by HP Mallory
“Training my body?” I repeated, with a frown, unaware of his gist.
Tallis nodded. “Jist as ye moost possess knowledge an’ skill ta wield yer sword, so moost yer body be in tip-top condition ta deal with the trials an’ tribulations o’ bein’ a Retriever.”
“So, you mean … I’ll be lifting weights or something?” I asked, still confused.
“You are skinny fat, Lil,” Bill pointed out, his eyebrows raised as he pointed at my stomach. “I mean, you look skinny but you’re all flabby an’ shit.” I glared at him until he shut up.
“Aye, weights an’ cardio trainin’ ta ensure yer swiftness oan yer feet,” Tallis answered as he stirred the contents of the pot again.
“Conan’s gonna turn you into that Terminator chick,” Bill piped up with a wink at me. “I totally wanted ta bone her when that movie came out.” A few moments of silence ensued as he, no doubt, was picturing Linda Hamilton’s naked body in his mind. “’Course, she’s prolly too old an’ loose now.” Then he shook his head. “Nah, I’ll bet she’s a Freddy Cougar—an old chick who can totally rock her slutty Halloween costume.”
I rolled my eyes at Bill before I addressed Tallis. “So you want me to join a gym or what?”
Tallis shook his head. “Nae. Ah’ve already consigned someone Ah troost ta train ye. Yer first session will begin at midday, today. Then, Ah expect ye ta train at least three times a week. With a proper diet, ye should be in fightin’ mode in two fortnights.”
“Okay,” I said, heaving a sigh. I’d never enjoyed diets and, consequently, wasn’t very good at maintaining them.
Tallis took the pot of stew off the fire using only his bare hands. His jaw seemed tight and his eyes narrowed. I wondered if he was feeling any pain from touching the incredibly hot handle, but he didn’t make a sound. It struck me that he was probably intentionally hurting himself as some form of punishment. About a week ago or so, I discovered him bare-chested in the freezing snow, whipping himself with a cat o’ nine tails until blood streamed down his back. After quite a bit of prodding, he’d admitted that he was punishing himself for past transgressions. Tallis Black was seriously messed up.
Taking out two wooden bowls, Tallis divvied up the stew and placed the pot in his sink, which was no more than a large metal tub that sat on the floor. Beside it were a jug of water and a bar of soap. He glanced down at his palm with curiosity, as if taking stock of the damage done by the scalding pot. From where I stood, I could see that his entire palm was bright red. As I watched, the angry redness began to vanish into his tan skin. Tallis could heal himself because of the warrior spirit who possessed his body. I didn’t know much more about the warrior, because Tallis wasn’t too forthcoming when it came to talking about himself.
He handed one of the stew-filled bowls to me and the other to Bill. Bill immediately stood up and inspected the contents of my bowl before addressing Tallis and claiming, “Dude, she got more than I did.”
“Aye,” Tallis answered as he faced Bill squarely. “An’ as Besom has a full day planned, she needs every bit o’ energy.”
Bill frowned. “I thought you just said she was going on a diet?”
“Bill,” I chastised him while shaking my head in an attempt to get him to stop whining. I worried that Tallis would freak out on Bill because the angel could be, in a word … annoying. Bill pouted and frowned, but returned to his place at Tallis’s table and ate his stew, making slurping sounds with every spoonful.
“So tell me about my physical training,” I said to Tallis, who was standing near the front door. I sat in the other chair at his table, across from Bill. Placing my bowl on the roughly hewn wood, I turned my chair around until I was facing Tallis. “I’ll have a personal trainer?”
“Aye.”
“What’s his story?” I continued.
“He is a demon,” Tallis answered nonchalantly.
“A demon?” I repeated, with anxiety emerging in my voice. “I thought our main goal was to avoid demons?”
But Tallis shook his head. “He doesna reside in the Oonderground City.”
“Where does he live?” I asked.
“Here,” Tallis answered. “In the Haunted Wood.”
“And he’s a personal trainer?” I asked, my tone growing dubious. It sounded like the prelude to a bad joke.
“Aye. He has made it his business ta train Retrievers. An’ he is verra good at what he does.” He paused for a moment or two, but watched me. “Ye are loocky, lass. Not everybody has connections ta Ael.”
“Ael is his name?” I asked, pronouncing it “Al.”
