Chapter 21: Meeting

The day after Kokashi's little insult, Sapphire had been sitting in her room, practicing the English letters Tom had shown her when Jackalope had opened the door.

“We are having a meeting down in the armory”

“About what? And why do I have to go down all those stairs?”

“Nunuk’s orders, come now” Well, there was no arguing with that, so off she went, still on her crutches.

Jackalope helped her down the stairs and shushed her when she tried to ask what was going on. Something was up, that much was clear, she was beginning to speculate on just what this meeting was going to be about. Not a very hard question to answer but still, why the secrecy?

As they made their way into the armory, Nunuk, Shiva, all the guards, and the other huntresses were all present. It was a little cramped in here with this many people, but it would do.

“Excellent, we are all here,” Nunuk started. “I’ve called you down here to discuss our newest addition, while he is occupied with Apuma and the children. It has become clear he is both exceedingly useful and very dangerous. He also seems to believe that he knows best what he should share with us and what not to. I don’t like that one bit. So far he has been nothing but friendly, but I wonder what his goals are.”

“From what my son tells me Tom does not fight with honor, he fights to win even in a training flight. I wonder just how he would act, with a mentality like that, if it comes to the real thing. Therefore I have decided we need to be a step ahead of him, rather than trying desperately to keep up. We need to be ready for what he might try next.”

“That is all well and good mother, but how do you plan on doing that? So far he has been exceedingly unpredictable and he seems to have no shortage of surprises.” Dakota had a good point, so far Tom had hit them with surprise after surprise.

“We don’t need to know what he will show us next, we need to be ready for what he will do next. He has brought both considerable material wealth and priceless knowledge with him. We cannot allow that to slip through our fingers. He seems friendly, but we know little of his loyalty. If he decides to cut and run, we can’t let him.”

“You want to take him prisoner!?” Fengi sounded quite upset. Rightfully so Sapphire thought, they had invited him as a guest to their keep and he had even taken an oath to defend it!

“No, I want to be ready in case he breaks his oath to this keep and I want to learn as much from him as possible before that might happen. If he does not run, he will be a valuable ally. If he does, he will prove an informative prisoner. If we cannot capture him we cannot let him escape in case his knowledge falls into the wrong hands.”

“Not a very honorable plan if you ask me. Preparing the assassination of an ally is more than a little underhanded” Jackalope was clearly not pleased by the idea a hint of spite in her tone.

“No, it’s not, but he is too valuable and dangerous to risk. We must do our utmost to earn his respect and friendship, but always be ready to strike if it proves misplaced. Sapphire, you have been spending the most time with him, do you think he will run?”

“Honestly I’m not sure, he said he wanted to stay because it was exciting here, and that can’t last forever. But he is talking about projects that will take years at least. I can’t work out if he intends to stay that long though, or if he just intends on teaching us how to do it. We could just try and ask him?”

“No, that would make it clear we do not trust him. Hmmmm… I want you to figure out as much as you can about him. Get him to trust you as much as possible, get him to confide in you if you can. If nothing else, he might let you know if he is doing something mayor before time. Also, everyone, I don’t want you to teach him anything about magic, show him a bit, just enough to pique his interest. If interesting things are what is keeping him here, we might as well save a trump card.” Nunuk was clearly set on trying to do this covertly, Sapphire hoped that was in case it proved unnecessary. Else this could get ugly

“Yes Ma'am, not a problem. But isn't that basically the same he is doing to us?” Sapphire answered diligently.

“It most definitely is, that would make it an excellent bargaining chip in the future. He seems exceedingly curious and if his world has no magic I’m willing to bet he wants to learn. Now Rachuck, I want you to figure out how he fights and how to best take him down if need be, We have seen his weapons but we need to know if has more surprises. Train him well, but leave gaps to exploit. Just in case we find ourselves fighting him instead of alongside.”

“Yes, mum, from what I can tell, overpowering him in close combat wouldn’t be much of a problem, especially with a numerical advantage. If he has his weapons though, it will be extremely dangerous but possible, he seems unwilling to engage us. During our first little training fight, he didn’t seem willing to fight at all. That could prove useful, if only for a short while.”

“Duly noted. Sapphire, I want to know at what times of the day he keeps his weapons on him and where he stores them. Ideally, we would know he is leaving long before he decides to do so and capture him in his sleep. But just in case we need a plan, Rachuck, that plan is your job.”

