Blade Archer ~ Seventeen
Feb. 2nd, 2013 04:18 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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yraeIf you haven't already, there's a recap of the first sixteen chapters for you to catch up on if you don't feel like reading the first 16 chapters. I won't hold it against you. I wrote them nearly 9 years ago. Actually the first half of this chapter I did, too. See if you can spot the paragraph where 2013 took over.
~ ~ ~
‘Aeia-damned northerners,’ Kael muttered to himself, kicking at a stone and stubbing his toe in the process. He rubbed at the bandage around his wrist and sighed as he craned his neck up at the palace’s outer wall. ‘I’m never going to live this down.’
He tried to conceal the bandage as he approached the two guards at the back door of the palace, and while neither of them said anything, Kael could see their disapproval at the band of dirty cloth, and they hesitated slightly before opening the door for him. Even just crossing the courtyard to the healing house, he noticed people eyeing him with even more caution than normal.
‘Oh, Kael!’ Somehow, Ronanen’s cry was both sympathetic and scolding at the same time. She grabbed his right hand and unwound his mother’s makeshift bandage to inspect the damage. Kael winced slightly as the piece of fabric pulled away from the wound, but the stinging pain paled in comparison to what the policeman had put him through last night.
Dried blood was caked to the skin around the wound, but the gaping cut itself was still weeping slightly now that the bandage had been removed.
Ronanen shook her head and tsked him quietly. ‘This is going to need stitches.’
‘That’s what I’m here for,’ he muttered. It did look bad. He hadn’t seen the other boys since they had split up last night. He wondered if either of them had ended up with a scar of their own. He would certainly be having words with them both. If they’d done what he’d told them and gotten out of there quickly, they would have escaped unscathed. As it was…
Kael flexed his fingers as Ronanen returned with a bowl of warm water, a bundle of bandages, and the curved needle and thread he knew too well. She set the bowl of water on the bed block beside him and took his hand in both of hers.
‘Please stop doing this to yourself, Kael,’ she said earnestly.
Kael scowled at his fresh scar. ‘It’s not me doing it,’ he reminded her.
Ronanen shook her head, then dampened a cloth in the water and began cleaning the blood, dried and fresh, from his wound. ‘You know exactly what I mean. You don’t need to do this anymore.’
He watched her for a few moments, her soft hands that had never known the work of real labour, her perfect face always dabbed with makeup, her concerned, innocent eyes. ‘Ye has no idea what it’s like.’ He sighed.
The healer looked up as she wrung out the cloth a second time. ‘So, tell me.’
The blade archer’s scowl deepened. ‘It’s just me and Mama now. Papa’s the one what used to feed us, Mama never had a job, and then he got killed when I was ten. Me brother and me sister have both gone off to make families of them own, so I’m the one left looking after Mama. This—’ He lifted his wrist. ‘—is all I know what to do. It’s all I got.’
Ronanen threaded her needle carefully, something to avoid looking into Kael’s eyes, he suspected. ‘That’s not true,’ she said, with the same naïve certainty as ever. ‘You’re to be in the army now, with a strong and honest income.’
‘I’m not even halfway through training yet, and the bastards don’t pay until I graduate.’
He watched as the healer lifted his wrist and set the point of her needle against one end of the cut. He gritted his teeth together as the needle pierced his skin, taking a sharp breath through his teeth when he felt the thread pull through his flesh. It would never grow any easier. Still, he reminded himself wryly, it was the last wrist scar he would have to have stitched up.
He flexed his fingers again. That last scar wasn’t there to protect him anymore. No longer was it ‘after the next one,’ and he found the reality did actually scare him.
‘What more can I do?’ he asked Ronanen, voice tight as she pulled the thread through for another stitch. The pain was lancing up his arm and down to his fingers now, but he tried his best not to let it show.
Ronanen shrugged, as though it were that obvious. ‘Take an honest job,’ she replied, as though it were that easy.
Despite the pain, Kael laughed and shook his head.
‘Farms and fishing boats can always use an extra pair of hands,’ she continued. ‘Pubs always need someone serving beer, blacksmiths and carpenters and bakers need attendants. There’s no end to honest work in Ni-Yana.’
