"Fianna, Ronan´s Choice" by Anne M. Leath

“Who’s the feine with the limp?” Ronan nodded at her over his lunch plate, devouring all of it he could as quickly as possible.  Eating was a survival sport to him, and he wanted seconds before the rest of them ate it all.  He had only just sat down and torn into the hard yeast roll when he noticed the mage walking across the courtyard outside.  His partner at the mess hall, Morna, was shorter than he, most men were.

Morna shoved a forkful of potatoes into his mouth and followed this with a swig of water before replying dryly, “’Tis Fiona, and I don’t suggest you let many hear you refer to her that way, most of all her feoil, Niall.” He hadn’t even looked over his shoulder before responding.

Ronan rolled his eyes and attacked the roast beef next with a vengeance, “I dinna mean anything by it, but she does have a limp. Does everyone around here just pretend not to notice.”

Morna finished his glass and let his eyes carefully scan the room as he replied, “We don’t pretend anything here.  There is just a respectful way and a non-respectful way to address the feine.  And a feoil’s place is to respect them.” He wiped his mouth, content that he did not see Niall around and went back to his tray, “Besides, they’ve been here since time out of mind, my new brother, and trust me when I say you do not want to tangle with insult and Niall.”

Ronan snorted.  It didn’t seem to him that tangling with anyone, ever, was likely to be a problem for him.  He looked over his shoulder again, in time to see her disappear into the building that housed the library across the way.  He shook his head.  The way everyone cowed around here to the feine as if everything rested on their shoulders bewildered him.

He had just been hoisted up and in, quite literally.  He had been in a brawl at a pub outside the docks in Belfast when he had stumbled into a pair from a cadre in town.  He was, of course, drunk at the time when he watched with bleary vision as the tall troll and the red-headed mage wiped the floor with all the remaining participants in the throw-down.  The orc had quite easily lifted Ronan’s weighty bulk up off the floor and brought him face to face with him.  It was then he had noticed the tattoos on the red-haired elf’s face, blue spirals and a half moon, he squinted at them curiously, “What’re them?” He dared ask as he pointed an unsteady finger at the feine.

The orc let out a guttural noise as he tightened his hold on Ronan’s jacket and pushed him back into the wall.  “Just give me the word Bren and I’ll smite him like a little bug.”

Ronan laughed, he couldn’t help it.  He felt quite sure that for the first time ever, someone just might smite him.  Even God, Ronan was sure, could not do that.  God had tried before and failed. 

His laughter seemed to catch them both off guard.  The elf even chuckled, amused at Ronan’s stupidity, bravery, level of inebriation, he wasn’t sure.  “Whad’ya think Shannon? Should we give him a chance at salvation?” The elf poked the orc in the arm and pointed at Ronan, dangling from Shannon’s thick grip.

“You have to be kidding me Brendan.” Shannon glared at Ronan again, his laughter abating at the elf’s question.

“Well, there’s not many would laugh at your offer to smite them, Shannon.  So as I figure it. He’s either very stupid, or very crazy.  And if the latter, then he’s every reason to accept our kind of salvation.  If the former, then we should kill him now.”  Brendan looked around on the empty tables for a pint which still might be standing.

“Ye still havna’ answered me question.” Ronan slurred and pointed again at the tattoos. “What’re those marks on your face. Some kind of magic thingie?”

Shannon hoisted him up higher, pushing the back of his neck into some ancient piece of taxidermy hanging on the pub wall, “”Tis stupid Bren—I say we kill him.”

Brendan, for his part, had found a pint and was drinking it down as he considered this.  Finishing, he licked his lips and looked up at the large, dark-haired and dirty elf hanging in his feoil’s grasp.  Ronan was crowned by a dusty stag’s head like some parody of a Royal Woodsman.  He has the strength, Bren thought, But does he have anything else?

“The tattoos, “ he began, “are a mark of the Fianna.  Do you know what that is boy?”

Ronan shook his head.

“D’ya love the English? Harbor gentleness in your heart for the false queen? Forgiveness for the terrors committed against our people? Forget the injustice we labor under every day?”

Ronan shook his head to all of these questions.  His blurred vision and swimming brain pickled beyond any ability to resist responding immediately to the issues put before him.  He had no idea who these two were, and if he would be shot dead in an instant for openly admitting treasonous thoughts.