“You are seriously considering taking a friend out in his sleep for the crime of considering leaving the keep!” Fengi was clearly outraged at the fact. “He has done nothing thus far except be nice, with the exception where you challenged him to hand to hand combat and you didn’t even give him a sword!” she continued, pointing at Rachuck.

“Where he retaliated by pointing a weapon at my face that would have taken it off!” Rachguck countered. “You should have seen his fight with Anchor, I honestly thought he was going to bite, he is relentless and hardly seems to tire when fighting. He might not know how to use a sword, but he is clearly a soldier nevertheless .”

Anchor added “And a soldier of an army that hides from the enemy only to strike from the shadows at that, but when you get him into a corner he fights like an animal, not a warrior. I honestly didn’t know if he would stop when Rachuck told him to. He is strong too, and quite heavy. That makes him dangerous if it comes to grappling or fist fighting.”

“So exceedingly useful, exceedingly dangerous, and possibly unstable. Marvelous...” Nunuk said with a sigh. “Do as I have told you and we will have to see what happens. Tom must not know about this, for all intents and purposes we are the best of friends. Understood?”

“Understood” it came more or less in unison from the assembled dragonettes.

“Let’s hope this was all for nothing,” Sapphire said, turning to leave.

“Yep,” Jackalope seemingly quite perturbed by the discussion.

“It better be, I doubt we will live if it’s not.” Fengi stormed out clearly upset.

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It had been a quiet day for Tom, well as quiet as what was essentially dragonette kindergarten could be. It had started with Fengi coming to find him sitting in the library studying, so as not to wake the kids. She had been trying very hard to look as innocent as possible, almost pleadingly at him.

“Cancakes?” She went, Tom stifled a laugh into a chuckle answering

“Ohh so you want pancakes” in English to the apparent annoyance of Fengi

“Help make cancakes. Please” She held up her hands in a praying motion.

“Okay. You, owe, me” He went trying to make it as clear as he could. Fengi nodded, seeming a little perturbed if still relieved at the fact she now owed him a favor for the price of learning to make pancakes. Tom just chuckled to himself following her out into the kitchen.

It had not been a difficult job, Kokashi was already in the kitchen getting the fires going. Together they quickly had a few plates put together, even if the sort of bacon seemed to have a tendency to disappear from the plates.

After his little morning adventure, he had classes with Sapphire, she was beginning to teach him writing, at least on the most basic level, while continuing to work on his speech. Apuma had dropped in and they had worked a bit on their English too. It was a funny situation going back and forth between teacher and teaching but it worked quite well. They were starting to pick up on a few things even if their accents made it equal parts difficult and hilarious. The main focus was teaching them to write though, so they could start learning from the books he brought rather than just him.

Following his private lessons, it had been time for another lesson with Apuma and the kids. Today’s subject had been history, it was hard to follow when much of it didn’t make any sense still. But he was getting the gist at least, it seemed to be about their pantheon. They clearly had many gods, some good, some evil.

There was a god of war, glory, and honor, and judging by the children’s reaction they were positively familiar with that one. There was a god of the sun, harvests and the like, one of nature, healing, and the hunt, one of fire and crafting and so on. All very Fantasy, Tom thought. He had never been terribly religious before, the idea of praying for one’s life before you went out on patrol didn’t make much sense to him. The other guys were likely praying for his death anyway, and that hadn’t worked so far, even if they had gotten quite close.

He began wondering if the gods here were different than back home, what if they actually did something here? He couldn’t help but notice the two people he had seen perform healing, were both huntresses, even if Nunuk was now a bit old. Maybe they were priests of sorts? He would have to figure that out at some point, and why the others didn’t have healing, else he thought they would have used it. What if he could learn magic, that sounded awesome! He began noting down as many gods as he could from Apuma’s teachings along with their associated aspects.

After the lesson, it was time to go back down to train with the guard. He was still sore as hell from yesterday. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be more sparring, maybe archery practice, or something else. Sapphire had met him upon exiting the classroom and had begun asking him about what they had been learning about today. As they walked and talked, Tom had answered “Gods, magic” Sapphire seemed to stiffen for a moment before continuing on. Strange Tom thought, maybe he wasn’t supposed to have figured that one out yet?

