"The Ring in Roundy Wells"
Achnacarry – 1837
The man stared at Penance for a time.
And for all that time Penance stared right back at him.
He was a tall and lanky fellow, broad-shouldered but thin-hipped. His face was narrowed like the rest of his body; hard bony lines graced his cheekbones and circled around his orbits, creating a nearly skeletal quality to his face. His large, pointed nose was a mismatch for the rest of his face, like a full castle turret sticking out of a dilapidated shack. His dusty, dun-colored hair clung to his head in careless and messy clumps, sides smitten with the shock of a more colorful yellow running from over his ears to the back of his skull.
"Good evening," he finally answered the boy.
The man's accent was devoid of any European influence; Penance's first thought was New England. It was a rather artless accent to carry through the British Isles.
"You're late for dinner, you know." Penance again blew a mess of bubbles out of the pipe.
"I'm not here for the food."
"No." Penance set the pipe down on the table beside his chair. "You're here to feast..."
The man's cobalt blue eyes narrowed. He clucked his tongue.
"I'm guessing you'd be the prey, then?"
The boy tilted his head, face ambivalent.
"What's your name?" Penance asked.
The man answered by reaching into a small pack on his back; Penance could hear the dull scrape of a steel blade being loosed from a scabbard.
"You see those windows in the hallway?" Penance motioned behind his chair with his head. "They're really narrow. Did you notice? You pull that thing out here and I'll run and dive out one of 'em. I'll be lost in the black woods long before you've found another way out of the house."
The man stopped, considering the boy's words carefully. Eventually he tilted his head, grunting, and then removed his hand from the pack.
"My name is Kingfisher," he said.
Penance arched his brow.
"That's a stupid name," he muttered.
The man cocked his head at Galabeg, sitting on the tabletop beside the boy.
"I suppose your name is 'Foxface', or the like?"
The boy smirked, again tilting his head ambivalently.
"Well, I'm not planning to rabbit on you. If you agree to my terms—"
"You know what I'm here for, child," Kingfisher said. "There's no sense you making it more difficult than it needs to be."
Penance tilted his head to the other side, rolling his eyes.
"I'm waiting for you by myself, in breeches, with just a li'l letter opener on my body." Penance patted the staghorn hilt of his knife, nestled in the waistband of his drawers. "This'll be the easiest thing in the world for you. If you agree to my terms. Otherwise I'll bolt for the woods, and you'll never find me, guaranteed."
Kingfisher crossed his arms, flaring the nostrils of his oversized nose.
"What are your terms, boy?"
"I knew you were coming, of course. I could've run from you at any time. Or set up an ambush. I didn't—"
"Color me grateful," Kingfisher smirked, shaking his head.
"The rules say I don't have rules, not when fighting the likes of you. But I say we play by 'em anyway."
The man blinked.
"You mean—"
"A 'fair Game'." Penance nodded. "You and me— one on one— to the death. But not here." He motioned to the door leading into Gilbarta's room. "Don't wanna disturb the lady, after all. And anyway if you're gonna lop off a young boy's head it's a little more prudent to do it out in the wilds and not in a fancy manor, right?"
Kingfisher looked back at the door, then at the boy. Again he flared his nose, thin skin of his face tightening over his hard cheekbones.
"One would be tempted to run, wouldn't one?"
"I've been able to run at any time, bird-man—"
"And you haven't. Is that for her?" He motioned back to the door. "Afraid of the... 'consequences' of leaving her alone?"
"'Consequences'?" Penance mumbled the word very softly, his rusty blue eyes ineffable.
"Use your imagination," the man answered.
Neither of them spoke again for nearly a minute; the only sound that passed between them was the light tapping of Penance's finger as he casually flicked the staghorn hilt of his knife. Finally the boy broke his gaze with the man, looking down at his knife.
"Before we start," he muttered. "Are you sure this is what you want?"
"I'd more say 'need'," Kingfisher said. "But that only dooms you even more, I'm afraid."
"And if you don't get what you need here, tonight," Penance looked up at him, his gaze cold. "The 'consequences'..."
