Eragos wondered if footwork was too complicated for her. There were no forms as these southlanders knew them - they learned the sword by rote, instinct guiding them into a set pattern that was determined by their training. If he went high, you went low. There was little observation or improvisation in their style. Almost like a dance. Eragos had not met a southerner who equaled his skill with a blade for that reason, he thought. Valos never insisted on a form. He told you to defend yourself. Then, to try and kill. When you could win one match out of two you were ready. And he always used live steel. It taught you control of the blade, taught you to know precisely its limits. After a few stumbling, swerving attempts to avoid a "hit" Eragos had learned rather quickly what he could and could not do with the sword.
It was a part of him. As much as his arm.
"There is a way," Eragos told her with a salute of the weapon he held in his hand, cold steel touching his forehead ever so briefly. "But you couldn't do it; not yet."
"Shouldn't you be resting?" Hasna finally asked in exasperation.
"What would I do with rest?" Eragos set himself for the next round, feet wide, knees bent only slightly. "Sleep?"
"Generally," the bony old woman replied.
If he slept, he would see their faces. Faces he had never glimpsed but had imagined, when his eyes were closed, when the thunder and distant crack of flame was still in his mind and in his heart. They were supposed to be peaceful moments, void, sterile and untouchable. Instead they were the greatest horror he could imagine with a heart as full of stone as his. There in the quiet, with nothing but demons fouler than any which could possibly exist, you had nothing to comfort you. It was the demons that gave Eithne the energy to keep going. The same as it was for him. How many nights had they spent naming stars, inventing stories for the stars? He seemed almost whimsical in his memory. Somehow less of a knight, less of a man, on those days. And yet it was - in that brief moment - as though he were living some manner of story.
Inventing the sky.
Creating the stars and naming them, in his mercy, with his blessing.
She would sit on solid ground while he lay against his saddle. And the stretches of quiet were comfortable between them. Now there was no silence between them that was comfortable. And if he had regret he could not express it to her, because whatever he'd said, it led in part to this. Eragos could never be angry with himself for leading her to this place and this time. They would never sit and name stars again, to the best of his knowledge. Those days were past. Neither of them could be so simple and so innocent. Neither one of them could remember how to invent a sky.
It was a distant thing, just as the memory itself was.
"When I lay down to sleep I see the forest," Eragos finally said quietly; Eithne was poised to strike, but she was listening. "I see a face. Your face, Eithne. I never thought I would see you again, when we came out of there. What do you see when you try to sleep?"