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"I think this one will do me fine," Duncan MacLeod told the barn manager. He stopped before a mahogany bay who had watched him come into the aisleway. The dark stallion acknowledged him with a soft, respectful snort and touched his warm, soft nose to Duncan's hand. Long ago, in Arabia, Duncan had acquired his first desert horse in this fashion. Even after the deal was closed, he still had to meet with the horse's approval or the deal was off. The horse was let free and if he touched you, then, and only then, he was yours."And the flaxen sorrel gelding in the first aisle will do for my friend," Duncan added.
"The plow horse?" Adam complained. "No!" With that, the tall, seemingly young man, became all the younger still by sitting down suddenly on the cement flooring of the center barn aisle, crossing his long arms and smoldering into the start of a relatively severe pout. "I'm not moving!"
Duncan turned from his conversation with the senior stallion and watched his friend acting out like a five-year-old, instead of a five-thousand-year-old. The stallion stared over his shoulder at the odd sight of a two-leg getting cast. He nuzzled Duncan's ear, asking or simply noting about the man on the floor.
"He's all right, bairn," Duncan stroked the wide cheek. "Just a little travel colic. Be fine soon's we mash him."
The barn manager shook his head and rolled his eyes. He stood in front of the stallion's stall door, hands in his pockets, staring at the bay and away from whatever Adam was doing. "Thing is," the manager drawled out the second word. "Senior Stud, here, purebred Ayrab, Polish racing stock. Ain't for rent. Ain't even for sale....well," here he paused to the unwritten law of trading rhythms. "Not for anything you'd want to pay."
"He's a good pony," Duncan had not done this in a while. He knew going in he was going to get taken, but he could afford to make a good showing anyway. "But he's old and that far hock is a bit mushy. I know, probably because he's just come off breeding season." Duncan dug his fingers under the old guy's mane and began to scratch the bed. The stallion started weaving and stretching in sheer ecstasy with little wickers of delight. "He looks to be Bask by that shoebox head of his, which makes him a little old-fashioned as to the current style of the breed."
The barn manager didn't register how impressed he was at this man's knowledge, but you could see the dollar signs floating away with the smoke he'd intended to blow.
"Course," Duncan added, good-naturedly, "I wouldn't give you two cents for those living porcelain Egyptian types you see lately. Tell you what," Duncan thought better of dragging this out. Who knew when Adam would start frothing at the mouth? "I'll give you a check for twenty-five now and twenty-five when we get back from this trek, if you throw in the Belgian cross-bred for my friend, let us borrow some tack, and show us the best way to pack inland, up to the falls.
"I'll get 'em both shod for you, too," the manager knew when he'd struck gold. A goose this golden was not to be believed.
"Very good," Duncan put his hand out to the barn manager. The stallion watched over the traditional shake as if he were the ultimate judge of such transactions, as if he remembered the history of his kind.
"That's it," Adam, still on the floor, still in a dither, continued, "I am not going. I refuse to ride into the mountains on that dray. I used to be a Horseman, for God's Sake!" he whispered so loudly all the horses up and down the aisle started nickering and fussing.
Duncan might have found all this thoroughly amusing, in another time. This was not that time by several centuries. "Get up and either leave," he threw the keys to the "T" at Adam, "or shut up and do what I tell you."
"And that," Adam's hand swooped the keys up and he was on his feet, leaving, "Is that."
"Well, Bairn," Duncan turned toward the stallion, "it would seem it is just the two of us. What do you think?"
The dark, shiny head, the clear, attentive eyes, the tiny, curved ears all came to attention, and the stallion leaned forward against his door.
Well, Duncan thought, if you don't kill my ass, old boy, then I think we shall get along well.
I wonder if you spook at dragons?
"Will you wait?" Adam scurried after Duncan, who was already nearly out of sight, down the trail that led away from the large ranch complex.
Duncan slowed his stride, but he did not stop, and he never left off his conversation with the tall black stud. The gelding dawdled on Duncan's left, watching the ground and waiting for a pause in the motion to graze. Both horses were saddled, with packs and canteens and brand new shoes.
As Adam got closer, Duncan stopped walking and wheeled the horses around to face the Eldest Immortal. "Don't you know better than to run up on ponies from the rear? You want to get kicked?"
Adam slowed down, "These two? There's hardly enough spirit between them to buck, let alone strike."
Duncan conveyed this very disrespectful comment to the stud and made a suggestion. Then he tied the reins loosely over the horn of the old western saddle and stepped sideways. As Adam reached them, Duncan started snorting and tucking his chin, as if he were challenging the gangly Immortal. The stud took the cue and rose, his right hoof just missing Adam's ear.
"Hit the dirt!" Duncan called out to his friend.
Adam followed the tone of the command more than the words, which was fortunate, for in the next instant, the stallion came down in a low crouch, wheeled left and let fly with both back hooves, where Adam had stood only a moment before.
"Now, see what you've done?" Duncan reached out a hand to help Adam up. "You've gone and upset my poor old horse. You know his weak spirit will nay take such meanness."
"...and the horse you rode in on," Adam finished the all-too-appropriate Lucille phrase.
"Well, if you're coming," Duncan called back over his shoulder as he and the stallion made their way down the trail to the pasture gate. They had left the gelding behind for Adam to wrestle away from a succulent bit of new grass and clover.
Duncan and the stallion waited for Adam and the gelding to join them at the gate. Adam stomped through, dragging the big sorrel behind him and mumbling maledictions from the homeland of the stallion's Arabian forebears. Duncan closed the gate behind them. "Wait," he called out to his lanky and out-of-sorts riding companion.
"Now what," Adam snapped back.
"Well, in the first place, that cinch isn't tightened," Duncan shook his head. "And in the second," he grabbed Adam by his shoulders and turned him around. "You can't miss this."
Adam waited a few seconds, "Yes?"
"Just look at that," Duncan said.
Adam didn't see a thing out of place. "Look at what, Duncan?"Duncan just shrugged, "No wonder you never have any good answers for the 'what was it like when--' game."
"Why do I sense a lecture coming on?" Adam replied.
"Forget it," Duncan sighed and went to tighten his mount's girth. "It will be well, Son," he murmured to the horse, "Your mares will fare well without you for a few days and your friend here will come along, so you won't want for company."
"And Timmy is trapped in the well--" Adam grumbled as he jerked up on the gelding's cinch, leaning in and trying to catch the buckle hole before the large barreled horse took his next breath.
Duncan mounted, "Timmy is trapped? What are you going on about?"
"I was just commenting on your silly habit of talking to that beaste," Adam pulled up again on the cinch buckles. Why couldn't he have a Western saddle with a sliding cinch and not this triple-buckle pseudo-Aussie bush outfit?
"Sometimes I wonder," Duncan replied.
"I mean, it's not like he can understand a single word you're saying, Duncan." The gelding started shifting his weight and twitching.
"It's not as if--" Duncan agreed.
"I doubt he even thinks the same way as you do," Adam jerked again and missed the buckle hole. The sorrel backed his ears and set his teeth on the egg-butt snaffle in his mouth.
"Not even--" Duncan sighed.
Adam leaned into the leather and pulled with all his strength, "After all they are just dense--- Ouch!"
