“I won’t be fighting in the match today,” Rasp said. “I’m a pacifist now. In case you haven’t heard.”
“You stabbed me with a fork at breakfast.”
Rasp placed his hand on Faris’s shoulder in the same manner others did to him when trying to convey a sense of reassurance. Faris’s taut muscles flinched beneath the unwelcome touch. That was only fair, Rasp supposed. He had stabbed Faris at breakfast. But honestly, what did he expect after serving him a bowl of oversalted oat mush? If there was any real crime, it was Faris’s idea of a hearty breakfast. “That was a long time ago. I’ve since realized the error of my ways.”
Faris’s voice was flat with disbelief. “If I searched your pockets, I bet I’d find another fork to stab me with the moment my back’s turned.”
“Not true.” It was a butter knife, actually. And Rasp wouldn’t wait for Faris’s back to be turned. There was hardly a challenge in that.
Faris, one of the many faun folk that resided in the village, produced a loud, breathy snort, accompanied by an irritated flap of his ears. It sounded like a leathery butterfly trying to take flight. One that gave up after a single snap of its useless wings, forced to concede that perhaps walking was the more practical option, after all.
Rasp was human. In the isolated mountains where he had been raised, other than the occasional missing eye or amputated leg, his people lacked severely in the diversity department. Here, in the quaint little village known as Lonebrook, the citizens were a good mix of species, though the majority were fauns. After having spent every waking moment in the company of his keeper, Faris Belfast, Rasp had cultivated a rather detailed understanding of faun mannerisms. This particular sound meant the time to turn and run had been precisely thirty seconds ago.
“Bye!” Rasp spun sharply on his heel and hightailed it in the direction of the front door.
“Oh, come on. I just finished spot-cleaning the blood off my jacket from your last getaway. Why do you insist on doing this the hard way?” The faun’s hooves clacked against the hardwood as he took chase. Reluctantly, from the sound of his slow, dragging steps. His voice reverberated along the narrow walls of the dim hallway, nipping at Rasp’s heels. “You can’t see, idiot! This never works out for you!”
The worn floorboards creaked underfoot as Rasp doubled his speed. Burnt incense, intermingled with the earthy undertones of faun musk, hung heavy in the air like stale clouds. He breathed the familiar scents in through his nose and out his mouth as the blurry green and brown tinted walls passed at a dizzying rate. Without warning, the heavy oak door swung open ahead of him with a raspy groan. A channel of harsh light poured in from the outside and illuminated the surrounding gloom.
“Gangway!” Rasp called to the fuzzy shape that took up most of the doorway.
“Mister Snow, you blind fool!” the washerwoman squawked as she scuttled backward in fright, hooves scraping the stone porch in her haste to escape the oncoming collision. “You’re going to be the death of me one of these days, I swear it!”
Her squat frame, backlit by the gray light of the outdoors, had a peculiar lump protruding from her hip area that suggested she was carrying something. A basket, Rasp realized as he drew nearer. A maniacal smile formed across his face. “Why, Miss Beechum, is that the freshly dried laundry?”
“You know it is, boy. And don’t you even think about rolling in my clean sheets again.”
“Here, let Faris help you with that!” Rasp grabbed the reed basket from her and heaved it behind him. There was a curse, followed immediately by a dry crunch and heavy thump as Faris failed to dodge the basket on his way out the door. Not slowing his breakneck pace, Rasp cleared the stone steps in a single leap and landed ankle-deep in an icy puddle. Cold mud squelched between his bare toes as he forced his legs to move even faster across the slippery courtyard.
Thlop, thlop, thlop. The sound of Faris’s fast footsteps grew louder behind him. “You’re dead when I catch you!”
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As far as escapes went, this one was poorly thought out. The courtyard of Belfast Manor was open and kept clear of obstacles. Navigating it would be a breeze. It was the woodlot beyond that presented a complication. Rasp didn’t normally give problems much thought. For the most part, this tactic worked remarkably well for him. Right up until it came time to face said problem, which, alas, was now. The terrain underfoot shifted from mud to loose piles of slippery, wet leaves. Around him, the crisp air turned sharp with the lingering scent of decayed vegetation and damp soil.
