by Aldrea Alien
He’d given himself a brief wash down in a basin just last night and did so most mornings, but actual full bathing? “No. There’s no bath.”
Tracker laughed. “There is indeed such a convenience.” He indicated the pond with a jerk of his thumb. “And I think I shall indulge fully whilst the women are occupied.” He waved a little pouch, which had a familiar, soap bar bulge in one corner. “You are welcome to join me.”
He eyed the pond. The water was relatively clear and revealed nothing sinister lurking under the surface. “It’ll be cold.” Not that it’d stay that way for long if he wanted, but if the hound thought Dylan was about to heat an entire pond for his use, then the man was very much mistaken.
Tracker shrugged. “It is an incentive to be quick. Consider it my gift to your sleeping companion that you return to her smelling sweeter.” He sniffed the air. “Not that you would notice any change with the rather thick perfume you have made of these poor flowers.” He tipped his head, a playful grin skewing his lips. “Or are you afraid of a little cold water?”
Knowing he was being goaded, he conceded and let his robe fall alongside his still sodden undertunic. Dylan’s boots swiftly joined them before the elf could finish unbuckling his belt.
Dylan slipped into the pond. The coolness bit into his skin. He waded along the gentle incline, shuffling to keep himself from kicking up too much water, until he reached what seemed to be the deepest part of the pond. Unfortunately, that meant the water only came to his knees.
The hound’s laughter, rich and light, drifted across from the shore. “You seem to have forgotten to remove a piece of your attire, my dear man. Or were you planning on bathing in your smallclothes?”
When they’d a chance of being snuck up on by the others? Definitely the latter. Not that it mattered. He could’ve chosen to bathe fully clothed and the fabric would’ve dried quick enough once he turned his magic to them. This way, at least his smallclothes got a rinse of sorts.
Shrugging, he knelt. His breath was stolen from him in the brief moment his waist slipped beneath the waterline. Turning his magic to gently heat the water made it bearable. He expanded his focus until a comfortable circle of warmth surrounded him.
There wasn’t much he could to cleanse himself without a cloth or soap, but he rubbed at his damp skin anyway, hoping to sluice off whatever might’ve stuck to him on the short walk from camp. Perhaps if he asked, the hound would share usage of the soap he guessed was in that pouch.
A small sigh parted his lips as the water sloshed against his chest. How long had it been since he’d encountered a body of water big enough to kneel in like this and still cover so much of him? Decades. If it wasn’t for the certainty that he’d all the buoyancy of a rock, he would’ve dared to lay back and stretch upon the pond’s surface.
He glanced up to find the hound had shed the top half of his armour. The man still wore a thin undershirt, but it didn’t do much to obscure the way the elf’s muscles shifted beneath the off-white cloth. Dylan found he couldn’t look away from such a view.
Something deep in his gut stirred as the rest of Tracker’s attire—everything from the leather boots and trousers to the man’s smallclothes—was swiftly discarded.
Despite trying not to, Dylan’s gaze swept over the man, his breath rasping through his throat. Like other elven men, the hair on Tracker’s chest and limbs was sparse, but he hadn’t expected the myriad of tattoos marking the hound. They accentuated his bronze skin and rather invited the eye to travel downwards. The man was surprisingly well muscled. Not the trained robustness of Authril nor the leanness of Marin, but a definition that spoke both of suppleness and strength.
Dylan swallowed, his mouth left rather dry by the sight.
The elf strode into the pond, seemingly oblivious to the scrutiny as he sprayed water with every step. “I see you have found the deepest part of the pond.” Tracker sank into the water not that far from where Dylan knelt. His brows lowered as he settled. “It is… warmer here? I know there are hot pools in the southern lands, but—”
“It’s my doing,” Dylan blurted. Closing his eyes, he continued, “I used my magic to heat the water.”
