#56 - Spousal Abuse?

Teel watched Ahrimaz pace up and down the road by the military dock, fuming and thunderous, as the young priest did his best to pray that the barges be released from the ice.

They’d made good time the first two days, the river still flowing slush and chunks of ice and then, when they’d tied up at Mantes-la-Jolie the temperature had dropped overnight and they’d been frozen in hard.

The young Hunter priest sat, cross-legged at the bow altar, with both hands out of their mittens and clutched around the copper line spanned around the boat at the waterline… or in this case the thin film of water and ice line. His head was bent and he was struggling to pray, again, for the God to warm the boats free.

The riding mare that Ahrimaz had been training on trailed at his heels like the two dogs, the war cat draped over the mare’s blanketed back.  Every time he turned, bootheel grinding his frustration into the snow, the animals turned with him.  He didn’t notice, fists swinging to raise puffs of snow from his sleeves as he shivered and tried to beat some heat into himself.  The Captain had already stopped him from screaming at the young priest twice and sent him off to pace the bank until he calmed down.

-         Like a raging tiger, pacing the bars of a cage. Teel wrote in his notebook and looked up as

Ahrimaz slowed by the gangway and stopped, digging his toes into the filthy snow.  “Here,” he said finally, looking around at the entourage of animals around him.  “You lot get back on board.”

The mare’s ears twitched forward, then back, then she bobbed her head and carefully tripped up the wide gangway, to her tent-stall onboard.  Heylia swiped at Ahrimaz as they went by, stealing his scarf right off his neck.  He grinned and caught it long enough to make her bite it in a fury before letting her have it and turned up the wool twist collar of his great coat against the biting cold wind.

“The snow, you say, is probably going to pass south of us?” He asked the barge master as he trudged up onto the barge, scowling down at the ice.  The hull squealed and groaned as the pressure changed and Ahrimaz winced.

“Looks like,” he said and spat over the side to leave a brown splot against the enemy.  Teel followed along, ducking under the tent flap and welcoming the heat the horses generated.  Ahrimaz cleared his throat at the Horse Guard’s desk.  Really it was a postage stamp sizedboard hung on a strap around her neck to make a shelf over her lap when she sat.  She looked up at him, frowning.

“Captain,” Ahrimaz said quietly.  “I have an idea.  Let me take my Imaryan and speak to our priest?  I promise not to discommode him.”

Captain Jeanne rubbed a hand over the power-burn scar on one cheek.  “And you were going to grab him and shake him like a pup not two minutes ago?”  She shook her head.  “The Hand made me swear not to let you channel the God as it would harm you, even if you could break us out.”

“I also swear not to channel the God, Captain.  I have an idea that turns my guts and makes me weak in the knees but it might open the river and give a lesson in being a priest to your Hunter boy over there.”  He nodded at the tent wall where the priest knelt.

“Then go ahead, Ser!” She snapped.  “If you make him unhappy and cut him off from Aeono I’ll scorching warm your hide personally!”

He smiled at her, as if she were a puppy savaging one of his slippers, Teel thought.  “Thank you, Captain.”

“Eh! Limyé!  Would you be so kind?”  The Imaryan looked up from where he and the young chiurgeon, Etienne were consulting one of the medical books.

“Ahrimaz?”  He rose and they became a little entourage heading up to the bow.

“Limyé I need you to make sure I don’t slip and get angry or frustrated.  The Innéans think that the God and Goddess are a couple, correct?”

“That is correct, Ahrimaz.”

“And I come from a world where there’s a lot of spousal abuse happening.”

“I don’t understand where you’re going with this, Ahrimaz.”

“I think I see a little of it here.  I recognize someone trying to force something out of fear, am I correct?”  They’d stopped just back from the altar and Ahrimaz faced the stern, the wind practically ripping his quiet words out of his mouth.

“You could be right,” Limyé said.  “Are you going to try and explain it to him?”

“In my best and most priestly and healerly manner.”

Teel stared at him in shock.  “Priestly?  Healerly?”

Ahrimaz grinned at him.  “Just like your oh-so-precious Ahrimaz Hand of the People, beloved blah blah blah…”  He turned and stepped up onto the altar step and knelt beside the young Hunter priest and turned his mittens and his uncovered face up to the icy grey sky,