Brendan nodded and crossed his arms over his chest, looking up at him.  “You have a choice then man.  You can either come with us and serve the right path, or you can die.”

The choice, as it were, seemed pretty clear, even to Ronan.

“I’ll serve the path.” He grunted.

Shannon released the elf and stepped back as Ronan’s limp body hit the floor, the dead deer’s head toppling over his shoulder and crashing into a nearby chair after him.  “’Tis on your shoulders if he doesn’t meet the requirements.” The orc growled as he turned to make his way to the bar.

“Are you questioning my decision?” Brendan raised an eyebrow at his feoil, who was currently leaning over the deserted bar to grab a fifth of whiskey.

“Of course not.” Shannon stated plainly and bit off the rubber cork plugging the lip of the bottle, “I’m gettin’ a drink.”

Ronan had since come to learn in his short time in the Fianna’s training facility, that this wasn’t such a bad deal.  Food, clean bed, showers, classes on tactics, combat, weapons, he figured this was definitely better than scraping by day to day out there.    He knew vaguely of the fact that he would be paired with a mage, that it was his new job and expected that he would protect that mage.  Details, he knew not.  He had met many of the elder feoil, already paired with the feine.  The long-termers were the ones that taught most of the classes, that or were sent out with a cadre of new-termers to show them the ropes.  How hard can it be to protect a mage?  From what he’d heard, most of the time it was a matter of not letting them blow themselves up accidentally.  The feoil often joked that the feine had no sense of practical matters, they were too wrapped up in the meta, in worrying about magic. 

Morna, his partner at the mess today, was the explosives instructor.  He was generally easy going and liked to laugh, but he was dead-calm and inscrutable when describing arming and disarming routines.  Ronan paid requisite attention, not wanting to blow himself up before even getting assigned, but his real love was guns.  He could pick up any weapon, pistol, rifle, launch cannon, or hybrid shotgun and it was as familiar to him as breathing.  It was his talent.  His firearms instructor had remarked on it the first day and had henceforth left him to his own devices on the range. 

He was thinking on this when he suddenly realized he was being watched.  Stared at, really.  He looked up from his plate of food and saw her.  A slight figure, mouse brown hair spilling over her shoulders and a far-away look on her face that seemed to come into focus sharply and quickly when he returned her gaze.  Her eyes seemed to change colors, blue to green, maybe brown?  She was floating towards him through the rows of tables at the mess, followed by two other feine, both with concerned looks on their faces.  She seemed like an angel to him.  He wasn’t sure, really, what exactly an angel was supposed to look like, but they had described them to him in school when he was young.  He had been sure up until that moment that angels did not exist.  He was just as sure that God did not exist either, and now as the angel stepped forth and stopped directly across from him, he wasn’t sure of anything.

Ronan stood awkwardly, the chair pushing back behind him and toppling over.  He tried to place his fork down on his tray, but it didn’t quite make it there.  He stood, a towering rough man, face covered in stubble and hand barely trembling as it held onto the metal fork like the last piece of reality that existed at that moment.

Morna raised his eyebrow and moved his chair back as he too looked up with the rest of the room at the trio now standing near their table.  Ciar and another feine stood behind the unknown brown-haired woman.  None spoke other than her and with a quiet voice, like whispering wind she pointed directly at Ronan’s chest, “You.  Do you like guns?”

Ronan swallowed thickly.  He couldn’t form a response, even for something as simple as that.  He stared at her absorbed in something he couldn’t identify.  He didn’t even feel Morna’s boot kicking him soundly underneath the table.

She turned to the feine behind her and nodded, “He’s the one.”  The three of them silently turned and headed back to the door, the cacophony of the mess hall starting to rise again.

“Wait.” Ronan heard himself call out to her, “Where are you going?!” Morna looked at him as if he has lost his mind.

She turned her head ever so slightly and smiled, a promise in her eyes, as they walked out of the hall, “Don’t worry. They will put us together.”

He sat, fork still clutched in his giant hand.  Morna stared at him silently for a moment and then shrugged, starting in at his lunch again.  “Well. They’ve never done that before.”

“What’s that?” Ronan mumbled, still thinking of her stormy eyes.

“Let a feine pick their own feoil.  Must be a difficult one, my friend.  You’re in for it.”

The only thing that seemed difficult at that moment to Ronan, however, was waiting.