There was the gentle slosh of water and hound’s presence suddenly seemed closer. “And that is also the reason for you sudden ill look, yes?” Tracker chuckled. “My dear man, I am not planning on reprimanding you for not wanting to bathe in cold water. I… simply had no idea that such a thing was possible.” The man’s warm hand closed around Dylan’s forearm. “How far can you make it reach?”
“Not very,” he mumbled, risking a peek.
Tracker knelt almost close enough for the hair on Dylan’s arms to brush the hound’s skin. Those honey-coloured eyes were bright with curiosity and something else Dylan rather preferred not to linger too much on. “If that is so, then would you mind terribly if I stayed close to you?”
He opened his mouth, his tongue freezing in place. Averting his eyes to the opposite side of the pond helped everything but his steadily warming face. “I…”
The man sat back, relinquishing his hold. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
Dylan worried at the inside of his bottom lip. The place where the hound had touched him still tingled and his stomach bubbled, but the latter could easily be last night’s meal not sitting well with him. “Have you ever dealt with a spellster before?”
Tracker glanced up from where he’d been scrubbing a small piece of cloth over a bar of soap. “A number of times, yes.” One russet brow lifted. “Why do you ask? Do I not put out an air of… experience?” The final word left Tracker’s lips in a breathy tone that tingled across Dylan’s shoulders. There was a certain quirk in the twisting of the hound’s mouth that told him the reaction had been noticed.
Dylan shuffled across the pond floor a little ways, trying to put some distance between them without being too obvious. He moistened his suddenly dry lips. “It’s not that. I—”
Tracker laughed. “Ah, your head is no doubt swimming with tales of the evil hounds, yes?” The fine lines around the elf’s eyes deepened. “They use our presence like a mother uses the bogeyman.” There was a matter-of-fact tone to his voice. One that suggested he’d heard directly from the source at some point.
Dylan swept his gaze over the man. “And where would you hear such tales? Not from the tower, surely.” He was certain word would’ve gotten about if Tracker had ever stepped foot inside the tower walls. Even without being a hound, the man would’ve drawn the attention of quite a number of tower inhabitants and Dylan was pretty certain he would’ve remembered that face if they’d met before.
“No.” The hound scrubbed at his neck. “I have been inside many times, but the guardians are… reluctant to let us linger for long.” He continued on to his arms, heedless to the suds running down his chest in thin pearlescent lines.
Dylan followed their trail to the water’s surface, his breath tight. He watched, not quite focused, as the man bathed and the air begun to smell of citrus and a pungent spice that seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He breathed deep until it filled his nose. Cinnamon. The taste of it was in the back of his throat, setting his mouth to watering. Bad enough that the man wasn’t exactly unpleasant to look at, did he have to smell so accursedly edible as well?
The man’s soft chuckle had Dylan refocusing his attention, surprised to find he’d been staring at the man the whole time. “Do we perhaps see something we like?”
Snapping his gaze back up to the man’s face, he shook his head. “Not at all.” It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a naked elf, man or woman, and the man had absolutely nothing that could interest him. And yet, there was something about the hound that made it difficult to look away. “But you’ve still got a bit of blood in your hair.”
Surprised, the hound pulled the long braid over his shoulder. He gave a disgusted grunt and released the thong keeping his hair together. The tight braiding unravelled, his hair springing into corkscrew
-like curls as if it possessed a life of its own.
Dylan covertly watched the hound as Tracker washed his hair, unable to keep his gaze from travelling down the man’s body. It had to be the tattoos that kept catching his eye. The elf’s right bicep was banded by a faded interlacing weave of elven design, whereas his left bore the angular, tribal design of a snake weaving through a splay of what looked to be a Demarn leaf-like motif, both the snake’s head and the pattern extending across the man’s shoulder to his chest.
An array of dots and lines scrolled down the man’s right side, following the musculature, tempting his gaze into trailing them to the end. Scars criss-crossed a number of the tattoos, marring some of them beyond recognition. Others reminded him of fire, like the delicate, almost sketchy, bloom of what looked to be a bird at the man’s left hip, its head pridefully arched up the man’s side framed by flaming wings. Dylan’s gaze travelled down to the bird’s long tail feathers, which were splayed wide to curl around the hound’s thigh.
