The Silver Sparrow

My Source of Strength

Was there ever a more fucked up Raviyani?

Nazir sighed, kneading the throb in his temple, his other hand already undoing the buckle of the sword belt as he rushed toward the tent. How was it, that for who and what he was, he hadn't seen all that coming? Being tested on his first day leading the hunt could be expected, losing the firstborn son of a chief was not. As if that wasn't bad enough, now he was going to have to hack a limb off his sister's swornsword and possibly toss away all his plans for the boy or be considered a weak khumar. He didn't even want to think about what Djari would say to that. More importantly, what she would do to interfere.

The booming, first beat of a Raviyani drum sounded from where the main bonfire had been lit, snapping Nazir out of his thoughts for a moment. The celebration had already begun. He would have only a few hours to freshen up and get ready for the big events later that evening while music and dance ensued. For all the shits that had managed to happen during a single afternoon, he needed days, not hours, to straighten things out and rearrange his thoughts.

Brushing aside the bad feeling in his stomach, Nazir strode quickly inside his tent for a drink. He reached hurriedly for the goblet on the table, thankful for the one hurricane that had already been lit for his return and the wine that sat waiting on the table. At least one person had enough fucking sense to follow instructions.

A hand landed on his shoulder, yanking him back and threw him off balance. Catching himself just in time before crashing into a desk, he spun around to face the attacker. Through the dimly lit space, the intruder lunged forward and reached out a hand to grab his collar. Nazir stepped to the side, dropped low to the ground to slip a dagger free from his boot. Rising to his feet just as the intruder's arm passed over his head, he took the man by the throat, pushed forward and slammed him down against the desk. Arm raised high over the figure much larger than he was, blade already flipped into position, he plunged the dagger into the wood, landing it next to the intruder's ear, carving a small wound on the outer part of the earlobe.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't gut you right now," Nazir growled, grinding his teeth at the newly formed, searing heat of something closer to pain than anger rushing down his stomach.

The man underneath him stilled, tugged up the left corner of his mouth into a half-smile, his green eyes catching the light from the hurricane. "Oh I can name a few," said Baaku, his gaze traveled down from Nazir's heaving chest towards the gap between his thighs. "But the fact that you're hard as fuck right now should be sufficient, wouldn't you say?"

Nazir squeezed his eyes shut, registered the truth in Baaku's words for the first time and sighed heavily at yet another thing he couldn't control that day.

"We need to talk." He twisted the dagger in his hand, lengthening the cut that was already bleeding. Outside, the drums seemed to have picked up speed, and so did his pulse.

Baaku's half-smile stretched into a full grin as steel bit into his earlobe. The hard muscles of his chest rose and fell under Nazir in swift successions, as if in anticipation of what he knew would follow.

"Later," said the khumar of Kamara, mouth splitting a little apart, inviting, suggesting, reminding him what it had done and could still do given opportunity and permission.

Permission that didn't really need to be given, not when they were what they were and how their past, private encounters in that tent had turned out for the last two years. Even without those memories. Even with the bad feeling sitting in his stomach and the rage that still followed him around like hungry vultures hovering over a dying man, he was, Nazir admitted, his conscience drifting away like smoke in a persistent breeze, indeed hard as fuck from the confrontation at the hunting ground and the fight just now.