‘Yeah?’ he said, eyebrows raised. ‘And how many of ‘em are like to take a dishonest southerner on, with the scars to prove it? And when I’ve got me training to do, and practicing whenever I’m not in training, when am I supposed to be doing this honest work?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s only four more years.’ He looked towards the door when he saw two more figures step into the healing house, his scowl returning. ‘And I won’t be relying on no untrained urchins, neither.’
Both his accomplices, he was glad to note, had bandages around their wrists. Once they had noticed Kael staring at them, they made pointed efforts to avoid looking at him again, and with good reason. Kael forced all his southern darkness into that glare.
‘Kael.’ Ronanen’s voice was soft and gentle, but carried an edge of warning to it. The next time she stabbed the needle into his skin, Kael just barely concealed a yelp of pain. ‘I understand you may see no way out, but please don’t pull anyone in who has no reason to be there.’ She looked up at him with pleading eyes. ‘Especially not your friends.’
Kael gritted his teeth as Ronanen tied off the knot, not saying another word. The healer dabbed the familiar yellow ointment over the stitches, making Kael cringe but not shy away, then she tied a fresh bandage around his wrist. Before he stood to go, she rested a hand on his arm.
‘Please, Kael. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt again.’
The training blade archer sighed and got to his feet, holding his left hand over his throbbing wrist. He looked down at his spread fingers, and cringed at the mere imaginings of pain that losing one would cause him. ‘I’ll just be more careful, then,’ he muttered, clenching his hand into a fist and striding from the healing house.
His hands were back down by his sides as he broke into the army barracks. ‘One word,’ he barked to the casually waiting trainees, ‘and I give ye one to match. And I’d like to see ye explain that away the rest of yer lives.’
He snatched a dinted sword from the crate by the door, hefting it in his left hand in warning.
The boys were silent for a moment, some staring at his bandaged wrist, some at his sword, a few at his face. All wore expressions of cautious smugness, some grinning outright as they spoke in low murmurs to their friends. Let them talk amongst themselves, he thought, but the second any made a comment in his earshot, he had both blades ready.
He rested his back against the wall, spinning the sword tip against the earthen floor just to keep himself from itching at his bandage. The boys gave him a wide berth, but not, it seemed, through fear. They just didn’t want to associate with him.
‘Good,’ he muttered, watching the sword tip drill into the hard-packed earth. The less he had to associate with any of them, the better.
Sword master Heo appeared after a few more minutes, and glanced with raised eyebrows at Kael’s bandage. ‘Only a matter of time,’ he murmured to the blade archer in warning. ‘The first three weren’t enough?’
Kael glared straight back at him. ’Until ye maggots start paying me, it ain’t like I got a choice. Get off yer Aeia-damned pony once in a while and have a look at how the other half of this city lives.’
Master Heo only looked on in disdain. ‘Take your case to Queen Alurié. I’m sure she’d be delighted to help.’ He sneered at his wrist once more, then stepped to the front of the room to begin the day’s lesson.
Wilari was conspicuous in his avoidance of the topic of Kael’s new scar. The young archer was even more chatty than usual, trying to be as helpful as he could to improve Kael’s technique, chatting about the markets and the weather and a pretty girl in the healing house, anything to keep him away from Kael’s threat.
Kael gave him sullen silence in return, and did the complete opposite of what Wilari suggested. Wilari told him to aim lower, so Kael slashed at his head. Wilari told him to keep his movements smaller, so Kael swung in sweeping, brutal blows. The wild slashes helped a little to let of his anger and to calm him, but his partner’s constant chatter and helpful advice grated.
‘I don’t need yer help,’ he snapped at the end of the session, dumping the sword with a violent clatter into the wooden crate. He shoved his hands into his pockets, wishing the right was deep enough to hide his bandage as he strode from the barracks.
‘What did we say about you not belonging here?’
Kael spun at the sound of Niloren’s voice. The training swordsman rested with one shoulder against the outside wall of the barracks, his sword left inside with the others. Foolish move, Kael thought.
‘What makes ye think I want to?’ he retorted, sidling closer to the swordsman. The boys filing out of the barracks had stopped walking and were quickly becoming interested.
