Forging the Blade, Part 2: Kithe and Kin, Ch. 3, 1/2

      kageorge (kageorge@EROLS.COM)
      Tue, 16 Oct 2001 11:30:27 -0300

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      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)
      
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