b r i t t (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smithereens) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
augustines2013-09-04 08:23 pm
smithereens) wrote in augustines2013-09-04 08:23 pm
Entry tags:
we the mortals.
.
.
.
She is completely unsuited for the desert; Damiyr can see it before they even leave the palace. He must coerce her into pants for riding, with the concession that she have a long enough qamis to serve for a knee-length skirt; must tie the keffiyah about her head for her so that it covers her mouth and nose, protection from the dust and wind as well as the sun; must make a stirrup of his laced fingers in order to lift her into the saddle of a very gentle, very placid mare they used to train the greenest of their children, while his company looked on in faint alarm.
Looking at her now, wilted in the saddle under the unrepentant mid-morning sun, he begins to think she’s even greener than their children. She would be sore to the high heavens if she continued to sit like that--she would be sore either way, he reminds himself, but enough time in the saddle would cure her of that if only she had a proper seat.
He wants to correct her, but hesitates only because he’s still chafing at the fact that he’ll be roped to this useless girl for the foreseeable future, at least until they find her father. Just the sight of the long, impractical river of hair down the length of her back is irritating him.
It’s not specifically her fault, he tells himself in a weak attempt at kindness; it’s her parents’ damned fault for not teaching her even the most basic of survival skills, though he supposed foreign merchants had that luxury. He wonders, briefly, what it is she does all day, whether she’s been put to any kind of work at all--or if she just starts gallivanting over the gap on well-intentioned whims.
“I think the two of you will get along very well,” his mother-samar had said, a twinkle in her eye that never failed to make Damiyr reel back in dismay.
“How can we get along at all?” he’d said, scowling. “I’m not a nursemaid.”
But his mother had only laughed and took his face between her hands to press a kiss to his forehead. “Be careful, my son.”
“Always.”
And now Damiyr eyes the khanjar jostling against her mare’s rump and wonders if she’s ever held a weapon in her life, since she apparently hadn’t thought to bring one of her own when she went chasing after her father. The knife was one the royal household had provided, along with nearly everything else in her pack.
A nursemaid indeed, he thinks sourly.
“Ride with your back straight,” he says curtly, ignoring Shahzadeh’s amused glance. “And use your knees for balance, not your bottom.”
He finds spiteful pleasure in Cleo’s indignant blush.
.
.
.
When they make camp for the night--when Damiyr and his company make camp, and Damiyr directs the girl in the menial tasks--he pulls the khanjar and sheath from its holster while Cleo watches him with apprehension in her eyes. She’s still sunburnt from her foray alone into the desert, before he’d scooped her up and been forced to make for the capital; any skin she’d had exposed is an unnaturally bright pink in the waning sunlight, and he wonders if she’s pained by it. Certainly it must annoy her.
That does not bring such spiteful pleasure.
“Come,” he says, while the others are otherwise occupied, “I’ll show you how to use this. Better you know how to defend yourself than be a complete burden.”
“Is something really going to attack us out here?” she asks, not without some sarcasm in her voice.
“You answered that for yourself at the oasis.”
Her mouth presses into a thin line, but she says nothing; Damiyr beckons her and says again, “Come.”
She rises to her feet and gingerly takes the knife from his proffered hand, still in its sheath. He’d picked a smaller khanjar for her, not the finest their armoury had to offer, but serviceable and well-balanced and manageable for a beginner.
But the way she holds it seems to suggest it would come alive and bite her. Damiyr sighs and arranges her fingers around the hilt in the proper way.
“This is a khanjar--dagger is your word, I think,” he explains, covering her hand with his on the hilt. The khanjar is too thick at the tang and too curved at the blade to be called a dagger of her people, but it’s the closest approximation he can make. “It’s like a lover--do not hold it too tightly, or it will pull you down where it goes, but also do not hold it too loosely, or it will leave you when you least expect it.”
Her cheeks turn as pink as her sunburn, but she nods determinedly. Her grip is too tight when he lets go, her knuckles white with strain, and he flicks the back of her hand with his finger.
“Looser,” he says.
“But--”
She is afraid of it, and probably rightly so. She is afraid to cut herself or most of all someone else, and so she holds the khanjar as if it will turn on her at any moment, as if it will leap out of her hand and cause harm.
“Trust me,” he says, more gently this time in spite of himself, because he knows the feeling. Even now, it gives him no pleasure to take up arms against anyone, even his enemies. “The khanjar should become like--how would you say...? Another part of your arm. Another limb of your body. You are its master, and you tell it where to go and how to move.”
She stares at him a moment, she of the wide, bottomless eyes, as if coming to a decision, and makes a conscious effort to loosen her grip, even if only minimally.
“I’ve never used… anything like this before, so start from the beginning,” she says cautiously.
“I supposed,” he says dryly, but doesn’t give her room to answer before he flicks the back of her hand again. “Looser.”
She groans.
.
.
.
