BEHOLD! Chapter 1: The Damsel And His Rescuer

In its strange orbit the Earthshard turns, sinking the dust-reddened sun toward the horizon, silhouetting the Tombmount, a black spike of volcanic rock upthrust from the edge of the world. These days--two days, thereabouts, before the thousandth anniversary of its occupant’s death--it seems all eyes are turned upon the Tombmount, but there’s only one pair of eyes that matter in this moment of bleak beauty as the life-giving sun stands ready to cast the world into darkness for an indeterminate period of time. These eyes are dark, narrow, set in a broad face that seems carved of sandstone. The hardened face of one born to wander the tundra and taiga--not that there are any tundras or taigas left, not on this piece of Earth.

The owner of that face would cut a dramatic figure even in less dramatic lighting. Brodcrum the Bloody stands seven feet tall, a mountain of lean muscle--thews out to here, and he sees no point in concealing them. He’s naked by any civilized standard, clad in a broad belt, a tattered loincloth, knee-high boots, an amulet round his neck, and golden torques that adorn his concussive biceps. His long raven-black hair flies free in the breeze as he breathes deep the evening air--desert hot sinking toward the chill of night--taking in his first clear view of his destination.

“Long have I sought you,” Brodcrum tells the Tombmount, for he considers it an unmanly habit to not voice his thoughts aloud when the urge strikes him. “But at last, I shall have what I seek, and all who have mocked me shall be brought to heel! This I swear before Yrd, the Grim Lord of Death!”

With that he raises high his sword, a single-handed beast as long as some two-handers, its blade as broad as Brodcrum’s broad palm, the juncture of its vestigial little crossguard adorned with the insignia of a dragon’s skull. He holds the pose, eyes shut, for what was supposed to be a dramatic moment, but it’s ruined by a high scream and the snap-back-and-forth of coarse shouting.

Brodcrum cracks open a glaring eye. In the songs nobody’s moment of heroic reflection gets interrupted by sordid fuckery. But he spies no threat--until another scream tells him its source: just over the sandy, scrub-littered ridge to his left. Sword held low and ready, Brodcrum creeps up the slope and, selecting a spot where he will be well-concealed by the brittle brown shrubbery, peers over the ridge.

“Sordid fuckery indeed,” Brodcrum mutters as he spies a greasy-bearded man in an old jacket of boiled leather and a crappy steel cap, holding at knifepoint a woman in a gown of shimmering golden silk. Two similarly greasy and crappy men rummage through the woman’s saddlebags, while two more keep watch badly enough that they fail to notice Brodcrum. The massive Barbarian watches, pondering whether it would be worth his time to interfere. Though they outnumber him these scum are so clearly beneath Brodcrum that he knows their slaughter will be too easy to be enjoyable. Their victim is beautiful, slender and waifish with long black hair and smooth copper skin, but Brodcrum has no time for seducing wayward women, not when the objective of his quest is so close. His sense of justice wants him to intervene, but it’s not as strong as his sense of honor, which knows that in the shadow of the Tombmount there is only one law: that belongs to you which you are strong enough take, and not that which you lack the strength to keep.

But then one of the bandits makes a fatal mistake. Brodcrum’s eyes narrow, his nostrils flaring as the bandit seizes the woman’s amulet and yanks it from her throat. Weak enough to be prey this woman may be, but that is cheating! This close to the edge of the world, anyone without an anti-rad amulet gets cooked by cosmic rays within a day, a fate which no amount of might or cunning can prevent. Senses of honor and justice suddenly aligned, Brodcrum the Bloody charges over the ridge and down the slope, roaring his own name as a battlecry.

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Don’t piss yourself, Naewoon thinks frantically. Don’t let your voice tremble. The second they sense weakness, that’s when you lose the ability to negotiate with them.

Optimistic thoughts for an unarmed man held at knifepoint, but he’s been through worse.

No, I have absolutely not been through worse, Naewoon admits as the bandit tears his anti-rad amulet from his throat. He imagines he can already feel the prickling of a sunburn that will slowly escalate to all his organs melting and his skin sloughing off, but he understands the science well enough to know it doesn’t actually happen that fast. He wonders if these bandits will leave him to that fate or simply knife him and have done--either seems like all too predictable an end for this poor, disgraced scholar, just two weeks into his adventure.

