"Edges of Kindness"
Letterewe – 1650
The bark shattered like glass. A chunk of the aged stuff sailed off the ancient tree, exposing the lighter pith beneath. Sap bled from the trunk. It was satisfying, but Penance's knife didn't impale that tree as he planned; instead it went careening off with the bark, landing a few yards away.
The boy squinted and let a huff escape his lips.
He picked up another little knife from the pile beside him and gripped the blade tight. Taking a deep breath he reached back, arching his feet up and down in time, looking something like a cat wiggling its hindquarters in the brush before a pounce. It was ages before he let the knife fly, but when it did it struck true: part of the blade clung to the tree at a clumsy angle. It fell off after only a few seconds, but it was the best throw he'd had all afternoon. Penance was rather pleased.
Uallas, however, was not.
"What's all this, then?" The man barked at the boy as he descended the hill behind him. "What ruinous sport do we play, lad?"
Penance picked up another knife by its blade and motioned to the tree.
"Just throwing some knives around—"
Uallas ripped the handle right from Penance's hand, and the blade ripped into the boy's palm as it went. Penance winced, pulling his slashed palm away. He balled his fist and pouted at the man sarcastically:
"Ouch," he muttered.
Uallas wagged the knife before his eyes:
"Knives're for two things: cutting and stabbing. If you didn't hear 'throwing' in that list, it's because that didn't make it on!"
Penance motioned to his practice tree:
"Well, if I gotta defend myself I figure I might as well be able to do it before anyone else has a chance to get close to me—"
"And if you miss, lad?"
Penance opened his mouth to answer; after a terrible half-second pause he realized that he couldn't.
Uallas scoffed:
"Just so," he growled. "You'd be finishing the fight with only your fists to aid you. And even with a successful throw there are precious few spots on a man one can hit to stop him dead in his tracks." Uallas motioned to his throat. "This would be the most obvious— yes, a nice and soft target— but it's a rather small target, isn't it?" The man shook his head, grey eyes disdainful. "And in the heat of battle you'd do well to hit your man at all."
"There are other targets," Penance crossed his arms, pout deepening.
"Well, yes. In fact there are. Like the spine, perhaps," Uallas shrugged. "If your enemy is stupid enough to present his back to you, and if you manage enough force to split the bones. That's quite a lot of force involved, especially for a skinny-armed little boy—"
"I'm stronger than other boys, Uallas!"
"But not smarter, it seems." Uallas picked up the remaining knives and shook his head. "Put any thought of throwing your weapons out of your mind. It's folly, and it's nonsense; it's the kind of ploy told in silly stories made up by folks that don't know how a real fight is fought."
Real fight? Please, Penance thought. According to the man himself that was supposed to be the last thing on Penance's mind, not that you'd know it from the training he received so far.
By now Penance was masquerading as an 'apprentice' at Uallas' forge. Well, that wasn't exactly fair: technically he was Uallas' apprentice, but he spent only part of his time fiddling around up there. Most of his time was spent in training, and it was exhausting training. Despite Uallas poo-pooing Penance's ability to learn swordplay the boy got plenty of experience; he learned basic blocking techniques, disarming, and footwork. But then, as Uallas predicted, any time the man chose to take off the kid gloves things got messy pretty fast. Every time Uallas actually made a real go at Penance with all his might the boy was no match whatsoever. Even if the boy managed to land some tactical victory against Uallas— maybe nick him in the leg and get him off balance for a brief moment, or slice open one of the man's arms, forcing him backward— he could never fully capitalize on it. The man would invariably power-through Penance's defenses at will and skewer the boy like a kebab. It was frustrating work.
And it was painful work, too.
Penance followed Uallas up the hill, moving in the man's sour wake. Despite his spirited protests the boy didn't relish the idea of displeasing him. In fact he genuinely strove for the opposite: he remembered that crooked, toothy grin the man gave Penance when the boy managed to forge his first 'passable' blade; that time he whooped for joy, leaping to his feet when Penance made his first kill with a bow (rest in peace, little rabbit); or those very rare times when, despite himself, the boy managed some accident of brilliant swordsmanship in their sparring lessons— enough to even give the old man pause— and Penance got that wordless, warm look to the eyes and a ruffle to his hair.
That was actually kinda nice.
Well, he preferred it to disappointment, at least. That was all, really. Of course it was. It was only practical for him to feel that way.
Now, all that said, it didn't mean Penance was above childishly pressing his point when he wanted to:
"I thought you weren't trying to teach me how to fight a 'real' fight," Penance caught up to the man and walked alongside him. "You said you were supposed to teach me how to avoid a real fight, isn't that right?"
"Too true. But it is best to at least have some understanding of what you're trying to avoid, isn't it?"
"Not really. It's frustrating. And it's painful. And it's useless, I think."
Uallas stopped walking. The pair was within sight of the homestead, and the old man cracked his spine as he watched the sun fall into a bank of burning clouds.
"Then it may be time, my dear child, to move on to something more useful for you." He looked down at the boy, and his gray eyes were razor daggers. "Mind you, Penance, that as the usefulness of your training increases, so too might the pain." Uallas grinned widely, yellowed teeth poking out his mouth like a bed of bleak thorns. "And so too might the frustration..."
