“Hanna, you are awake,” he said, rising from his crouch and opening his arms to me. “Dallan, how went the darkness?”
“Acceptably,” Dallan allowed from behind me as I tried not to move too quickly into those arms waiting for me. “Only once have I found naught of pleasure with this woman.”
“Was she ill?” the barbarian asked in surprise, his mind automatically beginning to hum from the touch of my body against his. That that was the only explanation to occur to him was normal for a Rimilian, just as normal as asking only Dallan about how things had gone. I was glad not to have to be evasive to questions, but at the same time I was annoyed.
“The woman was not ill,” Dallan answered, crouching down near the spreading blaze with a smile, to pick up a stick and a pice of dimral that waited to be warmed in the fire. “When the woman made Cinnan’s capture possible by Aesnil’s guard, my cousin was so pleased with her that she was given many gifts. One of the gifts given to her, at her own request, was the presence of her servant-slave in her new apartment, all clothing having been taken from him before he was chained hand and foot to the floor. ”
“Stripped and chained’?” the barbarian repeated in outrage above my head, stiffening in insult by proxy. “At her own request?”
“Indeed,” Dallan agreed, his mind beginning to chuckle. “I, a slave, was then forced to submit to my dendaya, which gave little of the pleasure usual in the use of a woman. To be taken apparently brings less to a man.”
“Men are not born to be taken as wendaa are,” the barbarian stated, still more than annoyed. “Such a thing should not have been attempted, not to speak of done. Had I known of this sooner, Terril, you would have been well punished for it.”
“I had the right,” I said with as much stubbornness as I could call up against the disapproval of the man who still held me, wishing I could throw something hard at Dallan’s blond head to dislodge the increased amusement in it. “How often have you told me that ability provides the right?”
“And yet you felt it unfair that I punish you merely because I could,” he came back, his mind sharpening noticeably. “Such was not the true reason for your punishment, yet you felt that it was and that such a reason was unfair. Does the doing become less unfair when indulged in by wendaa rather than l’lendaa?”
“You’re confusing me,” I protested, raising my head from his cloth-covered chest to look up at his face. “I’ve never believed that ability provides the right, but you’ve always insisted on it. Now that I’m trying to use the same argument, you’re switching sides.”
“Terril, you must make the attempt to recall that speaking in your own tongue with others present is extremely ill-mannered,” he scolded, looking down at me sober-faced. “I attempted to correct you in this without speaking of it in words, yet have I now found the words necessary. Will I next find it necessary to correct you as a child is corrected?”
“Do you find the answering of my question so difficult that you need to speak of other things rather than that?” I countered, feeling the flush of embarrassment in my cheeks over the way he had spoken to me. I knew it was rude to use Centran with Dallan and Cinnan around, but when I became upset it just seemed to slip out.
“Wends, when first I told you that ability provides the right, you were not yet able to comprehend the entirety of the matter,” he said with a sigh, rigidly keeping himself from pursuing the scolding he’d started. “As I recall, you were greatly incensed that I had taken use from you and had caused you to feel pleasure. Was I to tell you then that it was my ability as a warrior which provided the right, a right which allowed me to choose what unclaimed woman I wished? The right was one earned with skill and tempered by a knowledge of honor, yet you then knew naught of any rights save those which had been given you by others. Rights earned bring with them a balance of sorts, which most often allows one to see what is proper; rights merely given to one by others provide no such balance.”
“I believe I shall cease doing anything of any sort,” I answered, so confused that I wished I could lock myself away somewhere for a while, to try to get some glimmer of sense from what he’d said. I knew I was missing the point he was trying to make, and all the lessons in proper behavior I’d been getting lately were beginning to give me a headache.
“You may not cease participating in life, hama,” he suggested with a laugh, looking down at me in amusement while Dallan chuckled. “Only through doing is it possible to learn, from those things which are done correctly, and those done in error. For now you may exercise such doing by taking a piece of dimral, and warming it for us in the fire.”
“I find your bravery unparalleled, Tammad,” Dallan commented, examining the meat he, himself, was warming. “My hunger is such that I dare not do the same as you, for burned dimral does little to satisfy the appetite.”
“You are a cruel man, drin Dallan,” I told him in a huff, resenting his comment, his amusement, and the deep chuckling he’d produced in Tammad. “When I have learned to cook with great skill, I shall be sure to use none of that skill for your benefit.”
“One of advanced age often finds little interest in skilled cooking, wenda,” he replied, glancing up at me with a grin. “When the time arrives, please consider yourself at liberty to disregard me as you like.”
The miserable beast thought he was being clever, but worse than that the barbarian seemed to think the same. He nearly strangled trying to keep from laughing loud and hard, letting me go so that he could turn away to struggle in private. I put my fists on my hips, wasted a glare on each of them, then gave it up to go take care of our breakfast.
I managed to get the piece of dimral mostly warmed without doing more than singeing its edges, but that did not reduce the now-unexpressed but definitely still-present river of amusement around me. I was feeling so annoyed and put out over that that we were already back on the road before I noticed the only lack of unanimity among my traveling companions. Cinnan had stayed in his tent until the last possible moment, and had had to work at being polite when he’d given the other two men greeting for the new day. He’d then packed up fast without eating anything, and had returned to riding point wrapped in thick, self-made isolation. He’d pretended to ignore me completely, but was so intensely aware of my presence that the growl in his mind kept trying to snap out of his desperate control of it.
I was glad that my sitting behind the barbarian made it difficult for me to see Cinnan; feeling his mind was bad enough.
When the sun came up high enough to feel, it became clear that we were leaving the deeper cold of the pass behind us. It took a short while for me to realize that, however; most of my attention was on the lesson I was giving. Not long after we had gotten back on the road, my memabrak announced that he was falling behind in his learning, and we were wasting valuable time. The next thing I knew he was projecting sadness at me, doing better than he had a few days earlier, but more in intent than in technique. Sadness is one of the best practice emotions an empath can use; keeping it from sliding off the scale one way into indifference or the other way into grief takes a good deal of control, and control was primarily what Tammad lacked. We continued on down the road out of the pass with me trying to teach the barbarian control, and his first few hours of practice accomplished more than all the days we’d worked before that. He was determined to try and determined to succeed, and that made all the difference.
It was almost precisely midday when Cinnan pulled off the road for the lunch stop, which came as a real surprise to none of us. He’d been so miserably uncomfortable during the morning’s ride that even Dallan had almost been able to feel it, and Tammad had had to grit his mental teeth at times to keep from being swept up in the emotions so often exploding at him. My curtain had helped to keep most of it away from me, but that wasn’t to say I wasn’t affected. Just because there’s a light rain between you and a forest fire, doesn’t mean you aren’t going to sweat from the heat of the blaze.