The gelding finally had enough of Adam and nipped him solidly on the left buttock. Adam lifted his hand to smack the stupid horse, and felt the hot breath of Duncan's stallion at the back of his neck.
"Let me help you with that," Duncan had dismounted. He handed the stallion's reins to Adam and went to talk to the gelding, soothing and chatting him up until the jaw relaxed and started chewing around the bit again. Then he resettled the saddle on the gelding's withers and began buckling and unbuckling the cinch up by degrees, checking each tightening and waiting for the horse to relax between adjustments. "Adam, joke if you want to about the talking, but at least pay some honor to the listening. You cannot go through your life so, so disconnected."
"When God lays a vista like that," Duncan pointed behind him, "at your feet, at least give it the grace of your eyes, if not your gratitude. When a horse tells you to 'stop that,' five times in a row, as clearly as if he were screaming, it serves you to hear him. There." Duncan traded the gelding's reins for his stud's and patted Adam's rump.
"Hey!" Adam complained.
"Just get on," Duncan said after he was mounted again. "It's a five-day ride to the falls and we need to make some tracks today while we're still on level ground."
Adam stepped up, threw a long leg over the gelding, and plopped down on the saddle. The gelding grunted. Duncan rode off without looking back.
Adam couldn't understand what had turned the usually even-tempered Highlander into such a bully and a grump. He gave the gelding a hefty kick in the ribs and the stupid beaste just hunched down and refused to go. Duncan had done this on purpose, Adam was convinced, some devious, cruel trick on the Scot's part to demean the Old Man. After a bit, the pull of the retreating stallion overcame the pull of the barn and the gelding started up on his own.
And Adam, for no particular reason, looked back over his shoulder and took in the green field and the red barns and the clouds lifting away from the horizon. Very nice, he thought.
"It shouldn't be hard to find," Duncan commented idly, trying to ignore Adam's uncomfortable shifting and the very displeased attitude of the sorrel gelding. "We just follow the river upstream until it dives under the eastern cliff face and then there's a trail up the steps called 'The five tiers.'" "Or the Seven Rings," Adam grumbled. "Why exactly are we doing this, again?"
Duncan laughed and the stud chortled along with him. A thoroughly agreeable mount, Duncan thought. The gelding had been right about his barn buddy. Duncan had noticed the gelding first, a far finer horse than Adam credited him as being. The gelding had indicated another in the next aisleway, by his gaze and attention, by the answering whinny when the stallion called out. Duncan would have rather mounted Old Adam on one of the hard-headed and wise old mares, but given the quality of the sorrel, and the obvious charm of this fine blood horse, he'd changed plans mid-stream.
"Well, let's see," Duncan navigated the stream path and bore uphill, away from the muddy bank. "Joe called Tuesday, caught us at Lucille's. Ram's gone off again. He won't say why. She's at the crystal falls. Joe can't say why he knows. We arrived this morning, after driving all afternoon and all night. We bought these two fine steeds, and off we go, into the northern wild mountains, adventuring.""But why?" Adam shifted his weight again and hauled on the gelding's mouth.
Duncan couldn't stand it any longer. Riding lessons were about to commence. Who would have thought? Off on a dragon quest with one of the original Four Horsemen, and riding lessons was about the last thing he'd thought he'd be doing. It wasn't as if Malak hadn't warned him about Adam's stubbornness and deficits in the arts equestrian. Duncan had just thought Malak was exaggerating for effect. If anything, Adam's teacher had downplayed.
"Adam," Duncan wondered how to approach this. His tall friend was going to be furious. "I got you something," Duncan dug in the right saddle pack and brought out a small paper bag.
Adam gave up trying to move the gelding and dismounted. He took the bag cautiously. "What is this?"
"I don't know," Duncan started, "You haven't ridden for a while. I thought you might forget...I--"
Adam tried to read the various winds and clouds that ran across the Scot's dark face. He gave up and opened the "present" and broke out laughing. "And just exactly how am I supposed to take this?" he quipped.
Duncan breathed in slowly and dismounted, taking the gelding's reins. "You take it over to that thicket and change out of those stupid boxers you're so fond of, and tuck everything up and to whichever side is more comfortable."
"Everything?" Adam began laughing again.
Duncan smiled, "I know it'll be a squeeze, you being so well-endowed and all."
"Well, I hope you weren't expecting anything in return, Duncan," Adam called over his shoulder as he disappeared behind the aforementioned thicket, "My Victoria's Secret didn't arrive this month."
The stallion nudged Duncan's arm and started rubbing his bridle against the wide shoulder, reminding the Scot that his head was itching. Duncan removed the bridle and replaced it with a halter he'd brought. Then he removed the gelding's bridle and rubbed his mouth, checking to see that neither his gums nor his tongue were injured by his ham-handed rider. Then Duncan had to kick the gelding and dissuade him from rolling with his full gear on. He removed the saddle and pack and told the sorrel he was now at liberty.
The gelding wandered off to wallow near the cool mud and ease the soreness his bouncy mount had pounded there.
Then Duncan unsaddled the stallion, unpacked something for lunch and settled back to soak up the bright, crisp air and the wonderful old-earth quality of this primal place. He should just be straight forward with the Old Man. Yes, that was the best way. The truth.
"This is really uncomfortable," Adam complained as he returned and took his share of the sandwich and water.
"Adam," Duncan tried to keep his voice even. "You got through learning how to be a Nanny. I am sure you will live through Master Duncan's School of Horsemanship."
"School?" Adam said around a mouthful of peanut butter.
"I don't want you to take this personally, Adam, but your riding gives 'Death on a Horse,' a whole new meaning."
"It's that horse you got me, Duncan. He has to be the stupidest beaste in Creation."
"Right," Duncan wondered why he even thought this was going to be possible. "Here," he handed over the rope to the stallion and told the horse to behave while he was gone. Then he got a sponge out of one of the packs and went down to the stream to tend the gelding who was by now all over mud and thoroughly pleased with the effect.
Adam watched his friend strip down to his jockey shorts and go swimming in the river with the gold-red gelding, cleaning and playing and splashing and scolding as if they were brothers. Adam readjusted his own brand new shorts, or rather their contents, and reached for his sandwich again, only to find the stallion had grazed over to his side and was smelling Adam's lunch.
Then the stud gently sniffed Adam's mouth.
"It really is good," he heard himself saying. "Try some," he handed up a piece and the horse carefully picked it from his fingers.
They were soon sharing the remainder of lunch, and whatever Duncan had been foolish enough to leave behind, both of them smacking their tongues against the roofs of their mouths.
"You know," Adam said sucking back a mouthful of water from the canteen, then pouring some in his hand for the stud who lapped it up, "I think Duncan's gone over the edge because of his visit to Hell."
"I mean, look at him," Adam pointed at the river where the gelding had just blown a gallon of water straight into Duncan's face. The stallion lifted his head up and looked, then leaned over again and waited for Adam to pour some more water.
"I think he's lost it," Adam pronounced his assessment in round, full tones. "What do you think?"