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Why, Apuma!? Why would you teach him about magic? Sapphire thought to herself. As she continued her questions, it at least sounded like Tom had not been taught anything about how magic works, he had just been told about the gods. Sure, magic was imparted by the gods and Tom had somehow seemed to realize this. Dammit, it would be so much harder to keep him from figuring this stuff out if he couldn’t put two and two together. But mastering even simple magic took talent and years of training, so there probably wasn’t anything to worry about. At least not for the time being.

She had taken Kokashi's advice, no matter how rudely it had been delivered, and asked to join Tom for his day’s training. She needed both to spend time with him and get to know him as well as she could.

“Stairs?” he had looked questioning.

“Help?” Sapphire had responded trying her best to copy Fengi looking big-eyed at Tom. This better work or she would look like such an idiot.

“Uhmmm okay” Tom had answered, seeming a bit uncertain. Oh, thank the gods, he was at least susceptible to that she thought.

As they were making their way down the stairs Sapphire was developing second thoughts about this. Tom had slung her over his back and around his neck. It was not exactly graceful, in fact, she was fairly certain she looked even more like an idiot right now. Mercifully Tom apparently agreed, before they turned the last flight of stairs, he put her down gently, then picked her up in his arms instead. It was a lot more graceful and more comfortable too for that matter.

At the bottom of the stair, they had turned towards the training fields, but Tom hadn’t put her down. Okay then… As they rounded the corner Sapphire thought she might as well put on a show, she was supposed to gain Tom's trust, after all. Might as well show off, especially for Kokashi that old buffoon. She put her arms around his neck and readied her most sly grin. Judging by the staring Kokashi and Heron, the mission had been successful. Anchor just let out a chuckle shaking his head.

It seemed they intended to go a bit easier on Tom today, the training dummies were out and they had a wide variety of weapons. As they took Tom through various different stances and demonstrated on the dummies, Sapphire watched from the side. He did indeed seem quite clueless, and definitely unrefined. She was decidedly unimpressed in fact, he was supposed to be a soldier after all. He did just keep going though, far longer than she would expect and without breaks and when he took brakes it was mostly just to gulp down large amounts of water. He also started getting wet? She thought she had seen that before when he was working in the field, that must be why he needed so much water then.

“Hey, Rachuck. Why is he getting wet?"

“He called it sweating yesterday, says it keeps him cool, don’t know how it works just seems to happen.”

“Huh that's new, sounds useful though."

“Aren't most things with this guy?”

“Touche” She could see how something like that was useful, once they were up to temperature they could maintain it with physical activity. If Tom was always hot, the activity would make him overheat, that only made sense. They would too of course with excessive exercise in hot environments.

“Hey Tom!” she shouted out. Grabbing his attention, “Remember I told you Kokashi called me fat?”

Tom stopped to look at her for a second and Kokashi flinched.

“Would you mind showing if you have learned anything from these savages?”

“Fight Kokashi for you?” Tom had answered seeming a little puzzled.

“Yeah teach him” She replied trying her best to sound cheerful.

“Not sword?” Tom had asked, seeming to sigh a little.

“You choose” Sapphire went pointing to the stand of various weapons with a smile.

“Sure” Tom went lumbering over to the stand looking at Kokashi “Hey Kiran, What use?”

“Big hammer” The little kid answered, laying on a table near sapphire, he loved to just lay and watch

He looked back and forth between Kokashi and the selection of arms, before picking up a small warhammer and shield. “Hammer time.”

“NO no no!” Kokashi went, sounding quite panicked. “I’m not getting into a fight with him armed with a fucking hammer. No way!”

Tom seemed to shrug before putting the hammer back down, raising his fist “Old school?” He went tilting his head. This should be both fun and interesting, Sapphire thought, Tom didn't have claws of any kind. Even if the combatants were not usually allowed to use them in training, or bite for that matter. She would like to see if Tom had some alternative ways of fighting unarmed Rachuck seemed to agree on this, likely wanting to know how Tom would fight if caught without his weapons.

“You heard him, Kokashi. unarmed, no biting, no scratching, understood? Tom respected surrender!” Rachuck seemed very adamant on that last point, Sapphire wondered just what he had done to Anchor to warrant that.

“Kicking?” Tom had questioned, clearly to the dismay of Kokashi.

“Yeah sure why not” Rachuck had answered, resulting in a sly little grin from Tom

“I want you to know I hate you for this, Saph” Kokashi let out in defiance before he made his way to the ring.

“Don’t be a scared little mouse, you even got your armor on!”

“Harumph.” It came from Kokashi, clearly not pleased with what was about being a test subject.