He teaches her how to mount her horse more easily, and without risking tilting the saddle; teaches her how to ride without soreness; how to make camp and then break it without leaving any trace of themselves. He teaches her a great many things, with Shahzadeh’s help, and he’s not sure whether he’s pleasantly surprised or disappointed that she learns quickly and he only has to repeat things once or twice before she picks them up. She occasionally complains, but never in earnest, and never resists his instruction for more than a few breaths, even if it’s with reluctance.
She is the most reluctant when he teaches her how to wield the khanjar, how to grip it, how to maintain her stance, how to dodge and slash and stab and throw. Her grip is still too tight even after his constant correction, but that is a problem only time and familiarity with the weapon can really solve. He’s far more interested in giving her the means to defend herself, if necessary, long enough to give her the chance to run.
“Where did you learn all this?” she asks one night, tipping her head to indicate his own khanjar, at his feet, and his scimitar, slung naked over his lap as he polishes it. She is turning her sheathed khanjar over in her hands, brushing her fingers over the silver work.
The others lift their heads curiously, but Cleo speaks lowly and only Shahzadeh and Arim could possibly follow their conversation anyway.
“Weaponry?”
“You’re all soldiers, aren’t you? You’re their captain?”
So it hasn’t escaped her how he’s treated by the others. He doesn’t have the heart to correct her, to tell her that their reverence was only partly because he was their commanding officer.
“Aswaran salar,” he says. “I do not know if you would call it captain, but yes.”
Shahzadeh snorts loudly, over by Tabazin. Damiyr warns her with a glare.
Cleo doesn’t miss a beat, squinting her eyes suspiciously. “Aren’t you a little young to be a captain?”
He bristles, mostly because it’s to her credit that she’s wary, even without knowing he’d underreported his rank immensely. “When I first joined the cavalry, the damned wizard-king had just split the earth as it is now, and in that--we lost many good soldiers in the war, and with the gap we were at the mercy of brigands and foreign soldiers who couldn’t escape our borders even if they wanted to. Many of us became captains in those fights.”
“Oh.” She pauses, still fingering her khanjar thoughtfully. “What made you join the cavalry?”
“It seemed better than joining the infantry.” That’s true, at least. He doesn’t care to tell her that he still didn’t have much choice either way, as the infantry was below the mallaha’s sons, even third sons. He doesn’t care to tell her a lot of things, and for reasons he can’t really explain even to himself.
Mercifully, Shahzadeh is more absorbed in Tabazin to interrupt again, and Cleo seems to realize that she’s touched upon a dicey subject, because she doesn’t open her mouth again long enough for Barzayn to laugh so hard at one of Arim’s stories that he falls over.
And it feels almost natural, the seven of them.
.
.
She is completely unsuited for the desert; Damiyr can see it before they even leave the palace. He must coerce her into pants for riding, with the concession that she have a long enough qamis to serve for a knee-length skirt; must tie the keffiyah about her head for her so that it covers her mouth and nose, protection from the dust and wind as well as the sun; must make a stirrup of his laced fingers in order to lift her into the saddle of a very gentle, very placid mare they used to train the greenest of their children, while his company looked on in faint alarm.
Looking at her now, wilted in the saddle under the unrepentant mid-morning sun, he begins to think she’s even greener than their children. She would be sore to the high heavens if she continued to sit like that--she would be sore either way, he reminds himself, but enough time in the saddle would cure her of that if only she had a proper seat.
He wants to correct her, but hesitates only because he’s still chafing at the fact that he’ll be roped to this useless girl for the foreseeable future, at least until they find her father. Just the sight of the long, impractical river of hair down the length of her back is irritating him.
It’s not specifically her fault, he tells himself in a weak attempt at kindness; it’s her parents’ damned fault for not teaching her even the most basic of survival skills, though he supposed foreign merchants had that luxury. He wonders, briefly, what it is she does all day, whether she’s been put to any kind of work at all--or if she just starts gallivanting over the gap on well-intentioned whims.
“I think the two of you will get along very well,” his mother-samar had said, a twinkle in her eye that never failed to make Damiyr reel back in dismay.
“How can we get along at all?” he’d said, scowling. “I’m not a nursemaid.”
But his mother had only laughed and took his face between her hands to press a kiss to his forehead. “Be careful, my son.”
“Always.”
And now Damiyr eyes the khanjar jostling against her mare’s rump and wonders if she’s ever held a weapon in her life, since she apparently hadn’t thought to bring one of her own when she went chasing after her father. The knife was one the royal household had provided, along with nearly everything else in her pack.
A nursemaid indeed, he thinks sourly.
“Ride with your back straight,” he says curtly, ignoring Shahzadeh’s amused glance. “And use your knees for balance, not your bottom.”
He finds spiteful pleasure in Cleo’s indignant blush.
.
.
.
When they make camp for the night--when Damiyr and his company make camp, and Damiyr directs the girl in the menial tasks--he pulls the khanjar and sheath from its holster while Cleo watches him with apprehension in her eyes. She’s still sunburnt from her foray alone into the desert, before he’d scooped her up and been forced to make for the capital; any skin she’d had exposed is an unnaturally bright pink in the waning sunlight, and he wonders if she’s pained by it. Certainly it must annoy her.