Technically he’s been traveling for more than a month, but everything before setting out into the wastes doesn’t seem to count. The spellsteam-powered train from Aeyilwurt to Ankyria certainly hadn’t--by Quat, it’d had a feather bed and room service--but the bus to the edgelands seemed like an adventure at the time. Rife with delays and roads in a perilous state of disrepair, the bus route had to swing five hundred miles out of Naewoon’s way to avoid going anywhere near the Dragonspine Promontory. There may not have been bandits, but the bus had been boarded distressingly often by priests of Aman. The acolytes of Heaven’s King enjoyed waving pictures of miraculously undecaying corpses in the faces of innocent travelers, reminding everyone that their god and their god alone promised an afterlife to all sufficiently obedient worshipers, not just the ones who accomplished great deeds. The one time they’d addressed Naewoon directly he’d haughtily replied that Quat was Lord-Most-High enough for him, as despite his youth he was already a scholar of some renown, thank you.

Now, two-hundred miles past the Ankyrian border and two weeks’ ride beyond anything resembling a police force he could pay to save him, Naewoon decides his family and colleagues must have been right. He really must have insulted Quat with his choice of research topic if the God of Knowledge is ready to discard his chosen scholar so quickly.

But Naewoon is distracted from contemplating his certain doom by a bestial roar and sudden motion near the top of the ridge. Something bounds down the slope, but Naewoon doesn’t have time to process what it is before it’s right in front of him. Some hideous monster from these irradiated reaches, he surmises by the way a bandit’s head flies free of his body in an arc of blood that’s almost black in the dying light. The thing responsible for the decapitation is too fast to be seen clearly, but it must be at least partially metallic, judging by the steel gleam as a flurry of motion makes a second bandit collapse in five different pieces. Another bandit’s top half hits the ground in a puddle of intestines, and by the time the bottom half falls ass-first, the bandit who took Naewoon’s amulet is sheltering behind him, the knife to his throat. But the bandit doesn’t have time to cry a threat or warning before the huge thing’s sweaty chest is pressed against Naewoon’s face, the point of a massive sword plunging past to cave in the bandit’s face with a wet crunch.

It’s only as the thing pulls away, turning to face the last bandit, that Naewoon realizes it’s a man. The largest man Naewoon has ever seen, and--Naewoon feels his cheeks going red--basically naked, all his glorious muscles exposed to all the gods that care to watch. The obvious Barbarian points his bloody sword at the last bandit, bellowing, “Behold! My beautiful brutality and gorgeous goriness! I spare you so you may tell tales of me later! Now flee before me!”

The bandit doesn’t need to be told twice. Naewoon catches a whiff of piss as the comparatively tiny man falls over himself, scrambling away from the Barbarian and running for his life. Heart pounding, adrenaline dumping, Naewoon doesn’t think to restrain his curiosity as he finds himself asking, “Aren’t you supposed to tell him your name when you do that?”

The enormous man looks at him with gleaming black eyes, face splattered with blood, sword arm red to the shoulder, and for a terrified second Naewoon fears fate has swapped one death for another, five killers for one who is more terrible than all of them combined. But then the Barbarian shuts his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his big flat nose between his callused fingers, and declares--

“Shit.”

Naewoon cranes his neck after the dwindling figure of the last bandit. “I think you can still catch him.”

The Barbarian regards the fleeing bandit with an eagle’s stare. “You’re right.”

But the huge man doesn’t immediately take off after his quarry. First he steps around Naewoon, stooping to take something from the bandit with the imploded face, and then, with rough, sure hands, ties Naewoon’s anti-rad amulet back around his neck.

“Stay here,” the Barbarian says, then sets off at a horse-swift pace after the bandit.

Naewoon obeys, checking on his horse and gathering some of the things the bandits pulled out of his saddlebags. Some of these have blood all over them, which makes Naewoon realize he’s got blood on his shoulder and neck and--oh ew--some of it’s in his hair. He’s not just witnessed his first murder, but his first four murders. He’s surrounded by mangled bodies and he’s taking it… surprisingly well? Not that much of an urge to puke or run away screaming. Maybe he’s in shock, or maybe it’s a sign of how much of a death-spiraling clusterfuck the last year has been, that he finds it easier to meet the one remaining eye of an imploded-faced dead man than he had his mother’s disappointed glare the last time they’d spoken.

