Disclaimer: See previous chapters; I don't like being redundant.
Notes: All right. I'm considering returning back to the "present" time of this story in the next chapter, although there still is a chapter of history left in me to tell. Regardless, please let me know what you're thinking.
The morning after our departure – escape, if you must – I awoke early wanting to have a proper look at the horses. I had never in my life seen horses to large: they were sleek and glossy, but they were incredibly tall, especially to a short girl such as I.
Only Elan was awake at that time, and he bid me good morning with a slight inclination of his head. I was bombarded with the impression that every person in our party was maintaining a distance between themselves and I. In many respects, it made a good deal of sense: after all, they were to leave me, probably alone, in Sparta at the end of this journey. Emotions or attachments were apparently not a part of the requirements for the mercenary occupation. I found myself wondering about their pasts, about their histories: who were their parents? Would they have agreed with their current lifestyle? Who are their children, their lovers, their wives? Did they love them unconditionally?
I walked up to the same horse that had borne me the day before, looking him in the eye and patting his long nose softly. In the clean dew of the morning, I measured him to be above eighteen hands high – an astounding height to me. Satisfied, I gave him a final, rather inadequate brush with my fingers before returning to the dying fire of our camp.
The scent of jasmine was overpowering, and almost heavy in face of the fresh morning air. It was the scent of my home. I grew still, caught up in the impermeable nostalgia of my life in Macedonia with my family – a life that I probably would never return to, nor see the likes of ever again, Like poverty, and sickness, and the clammy texture of diseased flesh, it had in these short hours already become foreign to me.
Tristan, who was now up and walking around, began strapping his few belongings inside the saddlebag on his horse. He took a single, cool glance at my facial expression from under his hair, and then looked back to his task. He didn't even bother with good mornings or salutations, he merely ordered grimly, "If you must grieve, then save it for a better time." He pulled finally on the strap, and, satisfied with its security, began walking back to the fire.
I followed him. "Save it for a better time…what are you talking of?"
He sighed heavily, as if exasperated with me, and glared balefully from under his hair. I didn't care much for or about his glares, and he knew it, so he grudgingly elaborated as he laboured about his tasks. "You," he began, tossing water from a canteen on the remnants of the fire, "were about to get weepy, for whatever reason. In my experience," he stood and crossed over to where his weapons lay on the ground, "weepy females always bring disaster upon a group. So please," he faced me briefly, "save the weeping for when you're alone in Sparta."
I couldn't believe this boy! "I'm sorry," I said to his back as he turned to pick up his broadsword, "but you could just give me a slight amount of sympathy – I've left my entire family to the Romans, and I will probably never see them again!"
Tristan buckled the belt from which the shorter sword and its scabbard hung around his waist, answering lazily, "I could give you sympathy, but the enemies we will run into along the road to Greece will not." He looked me in the eye, and the thought of impending battle with thieves and rogues and Romans stopped me cold. He picked up the long sabre and its belt, and added very frankly, "You should be thankful you no longer have family to tie you down. You're no longer confined by propriety. You're free."
His last words lent a kind of brightness to his eyes that was all his own, as if this were a private knowledge of his that he was sharing with me. I didn't even know what to say, and he knew that as well.
He tightened the second belt around his waist, and then looked directly at me. "Get ready to ride," he said, "we leave very shortly."
Around me, as the morning brightened, the scent of jasmine was becoming fainter.
As the days past, Tristan unwittingly (and, on his part, probably quite unwillingly) became my anchor of sorts. It's a natural course for a person to take after suffering emotional devastation, to latch onto something or someone. Tristan was a boy of rarely surrendered and freely offered words, but I made it my business to coax them out of him. I held the baubles of information and wisdom that his words embodied to me like chainmail, as if they were all that I had left to protect my mind from insanity. Comparing him to how he is now, I suppose Tristan spoke more as a boy than as a man, and he was far less intimidating. It is difficult for a boy to be as grizzled and deadly as he is now. He also had a sense of humour, if slightly sadistic, but rarely laughed heartily and out loud.