Niloren’s lips curled in an ugly smirk. ‘Street rat,’ he spat, then nodded towards Kael’s wrist. ‘Your girlfriend patch that up for you? Hope it hurt.’
Kael knew the red shirt was provoking him, but he wasn’t about to let his earlier threat sit idle. He lunged, dropping to one knee and kicking the other out to catch Niloren’s ankles.
The swordsman still hadn’t learned to control his feet. He stumbled back against the wall, slamming back clumsily against the rough surface and grabbing at it without finding purchase.
Kael kept low and grabbed at both his ankles, pulling him easily to his backside with a satisfying ‘oof!’ He sprang forward before Niloren could recover, pinning his chest with one knee and his left arm with the other. His right arm Kael snatched and yanked back violently, then he drew his dagger and pressed the tarnished but still very effective blade against the skin.
Niloren froze, but only for a moment. He tried to struggle free, to kick his knees up against Kael’s back, but the southerner had far too much experience in the real world for Niloren’s practiced strikes to have any effect.
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he bluffed, yanking his arm back in vain. ‘They’ll kick you out for this.’ His face was dark and threatening, but his threat was empty. This was the army. They wouldn’t kick a boy out for one cut with a dagger.
Kael glared at him for a moment longer, watching the anger and the fear swim in Niloren’s eyes. The boys around them were shouting unintelligibly, each drowning the other’s words.
He tightened his grip on both dagger and hand, repositioned the blade so it matched up perfectly with Kael’s first scar, then dragged it firmly across Niloren’s wrist.
Niloren cringed and bit back a cry, but the longer Kael dragged the blade, the more anguished his face grew. Kael knew exactly what he was experiencing, and he relished in it. He wondered if the Talons had the same level of satisfaction when they gave Kael his own scars.
Finally Niloren cried his pain, involuntary tears leaking from his clenched eyes, and Kael sheathed his blade. He knew, though, that Niloren would feel as though the blade was still there. He bent forward, leaning his full weight on the knee that pinned the swordsman’s chest. ‘That’ll need stitches,’ he sneered. ‘Three more and I’ll need to start taking yer fingers.’
He let the swordsman go with a shove from his knee, then pushed through the crowd of jeering boys and made for home.
‘Aeia-damned northerners,’ Kael muttered to himself, kicking at a stone and stubbing his toe in the process. He rubbed at the bandage around his wrist and sighed as he craned his neck up at the palace’s outer wall. ‘I’m never going to live this down.’
He tried to conceal the bandage as he approached the two guards at the back door of the palace, and while neither of them said anything, Kael could see their disapproval at the band of dirty cloth, and they hesitated slightly before opening the door for him. Even just crossing the courtyard to the healing house, he noticed people eyeing him with even more caution than normal.
‘Oh, Kael!’ Somehow, Ronanen’s cry was both sympathetic and scolding at the same time. She grabbed his right hand and unwound his mother’s makeshift bandage to inspect the damage. Kael winced slightly as the piece of fabric pulled away from the wound, but the stinging pain paled in comparison to what the policeman had put him through last night.
Dried blood was caked to the skin around the wound, but the gaping cut itself was still weeping slightly now that the bandage had been removed.
Ronanen shook her head and tsked him quietly. ‘This is going to need stitches.’
‘That’s what I’m here for,’ he muttered. It did look bad. He hadn’t seen the other boys since they had split up last night. He wondered if either of them had ended up with a scar of their own. He would certainly be having words with them both. If they’d done what he’d told them and gotten out of there quickly, they would have escaped unscathed. As it was…
Kael flexed his fingers as Ronanen returned with a bowl of warm water, a bundle of bandages, and the curved needle and thread he knew too well. She set the bowl of water on the bed block beside him and took his hand in both of hers.
‘Please stop doing this to yourself, Kael,’ she said earnestly.
Kael scowled at his fresh scar. ‘It’s not me doing it,’ he reminded her.
Ronanen shook her head, then dampened a cloth in the water and began cleaning the blood, dried and fresh, from his wound. ‘You know exactly what I mean. You don’t need to do this anymore.’
