Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [54]
The homeless girls of the city were always welcome at Greygriffon House, once the quarters of Mirt's mercenary company. Mirt spent much gold hiring good women to see to the girls' upbringing and tutelage, and himself sponsored them to apprenticeships as they desired or gave them dowry when they were taken to wife.
"Mirt's Maids" were always to be seen wearing gowns as fine as any goodwife when out in the streets. When of seventeen summers, they were free to take their weight in silver and gold and make their own way in the world. Some stayed happily at Greygriffon House. Others asked Mirt to sponsor them as apprentice smiths, or warriors, or ship captains. The Old Wolf proved to have a heart as soft as his pockets were deep, and did so.
If he grumbled and bristled and blustered through his days, those who knew him saw past that and valued his friendship for what it was. Mirt grew fat and wheezing from hours at the flask and belly-up to well-laden tables, but he never laid aside his weapons or let clown his guard of wary eye and sharp wits.
Asper looked at her lord now and saw wrinkles and stubble, his paunch and wild-flowing, mostly gray hair. She saw too the anger smoldering in his eyes as he looked around die room with drawn sword raised, and loved him all the more.
She had always loved him, since that day many years ago when he had come loping through the streets of a burning city, while his troops looted and slew all around him, and scooped her up from under the wild hooves of a riderless horse.
Hardened fighting men had looked on amazed as their general, the cold and deadly Wolf himself, caught up the crying toddler. He had held her close against his stubbly cheek as he snatched the reins of the terrified horse, hauled it near enough to grab a brutal fistful of mane, swung into the saddle, and spurred out of that ruined place.
Women he had taken, that night and many nights later, but always he bathed and cuddled his stolen child before he slept, telling tales and hoarsely whispering coarse songs to her in the night.
"Asper" was all she remembered of her name. Asper she was to him. She rode to battle strapped to his back, wrapped to the chin in thick, sweat-stained leathers, A great steel shield covered him from shoulder to shoulder and kept her safe, if half deafened and much bruised, within.
He fed her on mare's milk and such wine, fruit, and cheese as she could suck from his fingers. Later she ate bread and half-raw meat, and choked on the fiery wines he plundered from a hand's-worth of cities. Scarred and loud-voiced warriors tickled her and showed her tricks of knife-throwing and string-knotting and drawing in the dirt around a hundred campfires. She laughed a lot and grew to love the man who made her laugh so.
Winters passed, and Mirt's riding and fighting came less often. Asper finally lost count of the battles she'd been big enough to actually see and grew steadily sadder at what her eyes beheld. One after another, many warriors she knew and liked groaned or gasped their last moments away or lay twisted and still in the dust. Mitt grew older, too, and slower, and at last he came to vast, noisy Water-deep to stay, not just for a roaring ride of drinking and wenching and hiring on new swordsmen.
Asper grew taller. Mirt took to buying her gowns and fine slippers and one day awkwardly presented her with a canopied bed and a room of her own. He had held her, too, when she came howling from night-terrors or sheer loneliness to interrupt his snoring, and told her gruff and bracing truths and marched her firmly back to her own bed. He even took to calling her his daughter.
So she had been the first of Mirt's Maids, Asper reflected, even if he saw her more as his daughter and less as a consort. She would never leave his side, if she could manage that. She would die for him, gladly, if the gods willed