FicWad

Chapter Four


They were laughing, drinking and reveling in their victory, singing reels that no one could quite remember all the words to-but the refrain was always strong and awfully sung, their tankards raised, their voices high and rapturous.

Llewellyn leaned against Dow outside the tent, and sighed, looking up at the stars. Dow was giggling, deep in his cups and staring into yet another, and Llewellyn was smiling as though stupid, muttering about nothing in particular-a dream perhaps, or a memory of something he had never done.

Somehow-perhaps by the song-they came upon the subject of women. Melusine was brought up, along with her partner and young son, who would be in this year almost four, an abstract thought to Dow. She was passed along to better subjects of such a conversation, subjects such as the beautiful women of legends.

Dow managed out, through giggles on a particularly interesting description of the 'perfect woman', "I believe I shall stay my hand on women. They're far too soft."

"Have you no care for softness?" Llewellyn murmured against Dow's neck. He shrugged the opposite shoulder and sighed, turning his head to nearly meet his companion's eyes.

"There is softness, and then there is a woman, which is simply soft."

"How so? Explain yourself, little stag, or I'll lose you."

Dow deliberated, trying to figure out just what he was saying himself. Finally, he proclaimed, "Woman are all curves and gentle lines. There is no sharpness to a woman, except, perhaps in her wrath, which I hope never to see or experience-my mother has taken a shoe to me, more than once."

"And that is soft?"

"Yes. But softness is different. Softness is being held after love, which a woman will do; or being comforted without words after a friend has died, which a woman will not do. She will try to speak you out of misery, or offer you to her soft voice, her curves and such."

"You do not wish to be coddled, little stag," Llewellyn murmured, his voice a soft caress of his ear, "you wish to be broken on hard lines?"

"I wish to be engulfed in all things, 'wellyn," Dow whispered, his words slurred at that level of tone and drunkenness. He turned, and smiled at the ginger, throwing back his head in a raucous, nonsensical laugh that rang through their camp. "All things should burn."

"All things? I should hope not!"

Dow was not normally a heavy drinker, unlike most of the young men their age who had been to battle and back. Llewellyn thought it odd and unsettling, to see the drunken haze in the dark man's eyes, to hear the words he spoke.

"What of love, my stag. Should love burn?"

"It does when it involves you," Dow grumbled, accompanying the worrying words with a leering grin that made Llewellyn shake his head, stand, and stretch widely.

They strode through the camp, listening to the revelry quietly, and slunk into their tent together without words, their hands brushing and their eyes half hidden. There was no need to hide such things, they knew-they were warriors, unattached and still young, and none of the veterans would object, should they know of such things-but years of rushing around behind Fionn's back had not been misused.

They were cautious and quiet in their play. After, Dow curled around Llewellyn, wrapping his arms around his firm waist and resting his chin against his breastbone, staring at his sated, slightly sweaty face.

Blue eyes glimmered at him, catching light from outside the canvas, and Dow smiled slightly, darting up to steal a kiss, murmuring his love against thin, slightly chapped lips; Llewellyn professed tiredly back at him, a sleepy smile curling his lips into graceful bows.

"You will always be there?" Dow whispered against his breast, resting his ear to the thrum of Llewellyn's strong heart. Long fingers dug into dark, soft hair, and soothed along his tense scalp gently.

"Always," came the quiet, sleepy reply, half smothered by a yawn that sounded pleasantly loud in Dow's ear. He sighed, and nestled deeply against Llewellyn's side, content, for the time, to simply be held and speak of nothing as they drifted into a deep, bone-tired sleep.There was a feast when the warriors returned to the village; drinking; dancing; too much meat to eat in one night, but they somehow managed to stuff their bellies passed full. Musicians and dancers entertained. Dow consoled with his family-they'd been gone a year and more and things had changed: Vyvyan had married; Drostan was courting; Gwyn had taken a fever from breaking his leg, and was now a gimp, to tend only to things around the house; the twins were growing strong, and Seamus' son was learning the sling.

Llewellyn whispered away to Fionn at some time, and came back a skulking mess of anger and resentment. He disappeared off some where, and Dow found himself following, knowing where the older man would go in such a state.

He asked, from the edge of the clearing, "What's happened?"

Llewellyn replied, "I told Fionn that I had taken someone as mine, and that I wished to be handfasted. He asked me, 'Who is this lucky woman whom you have taken to you bed? Is she beautiful? Will she bear you good sons?'. I told him, 'I haven't taken a woman to my bed in my life. I don't care for them. It is Draga's son, Dow. He is a fine warrior. He will make a good man of me' and I refused to be swayed."

Dow stepped up to Llewellyn's back, rubbing gently and kissing the back of his neck. They were still not the same height, and Dow supposed they never would be, but that was alright.

Llewellyn turned, and looked at Dow seriously. "He said to me, 'You are my legacy, Llewellyn, and that of your dead mother. And you take off with a boy?'. And I told him, in my most angry voice that I can use with Fionn without being struck, 'This is no boy. He has saved my life. He is a powerful warrior, and a fine man. He will make me a good man'."

Dow grabbed Llewellyn's face, and kissed him, powerful and thankful, running his fingers into thick, softly combed ginger hair. He pulled away, and embraced the older man.

Above him, Llewellyn whispered, "He will not speak to me now. I don't know what I've done."

"You were honest with all who you needed to be honest with," Dow stated, pulling away and kissing Llewellyn again. He held him in his arms, and smiled. "And what has he to say in how you are? You are your own man, 'wellyn, and a fine, good one." He jokingly put in, "I doubt I will make much difference on that."

