Chapter 34
Ambarro began regretting his decision halfway up the tower.
The climb had started out smoothly. He bounded up the stones as if they were set in solid ground, easily reaching eighty, ninety feet. Then the fatigue from the assessment session set in and he felt his limbs turn to jelly. His hand shook as he struggled to keep his grip. He looked down, the wind rushing past his ears, and the ground seemed to reach for him.
He wasn’t particularly worried about falling, though. With their modified bones and tendons, followed through with proper application of the kiai, shinobi could easily survive falls from anything short of terminal velocity. And when it came to that, there was always magic. Still, Ambarro cursed himself for his stupidity. If I fall now, I’ll never gather the strength to make it back up.
‘Damn it, Master Mokko, why’d you have to push us so hard,’ he groaned, trying and failing to pull himself upwards. Well, there was nothing to it. He would simply have to rest there for a while.
He hung from his handhold like a rag, supporting his weight with his left arm, then his right, switching hands to work the cramp out of his muscles. After fifteen minutes, he felt he had recovered enough to resume the climb.
One, two, huff! Putting on a burst of energy, Ambarro flung his legs under his arms, kicked off, grabbed the wall in front of him with his hands and repeated the process, propelling himself two body-lengths upwards with every leap.
When he finally reached the top, his muscles were screaming with agony. ‘Ach,’ he muttered, exhausted, and lay down on the top of the tower. ‘“The Pale Flask will raise your overall strength and physical endurance”, blah, blah, gibber.’
‘What, did you expect to be able to exert yourself indefinitely?’
Ambarro turned over, mouth agape in disbelief. Harrow was sitting there, his legs crossed, cupping his cheek with a hand propped up on his thigh.
‘What in Oblivion are you doing here?’
Harrow raised an eyebrow for a fraction of an inch. ‘That’s my line, dunce. As drained as you were, you should have gone straight to your quarters or the baths.’
‘You’re one to talk,’ Ambarro sputtered. ‘They put you through the same course I did, and you were still lying down dead tired when I left the dojo. How’d you even get up here so quickly?’
‘I rode-’ Harrow stopped, looked at him, and his lips curved into an irritating smirk. ‘Secret.’
‘You rode what? Never mind, forget it,’ Ambarro snapped. ‘I’m not stupid enough to expect a straight answer from you of all people.’
‘Yes, you’re certainly not stupid enough,’ Harrow said, his smirk widening.
‘I’m-’ Ambarro opened his mouth briefly to retort, then bit his tongue and glared at the elven kit suspiciously. If I say that I’m stupid enough, that means I’m admitting that I’m stupid, but if I say that I’m not stupid enough, wouldn’t that basically mean I’m saying that I need to be more stupid?
‘Don’t pop a vein thinking about it, dunce,’ Harrow snickered, turning to face the sunset. The fading light tinged his pupils with gold. ‘You’ll be here long after dark.’
‘Stupid, not stupid, stupid,’ Ambarro muttered, scratching his head as he climbed up beside his…
His…
What was Harrow to him?
Classmate, yes. Fellow shinobi, certainly. Teammate, at times. That should have been it… right?
A younger, even dumber Ambarro might have added that they were mortal enemies, that one would not rest until he beat the other. He snorted. Stupid kid.
Their rivalry still went on, of course. If anything, the two were more competitive than ever before. But lately, whenever Ambarro laid eyes on Harrow, he found himself thinking not of new ways to take him down in their next sparring match, but of the determination in his gaze as he covered his retreat in that alleyway, the weight on his shoulders as he dragged him out of the mercenaries’ shack, the stench of the sewer waterways as they cornered the werewolf together, the worry gnawing at his gut as he waited with Diia outside his room in the hospice as Rendanshu tore his body apart.
And then there were the little things. The occasional smile and rare chuckle at one of his jokes. The flash of concern in those silver eyes when he was wounded. The bizarre sense of quiet companionship when they were alone, their barbed words and taunts exhausted, as they were now, the two of them sitting there together, watching the sky darken.
From their perch, the two kits could see the length of the Jeralls sprawled out under Mount Furiya. The wind picked up a white flurry and sent it whirling through the village, where lights were beginning to spring up, Akaviri lanterns glowing warm yellow.
Ambarro broke the silence first. ‘How’s your leg?’
Harrow blinked. ‘It’s fine. Barely a flesh wound. Healed it myself after the battle.’
‘Mhm.’
‘Was there a particular reason you asked?’