Ram rolled over on her belly scales, unhooded a single, baleful eye and stared out the cave entrance on the obscenely sunny afternoon woods, the far side of the high lake. The fall of the cataract across the cave's "door" shimmered the bright light far back into the coolest and darkest recesses of the cave where Ram's great bulk lay. The enormous nostril's expanded and took inventory: a herd of deer in the high park beyond the forest to the east, a fire in the low brush far to the south, just smoldering out, numerous lesser fauna, and ah, a moose far west of here, a solitary male. That last would make a fine dinner as soon as it was dark, five or six hours from now...after a long nap would be good.She couldn't smell them yet, but Ram knew they were coming, up from the south, the two hybrids, her own bastard and the distaff half-brother. The mortal must have sent them. She had not explained it well, or he had not understood, or understanding, had not believed. It did not matter. They would be days getting here and coming through the falls was impossible for their puny forms, even if they could climb the sheer drop of this cliff.
Another scent wafted through the falling water curtain of the cave. Damnation! There would be no moose tonight. By sun's fall, the bear would overtake it. The ursine interloper was ranging too far north. Ram could only surmise it was crippled or old or in some way had become unfit competition in the lower and more abundant lands to the south. She didn't relish the taste of old bear, even if--or perhaps, because--she carried the soul of such a one, sleeping, deep inside her. Sleep on, Marak, she spoke soundlessly. Wouldn't want you offended should I find it necessary to dispose of that old griz.Her belly grumbled and complained, her long tail thudded against the back stone wall, but Ram decided another night hungry was to be the menu this day. She was saving the venison for later in the season. Better to sleep, to rest, to luxuriate in the blessed peace of this place where the bothersome sapient four-limbs were a world away, beyond this cave and cataract, beyond this woods and wilderness.
Ram ruminated as she drifted in the dancing light, revisiting her last sojourn in the world of Men from the safe distance of her very long memory.
Ram pressed the side of her face into the Wizard's wide chest, lingering in the moment, while she waited for Joe to wake. It seemed as if his entire presence exhausted all her senses, calling them forth with such abandon, that she could not stay conscious at times. So often had Joe waited for her to wake from one of these passionate throes, that Ram thought it high time for her to return the favor and wait for him. She wondered that he did not lose patience with her passing out all the time. Ram had merely assumed this was an affect of Set and her brain-wounding, but Set was gone now, and still...
Her long fingers played lightly with the soft fur at his left nipple and Joe emitted a low, sleep- burnished growl. Ram felt his strong hands move to her waist to slide her on top of him.
"Good morning," she said brightly.
"Mornin'," Joe blinked his eyes and tried to focus. "I guess I fell asleep."
Ram tucked her hands, palms down, beneath his shoulders, and pulled up even with him, so she could gaze down on his dear face. "How are you this fine day, Husband?"
Joe chuckled, "I like the way that sounds, Wife. And I am fine," he ran his hands over her lower back. As he reoriented to Duncan's loft, Joe felt suddenly grateful that the Scot had had the exquisite sense not to return home for--what was it?--a day and a night, and this morning, late by the look of the sun ray angles. Of course, Lucille's gracious hosting was not a hard thing to endure at that. "But I am a little tired."
"Would that be one of Lucille's 'too much of a good thing's'?" Ram asked.
"And then some," Joe agreed.
"I could get up and start a bath or make breakfast," she suggested.
"This is fine, Ram," Joe shifted a little under her and started kneading the muscles of her back. "We can just be quiet together."
Ram's pale eyes closed and her sinuous back began to roll under his touch. "Not if you keep doing that, we can't," she argued breathily.
"We can't what?" Joe asked, his hands moving up behind her head and pulling her down to him.
"What?" Ram's tongue snaked out and she tasted his top lip.
"I forget," Joe surrendered as she suckled across his bottom lip.
"Ram?" he asked, when next she paused to breathe and Joe had his mouth back again.
"Yes?" Ram replied and pulled up to sitting, straddled across his belly. "I can see you are determined to converse, Wizard. I am listening."
"And, yes," she added, "I do not just love you for your fabulous body." Ram shifted teasingly across his belly though, just to remind him she did also love him for his fabulous body.
"You said something about losing your tears in Hell," Joe began. He felt the muscles of her thighs tighten and bulge against the bones of his pelvis, saw her shoulders set and the bands of her pectorals draw tight beneath the small, tender breasts. He chided himself for having so thoroughly ruined the moment, but Ram had given him little or no time at all to make his acquaintance of her in any but the physical sense, and he felt at a severe disadvantage thereby. Joe also worried that her seeming ease and health were covering some pain. After all, he reasoned, so long in Hell must surely leave a mark, though, since Ram had understood she was free, she seemed all right in every way.
Ram slipped her hands out from under his shoulders and began sorting through the hairs on his chest, some of them as silver as the frosting in his beard. "Joe," she sighed like some breeze on a dark, frozen shore, all crystalline chill, "when you first were wounded, did you welcome questions about just how much of each leg was gone and exactly how crippled that made you?"
"Ram!" Joe did not welcome such questions even now.
"Well, Joe," Ram continued, "you are preparing to ask me just such a question."
"Yes, I am," Joe reached for her waist and played his thumbs along the hollow of each pelvic wing.
"You want an answer, I take it," Ram was clearly pleading with him not to ask, but she made it sound like an imperial commentary nonetheless.
"Tell me," Joe said simply.
Ram's hands stopped sorting, pushed his hands down from her waist and she rose off him to sit facing the window, her back to him and the rest of Duncan's broad bed. "All right," she said, "exactly what do you want to know, Wizard?"
"You said your tears were the first thing you lost," Joe prompted.
"I could write a list for you," Ram snorted.
Joe levered up to sitting and slid behind her. "I don't want to hurt you or fight with you, Ram. I just want to know."
"Just," Ram hissed. "Let me think," her slender hands opened in front of her and cut the rays in dark shadows. "Okay, no tears, no laughter, no drinking, no......" She twisted around to look at him, "I think it would be easier to tell you what is left, Joe."
"I'm listening," he replied quietly.
"You," Ram said.
"Excuse me?" Joe tried to make some sense of what she'd said.
"No," Ram retorted, "not ever are you excused, Wizard. Without you, I should be drooling and babbling and still in Hell, no matter where I was. I could not possibly excuse you."
"Forgive me, Ram," Joe tried to understand but...
"Or forgiven. Not ever to be forgiven or forgotten. Without you I should have been destroyed, Wizard."
Joe stroked her short hair, "Darlin', I just don't understand."
Ram's neck began to lose its stiffness as she leaned into his touch. "I love you, Joe...so strongly, that I would die for you," she swallowed, "so strongly that I would even live for you. And that is how I survived Hell, because I chose to believe in you, to hope for you, to feel you, when everything else was faithless and hopeless and dead. And even though I knew I would never see you again, still I chose to believe that I would. And nothing Hell could show me would make me feel differently."
Joe took her words in and found himself suddenly at a loss for any of his own. Dear Lord, no pressure here, Old Wizard. "Ram," he said finally, "I think you sell your own bravery short in your deliverance."
"I am sorry this over-burdens you, Joe, but you are my only connection to the world that remains, the single precious thing which I have preserved through that dark time. And I am thereby preserved myself, at least in this particular."
Joe circled her with his right arm and kissed the back of her neck, "Who wouldn't be flattered, Ram, but you have many connections--Adam--"
"No."
