…or, Shake Your Rainmaker
It rained during thaumatology class. I could hear the fat raindrops pinging off the roof. It didn’t last long—it was done before class let out—but the brief downpour was enough to turn the Hauldhagen Field into a slick mess. The wet grass and mud promised to make class interesting, in the same way that a stroll through the woods with Iason could be interesting.
Callahan treated it as a teaching opportunity. She broke us out of our groups right away and started putting together demonstrations, showing how the weather had changed the battlefield and how we needed to change in response. It was good, useful stuff. I hoped it would give the ground a little time to dry up before we all had to get out and fight on it. I doubted that was the reason Callahan was taking the time for demonstrations, though.
The ground wasn’t the only thing that was different—Steff showed up to class in a skirt. I don’t mean the kind of short wrap that fighters sometimes wear to keep their legs free. This was down past his knees. He looked as ridiculous in it as Alli would have if she’d tried to pass as a man in her leather and fur. I don’t think he was actually trying to pass, though. It was for shock value. He was daring Callahan to do something about it. That was obvious from the way he kept shooting her glances, and the way he kept bouncing forward when the coach wanted a volunteer.
Callahan obliged him by putting him in a position to be hammered into the ground, over and over again. He kept volunteering. Every time, he mugged more, added more unnecessary motion, and did everything that Callahan was coaching us against.
I was formulating a theory about why Steff didn’t live in Treehome: he was bugfuck insane, even by the standards of middling elves.
Each time he got dismissed, he went and stood next to Mack. The way he leaned into her, it seemed like they’d gotten a lot friendlier since the last time I’d seen them together. Either he’d changed his mind about her or the fact that she was an easy piece of ass outweighed everything else.
Probably the latter.
I wondered what was crazier: him having a hard-on for her or for Callahan. If I’d never seen Callahan or the half-demon in question, I never would have believed the mostly-human coach was the more dangerous one. I still didn’t have my mind made up on that score. With Steff being half-human, it seemed like he’d be all lunch for a half-demon, but I couldn’t quite see that. Somehow, she just didn’t seem that threatening. Looks could be deceiving though, and so could demons.
Either way, it was clear Steff had an unhealthy attraction to unnecessary danger.
I almost wanted to ask him how he felt about delving.
Almost.
I had a feeling he’d say yes. He might be more than halfway capable. But if we did go on our expedition, I’d want people with me who could help reign Iason in, not egg him on.
Once we broke down and started sparring again, I took a couple of spills. Watching Callahan walk people through how to stand and how to move didn’t translate into direct knowledge. I was glad my axe’s safety properties were duplicated by the box as efficiently as its sharpness and accuracy were. Otherwise, I would have sliced my leg open before anybody else’s weapon got near me.
My partner of the moment was a tall, muscular brunette named Rhona. She had a nice face but a body that looked warped by one too many potions of giant strength over the years—human bone strucure, but big twisted muscles like you’d expect on a half-ogre or giantblood. Her weapon was an iron rod about two feet long.
It could have been my imagination, but it seemed like Callahan seemed to enjoy pairing me with butch women, when she took an active hand. That was probably a side effect of being associated in her mind with Steff, as one of the two treefucking sissies.
“You okay, kid?” Rhona asked me after a charge turned into a really bad spill. The axe turned in my hand so that the blade didn’t go into my stomach, but I knocked my own wind out anyway. I was starting to hate the mud.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Nothing hurt but my pride.” I was covered in mud and grass. I’d have to shower before dinner. “And my stomach.” I got to my feet. Something creaked and cracked. “And my back, a little. Mostly my pride, though. I’m not used to feeling this clumsy.”
“It’s the mud,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I feel like I can pay attention to my feet or to you, and I’m not used to paying attention to my feet. Anyway, we’re just lucky the rain stopped raining before class, I guess.”
“Luck, schmuck,” Callahan said, coming up from behind me. “And a schmuck is exactly what you are if you rely on luck. Remember, luck is like a drunk friend: never hesitate to take advantage of it, but never count on it.”
“Uh, right,” I said. Note to self: never drink with Callahan.
“It stopped raining before class for the same reason it started raining: because I wanted it. If you need a battle to happen on this side of the river, you make it happen on this side of the river,” she said. “If you want to fight in the rain, you make it rain.”
“Okay, but you can’t just make it rain, though,” the girl said.
“What school do you go to?” Callahan asked. “If you can’t find somebody who can make it rain, you make do, the same way you fight the battle where you have to if you can’t fight it where you want to. Anyway, I came over to tell you that the fight isn’t over when he hits the ground. Half of learning to fight on difficult terrain is learning to keep your balance. The other half is learning what to do when you—or your opponent—lose them. If they go down, you step up.” She looked directly at Rhona. “Don’t be afraid to work the balls, either. Intro To Daintiness is one field over.”
Rhona didn’t answer. Her expression was about like mine and I loved her a little for that. She didn’t say anything until Callahan had gone off to torment another group of fighters.
“Dude, no offense, but I’m not going near your balls,” Rhona said.
“Yeah, I’m strangely unoffended by that,” I said. “What the hell was that about?”
“Callahan,” Rhona said. She took a swing at me. I stepped back, my heel slipping a little when it landed halfway on a clump of grass. “If I were a half-elf, I’d never take her classes.”
“That guy Steff’s a half-elf,” I said, my axe clattering off her short staff. “I’m not even a quarter.”
“Really?” She swung. I ducked under it without moving my feet. “She looks pretty elven to me.”
“Maybe if you’ve never seen a full elf up close,” I said. It seemed pretty obvious that Rhona hadn’t. If she thought Steff was a girl, what would she have made of Iason?
“Maybe,” she said.
She caught my axe swing on her stick and then gave me a hard shove backwards, then stepped forward. I realized what she was doing just in time and rolled to the side as she planted her boot where my crotch had been.
“What the fuck?” I said.
“Sorry,” she said. “It just seemed like it might be an easy grade.”
“If the coach wants to watch muscular women stomping on peoples’ balls, I’m sure she can buy porn,” I said.
“Not on my salary, Princess!” Callahan yelled. “Step it up, Twiggy.”
To her credit, Rhona didn’t try again. Every time I started to lose my balance, she stepped back, embarrassed. Callahan didn’t say anything and she didn’t have us change partners. She’d taken a shot at getting an extra little thrill, but she wasn’t pushing it.
Just because she wasn’t above mixing her kind of pleasure with business didn’t mean she was going to forget about business.
I watched Steff trot into the trees with Mack after class. It looked like he was hustling her away from campus and everybody else. I wondered if it wasn’t the other way around. I thought again about camouflage. The stereotype for demons who were trying to hide their nature was a suave persuader. That schtick was so embedded in the public consciousness that it had to be about useless. Acting like a naive idiot could work a lot better.
Steff had said that Mack was harmless. He’d suggested that if anything, she should be afraid of him. What attitude could be more perfect for a hunting demoness to instill in her prey?
That was speculation, and weak speculation at best. I just couldn’t convince myself that Mack was that dangerous. Not a good person to reach out to, as Barley could attest. Not the best girl for a human guy to date, as her hotter-than-she-deserved boyfriend could tell you.
But even knowing what I knew, I couldn’t work up a whole lot of worry for Steff’s safety, watching the two of them go off alone. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was a stupid instinct that had gotten a lot of humans killed over the years.
I just couldn’t see her as dangerous.
Cross-reference TOMU chapter 109. « « ~66~ Ball Games ~68~ The Flower Of The Shire » »