"I do not think my mother would be proud of me," he whispered, and Dow could hear the tears on his voice. "She would have cried to know this of me."

"She would be proud of your love." Llewellyn let out a barking, half-sob laugh, and Dow frowned. "You don't believe me? Come. My mother is a powerful witch. We will walk you, and you will speak with your mother, and ask her what she would think on all this."

They did just that, sitting in Edain and Draga's house, surrounded by candles. Llewellyn held the sword which his mother's father had given him when he was still very young-the sword which Dow had stolen from him when they had been thirteen and fifteen-and closed his eyes, breathing deeply of the sharp smudge Edain used.

Dow sat at the table, and watched them intently. Edain's voice was a calming lilt in a very old tongue, going out of fashion; and then it was the words of the walking, guiding Llewellyn peacefully through a vision so deep that perhaps nothing but Edain could wake him now.

He felt himself drifting, his nose full of smudge and the sweet smell of venison from the earlier feast, ale and wine weighing his stomach. Slowly, he laid down his head, and let his eyes close, only to rest his eyes for a moment.

When he opened his eyes next, the sky was bright with the sun. He jolted upright, reminding strained muscles of their complaints, and looked around as he rubbed his back.

Meghan was cooking at the stove. She had a flower in her hair, and was wearing a pretty red cord around her neck. Really, she was a beautiful, almost elfin creature, with her dark hair and bright eyes and fair skin, scattered with freckles across the nose; she looked like Edain. As Dow straightened again, trying to persuade a kink out of his back, she turned and smiled on him.

It was hard to remember she was in her fifteenth year. Her eyes were bright. She was old for her age.

"Where is everyone then?"

"Vyvyan and Alden are in the market with Edain and Draga. Drostan went to see his woman. Seamus is on the hunt with his party; Gwyn is asleep, I think; and Gwendol went to the river." Her eyes sparkled for a moment as she paused. She giggled a little, and said, "I saw your man before he left. He is quite something."

"He's not my man, Meg," he corrected sternly, but then thought of retracting it. He shook his head, and shrugged a little. "At least, he isn't yet. Where did he go?"

"To speak with Fionn, I think. Or perhaps Uryen; he came by, looking for him." She gave him an odd, too intelligent look, slinging her hip a bit. "Do you plan to make him your own, Dow?"

"Don't ask these things of me, Meg," he begged, shaking his head and rubbing his brow. She sighed a little.

He could hear the smile on her voice; "He has fine hands, even if they are mad and riddled. They're very large."

"Bigger than my own," Dow conceded. He looked over her shoulder at what she was cooking, and inhaled deeply of the smell of mushrooms and rabbit. She bumped him away with her hip, frowning slightly.

"You should go and find your man, Dow. He might run off. Or be stolen away."

"More the former," he assured, rolling his eyes a little in dejection. But he did as he was told, slipping out of the house into the bright light of day.

He stepped lightly to Irving and Uryen's, humming under his breath all the way. The sky was clear of any obstruction, and the day already warm, though it couldn't be very late at all, really. From the road leading toward their small home, he could hear them talking back and forth, and a third voice-which was not Llewellyn's-bantering in as well.

It turned out that Meghan had reported wrong. Gwyn was not asleep, but sitting on the bench outside Irving and Uryen's home, smiling genially and combing his fingers idly through his hair. Dow halted, just out of sight, and watched them for a moment.

Dow had not seen Gwyn since he'd come home and heard of the accident. The older man looked good, for all the strain of his illness and the loss of his leg. He lounged gracefully, a thin reflection of their father, and bantered with the other two as though he were intimate with them.

Perhaps, Dow wondered, he had been, or was. There was a comfortable euphoria about the three of them.

And the way Irving kept leaning in to speak with Gwyn could not have been strictly familiar. Dow sighed a little, and shook his head a little. He supposed it didn't surprise him; Gwyn, beside Draga and the women of the house, had been the only one of any real support in the matter of his relationship-such as it was or had been-with Llewellyn.

He came out from his pocket in the road, and smiled, waving at them. Gwyn stiffened a little, but relaxed as the other two laughed and waved as well, calling him up toward the house.

His brother leaned forward with a quiet smile, and ruffled his hair. Now, Dow could see where the blow had been dealt to save Gwyn's life; he still had a great deal of his leg left, and Dow supposed it had been dealt with by Uryen. That would explain the new development in everything taking place; death had a way of revealing interesting things to people.

"Hey elf. Wandering about? Where's your friend?" Dow shrugged, and sat beside Gwyn, smiling up at him.

They talked for a while, jovial and grand in their tales. Gwyn willingly but sparingly explained his sneaking out of the house without even Meghan noticing, his whispering away to sit on Irving and Uryen's bench.

Uryen admired the scars that remained from battle, though he frowned over the remaining stitching on one wound, pulled the knots, and restitched it, much to Dow's cringing chagrin.

Irving asked, "When are we next going on the hunt? Or are you running away to war and glory again, little elf?" Dow could only shrug and laugh slightly; it felt good to sit about and not have to think or worry over anything.

Llewellyn turned from down the road, looking baleful. He spotted them quickly. Dow sprung to his feet, and wandered over, all smiles and laughter, until he caught the hideously wounded look in his beloveds eyes.

"What is it?" he asked, grabbing Llewellyn's shoulders and staring up at him worriedly. Llewellyn looked away, lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck.

He pulled from a pack he'd carried on his hip since he'd been eighteen a thin-stemmed chalice, and pressed it slowly into Dow's hands, and, speaking softly, said that he had been promised by his father to a woman.

The chalice fell from his numb fingers with a clang on the hard-packed dirt.