"Duncan?"
"No."
"Sean?"
"No, Joe. I can't expect you to believe this, but it is so. You have asked and I have answered," Ram said crisply, "And I am hoping you will not ask again."
"You just need to give this time, Darlin'," Joe held her more tightly.
"About as much time as it will take you to grow new legs, Joe," Ram replied bluntly.
Joe sincerely wished she would drop the comparisons. "You were more badly damaged after the auto accident, Ram."
"No."
"...and you recovered from......No?"
"No, Joe, I was not as badly hurt then," Ram pulled away from him and stood up. "I could leave, if you like. I can't lie to you, Joe. I will be no better than I am."
"You are fine," Joe argued. "And promise me you won't run out the door just yet," he peered down on the floor, "I can't find my--"
"On the other side," Ram commented, rifling through Duncan's chest of drawers and retrieving a T-shirt. "propped up against the nightstand." She pointed over to his prosthetics. "I am not running anywhere, Joe," she added, slipping the T-shirt over her head.
Joe drug himself over to the other side of the bed and retrieved his "legs."
Ram watched him, fascinated.
"You're staring," Joe barked as he started to assemble the complex collection of plastic and steel and liner and... "Ram!"
"I don't understand," Ram began, "Is there some rule here about don't watch the Wizard dress?"
"Ram!"
"You know," she stalked back towards the bed, "There is something so irresistible about shyness, Wizard, that just begs..."
"Please," Joe couldn't explain why he felt suddenly awkward. "Just go take a bath or make breakfast, or..."
"Or we could just be quiet together," Ram said softly.
"Go!"
"You don't trust me," Ram said, astonished at the realization.
Joe threw the stupid legs on the floor, pulled the covers up over him and folded his arms across his chest. Each move lent a greater and greater credence to Ram's suspicions, only made greater still by his flustered comment, "Why the hell would I?"
Ram collapsed to sitting on the bed's edge. Her face slacked and her eyes grew round and childlike. "When have I ever betrayed you, Joe?"
"Oh, gee, I don't know," Joe was suddenly furious for a great many incidents he had let go at the time of their occurrences. "How about in this very bed half a year ago with my best friend for one?"
Ram just stared. "Because I slept with Duncan?"
"You were married to me at the time, Ram. Yes, we humans are funny that way about adultery."
"Oh," Ram's breath sailed out of her in a whispering sigh.
"How about," Joe was full into that storm of temperament called righteous indignation. "Enticing me into sleeping with you as Malak, just so you could pass out and never come back. You don't think that a betrayal? Jesus, Ram, if I worried before, don't you think making love to you now doesn't kill me a little every time, thinking you might never wake up again?"
Ram turned her back to him and her shoulders rounded over. "Mmm," she made a noise like a strangled moan.
"I'm not saying I don't forgive you," Joe knew he'd pushed this too far and he cast about for a way to recover, "I do love you and, like every other pair since The Garden, we will work out whatever comes between us."
"Ram?" Joe watched the shoulders jerk. And she said she could no longer weep. Joe pulled himself over to her and turned her round. She wasn't weeping.
She was dying, a great bloody rent gushing beneath the T-shirt where he had torn her heart again.
Ram had tried to explain to the Wizard that it wasn't the messy bit with the chest wound that made her decide to leave. She told him how grateful she'd been for her own blindness which had kept her safe in Hell. Because she thought her love for the Wizard was the one entirely holy and pure attainment, the one abiding and redeeming feature of her long and complicated existence.
Not unlike Hell, she mused. She had made it so, because she believed nothing else.
And even the Wizard, himself, saw the truth--or rather, The Lie--of it. Her feelings for Joe were no more, nor no less complex and corrupted than her love of her son, her brothers, herself. She should not have been surprised, after all, to discover that she was incapable of an act so thoroughly outside her basic and irredeemable and incorrigible old self. It was only a dream, lovely as it was.
Malak had been right after all. Not his chastity--that was merely a mask. No, his motto was, "Be glad, be kind..."
"...but take care to love no one."
Ram rolled over and the scales made a scrabbling sound over the stones. They had talked and talked all the rest of the afternoon until it was dark, but even Joe knew they were only forestalling the inevitable. Then she'd disappeared into the bathroom to bathe while Joe made supper. Ram had climbed out the window, up to the roof, manifested in this form, and flown all night to this deep, dark, solitary cave with only the falling water to break the blessed silence.
The great obsidian orbs closed. She wondered if the bathtub had run over before Joe discovered she had gone.
After lunch and the gelding's bath in the stream, a half hour's nap in the idyllic little glen saw them fit and dry and ready to go again. Adam reached for his blanket and saddle and hauled the lot over to the dense sorrel. "Okay, Red," he started, "we got off to a bad start before..." The gelding paid no attention to Adam's overtures. The tender pink flowers and the new grass shoots were entirely too absorbing.
Duncan and the stallion watched this exchange, or lack thereof. They touched noses. "No, I don't have any peanut butter on my breath," Duncan answered. "Maybe later tonight, for supper."
"Adam," Duncan called out. The stud snorted an accompaniment. "His shoulders are still tight and sore. Make them feel better and I believe you'll have a friend there."
Duncan said nothing else, at least not to Adam. He began to repack, much to the fascination of the stallion who touched and asked about everything, and finally got a fingerfull of peanut butter for all his efforts and friendly attention.Adam touched the gelding's withers and the horse twitched as if fly beset. He stroked more gently and Red lifted his head, his mouth sporting a flower arrangement out of both sides. Adam's long fingers barely grazed the bunched muscles behind the withers. He watched Red's face and waited for the flowers to move as if they were in a mouth and not a vase. Gradually, he increased his pressure, moving his palm away so only the tips of his fingers were touching and tracing the muscle edges. A hand's width back and he hit just the right spot and the gelding tucked his neck and lifted one hind leg, stretching it out far behind him as he arched the thick back.
"Oh, I see," said Adam and he continued down the back, finding and easing each spot, until the flowers fell with Red's drooling to the sward beneath them. Then he worked on the gelding's shoulders and the gelding worked on his long back, the horse finding just the place, three-quarters of the way down, where he usually knotted up by day's end. Adam wondered how the horse's muscular muzzle could find just the way to make him feel better. Then again, the horse probably wondered the same thing about him, seeing he'd been such a dolt all morning.
"Well," Duncan rode up beside them. "Before the two of you melt in a contented puddle by this lovely stream, could we entertain the notion of saddling up and getting a little farther down the trail today?"
"You can't rush these things," Adam said so seriously that Duncan had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.
Maybe there was hope in the world after all, Duncan thought. Maybe Old Adam's finer instincts would succeed where his courage failed. The Highlander was content to wait the next fifteen minutes while Adam fixed and fussed and consulted and generally got the gelding saddled and bridled to everyone's satisfaction.
Adam stepped up, swung his leg over, and....
"Don't--" Duncan began.
Plop, down came Adam on the gelding's back and Red grunted his disapproval.
"What," said Adam.
"Don't drop down like that," Duncan scolded.
"Well, okay," Adam agreed. "I won't next time. But what do I do now?"
"Just apologize," Duncan suggested.
