20Admittedly, I'm being very slack on updating this. I say I'll update every Tuesday… and I don't. Well, seeing as I have a total incapability to fulfill a promise I make to you guys, I'm going to rephrase that, because it's not fair on you if I can't keep that promise.
I promise I will update on a day of the week when my guilt is getting the better of me. Whether Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday, I promise that I will update it.
My latest excuse is that I have had exams recently, and after every exam I have had the exact same desire - to simply lie down and sleep. I've been lazy, and I've been selfish, but no more. (Having said that, I'll probably wind up continuing my laziness and selfishness, purely because I know myself too well.)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize, including Shakespeare's lines from Macbeth. Forgive me – I've been studying it lately, so it's on my mind.
There was a rough hand shaking her awake, and Lianne's eyes snapped open. "Get up," Murtagh's voice told her, sounding irritated. Was he always this way? she wondered. "We've got a fair way to go."
Blearily, she tried to get up, but her ankle jolted and she sat back down again, letting out a small squeak of surprise. She was no expert in injuries, and hadn't really given any thought to her ankle, but as she looked at it, she saw that she had made a massive mistake.
Murtagh whistled, and Lianne didn't think he was impressed. "How on earth did you walk on that?" he asked. "It's at least twice the normal size."
"I didn't think it was important," Lianne confessed.
"It's no wonder they caught you," he commented, kneeling down to examine it. Lianne wasn't sure whether he was commenting on her stupidity or her ankle, but she winced as he probed it gently with his fingers. It was odd, how gentle they were. He was obviously a seasoned warrior, and yet his touch was as soft as a breeze. He stood up briskly. "You'll have to ride."
Lianne cast a look at the big grey warhorse and shuddered at the thought of it. "No, I can walk," she protested. "I did it before."
"You'll only make it worse," he replied, rolling his eyes at her naivety. "It's quicker if you just ride. You won't slow us down."
Lianne still seemed uncertain. "But it's your horse."
"I don't care – ride with me, if it makes you feel better. All I care about is getting away from here, because when the Empire finds out you've killed some of their soldiers, they'll send more, and I'm not willing to be caught because some girl refused to ride on a horse."
"I've never ridden a horse before, though," Lianne told him.
"It's not difficult. Just hang on to me." Before she could protest further, he picked her up, and set her on the horse. She clung onto its mane as if she would slide off at any moment as he finished packing up the camp. When he looked at her clinging to his horse, he sighed. "You'll have to let go if I'm going to get up," he reasoned. She let one hand go and, finding she could somewhat balance without holding on, let go of the other hand. As he mounted quickly, she almost slid off, but he pulled her arms around his waist. "Just hang on there," he told her. "And try not to scream."
She nodded, and hid her face. She wasn't going to like this, she could tell. As he kicked the horse into a gallop, she clung onto him tighter than ever, and prayed she wouldn't fall off. The last thing she needed was to look like even more of an idiot in front of him.
In front of her, Murtagh smirked. She seemed like such a country girl – quiet, mild-mannered, and rather backwards in her ways. He wondered why on earth that letter was so important to her – important enough to ask a total stranger to travel with them and teach her how to read. No wonder the Empire had been chasing her.
Whatever the reason, he was reluctant to force it out of her right at this moment. There would be plenty of time to coax it out of her – teaching someone to read was not a quick process.
As they stopped for the night, Murtagh helped Lianne off his horse. "You are a terrible rider," he commented wryly. "I thought all country girls learned to ride."
Lianne shrugged. "This girl didn't." She winced. "And if you get sore muscles every time you ride, I think I'm glad I didn't."
Murtagh smirked. "Just wait until tomorrow morning. If you think that's bad, you're in for a shock." He pulled his pack off his horse, and picketed his horse near a nearby tree. The clearing he had chosen was small, but offered plenty of trees to hide them from any unwanted visitors, and to help keep them dry if it rained. Looking at the clear sky as his horse guzzled water, he reflected that this was unlikely to happen. He looked over to Lianne, who was limping around and collecting wood for a fire. She winced every time she put weight on her swollen ankle, and he sighed. "How bad is it?"
She looked up, startled that he would ask out of concern. "Not bad," she replied.
"Liar," he commented, as she winced again. "Stop doing that – you'll make it worse."
"I thought you said you'd fixed me up," she countered.
"I never said that."
"The phrase 'You'll undo all my good work' is what I remember."
"I see it this way – we can argue about who said something, or you can stop collecting firewood and I can fix it up for you," he told her.
He was making sense, she reasoned, and so she obliged. As she dumped the firewood onto the ground unceremoniously, he motioned for her to sit down. As she obeyed, he took a blanket and tore it into strips. He doused another blanket in water, and wrapped the cold, wet cloth around her ankle. "Keep that on it," he ordered. "It looks like a sprain, but it's not too good."
She obeyed, and he wrapped the strips of cloth around her ankle, securing the wet one to it. "It'll keep the swelling down, and you should be able to walk on it a lot better," he told her.
He stood up, and began starting a fire. She watched carefully, taking in his movements, before speaking. "Did you mean what you said?"