Naewoon gets himself composed by the time his terrifying rescuer finishes shouting his name at the surviving bandit. The Barbarian trots up to Naewoon, unwinded from his long sprint, using the cleanest of the dead bandits’ jackets to wipe off his sword before finally sheathing it. Naewoon scrambles for something to say, something that will humanize him in the eyes of this bestial wanderer of the world’s edge wastes, but before he can think of something the Barbarian asks, “What’s a woman like you doing in such dangerous lands as these?”

Naewoon gawps, struck silent by indecision. He’d considered dressing as a woman for this expedition, hoping to avoid being seen as a threat, but looking at himself in the mirror after putting on his lacy disguise he figured potentially being seen as prey wasn’t any better, and gods know what’d happen to him if he ran into an Amazon. Now it seems that Naewoon, slender and delicate of face, with his thick black hair tied with a ribbon in a long braid, hadn’t needed a disguise to be taken for a woman by this Barbarian’s standards. Naewoon realizes he could roll with that old plan, considering that it seems to have accidentally worked as intended, but he also knows Barbarians react badly to being deceived, so he settles on saying, “I’m a man, thank you very much!”

The Barbarian laughs as if at a joke. “Then why do you wear that fine gown?”

Naewoon adjusts the folds of his golden silk. “It’s an anru! The traditional masculine garb of Aeyilwurt!”

“It’s a dress,” the Barbarian says flatly.

“There are trousers under here somewhere!” Naewoon rummages in his anru’s skirts to show his lower legs, clad in loose folds of silk tied tight at the ankle above his pointed shoes.

“Behold!” says the Barbarian. “You have taken two hobble skirts and tied one onto each leg.”

Naewoon decides arguing with a Barbarian isn’t any safer than deceiving one. “Ah, you caught me! I suppose this is quite a lot of skirts for a manly disguise.”

“Next time try armor,” the Barbarian says helpfully. “Nobody looks womanly in a coat of mail.”

“Excellent advice,” Naewoon says with a nervous smile as he shifts into his role as damsel in distress. “You have my sincerest thanks for rescuing me, O mighty Barbarian. May I learn the name of my rescuer?”

“So you expect to live long enough to tell tales of me?” At the look on Naewoon’s face the Barbarian bursts out laughing. “My lovely wench, I am messing with you! In these parts I am known as Brodcrum the Bloody.”

“Broad… crumb?” Even knowing Barbarian naming conventions, this seems a strange combination.

“Weird pause in the middle there, but yes, that is me,” says Broadcrumb. “What are you called, O civilized lady?”

“Thank you for the gift of your name, Broadcrumb,” Naewoon says, wondering if he’s overplaying the damsel-y lilt to his voice. “I am called Naewoon.”

Broadcrumb cocks an eyebrow so forcefully Naewoon expects it to make a crunching sound. “Kneewound?”

Naewoon doesn’t want to embarrass the huge warrior by correcting his pronunciation. “…Sure.”

“An inauspicious name,” Broadcrumb says frankly. “But you have rudely failed to answer my first question, Kneewound. What brings one so ill-equipped for violence to this, the most violent of lands?”

“I’m an anthropologist!” Naewoon says brightly. “Of the Fourth-To-Innermost Temple of Quat, God of Knowledge and Patron Deity of Aeyilwurt. I have come to study the cult of Butterbar the Beautiful.”

“Butterbar,” Broadcrumb says with a stern air of correction. “The Beautiful.”

“Yes?” Naewoon winces, unsure of the difference.

“It is impressive that a woman of your softness understands the allure of Butterbar. The Beautiful,” Broadcrumb says, and this time Naewoon hears the pause between the name and the epithet. “When naming the greatest of heroes, it is proper to be struck silent by the mere thought of his beauty.”

“My humblest apologies to you and to the spirit of Butterbar. The Beautiful,” Naewoon says with a little bow, suppressing the screaming need to get out his notebook and jot this down. By Quat, two minutes into his first conversation with a real Barbarian and he’s already making original discoveries! “I fear your ways are…” Naewoon, in his enthusiasm, trips over himself as he almost says, considered not worth studying. “...all but unknown in Aeyilwurt! I have come to learn, and I hope you understand my errors are those of ignorance, not any desire to dishonor you or the mightiest of heroes.”

“At least you know proper respect.” Broadcrumb hesitates, then nods as if deciding something. “Gather your things and get yourself ahorse. I am bound for the summit of the Tombmount, and you shall accompany me!”

