#46 - I'd Like It If You Could

With his eyes still locked on Ahrimaz’s face, Teel smoothly reached into his great coat, pulled out his notebook and licked the tip of his pencil.  “May I quote you on that?” He said.

Ahrimaz made to lunge forward but both Rutaçyen and Pelahir had him by the wrists.  Teel looked down, scribbling.  “Was that ‘ash-dick or charcoal dick’?” he asked.

Rutaçyen shook her head at him. But Ahrimaz subsided, staring at him.  “What?”

The warmaster shook him slightly.  “Was he untruthful in what he wrote?” Her touch on his wrist actually was a light hand, not physically holding him back, but he reacted as if her touch chained him to the ground.  “Did he insult you?”

“No! But. No!”

Pelahir tugged at the crumpled paper in Ahrimaz’s hands and he let go of it, and Pel’s eyes skimmed down the mangled sheet.  “It seems very… gentle.”

“Yes! No! But…” Ahrimaz subsided back onto his heels, where he’d knelt before, and shook his head, bewildered.

“What do you need to fear that you are so angry about?” Rutaçyen asked quietly.  There was a long silence as Ahrimaz thought it through, the rushing of the waterfall behind it all.  Teel could feel the spray beginning to soak into his coat, but didn’t move from where he sat, pencil poised over his page.

A raven swooped down from the Goddess tree above, settled on a branch right over the lip of the waterfall, bobbing up and down as it swayed and then when it opened its beak an amazing liquid trill of notes poured out, instead of a harsh croak.  It sang and as it sang Ahrimaz’s head tipped back as if he looked at it, though his eyes were closed.

“I’m… sorry, Teel,” he said at last and Rutaçyen and Pel both let him go.  “I am afraid of people.  I have always been hurt by people.  Soldiers I understand, and subjects can be commanded.  I am terrified of what free people will think and do.”

“Would you be hurt if I told people that?” James wrote it down, even as he asked.  Ahrimaz lowered his head and opened his eyes.  A breeze blew a swirl of snow down on them and the raven flapped away as if called to urgent business elsewhere.

“I… suppose not.”  Ahrimaz looked at Pel first, measuring his reaction.  Pel shrugged.

“It’s a generous piece,” he said.  “And doesn’t make you look like anything but what you are, at least from Monsieur James’s point of view.”

James bowed from the waist where he sat.

Ahrimaz leapt up then.  “Since you are here and neither of us is welching on this bet,” he said sharply, “I’m going to warm up before the war master teaches me anything.  Keep up, if you can, James.”

Even as Ahrimaz moved Teel was on his own feet, peeling off his greatcoat and dropping his notebook upon it next to his cane.  Ahrimaz wheeled to his right and took off next to the river, Teel on his heels.  The riverbank was treacherous with rocks and slippery so he could not run as fast, he turned up the bank to the groomed path and they hurtled past the priestess there, neck and neck.  Teel took as much advantage of his longer legs as he could but even the path, though smoother than the riverside, was uneven enough to slow them both down.

“You aren’t wearing a waistcoat today?” Ahrimaz said, panting.

“Nor a cravat!” Teel huffed back.  “The… back… of your… pants are wet.”

“Get… in… front… if you… don’t want… to… look!”

Then they saved their breath for running, Ahrimaz putting his head down and settling into a steady, ground-eating pace.

Rutaçyen and Pel stood watching them disappear around the bend, toward the bridge that would bring them back around the other side.  That path would have them scrambling up the opposite side of the waterfall and having them hopping the slick stepping stones across before bringing them back to where they’d started.

“In case you’re wondering,” Rutaçyen smiled at Pel who was beginning his own slow set of poses as his warm-up.

“No, Ru,” he smiled back at her.  “Not wondering at all why you aren’t running along with those two idiots.”  Distantly they could hear the thunder of foot steps on a wooden bridge.

She nodded and settled back down to her cross-legged pose in the snow.  After a time they could hear Ahrimaz and Teel puffing up the path.  “Moron.”

“Who’s… the… moron?”  Then just puffing breaths for a bit.  “I’m getting training from the best AND… I… get… a… story…”

No answer as the two men scrambled up the cliff path on the other side of the waterfall, throwing up puffs of snow.  At the top Teel gathered a handful of snow off the edge and tossed it sideways onto Ahrimaz’s head.  His head snapped around and he flung out a hand to catch Teel’s ankle.

He slipped the grab but responded by scrambling backward and managing to put together another snowball.  He threw it, hit Ahrimaz in the face with a light ‘pumpf’ as it exploded.  “Cheater!”  Ahrimaz managed to shout.  Teel slowed down and looked back over his shoulder just in time to get a slush ball in the side of his head and both men stopped running to begin hurling snow at one another.

Rutaçyen watched them, smiling.

Pel stood up from his last pose and watched them as Ahrimaz lunged for Teel and managed to knock him over and they rolled in the snow.

“Hey!”

“Peace!  This isn’t sparring OR our bet!”  Teel  had both of Ahrimaz’s wrists in his hands and he was a bigger enough man that he had him solidly, at least for a moment.  Ahrimaz rolled right over his head, snatching his wrists out of Teel’s hands but didn’t get up.  He stayed, sprawling, head to head with James.

“You’re right,” he said quietly.  Pel, standing below could barely hear them over the sound of the water.

Teel rose, beating snow out of his clothing, put a hand down to offer if Ahrimaz wanted his help getting up.  “The other Ahrimaz and I were friends,” Teel said.  “I’d like it if we could be.”

Ahrimaz stared at the proffered hand and actually made a motion to take it before snatching it back to his chest, rolling over to lie face first in the snow.

“Drowning hell, Ahri,” Teel snapped and grabbed him by the collar.  “Quit that.”

And Pel closed his eyes, waiting for Ahrimaz to explode and actually punch James.  Nothing.  He opened his eyes to see Ahrimaz standing in the snow, covered in it, visibly shivering, in front of Teel.  “Come on.  You need to get back down to the House to get into the tub.”  He looked over at Rutaçyen who nodded.  “And I don’t give a rainy fuck if you don’t want to.”  He took Ahrimaz’s arm over his shoulder, bending down to do so, and began steering him over the stepping stones and to the path back down to the House.

“I think they will be fine,” Rutaçyen said quietly.

“I didn’t know James was that good,” Pel said.

“Most people who are good warriors don’t tend to boast about it a great deal,” Rutaçyen said.  “Draw please and give me a good attack, Pelahir."