The Huntress and the Hunted: Whiterun Interlude
The clash of steel echoed through the courtyard of Jorvasskr.
Arnsmyth fainted left then closed distance inside Vilkas' swing arc, bashing him with his shield and swatting the flat of his blade across his torso before backing off again.
"That's three touches total for the new blood" announced the twin Farkas gruffly from the veranda as the others watched them.
"Three to nothing," Aela whistled "You're starting to look like the old one, Vilkas"
Vilkas said nothing, just continued circling with his greatsword, glaring at Arn with the same look he'd given him at the farm when he'd bickered with him over killing the giant.
Then he lunged in fast, bringing down a mighty swing that Arn sidestepped and tried to counter, but Vilkas got his handle and blade up, shouldering them into Arn, knocking him momentarily off balance, allowing Vilkas to pivot and spin, bringing his blade across Arn's lower back.
"Ugm..." Arn groaned, glaring back at Vilkas. This was only supposed to be a touch match. Five touches wins. No actual striking.
Guess Vilkas really didn't like him, Arn thought as he felt blood trickling down his lower back. The slash must have either broken the metal plate or hit just next to where the plating ended at his side.
"Three touches to one" announced Farkas.
"If you call that a 'touch'," spat Arn with contempt.
Everyone was silent as they continued circling each other.
Vilkas moved to strike again, but this time Arn had been watching for the tell in his hands, exploding in on him again and catching his downswing with the edge of his shield before following through with a pommel strike from his sword hand to Vilkas' face and slashing with the flat of his blade across his torso as he kicked him away.
"Grrr..." Vilkas growled at him, spitting out blood, and Arn saw something in him was changing. His eyes were a different color.
"Four touches to one...Vilkas, be careful" Farkas announced.
They continued circling and there was no mistaking it now. Vilkas' eyes had turned from a dark brown to a silver white while he continued growling at him in a way that didn't seem right either.
Arn had seen men lose themselves to blood lust, but he'd never seen someone's eyes change color or shape. This had to be something else, some strange magic at work.
Then Vilkas attacked, but faster and far more fiercely than he had before or even than Arn thought should be humanly possible.
He only had half a second to get his shield up before Vilkas rained down blows so fierce and fast, it knocked Arn to the ground.
In the space of two or three seconds, Vilkas had hit him with six or seven repeated overhead swings of a greatsword. It was all Arn could do to block them, but the seventh blow hit so hard, he felt something snap in his shield arm and pain shoot up his arm.
"Vilkas! STOP!" yelled Farkas
"Vilkas! Get ahold of yourself!" followed Aela's shout.
Arn thought they were going to intervene but he couldn't wait that long.
Pulling his shield in closer to help his ailing arm, he rolled into Vilkas' legs as he was bringing his sword down again, knocking him down.
Ignoring the shooting pains in his shield arm, Arn sprang to his feet in time to be facing Vilkas on his feet again.
This time Arn went on the offensive, feinting in for a high shoulder strike before swinging underneath Vilkas' block and tapping him on the left side of his abdomen with the tip of his sword, pushing Vilkas away from him in the process.
"Five touches...I win" growled Arn, staring Vilkas straight down the blade of his sword.
"Grrraaaaaahhhh!" bellowed Vilkas.
"VILKAS! STOP!"
"VILKAS!"
Arn heard the cries of the others but they only just now started off the porch and were too far away to stop or intervene in any attack Vilkas made.
Vilkas growled again, louder this time and more feral. Arn thought his hair of his beard was also suddenly a lot longer.
Then in a feat of superhuman ability, Vilkas ran to the side, leaped on a rock sideways and used it to spring across straight at Arn twenty feet sideways in the air!
This would not stand.
"FUS RO!"
The partial word of power erupted from Arn, caught Vilkas midair, and sent him flying backward into the rocks like a rag doll, knocking his sword free and knocking him unconscious.
Then it was a rush of people converging, all the companions going over to Vilkas and huddling around him, meanwhile Lydia and a few other hopefuls came rushing up to check Arn over with a pouch full of potions.
"And here I thought the Companions were all about being honorable warriors" sneered Lydia angrily as she carefully tried to get at the cut on his back without causing anymore pain.
As Arn moved to allow one of the other new recruits to take his shield off, he gritted his teeth at the pain in his arm, which immediately caught Lydia's attention as she raced around to cradle his arm carefully with that cute scrunched up face of hers.
