Forging the Blade, Part 2: Kithe and Kin, Ch. 3, 1/2
kageorge (kageorge@EROLS.COM)
Tue, 16 Oct 2001 11:30:27 -0300
Forging the Blade, Part II
Kithe and Kin
By MacGeorge
Acknowledgements and Disclaimers: See Part 0 previously posted.
Rating: PG-13
Chapter Three
It took two days to drag Duncan out of Glencoe – actually, out of
Bridget’s possessive arms. Connor could hardly complain, however. The
enthusiastic and athletic Miriam made Connor her ‘special guest’, fed
him until he thought he would explode, then helped him work off all that
food in delightful fashion. She even forgave her barmaid for her
slacking work ethic since Bridget’s knack for keeping Duncan occupied
also kept Connor from leaving town too quickly.
So, when the day of their planned departure dawned wet and gloomy,
Connor was tempted to stay even longer. But Duncan had done little but
drink, eat and partake of Bridget’s charms since they arrived, and it
would not do to let his student think he was not still subject to the
rigors of training and apprenticeship. They carefully packed the goods
Connor had purchased, spreading the weight between the two horses, and
covering the packages with skins and oiled cloth. They didn’t bother
covering themselves against the summer rain. It would have been a
pointless effort, and skin and wool would eventually dry, and none the
worse for it.
There was a tearful goodbye between Duncan and Bridget, at least on
Bridget’s part. Connor noticed that his student was careful to make no
promises or commitments, but still managed to salve the maid’s wounded
heart with pretty, flattering words. The lad obviously had been born
with the gift of charm along with his extraordinary appearance, and it
occurred to Connor that perhaps, in time, his student might be able to
teach him something about the wooing of women. It had never been a
skill that had come easily for him, and his century of living had not
revealed any great wisdom or revelatory secrets about their mysteries.
With the exception of Heather, he frequently felt awkward and graceless
around beautiful women, and had badly mishandled any number of potential
romantic encounters.
They had ridden for an hour or so in silence, each man content with
mentally reliving the pleasantries of the recent past. The gentle rain
became a steady downpour, then sometime in mid-morning, it became a
torrent. Connor judged the time right, and pulled his stallion to a
halt.
Duncan rode on for a second, then turned the gelding. “Is something
wrong?” he asked. He was soaked to the skin, his hair clinging limply
to his head and shoulders, water dripping off his nose and chin.
“Aye. It is time we had a little talk,” Connor announced, to the
accompaniment of a rumble of distant thunder.
“Right now? Can’t it wait until we’re out of the rain?”
“No. For what I have to say, a thorough drenching is entirely
appropriate. You, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, are an idiot, a
child, a raving lunatic.”
Duncan’s eyes narrowed and he stiffened in his saddle, waiting for an
explanation.
“Do you really think your life, or the life of some poor sheepherder is
worth a barmaid’s kiss?”
“Is that what this is about?” Duncan scoffed. “The man stepped over the
bounds of decency. I was just going to scare him a little.”
“You practically choked him to death, and you drew unwarranted attention
to yourself. What if you had gotten cut, then healed right in front of
everyone? You were so damned afraid of people recognizing you, then you
practically paint a sign on your forehead, pointing out that you’re
Immortal,” Connor said in disgust. “Then you bloody well drew your
sword! What were you going to do with it? Do you think the sanctity of
a barmaid’s lips was worth a man’s life? They don’t heal in a few
minutes or come back to life, you know. They are mortal and you are
not! Or have you forgotten that so soon?”
Lightning splintered the sky, the horses danced nervously and the rain
managed to intensify until it seemed as though they stood under a
waterfall. Duncan settled his horse, looked down, then away, spots of
color appearing on his cheeks.
“Well?” Connor prodded.
“I didn’t think. I…I was a little drunk, and…it had been so long since
I’d been around people that I overreacted, to everything, I think,”
Duncan admitted glumly through clenched teeth.