Now, he is a man, and he has become as remote to me as the isle of Britain, a jagged landscape unfamiliar to all my senses.
On horseback, I had many conversations with him, as I was far too shy to acquaint myself properly with the rest of the party. They must have thought I was some sort of pompous twit of Macedonian nobility, which, in fact, I was.
Our dialogues must have gone something like this:
Day One: In Which Sir Tristan Actually Starts the Conversation
Hours had passed since we had left our first camp, and he turned to me quite suddenly, as if something had just occurred to him. "How useless are you in battle?"
At first, I was almost embarrassed: he had assumed that I was some idiot noble princess whose hands were like cream and had never seen blood before the events of yesterday. Of course, I didn't want to admit to myself and to him that I really hadn't seen a true battle, though I had been trained with some weapons – if ancient ones. I was like a mismatched, disoriented girl, mistakenly tangled up in a tapestry of menial battle skills. I defaulted, "I don't understand."
He stared straight ahead at the open road, but gestured lightly with one hand. "I need to know how closely we must watch you should we run into a fight." The others were beginning to listen to this dialogue. Finally, he looked at me, and then pointed with his chin to the gift from my uncle, the box of ornate tridents, which was packed in my saddlebag. "Can you use those weapons?" His eyes were clear, and free of ridicule.
I answered honestly, looking at my hands and hoping he would not laugh at me for owning such outdated weaponry, particularly when compared with his beautifully rendered swords. "Well enough, but they are an ancient style of weapon. And terribly crafted. They only look nice."
Looking away, Tristan smiled almost wistfully. This was his amused face, I would learn. "You're smarter than you look."
It was the highest compliment he had deigned to give me so far.
"What does that mean?"
He wasn't apologetic at all, just honest. "You don't look as though you know much about weaponry." Our eyes locked, but I was the first to look away.
I said, "My uncle taught me some skills, but not very much." I didn't want to lie to him and overestimate my skills. All that would result in would be his abandoning me in case of ambush, expecting that I could take care of myself, and then I'd be dead, or robbed, or raped. I didn't fancy myself such a foolish girl as to risk those outcomes in favour of his admiration.
"Never been in battle?" He asked this almost curiously, as if he had never laid eyes upon such a breed of person in his life.
"No…"
"Never seen a battle?" His tone was even more curious.
"No…"
"Wonderful," he deadpanned, and then cast a few glances about. All those of our group who had been listening and watching closely looked away surreptitiously. I sighed.
Day 3: In Which I Begin to Question What Has Occurred.
"Tristan, do you know of the Roman who organized the coup in my house?"
Not a single muscle in his face moved. I had hoped for a bit more of a reaction. "Very little," he admitted.
"His name is Darius," I prompted, and received a mildly contemptuous look in response to it. The look in his eyes suggested something along the lines of, if you know this, then I most definitely knew this ten times over ten days before YOU ever heard of it.
"I know. I was watching you by that time," Tristan repudiated. He had apparently, very few scruples with admitting this diverting fact as well. The boy had very little to be ashamed of, in his mind.
"Oh." I waited for him to elaborate, but remembered quickly enough that this was Tristan I was talking to. Tristan, who rarely spoke unless spoken to. Tristan, who preferred the dark to having company. "What do you suppose he will do next?" I asked.
He shifted upon his horse, and then recited his answer as if he were in a schoolroom, and excessively bored. "I expect he'll hand over control of the palace to Roman authorities. He'll probably be highly commended for his work for the Empire, and retire in wealth and notoriety."
The mere idea that the terrible Roman might experience such a happy life at the expense of mine was both angering and depressing at the same time. I was unaware of how to react, except: "That's horrible! He was an awful man." I looked down at my hands.