"You have more serious injuries...we're going to need to get that armor off" she said, carefully shepherding him toward Jorvasskr's door.
"Yes...we do need to get him out of that armor" said Aela, walking up to them.
Her honeyed tone and exaggerated cocking of her hip, combined with her already barely-there leather armor suggested she wasn't talking about healing, and no one could fail to notice it.
"Is there somewhere he can use where your friends aren't going to try anything else stupid?" snarled Lydia, glaring daggers at her.
"Sure, we can find a nice, private spot" Aela grinned at Arn who would've been more intrigued if the pain in his arm wasn't forcing all his concentration from him at the moment.
"It's...not...that...bad" gritted Arn, the pain making him annoyed at everyone.
"Yes, it is" insisted Lydia, returning her attention to him "We're going home...now" she glared back a warning at Aela, who simply shrugged and took a seat on the porch and crossed her long bare legs as she watched them go.
Once they were back in Breezehome, Arn got more cantankerous.
He wasn't used to anyone removing his armor or looking after him.
Part of him detested moving this way and that as Lydia unbuckled the clasps that held on the plating and slowly removed them, but part of him also felt comforted by her every touch, being able to forget the pain with every momentary brush of her fingers or arms on him.
Once the plating, leather jerkin, and cotton undershirt were gone, he sat bare-chested on the edge of his bed as Lydia sat behind him with a platter of poultices and potions, examining the ugly gash on his lower back.
"My arm is much worse than my back" he muttered, wincing again as he shifted.
"Yes, but once I get your back taken care of, you'll be able to lay down while I work on your arm" she replied
She began cleaning the wound up a little which caused him to stiffen slightly.
"Oh no...it's ok...just a little more" she almost whispered to him while calmly patting and caressing above his wound.
Arn couldn't hide his grin. He really was getting the baby treatment. Not that it was that bad. It was making him forget the pain and making him want awful badly to lean into the warm touch of her hand more.
"Hey! What are you grinning at?" she asked while applying a powerful regenerative potion that Arn could immediately feel taking effect, the pain in his back lessening to almost nothing.
"You...you're completely treating me like some milk drinker who's never gotten a splinter in his life"
"And how many times are you going to try to tell me 'It wasn't that bad?'" Lydia asked, the last part in a deep mockery of as much of a male voice as she could come up with.
"Why? It actually wasn't-"
"See! That's what men always say" she said, tapping a finger on his good shoulder chastisingly, "Then they groan and bellyache and secretly cry and let it fester...and in the end, they finally have to get more help"
Arn turned his head with a raised eyebrow as she continued.
"Raised in Kynareth's temple...remember? Do you know almost every grown man that showed up for healing was always worse off because he refused to come at first because 'it's wasn't that bad'?"
"Yes, well, I doubt most of them could do this" replied Arn as he moved his right hand over the left injured arm and began whispering the words to the healing spells, a blue light glowing from his hand and encircling his injured arm.
Lydia stared in silence as he moved up and down his injured arm twice before relaxing his right hand and flexing his left arm around to test how healed it was.
"You're a Restoration Mage too?!" she asked incredulously, moving off the bed to come around, watching him flex this way and that.
"No..no, no. I'm not gifted with enough magicka to be a mage, but I have tried to learn a few spells that will help in my line of work. If you spend your life with sword in hand, you have to expect you'll need healing or need to heal someone else at some point."
"So...once I got the pain level down, you were able to focus your willpower better?" she surmised, getting to her feet in front of him.
"Yeah...you know about restoration magicka?"
"Kynareth..remember?"
"Right...did you ever try practicing any?"
"No..I figured I wasn't magicka inclined enough to be a mage or healer, so better to focus on my martial skills"
They were both silent for a long moment before Arn realized she was staring at his bare chest.
Arn was going to give her a hard time, but for some reason the memory of her passionate kiss in the cave after they first met leaped unbidden into his mind and he found himself staring at her lips.
Knowing his loins were stirring and there would not be much to conceal it, Arn needed a way out.
"So...hungry?" he felt like he blurted out, startling her out of whatever she was thinking or fantasizing about. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best thing to say if they were both thinking about rutting.
"Oh...sure...uh...let me fix something for you" she said, a bit flustered before hurrying out of his room and downstairs.