“You’ll take me to the Tombmount?” Naewoon’s as delighted as he is relieved. He’d expected greater difficulty finding a guide, despite the sack of gold he’d brought as payment.

“You shall come as payment for your rescue,” Broadcrumb says, and it’s only then that Naewoon catches the finality in his voice, the fact that, so far as this enormous and skillfully violent man is concerned, Naewoon has no choice in the matter.

Naewoon’s heart hammers, but his renewed fear cannot quell his excitement. Cautiously he asks, “Why is it you’re so… interested in taking me along?”

“You are pretty to look at, and if you made it this far before needing rescue you are cleverer than me and will be an asset in navigating the dangers of the Tombmount. Either alone would have been reason enough. Now get on your horse or I’ll put you on it! We have miles to go before reaching the Inn at the Edge of the World, and it is not wise to wander these wastes after dark!”

Heart skipping a beat, Naewoon obeys, scrambling to stuff his less bloodstained things back into his pack and getting back into the saddle. His horse snorts as if in mild annoyance, and Naewoon’s struck by how little it seemed to care about Broadcrumb butchering a pack of bandits right in front of it. He really did get his money’s worth, buying a “Barbarian-acclimated” steed. Naewoon is hardly settled in the saddle when his guide/captor takes the reins and sets off toward the Tombmount on the somewhat less-distant-than-usual horizon.

“My horse is a strong beast,” Naewoon offers. “There’s room for you up here as well, if that would be faster.”

Broadcrumb spits, a big wet gob hitting the ground with an audible splat. “Do I look like a woman or an honorless brigand to you?”

“I wasn’t aware horses were associated with either of those things,” Naewoon says.

“A real man walks the world with his own feet!” Broadcrumb declares. “And it is a man without honor who puts a beast between himself and his enemies by fighting on horseback. A man does not deserve an edge in battle, just because he is rich enough to afford a horse!”

Naewoon doesn’t know how to politely ask, So is this a hangup of all Barbarians, or just you? Damn it all to Quat’s pile of unread books. The scholarly community of Aeyilwurt knows so little of Barbarism, all out of the arrogance of assuming this rich culture is nothing but big stupid men doing big stupid things. That may mean Naewoon’s research will be groundbreaking by default, but it also means he’s going into this blind, not knowing which of his assumptions are facts and which are bigoted rumor. Naewoon decides it would be best to start with the basics--so long as he can interview Broadcrumb without triggering his no doubt easily-triggered temper.

“You seem like an exceptional man, even among Barbarians,” Naewoon begins, and winces. He hadn’t meant it to sound like flattery, but his damsel voice makes everything sound a little simpering.

But Broadcrumb reacts like he’d said water is wet. “Yes, that is me.”

“So you’re no doubt the best sort of man to ask about the etymology of ‘Barbarian’ and ‘Barbarism.’”

“What is etymology?” Broadcrumb asks flatly.

What did you expect to happen, using polysyllabics in front of the brute? Naewoon imagines Magister Onkilput saying, his fluffy gray eyebrows waggling with the disapproving scowl that never seems to leave his face these days. Naewoon bristles at the imagined rebuke, wanting to shake his fist at the Magister and demand to know whether it was his area of study he objected to, or just the fact that he, Naewoon, was the one doing the studying.

“The, err…” Naewoon searches for small words that won’t make him sound as condescending as Magister Onkilput. “The study of the history of a word’s meaning.”

“Stupid word,” Broadcrumb rumbles. “It should be wordhistoryology, as it is the ology of word history, not etyms, whatever those are.”

“Agreed,” Naewoon says, just to have something agreeable to say.

“It is simple as this, civilized woman,” Broadcrumb says. “If you shouted the name of Butterbar. The Beautiful, in a high place full of rocks, you would hear the echo go, bar… bar… That is us. We are the echoes of the Golden One, carrying on infinitely into the future.”

Naewoon bites down on, But since you always finish with the epithet wouldn’t you be Fulfulians? and substitutes, without having to feign his enthusiasm, “That is… fascinating and perhaps even a little beautiful, Broadcrumb. What of the… wordhistoryology of ‘Amazon’?”

Broadcrumb scowls up at him. They’re almost at eye level, with Naewoon sitting on a horse. “Do I look like I associate with Amazons?”