Tristan continued with his sermon as if uninterrupted, though he directed the rest of it as advice towards me. "Though I would suggest you keep your nose clean and your head down for the rest of your years. What happened in your palace was dishonourable, even by Roman standards." The way he looked at me made me believe that he was ordering me to do as he had told me, and I had little inclination to do the contrary. So far, his advice had not led me astray.
"What do you mean?"
"It defies Roman principles to attack defenceless people, like those who inhabited the palace." He explained. "Roman tactics state that they must first defeat the enemy's army until near massacre, and it is only then that they may offer an alliance of sorts to the enemy. To serve under the Roman flag. Only then can they invade civilian areas."
I briefly wondered just how he had come to know so much about Roman tactics, but did not ask for fear of raising his ire. "What are you trying to suggest then?"
"I am suggesting that your testimony to Roman authorities would destroy his reputation and probably incarcerate him. He will therefore devote a sizeable portion of his resources to finding – and silencing – you." He said all of this very bluntly, and rubbed his neck with the back of his gloves.
It was difficult for me to accept the differences between he and I. Each day went by and I unearthed more discrepancies between us, despite our closeness in ages. I found myself longing to find a similarity or a hobby in common, but all I came across was further validation of his life's philosophies, and disproof of those that I had lived my own life by. Being around him made my mind into a quagmire, and it frustrated me in that I could not admit to myself that he might actually know more than me – he, a hardened boy-soldier, and I the pint-sized and intellectualized noble. The frustration translated itself into my voice, and into my words, though he paid it no heed: "Well I hate him! Why don't you let me tell the tale to the nearest Roman officer, then?"
My eyes may have been flashing, but he might as well have been discussing the pedigree of our horses, his voice contained so little excitement and emotion. "Can't. If we don't know the extent of his resources, then we have to assume that any officer might be one of his devotees."
I hated his soldier's logic – a logic which now seemed to apply itself to my whole new life. I asked desperately, "So what you're saying is that I have to hide from every Roman officer I see for the rest of my life?"
He answered conversationally, "At least until you grow older and hide that tattoo on your forearm." His eyes darted down to my sleeve for only a second, and I rubbed my forearm warily.
I narrowed my eyes at nothing in particular, and said rather petulantly, "You're no good at consoling people, Tristan." Perhaps it would shut him and his unwavering truth up.
He smirked, as if delighting in this 'praise'. "I only possess skills that I need," he said simply.
Day 6: In Which I Think Tristan Is Beginning to Warm Up to Me
I began to ask him questions of his origins, of his beliefs and of his family, and Tristan began to answer me. It was no great friendship, but the days before were branded freshly in my hindsight – the brush-offs and final words he had thrown my way whenever I had asked him about himself. I drove myself to believe that he was beginning to take a liking to me, though truly it must have been a sheer surrender to my queries.
"Am I to understand that you have abandoned your family, Tristan?" When I asked this opening question, we had long since crossed into Greece, and were so far travelling unhindered. No tidings had come of my father, Perseus, in his impending battle against the Romans, nor of the occupants or civilians of my house in Macedonia. I surprised myself with my capacity to divert myself from thinking of our schism, and had become remarkably pleasant. Or, in retrospect, more pleasant than I had been to begin with.
He only corrected, "'Abandoned' would be the wrong word." Tristan stared straight ahead, as he always did, rolling his body smoothly with the walk of his horse. There was no expression on his face.
I had learned to persevere in dialogue with him, and did not turn him loose from conversation. "Then what would be the right word?"
Shrugging, Tristan only said, "There is none. I was driven away by necessity." His eyes briefly met mine.
Like an interrogator, I latched onto the openings in his statements. "What necessity? Like I have been driven away from my family?" Perhaps I had found something he and I had in common?
"No."
Frowning, I asked almost searchingly of him, "And yet you do not feel any pity for me, in that I never even said farewell to my own?"