"You're kidding!" Adam stared at his friend. No, he wasn't kidding. "I'm sorry, Red," he said.
"With some feeling, Adam," Duncan urged.
"Oh, all rightee then," Adam leaned forward, got his long arms nearly around the thick neck, hugged the gelding and crooned out an apology that would have won him a pardon for many more serious transgressions. The gelding accepted with a noble indifference. And that was that.
"What do you think we should do if and when we find Ram?" Duncan asked, more to make conversation. They were three days into this trek, probably two more to go, and the novelty of all the lush forest and clear sky was beginning to wear off as they climbed slowly up the third tier.
"I don't know about Ram," Adam replied grumpily, "but I do have some splendid ideas about what to do with that switch if it ever gets out of your hand."
"Oh, come on, Adam," Duncan tried to jolly the Old Man. "You are sitting up so square now, I hardly have to use it any more." And he'd popped Adam so often, the gelding didn't even flinch any more.
"I haven't been switched since I was a child," Adam growled through his locked jaw.
"And I am so sure Ram beat you every day," Duncan laughed. "Knees," he said.
"Does the Horse Master never rest?" Adam sneered, but he turned his knees forward all the same and drove his heels down deeper in the stirrups.
"I believe the subject was what to do with Ram?" Duncan turned the discussion back.
"Why would I know?" Adam felt his right shoulder slump and adjusted it back, at the same time pushing his hand forward, so as not to take up the slack in the reins. He was beginning to get the idea that riding was a sort of moving meditation, a discipline of the body that was all but impossible to achieve there were so many things to remember, but Duncan was right about the switch he'd stripped from a tree the first day of riding lessons. Adam didn't have to remember his back at all. All he had to do was start to bow forward and the muscle memory kicked in and bolted him back up again just remembering the sting.
"She's your mother," Duncan commented. "Any idea what could have happened between her and Joe?"
"The perfect loving couple?" Adam shook his head and then readjusted his chin in and straight. God, but his posture was awful. No wonder his back hurt all the time. Thank Red for their nightly reciprocal scratch and bond sessions. He couldn't imagine how he'd made it through all those years with the Horsemen.
"Well, something happened," Duncan said. "Something dreadful."
"I can only imagine," Adam mused.
"Yes?"
"Wait," Adam dismounted and walked up the steeper part in the path, because he knew his poor balance would hinder Red. "I noticed you did not choose to enlighten Mr. Dawson about his wife's true nature, Duncan." Adam said when they'd finally topped out on the mountain park known as the Second Tier. "You think he found out about the dragon thing?" Duncan asked, dismounting and unsaddling the stallion. He unbuckled and slipped the bridle, haltered the stud and began brushing his coat.
Adam did much the same, closely inspecting the sore spots, making sure they weren't trying to be raw spots. Duncan had cut some holes in the blanket to help with the pinching and Adam's own improvements had also contributed to the big gelding's comfort. Then he let the horse go on a wander round the park. The stallion nickered, but Duncan did not know him well enough yet to let him loose.
"Yes, Duncan."
"Yes, Duncan, what?" the Highlander let himself down on the grass and leaned back against the saddle, playing out enough slack on the lead that the stallion could wander a little at least.
"It might be what you referred to as 'the dragon thing.' I tend to doubt it, though, if Malak didn't bother him," Adam paused, wondering if he should press Duncan with the next obvious question. Then he remembered the switch and decided all bets were off. "You told me how you took Ram up to the bay and she turned first into a dragon and then into a man, into Malak. You told me that after that you couldn't ask her to marry you--well, you didn't know at the time that Joe had reconsidered his stand on an annulment. I was wondering--"
Duncan sat up straight as if Adam had used the switch on him. "Yes?"
"You had said initially that there were three truths, but I only counted two. What was the third truth and why couldn't you ask Ram to marry you, Duncan?"
Adam dug out a canteen, tilted it several times to gauge how full it was and offered it to Duncan.
After a deep drink, Duncan held the water in his mouth, and thought about how to answer. Then he swallowed. "You are not going to like either answer, Adam," he said finally.
"Go on," Adam took the canteen back and glanced across the field to make sure Red was all right.
"I couldn't ask her because she was a man," Duncan answered the first question.
"That was worse than being a monster?" Adam asked, somehow maintaining an air of detachment.
"Yes, Adam," Duncan replied. "At that time, I thought that was worse."
"And the third truth?"
Duncan laid back against the old western saddle, "Well, as it turns out, I am your uncle."
It took the Old Man a moment to put the fact in some order or reason. "Which would make you Ram's--brother?"
"Half," Duncan corrected him.
"You're Ithuriel's son?" Adam asked.
Which put the Chaos in Duncan's court. Ithuriel? "I think the King's name is, was, Boëdvir," Duncan said.
"That was his Alkyr name," Adam said, as if that explained everything, or anything.
"Wait," Duncan thought a moment, "You mean that the King in that story about Malak is my mother?"
Adam had to think about that association, "Why yes, Duncan, exactly."
"But that doesn't make any sense, Adam. Why would Ithuriel want to bed his own..." Duncan didn't even try to finish the thought. No wonder Ram had never been particularly upset about the incest inherent in Sean's conception.
"My understanding is that they have no prohibition against such unions," Adam continued.
"And still," Adam whistled and the gelding started back towards them. "You had already decided she was unsuitable, even before you knew she was your brother. I suppose I can stop worrying about you and that damnable 'belt buckle' sign then. You have been bluffing all along."
Duncan didn't answer. He was tired of this, weary of the actuality that had so vividly played itself out in the metaphor of Hell: that he would ever find himself compromised so thoroughly by his affection for this man and that no matter if the worse should happen, Adam would never be satisfied. The stallion came over and nuzzled his ear, maybe because he wanted more peanut butter. Maybe because he sensed Duncan's perturbation. Maybe it didn't matter. Just to tend and be tended with some gentleness, if not a little affection.
Maybe that was all, and in fact more than, any of them could hope for in the long undying that marked their lives.
They reached Tier Four on the fourth day. The trail widened out and the ground grew more rocky, the trees more sparse. Great natural stone wells held enough rain water for the horses though the stream ran underground beneath the fourth and third tiers. The air grew chill even though it was August and their horses skittered beneath them like cats, even the cumbersome old gelding.
Adam was riding effectively enough that he stayed with the sudden jumps and starts of Red's design, and steadied the gelding's nerve with his deep voice alone. Within the dim trappings of his shameful Horsemen past, lay a true horseman, only waiting all this time for Duncan and his switch and this hardy beaste beneath him, built like a tank, but playful as a colt in the high mountain air.
Duncan was quite proud of Adam's progress, more like opening a package than building something, but satisfying nonetheless. He might have had the luxury to study Adam's superbly evolving skills, but Duncan had all he could do to handle the stallion who had suddenly remembered his forebears racing propensities and took every opportunity, however small, to bolt. Or the stud would take a notion to show off his "war skills" leaping and wheeling in beautiful, if bothersome, airs above the ground.
So they came dancing into Ram's new demesne, the Highlander and the Eldest Immortal, mounted like knights of old on mighty steeds blowing great mist clouds before them in the shadow of their breaths and great gouts behind them in the scuffle and spark of their shod heels.