After throwing his cotton undershirt back on, he took his time checking any damage to his armor before going downstairs to find Lydia standing over a stew bubbling on the newly installed oven.
"So much nicer to have some furnishings now" he said, easing into a chair at the table.
"Yeah..." she answered indirectly, not taking her attention off the stew.
Arnsmyth saw she had changed out of her armor at some point as well, now just left in her leather breeches and cotton undershirt.
Seeing her figure from behind in just the leather and cotton didn't help him take his mind off that kiss.
"So...you don't care for Aela that much it seems" he said, finding something to hopefully keep his mind off more intimate things.
"No...I don't" she replied, a frown crossing her face as she half turned to answer him.
"Is that because of what happened today or have you two never gotten along?"
"I...used to idolize Aela...when I was younger. She's about six years my senior. So I watched her do all sorts of things just before the time I could. She lived with her parents out in the wilds, got to hunt all sorts of things, and became a prominent member of the Companions...it was...everything I wanted...until a few years after my maidenhood."
"So...what changed?"
"When I had petitioned to join the companions at the end of my maidenhood, they said 'no' on account I was too young...even though I knew Aela had been accepted at a younger age than that and I knew she could've swayed them if she wanted."
"And?"
"And what?"
"I'm sensing more to this than that"
"Well...a few years afterward...when I had gone into the city guard, I found out about the men..." Lydia replied.
There was a long pause before she continued.
"Whereas I practically couldn't buy a man's attentions during my maidenhood, Aela had them following her in droves. That wouldn't have been bad, except she liked to play with them...string them along...seduce them, sometimes more than one at a time. Her nickname..the Huntress...isn't just about hunting animals" she said, turning to fix him with a stern look.
"So...you're jealous?" he muttered before instantly regretting his choice of words.
To his surprise, she didn't lash out. Worse, she stood with her head hanging in somewhat ashamed manner.
"I don't know...maybe...Just...it seems horrible to be given that much only to then use it like that...she doesn't even entertain marriage offers...it's like a joke to her or something when any man tries" she replied silently.
"And you're worried she'll get her claws into me?" surmised Arn.
"Yes..." said Lydia, blushing uncontrollably, avoiding looking up at him.
"Well, don't worry. I'm old, remember. It wouldn't be the first time a woman tried to seduce me" he replied matter of factly, retrieving some dishes for the meal.
"Oh..the old 'I'm too old for that' reason huh?" she brightened up at him with a raised eyebrow "So who were all these other seductresses that you left in your wake of oldness?"
He laughed.
"That would certainly NOT be appropriate dinner conversation. Maybe some time when I've had too much mead, then I'll talk about all my 'oldness' adventures" he replied before they both laughed and set about eating the stew she'd prepared.
Arn happily waited for his stew before having his heart jump into his throat as Lydia handed him a bowl. Her cotton undershirt had no buttons at the top and was partway open. When she leaned over to hand him the stew, he'd watched the fire light catch a glimpse straight down her shirt and between her large breasts hanging loose.
His loins were hardening again. Damn it. Couldn't he even eat a meal without being tormented so?
As he avoided looking at her, both of them eating in silence, Arn realized he needed to get away from her, even if just for awhile. Being around this beautiful woman was becoming harder and harder.
He needed to spend some time on his own, or better yet, with another woman. He hadn't had a woman besides Delphine in some time and he figured he was getting to the point if he didn't have nightmares about Desarra anymore, maybe he was ready to be able to please a woman properly again.
Maybe that's why he was having such a hard time focusing around Lydia. Maybe if he found another woman to be involved with, he wouldn't be thinking about her that way anymore.
He doubted Lydia would see it that way, though, and there was no way he was going to let her know he was struggling to keep her body out of his mind.
"So...I am going out tonight, I think" he said, breaking the long silence as they were finishing up.
"What do you want me to bring?" Lydia asked, brightening up.
"Nothing...I think you should stay and rest...I think I want to do some recon of the area northwest of here and I'll move a lot quicker and quieter on my own" he replied cautiously.
"You're the one who was injured today" she smirked, though he could see the hurt in her eyes at being told to stay.
"Yes, but I'm not tired and there's some things my mind won't let go. So I'd like to get a head start on finding the bandit hideouts for the Jarl"
"Ok...well...is there anything you want me to do while you're gone?"
"Just rest up...I'm sure looking after me and my 'oldness' must be tiresome sometimes" he replied, rising with a grin.