Finally, he looked straight at me, holding my gaze. He smirked crookedly, as if he had a tick in the corner of his mouth. "Well, you don't seem to be suffering too badly. Haven't cried once." Had he been watching me? I did not know what to make of this prospect, but was quietly thrilled.
Childishly, I retorted, "Because you told me not to!" I recalled his saying to save my weeping for Sparta, my blood boiling.
The smile grew. "And you listened?" He only asked back, silencing me.
After a few minutes of retreating into myself, I resolved to ignore his teasing, and resumed my interrogation, of sorts. Sighing, I started anew: "Where are you from then, Tristan?"
The mirth had apparently left his bones as well, and he seemed almost grey in the hollowness that was left, for that moment. "North." He was purposefully not specific, and returned to his casual straight-ahead stare.
"From within the Empire?" I asked, attempting to narrow the area down. I leafed through memories of maps and geography, a privilege few achieved. When he didn't answer, I guessed, "Sarmatia?"
"Yes," he said honestly.
I was at a loss with something to say, finally realizing that he was a citizen of an occupied territory, like me. I felt a pang of guilt at asking him about his possible alliances with Rome on the days we met. I asked rather blandly, "Was it nice there?"
Again with that wistful smile, Tristan said, "I think it's nice everywhere, and so I am happy anywhere." It was a nice thought, to be happy anywhere.
My curiosity got the better of me again, and I resumed trying to sketch in his history in a character portrait. "When did you leave?" I asked innocently enough, but he did not answer. Finally, I gave up, and instead asked, "So…since then?"
He glanced at me, an eyebrow raised under his mane of dark hair. "Since then what?"
I threw out my arms, releasing the reins of my horse briefly and gesturing wildly. "What have you done? What have you accomplished?"
"Probably a hell of a lot more than you have."
Pressing on further, as I refused to be bested by his naturally secretive and repelling responses, I asked, "Like what?"
His gaze turned to the sky, and it seemed as though he was caught in a moment of numbness, in a never-ending eternity wrapped in a moment of nostalgia. He said, "Honed my skills in battle. Learned the land, the languages. Talked to people who have lived." He smiled again, so there must have been fond memories in there somewhere.
I smiled too, and inquired, "And what did they have to say?"
Looking at me with that same smile, I felt both warm and safe, and then quite silly for feeling the first two. 'Warm and safe', I thought to myself, and then chastised myself for using clichés. As I did all this in my head, Tristan had answered, "Many things."
"Anything important?"
With a higher-than-thou glint in his eyes, he responded wisely, "Everything is important."
Trying to respond in kind and to sound just as worldly and illustrious, I said, "To you, everything is always something."
He baited me innocently, "Do you disagree?"
I greatly disliked talking in vague, useless generalities, and I also disliked being led off-topic. I shook my hair and instead returned to the previous topic: "So what did these people most frequently tell you?"
As if strategically surrendering to my persistence, he finally allowed himself to answer: "They told me to find my talent, and to forge my purpose in life out of my talent. Only then could I be happy." This seemed wise enough, and he appeared to agree.
"And have you found it?" I watched him closely.
"Yes," he said simply. I waited. He said nothing. I waited.
Then, "What is it? What is your talent?"
From the front of our party, Elan, who had evidently been overhearing our dialogue, interjected quite jovially, "Isn't it obvious?" All members of the group save Tristan and I shared a laugh over that one.
Glaring balefully at Elan's back, Tristan answered as if there had been no interjection. He said with obvious enjoyment and relish: "Killing. Taking life. Wielding my sword, spilling blood. The art of battle." He seemed to take such pleasure out of saying the words; I could only imagine his love for actual bloodshed. The image that my mind created from this analysis was almost disturbing, and I did not know what to think.
Again, almost like a child, I pouted as I answered finally, "Tristan, you're awful. Sometimes I hate you."
Everyone laughed at that, and silence fell between he and I once more.
Well?
