Ch 28

Silvan had not said anything else on the way back to his home. When we got there, he took a last disgusted look at me and then went into the house. Since Beetle was busy scrubbing the patio at the side of the house, I went to help him. “Welcome back, glad to see you’re not dead.” Beetle said pleasantly when I grabbed a heavy brush and started to scrub alongside him. “I can’t decide if I’m glad not to be dead yet or not but presently I’m glad I made it out of there.” Beetle gave me a long look and decided not to press further. Likely he knew that I would not want to talk about all the death that I had taken part of in there.

It was nice to pick up the weighted daggers again with Beetle once we had completed our tasks for the day. They were much heavier than anything I had lifted while in the arena but at least they weren’t sharp and the other person wielding them against me was not trying to kill me. Those two little facts were enough to suddenly change something that had before been a tedious chore that Beetle made me do with him into something more akin to a game. I had not gained any new muscles while I was away for the last fifteen days, but I had picked up some new tricks in the arena and I was eager to share them with my mentor, through demonstration of course. Nothing gave me greater satisfaction than managing to win against him a few times, but much as before, I was dripping sweat and breathing hard long before he was ready to call it quits.

Once we were done, I expected him to go and make a fire to cook rodents on as usual but he did not do this, instead he looked towards the dark part of the property where he normally did this and then gave a long sigh and went back towards the house and into the cellar where we slept. I followed him feeling confused but decided not to ask him until we were inside, after all, with Teka having not recovered and Minge dead there would be nobody to overhear us speak anyways.

Once I reached the bottom of the stairs and passed through the lower door, I saw Beetle striking sparks with a bit of flint and some iron, trying to get the candle lit. After a minute he managed to get it lit and then by that light I was able to see the room which I had now spent so much time sleeping in. My pile of rags which I had claimed when Minge died had remained undisturbed. Beetle likely could have used them as there was precious little comfort down here but instead, he had left them alone, even though Silvan had believed me dead. It seemed like my mentor had more faith in my survival than my master did.

Casting my gaze around I saw Teka, still lying on the ground, but now moved over to where his rags were, with them packed underneath him to give his body some limited comfort. The fact that he was still alive and not rotting or stinking spoke more about what Beetle had been doing while I was away. When he saw me looking at Teka and then back at him he arched an eyebrow at him. “I may as well ask since it seems we have some things to discuss but have you been feeding and cleaning Teka?” He smiled a bit and then said sadly, “It is not so much to do. Without the master leaving for the arena I cannot go out to hunt and without going out to hunt I spend more time down here. It only makes sense that I would not want my bedroom to stink so I wash him.” I looked at him for a moment, he made it seem like he was only taking care of Teka in the same way that one took out the trash and washed the dishes but it would have been a lot easier on him to simply drag him outside than to keep him fed and cleaned on a daily basis.

“Whatever you say then.” I told him not buying it. “No hunting has got to suck, that was the only time you got out of here and without the protein the extra weight on everything will start tearing down your muscles.” Although I said this to him as if I was worried about his health, a part of me was also concerned for myself because if Beetle could not hunt then neither could I. “This is something that may be soon solved for me I think.” Said Beetle a little slyly with a playful wink in my direction. “Oh?” I responded, “how might this problem of yours be going away?” At this Beetle began to chuckle in earnest for a few minutes before composing himself and saying, “You still haven’t realized it have you? Since you survived the arena and Teka hasn’t recovered Silvan will have no choice but to fight you instead no matter what he thinks. When he does this, I can hunt.”

Now it was my turn to feel amusement over something that the other did not know. I began laughing out loud, more so than Beetle’s quiet chuckle from moments before. “What’s so funny?” he asked me, looking a little uneasy. “I never used to know how you knew exactly when to head back to the house but then while I was fighting in the arena, I saw it. Whenever a fight is started a red flag is flown high above the arena and whenever you saw that from the grasslands you would know that you had five minutes left on average before you needed to leave because Teka would take just over five minutes to finish his opponent. In this way you always got back before our master.” Beetle was looking at me with a still confused look on his face, “Ok but even if you know how I gauged the time why would that make you laugh?” As I turned to him and smiled, I prepared myself to enjoy the look of shock on his face. “I usually take less than a minute to finish a fight, you won’t have any time to hunt at all.”

As I said this Beetle did indeed look shocked and then he too started to laugh. We chuckled about this far longer than we should have but in a place where everything is dour, any excuse to find a little levity is good enough to be grasped onto and so we enjoyed each other’s company and laughed and then went to sleep feeling a little better about the world that we were in, but only just a very small bit better.