(no subject)

[hippodamio]

Fate is as the Spinners spin it, and if one's life-thread turns for a time away from certain doors, there is not much to be done about that. Days may spin out into weeks, months; years, even, and at the end of that much time one may perhaps be forgiven for forgetting that merely because a door has opened onto one place for all the time you have known it, it may not necessarily always open so.

The lad who opens the door is not quite the height of a man yet, and moves with the odd grace of a young man striving to overcome the awkwardness that comes of shooting up a hand or two in height without warning. He wears dark kidskin breeches and a leather jerkin that might have been blue once. That was some time ago, by the sight of him. One does not end up covered in the grime of a roadside struggle, red to the elbows, without it leaving some mark on one's clothes. And one's weapons; while the bronze spear he bears looks as if he tried to wipe it clean, it could do with almost as much cleaning as he.

He stands a little inside the doorway, staring around him in something like wonder as very old memories come back to him. "Oh," he says. "This place again." The spear is shifted to his left hand as he awkwardly touches still-wet knuckles to his brow and bows deeply to the Bar.

Comments

[azure-mercy.livejournal.com]

There's something familiar about the young man who comes into the bar. It takes Zhaan a few moments to place him. "Hektor?" she mutters to herself, disbelieving.

Well, there's only one way to find out. She goes over to him, looking him up and down all the while. "Hektor? Is that you? You've..." Another up-and-down look. "...grown somewhat," she finishes.

[hippodamio]

Hektor blinks a few times, wiping the hair away from his forehead with the back of one hand; it leaves a bloody smear. "I remember you," he says. "Six years ago, it was... you're Zhaan, the priestess, am I right?"

[azure-mercy.livejournal.com]

"Kahalen, six years...yes, I am." A smile appears on her face. "I assume you managed to tame the horse?" The last time she saw Hektor, she had given him a blessing to aid his efforts in that direction.

[hippodamio]

He nods. "I did," he confirms, "and I remember- as soon as I had done with the offerings to Poseidon, after, I went straightaway to the Goddess' shrine to give Her thanks as well. Thank you. It was... it helped, I think. All of it."

He looks down at his hands as if seeing them for the first time in days.

"You wouldn't happen to be able to take blood-guilt off a man, would you? Or ought I to go to a temple of Apollo for that, as I would at home?"

[azure-mercy.livejournal.com]

Zhaan looks at his hands, too, and for the first time she takes in the spattered, dried blood on them, the cut on one hand and forearm. But what worries her is that, though Hektor speaks of removing blood-guilt, he does not seem particularly disturbed by having done the deed that requires it. Then again, he is from what Zhaan would call a very martial culture.

"Yes," she says, nodding slowly. "I can do that. It will require some preparation, and we must go out to the lake." She will need her vestments, a knife and a silver bowl, and Hektor will need to make prayer boats. She can do the calligraphy for them, but he must fold them himself.

[hippodamio]

"All right," says Hektor. In truth, he shows more surprise at being asked to fold paper than anything; he had expected some sacrifice to be involved. Perhaps the paper will be burnt. That, at least, would be a sacrifice in Troy. The Egyptians alone know the way of making paper, and the stuff is as rare as hen's teeth.

[azure-mercy.livejournal.com]

About an hour and a half later, Zhaan and Hektor stand in the shallows of the lake in the fading light. Hektor's submerged up to his waist, Zhaan barely to the hips. She wears her silver Pa'u's stole over a cassock that she doesn't mind getting wet. Both of their sandals have been left on the bank.

Zhaan's got the silver bowl in one hand and the knife in the other. In the bowl is Hektor's prayer boat. "Merciful goddess," Zhaan intones, "one comes before you seeking forgiveness. Hektor, son of Hekabe and Priam, asks that you cleanse his soul."

[hippodamio]

It is not quite what Hektor had expected, but then the Mother of his mother's folk is not like the Mother as she is known around Mount Ida; it will do all the same. "The man I killed today was my kinsman from afar off, the son of one of my grandfather's by-blows," he says. "He slew my cousin Iros, and raised his spear against my brother Aisakos; for that I cut him down. I would pay his blood-price right away if he had any kin willing to ask it."

Very carefully (his hand is still stinging where the spear grazed it) he makes his people's sign against evil, and looks up to Zhaan.

[azure-mercy.livejournal.com]

"Accept the offering of the blood of your supplicant, and let it be washed away." Zhaan holds out the bowl and the knife to Hektor.

[hippodamio]

That, at least, is a thing Hektor understands. His bronze dagger (not the little one of his first days at Milliways, but a more practical knife by far) still has its edge, although he will have to smooth a few nicks out of it later. But for this it is enough; he draws the blade and swiftly pulls it across his palm. When the red wells up he turns his hand over, watching the blood bead and drip onto the boat for a little while. Then, as the priestess told him, he sets the paper boat down on the water and steps back.

[azure-mercy.livejournal.com]

Normally this would be done in a sacred river, but there are no rivers here - only the lake. Still, it seems that the Goddess accepts the offering, for the little boat goes spinning off into the distance. Zhaan is glad for that.

