The Swordmaster followed Verissa with his eyes when she stepped away from him, wondering if he'd said something she found offensive, his scarred brow arched slightly over a stormy eye as he watched her gaze travel up to his face. She was so nervous, scared, and it reminded her of the yales that ran in huge herds on the grassland. They were graceful, but prone to bounding away at the slightest noise.
And he didn't correct her when she used his name. Any title other than Swordmaster would have made him feel soulless.
"I will," he promised, falling even more solidly into the habit of saying everything in Kvaren first and then translating it into Common for her. It was tedious, but he wanted her to trust him. Even if her urgency to adapt to life here was purely in the interest of self-preservation, he couldn't help but hope that perhaps one day it would lead to something more. "If it had been up to me, Verissa, I would have simply left you in your home. But now that you're here I'll...I'll do what I can to make you happy."
He held his hand out for the staff and took it, but rather than toss it back into the grass where Verissa had found it, he turned and heaved his arm back, throwing it like a spear until it clattered into the empty bed of the wooden cart. The mule attatched to it pinned his ears back and looked up, chewing on a mouthful of grass and glaring disdainfully at the fighter.
"It's a little bit too tall for you, but I'll shorten it and clean it up so you can keep practicing. Now, let's head back to the tent. We have some packing to do tonight."
Asher motioned for her to walk at his side and led her back to his tent, the huge mule and rough cart rumbling beside them.
"There are only a few ways a slave can become a free member of the Thunderfang tribe," he began, taking his time before answering her question. He eyed her at length, hesitating. "The first way is to marry your Master," he started, though there was something in his tone that discounted that possibility immediately. "Luckily for you I am not the kind of man who would consider taking a second wife. The second way would be to have my child, whether I married you or not." To Asher, becoming a free member of the tribe seemed poor consolation for women captured and raped by his fellows, but he supposed it was better than nothing. He glanced down at Verissa again, "I hope I made it clear last night that I don't intend to do that to you, Verissa."
They were coming up on his pavillion tent now, and Asher tied the mule to a post and beckoned for Verissa to help him start loading much of the stuff from inside his tent into the back.
"The third way is the Hunt. Not every tribe allows slaves to take it, and they still need their Master's permission, but it's the same Hunt that children go on to become adults. The Kerawac, what you call "The Valley of the Screamers," and he grinned somewhat amusedly at that, "is full of many deadly animals. Knowing them, hunting them, defending ourselves against them, that's how we survive. A young Kvaren will take a weapon and a small pack of supplies and go out into the grass to kill something. Upon bringing proof back, they are accepted into the tribe as an adult. Or in the case of a slave, free."
He lifted the coppery and black wolf hide down from the wall and ran his hand through the soft fur as he rolled it up. "This is the maned wolf I killed to earn my place in the Tribe. This is his fang too." He pulled the heavy fang pendant from his neck and handed it to her to look at. "Maned wolves aren't especially large or dangerous compared to other things, but they are not very common."
When they had finished, the mule (as well as Phantom) were hitched outside, munching muffledly in their leather nosebags and snoozing before the start of their long journey in the morning. Asher was sweating, his dark hair plastered to his forehead and his cheeks hot from lifting heavy crates into the back of the cart. He had pulled off his shirt, the resulting effect somewhat spoiled by the bandages around his shoulder. There was strikethrough on the white linen, proof that he'd overdone himself.