“Aye,” he answered.
“Al don’t sound like no demon’s name to me,” Bill piped up with a mouthful of potatoes.
“An’ does Bill sound like ah name o’ an angel?” Tallis asked, raising his eyebrows with a lofty expression.
“Ha-ha, very funny, Shrek,” Bill answered, frowning at Tallis. After slurping his last spoonful and swallowing it down, Bill put the bowl and spoon on top of the table. “Done!” he exclaimed as if he’d just won an eating contest. “Any seconds?” he asked Tallis.
“Nae,” Tallis answered before shaking his head and muttering something about Bill’s appetite being more like that of a pregnant sow.
Since they were both waiting for me to finish my stew, I shoveled down the last three bites and put Bill’s bowl and my own into Tallis’s “sink.” Picking up the jug of water, I intended to wash our dirty dishes, but Tallis’s hand on my arm stopped me. At his touch, I felt goose bumps break out all over my skin. It was very unusual for Tallis to actually touch me.
“We’ve wasted enough time,” Tallis announced. “Ah can wash oop later. Now, we practice yer sword fightin’.”
“Hey, Tido, you mind if I hang back an’ get me a little shuteye?” Bill asked, eyeing Tallis’s bed with undisguised interest. “I’m prexhausted.”
“What?” I demanded, throwing my hands on my hips. “How can you be exhausted? You haven’t done anything today except eat!”
“Duh!” Bill responded, shaking his head like I was the one who was slow. “That’s why I said I’m prexhausted, not exhausted or post exhausted. Just thinkin’ about everything we gotta do today has exhausted me.”
“Aye, ye can remain ’ere,” Tallis replied. “Boot yer not ta sleep oan mah bed.”
“Blewdy hell,” Bill answered, doing a poor imitation of Tallis. With a shrug, he headed for the fireplace and sat down on one of the animal furs. Stretching out, he covered himself with another fur before looking up at me. “Since I just ate whatever the hell that shit was, I get Farte Blanche,” he said as he eyed me knowingly. “You hear me, Lil? I get unrestricted power to fart at my own discretion, got it?”
I just shook my head and looked at Tallis, who faced me. “Yer sword is leanin’ ’gainst the wall, lass,” he said, pointing to a long, narrow object, which was wrapped up in muslin. Tallis had disallowed me from taking my sword back with me to Edinburgh after our last mission. His explanation was that I knew just enough about wielding it to be a danger to myself and others.
Picking up my sword, I followed Tallis outside. He closed the door behind us and grabbed his own sword from where he’d left it leaning against his house. Heading for the rear of the house with me following closely on his heels, along with the herd of Grevels, I asked, “Where are we going?”
“We cannae parry here,” he answered as he plodded forward, without offering any more information. Trying to interact with Tallis was what I liked least about him. He wasn’t a talker by any stretch of the imagination. The incessant silence between us always made me uncomfortable. Trying to look at the bright side, I pasted on a smile and started humming “Do I Wanna Know?” by the Arctic Monkeys. Tallis glanced back at me with a furrowed brow that said he didn’t appreciate my humming, but I didn’t care. If he couldn’t politely engage in some form of conversation, then he’d have to tolerate my humming.
When we reached the same clearing where we’d pract
iced the first time around, Tallis stopped walking. Some of the Grevels disappeared into the undergrowth, no doubt scouting for God-only-knew what, while the others collapsed beneath the cool shade offered by the nearby trees, and watched us both curiously.
“Ye can oonbind yer sword from its swathe,” Tallis announced as he pulled the scabbard from his chest and took out his own sword. I, meanwhile, fumbled while trying to unwind the muslin wrap that swaddled my sword, not finding it particularly easy. I heard Tallis’s chuckle and looked over at him in surprise. He rarely smiled or laughed. “Jist stand the sword oop straight, an’ the cloth will drop, Besom.”
I did as he instructed and, as usual, he was right. The sunlight glinted off the polished blade of my sword and as I held the hilt, a strange feeling overcame me, as if I were being reunited with an old friend. “What type of sword did you say this was again?” I asked Tallis.
“A Claymore.”
“No, I mean in Gaelic,” I clarified. “You called it something else.”
