Mather couldn’t suppress a smile. He had known Bradwarden for nearly five years now, and the young centaur’s overblown sense of pride and wild spirit had been a true amusement to him for all that time. Bradwarden was just into his thirties, which equated to the same stage as a human teenager. Oh, how he acted the part!
“Take two for yourself, then,” Mather teased. “After all these years, it seems appropriate that you finally best me in something, even if it is but a minor battle with a trio of weakling goblins, a trio I’d have an easier time killing myself.”
Bradwarden recognized a challenge when he heard one. He dropped his bowl of venison stew-but cupped it as it hit the ground, catching a substantial part of the spillage and rushing it right back to his waiting mouth. He nodded his chin in the direction of the tree stump at the side of the small encampment.
Mather smiled and shook his head. “You’ll only get angrier,” he remarked, but the centaur was already on his way. With a feigned sigh of resignation, Mather climbed to his feet and rolled up his right sleeve, then took his place opposite Bradwarden and placed his elbow on the stump.
They clasped hands, and the centaur began to pull immediately, gaining a quick advantage. But Mather, the muscles of his forearm bulging with strength from all the years he had spent squeezing the milk stones to make the elvish wine, locked his arm in place and turned his wrist over the young centaur’s. Within a matter of seconds, Mather understood that he would again win their arm-wrestling, and he put a smug smile over his straining companion. The ranger figured that he would enjoy the victories while he could, for his strength was on the wane, while Bradwarden was growing, and growing stronger, every day. Bradwarden was twice Mather’s weight, but the centaur would likely gain that much again within a couple more years. Even now, so young, the centaur could beat almost any human at arm wrestling, though his human arms were undeniably his weakest asset.
But Mather Wyndon wasn’t just any human, was a ranger, was in fact, the epitome of what a human warrior might achieve in body and soul. Slowly but surely, the centaur’s arm slid back and down toward the tree stump.
Bradwarden’s eyes went wide in apparent shock as he looked over Mather’s shoulder. The ranger, expecting a goblin spear to be flying at his back, glanced around-and the centaur pulled hard, nearly pulling Mather’s elbow out of joint and slamming the ranger’s hand hard down on the tree stump.
With a howl of pain and outrage, Mather, realizing the ruse, spun back on Bradwarden, and now it was the centaur wearing the smug smile. “Two for me and one for yerself,” the centaur said. “And now ye’re beaten again.” And then he was off, spinning and bucking to ward off Mather’s rush, then galloping across the encampment and into the forest.
Laughing all the way, Mather followed him as far as the edge of camp. “Have your victories, then!” he shouted. “I’ve got the stew, and that makes me the winner!”
“And what would you know of any victories?” came a melodic voice from behind, a voice like the tinkling of sweet bells, or the drift of perfect harmony on summer breezes through a forest. At first, Mather stood as if turner to stone, stunned that someone, anyone, had been able to sneak up on him so. As he considered that voice, that familiar voice, he came to recognize the truth, and his smile was genuine and wide indeed when he turned about to face the speaker.
She sat on the lowest branch of a tree at the side of the camp, her delicate legs dangling and crossed, her nearly translucent wings fluttering behind her. “Blood of Alturias,” she said derisively, a taunt Mather Wyndon had heard so many times, a reference to a deceased distant cousin, one who had been an elven-trained ranger long before him, one who this particular elf, Tuntun by name, had apparently consider far more worthy of training than she had Mather.
“Tuntun, my dear old friend,” he said dryly, feigning resignation, though it was obvious that he was overjoyed to see the elf.
“Never that,” the elf replied.
“My mentor, then,” Mather replied.
“Hardly.”
“My teacher, then,” Mather agreed.
“Unfortunately,” came the curt response, but Mather understood the joke behind it. Tuntun had been, perhaps, his most critical instructor in his years with the elves, and, despite the fact that she weighed nowhere near to a hundred pounds, had bested him many times in sparring matches. Keen of wit and of skill, the delicate elf had put more than a few bruises on Mather Wyndon, body and pride!
“What brings Tuntun so far from Caer’alfar?” Mather asked. “And does she come alone?”
“Would she need an escort in these lands full of bumbling, stupid humans?” the elf replied.
Mather bowed, granting her that. Indeed, he knew that Tuntun could pass all the way through the human lands and back again, stealing food wherever she chose, sleeping wherever she decided was most comfortable, without being spotted once by anybody.
“And why am I so blessed with your visit?” the ranger asked.
Tuntun half-jumped, half-flew, down from her perch, going at once to the cauldron and sniffing it, then curling her features in obvious disgust.
“Were you just curious as to how I was getting along?” Mather pressed. “It has been three years, at least, since I have seen you or any of the Touel’alfar.”
“That is the joy of training rangers,” the unrelenting Tuntun went on. “Once we are done with them, we set them back to their own kind and do not have to smell them again.”
Mather let it go with a chuckle. He knew that behind the gruff words and constant insults, Tuntun, perhaps more than any of the other elves, truly cared for him. Tuntun, though, had always equated any show of the softer emotions with weakness, and both of them understood that weakness could quickly spell disaster for one working as a ranger.
“And yet here you are,” Mather said, his smile as unrelenting as Tuntun’s insults, “come to share my meal and my company.”
“Come with news,” Tuntun corrected. “And to see how you fare with the child of Andos and Dervia,” she added, referring to Bradwarden’s parents, whom Mather had never met.
“Bradwarden grows stronger each day,” Mather replied, and even as he spoke, as if on cue, a beautiful, haunting music drifted on the breeze. “And his piping improves,” the ranger added.
Despite her demeanor, Tuntun smiled at the sound of the centaur’s distant music, a wondrous tune indeed, and nodded her approval. “He has his mother’s gift for song, and his father’s strength.”
“A fine companion,” Mather agreed. He sat down and picked up his stew, then, and Tuntun did likewise, lifting Bradwarden’s abandoned bowl. Neither spoke for a long while, both just enjoying their meal and the continuing melody of Bradwarden’s piping.
“I am returning to Caer’alfar,” the elf explained much later on, after Mather had told her of his more recent exploits in the region, including the fight that day with the goblin trio. “I meant to go this very night and should not have veered from my path to speak with you. Too long have I been away.”
“But you did come, and with news, so you said,” Mather replied.
“Do you remember when you were a child?”
“When Tuntun used to stop me from eating my meals hot, or even warm?” Mather returned with a grin.
“Before that,” the elf replied in all seriousness.
Mather stared at her hard. He had been only a few years old when the elves had taken him in, rescued him from a mauling by a bear, nurtured him back to health and then trained him as a ranger. He didn’t remember the bear attack, just the elves’ retelling of it. Try as he might, he could remember nothing of the time before that, other than small uncapturable images.
“You had family,” Tuntun explained.
Mather nodded.
“Younger siblings, and a brother who was born some years after you left them,” Tuntun went on.
Mather shrugged, hardly remembering.