Faris’s voice rang out from behind him with sudden urgency. “Tree! To your left!”
Rasp dodged right, narrowly missing the towering object that came into blurred focus far too late to be helpful. More trees cropped up along the edge of his murky vision, forcing him to slow his pace in order to avoid running face-first into them. “I thought you wanted me dead,” he puffed, already beginning to feel the invisible fire that burned within his lungs. It tightened like a hot vise over his throat and clogged his airways.
“By my hand, obviously. There’s no satisfaction in watching you get taken out by a tree.”
Faris sounded nearer than before. Another cruel reminder that any moment now Rasp’s keeper would be upon him and his sudden rendezvous through the woods would be cut regrettably short. There would be consequences for inciting a chase, of course. But it rarely amounted to anything serious. Despite Faris’s threats, his people did things differently than the mountain folk. They were light-handed and used words in lieu of fists.
Rasp didn’t understand their peculiar ways any more than he had six months ago, when he first arrived in Lonebrook. There was something deeply unsettling about walking away with a simple telling off when he rightfully deserved a thrashing. At first, he mistook their gentleness for pity. It seemed plausible, given how helpless he was after the whole left-for-dead thing. But their treatment of him never changed, not even after he was strong enough to defend himself. Rasp had begun to wonder if they were taunting him. Treating him like an invalid as a reminder that he would never again be what he once was.
Gods, Rasp thought. Is this who he was now? The mighty Rasp Stoneclaw reduced to being chased by a physically inferior opponent? And for what, a stolen butter knife? This was degrading. Downright humiliating, in fact. A year ago it was he who’d held the power. In Rasp’s prime, before the exile, the good folk of Lonebrook would have cowered in his presence. Now? Now they laughed. He, a formidable Stoneclaw warrior, the Iron Devil himself, was but a shadow of his former glorious might. And they knew it.
A hand grabbed the base of his neck and yanked him backward. “Caught you, you little—”
“I’m still a Stoneclaw!”
A properly executed back throw was a beautiful thing. The one Rasp attempted could only be classified as a thing. He seized Faris’s hand and tucked it into position, then stopped, bent at the waist, and allowed the faun’s momentum to send him hurtling the rest of the way over. Faris rolled over the top of him and struck the ground. As did Rasp, too, unfortunately, since their arms were still intertwined. The pair tumbled downhill in a flailing tangle of limbs and muffled curses through the slimy, leaf-littered muck, until at last they rolled to a stop with the aid of a very sturdy tree trunk.
Despite the ache in his lungs and the sudden, excruciating pain that flared across the hinge of his elbow, Rasp recovered first. He clambered over Faris, clawing, punching, grabbing at whatever he could find. “And stop calling me little! I’m bigger than you!”
“Not where it counts.” Faris’s knee shot upward and slammed into the delicate spot between Rasp’s legs. The impact stole the last of the air from Rasp’s battered lungs.
Rasp wheezed, unable to speak as he slowly listed to the side. He struck the cold forest floor in a splatter of wet leaves and mud. No matter how vehemently he willed his legs to get up and take flight once more, the fight was gone. The festering rage that boiled deep within his gut settled to a gentle simmer as pain took up its place. Rasp drew his knees to his chest and desperately tried to recall the steps necessary to breathe. Something about in and out?
“First of all, you’re a horrible pacifist,” Faris panted. There was a noticeable pause as he sucked in enough breath to continue his rant. “Secondly, you do not announce to the world who you are! Only my family knows. And for good reason. The townsfolk would hang you from the nearest tree if they knew who you were. Understand?”
Rasp’s agreement came in the form of a low-pitched moan.
This was not good enough for Faris, who clamped his hand over Rasp’s shoulder in a manner that was neither friendly nor reassuring. Painful was the foremost word that came to mind. “So when people ask, you tell them your name is?”
“Snow.”
Faris’s grip tightened. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Snow! My name is Snow.” Rasp batted him away with his hand and slumped back into the mud with a whimpered groan. At times like these, a little voice emerged in the back of his head. Not to offer comfort, of course, but to add a layer of insult to the steady stream of agony coursing through his already tormented body. Without hesitation, it slunk from the dark, unvisited corner of Rasp’s mind and bared its ugly teeth.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.