Beyond The Stone

Chapter 14

Jack rose slowly from where he crouched after jumping down onto the pebbles to meet them. His immense bulk shone clearly through his clothes as he began to tower over them. He was a monster of a man!

"Thou cannot begrudge me yet still," Tristan protested as he backed up a step, hands half raised in passive surrender, "'Twas my manly duty enjoy such a beautiful sight."

'What?!? Why would you even say that right now???' Ava hissed nervously.

She was still painfully aware of the dull ringing in her head from the last blow that they'd received from that mammoth.

"As was my duty as their brother to protect them from prying eyes," Jack replied as he tossed Tristan's water skin towards him instead of rushing over to take him down with a tackle.

Ava became vaguely aware that they'd just uttered some sort of unfathomably stupid bro code. Instead of resuming the fight they now simply stood staring at each other speculatively for a moment.

"You are a soldier?" Jack asked, eyeing the sword at Tristava's hip and the handful of old scars on his torso.

"A knight," Tristan replied, "But think nought of it. Thy was within thy rights."

The sudden trepidation that had appeared on Jack's face dissipated slowly while Tristan turned to fill up his water skin.

Ava tried to make out Tristan's reflection in the water, but it was moving too swiftly and it was churning over the rocks in the river bed in that shallow section of shore.

'Not all men are the sum total of their physical appearance,' Tristan chided her playfully as he corked the water skin and retrieved his wet shirt and tunic from the ground to wring it out.

'Neither are women,' Ava harrumphed in retaliation.

Tristan grinned to himself as he approached Jack.

"Woodsman?" he guessed, eyeing the man's ridiculous musculature.

The physically difficult work of felling and carting lumber would certainly account for much of the man's brawn, but some freak of birth had to be responsible for his immensely large frame. He would have made a most formidable fighter.

Jack nodded that he was, indeed, a woodsman.

"My name be Tristan," Tristan offered by way of introduction.

"Jack," Jack replied as he took the hand of greeting offered to him.

"Well then, Jack, my friend and I have a good fire going not far from here," Tristan informed the man as he buried his frozen hands under his slightly less frozen armpits and hugged his body for warmth, "Let me make amends by inviting thee to bring thy sisters to warm up at it a little ere thee journey home. It would be best not to let them catch a chill," Tristan suggested affably.

Jack's eyes fell upon the metal bracelet on Tristan's arm wearily.

"The result of an unfortunate misunderstanding," Tristan explained awkwardly as he shifted the wet clothing draped over his arm to hide it. "It shall be gone ere I have dispatched that which plagues Hamley Forest."

"You... you be going to Hamley?" Jack noted with alarm.

"'Tis my quest," Tristan replied honestly, though he didn't much appreciate the affect that the name seemed to always have on people.

"But... you are still a relatively a young man!" Jack reasoned.

"I be very much still in my prime and good with the sword," Tristan shot back with mild annoyance.