That does not bring such spiteful pleasure.
“Come,” he says, while the others are otherwise occupied, “I’ll show you how to use this. Better you know how to defend yourself than be a complete burden.”
“Is something really going to attack us out here?” she asks, not without some sarcasm in her voice.
“You answered that for yourself at the oasis.”
Her mouth presses into a thin line, but she says nothing; Damiyr beckons her and says again, “Come.”
She rises to her feet and gingerly takes the knife from his proffered hand, still in its sheath. He’d picked a smaller khanjar for her, not the finest their armoury had to offer, but serviceable and well-balanced and manageable for a beginner.
But the way she holds it seems to suggest it would come alive and bite her. Damiyr sighs and arranges her fingers around the hilt in the proper way.
“This is a khanjar--dagger is your word, I think,” he explains, covering her hand with his on the hilt. The khanjar is too thick at the tang and too curved at the blade to be called a dagger of her people, but it’s the closest approximation he can make. “It’s like a lover--do not hold it too tightly, or it will pull you down where it goes, but also do not hold it too loosely, or it will leave you when you least expect it.”
Her cheeks turn as pink as her sunburn, but she nods determinedly. Her grip is too tight when he lets go, her knuckles white with strain, and he flicks the back of her hand with his finger.
“Looser,” he says.
“But--”
She is afraid of it, and probably rightly so. She is afraid to cut herself or most of all someone else, and so she holds the khanjar as if it will turn on her at any moment, as if it will leap out of her hand and cause harm.
“Trust me,” he says, more gently this time in spite of himself, because he knows the feeling. Even now, it gives him no pleasure to take up arms against anyone, even his enemies. “The khanjar should become like--how would you say...? Another part of your arm. Another limb of your body. You are its master, and you tell it where to go and how to move.”
She stares at him a moment, she of the wide, bottomless eyes, as if coming to a decision, and makes a conscious effort to loosen her grip, even if only minimally.
“I’ve never used… anything like this before, so start from the beginning,” she says cautiously.
“I supposed,” he says dryly, but doesn’t give her room to answer before he flicks the back of her hand again. “Looser.”
She groans.
.
.
.
He teaches her how to mount her horse more easily, and without risking tilting the saddle; teaches her how to ride without soreness; how to make camp and then break it without leaving any trace of themselves. He teaches her a great many things, with Shahzadeh’s help, and he’s not sure whether he’s pleasantly surprised or disappointed that she learns quickly and he only has to repeat things once or twice before she picks them up. She occasionally complains, but never in earnest, and never resists his instruction for more than a few breaths, even if it’s with reluctance.
She is the most reluctant when he teaches her how to wield the khanjar, how to grip it, how to maintain her stance, how to dodge and slash and stab and throw. Her grip is still too tight even after his constant correction, but that is a problem only time and familiarity with the weapon can really solve. He’s far more interested in giving her the means to defend herself, if necessary, long enough to give her the chance to run.
“Where did you learn all this?” she asks one night, tipping her head to indicate his own khanjar, at his feet, and his scimitar, slung naked over his lap as he polishes it. She is turning her sheathed khanjar over in her hands, brushing her fingers over the silver work.
The others lift their heads curiously, but Cleo speaks lowly and only Shahzadeh and Arim could possibly follow their conversation anyway.
“Weaponry?”
“You’re all soldiers, aren’t you? You’re their captain?”
So it hasn’t escaped her how he’s treated by the others. He doesn’t have the heart to correct her, to tell her that their reverence was only partly because he was their commanding officer.
“Aswaran salar,” he says. “I do not know if you would call it captain, but yes.”
Shahzadeh snorts loudly, over by Tabazin. Damiyr warns her with a glare.
Cleo doesn’t miss a beat, squinting her eyes suspiciously. “Aren’t you a little young to be a captain?”
He bristles, mostly because it’s to her credit that she’s wary, even without knowing he’d underreported his rank immensely. “When I first joined the cavalry, the damned wizard-king had just split the earth as it is now, and in that--we lost many good soldiers in the war, and with the gap we were at the mercy of brigands and foreign soldiers who couldn’t escape our borders even if they wanted to. Many of us became captains in those fights.”
“Oh.” She pauses, still fingering her khanjar thoughtfully. “What made you join the cavalry?”
“It seemed better than joining the infantry.” That’s true, at least. He doesn’t care to tell her that he still didn’t have much choice either way, as the infantry was below the mallaha’s sons, even third sons. He doesn’t care to tell her a lot of things, and for reasons he can’t really explain even to himself.
Mercifully, Shahzadeh is more absorbed in Tabazin to interrupt again, and Cleo seems to realize that she’s touched upon a dicey subject, because she doesn’t open her mouth again long enough for Barzayn to laugh so hard at one of Arim’s stories that he falls over.
And it feels almost natural, the seven of them.