“Err, no you don’t,” Naewoon says with a flinch. “But doesn’t a wise warrior know his enemy?”

Broadcrumb nods. “I know how to fight those arrogant, cheatful, blasphemous women, but I do not know their silly word meanings! Their name probably means, ‘I am amazing,’ or something equally lacking in manful meaningfulness.”

Naewoon, fully in anthropologist mode, isn’t offended even as he imagines his older sister trying to take this fellow on, even though he probably outweighs her two to one. “So as a Barbarian would you say you associate masculinity with--”

“Reflect on what I’ve already told you, book-witch,” Broadcrumb says. “You can ask me more questions when we have beer.”

Naewoon doesn’t have to be told twice. He decides more scholars should try being a Barbarian’s captive, as he’s finding it wonderfully conducive to his craft. With Broadcrumb leading the horse Naewoon doesn’t have to pay attention to anything but getting his quill, ink, and notebook out of his saddlebags. It’s a bit of a struggle getting his inkpot to sit between his legs without spilling all over his anru, but after that he’s scribbling away, writing down Broadcrumb’s words in exactitude, then jotting down all the questions about Barbarian culture this raises. Then he peruses his list, trying to pick a question Broadcrumb won’t find offensive or annoying when they reach the inn, until the sun sinks below the edge of the Earthshard and he finds himself straining to read his own notes in the twilight. Only then does Naewoon look up, and gasp with wonder.

With the sun down the Tombmount is a black wedge cut into the darkening sky, all except for the fire now visible at the summit, not a hotly dripping volcanic glow but a cold, starry white. The fabled wall of flame that’s kept heroes and historians alike out of the mountaintop Tomb for nine hundred and ninety-nine years. And cresting above the Tombmount, bathing all in celestial light: Earthshard Prime, looking twenty times bigger than Lunria the lost moon was said to look in the days before the God War, half aglow with reflected sunlight, its nightside twinkling with city lights.

Naewoon has read what few records survive from the years immediately after the world’s breaking. A time of violence and chaos, despite the gods’ intercession keeping this Earthshard in a stable orbit. A time for monsters and tyrants, a dark age from which civilization might never have risen again--if not for the extraordinary deeds of one man, a golden-maned warrior who refused to sit idly by as those great in wealth and sorcery picked clean the bones of what was left of the world. A slayer of monsters, a butcher of tyrants, a man whose legend still inspires mighty deeds a thousand years later, and whose body and relics now rest atop that solitary mountain at the edge of the world, silhouetted in the light of another piece of Earth.

“Beautiful,” Naewoon breathes, not sure if he means the mountain, the other Earthshard, or the legend thundering in his heart.

Broadcrumb spits on the ground. “It’s just an inn.”

Naewoon blinks, lowering his gaze to what’s right in front of him. Broadcrumb’s been leading the horse at a horse’s pace, and they’ve already covered the miles and come to a wall of spike-riddled timbers with torches burning beside a small gate, lantern-lit watchtowers peering over the top like scholars irritated to have to look up from their books. Stretching a couple hundred feet from the gate is a line of men who seem to be living their lives to the same tune as Broadcrumb, enormous and muscular and bristling with weapons.

Broadcrumb eyes the line. “That’s new.”

“It’s never been this busy before?” Naewoon asks.

Broadcrumb nods. “Every year the Tombmount draws a few score of the world’s mightiest heroes to pay homage to Butterbar. The Beautiful. But on this, the millennial anniversary of his death… In two days’ time, the prophecy says, the flame wall will go out, and the only thing guarding the summit will be the lightning tree that smites the cheatful and unworthy. I’d wager every living Barbarian and Amazon who ever made the pilgrimage to the flame wall, and many who never have before, are at the inn right now.”

“Will there be room for us?”

Broadcrumb gives him what might’ve been a charming smile if such a man with teeth bared wasn’t such an alarming sight. “There is always room for Brodcrum the Bloody.”

With that he leads Naewoon in cutting the line, not glancing at any of the other Barbarians as they stare indignantly. Anxiety stretches the moment as Naewoon takes in the sight of this manyBarbarians in one place. The gate in the spike-riddled wall seems a mouth set to swallow him. He goes in there, and this murder-happy and perturbingly possessive man will be his only protection. For the first time what he’s set out to do becomes real to him: he’s going to put himself in this degreeof danger--and for what? To prove something to Magister Onkilput? To his mother? To the woman he blew off marrying? If he comes back with a groundbreaking paper or three--or a book, oh, a book--on Barbarian culture, will anyone even care? It suddenly seems absurd to him, his desperate belief that this despised area of study will regain him his reputation or get him a marriage more suitable than the one he refused.

