32. Rust
Rust
Ghost knew the way down, and led Kain along a hidden path that ran off the far side, down to the south. The slopes below took him some time to work through, but he managed it, and when he finally came out it was well into the afternoon.
Roan stood easy at the dead tree, with none of the look of a horse that had been anywhere near a gryphon, which meant their trip up had gone unnoticed. That was worth something.
Kain gathered up the empty buckets, swung up onto Roan, and rode for home.
He knew Sasha would want to hear how it had gone, but he had nothing solid to tell her yet. He had thoughts. He needed to chew on what he had seen before any of it was worth saying out loud.
The hills rolled past while his mind worked over the day. He had seen the beast's patterns. He had seen the way it fed.
He was getting to know the creature, and it wasn't leaving on its own. The only question left was how to deal with it.
More and more he came back to the same answer. He was going to have to fight it himself. No adventurers were coming. Nobody was going to ride out into the back hills and take this off his hands.
When Kain made it home, he turned Roan out into the small pasture and glanced over at the garden. Weeds had come up in the rows, and he didn't have time for them today.
He went up the steps and pushed the door open, and the hinges let out a long groan. They wanted grease. That would wait too.
Ghost followed him in. In the bedroom Kain crouched and drew the sword out of its sheath once more, and it came free with a soft ring of steel.
For a moment he only held it. The blade caught the afternoon light, bright along the edge where the oil had cleaned the rust away. It sat heavy in his hands.
His hands had known hammers and shovels since he came here, and he hadn't drawn this since the wolves.
Ghost looked up at the blade and didn't flinch from it. The last time the wolf had been this close to it, Kain had turned the flat and knocked the animal down rather than cut it down. They both remembered that.
He nodded to the wolf, then carried the sword out to the barn.
He didn't want to be seen at this, and the house had no room for it. He left the barn door open but kept himself well back from it, out of sight of the road. Ghost padded up and lay down in the open doorway.
He undid his belt, ran it through the hook of the sheath, and cinched it down again. The weight on his side was familiar in a distant way, like meeting an old acquaintance he hadn't seen in years. He stood a moment and let himself get the feel of it back.
It threw his balance off a little, where once he had worn it without thinking, and now it slapped at his left leg and lay in wait to trip a man who had forgotten how to walk with it. He closed his eyes and took a few steps forward, then a few steps back.
He turned left, then right. Basic movements. A dodge. A leap. A duck. He drilled a string of punches forward, then spun and drilled them backward. It wasn't long before his breath came hard, and he paid it no mind.
He fetched a square hay bale from the back, the kind kept for Roan's stall, hauled it to the middle of the floor, and set it down. He stripped off his tunic and threw it aside, and in his undershirt he took hold of the hilt.
"All right," he muttered. "Let's see what's left."
He drew the blade for the first time since the wolves. Cleaning it was one thing. Drawing it to use was another matter entirely.
It hung heavy in his palm, and he closed his fingers around the grip.
「Notice: Your Blade skill has gone rusty. Practice will be needed to bring it back.」
He set his feet one at a time. He readied his body, tightening some muscles and loosening others, work he had done a thousand times. His body knew it well.
His mind came along slower, but his body didn't wait on it. His arms were solid. His feet pointed where they ought to.
He had no wish to take his own arm off because he got eager. A professional knew the work that needed doing and did it with care, stakes high or low.
He swung the blade once, then twice, and his fingers began to find their old strength. He remembered the small shift of the grip. He drove the point through the hay bale and out the back of it.
"Good." He pulled the blade free and raised it. "Now let's get to work."
He moved through the forms, slow at first, then faster. He slashed and spun in short, controlled movements, the ones every other strike was built on.
Some men skipped the basics and threw themselves straight into a fight. A few of them got good at it. Most of them died the first time they met something they had never seen before.
He spun and cut at the bale, drove the blade deep, pulled it out and stabbed again on the turn. His breath came fast and he kept on, pushing as hard as he could. High, low, right, left. At last he stopped, soaked through with sweat.
「Blade: Restored.」
"Not bad." He sheathed the weapon. The hay bale was a ruin of loose straw, and he set it by Roan's stall to go down when he next mucked it out.
He went back inside and took down Sarah's old bow. It was a fine thing, handmade, one of the best he had ever handled. She had worked elegant swirls into the wood, and there wasn't another like it anywhere.
The pull came in around a hundred pounds, and she had put it to good use in her day.
He pulled down a handful of arrows and carried the bow out to the trees behind the house. He strung it carefully, half expecting it to snap after so long unstrung, the wood gone brittle. The string came over the upper limb and held.
He raised the bow and fit an arrow to it.
"Never was my strong suit, a bow," he said. "Let's see if I can manage the bare minimum."
He drew the string back and pointed it at the big oak straight ahead, one he had eyed for a while as a job for later. It would take an age to fell, hemmed in by so many others that there was no sense starting on it until he had cleared its neighbors.
He sighted on a knot in the trunk and let fly. The arrow struck just under the knot, a couple of inches low. Not his best, and he could do better.
He drew again, and again.
Arrow after arrow thudded into the trunk. One low, one high, one off to the right. Kain set his jaw and sighted carefully down the next shaft.
「Notice: Your Archery skill has gone rusty.」
"I know," Kain muttered. "It'll improve."
「It will take many hours.」
"Then that's what it takes." Kain fit another arrow. "Either tell me something useful or nothing at all."
He loosed arrow after arrow. The sun slid lower through the afternoon, and at last a final line appeared.
「Archery: Restored.」
「Combat Readiness: Operational.」
Kain nodded. His body still held the B-rank mercenary it had been. That trained edge wouldn't leave him, even if he had to drag it back out into the light.
The rest of him was a green hand at farming, a long way down the ladder. The gryphon wouldn't care which of the two showed up to meet it. He would need both of them strong enough when it came to that.
The more he turned it over on his way back inside for the evening, the surer he grew that it would come to exactly that.