“Keep looking at me like that and a man could get ideas.”
He jerked his gaze back up to find the hound was smirking at him. Warmth slowly blossomed in his cheeks. “Sorry, I—” His mind worked frantically for an excuse. “I wasn’t—” He halted his tongue before the outright lie could finish. “I just… haven’t seen hair that long before.” That was true. Not on a man, anyway. Certainly not of such a texture. “Doesn’t it get bothersome?”
“Oddly enough, I find day to day more manageable with it at this length.”
“Really? I’ve a friend back at the tower who claims otherwise.” Sulin’s hair had been of a decent length when he first arrived at the tower. Not as long as the hound’s and denser, more tightly curled. The first thing the young man had done was chop it back to an inch thick. He’d kept it that way ever since. “But then, he’s an alchemist.”
“Ah.” The elf wrung out his hair. “I suppose growing it to such lengths is impractical when things keep going boom around you.”
“What do you know about alchemists?” Few hounds came to the tower without either a leashed one or a young spellster present. Fewer still would’ve been allowed to venture into the underground rooms where the alchemists worked and trained.
“I know they work with that infi-whatever metal.”
“You mean infitialis?” he asked, drawing out the syllables.
Tracker grimaced. “Yes. That one.”
“It means negative in the ancient Domian language.” That’s where they started using collars to bind each other. Then, their land was consumed by the growing Udynea Empire, who kept the metal’s name as well as its use. He’d heard several tales from Launtil and the other escaped slaves on how the emperor reputedly had half-a-dozen highly-trained alchemists at his command just in case the nobility needed keeping in check. He wasn’t certain how much of it was true, but it certainly sounded like something their emperor would have. “Most alchemists here refer to it as dog metal.”
“Cute,” the hound murmured as he resumed bathing.
Dylan sat there, unable to think of a good reason to leave even though he was essentially done with the water. He supposed he could wash his hair, but that seemed pointless without the soap currently in the man’s possession.
“So, tell me…” Tracker said. “What is the towers current thought on hounds nowadays? Do they still believe we drink your blood to enhance our abilities?”
“Some might believe such tales. I don’t.”
“Ah, a sharp one, are we?” The man turned and Dylan discovered that the tattoos extended there, curving over his buttocks and down his thighs. “Of course, the tales are somewhat less gory than they used to be. I remember one from when they first sent me out on the hunt. There was this young elven spellster… she was terrified I would sacrifice her under a full moon, because that is apparently what we did.”
“I…” Dylan tilted his head. There were hints of other marks up the man’s back, obscured by the sodden curls. “I’ve not heard that one.”
He just caught the glint of the man’s gaze looking his way before returning to bathing. “Oh, yes. And your entrails are supposed to make a decent diviner’s aid. Never discovered what we were meant to be divining for that would constitute such a messy business.”
Dylan hummed, his thoughts drifting elsewhere as his gaze idly tracked the lines travelling down the man’s side. His fingers rather itched to touch them. He balled his hands. “Ancient Domian used to practise haruspicy.” He didn’t recall the tower library holding any records of the Domian priests using either human or dwarf. Although, it was possible they didn’t class slaves or the leashed as people.
“But people are willing to believe anything, yes?” The elf slid closer. “Such as how much someone is unlikely to notice them staring.”
His heart all but leapt out of his mouth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He couldn’t have been staring that much, surely. A few glances here and there.
“Do we not?” Tracker grinned. “Come now, my dear spellster. We have the same equipment. There is no need for you to hide yourself behind these.” The man’s long fingers slid down Dylan’s side, hooking into the waist of his smallclothes and tightening every muscle in his body. “Or to be so modest.”
