Chapter IX: Three Of A Kind
The village of Zeist, 1440.
Amid the smell of corpses and burnt houses, sympathising with the saddened mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and sons who had lost someone, the outlander moved slowly through the bloodstained soil. She held her black dress with her fingers, to prevent its tarnishing. She halted by a house, the only dwelling that had stood untouched by the bloodletting that had gone on outside.
A wailing haggard woman limped past her, cradling in her arms the lifeless corpse of a baby. She looked away. In all its years, mankind had not yet learnt that war may not be the best means to achieve something. The swiftest yes, but not the best.
Her eyes scrutinised a pile of corpses nearby and she drew near it, feeling the tingling sensation that she understood as an omen. An immortal was among all that pile of rotten bodies. Probably not reborn yet, probably stirring. Or probably alive as an eternal being already yet physically unable to break free, prone to die again by suffocation.
A hand was moving. She rushed there and removed the corpse of a teenage boy hideously slashed in the face. She saw the face of a longhaired man, terrorised by his being there, among a pile of rotting flesh.
"Help! Someone is alive!" she called out.
But nobody was listening. The village of Zeist had been attacked by a coalition of other villages. Zeist had the wealthiest crops, crops that had been stolen. Entire harvests had been destroyed. Families had been terminated. Everybody was drowned in his or her own grief, and did not care about anybody else. She dragged that person out by herself, exerting beyond what she thought herself capable of.
"What... how...?" the man gasped, taking a lung of fresh air.
"I'll tell you." She sat on the soil, now careless whether her dress would stain or not, and sighed. "As soon as we get out of here."
-----
Katana woke up. Everything was dark. He rubbed his brow and sweat wetted his hand. He had not dreamt of his death in more than a century. It was disturbing that those dreams haunted him again. The dread of being choked to death by all those lifeless pieces of dead human meat invaded him again and he stirred.
He looked around. Connor MacLeod was peacefully sleeping a few steps ahead of him, leaning against a wall. To Katana's left, Jacob Kell snorted loudly, disturbingly. Even in sleep he continued being a nuisance, Katana thought. At Kell's legs, Kenny was stretched, using Jacob's legs as a pillow. Katana thought about that kid for a second. Not a kid, an 800-year-old man trapped in a small body, unable to stand a proper fight, unable to fully know the physical pleasures growth brings with it, and unable to be taken as seriously as he should be. To Katana's right, Kyra was sitting on a chair against the wall, her coat still on, with her Spartan sword trapped between her legs, the grip of it resting against her breasts. She was supposed to be guarding, but she had nodded off. He gazed in amazement.
Kyra, Katana's first teacher, the woman who had delivered her wisdom on the futility of war, having been herself a warrior in her days. Lessons that Katana had forgotten when power had embraced him, and that he painfully remembered when power let him go. Kyra had trained him, shaped him... even loved him on occasions. Their departure had been something spontaneous. One day she unilaterally decided he was ready and parted before he woke up, after a night of unforgettable manifestations of lust.
He stood up and tiptoed by her. She was beautiful. She had won his heart from day one. He stuck out a hand and tenderly caressed her hair. His hand went lower to stroke her cheeks. She grinned dimly in response to his touch. He touched her lips with his thumb and withdrew his hand as his conscience commanded, before he dared go further down.
She half-opened her eyes and found him there, gawking foolishly at her. She smiled and then rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and for a second, she appeared to be a goddess, his goddess. Then she stood up in fuzz wielding her sword, eager to thrust at whoever dared approaching.
"Kyra..." Katana whispered.
"I fell asleep! Damn me!" she cursed in a very low voice.
"It's OK." He said soothingly. She returned to her chair, pissed-off at herself. Katana squatted by her.
"It's not. What if they had come?" she moaned.
"They didn't." He said with a calm, charming voice mimicking not very well a British accent.
"I can't sleep." Kenny appeared, scratching his head, barely wearing a tee shirt and a silly Donald Duck underwear. "Kell is a roaring engine."
"Welcome to the team." Katana joked. "Want a cuppa coffee?"
-----
"So you tried to kill Duncan... twice?"
Despite it was her late friend Duncan MacLeod they were discussing, Kyra found hilarious the fact that Kenny had attempted to get rid of the Highlander and had been close to succeeding. She had listened in rapt amazement Kenny's rant about his meetings with the Highlander.