He looked at her. "About teaching you to read?"
She nodded.
"Of course I did. I don't break promises," he told her. The fire took hold of the kindling, and he began building it up until the heat was warming them both. He handed her some bread from his pack, and she split it into two, before giving him half. They ate in complete silence, and when they had finished, he leaned towards the ground and drew an 'a' in the dirt. "That's the letter 'a'," he told her. "Copy it."
She frowned, scrutinized what he had drawn for a moment. "That's on my letter." She pulled it from her bag and showed him. "See?"
He nodded. "That's right."
She began carefully tracing what he had done into the dirt. "Like that?" she asked, her hand wobbling slightly with the concentration.
He nodded. "A good way to remember it is by thinking of something that starts with that letter." He thought for a moment, and then brought out an apple from his pack. "Like this. Apple starts with 'a', so that's how you can remember it."
Lianne frowned again. "A for apple," she echoed. She nodded. "That makes sense." She drew it in the dirt again, this time with more confidence. "A for apple."
Murtagh nodded again. "Good." He drew a 'b' in the dirt next to the 'a'. "That's the letter 'b'. Copy it." They continued with this until the sun sank, and the light of the fire was too little to see by. Murtagh stood up and scuffed out the writing, before banking the fire for the night. "There are some blankets next to the pack," he told Lianne, who obediently stood up and hobbled over towards it. Pulling the blankets out, she cast a look at Murtagh, who was checking the campsite once more to make sure they were safe.
He wasn't as bad as he seemed to want people to think he was, she reflected. He had let her accompany him, when he didn't have to. He had made her ride a horse when he could have told her to walk. He had bound her ankle up. He was even teaching her to read. He wasn't that sour towards her.t
So why did he not want people to think that?
"My name... is Lianne," read the girl in question slowly. "I am... sev-en-teen years old, and I have brown hair." She looked up. "That's right, isn't it?"
"Good," Murtagh answered. "Try this." He quickly wrote out something. "Read that."
"By the pri-cking of my thumbs," Lianne read, accidentally emphasizing the 'b'. "Some-thing wick-ed this way comes." She looked up at him. "What does that even mean?"
"No idea," Murtagh replied casually. "But it sounds good, doesn't it? Sometimes I think I should be a poet."
Lianne laughed. "You'd make a very poor one, if the first thing that comes to mind is the colour of my hair," she commented.
Murtagh raised his eyebrows. "Oh, really?" He quickly wrote another sentence on the ground. "Read it." He seemed extremely satisfied with himself.
"This my hand will ra… ra-ther the mul…multi…" Lianne trailed off, and shot Murtagh a glare. "Alright, you win. What does it say?"
"Read it yourself," he replied. "Sound it out."
Lianne glared at him again. "This my hand will ra-ther the mul-ti-tu-din-ous seas in-ca… in-car-na-dine," she read, placing a finger underneath each syllable as she went. "Mak-ing the green one red." She shot him an incredulous look. "Care to explain what it means? Where on earth did you think of this?"
Murtagh shrugged. "I read it somewhere in a scroll. I don't know where. I think it was something about guilt. But you're doing well."
Lianne blushed. "Thank you." Since memorizing what Murtagh wrote out every night for the past few weeks, she had slowly progressed to simple words, and from there, on to full, albeit still simple, sentences. It wasn't so much a compliment to her as a compliment to Murtagh – he was the one who had insisted on her practicing every evening. "Would it be enough to read the letter?"
Murtagh shook his head. "Not yet."
Her shoulders sank, and her heart with it, but she knew he was telling the truth. She liked that about him. She liked how he wasn't afraid to share work that was traditionally classified as a woman's job. She liked that he didn't abandon her even after her ankle was healed. She liked how he would keep an eye on it when he thought she wasn't looking.
Their initial wariness had faded along with the pain in her ankle, and they had progressed from there to a stage of what was more or less a level of tolerance bordering on what seemed rather like some form of friendship, although there was always a feeling that he was never quite honest from her, as if he was holding some great secret about himself away from her, and wouldn't let her hear it. It frustrated her. Why would he not be totally honest with her? Had she not been totally honest with him?
She thought about this as she watched him examine his sword in the firelight. As he produced a whetstone from his bag and began to sharpen it, she finally voiced her thoughts. "Murtagh?"
"Hmm?"
"How…" She took a deep breath and forged on ahead. "How long have you been running from the Empire?"
"A while," Murtagh replied, his eyes firmly on the sword.
Lianne rolled her eyes. "Are you ever going to tell my why you're running?"
"It's better if you don't know." He seemed determined to end the conversation there, and Lianne reluctantly dropped that line of questioning, choosing to take up another. She'd been considering it for a while, ever since she'd watched him hunt a rabbit for their dinner one night.
"I've been thinking," she began again.
He didn't look up, or even acknowledge her words, and she bit her lip, and wondered how to put the question to him without seeming silly. "Have you… ever… cried when you killed someone?"
"No." The answer was flat, emotionless. He looked up from his work, and there was an almost unnatural flash of concern on his face. "You did, didn't you?"