Again Kingfisher looked back at Gilbarta's room, then he met the boy's gaze with a coldness to match.
"Everything has 'consequences', child."
Penance nodded in response.
"Yeah," he mumbled.
The boy slowly got to his feet, making Kingfisher take a small step back and again put a hand to his pack.
"I lead; you follow." Penance took Galabeg in one hand. "Stay back at least twenty feet, or I bolt. Keep your weapon sheathed, or I bolt. Do all that," Penance started walking down the hall, "and I promise that you'll get what's coming to you."
Kingfisher dutifully followed, smirking at the boy.
"We're a cryptic and ominous little thing, aren't we? I admire your confidence, child."
"I admire how your face is able to hold up that nose," Penance grumbled.
That reedy old butler met them at the bottom of the stairs; Kingfisher again reached into his pack as he saw the old codger waiting, but Penance sternly waved the man off.
"This doesn't concern you, or her ladyship," Penance told the butler. "Go back to bed—"
"I'm not one to take orders from a li'l hob," the butler grumbled. "Nor am I one to suffer uninvited—"
"Go to bed," Penance snarled. "And don't bother her ladyship, either!"
The boy's animal snarl was enough to still the butler's tongue. As he passed the old man, however, Penance did think to look back at him with a wan half-smile.
"Let Gilbarta know that I enjoyed playing the 'proper young lad' to her 'dignified lady'."
Penance looked back at Kingfisher, waiting on the middle of the stairs, and his smile disappeared.
"It's fun to pretend," he whispered.
X
X
X
Penance led the man out into the night and down the canopied path of the Dark Mile. Other than their feet shuffling over the gravel the only sound to meet their ears was crickets, broken by the occasional call of an owl.
To call it a 'tense' walk would be an understatement. Penance kept himself a good distance ahead of the sound of Kingfisher's steps. Every one of the man's footfalls in the gravel sent a shiver into Penance's spine; his body demanded he flee in blind panic.
His brain, however, managed to still his muscles.
Just barely.
Finally they reached the shore of Arkaig. The moon was out just enough to glint off the water. Penance clambered up on the side of a small boulder as he waited for the man to join him at the water's edge; he looked down on Kingfisher as the man reached the shore.
"Pleasant enough lake," the man mumbled.
"Loch," Penance corrected him.
"Reminds me of the bends of the Connecticut. There was always good trout up to be had up there, you know."
He turned his attention to the boy up on his boulder. Slowly he pulled a sword from his pack. It was a spadroon, its slender blade a tight beam of immaculate silver in the moonlight, the simple stirrup guard at its hilt made of bright brass, elegant in its own Spartan way but wholly utilitarian. 'Militaristic' would be Penance's description.
"I suppose you think me a monster, don't you, child?"
"Predators and prey don't give each other any 'thought'," Penance said.
"If you were neither?"
The boy shrugged.
"Watching a predator hunt— and prey evade— there's at least something to respect in both their efforts."
Kingfisher took a few slow practice swings with his narrow sword, grunting appreciatively. Again he looked out to the water.
"You're remarkably understanding for such a little thing. I suppose you might even understand where I'm coming from— an adult immortal. We're nothing like you pups, forever in shadows to your enemies' senses. Mmm. Life's a constant danger for you, I'm sure, and I don't doubt that nothing is ever 'easy' for you, but at the least you've got that one blessed gift: you move in shadows."
The man looked up at Penance, gently tapping his own chest.
"Us? Mmm. We're stronger, yes. Grown in body and better able to blend. Better able to navigate a 'satisfactory' life, as far as we can have it, yes. But what satisfaction is there, really, when your life's a constant bombardment of hunts, challenges, and violence? What 'life' is there when every day you fear the arrival of a new opponent?
"Our ability to live is our ability to overcome the next inevitable challenge: the next immortal that will sense our presence and comes to do battle. It never ends, and the opposition only gets stronger. That means we all must draw strength wherever we can draw it from."
Penance faced away from the man, moving further back on the boulder.