"Now blood has been repaid with blood," she says. "Let the burden of sin be washed away." She dips the silver bowl in the water and holds it up high. "As he is cleansed by this water, let him be cleansed by you." With that she tips the contents of the bowl onto Hektor's head.

She remembers doing this herself a long time ago, after she killed Be'tal and before the Peacekeepers arrested her for it. At the time, she did not think that the Goddess had accepted her prayers, but now she knows that she was forgiven - or, at least, had the opportunity to earn forgiveness.

Zhaan takes Hektor's hands in her own. "Hektor, son of Hekabe and Priam: through your repentance and the mercy of the Goddess, your sin is washed from you. Now go forth in peace."

[hippodamio]

Repentance is not really how he would describe it, but it does not do to question a goddess in Her precincts, or one of the goddess' representatives, either. So he only bows as best one can when standing in water, and turns to make his way out of the lake.

Before he has taken two steps he stops and looks to Zhaan. One does not speak much on the way home from a sacred rite in his country, but if she needs some assistance herself, his hand is not so badly harmed that he cannot lend her aid.

[azure-mercy.livejournal.com]

Zhaan can get out of the lake all right: she smiles at Hektor as she moves into shallower water and then onto the bank, where she slips her feet into her sandals. It is not customary for Delvians to talk after a ritual either, especially this one. The time after cleansing is meant for stillness and reflection.

The two of them walk side-by-side back to the bar. Fortunately the evening is a warm one, and so their being wet does not discomfit them.

[gotapenny.livejournal.com]

Then there is another kid in the bar. Older than himself but still a kid- at least that is what George tells himself studying Hektor's odd sort of clothing. He'd seen stuff like that in the history books before but..something was just odd. Maybe it was the spear that is doing the trick.

"Are you an Indian?" he asks curiously from where he's sitting at a table looking at his comics.

[hippodamio]

At least Hektor's washed the blood off himself by now; for the moment he's trying to clean the spear with a cloth from the Bar. He looks up at the question. "No," he says, "I'm a Trojan; what are you, then?"

[gotapenny.livejournal.com]

"Trojan," the 1930's kid mulls the word over, eyes narrowing in thought as he mouths the word again. The only people he could recall from his lessons wearing animal skins were the Indians. "I don't think I know what a Trojan is."

Shifting at his seat a little George tries to look at the spear without falling out of his chair. "I'm from Rhode Island."

[hippodamio]

Hektor thinks a moment. "You come from Rhodes and you don't know where Troy is?" he asks. "Strange. Are your family farm-folk, then, from up in the island hills?"

[gotapenny.livejournal.com]

George just blinks, "No. West Warwick, Rhode Island." Pauseing slightly he starts to move out of his chair and towards the older kid. "I don't know where Rhodes or Troy is- is that in New York or somethin?"

At the mention of being farming folk, Luz just grins. "No..no but they say my Great-Grandpa was a farmer. My Pa works in the mills."

[hippodamio]

"Oh, no," says Hektor, thinking. "No, I think... no, I don't remember hearing of such places; my city is east of the Greek lands, and south of the Euxine ocean." He thinks for a while, in the end adding, "Egypt is very far to the south and west of us, across the seas."

[gotapenny.livejournal.com]

Two words do catch the future-paratroopers attention. Greece and Eygpt. "Oh that's way across the Ocean from where I'm at!" Coming to stand a few steps away from Hektor he eyes the spear again. "A long ways away from America- or at least thats what Mrs Wilkenson told us at school."

Raising his right hand he offers it to Hektor. "I'm George."

[hippodamio]

"Ah! That, I have heard of," says the older boy, coming to his feet. "It was long ago; someone here told me of the place, and said you have no king. It all seemed very strange to me."

It has been six years since he saw a hand offered for the shaking; he stares at Luz's a moment before remembering that he is supposed to clasp it. "My name is Hektor."

[gotapenny.livejournal.com]

"No but we got a President. England has a king, though," he adds trying to make the older kid feel less strange about it. George wasn't the political type so the whole system was quite beyond him for the time.

Shaking the other kid's hand he nods towards the sword. "You're lucky your parents let you play with stuff like that. I'd have my hide tanned if I was cought with it."

[hippodamio]

"What, this?" Hektor looks at the spear. "My uncle has been training me in the spear since I was ten years old, and the javelin before that. This is not mine, of course, I had it from my cousin when he was killed today; he was older than me, and had his own arms."

[gotapenny.livejournal.com]

For once George truely has no idea what to say. His smile falls slightly as he glances back up to Hektor. "Your cousin died? I'm sorry..."

Then an awkward silence fell for a moment before the younger kid cleared his throat a little. "Was it in a War? My Pa said he saw kids fighting when he was in France during the Great War."

[hippodamio]

"No, it was a quarrel, and the other man would have driven off with my cousin's horses; only my brother and I came upon them early," says Hektor, who seems more irritated than troubled by it. "He won't be needing arms nor horses again, not where he's gone. I don't think I've heard of any Great War, though."