“A claidheamh mhor.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that was it.” Fastening my eyes on the sword’s undeniable beauty, I allowed my gaze to absorb the essence of it. The sword was long, maybe four feet or so, and featured two handles at the top of the blade. Each handle curved into a honeycomb shape. The hilt was created of wood, which I assumed must’ve come from this very forest. I gripped the hilt tightly and examined the flawless beauty of the blade, unable to restrain my smile.
“Ye have missed her,” Tallis said. I found him studying me with an expression of curiosity.
“Yes,” I said, nodding as I beheld my sword again. “It’s beautiful.”
“Aye,” Tallis said as he nodded. “Boot the look in yer eyes was not one o’ admiration, lass, boot pride.”
“Maybe,” I said with a shrug. “I am proud of it.”
Tallis actually smiled. “It pleases meh ta hear it, lass.” I didn’t respond or have to. “We shall begin,” Tallis continued. “Do ye recall yer lessons?”
“I think so,” I replied while gripping my sword with my right hand, the dominant one. Then I took hold of the pommel, using three fingers: my ring, middle and pinky fingers. I pointed the tip of the sword right between my sternum and my throat, just like Tallis taught me.
“Aye,” Tallis said while nodding to let me know that my stance was correct. “Is the pommel jist above yer belly booton, lass?”
I glanced down and saw that it was. My stance was correct. “Yes.”
“Strike,” he ordered. Bringing my left hand up past my eye, I aimed for the sky. Then I brought the sword down, using my right hand to guide it while my left hand provided the force. “Good, lass, good,” Tallis said. “Again!”
This time, I focused on my footwork. With my left foot behind my right, I stood on the ball of my foot and pushed off, being careful to place my left foot down before sliding my right one along the ground to ensure my balance. When I was ready to strike, I brought my left foot back into position and lashed out with my sword.
“Ye appear a wee bit unbalanced, lass,” Tallis said as he studied me. “Boot all in all, not bad. Ah daresay ye’ve been practicin’?”
I wasn’t sure if he would have wanted me to practice without him, seeing as how he’d kept my sword rather than allowing me to take it with me. But there was no use in lying. “Yes, I have.”
“With what?” he asked, suppressing a smile. He appeared to be amused, or maybe he was actually pleased with me. Tallis was such an enigma, it was extremely hard to tell.
“A long stick,” I answered and remembered how ridiculous I looked when practicing in my room and jabbing at the air with my pointed stick. I started to laugh.
“Ye have done well, lass,” Tallis said as he stepped away from me, bracing himself with his feet shoulder-width apart. He assumed the same position I had when I demonstrated proper striking stance. “Now, ye will fight meh.”
“Huge hail, and water sombre-hued, and snow, athwart the tenebrous air pour down amain.”
– Dante’s Inferno
THREE
“Um,” I started, prepared to argue the reasons why I shouldn’t fight Tallis, namely because he was a practiced warrior and I was a nobody; but he was already coming at me, his sword raised high in the air, and the maniacal look of a crazy person in his eyes. I was as good as dead.
Bracing myself, I held my sword out in a defensive stance before me. When the blade of his sword struck mine, it felt like an earthquake rocked my entire body, with the epicenter in my right arm. After the initial, jarring blow, my arms felt like jelly but, amazingly enough, I managed to maintain my grip on my sword. My brain, however, still felt like it was rattling around in my head. “Are you trying to take my arm off?” I yelled at him. “Not so freaking hard!”
Tallis raised his sword into the air again, clearly continuing his assault. “Demons o’ the Oonderground wilna be lenient oan ye, lass,” he explained as he rushed toward me again. “Ye moost learn ta defend yerself, come what may!” I experienced a few seconds of intense déjà vu, but then figured I’d just seen Braveheart one too many times.
I deflected the blow in the same way as before, but a split second later, the blade-wielding Scotsman circled around and charged me once more, his sword held high again. Before I could even fathom what was happening, Tallis held the tip of his blade against my throat. I clutched my sword in my left hand with the tip of it just skimming the ground, realizing it wasn’t doing me a whole lot of good. Tallis walked a few paces forward, and forced me to walk backwards to avoid being run through.
“If Ah were a demon, mah sword would be buried in yer head by now,” he said calmly. “Och aye, perhaps then Ah’d sever yer head an’ later, it’d be mounted oan mah wall.”
