Chapter Eight Ruhlin
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ruhlin
He woke to the feel of a cool damp cloth upon his forehead. The unconsciousness that resulted from excessive use of a stagna was invariably rich in nightmares. But, although Ruhlin knew his sleep harboured uncounted horrors, upon waking he was grateful to find he couldn’t remember them in detail.
“Best if you don’t try to rise just yet,” Fernhyld advised, removing the cloth from his brow.
Her blindfold still in place, her fingers fluttered over his face before pressing them to his temples.
“No fever,” she mused. “You’re lucky. The last time a stagna put me to sleep I spent two days bathing in my own sweat.
Here.” She took a cup of water from the table beside his bed and held it to his lips, Ruhlin finding himself impressed by the surety of her movements.
“Are you truly unable to see anything through that?” he asked after draining the cup.
“It allows enough light to make out shapes. Shadows too. Stops me bumping into things. When I first got here my eyes were bound in a cloth so thick I fell constantly. Ohtera prevailed upon Silvahk to have an artisan craft me something better.”
Her words were partly smothered by a sudden cheer from outside, dozens of voices raised in acclaim. “It’s a practice day,” Fernhyld explained. “With the Vortigurn’s Meidvang drawing closer, the Ventra are keen that we make a decent show of things.”
“But you are excused?”
“My…” her hand touched the edge of her blindfold “… particular ability would put my fellow Kelven at great risk.”
Ruhlin began to ask about the precise nature of her ability but she moved to the door before he could compose a suitably subtle enquiry. “I’m sorry,” she said. “While I am spared practice, you are not.”
Following her outside, he found Ohtera in the arena.
She had adopted a predatory crouch, one long-nailed hand scraping furrows in the sand as she faced Hulyk, the younger of the two wrestling brothers.
Curiously, he saw none of the young man’s cocky bravado from the day before.
Instead, he stared at Ohtera with intense focus, features possessed of the rigidity Ruhlin knew to result from contained fear.
Silvahk stood upon a stone platform at the far end of the arena, one arm raised above his head.
“Keep to the rules,” the Ventra cautioned, Ruhlin noting how he directed his words at Ohtera rather than her opponent. “Fight!”
Ohtera moved the instant Silvahk’s hand descended, limbs flexing to send her into a high leap, and, as she reached its apex, she changed.
Muscles swelled and limbs stretched, Ohtera’s powerful, feline form fully roused by the time she descended upon her unfortunate opponent.
Ruhlin’s own transformations had never been so swift.
He was witnessing something remarkable, and also potentially useful.
To his credit, Hulyk actually managed to avoid Ohtera’s first attack.
With a speed and skill no doubt born of many hours’ practice, he launched himself into a backward flip, nimbly evading her lashing claws.
Lunging with inhuman speed, Ohtera caught him in mid-air.
Bearing Hulyk to the sand, Ohtera clamped one claw about his neck, pinning him in place as she reared.
The claws protruding from her free hand grew yet longer as she drew it back, poised for a killing strike.
“Enough!” Silvahk barked.
Ohtera rolled away from her victim in unhesitant obedience, shifting back into her human state even before the sand had fallen. She strode towards Ruhlin and Fernhyld, none of the rancour from the previous day showing in the smile she offered.
“It’s not in her to harbour a grudge,” Fernhyld told Ruhlin in a whisper before extending a hand to Ohtera, their fingers entwining in a gesture of habitual intimacy.
“Finally got him out of bed, then?” Ohtera observed, casting a critical eye of Ruhlin.
“I am grateful for her attentions,” Ruhlin said. “And feel I must beg forgiveness from you both. I spoke without thinking…”
“If I killed every Kelven who did that, this place would be empty,” Ohtera said. Pursing her lips, she added, “Which, I realise now, may not be a terrible notion.”
“Amundyr!” Silvahk called from his perch. “Tremyn!” He tossed two wooden staves into the centre of the arena. The taller brother strode forward to take up one of the weapons, moving with much the same reflexive obedience shown by Ohtera. Ruhlin stayed put, levelling a steady gaze upon Silvahk.
“Don’t test him,” Ohtera warned. “He dislikes you enough as it is.”
Still, Ruhlin refused to move until the Ventra sent an icy pulse through his stagna. Having identified a crack in this chain, it was important to keep straining it. “My name is Ruhlin,” he told Silvahk as he stepped forward, scooping up the other stave.
The Ventra merely laughed before speaking on. “Just weapons,” he told them. “No blessings. Let’s see if mighty Amundyr has learned the meaning of restraint.”
