Dragon Knights Fan Fiction ❯ Twenty Themes ❯ Platonic Love ( Chapter 16 )

Warnings: Rath/Rune/Thatz, but platonic,

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Rune was fuming. Rune always fumed. The other two swapped looks behind his back as they wound him up further. People who met them wondered first how Thatz and Rath could put up with Rune's behaviour, then later how Rune managed to stay sane with companions like those.

The road forges people. Living with someone isn't as trying as travelling with them. When there's no escape from your friends, no distractions or amusement, no entertainment except for the wit and conversation of the two people you've talked with every day for the past year, relationships get strained. It's even worse when all you have to look forward to the following day is a hard slog on aching feet and there's no sympathy to go around. When you're on the road, you can't take a break from your friends, do something to let off steam, or escape for a while... not if you want to get to the next town before dark.

Irritating traits get magnified. Even reasonable behaviour becomes jarring and innocent small talk gets taken up the wrong way. With a cast of three all manner of childish games can be played, until the go-between becomes angry and a new fight replaces the old one and alliances are reforged, although Rune usually ganged up on the other two. Sometimes, Rath wondered when Rune developed the backbone he used to beat them up.

When he'd first met Rune, Rath had been a child and Rune had been unfailingly polite. It took a few years for those gentle edges to rub off and the bitter, raging sense of unfairness that he carried to show itself. Rune tried to explain things calmly to the young Rath, and then firmly, then forcefully and finally loudly. For his part Rath had been confused by Rune, who was the only one to treat him so gingerly. Ruwalk had said that the water knight was like him, but Rune was soft and warm and disliked eating worms and bugs. He never let his dragon out, which was a very cruel thing for such a timid person to do.

Thatz came last to the group. He was lots of fun, but caused lots of trauma. Rath had the most fun with someone encouraging him to sneak out of the castle and go on demon killing and looting duty. Rune hated Thatz for the same reasons. He constantly harped on about the knights' duty, rebuked their side-trips and called them lead weights around his neck, yet whenever he managed to drag them home, he still sought out their company. Once, thinking that he might have figured out the cause, Rath asked if he got homesick and Rune went on for six days about the faerie forest.

He never visited. It's not as though a diversion to see his birthplace would be any more wearing than one of Thatz's jaunts to an old ruin that was rumoured to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered rich man, or that it would take them any further out of their way. In fact, some of their missions took them really close, within a fortnight's travel, but Rune never asked them if they'd mind the delay. Rath and Thatz didn't suggest a visit. They knew it could hurt Rune, although they didn't hold back from commenting on his girlish looks.

Some of the tricks they played were cruel and they always seemed to hit when Rune was moping a bit more than usual, sighing and generally slogging along without talking to the other two more than neccessary. The last caper had been a huge success or tragedy, depending on how you looked at it, and Rath and Thatz traded ideas on how to match it while Rune built up an ever greater head of steam.

Their chance came at the next stream. Rune couldn't pass by any given body of water without stripping off and jumping in. He tried, vainly, to get Rath and Thatz to join in and wash their stinking hair. They figured that it'd just get dirty again and at least their noses had gotten used to the stench. It always amused Thatz that Rune would complain about a quick side-trip of the Earth or Fire Knight, yet quite happily hold them up for hours while his hair dried beside a camp-fire. Once they hit water, the day was gone and Thatz would set up camp while Rath grew bored.

These delays left them plenty of time to plot.

Although sometimes Serendipity offered them a beautiful gift.

A clatter of female voices interrupted their moaning as Thatz put on a kettle of water to boil. He grinned at Rath when a small group of men and women came around the corner of the road and waved at them from the verge. Once they'd come closer, he shook his head with a sorry sigh.

"I have to ask you not to go any further this way," he said. "There's a lovely, slow-moving river just through the bushes, but I'm afraid that our sister is bathing there. She's a very modest girl and she asked us to keep strangers away."

The travellers looked at each other and patted down their dusty clothing. The two guys grimaced at each other and made a show of sniffing their armpits and shrugging their shoulders. Three of the girls swarmed over Thatz, who seemed to be enjoying it a bit too much.

"Please, sir," said one, a busty brunette with a mad glint in her weary eyes, "is there really an honest-to-goodness river nearby? I haven't been clean in a fortnight. There'd be no greater luxury than to bathe in fresh water."

"Yes," said her friend, who grabbed her hair and nearly pulled it out. "My hair is blonde under this muck. I fell into a sink-hole two days ago and I'm sure there's something living in it now."

The third girl just batted her eye-lashes in between her comrades' pleas.

"Look," said a woman in a chain-shirt, who had been patting down the mules and checking the straps that held their belongings in place. "I respect that your sister asked you to keep a watch out - no woman wants someone to find her while she's vulnerable and when you're wet and naked is the worst - but we're tired and dirty. I'm sure that she wouldn't mind if some fellow women joined her. I bathe with other girls all the time and some of them are quite prudish."

"Well..." mumbled Thatz.

"I can understand that she'd want you to keep men away, but I bet that after all this time in male company, she'd like a bit of girl-talk."

"Yes, girl talk," agreed Busty.

"Oh she'd be delighted to share with us," agreed the mucky blonde.

The eye-lash girl batted twice more and one of the goons in the back flexed his fingers near the hilt of his sword.

"Of course," answered Thatz, keeping a wary eye on the goon. "I'm sure she'd be delighted."

"Let me just warn her first!" blurted Rath, who sped down the path Rune had followed, nearly tripping over several roots. He pushed grasping branches aside and emerged beside the river. He quickly spotted his friend, indulging in a lazy back-stroke. "Rune," he sang over the waters to the swimming Water Knight. "Some other people want to use the river and they're really nice and really dirty and Thatz said that it'd be okay."

Rune waved at him and started to swim back.

Rath sniggered before adding. "Don't be a prude, after all, you're all girls, right? Okay, thanks, bye."

Rune stopped mid-stroke and dived under the water when a cascade of women flowed down the bank and into his river. The chick who had been in chainmail reached under the water to pull his head back up. "It's okay, relax," she said, before ducking under the water. Rune's hands clamped over his chest and crotch and stayed there even after she re-surfaced. She shook her hair, spraying water over Rune, who crouched lower in the water and couldn't remove his eyes from her exposed body. "Aaaaah," she sighed, running her fingers through the wet and tangled mass. "Do you have any soap?" Rune pointed up to his bundle of clothing. His arm snapped back under the water when a busty lady retrieved his soap and shared it around.

Rune sank lower, the water tickling his nostrils as they lathered up, gossiped, frolicked and splashed each other. He grew wrinkled and cold, barely moving as he was, until night fell fully and he was sure that every last one had left the river. He crept up to the bank, jerked on his clothing and snuck back to the fire to have a word with the other knights.

Rath and Thatz stopped running when they reached Draqueen and managed to hide behind Tetheus. Rune gave out for two days solid and swore blind that he'd never go on a mission with them again. The following morning he sat down beside them and civilly commented on the weather over breakfast. Two weeks later he was packing again, carefully hiding the bail money and squeezing in extra bandages for Rath.