milliways_bar | (no subject)

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He has not been into the Bar these past nights, not since his arrival. Hektor has spent the nights awake, leaning on his spear and tending his fire; as he has not spoken to any who tend the stables, he has had to keep watch over his horse. There are things howling in the woods that have voices no wolf of his knowledge could ever hope to match. As for his days, he has been looking for a way back on the paths by which he came here, or working Boukephalos until the edge is off the stallion and he no longer seems likely to seek out other horses for a fight. But tonight, at least, it seems quiet; and so the horse is safely tethered outside, well away from the stables, and Hektor has come indoors for the moment. One can only make so many meals of an ill-prepared belt pouch's contents and the stuff found growing in woods so strange as these.

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It makes a klonk sound not too unlike that of hitting any other giant slab of bone. "Good. Fuckin' hell. You are a lucky, lucky man." young, yes, but Hektor isn't a kid as Spoon's time has them and Spoon doesn't feel like insulting.

"If it had come to it, Boukephalos can outrun anything on four legs save one of those spotted cats the Persian kings use to hunt," says Hektor. "I would have ridden him away, if things had come to that pass."

He turns the mask over and runs a hand over the interior.

"Ye-ah," Spoon says, "about that...uh. We're faster than you'd think. Dunno if we're quite that fast, but we're fast and all it takes is a scratch for you to be joining us during the moons."

The interior has only a very minimum of padding, and a lot of places where additional systems will be added in as Spoon earns and gathers them.

"Well enough, then," says Hektor. "I will see to it that next moon, we are not here."

He does not move to put the mask on, as that would be rude; but he does lift it a little, and turn it thus and so, hoping to catch a glimpse through its eyes.

"I have a picture of the thing that came from." Spoon says, tilting his chin at the mask, "The eye-slits are made so that I can see through it as a human and in werewolf body."

"Might I see, then?" asks Hektor, handing the mask back. "It's no sort of creature I recognize. One might expect to find such things in the underworld, if anywhere."

"Outer space." Spoon says, "Not the underworld." Then he pulls out his wallet and flips past family to the picture of the kainde amedha skull. "That's it's head."

Outer space is no word that Hektor recognizes, but he turns to see the portrait anyway. Then he stares for some time, and tries to make sense of the pictured nightmare.

"Yeah." Spoon says cheerfully, "I killed it with me teeth, but I had to regrow a large chunk of me skeleton. Acid blood."

Hektor looks from the picture to the man, and then to the picture again. "One hears tales of such things happening in the wild lands beyond the Euxine," he says, "but I had never given them credence before this. . ."

"Milliways is different." Spoon says, "And I'm not human. Neither is Christine, although she's rather less human than I am. It was there, we fought, and I killed it. Earned me status amongst her people."

"Earned you status among anyone, I should think," says Hektor. "I was proud enough of the boar I killed with my spear that I had his tusks made into part of my helmet, but this. . ." He shakes his head. "That is a far greater kill than any I've heard of in our lands, to be sure."

"In order to be considered a person by Christine's people you have to kill one of those." Spoon informs him, cheerfully, "It was an accident that I ran into one, but that's life. Opened up a whole fuckin' new set of possibilities for me."

"Her people must not have many enemies, then," says Hektor. "Not among the living, anyway."

"Not that I know of!" Spoon says, "They're...we're...hunters. Status is gained, in part, by testing yourself against dangerous things and taking trophies. It's considered an honorable death to have your head taken as a trophy."

Hektor nods. "Not so different from the wilder tribes around us, then," he says. "Though I think they are more dangerous, your people and hers. I hear the Thracians do much the same with the heads of enemies they consider truly valiant."

"We probably are." Spoon agrees, "Christine's people hunts humans. I don't, but the rest of them do. You're considered a prime prey because you're so damn unpredictable."

He might, perhaps, be excused for growing indignant at that; but still, there is something in being thought of as difficult opponents. So he only nods, and resolves to himself that when he returns to Troy- or before, perhaps- he will be doubly certain to practice with spear and sword alike, every day, for as long as his arms will bear it.

Spoon, sniffing the indignant reaction, says, "Yautja only hunt predators. Predators are prey, and anything that isn't considered a danger isn't worth the effort put into it."

"I suppose that's something," Hektor allows. "Still- it sits ill with me, that is all; so might one of the Athenians feel who was taken for the bull-dance, when they still held that in Crete."

"Nobody likes to think of themselves as the hunted." Spoon agrees, "Sometimes it just happens like that."

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