[sub]ft. [@Hank][/sub]

[hr]
The meeting had since been adjourned and its participants had gone on to spend the rest of the night in their own way, whether that be drinking or resting or frolicking with the others or huddling into isolation and watching the dances of firelight and shadow from afar and Ando was amongst those who had taken the lattermost option. He was perched atop camp, sitting on a tree branch that kept him at the very edge of the light, his feet dangling into bare visibility from above as if it were a foreboding premise for the sight of a hanging corpse. Save pulling a piece of firewood in his hand into the edge of the blade sitting in his lap in a reverse chiseling motion, he was motionless, more automaton than man, and he was liberating a small blade, liberating it from the excess of material that which surrounded it, and as such giving it purpose like the warrior-woman gave to those that gathered around her.

He had stood by her side in the council, and only stood, like a macabre figure of taxidermy, and he had not spoken a word nor was there any response elicited from him. He was not the final authority in the council and he knew for a certainty that were he to add an opinion, it would only muddle the waters further, even if his opinion was put forth to snuff out the other opinions and cease the contention, a pointless endeavor. But he also knew well that women of Isobel’s sort were far too loving of their confederates and far too merciful to clamp down on their notions of individuality and entertained it as some sort of respite for them, for questioning one’s place in the great machine of fate was an act which brought with it much dejection and weakness.

He turned his head and his gaze fell upon the camp. They were a bunch of broken and or fleeting spirits, unpolished and inconsequential despite their power. Some had been hooked into her act out of curiosity and some out of ambition and some for new purpose for no living being could knowingly accept its purposelessness. Life sought will like moths sought flame, whether its own or someone else’s, for life did not care for whose purpose it served, only that it served one, and as such one could become a pawn with the same ambition that one sought its own ends with, whether to leech off that larger will and rebuild its own or to lose all individuality and learn to love being a tool. A blade. Few could appreciate that the strength of a blade did not lay in its construction but in its wielder’s mastery and it was a common mistake for a blade to see the acts of cutting it served as a means to as its own planning and doing.

What of him, then? Amongst this crowd of fools and undesirables, was he really cutting his own path or had he taken up the path of the pawn again?

His thumb slipped and licked the edge of his blade and he lifted it up and saw a cut on it. It was a minuscule cut and it had barely penetrated the skin and there was no blood, but the blade had cut nonetheless and his brows furrowed and he grasped the tang of the blade as if it were a flyswatter and he slapped the flat of the blade into a nearby branch and did it again and again. He stopped, abated, and he pulled his weight forward and landed on the leavy clearing underneath and put the blade back in its resting place in the ropes wrapped around his waist. The half-carved wooden blade stood in his other hand like a tasteless reminder and he threw it away and began walking through the camp, his mantis gaze wandering upon the surroundings and the inhabitants as if eyeing potential fodder.

Akamon was the first to spot Ando as he dropped down from his perch and he followed him with his gaze as he made his way through the camp until the two men locked eyes. Perhaps emboldened by the Stros M’Kai rum that he was still nursing, the Redguard stood up from his place by one of the fires and yelled out the Rimmenese swordsman’s name. “Come, sit with me,” he added and gestured for Ando to join him, an inviting smile on his face even though he knew that the man was not susceptible to being manipulated into interaction by adherence to the social contract. Hell, Akamon didn’t think Ando even knew what the social contract was. “I have rum,” he added, and wiggled the bottle and the sloshing of the rum almost spilled some over the rim. 

The sandy-skinned figure first gazed at the Redguard for a couple of seconds without a response before moving forward slowly yet in a peculiar loping gait, and sat in front of the fire across the man. He looked blinklessly at his face, as if Akamon were an animal or a foreign creature or perhaps vice versa, for either way the behavior was alien all the same, and his expression seemed slightly fascinated as if comprehending a newfound object or a beetle before growing complacent and he proceeded silent and expressionless and without movement.

“Do you want some?” Akamon asked and wiggled the bottle of rum again. There was an easy smile on his face that hadn’t wavered, even when Ando lumbered towards him and stared at him and sat down without saying anything. He had come to accept the man’s strange ways and insular nature and he was just glad that he had replied to his invitation and that they were now sitting together. Conversation could follow later, if it was to happen at all. “You might like it.”

Ando reached forward, perhaps unexpectedly, and grasped the bottle’s bottom with an open palm as if holding up a ball. He pulled his arm back and brought the bottle’s mouth to his face, and held his nose over it and took a curious whiff and his face grew sour and his brows curled down in a frown. “No,” he said, and he grasped the neck of the bottle with his other hand before leaning forward and handing the bottle back to Akamon. “Alcohol. Not good for you, not ever. Especially not today. Tomorrow is the day of battle. Would cease if I were you.” His voice was not as hard as it normally was, and his expression seemed unconcerned and without judgement, as if voicing a fact.