“I’m not being modest.” He wasn’t quite sure why he’d chosen to keep his smallclothes on in the first place, especially since the appearance of either of the three women was unlikely, but he wasn’t about to remove them with the man so close. And insistent.
“Then how about you take them off?” Tracker purred, his breath skittering along Dylan’s ear. “We could help each other get clean, yes?”
He swallowed, his mouth having gone completely dry. “Actually, I…” His smallclothes suddenly felt that little bit too tight. He was certain it had nothing to do with the water and everything to do with the slightly warm hand creeping up his thigh.
Dylan stood in a rush of water, keeping himself that little bit hunched over. “I’m fine!” he blurted, hedging towards the surrounding brush. “Done. Clean. I’ll just go and wait with the others whilst you finish up.”
Tracker raised a brow at him and he could’ve sworn the man was smirking. “If you feel you must depart so quickly.” The hound’s gaze returned to his armour. “But camp is the other way.”
He stared at the man, then their surroundings. The crop of wild lavender he’d previously walked through graced the far side of the pond. Of course it is. Skirting the pond’s edge, he gathered up his clothes and rushed for the nearest bush.
When he felt confident that the elf wasn’t following, Dylan flattened himself again a tree trunk. His heart pounded almost hard enough to make him believe he was about to pass out. He clutched his sodden undertunic to his chest. Had he really stirred at something as simple as the man’s touch? It wasn’t as if he’d never had a man show interest in him before and, yes, a part of him enjoyed the attention. But he couldn’t recall ever… reacting… quite like that.
He brushed back his hair. It’s not what you think. It couldn’t be. If the hound had been a woman, then it definitely would’ve been what he thought. But this? He didn’t get those sorts of feelings for men and he most certainly didn’t respond.
Then what, by the gods, what had just happened?
Their journey through the forest came without further incident. They were a mere two days from Oldmarsh now. He expected to come across signs of bandits, even if they wouldn’t rejoin the road until tomorrow. Hopefully, that meant their pace would improve, for as much as he’d enjoyed it at the start, travelling through the forest had lost quite a bit of its romance.
Ever since the attack, Tracker took the lead with Authril and Marin at their rear. Sometimes the hunter would pop into the surrounding undergrowth only to return ahead of them. They often stayed silent during those times, listening for any sign of trouble.
Marin had just returned from one such trip, the brightly feathered carcass of a pheasant hanging from
her belt.
Dylan eyed the bird, silently grumbling to himself. He couldn’t recall ever dining on much in the way of game quite as frequently in the tower as he did out here.
Back home, stews thick with vegetables rather than meat had been the typical evening repast. The midday meal was generally light, if at all, and would consist of soups in the winter or sometimes a pie would be brought to those training in the outside arenas. All this meat was starting to do weird things to his stomach.
Walking at Dylan’s side, Katarina cleared her throat. “Sir Tracker—”
The hound glanced back at her and flashed a grin. “Dear woman, please. We travel together, there is no need to be so formal.”
“Oh, of course. I just assumed that you…” She lengthened her stride, easily catching up to the elf. Although she wasn’t as tall as Marin, her head still looked to top the man by a few inches. “If I may, I was wondering if you’d be able to help me piece together a few things regarding the history of your people.”
Tracker twitched a russet brow at her. “My people? Is it elves or hounds that you wish to speak of?”
“Elves.” She twisted to smile over her shoulder. “I’ve already asked all I can of Authril and I thought that, with the difference in your backgrounds, you might have additional sources.”
The hound tilted his head and gave a considering hum. “I do not see how I can aid you there. Just what is it that you wish to know, my dear hedgewitch?”
“Well…” Katarina cleared her throat. “Legend says the elves reached the continent via massive ships. Based on old reports, the vessels were bigger than even those of the Independent Isles.”
Dylan slowly nodded to himself. He recalled the tower’s history lessons quite well. Being that those ships had landed on the opposite side of the continent, the truth of it had always been contested. That the ships had carried vast quantities of elves was the only accepted fact.