanted to distract him, to turn his mind away from the issues that were haunting him. "We can make so many of them that the riders will never run out."
 
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"it's jus' the ground troops we need to worry about for right now. Let's start with a couple dozen. Soldiers break an' lose knives left, right, an' center." Sam took a deep breath and pulled Riley back to hug her tightly. "I've got some bars pre-weighed in th'stock room, have at 'em. I'll teach ya some new blade styles."
 
Riley held her Da tightly as he pulled her back. She loved her Da beyond anything else in the world and seeing him in pain hurt her to the core. In that respect, she was very much like Fiona.

"Let's get to work." Riley said, kissing her Da's cheek before she went to gather up the materials that they would need.
 
Over the next couple days, Sam completely immersed himself in his work, only really pausing when necessary. At the very least, it kept his mind occupied. At best, he he felt he was being minorly useful without taking up his armor and blade again.

Within a week, word came that the Empire had struck the Polish border, and the North grew tense waiting to see if the Imperials would move on Northern Allies as well. Poland called for aid in all directions, but the treaty struck two decades before forbade the North from helping any of the Empire's other targets.

After two weeks, a message arrived at Queen Kayla's desk explaining that Jani Halfborn had been taken into the custody of one Baron Dieter Kurtz, her former contract-holder when she was a free mercenary. The man wrote that while he did respect what Jani had been sent to do, she had been at large for twenty years for the crimes of treason, betrayal, and several counts of murder and theft outside the battlefield, all crimes committed against the Imperial people. As such, the Baron simply requested Kayla's understanding, Jani being considered among her people after Fiona no longer had a throne, and he simply said that Jani's imprisonment was not against the terms of the treaty thanks to her being a criminal. Whether that was true or not, the treaty was vague enough to be twisted to the Baron's needs.
 
As soon as Fiona had heard about news on Jani, she had ridden for the palace. Kayla was as serene as already as she explained the situation, watching the younger woman nearly seethe in anger.

"How dare he think that he can keep Jani." Fiona growled, pacing the length of Kayla's office as the queen and Kristoff sat side by side, the young prince learning to take over the running of the kingdom from his mother.

"They're within their rights. She is a mercenary who was hired by their army and deserted. I have my best negotiators on it." Kayla said, trying to sooth over Fiona's temper.

"I have never left a rider behind if I could help it. Never a single dragon either. She won't be the first because some pompous lord thinks that he can throw the conditions of our peace treaty back in our faces." Fiona said, turning to stare at the both of them.
 
"We may be able to buy her freedom by reimbursing the cost of her former contract and additional interest," Kristoff told Fiona quietly. "The Empire is incredibly forgiving when money is involved. But we are trying to pursue the proper way first."
 
"All we do is pay them a king's ransom and help to feed into their war machine." Fiona said, turning to look at the both of them. "I'm tired of playing nice with them. They have zero respect for anyone."
 
"It's an alternative if there's no other way to get Jani out," Kristoff explained. "She's too valuable to the North, and too much a part of our family not to exhaust all options. But we will try everything else first. And she's a bit of an escape artist, I wouldn't be surprised if she escaped if we bought her enough time. But we need to keep negotiations open to keep an axe away from her neck."
 
"When did we turn into such cowards?" Fiona asked bluntly, turning to look out Kayla's wide windows to the bay beyond.

"When I lost Ashien." Kayla answered bluntly.

Fiona lowered her head as she heard that. She would fight for her family when they had no strength left, but it seemed that no one else was ready to pick up their swords again. Even Sam was having trouble keeping himself together in the face of a renewed danger.
 
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