He watched her for a few moments, her soft hands that had never known the work of real labour, her perfect face always dabbed with makeup, her concerned, innocent eyes. ‘Ye has no idea what it’s like.’ He sighed.
The healer looked up as she wrung out the cloth a second time. ‘So, tell me.’
The blade archer’s scowl deepened. ‘It’s just me and Mama now. Papa’s the one what used to feed us, Mama never had a job, and then he got killed when I was ten. Me brother and me sister have both gone off to make families of them own, so I’m the one left looking after Mama. This—’ He lifted his wrist. ‘—is all I know what to do. It’s all I got.’
Ronanen threaded her needle carefully, something to avoid looking into Kael’s eyes, he suspected. ‘That’s not true,’ she said, with the same naïve certainty as ever. ‘You’re to be in the army now, with a strong and honest income.’
‘I’m not even halfway through training yet, and the bastards don’t pay until I graduate.’
He watched as the healer lifted his wrist and set the point of her needle against one end of the cut. He gritted his teeth together as the needle pierced his skin, taking a sharp breath through his teeth when he felt the thread pull through his flesh. It would never grow any easier. Still, he reminded himself wryly, it was the last wrist scar he would have to have stitched up.
He flexed his fingers again. That last scar wasn’t there to protect him anymore. No longer was it ‘after the next one,’ and he found the reality did actually scare him.
‘What more can I do?’ he asked Ronanen, voice tight as she pulled the thread through for another stitch. The pain was lancing up his arm and down to his fingers now, but he tried his best not to let it show.
Ronanen shrugged, as though it were that obvious. ‘Take an honest job,’ she replied, as though it were that easy.
Despite the pain, Kael laughed and shook his head.
‘Farms and fishing boats can always use an extra pair of hands,’ she continued. ‘Pubs always need someone serving beer, blacksmiths and carpenters and bakers need attendants. There’s no end to honest work in Ni-Yana.’
‘Yeah?’ he said, eyebrows raised. ‘And how many of ‘em are like to take a dishonest southerner on, with the scars to prove it? And when I’ve got me training to do, and practicing whenever I’m not in training, when am I supposed to be doing this honest work?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s only four more years.’ He looked towards the door when he saw two more figures step into the healing house, his scowl returning. ‘And I won’t be relying on no untrained urchins, neither.’
Both his accomplices, he was glad to note, had bandages around their wrists. Once they had noticed Kael staring at them, they made pointed efforts to avoid looking at him again, and with good reason. Kael forced all his southern darkness into that glare.
‘Kael.’ Ronanen’s voice was soft and gentle, but carried an edge of warning to it. The next time she stabbed the needle into his skin, Kael just barely concealed a yelp of pain. ‘I understand you may see no way out, but please don’t pull anyone in who has no reason to be there.’ She looked up at him with pleading eyes. ‘Especially not your friends.’
Kael gritted his teeth as Ronanen tied off the knot, not saying another word. The healer dabbed the familiar yellow ointment over the stitches, making Kael cringe but not shy away, then she tied a fresh bandage around his wrist. Before he stood to go, she rested a hand on his arm.
‘Please, Kael. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt again.’
The training blade archer sighed and got to his feet, holding his left hand over his throbbing wrist. He looked down at his spread fingers, and cringed at the mere imaginings of pain that losing one would cause him. ‘I’ll just be more careful, then,’ he muttered, clenching his hand into a fist and striding from the healing house.
His hands were back down by his sides as he broke into the army barracks. ‘One word,’ he barked to the casually waiting trainees, ‘and I give ye one to match. And I’d like to see ye explain that away the rest of yer lives.’
He snatched a dinted sword from the crate by the door, hefting it in his left hand in warning.
The boys were silent for a moment, some staring at his bandaged wrist, some at his sword, a few at his face. All wore expressions of cautious smugness, some grinning outright as they spoke in low murmurs to their friends. Let them talk amongst themselves, he thought, but the second any made a comment in his earshot, he had both blades ready.
He rested his back against the wall, spinning the sword tip against the earthen floor just to keep himself from itching at his bandage. The boys gave him a wide berth, but not, it seemed, through fear. They just didn’t want to associate with him.