"Yeah." Kenny sipped a bit, enjoying the attention the beautiful Spartan was giving him. Katana was to his right and Kyra to his left, each with a mug of coffee in hands, inside the improvised kitchen they were in. "I just wanted to survive... I never really trusted an immortal, except for Amanda. "
"It's understandable." She yawned. "And you've survived for 800 years. Better trained immortals did not make it that long."
"How was he like?" Katana asked. "I never met him."
"Duncan..." Kyra stared at some point in the ceiling as if she were a high school girl in love with the quarterback of the football team. Katana and Kenny glanced at each other and rolled their eyes back without her noticing, sharing a smirk as they did so. "He was a fine man."
"He helped me out of big shit once..." Kenny added. "I wonder what it would be like... to win the Prize?"
"The power of a strong quickening... multiplied a million fold." Katana guessed.
"I don't think my body would be able to endure it."
"Why?" Kyra queried.
"Every time I receive a quickening, my skin peels. Scars appear across my body. I feel like I'm about to be vaporised to death. But I still take heads... survival." Kenny sighed.
"And tell me, Kenny." Katana downed the coffee, clearing his throat. "Have you ever found another one like you?"
"Yeah..." Kenny's hands suddenly shivered. "It was in 1700. The new century celebrations in London. A huge party was going on in the streets when suddenly I felt someone tugging at my sleeve. I turned." His voice went harder. "It was a girl, no older than ten. I was going to send her away when she simply said it resolvedly: Let's find a spot and do it." Kenny laid his head distressedly over his arms, leaning on the table.
"You won the jackpot..." Katana blurted out, being struck down by Kyra's eyes of steel.
"I wish I had. She had pretty blonde curls. But she drew out a butcher knife from under a nice yellow dress, like the ones dolls wear. I produced my sword. Her attack was reckless, too easy to avoid. She even tripped on her shoelaces as she went past me. I stared at her wimpy image with pain. She stood up, angry by my way of looking at her. This time, she hit me in the shoulder but didn't harm me. She went again and I parried her blow with as much as a flick. Then something..." his voice cracked and his eyes moistened. "Something possessed me and... and... I lashed at her head and..." Kenny hid his face in his arms, letting pain out.
"Which was her name?" Kyra asked softly, stroking his hair.
"Angela Jones. She was only sixteen." Kenny cried.
"You did what you must." Katana said encouragingly.
"She was young. I did not have to..."
"Some are liars, some are lepers, some are lovers. The meaning of life is learning what we really are. We are immortals. We fight each other in a life or death struggle to keep our heads and obtain quickenings. She knew that."
"So do I, but I still..." Kenny used his arms to clean his tears.
"What happened is that it was different." Kyra held Kenny against her chest. "You had always taken heads by surprise. You knew that the other would easily behead you if you stood mano a mano. However, what happened with Angela was that..." she paused to breathe heavily and measure her words "... for the first time you had the upper hand. You had the chance to be merciful..."
"But I wasn't." Kenny uttered, his voice regaining strength.
"Power is like a lion in a zoo. Imagine you work in a zoo and deal with a lion named..." Katana eyed up, looking for a proper name.
"Leo." Kyra suggested.
"Leo then. It's your job. Your family depends on that money and you know it. If you feed Leo, he will stay in his cage. If you take care of his health, he will stay in his cage. Keep the lion in his cage, free from hunger, free from pain. In control. Now, what if you don't?"
"Leo goes mad and wants out." Kenny whispered, not figuring where all this dumb metaphor was leading.
"Exactly. Power must be controlled by you. Like the lion. If you don't commit anything within you to control it, you will be controlled by it." Katana breathed out heavily, spreading his arms, and rose from his seat. "Well, I feel like sleeping. See you tomorrow."
"I have to maintain the guard." Kyra muttered.
"I'll be off to sleep too." Kenny grunted.
Kyra returned to her seat. Katana delivered a goodnight kiss on her cheek and returned to his sleeping place. To his surprise, Kenny chose his legs to use as a mattress rather than Kell's. He realised he was fond of that man-boy. However, he also feared for what might happen when the time to retaliate against the Watchers come, whether the kid would be able to present battle, or if panic and fear would consume him.
AUTHOR'S' NOTE: I took lines from "Power" by Tears For Fears, featured in the album "Elemental", and from "Astral Body" by Alphaville (b-side for all I know.)
