unfaithful (vedette)
Wind could bite more than the flesh. It struck at memory with harder hands, more lethal weapons, than it ever struck at skin and bone. One mountain was nothing like another. Yet the kiss of pine, the brittle taste of frigid water on your tongue - that stately emptiness in the air, a lack of civilization smelling as pungent as a boon of it - all of it conspired to remind him of the wife he'd known and then alienated. Perhaps it was easier to think that Minaht had estranged herself from him. Perhaps that was easier than facing the truth, most brittle and bitter of all things which confronted him. There were two parties in a marriage, in any relationship, and if one or th eother fell out of step then the march became disorganized. Perhaps not the most flattering terms for a marriage, this idea of a military procession, of a march, and yet that was what it turned in to. Not a dance in which each partner was expressing only joy. A march, which could be filled with the joy of a dance but also the solemn vow of duty. He told himself time and again that he'd done his duty to his wife.
A bard could weave a lie in any tongue, or any song.
Words cut like knives, he'd told his daughter. The shining light that gave purpose to his life when he desperately needed it. Yet in many ways Onainat was his superior. She was more honest with her heart, more giving with her trust, and in all things surpassed her father for compassion. She was not possessed of a wit so canny as his, or eyes to see the sharpest and most difficult faults. Cracks that lay hidden beneath the skin. What was a boy to a man? What was a warrior to another? Were they brothers or something else? And yet the question he always asked, the question he truly wanted an answer for, was simple. What was a husband to a wife? Was he more than a lover and a friend, someone who could be trusted with the needs of the flesh and the heart as well? Or was he a token, proof of existence, an acknowledgment of the fear which all creatures possessed. To be alone was not the worst fate in the world. Yet it often seemed that way. Even in the songs he wrote. Even in the lies he sometimes told himself.
And others.
So it seemed strange to him that Horon did not weep, did not cry, did not seem to care at all that a man he knew had simply died. Putting aside the issue of Minaht, whether or not she deserved the fate which had ultimately befallen her, seemed more difficult than it should have been. With Iluq riding beside him any male was bound to feel that questions of fidelity belonged in the past. That was not the reason that he put it aside. The reason was simpler than that. Memories could become a part of you, sustain you, but they could poison you if you let them. POerhaps that was why Horon was riding with a grim set of his lips, and why Koe was doing the same, despite the fact that both of them were thinking of something other than the fight which awaited them. Koe was using himself as a mirror for a man that he hardly knew - and yet the mirror did not always lie. Or at least, not often enough for Koe to completely discount it. Something was happening here which he did not understand. And until he did understand it, he had to press on in search of that truth which was so elusive.
"No burial?" Koe asked quietly.
"What?" Horon's voice was as close to a snap as Koe had heard it since their first meeting.
"No burial," repeated the bard. "We left him. Out in the open, for the ravens."
"He knew what he was doing."
"And what of you, Sir Horon? Did you know what you were doing?"
Something in the look the knight gave him said Horon had done this before. Quelled hard questions with a look, and the promise of violence, regardless of the target of his address. It said something about the content of his character, Koe thought, that he was so willing to try and intimidate to get out of answering a question. only he'd forgottenin that moment that he was addressing himself to a dragon. A dragon who did nto feel the fear of reprisal or steel as most should have or would have. Horon seemed to realize his mistake as soon as the scowl formed on his face. Yet he still delayed removing it. No matter. Koe saw the widening of the eyes, the startled soul that lay beneath the bluster and the pain. It was not just a complicated question because they knew one another. Something else was happening here. Who was the boy? A nd why did it matter to Horon so much? Why did it have the power to put him out of sorts? Koe did not like things which did not fit. Only he had to remind himself that they did fit. They jsut did not appear to fit at this precise moment.
That was going to change.
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no," the knight said grudgingly. "But it would have been foolish-"
"So we stay alive," Koe commented noncomittal. "We stay smart. But we are also wrong, are we not?"
"Only a fool lives life without compromise," the knight answered his with deadly quiet.
"Poetic words," Koe whistled a snatch of a tune he'd heard once, as a boy. "I wonder if a song would come of that."
The road they traveled was not a winding one. Slow and steady, across a field that should have been packed heavy with ice. Instead the first snows of the year were falling, or at least the first heavy snows of the year. Drenching the grass yellowed by sun and time, heat and drought, with frozen water. Water that would do the grass no good. Buried by the element it needed to survive, only fallen from the stars in the wrong state, was the very definition of irony so far as a blade of grass was concerned. Anything from the heavens was a gift from the gods, of course, but gifts from the gods were so rarely what one expected. What had Horon expected when the gods saw fit to bless his manner of doing things? To imbue mortal men with power, power of the ancient dragon kings, and then send them out into the world. To do so without the wisdom of the dragon... all of that power, yet Horon still remained helplessin the face of danger. Paralyzed by his own inadequacy? Or perhaps...
"You have many words," Horon finally said, through teeth clenched together. "But you would not be so flip if you knew what they meant."
"On the contrary," Koe did not smile, but he wanted to. "I'm well aware of the power words possess."
They did cut like knives, after all. The glance he gave Iluq was part question and part answer. Horon was hiding something, but something painful, and in this field rapidly disappearing beneath snow - out in this open space - he wondered if they would finally arrive upon that truth.