This time when he raised his hand he brought it down with barely a pause. “Fight!”
Tremyn attacked immediately, jabbing a feint at Ruhlin’s head before slashing at his legs.
In Tahrim Kyrn, Guthnyr had made efforts to teach Ruhlin some sword craft.
A surprisingly patient tutor, the warrior had done his best to impart the basic tenets of combat, which boiled down to three principles: Never be still. Never be timid. Always be quick.
So, when Tremyn’s stave came whistling towards his legs, instead of trying to dodge clear, Ruhlin crouched and lunged.
He took the blow on his thighs, a painful slap sure to leave a bruise, but lacking the force to break a bone.
Closing the distance to his opponent, he thrust the point of his stave at Tremyn’s face.
However, he proved to be both skilful and equally swift, ducking under Ruhlin’s attack and parrying the subsequent, clumsy blow to his chest. Before Ruhlin could draw back, Tremyn’s elbow came up in a blur to slam into his nose.
Staggering, Ruhlin tasted blood before doubling over as Tremyn’s stave connected hard with his midriff.
Never be still. Whirling, Ruhlin lashed out with his stave, wood clattering as his foe once again parried the strike with ease.
Spitting the iron taint from his mouth, Ruhlin sidestepped the next attack, suffering only a glancing blow to his arm.
It stung, however, combining with the pain in his gut and streaming nose to stir a worrying heat in the centre of his being. The monster had been roused.
“Don’t!” Ruhlin grunted, feeling the veins thicken along his arms. He strove for a resumption of the brief sense of connection he had experienced in the Vikra-sah, but all he felt was mounting fury.
Dropping his stave, he stepped back from Tremyn, raising his swelling hands.
Unfortunately, his opponent appeared too intent on securing a triumph to notice Ruhlin’s burgeoning transformation.
Gripping his stave in two hands, he swung a blow at Ruhlin’s back and found his weapon ensnared in a rapidly growing fist.
Letting out a growl, the monster tightened its grip, shattering Tremyn’s stave into splinters.
Through the encroaching red haze, Ruhlin saw the young Kelven’s face riven by a sudden, dire comprehension.
He tried to backpedal but was too slow, the monster slamming the flat of his hand into the centre of Tremyn’s chest. He landed fifteen paces away, scattering sand as he rolled across the arena and lay still.
Ruhlin expected the stagna to flare at any second, so was surprised when the monster was permitted to take a step towards Tremyn’s slumped form.
Then another. Silvahk wants to see me kill, Ruhlin realised, his vision now a thickening crimson veil.
He implored the monster to stop, trying to summon images of peace and kindness to placate it.
The wondrous warmth of Aleida’s embrace.
Ryma laughing as she bounced on the bear’s back.
Guthnyr’s good-natured taunts at his fumbling attempts with the sword.
The monster ignored it all, halting at Tremyn’s unmoving form and raising a foot to pulp his head.
“Stop!”
The monster came to a halt as a pair of figures rushed into his path.
Through the red haze, Ruhlin made out Fernhyld and Ohtera.
The blindfolded woman huddled protectively at Tremyn’s side while Ohtera crouched in readiness.
Her transformation was only partially complete and Ruhlin felt the monster’s interest as it watched her face shift into something that was more cat than human.
He expected an upsurge of rage at her defiance, but instead experienced a welling sense of fascinated recognition.
The heat of the monster’s ire cooled then faded with unusual swiftness as it backed away from Ohtera, Ruhlin resuming his prior form within seconds.
Ohtera straightened in response, her own transformation ebbing.
They stood regarding each other with mirrored expressions of bafflement until a sharp pang from the stagna provoked a shout from Ruhlin.
“I said no blessings,” Silvahk said. Gesturing a dismissive hand at Tremyn, he added, “Get him to the physician. For every broken bone, Amundyr misses a meal.”
“What was that?” Ohtera muttered to Ruhlin as they carried Tremyn’s unconscious form along a narrow passageway. Hulyk accompanied them, his expression veering between impotent animosity at Ruhlin and tearful concern for his brother.
“It’s what I become,” Ruhlin replied. “A beast with no thought save rage.”
She shook her head, eyes narrowing in calculation that told of reappraisal.
Clearly, the conclusions she had formed about him had been mistaken.
Whether her prior opinion had been too favourable or insufficiently negative, he couldn’t tell.
“No, it thinks,” she said, a note of surprise in her voice. “You just can’t hear it.”