Connor had expected resistance and argument, and was unprepared for
confessions of guilt. He urged the stallion forward again, and Duncan
fell in alongside. They were silent for a moment, before Duncan spoke
again.
“For awhile, I felt so…normal,” he sighed wistfully.
“I wish it were so,” Connor observed. “But you can never forget what
you are.”
Duncan looked more than sufficiently chastened, and the rest of the trip
back was made in sober, soggy silence.
~~~~~~~
Connor grew to know his student’s moods and silences over the next
months, as their drills grew more sophisticated and intricate, and
Duncan began to understand the value of strategy as well as strength.
The lad was passionate, hot tempered, and prone to quick judgment and
strong opinions. But given time and information, he would lapse into
long silences, seek solitude, then come back with probing questions that
demonstrated he had thought long and hard about whatever problem he was
contemplating, sometimes to an amusing degree.
But while Duncan could be very grim when it came to uncovering his own
ignorance or error, he was almost childlike when it came to daily life
and their regular chores and food gathering needs. Everything was a
game, a competition, a test of some kind or another.
“I did so!” Duncan insisted, his voice taking on a defensive whine as he
successfully parried a move they had already been over a hundred times.
“You brought down a six-point stag, on foot, with one arrow from a bow
and arrow you carved yourself?” Connor asked dubiously. “Well, everyone
is entitled to a little luck, I guess, especially the young and
foolish.” He thrust again, almost catching his student in the ribs when
he saw an opening on Duncan’s weak left side, but the lad swiveled out
of the way. He was getting better, watching more carefully. Ending
each sparring session battered, cut and bruised tended to bring home the
price of any lapses in attention.
“It wasna’ luck,” Duncan grumbled. “It was survival, and what my Da
taught me. There was even a boar I managed to…,” but his voice trailed
off, and his lips pressed together as though to prevent any more words
from escaping, and he executed a distractingly quick, aggressive move
that almost got past Connor’s guard.
Connor disengaged and stepped back, signaling a break as he reached for
a skin of water. Duncan wiped his streaming, flushed face with the back
of his arm, and waited his turn for the water.
“Managed to what?”
“Nothing. It wasn’t important.”
Connor handed the skin over, thinking how best to get his student to
talk more easily about what troubled him. When it came to the period
after his first death, Duncan had little to say. Connor was sure
Duncan’s reticence was rooted in some experience during his three years
of isolation, something that roused fear or shame, or both. It was
something he would eventually have to talk about or it would eat away at
him for centuries. Teaching Duncan had given Connor insights into his
own past, and his own teachers. Whatever wounds his original banishment
had caused had been quickly healed by Heather’s absolute acceptance and
love. And he had been fortunate to have one of the great ancients as
his teacher. Even if it had been for a relatively short period of time,
it had given him the knowledge, skills, strength and confidence to
survive.
Ramirez had the experience and power to do so many things, to easily
convey so many concepts as though he could reach directly into his
student’s mind, understanding his fears, overcoming his stubbornness
with the sheer power of his thoughts and personality. It was terribly
frustrating to know that his first student, his own clansman, and a
person he was growing fonder of by the day, could not benefit more from
what he had learned from his old teacher.
~~~~~~~
“Let yourself feel the stag,” Ramirez whispered behind him, touching him
at shoulder and elbow. “His heart, beating.” With the soft
instructions came the gentle touch in his thoughts, as only Ramirez
could do, edging open the closed and secret places in his mind, letting
understanding seep into his body, even when his mind refused to grasp
it. His chest expanded, his muscles warmed and tensed, his heart
sounded strong and steady, his blood coursing inside with unbounded
strength. He felt so incredibly alive, every sense alert and active.
He could feel…need, fear, sex, all crowding together at once. His feet
moved, digging into the soft earth. He needed…to run!
And so he had learned. Everything from complex sword techniques, to
world history, to chess, to surviving in places and under circumstances
that went beyond magic and became real, although not truly understood,
even now.