"I guess we do," he mumbled.
"Maybe some of us get greedy, too, and want more than is our right to have," Kingfisher said. "I suppose that's what really drove me here to you tonight, child. A certain greed..."
"To want more power to fight with, you mean?"
Kingfisher drew a long breath, letting it shuttle through his gigantic nose before answering.
"More like to protect what one has."
Penance looked back at the man with a dark scowl.
"What do you have to 'protect'?"
Kingfisher shrugged.
"Like I told you: something that's more than my right to have. Something more than 'satisfactory'."
Penance gently set Galabeg down on the rock beside his feet; he slowly pulled his little knife from his breeches, tightening his fingers around the hilt.
"Let's find out how much you want it, then..."
Kingfisher raised his spadroon and pointed it at the boy's bare back.
"Are you ready, child?"
Penance turned to face him, cocking his head.
"Who ever is?"
The boy took a long step backwards and then disappeared from view, falling through a cleft in the boulders.
Kingfisher quickly leapt atop the boulder and scanned the surrounding crags, blade at the ready.
"Did I not tell you, child," he barked, "of the 'consequences' of running?"
The boy's voice echoed up from the crags, sounding something like the wail from a sealed tomb.
"It's not 'running'," he said. "It's called 'going to ground'..."
Kingfisher, eyes narrowed, slowly clambered over the rocks, searching out the boy's hidey-hole.
"You think this will save you?" He challenged. "What about your 'fair Game'?"
"I am fair game," Penance answered. "A 'fox' always is, you know..."
Kingfisher took to stabbing his sword into the crags, blinking his eyes to adjust to the dark fissures.
"But you want to play unfair," Penance called up to him, "wanting to fight me head-on. Besides, there's a bigger mistake you've made, and it's a mistake you can't escape."
Kingfisher's eyes widened as he finally spotted the main cleft in the rocks; he slid down beneath the earth, sword held fast against any threats.
"What 'mistake', exactly, would that be, child?"
His boots lost their footing and he slid, uncontrolled, for some feet before landing at the floor of the cavern, legs sloshing in a brine of loch water and foul weeds.
Wan moonlight struggled in through small gaps in the rocks overhead. The place reeked of rot and decay.
And Penance's whispering voice, echoing off the cold cavern walls, was little more than a reedy hiss.
"Foxes... eat... kingfishers."
The man got to his feet quickly, sword braced for action, and he placed himself against a nook in the uneven walls, scanning the shadows all around the little chamber.
The boy's small shadow darted along the far side of the cavern, his feet splashing in the muck as he raced around the perimeter. Kingfisher followed, circling the opposite direction. Penance then went prone on the cave floor and propelled himself away from the rocky fringes of the chamber, sliding through the slimy floor on his bare stomach, as if he'd tripped.
Kingfisher stepped out after him, looking to spear the boy clean through his back.
Instead he speared his left leg right into one of the myriad tight, uneven crags lining the ground.
The man's broad boot wedged itself tight in the crag, displacing the foul water beneath it and making a vacuum-tight seal. Kingfisher desperately struggled to pull his limb free, and he managed to at least get his foot out, if not his boot.
And by then Penance was on him.
By now the boy had already slid all the way across the chamber, got to his feet and circled back along the edges, then he leapt at the man's body before Kingfisher could fully turn. Penance got him in the ribs with his little knife, twisting and tearing at his lung. For his part Kingfisher did manage to point his spadroon in the boy's direction, and it impaled Penance clean through the shoulder when the boy collided into him.
But Penance ignored that wound.
Kingfisher, in contrast, couldn't ignore the laws of momentum.
The boy's body hit Kingfisher hard, forcing the man to fall face first into the muck. He reflexively reached out to brace his fall.
And that's what doomed him.
His left hand found solid rock and support, the other found another narrow crag, and the force of impact drove his hand deep into the fissure, wedging the limb tight. It would take at least a brief moment for him to dislodge it.
Kingfisher didn't have a 'brief moment'.