‘Just curious,’ Ambarro shrugged. ‘Not everyone takes a blow from the Twinstinger and lives to talk about it.’
‘I dealt him one far worse.’
‘Heh, so you did. I’ll give you that much.’
‘We were lucky,’ Harrow said, nudging a clump of snow off the edge, watching it fall. ‘The Thalmor were simply testing our waters this time.’
‘Grandpa said something like that too.’
‘Takarro-ri is wise. As the Dominion moves forward with their plans, their actions will gradually become bolder and more aggressive.’
‘War is breaking out again.’
‘Soon, yes, but not that soon. The Dominion and the Empire both need a few years to prepare, put their pieces in place. Perhaps even a decade.’
Ambarro laughed mirthlessly. ‘Meaning we can sit back and relax until then?’
Harrow scoffed. ‘Of course not. Before fighting erupts in full, both sides will strive to gain the upper hand. That means gathering allies, collecting information, sabotaging the opponent, assassinating key figures…’
‘Fighting from the shadows,’ Ambarro grinned. ‘Well, a shinobi’s work is best done in the dark.’
‘Well, look at you, using literary devices like a poet. Master Torako’s lessons finally paying off?’ Harrow grinned too, then sobered just as quickly. ‘You know what this means, don’t you? Training is going to be twice as tough now, and we’ll be deployed on more missions than ever as the political landscape heats up. By the time we finish our urotsuki-nin journey, there will be no turning back for either the Empire or the Dominion. More likely than not, we will be the first generation of new Shadeclaws to know war.’
‘Tsukikage has survived for two thousand years,’ Ambarro said confidently. ‘Another war is nothing.’
‘I’ve no doubt the village will pull through,’ Harrow said, his loose raven hair billowing in the wind, casting shadows over his face. ‘But there’s no guarantee for individual shinobi.’
Ambarro felt a chill race down his spine, then grunted and gave Harrow’s shoulder a mild shove.
‘Don’t be such a downer. We’ll just have to deal with whatever comes our way like we always do.’
‘“We”? Not every shinobi can afford to be as carefree as you, you know.’
‘I know,’ Ambarro replied, and in a very soft voice added, ‘That’s why I have you around.’
There was silence for the longest time. Uncomfortable, Ambarro shifted. ‘Ick. That came out wrong. You know me, I’m not very good with words and-’
Harrow turned to look at him directly. He was smiling.
‘Shut up, dunce.’
Surprisingly enough, he did.
Night fell, and the aurorae began to shine. Masser and Secunda crept across the blackening sky, and side by side the two kits sat.
Side by side they counted every new star that flickered to life, each trying to keep a higher count than the other. They reached the thousands and Harrow realised that Ambarro was making up numbers. Side by side they shared a spyglass, observing as a pair of lumbering shapes passed across a snowy mountain ridge ten miles away. Harrow shrugged and said it was a couple of bears, Ambarro shook his head excitedly and yelled that it was a tall burly elf in a bear pelt being chased by a giant shimmering semi-transparent troll, which Harrow declared was the most thoroughly ridiculous sentence he had ever heard uttered in his entire life.
Before either of them knew it, it was midnight. Side by side they brought out their timepieces, both of them doing a double take at the exact same time.
Side by side they stood, Ambarro grumbling about having to get enough sleep and Harrow reminding him that if he hadn’t been a foolhardy idiot and climbed the tower that wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place.
Side by side they leapt from the edge, their forms blurring as they gained speed, melting into the familiar, comforting darkness of the Village Under the Shadow of the Moons.
(TO BOOK TWO)
ROARING THUNDER, HISSING LIGHTNING
BOOK ONE
GATHERING CLOUDS
END
Comments
And Harrow and Ambarro are cute. Btw, did Ambarro just make a hint at Underfrykte Matron and Dive Rock?
And Harrow and Ambarro are cute. Btw, did Ambarro just make a hint at Underfrykte Matron and Dive Rock?
Well it had been fun reading your stories. I certainly enjoyed it from beginning to end. It's not the 'end' end, but you know what I mean. To be honest, not many could finish posting one book/arc. I know a certain ... more
Well it had been fun reading your stories. I certainly enjoyed it from beginning to end. It's not the 'end' end, but you know what I mean. To be honest, not many could finish posting one book/arc. I know a certain story ... more
As for the next book, well... you'll just have to wait and see, hee hee. I will tell you, though, that the flying lizards don't come out just yet. Book 2 is set in the years 4E 199-200.