It was a long day's journey across the mountain steppe and they spoke not at all the whole way. This was partly because both mounts were being so fractious and demanding of their attentions, and partly because it was appropriate to approach a dragon silently. They were still a half-day away from the falls and they had no actual reason to believe she was even there, but the sense of questing made them quiet and introspective.
At day's end, they picked a site at the edge of the Fifth Tier, in a small stand of twisted pines. Duncan dismounted, handed his reins to Adam, still on the flaxen sorrel, and scouted the area on foot. The dusk had darkened so quickly that Adam lost sight of the Highlander when he was hardly thirty feet away. The stallion started rearing and Adam had a time digging out a flashlight from the pack behind his saddle. Even the gelding started shying and skittering.
By the time Adam got the reins sorted and the light out, both horses were giving loud, nervous voice to the place in the darkness where Duncan had disappeared. The Red gelding rose on his back legs in a full rear that felt like he was going all the way over backward. Fearing they would all end a tangle on the ground, Adam bashed Old Red over the poll with the heavy flashlight and the gelding came back down. The descending circle of light blinded the bear, crunching toward them, coughing, and making rabid, low guttural slaverings, its nose nearly on the ground. "The reins!" Duncan howled to his left, "Let go of the stud's reins," he repeated and leaped up on the stallion.
Adam complied. They couldn't descend the steep trail in the dark and they didn't dare face the bear from the ground. The shape of its head, narrow and long in the muzzle, like a fox, said this was no brown or black bear, but a grizzly. Could be worse, Adam thought, Kodiac would be worse, this was bad enough.
Adam dropped his reins on the gelding's withers and threw the light to his left hand, never taking it off the bear's blinking eyes. His right hand found the sword in the scabbard lashed beneath the pack and drew it out. If the days before had been riding lessons, then this would be, it seemed, the final exam. He readjusted his legs farther behind him and steadied the gelding between them, speaking an encouragement he did not really feel."What now?" he asked Duncan as the bear continued slowly towards them despite the blinding light.
Duncan answered from somewhere high above him and to the left, as if he and the stallion were levitating. "Like any charge," Duncan answered, now down again, even, on Adam's left. "We await the perfect moment."
"Charge?" Adam whispered.
"You heard me," Duncan hissed back, "You are right flank. I left. Stay steady. If your horse bolts, stay on as long as you can..."
Adam had a sudden, sinking vision of himself and the gelding plunging down some endless drop in the dark.
"...otherwise, take your best advantage with that long blade of yours, and try not to wound your own mount or mine."
Adam would have thought there was more to it than that, but then that was pretty much all the strategy he'd ever needed raiding. Then again, hapless villagers are not grizzlies. "But how do I wield the light and the sword and the reins?"
"Forget the reins," Duncan muttered, "That's why we've spent the whole while working leg aids. You've got the longest legs of anybody I know. Put them to some use."
The bear was almost on them. The strangled cough built up into a lowing moan and then a full and deafening roar as the beaste stood, great talons flashing in the light, and a dazzling collection of ivory that an elephant would envy.
"Now," said Duncan, and both men urged their mounts forward, the stallion left, the gelding right.
Adam didn't really have time to think about his knees or his back or anything at all, except that he needed to get to that flat spot off to the right. And there he went, as if on his own two legs. The bear veered away from the light and towards Duncan and the stallion. As Adam watched, the bay connected a fore hoof with the bear's right shoulder, dipped down low under the answering swipe and wheeled, planting both back hooves squarely in the ursine's belly, taking the beaste down from its standing posture to all fours. Adam heard Duncan's hearty praise of the stud over the furious wail of the bear.
"Which makes it our turn, Red," Adam squeezed just a little too enthusiastically and brought the nervous gelding up to full rear and then a vaulting exit which landed them nearly on top of the griz. Leaning out over Red's right shoulder, Adam planted the bronze sword deep behind the bear's left shoulder, eliciting a sound like demonic malediction from the gigantic throat. In the next instant, Red wheeled right to take them out of harm's way, but the bear was too close and too fast. Great sharp claws, like razors, strafed the near haunch and the gelding collapsed, spilling Adam directly in front of the wounded and outraged grizzly, both forepaws and gigantic maw all poised and armed and heading Adam's direction.
Adam's Immortality was small comfort to him then, flat on his back in the darkness, with only those awesome white fangs clearly visible above him and the daunting image of the bear repainted in subjective memory. This animal could take his head. It was not impossible. Then, in quick succession, Adam heard Duncan roaring somewhere above his head, then a great weight pushed between Adam and the bear, then another sound like a coming storm, growing ever closer.
Then everything slowed down and all the sounds stilled except for the last. Adam couldn't move. Something had given in his back with the fall. His legs wouldn't answer and his whole left chest was crushed and numb. He heard a deeper throated roar than any bear could make. He felt it reverberate in the ground beneath him, amplified through the great barrel of the gelding flopped beside him. It stood the bear up, away from him, clawing at the sky and howling an answer. It seem to Adam as if Duncan floated in towards the bear in slow motion on the dancing black bay, the bright katana flashing as it readied to strike beneath the uplifted paws.
Then the dim shadows became absolute darkness as the whipping, whistling, roaring thing blew into the glade and descended upon them all. Adam heard Duncan cry out, he heard the ringing slice as the katana hit something metallic, and then he heard nothing, saw nothing at all.
In the Canon of Immortality, there are certain rules, absolute and holy, like "There can be only one," and "No challenge may profane Holy Ground," and then there are all the lesser anecdotal corollaries. Adam was reminded of one of these latter as he struggled awake in the dark glen, "First down, first up." Which meant if you were both killed, but not beheaded, in a struggle, then you would wake in the order of who was killed first, then second, then.....
So, Adam was the first to rise. The soft, clover smell of the old gelding, filled his nostrils as the horse worried over him, snorting and wickering softly, and rubbing his cheek. "Hello, Red," Adam reached up to pat the horse's leg and met only air. He reoriented, felt lower and discovered the large sorrel was lying beside him, shielding him, tending him, trying to wake him, though Adam surely must have been dead for a while there. Adam felt a little like the first time he heard his brother Sean say his name. He stroked the matted, sweat swirled coat and thanked the gelding with all the sincerity that was in him. They had gone up against a bear, mounted. No one would believe even one, let alone two, such horses existed in all the world.
And not content with that amazing bit of bravery, Adam thought, you threw yourself between my dying carcass and certain death. Malak was right. I should have a horse to keep me sane. When we get home, I will find you a fine place to stable and we will go riding in the park every day. Sean will love you.
Pushing away from the gelding, Adam went in search of the flashlight, just as the moon shed its cloud shawl and bathed the glen in an eerie, pale luminance. Adam assessed the scene. Red's left hip was mauled and shredded the back leg hanging askew and useless. It nearly made him weep to think the proud, brave mount had crawled on that mangled limb to save him. There would be no park rides, after all. He knelt by the gelding and stroked his head. The horse did not seem to be in any pain, just dazed and sleepy. Adam took his coat off and rolled it up to stuff under the gelding's head.
Beyond the sorrel's body lay the body of the bear. The fearsome beaste had been run through multiple times by some large stave or pike and was covered in blood, which in the moonlight looked like crankcase oil.