Ramirez had called him “brother.” How much more, then, was Duncan
MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod? A student, a clansman, someone from his
own time and place and history. And yet Connor had not the magic
Ramirez had so easily used, the gift to open Duncan’s mind and show him
the things he needed to know. Instead, he could only teach him, tell
him again and again, and hope the lad would be smart enough, strong
enough, to find the magic on his own.
~~~~~~~
Connor was distracted from his frustrating thoughts as he caught the
speculative gleam in his student’s eyes, and he could tell the lad was
scheming up some distracting adventure. Duncan seemed to love contests
and bets, even when he consistently lost to his older, wilier clansman.
The lad seemed to have a bottomless well of optimism when it came to
competitive clashes with his teacher. Or perhaps the lad was simply
acknowledging the lessons learned, even in the losses. That, Connor
found even more unusual, the ability of one so young to see the layers
of meaning beyond winning or losing, even if the lad’s constant
rehashing of every lesson could get a bit tiresome at times.
Sure enough, Duncan thoughtfully wiped his blade, casting speculative
looks at his teacher as he did, obviously weighing his words carefully.
“How about I do the hunting for a week or two, and you do the chores
around the croft, and we’ll see who can bring home more meat for the
fire?” he offered.
“Oh, no,” Connor chuckled. “You just want to get out of doing chores
and drills. I may be old, but I’m not a doddering fool.”
“Connor!” Duncan protested, “I’m not a lad, you know. I lived on my own
for three years without you watching me every minute.”
Connor looked up from cleaning his own blade, eyeing his student
speculatively. “It must have been hard,” he observed. Duncan shrugged
enigmatically and slid his claymore into its scabbard, but Connor
reached out and touched his shoulder before he could turn away. “I’d
like to hear about it, Duncan.”
“Not much to tell, and not very interesting. Guess I’ll bring some water
up from the loch for dinner, and you can tell me some more stories of
Ramirez, eh?” He slid his scabbard up to his shoulder and headed off
back towards the house.
“Duncan!” Connor called after him. “It’s your turn for stories,
tonight, I think.” His student paused for a second, but didn’t turn,
then continued on down the hill.
Connor broke out his whiskey that evening. There was a damp chill in
the air, a precursor to the cold season lurking just a few weeks away.
He took a careful sip of the liquor and passed it to his companion,
suppressing a slight shudder at the contrast between the heat of the
liquor and the chill of the evening. “We could go south, you know,” he
offered. “To Greece or Italy. I have a lovely apartment in Ravenna.
And it is much warmer there in the winter.”
Duncan sipped at the bottle, grimaced at the burn of alcohol, and passed
the bottle back. “Leave Scotland? Why would you want to do that?” he
asked.
Connor had to control his smile. “Because there is much more to the
world than wet and cold and sheep, Duncan MacLeod,” he replied.
“But this is your home,” Duncan gestured to the small house they had
built. “And we just spent half the summer making it tight against the
weather. And there is so much left to learn, why I’ve barely begun to
understand half what you’ve shown me.”
“And why should we both be cold and uncomfortable while I teach you?”
“The same reason you brought me here in the first place. This is who we
are, Connor. We are Highlanders, and those hills and mountains, the
snow and the wet, the heather and the lochs, are as much a part of us as
our blades, our kilts or our clans. How can you teach me what I need to
know about survival as an Immortal in a place where I know naught about
the land, its people or its language?”
Connor smiled. When Duncan felt passionately about something, as he did
about so many things, he had a knack for expressing himself, and no
hesitation about doing so. “Perhaps part of survival is learning about
those lands, those languages and those people?” he offered.
“Och, I’ll have plenty of opportunity to do tha’,” Duncan dismissed the
notion. “I need to learn what you know about the sword, about strategy,
to win against men many times my age and experience. Tis better if…”
“And women,” Connor inserted.
“What?”
“There are female immortals, you know.”
(cont. in Ch. 3, Part 2)