‘Good,’ he muttered, watching the sword tip drill into the hard-packed earth. The less he had to associate with any of them, the better.
Sword master Heo appeared after a few more minutes, and glanced with raised eyebrows at Kael’s bandage. ‘Only a matter of time,’ he murmured to the blade archer in warning. ‘The first three weren’t enough?’
Kael glared straight back at him. ’Until ye maggots start paying me, it ain’t like I got a choice. Get off yer Aeia-damned pony once in a while and have a look at how the other half of this city lives.’
Master Heo only looked on in disdain. ‘Take your case to Queen Alurié. I’m sure she’d be delighted to help.’ He sneered at his wrist once more, then stepped to the front of the room to begin the day’s lesson.
Wilari was conspicuous in his avoidance of the topic of Kael’s new scar. The young archer was even more chatty than usual, trying to be as helpful as he could to improve Kael’s technique, chatting about the markets and the weather and a pretty girl in the healing house, anything to keep him away from Kael’s threat.
Kael gave him sullen silence in return, and did the complete opposite of what Wilari suggested. Wilari told him to aim lower, so Kael slashed at his head. Wilari told him to keep his movements smaller, so Kael swung in sweeping, brutal blows. The wild slashes helped a little to let of his anger and to calm him, but his partner’s constant chatter and helpful advice grated.
‘I don’t need yer help,’ he snapped at the end of the session, dumping the sword with a violent clatter into the wooden crate. He shoved his hands into his pockets, wishing the right was deep enough to hide his bandage as he strode from the barracks.
‘What did we say about you not belonging here?’
Kael spun at the sound of Niloren’s voice. The training swordsman rested with one shoulder against the outside wall of the barracks, his sword left inside with the others. Foolish move, Kael thought.
‘What makes ye think I want to?’ he retorted, sidling closer to the swordsman. The boys filing out of the barracks had stopped walking and were quickly becoming interested.
Niloren’s lips curled in an ugly smirk. ‘Street rat,’ he spat, then nodded towards Kael’s wrist. ‘Your girlfriend patch that up for you? Hope it hurt.’
Kael knew the red shirt was provoking him, but he wasn’t about to let his earlier threat sit idle. He lunged, dropping to one knee and kicking the other out to catch Niloren’s ankles.
The swordsman still hadn’t learned to control his feet. He stumbled back against the wall, slamming back clumsily against the rough surface and grabbing at it without finding purchase.
Kael kept low and grabbed at both his ankles, pulling him easily to his backside with a satisfying ‘oof!’ He sprang forward before Niloren could recover, pinning his chest with one knee and his left arm with the other. His right arm Kael snatched and yanked back violently, then he drew his dagger and pressed the tarnished but still very effective blade against the skin.
Niloren froze, but only for a moment. He tried to struggle free, to kick his knees up against Kael’s back, but the southerner had far too much experience in the real world for Niloren’s practiced strikes to have any effect.
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he bluffed, yanking his arm back in vain. ‘They’ll kick you out for this.’ His face was dark and threatening, but his threat was empty. This was the army. They wouldn’t kick a boy out for one cut with a dagger.
Kael glared at him for a moment longer, watching the anger and the fear swim in Niloren’s eyes. The boys around them were shouting unintelligibly, each drowning the other’s words.
He tightened his grip on both dagger and hand, repositioned the blade so it matched up perfectly with Kael’s first scar, then dragged it firmly across Niloren’s wrist.
Niloren cringed and bit back a cry, but the longer Kael dragged the blade, the more anguished his face grew. Kael knew exactly what he was experiencing, and he relished in it. He wondered if the Talons had the same level of satisfaction when they gave Kael his own scars.
Finally Niloren cried his pain, involuntary tears leaking from his clenched eyes, and Kael sheathed his blade. He knew, though, that Niloren would feel as though the blade was still there. He bent forward, leaning his full weight on the knee that pinned the swordsman’s chest. ‘That’ll need stitches,’ he sneered. ‘Three more and I’ll need to start taking yer fingers.’
He let the swordsman go with a shove from his knee, then pushed through the crowd of jeering boys and made for home.