On top of struggling to draw breath through his pureed lung, keeping his face out of the muck and fighting with his legs to find stable footholds in the slimy, hole-riddled ground he was helpless for that brief moment in time. And in that moment Penance took his little knife to the man's trapped sword-bearing arm.
And then Kingfisher's sword-bearing arm ceased to be capable of being called 'sword-bearing'.
Or an 'arm'.
In the aftermath he scrambled through the water, eyes bugged and delirious as he gaped at the now-vacant position where his arm once attached to his body. The bloody stump dried up as he gaped at it, mouth trembling. A mess of tight skin formed over the pathetic nub left in its place.
Penance carefully navigated the cavern floor, Kingfisher's narrow spadroon still driven through his shoulder, the brass hit glowing in the moonlight, its metallic luster beaming off the boy's bare chest. He held his little knife in a tight fist, and his eyes burned like rusty blue fire. The boy carefully licked at a small mess of white froth dribbling along his lower lip.
Kingfisher finally gave up the horrified gazing at his mutilated limb, instead looking up at the boy with a wild, hateful sneer. He screamed, clumsily getting to his feet, and he prepared to charge the boy.
Penance calmly loosed his little knife, almost as if shooting a lazy 'basket' with a wadded up ball of paper at a trashcan. It found Kingfisher's left eye with ease, and while the man dealt with that little boo-boo Penance took the hilt of the spadroon in one hand. He gently, deliberately slid the weapon out of his shoulder, as if pulling a splinter from his finger.
By the time Kingfisher managed to use his remaining hand to remove the boy's knife from his face Penance was there with the spadroon.
And then Kingfisher's 'remaining' hand quickly became less-so.
The man collapsed against the far wall of the cave, waving around the stub of his wrist in cold, unthinking terror. When he looked up at the boy standing before him, sword brandished by his side, Kingfisher took to inelegant, nonsensical mumbling.
Penance gave him a moment to collect himself, or at least get his wild breathing under control. When he finally did the man started sputtering half-formed sentences that barely made a lick of sense. The boy cut him off, pointing the narrow sword at the man's throat.
"You shouldn't have involved innocents; you really shouldn't have followed a boy into that manor—"
"No, I kno—"
"You shouldn't have threatened the lady of the house, either—"
"I wasn't going to—"
Kingfisher stared at the muck beneath him, face curling into a sickly, rueful frown. He scoffed, shaking his head.
"I wasn't going to hurt her. Not anyone, except for you. That was a bluff; I don't rightly have that in me, I don't think." He looked up at the boy. "Don't care if you believe that, or not. Supposing you shouldn't; there's no reason to."
Penance shook his head.
"No, I do believe that."
Kingfisher appeared incredulous, but Penance shrugged.
"You seem like a decent fellow, the whole 'decapitating children' thing besides. And I appreciated that little speech of yours; I agree with just about everything you said, too. It is hard for you adults, this Game, in ways that it isn't for us youths. Doesn't defend your actions, but it makes 'em more reasonable. And I can't defend many of the things I've had to do, myself. Point of fact is I actually like you, Kingfisher; as Game-players go you seem like an alright fellow. I don't hold a lick of hate for you."
Penance smiled. It was a warm, sincere smile.
And, by the Lord's honest truth, Penance genuinely meant every bit of it.
"You were doing what's in your nature, and I can't fault that. Like I said: a predator hunting— and prey evading— there's at least something to respect in both the efforts. Chasing prey in the field, on the run? That's just nature."
Kingfisher slowly, cautiously, reciprocated the boy's smile.
But the man's smile fell when Penance raised the spadroon, bracing it in both his hands, muscles tensed.
The boy's face turned cold.
When he spoke it was barely above a whisper.
"But you really shouldn't have followed a fox into its den."
Kingfisher's face sagged. The man first looked up at the glittering blade above him, and then at Penance's emotionless face. He swallowed a hard lump in his throat.
And then he closed his eyes.
Penance wouldn't have guessed it at the time, but the whole bleak cavern around them was actually quite pretty in its own right.
All it really needed, in the end, was some proper lighting.