But then one of the would-be alphas of this fractious pack of lone wolves decides to challenge Broadcrumb, and Naewoon finds he’s not any more terrified than he already was, and totally fascinated.

“Challenge my right to cut in line and you challenge me!” Broadcrumb roars, putting the point of his sword under the braid-goateed chin of the milk-pallid man who’d called him out. “Tell me, welp, do you wish to die before ever setting foot in the Tomb?”

The goateed man looks huge and terrifying to Naewoon’s eyes, with an armory’s worth of knives and axes on his various belts, which are adorned with what looks like a great many human teeth, but it’s clear he doesn’t quite consider himself to be on Broadcrumb’s level, because he backs away, hands raised and open. “My apologies, Brodcrum the Bloody. The light is bad. I didn’t know it was you.”

“I would kill you for mistaking me for a lesser man, but I am in a good mood. This is a happy occasion, is it not?” Broadcrumb sheathes his sword and Naewoon, his heart pounding from witnessing his first confrontation between Barbarians, scribbles notes by torchlight.

“It is,” says the tooth-adorned walking armory. “A prosperous quest to you, Brodcrum the Bloody.”

“And to you, Bigwrath the Brutal,” Broadcrumb replies with unnecessarily loud formality. As he leads Naewoon away, he mutters, “This place will be painted with blood by morning.”

Naewoon lets out an anxious laugh. “Whatever’s in Butterbar. The Beautiful’s tomb, I doubt anyone wants to share it. People will be looking for opportunities to cut down the competition.”

“Just so.”

“Should we really be staying here?”

“Still safer than sleeping out in the wastes. And do not fear for yourself. They will leave you alone, as you are obviously not a threat.”

“That’s me. Just a scholar. Just here to seewhat’s in the Tomb, not claim it for myself.”

“And besides,” Broadcrumb says with relish. “The wastes do not have beer.”

They pass through the gate without further incident to find a torchlit cluster of buildings, most of which seem to be storehouses, but there are two big, lit up timber buildings across a broad central avenue from each other, both bustling with activity. Naewoon asks, “There are twoInns at the Edge of the World?”

“Old Sal runs both,” Broadcrumb says, leading Naewoon toward the stable attached to the one on the right. “We’re going to this one.”

“What’s wrong with the other one?”

“Amazon territory,” Broadcrumb explains. “Me they’d challenge for the crime of setting foot in there. You, small and soft woman that you are, they’d eat alive.”

Naewoon gets his horse boarded and transfers his essential luggage to an emergency go bag, spending the whole process wondering whether Broadcrumb meant that literally. Then they’re in the warm, candlelit lobby of the Barbarian half of the Inn at the Edge of the World. The sound of a fiddle, lute, and drum barely escape the merry cacophony of conversation from the packed taproom on their left. Opposite is a polished wooden counter, behind which stands a one-eyed old woman who looks more battle-hardened than half the Barbarians Naewoon’s seen so far.

“Sal, good to see you!” Broadcrumb bellows. He seems to shout many things that do not need shouting.

“Brodcrum,” Old Sal says mildly, scratching under her eyepatch with a gnarly yellow fingernail. “Been saving you a spot. Everyone knows it’s not really pilgrimage season ’til you show up and kill someone for his room. This year I decided to save you the trouble.”

“One with a bed in it, please,” Broadcrumb says. “Behold my woman, Kneewound! Her mother was a witch, who perceived the curse upon her daughter at the moment of her birth and gave her a name that would absorb as much of the bad luck as possible.”

What the fuck, Naewoon mouths as Broadcrumb continues, “Behold as well our need for a bath! I know I’m living up to my sobriquet, but blood gets itchy after a while, and it didn’t come from anyone worth bragging about.”

“Of course.” Old Sal throws the two of them a sharp look. “Separate tubs. New policy. No one wants to bathe in a room that reeks of cum and cunny. If my girls hear you fucking in there I’ll come in and beat you with my broom, understand?”

“I would never insult your hospitality by fucking outside the designated fucking spaces,” Broadcrumb swears, slightly easing the nervous pounding that’s been going on in Naewoon’s chest since the Barbarian said the word bath.