“Ha-ha,” I said with little or no humor. I fought to take a deep breath and calm my heart, which, even now, suggested I was having an attack.
Tallis shrugged. “Ye shoulda blocked meh, lass,” he finished in a deep voice, his eyes riveted on mine.
I didn’t respond until I backed up against the rough bark of a tree and realized I was cornered. “You can’t expect me to defend myself from you when you’ve had over two thousand years of practice!” I yelled, not liking the feeling of being trapped. “And what’s more, I’m not possessed by the ghost of some dead warrior! So this isn’t exactly fair!”
“Do ye wanna survive the Oonderground?” he asked rhetorically. His tone remained casual and calm, which only irritated me more.
“Of course I do!” I railed back at him, craning my neck to the side as he held me captive beneath his blade. “What are you doing?” I demanded. But he didn’t remove the sword. He held it in place, while staring at me like he’d lost his mind. “Take your sword away from my throat!” I ground out as burgeoning fear tried to overcome me. Tallis was always unpredictable, which was, by nature, intimidating.
My voice was abruptly cut short when he pushed ever so slightly on his sword and I felt the cold metal riding up my larynx, its keen point threatening my neck, yet still not piercing my skin. Without a clue of what was going on, I looked into Tallis’s eyes and what I saw there worried me. A lot. His standard, midnight blue gaze was gone and replaced by a dark, inky blackness. His eyes were so dark and shadowy, I couldn’t distinguish his pupils from his irises. I’d seen his eyes eclipsed like this before—usually in moments of combat or after his anger was incited. I’d always figured it was just the warrior spirit within him suddenly overtaking his body. But why would the warrior feel threatened by me? I had no idea why. All I could hope was that I’d survive long enough to find out.
Tallis continued to stand there, silently watching me, his sword still precariously aimed on my neck. His eyes were completely engulfed by the strange blackness. They no longer resembled the eyes of a human ...
“Tallis,” I whispered. “You’re scaring me.”
My comment seemed to thrill him because his lips parted into a smile. But he still didn’t say anything. Ins
tead, he continued staring right through me with enigmatic eyes that revealed nothing. He continued to smile as he studied me, though, appearing amused by the fact that he had me where he wanted me, amused that I was his captive. And that was when I realized he intended to kill me.
“Ta … Tallis,” I gasped before moving my arm toward his blade, with the hope of pushing it out from underneath my chin. There was a strange gleam in his eyes that matched his bizarre smile. “Don’t do this,” I said as my heartbeat began to pound loudly through me. I could feel sweat breaking out along my hairline as the gravity of my predicament overcame me. “You said yourself that you were looking for salvation,” I started. “If you kill me, it’s not going to help you find it.”
“Kill ye?” he repeated, suddenly frowning. All at once, the black pitch of Tallis’s eyes disappeared altogether. In a matter of seconds, it simply dissolved into the navy blue I’d come to know so well. His eyes widened as if he were surprised, as he instantly dropped his sword on the ground beside me. Looking up at him, I shook my head, feeling the rush of heat in my cheeks as I witnessed how powerful Tallis could be and, more importantly, how completely unpredictable.
“What the hell was that all about?” I yelled as I pushed myself away from the tree and touched my neck, examining my fingers for any signs of blood. Although I found none, it didn’t alleviate how pissed off I was. “What the hell just happened?”
Tallis shook his head and looked confused. He started to explain, “Ah dinnae …” but I interrupted him.
“You were about to kill me,” I continued, my voice angrily accusatory. There was no way I was going to buy this act. I was more than convinced that whatever had just gone on in his head had nearly cost me my life.
“Nae, lass, ye are wrong,” he replied immediately.
But I vigorously shook my head. There was no way he could talk his way out of this one. “I actually saw it in your eyes!” I railed back at him. “You were just about to run me straight through with your sword right before you suddenly came to your senses.” I took a deep breath, trying to slow my frantic heartbeat. “Bill and I are leaving,” I tersely announced, wanting nothing more than to get as far away from him as I could. “I’m heading back to your house right now!” I added as I started forward. Then I thought better of it and turned back around to face him. “And when Bill finds out what just happened, you bet your ass he’s going to be furious, mister!” I knew Bill couldn’t do anything at all to Tallis or anyone else for that matter, since angels were prohibited from inflicting physical pain, but there it was.