To the west, three strides, lay Duncan, his black stallion nearly invisible in the dark shadows, standing over the Scot and nuzzling him fretfully. The stud seemed to have fared better than Adam's own dear mount. Just as well, he couldn't be unhappy about that. It would be a long walk home on foot without a horse to at least carry their packs. Duncan would be waking soon.
Adam began to gather wood and stack it for a fire. He wondered what nasty old grizzly bear tasted like...probably not chicken. He tried to piece together what had happened. He couldn't quite make an order to the chaos. In the midst of the attack, Red had come to him, covered him, and Duncan had charged in from the side, and...
He had the sense that someone, something else had joined the fight, some dark...
large...
flying...
Not staves! Not pikes! Talons the width of fists had taken that bear! Damn! Duncan hadn't exaggerated in his describing of Ram's true form. But if she had come to save them, then where was she?
Ooomph! Adam's inattention had tripped him over the answer to that very question.
"Mother!" He cried out and dropped to her side. His sensitive hands found the deep wound in her belly, the katana slice that had killed her and dropped her to earth some twenty feet from the battle. but of course, wasn't that how you killed a dragon, upstroke through the ventral scales. Surely Duncan had done this, though just as surely, it was not on purpose. Ram's dive towards the bear had simple carried her onto the Highlander's sword.
Adam pulled off his sweater and then his shirt, wadded the sweater into the wound and wrapped the shirt around her lax, pale form, colder than the ground. He lifted her up in his arms and took her back to the center of the clearing, near the gelding and the bear. Then he unsaddled the gelding, no mean feat, given the horse could not rise. Sorting through the pack, Adam started a fire and took some peanut butter over as a reward for the faithful stallion who would not have left Duncan's side were the Holy Father of All Horses to call his name.
Duncan gulped, in a spasm of air hunger and disgruntlement. "Stop that!" he managed on the next exhale.
The stallion, having given up on the subtler nudges and nickers, had escalated the attempt at arousal to full, peanut butter flavored licks and the odd push with one hoof or the other. He was so thoroughly and openly delighted when Duncan rose up angry, that it completely diffused any further retribution on the Scot's part. "Good Boy," the Highlander said, wiping the nasty, mucous and peanut butter frosting off his face. Duncan took a deep breath, stretched his shoulders and unsaddled, and unbridled the stud. He ran his hands over the horse, front to back and found no serious wounds.
"Go find your buddy," Duncan suggested.
But of course that wasn't going to happen. Not with his "buddy" lying so near the carcass of the bear.
"Adam?" Duncan called out. He caught sight of him, sound asleep, on the other side of an inviting little fire. Striding over, he called out again, "Adam!"
"Yes," came the answer, not from the fire, but north of it some ten paces, in the shadows.
Duncan looked again at the body by the fire as he approached. Adam's shirt, but not Adam.
"Who is this?" he called to the darkness.
"Oh, guess," Adam sounded positively jolly.
Duncan was in no mood for such. "Just tell me...Oh," he skirted the fire and crouched down. Who else? Who had they come all this way to find? "Still dead," he called out. "What happened? And what are you doing? Get over here!"
"Just one more....there!" Adam's voice floated back.
"Oh, Dear Lord!" Duncan exclaimed as Adam walked into the circle of the fire's light. "You've gone native! Or nuts!"
Adam was naked from the waist up, covered in blood, hair, torso, arms and hands, and draped over his left arm a thick, silvered fur of incredible dimensions. He looked for all the world like Og the Eldest, or some other notable Neolithic.
"Well, it's not my fault, your precious self would need to sleep so long and leave me with all the field dressing and skinning and..." Adam was far too merry to stand. He had Duncan pull a sizable log near the fire and he draped the bearskin over this so Duncan could lay their dead guest on some more comfortable bed. Underneath the skin he carried bear steaks, raw, bloody enormous chunks of the very beaste that had had similar intentions upon their own flesh.
"Well," Duncan took the steaks and started skewering them with sticks to hang over the fire. "Death on a Horse, you have surely come into your own. You look like the poster boy for testosterone."
Adam's long nose lifted as he surveyed his absolutely filthy physique. "I do at that," he agreed.
"And where's your horse?" Duncan asked.
Adam busied himself with the steaks, "He's sleeping," he pointed back to the shadows whence he'd come like the vision of Man Mountain. "Red's not going to be coming back with us. Mauled left haunch. I'd put him down now, but he's comfortable and sleeping. I just thought--"
Duncan reached over and patted the bloody forearm. "I am really sorry, Adam. He has a brother back at the ranch. I'll buy him for you. I know it won't--"
Adam just shrugged.
"Do you understand what happened, Adam?" Duncan asked as he retrieved one of the canteens, dousing a clean undershirt and handing it over to Adam to start working on clean up.
Adam was at first concerned they would run out of water, but then he remembered they were within easy distance of the falls, so he started washing and telling the newly born tale of the Knights and the Bear.
Ram was sound asleep, deep in the cold cavern behind the falls, when the bear got wind of the two horses and the men climbing the last trail up to the Fifth Tier. She rolled onto her belly and tried to stay asleep. Her first sleep bourne reaction was--Unfair! He'd stolen her moose two nights back, and, really, this was too much. The stupid bear could not think she would go hungry another night, just because he was so greedy.
The great nostrils drank in their scent, two grain-fed plump, prime beastes. No, Master Bear, not this night you won't! Ram came awake like the thunder before the storm, blowing and growling and crashing her great scaled bulk against the cave walls, throwing up sparks and fogging the entire cave.
Furling her gigantic wings, Ram crouched down and charged the front of the cave, tearing up the stony floor with her sharp talons. She crashed through the curtain of the cataract in a great gout of steam as the tons of falling water contacted her fiery form and evaporated in billowing clouds. The great, black and gild form fell several hundred feet before the muscular shoulders could pump the wings wide and down, wheeling away across the lake and lifting with each subsequent downstroke. The pointed ears flattened tight against the metal sheen of the long neck and the deep orbs took in all, missing not the tiniest leaf, or youngest sparrow.
"You are done for, Bear!" she roared. "This meal is mine!"
Both men turned around from there cooking and laughed loud and long at Ram's unique salutation. Well, so much for their thoughts she had come to rescue them. Probably just as well she had gotten skewered on Duncan's katana.
Ram jerked up from the bearskin and wrapped her arms around her stomach.
The two men stared at each other, each waiting for the other to be gallant. Son or brother, they were about equally indebted, family wise. Adam shook his head, smiling, and surrendered, going to Ram's side.
"Easy, Mother," Adam said cautiously. "You've been wounded. Just relax and give it little time."
Ram's nostrils dilated and she "whoofed" loudly as if she were still in saurian form. It was very like the sound Red made when he spooked, or like that velociraptor fogging the kitchen door window in the Jurassic movie. Adam came no closer. "Wake up, Mother," he said, as kindly as he could.
Ram opened her eyes and looked down, where she expected Adam to be, and then up to where he was. The sudden re-orientation made her dizzy and she fell back against the bearskin. A thoroughly inventive stream of old Egyptian invective came rolling out in a veritable rush.
