‘I could but wince,’ he said, sighing, ‘at seeing the stitch in your side.’
‘It was your seeming impatience that so struck me,’ she replied, drawing a muscled forearm across her mouth to sweep up the mucus and dirt, leaving it to glisten in the fine, almost white, hairs of her wrist. She then lifted and swept back her mass of wavy, golden hair. ‘But that is the curse of youth, after all. Berate me for my insensitivity, Hanako, and we can shudder down into our familiar roles.’
From behind the boulder, Erelan Kreed’s perfidious song ended abruptly. Stones grated underfoot, and then the warrior emerged, dragging the cave-bear’s skin behind him. ‘You complained of the night’s chill, Hanako,’ he said. ‘But now, in the months and perhaps years to come, you will be able to keep warm at night … as you chew the lord’s hide into suppleness.’
Lasa snorted, and so was forced to clean her nose yet again. ‘A suppleness the lord knew well. As well as his own skin. But years, Erelan? More like decades. The lord’s manifestation here, Hanako, is unmatched in my memory. It’s a wonder he managed to find a cavern big enough to home him.’
‘More the wonder that we did not even see it,’ said Erelan, ‘since it lies not twenty paces above us.’
‘And so the boulder that would so hide Hanako’s morning toilet did proffer the lord a most squalid gift, upon the very threshold of his abode.’ Even as she said this, she offered Hanako the breathtaking smile that had already ensnared three husbands.
‘I proffered no such gift,’ Hanako replied. ‘That unleavened loaf now resides in my left boot.’
This comment made Lasa Rook fold over once again, her laughter so intense that she struggled to breathe.
Stepping past Hanako, Erelan slapped a bloody hand down on the young warrior’s shoulder. ‘Next time you decide to wander off, pup, at the very least carry a weapon. You’ve not the claws or fangs to equal a bear. Still, the rolling embrace was a fine mummery to start this day.’ He then thrust something in front of Hanako’s face, making him flinch back. ‘Here, the lord’s lower jaw – it pretty much fell away. You came as close to tearing it off as to make a cutter hesitate to take coin.’
Sighing, Hanako accepted the trophy. He stared down at the jutting canines, remembering how they felt as they scored across his scalp. The thin white rings of the tongue-nest, lined up in parallel rows, were delicate as seashells.
‘As for the tongue,’ Erelan continued, ‘why, we have us breakfast.’ With that, the warrior continued on, stepping round the prostrate form that was Lasa Rook, and crouched down before the hearth. He had tucked the thick severed tongue through his belt, and now he drew it out to settle it atop a stone of the hearth, where it began sizzling. ‘The Lord of Temper’s run out of things to say, ha ha.’
There were many misfortunes to take and give shape to a Thel Akai’s life, but Erelan Kreed’s feeble witticisms were among the cruellest of curses. They were enough to dampen Lasa’s ground-kicking mirth, and once more she sat up, her reddened eyes fixing upon the slab of meat now sizzling on the rock, her expression settling somewhat.
Stifling a groan, Hanako pushed himself upright. ‘I am for the stream,’ he said.
‘Then we’ll see what needs threading,’ Lasa said, nodding.
Impatient youth? Yes, I see that, Lasa Rook. Given our purpose, and that joyous decision that so started us on this march, the bear might well have saved me the journey. Sighing yet again, Hanako skirted his way along the terrace until he came to the tumbling fall of water and its momentary pool that filled the bowl it had worn in the stone shelf. His few clothes were sodden rags now and he left them on the ground as he stripped down.
The water was clear, clean and stunningly cold. The shock against the lacerations covering most of his body quickly gave way to blessed numbness as he stood beneath the falls. Hanako, who so hates the cold these days. So quickly chilled by an unseasonal breath of wind. Hanako, who once crawled across a frozen lake, what has become of you? There was an old saying among the Thel Akai. ‘Born in the mountains, she longs for the valleys. Born against the sea, she longs for the plain. Born in the valley, she sets eyes upon the snow-clad peaks …’ And so on, as if the point already made could never be made to perfection, and the axe swings eternal against the tree, until the leaves raining down bury us. There we stand, senseless to the tremble in our hands, blind to the mulch against our eyes.
Thel Akai, you are brutes among flowers.
The cold water washed away the blood, slowed the ooze from the wounds. Naked and chilled down to his aching, bruised bones, Hanako returned to the camp.
He found both Erelan and Lasa crouched at the fire, slicing greasy strips from the charred meat. Lasa’s brows lifted upon seeing him. ‘So this was tongue after all,’ she said as she licked her fingertips, and then she cocked her head, ‘leaving me to wonder at my ambivalence.’
Erelan frowned up at him. ‘Have you no other clothes?’
‘I have … some few scraps,’ replied Hanako. ‘But I need sewing up.’
Lasa rose and drew close. She set to examining his wounds, touching here and there, standing all too close – close enough to have something brush her thigh. Glancing down, Lasa hummed under her breath. She lifted her gaze and arched one brow. ‘Not a mountain’s mantle of bitter snow can shrivel bold Hanako. I pronounce you fit and in no need of awl and gut.’
‘Do you mock me?’ he asked.
‘If one scar entices,’ she said, stepping back, ‘then your thousand will win you a launching of lust such as the world has never before seen. See how I struggle to constrain myself, young warrior? And I, a woman with three husbands!’
‘You would keep me at your knee, Lasa Rook.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Ah, now! You are right to chastise me. You have indeed grown – why, from thigh to knee, I should say, and more.’
Erelan Kreed laughed, but it was an uncertain laugh.
With a bright, sidelong glance, Lasa turned away. ‘We should be going. I will make a play of purpose to this wayward impulse, and shake the reins of my two work-horses.’
Frowning, Hanako knelt at his pack and drew out what little spare clothing he’d thought to bring with him. Overhead, the morning sun was already warm upon his torn back, making each gash sting. Yes, she was right to call them hers, although thus far neither he nor Erelan advanced any claim to an inviting caress. Three husbands left behind and Lasa Rook was yet to betray any greed to add others to her night beneath the furs. Work-horses indeed.
Gingerly, he drew on a worn hemp-woven shirt, and then leggings of the same coarse material.
‘Be sure to bring that fur,’ Erelan Kreed said as Hanako gathered up his gear. ‘It is a warrior’s way to wear their conquests, and to accept gifts from the Lord and Ladies of the Wild. By that cloak, Hanako, you honour the slain.’
Lasa kicked her way through the coals of the hearth, stamping each one underfoot. ‘Your way, Kreed, and none other’s. You’ll wear honour as if it fits, even as it stretches and tears to the swell of pride. The slain crowd your wake, and their realm is no more and no less than resentment. That you breathe in their stead. That your hearts still pound in your chest. That you move in flesh and bone and make nothing of the ghosts that haunt you. All of this gnaws their souls without resolution.’
But Erelan was humming again, as he tied up his bedroll.
Drawing close to Hanako once more, Lasa Rook dropped her voice. ‘Oh, do take the fur, Hanako. You wrestled it off the lord, after all. And all for want of a decent night’s sleep.’