The Redguard laughed. “No, no, you have it all backwards. It’s good for me [i]especially[/i] today, precisely [i]because[/i] tomorrow is the day of battle.” He did not explain himself and instead took the bottle of rum back from Ando without further argument, threw back a gulp with smacking lips and much appreciative grunting, and then put the bottle down and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at the swordsman with a tilt to his head and a curious gleam to his brown-green scarab-eyes, and at long last he spoke again and voiced an empathic question. “What is a sword?”

Despite the lack of context for the question and the frivolous behavior he’d shown beforehand, Ando received the Redguard’s question without any surprise, as if a lecturer or a student in a place of higher learning where such questions were the norm. “A sword is a tool for cutting,” Ando replied in a tone that belied the inquiry as a matter of fact. “A beginner’s tool, but a tool nonetheless.” He stopped and smacked his lips. “…You are a swordsman. You know what a sword is. If you ask for some other reason, you would better be direct.”

“I know what a sword is, but until I asked you that question I did not know what [i]you[/i] know a sword to be,” Akamon said by way of explanation, and he smiled because he had learned something about Ando now. “A beginner’s tool. How do you mean? Is the sword inferior to other weapons? You carry a sword,” he said and pointed out the katana that poked out from inside Ando’s ragged robes. “You would prefer something else?”

Ando’s eyes followed the Redguard’s index finger to the tang that stuck out from his belt and he seemed pensive for a brief moment before he grasped it and pulled it out of the wrap of rope around his waist. “This is no sword,” he spoke, his eyes following the tempering patterns of the blade. “It is a blade.” With a swift movement he flipped the blade’s orientation and thrust it into the ground by him. Lacking any sort of handle or cross guard it seemed more like the unfinished or unadorned work of a smith than a proper weapon. “And no. I would not call the sword inferior. You must define weapon for a clearer answer, however.”

“Blade, then,” Akamon conceded. But that only raised more questions. Why would Ando choose to wield an unfinished weapon, of any kind? And if the sword wasn’t inferior, then why was it only a beginner’s tool? He shook his head and chuckled and reached for the bottle, the act of drinking giving a moment’s respite to prepare a new avenue of questioning. “Let’s go back a step. You called it a tool for cutting, but only a beginner’s tool, yet it is not inferior to any other weapon. So, then,” he said, thinking out loud, looking up at the canopy, until the right question had come to him and his eyes found Ando’s again, “what is cutting?”

“To cut is to create a difference in space,” Ando replied flatly. “A sword, a blade, a rock, a tree, a wall, a man, a city. These are all cutting instruments. The sword is a beginner’s tool because it is expressly designed for its purpose. Would your swordsmanship fare better were you to wield a rock for a sword, or worse?” 

“Worse, of course,” Akamon replied, puzzled. He felt like he wasn’t understanding what Ando was getting at. “The rock has no cutting edge, no balance, no hilt.” He reached over his shoulder for his own sword now and unsheathed the weapon and lowered it in front of him, and he observed the faint green ripples in its make and the way its edge caught the light. “This is a cutting tool,” he said with certainty. “A rock cannot cut, nor can a man, or a city. But I think you mean something else. They do… affect change, I suppose.” Confusion had crept back into his voice and he stared at his sword for a few more seconds before he laid it flat across his lap and focused his attention back on Ando. “What is a master’s tool for cutting?”

Ando’s mouth curled in a faint smile, somewhat predatory but still more enthused than gloating. “Master’s tools, you ask. A rock. A man. A city.” He raised an arm and slowly waved it to one side, like he was presenting the scenery. “Trees all around us. Shrubbery. They cut your sight, do they not? You cannot see behind it.” He reached down with the same arm and picked up one of the smaller stones framing the fire. “A rock. You say it is not cutting, yet strike with the right alignment and it will sever all the same.” He stopped, lost in thought, before beaming with a hint of entertainment. “Or the right force. Watch this.” He held the stone between his thumb and his middle finger and he stood contemplative for some time and he sprung his arm back, and then he shot his arm forward along with a flick of his fingers, sending the stone cutting through the air and the fire and promptly smashing into the bottle of rum standing by the Redguard.
 
“Cutting and swordsmanship are two different things,” Ando spoke as his calves curled inward and pushed him to stand up in an odd display of human anatomy. “You would do well to consider what separates them and which it is that you seek.”

He turned his back on Akamon to disappear into the darkness, but then he turned again and he looked at the Redguard with his usual, blank gaze. “Appreciate the hospitality. Good night.” With that he turned once more and then he was gone.

Stunned into silence, Akamon watched Ando leave and his gaze remained fixed on the darkness where the Rim-Man had disappeared. “My fucking rum!” he exclaimed eventually, to nobody in particular, and grumbled and swept the shards of glass away from him with his foot. “Cutting my ass. That was [i]throwing.”[/i] He sighed and got to his feet and swung his sword idly around him, a languid one-handed grip around the hilt, eyes focused on nothing as he listened to the singing metal swishing through the air. “Cutting is not swordsmanship,” Akamon mumbled to himself. Then he returned his sword to its scabbard and decided to give the matter some more thought when he was sober again. For now Akamon headed deeper into the camp in search of more company and conversation -- and a new drink.