"Well I follow about the hyena and the jackal, but I lost you back at that bit about Bast and the backside of the Moon," Adam chuckled.
Ram's grey eyes narrowed and she gave him a look that might have been fatal in some of her other manifestations.
"Here," Adam steeled his nerve and approached her, squatting down and reaching to open her shirt.
"Are you not fond of that fair hand?" she warned.
"Now that you mention it," Adam pulled his hand back. "What can I do to help you?"
Ram's nostrils flared again, fluttering slightly as she stared at the fire. "I am not overly fond of bear," she began, "but if you feed me, I might not take a bite out of you."
"Fair enough," Adam replied.
Dressed in what was left in the packs, bellies full of bear, and the moon full up, the odd trio lounged round the fire, while the stallion ranged and grazed always within their sight. The gelding slept on, nuzzling into the familiar scent of Adam's coat and dreaming of the battle royal.
"So?" Ram threw the single word into the center of the quiet glen. Partly accusation, partly question, partly indignation.
"Yes, Ram," Duncan thought it was only fair he take the weight of this discussion, since Adam had already put his worth in just getting the woman dressed and fed.
"Why?" Ram tossed another word.
"We came to see you, Ram," hardly the winning opener, "to bring you a message from your husband, Joe."
Ram crossed her arms and waited.
"Do you want to hear this, or do you just want to pout?" Duncan decided the gracious approach wasn't going to work in this instance.
"I can't imagine my wants have anything to do with this. What do you care what I want? Why should I care to tell you?" The way she said "you" made Duncan acutely aware she meant, "your kind," as in "animal."
"Why do I speak with my horse?" Duncan parried.
Ram's face relaxed. Then she said something in Aramaic that rolled Adam over on the ground, howling and holding his sides.
Duncan waited for the translation, but Adam just righted himself and sat up again as if nothing had happened. "Well?" Duncan finally asked.
Adam shook his head and started laughing again. "Trust me--"
"Adam!"
"Well, Duncan, evidently the answer to your question about why you talk to the stallion is because--" Adam went off again. "Um, because--it doesn't translate well....something in the nature of the etiquette of foreplay."
"Ram!" Duncan looked disapprovingly over at the woman on the bear rug. "How could you suggest such a thing!"
Ram's reply stopped Adam's laughter as surely as if she'd strangled him. "Don't ask," was all he said to the Highlander.
"Why did you leave?" Duncan plowed through this impossible volley.
"And why, exactly is that any of your concern, Warmeat," Ram asked.
"I forget," Duncan sighed.
The gelding stirred, tried to rise, and started screaming. Ram stood, looked over at Adam and went to the beaste.
"No!" Adam moved to stop her, but Duncan stopped him.
"He can be no more dead, than dead," he told Adam. "I won't have you hurt by this demon."
Adam thought it was a cold assessment, but true enough. He sat back down by the fire and said his farewells to the sorrel gelding who had carried him farther than just these four days.
A louder scream followed, then abject silence. Adam expected Duncan to be there for him and he simply was, warm arms, gentle tones. Not enough to take the pain, but only share it. And that was all that Adam needed now.
When several minutes had passed and Ram did not return, Adam pulled back from Duncan and stared over into the shadows. "Oh, tell me she isn't eating him," he said.
"It can hardly matter, in any case," Duncan said, but his face screwed up in the same disgust that marked Adam's patrician features.
"Give me the message," Ram's voice sounded behind them.
Duncan jerked around.
"No, I didn't," she answered both their looks. "Tell me the message. I need to sleep."
She was right. Ram seemed suddenly fragile, hardly able to stand. Her smooth features seemed haggard in the fire's dancing light and her breath, though controlled was far too deep and fast. Duncan helped her down beside him. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"No, Leod. I have nay been even some right, not since I first met you, Lord Victorious, but one cannot curse the axe simply because it does the work of the executioner. Tell me what you came to say."
"Joe wanted me to say he is more sorry than words can express," Duncan began. "He loves you more than life and if he could cut out his tongue for what he said to you, then he would surely do so, if you would only return to him."
Ram blinked slowly, fighting to stay awake before the warming fire.
"Joe said you never betrayed him, that he cannot believe you kept your love for him through Hell, that he was the one could be charged with betrayal, because he had given up the ring of your marriage to him, had turned away when Set died...had--"
"Enough," Ram said, clearly unmoved, "He said all this before I left. Nothing has changed. I can change nothing. I have already apologized for lying to him, for lying to myself. I cannot change what I am. I cannot become what I am not."
Duncan could not stop his laughter, "My God, Ram, how can you of all people, say that?"
"Perhaps the words were badly chosen," Ram grumbled sleepily. "I meant I cannot change the way I feel. I wanted to think I was capable of loving. I wanted it so badly that I believed I had fallen in love with the Watcher, when I had only fallen for the idea of being in love. Now that I am over that delusion, I cannot pretend any longer that I am able to love. Because I am not. It is that simple. Malak, for all he could not stand to know many things, knew that, at least."
"The remedy is not within the Wizard's power, because there is no remedy," Ram added yawning. "Joe was right to take off his ring, since we are not wed. Set spoke the vow. I did not. And I cannot honor a geis made in falsehoods and denials and desperations."
"I will sleep and in the morning I will return to my den," Ram stretched her back. "And you will mount your horses and return to your world and that will be that."
"No," Duncan said suddenly. Both Adam and Ram stared at the strength and victory in his tones.
"No?" Ram tucked her chin down and smirked.
"You made me a vow," Duncan said. "you promised if I should ask you to marry me, you would say yes."
Adam's jaw dropped. Ram smiled.
"I am asking, Ram," Duncan proclaimed.
"What is this trick, Warmeat?" Ram was clearly flustered. "You are already married."
"I shall have two wives then," Duncan replied. "That was not a condition of your bargain."
Ram scrambled back away from him. "You are bluffing!"
"Ram, will you marry me?"
Her pale eyes rounded to their limits, "I will be Malak," she threatened.
"It does not matter," Duncan said. "It did before. But I had not been to Hell yet."
"I will be Marak," Ram was running out of ammunition to have even suggested she would wake the Bear within her.
"That would surely delight my other wife, Ram," Duncan replied calmly.
"But, but I am your brother!"
"And I yours, but if you can bed your father, I am surely no worse than he," Duncan set the blade to the bone. "Ram, will you marry me?"
Ram mumbled something.
"Ram?"
"Yes," she screamed at him, "I said 'yes,' you sorry celtic bastard. Yes, yes, yes! And may you choke on this stupid maneuver. You just think you have been to Hell!" With that, she stomped off across the glen to sleep in the stones.
"Well," Duncan caught his breath, "I think that went rather well."
Adam couldn't help laughing. "Oh, yes, splendidly. Just promise you won't start calling me Son."
"Should be interesting," Duncan said.
"If you live that long," Adam amended, then he jerked up and started searching the glen, "What did she say? About our going home in the morning?"
Duncan wondered at the disjointed question. "She said we'd mount our horses..."
"Horses!" Adam breathed, "horses!" He drew breath and whistled.
Out of the shadows came Old Red, hale and whole, a mouthful of mountain daisies and a look on his face as if he had vanquished many dire enemies, all in one night, and without breaking a sweat.