The man walked off, leaving Penance to contemplate his vaguely threatening words. Penance shook his head, snorting through his nose:
"I get enough of that from you, don't I," he growled. "It's no big deal throwing a little extra into the mix, is there?"
But as it turned out Penance had no idea what 'frustration' was— or 'pain', for that matter. Uallas had finally decided to unleash his grand plan for the true focus of Penance's training. It's actually kinda funny: the boy thought he had an idea of what 'hell' really was.
He was wrong.
He was very wrong.
X
X
X
It was near year's end in the Scottish highlands, and as the rains picked up Cadha's garden became a quagmire of loose soil. Soon, under unrelenting rains from the ocean, the soil began dripping like a snotty nose all down the hill, and with the soil came all the plants of her garden. The woman took it upon herself to remedy this situation and shore up the faltering soil, taking little Struana out with her early every day to assist. When Penance offered to lend a hand she scoffed in his face.
"Ha! Neither man nor boy can truly know the proper way to build up a garden, can 'ya? Tha's a thing to do wi' life, is it no'? Man and boy— I should say— are far more familiar in dealin' in the opposite, are they no'?"
Surprisingly that was the most radical feminist statement Penance would be exposed to for over 300 years. Go figure.
One day he awoke to the sound of rain hammering the thatch roof over his head. Lightning flashed outside, falling in bands on the floor around him. Penance yawned and stretched. He got to his feet, scratching at his head, and tried to orient himself to time. It was around 6:00, or a little earlier, maybe. Cadha and Struana would be down at the gardens by now, and Uallas wouldn't be up for another hour, at least. Penance thought he might try to pinch a chunk of goat's cheese from the kitchen before breakfast. Uallas wouldn't know, after all, and what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
As soon as Penance stepped through his doorway he bumped right into Uallas; the man looked down at Penance with a calm, cold smile, but the boy could only gape up at him with trembling eyes. Penance's body began to shudder, and then a trickle of blood dripped from his lips.
He fell right back into his room, landing on his sheets. Uallas stood over him, bloody knife still in his hands. Penance raised limp arms, trying to cover up that gaping wound in his chest. Blood ebbed from his body, flowing over all, moving in an ordered cadence in time with his heartbeat. That heartbeat came to a stop pretty quickly.
He woke up in a cold sweat, bathed in a sea of dried blood. The room reeked of his blood's metal, like a copper smelter. It was so strong he could taste it on his tongue. He struggled to drag himself to the doorway, and within a few seconds he had the wherewithal to find his feet. He found Uallas at the breakfast table, chewing on a wedge of cheese and humming very cheerily to himself.
Penance motioned to his bare chest, still saturated in dried blood:
"What... the...hell?" He snarled.
"Good morning to you, too." Uallas smiled insincerely.
Penance slammed one hand on the table, and it left a crusty red handprint:
"You stabbed me! And my room is a mess!"
"Indeed," Uallas nonchalantly munched on his cheese. "We're at the next 'phase' of your training, child: what I call the more 'practical' experience that you can gain from me. You're to learn a grand lesson for yourself in this phase— a great deal about yourself, too— and I agree: this was a most disappointing start. Perhaps tomorrow you'll show some improvement, lad."
"Whaddya mean 'tomorrow'?"
Uallas leaned back in his chair, resting his burly arms behind his head:
"It occurs to me that I have been too kind to you of late. In training as serious as yours to even show the very edges of any kindness to you might be a death sentence. You wasting time the other day throwing around those knives only proves this fact."
"It only proves that I'm bored with your training—"
"It proves," Uallas growled and pointed at the boy, "that you do not know what it is you truly are."
"I'm annoyed," Penance mumbled.
"You're ignorant of what it is you are. And until you know just what exactly you are, boy, we'll be stuck in this phase of training. Tomorrow morning— the very same time as today— I intend to walk into your room, lad. Once there I intend to kill you, and I'll do it in whatever way brings me the most amusement. Perhaps I'll pierce your chest again, or perhaps I'll snap that little neck of yours like a loaf of bread at the table. Who knows? Maybe I'll just press that precious little face of yours into your own washbasin and hold it down until you stop blowing bubbles. There's a million different ways, really. Your only task is to stop me, in whatever way you can. Victory in this training will only come when I am no longer able to threaten you, and defeat will end with you crumpled in a bloody heap, nice and 'dead'." The man's grin spread. "Were I you, Mo Flath Beag, I would become very accustomed to the idea of 'defeat' in the days ahead, because we'll do this as long as need be. Until the stars fall from the sky, perhaps. I've plenty of time, after all..."
Uallas tossed a bar rag into Penance's hands; he pointed at the bloody print on the tabletop:
"Now clean that, if you'd be so kind. And then get back to your room and clean all your linens and the floor. You'll have just enough time before the ladies return, I should think."
The man stood up and began walking off. Penance still stared at the empty chair, his rusty eyes vacant.
"Uallas... Uallas, you're kidding, right?"
The man looked back at the boy, and he sported a very twisted grin:
"'Kidding' boy? It seems an odd joke, doesn't it? Not funny at all, really. I would think that once we're done here, Penance, you'll think this more a nightmare..."
He left the boy alone to stare down at his bloody handprint.
And his face must've been priceless.