“Good.” Old Sal says, and beckons over a passing serving girl. “Hyra, room five is hot and ready to go, yes? Show our guests--and keep your ears sharp.”

“Right this way, Brodcrum,” Hyra says with a flirtatious smile. There’s something about this woman that makes Naewoon feel knocked sideways. Probably her shocking ordinariness among all these hard-bitten warriors--just a plump, happy-looking young woman in a plain Ankyrian-style dress, like Naewoon could’ve encountered in any land, civilized or otherwise.

“You know I’d follow you anywhere, Hyra,” Broadcrumb says with a flirtatious smile of his own--he looks ready to bite off her head--as she leads them down a corridor away from the lobby.

“So,” Naewoon says, looking to anchor himself with his proper academic’s reserve, though the words he almost says are, What on any Earthshard was that? “What was that story you told the innkeeper?”

“Only as much as you told me,” Broadcrumb says.

“I certainly didn’t!”

“You implied it. With your name.”

“My mother is a scholar!”

“A woman who has the knowings of many hidden things? That’s what a witch is, civilized woman.”

“You still made up--” But Naewoon cuts himself off when Hyra opens a door, releasing a blast of steam. Following her inside, Naewoon’s heart jolts at the realization that while there are indeed two wooden tubs in the room, there is no divider or anything to preserve his modesty besides the thickness of the steam.

“Just ring the bell if you need anything,” Hyra says cheerily, and before he knows it, Naewoon is alone with Broadcrumb in the steamy room.

“You know, I just realized I’m hardly bloody at all,” Naewoon says. “I should go secure us a spot in the common room, order dinner so it’s ready when you--”

“Hush, I know how you civilized folk love bathing,” Broadcrumb says, sitting on the lip of a tub and tugging off his boots. He stands, turning his back, and Naewoon has just a second’s warning before Broadcrumb unclasps his belt and, without a hint of self-consciousness, steps out of his loincloth to bare his statuesquely muscular ass.

“I’ve got a… uh, sacred oath to Quat not to…” Face red and hot, eyes averted, Naewoon falters with the lie, thinking, What? Not to bathe in front of other people? That sounds stupid!

Broadcrumb, who has blessedly concealed his nakedness by easing himself down into his steaming tub, glances over his shoulder with a frank look. “What? Do you think you will lose your status as my woman if I see your manhood? I would not bet on you having one, with those lovely hips, but I am a man-witch, and a knower of many things! It was by traveling through your land and hearing about the keepers of the Innermost Temple of Quat and their metamorphic sorceries, that I learned it is the heart, not the body that determines one’s manness or womanness!”

“Uh,” Naewoon says with the bizarre feeling of being simultaneously ready to catch fire from the heat in his cheeks and mad with the need to scribble down notes, probably under the header, Naked Barbarian Says, “Temple Keeper Rights???”

“Enjoy the water while it’s hot!” Broadcrumb says. “You will have few enough comforts upon the Tombmount!”

So now I’m pretending to be a temple maiden? Naewoon thinks, fiddling with the uppermost tie of his anru. It seems a perverse lie, maybe even blasphemous, but what the hell, he’s already disappointed everyone by coming here. This part he can leave out of the book.

“Just don’t look at me.” Naewoon isn’t sure if he says this out of fear of the Barbarian, simple modesty, or a heart-clenching flashback to when he’d gone to the Innermost Temple in search of some excuse, anyexcuse to call off the wedding, and the temple keeper in charge of admissions had said, No, I appreciate that you’re feeling lost, that you need somewhere to go, but you’re simply not one of us.

“I shall not,” Broadcrumb says solemnly, and at the oath-taking tone Naewoon feels more willing to peel off the layers of his anru. It really does look like a dress, puddled on the floor, his silken white underthings easy to mistake for something a woman might wear. But despite all the memories Naewoon would rather not think about, he realizes he feels good as he lowers himself into the scalding-soothing bathwater. This is the first chance he’s gotten to bathe in his two weeks of riding, and the first time he’s looked at his body in all that time. He’s shocked by the change. He’s still slender, still tiny by Barbarian standards, but his fat has burned away to reveal wiry muscle, leaving him far harder than he’d ever been as an indoor cat of a scholar. The change is the first thing Naewoon’s liked about himself in a while, and it seems a small sign that coming out here was worth it.