She nodded slowly. There was no point denying it, not when he could read it on her face. "Am I weak?" The question was barely louder than a whisper, and yet he shook his head.
"No. You just care." There was a hint of disdain in his voice, and she felt a little hurt by it. Didn't he like her anymore?
"Is that bad?" she asked, almost afraid of how he would answer.
"You won't make a cold-hearted assassin, if that's what you're hoping for," he told her sharply. His voice seemed to soften slightly, almost an unnatural act for him. "It's not bad for you. It means you have a conscience. Not many people can claim to have one these days."
She could sense that he was frustrated with her questioning, however carefully he might be choosing his words. His work was slowly becoming hastier, and his hands were tightening over the whetstone. She wondered what was so wrong with having a conscience. Surely that was a good thing? Why did Murtagh seem so disgusted with the concept? He wasn't evil. He had rescued her – he must have some sort of conscience.
As she lay in her blankets that night, waiting for Murtagh to come back, she felt a flash of uneasiness run through her. She knew he had gone to get some more firewood, and she didn't want to fall asleep without making sure he was safely there with her, so she did her best to stay awake until he got back. It wasn't difficult – her mind seemed so fixed on him and whether he was safe or not, that staying awake seemed a second priority.
When he eventually did come back, he seemed surprised to see her awake. "I thought you'd be asleep by now," he commented, dumping the firewood on to the ground and coming to sit near her.
She shook her head, and propped herself up on one elbow, resting her head on her hand. "Someone had to make sure you came back alright."
He raised his eyebrows. "I'm not a child, Lianne. I'm older than you are, and I can protect myself."
"Someone still has to look out for you though," she pointed out. "You don't have to shut everyone away. Sometimes people just want to help you."
Murtagh rolled his eyes. "Enough of this."
"Of what?" she asked, innocently.
"Asking me why I'm running away from the Empire. Don't deny it," he added, seeing her about to protest. "You've been asking this sort of stuff all day, for weeks now. I've told you so many times – I can't tell you. And if it's not why I'm running, it's always about people left behind. You always talk about your father, and all the people from your town, and then you ask me if there's anyone I care about. There isn't. I've told you time and again that my parents are dead."
"There must have been someone," Lianne retorted. "Everyone has someone that they care about, or that cares about them. Didn't you even have one friend where you lived?"
"The only person who was ever kind to me was Tornac," Murtagh said flatly.
"Who's Tornac?" Lianne asked, knowing she had been right. She fought back a smile, determined to find out something about the young man with whom she was travelling.
"The man who taught me to fight." He saw her open her mouth to speak. "Don't get excited," he snapped. "He's dead too."
"But he was still a friend," she pointed out triumphantly, a smile playing at her lips. "He still cared about you."
Murtagh looked infuriated, but seemed to swallow his frustration. "Just go to sleep, Lianne," he ordered.
Lianne lay down again, albeit unwillingly, and closed her eyes. "I saw what's on your back," she commented, when all was quiet.
Murtagh clenched his fists. Would she ever stop talking? "What?"
"You know what I'm talking about," Lianne told him, opening her eyes again. "That scar on your back." She was quiet for a moment. "How did you get it?"
"I don't remember," Murtagh lied. "It happened a long time ago."
"Nobody could forget receiving that," Lianne disagreed. "Does it hurt?"
"Not any more." He paused, testing the waters. "It must make you feel sick."
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't alarmed when I saw it," she said quietly. "But it's part of you. You don't sicken me as a whole. Why should you pay for something that is only part of you? You didn't ask for it, did you?"
There was a flash of annoyance at her answer – always the same damned answer – and yet he felt unnaturally relieved by it. "When did you see it?" he demanded
"You'd been gathering firewood again. I think you must have thought I was asleep."
"Well, why don't you go to sleep now?" He was getting more and more irritated by the second. She should stop sticking her nose into business that wasn't hers, he thought.
He heard her sigh, and roll onto her side so her back faced the fire. As he waited for her to fall asleep, he slowly unclenched his fists. It wasn't her fault that she was so damned optimistic, he told himself. She was just brought up that way, as he had been brought up to be practical.
If he told her who he was, how would she react? Would she be alarmed by it, as she had been with his scar? Or would she simply accept it? Part of him wanted to tell her, just to see how she would react, to see the look of horror flash across her face as she realized whom she had been travelling with, who she had been taught by. It would reassure him that he wasn't changing, wasn't going to be relieved if she simply accepted it.
But when he looked over at her still form, he knew that he didn't want to. To reveal something that big would test her limits to breaking point, and, although he would rather have cut off his own sword arm than admit it to anyone, he liked Lianne. He liked how honest she was and how she was willing to work hard, a testament to her life. And, if he was brutally honest with himself, he found her optimism infuriatingly refreshing. She was the closest thing he'd had to a friend in a long time. He didn't want to test the limits of it.
He looked back into the fire with the sinking feeling that he was going soft.
Damn it.
A/N: Okay, so apologies for the Macbeth references once again. Clearly I've been studying it too much.
Hopefully Murtagh isn't too OOC. Is he? Let me know. You know I like it when people point out stuff I've missed.
Sarah :D