t took two days to drag Duncan out of Glencoe – actually, out of Bridget’s possessive arms.  Connor could hardly complain, however.  The enthusiastic and athletic Miriam made Connor her ‘special guest’, fed him until he thought he would explode, then helped him work off all that food in delightful fashion.  She even forgave her barmaid for her slacking work ethic since Bridget’s knack for keeping Duncan occupied also kept Connor from leaving town too quickly.

So, when the day of their planned departure dawned wet and gloomy, Connor was tempted to stay even longer.  But Duncan had done little but drink, eat and partake of Bridget’s charms since they arrived, and it would not do to let his student think he was not still subject to the rigors of training and apprenticeship.  They carefully packed the goods Connor had purchased, spreading the weight between the two horses, and covering the packages with skins and oiled cloth.  They didn’t bother covering themselves against the summer rain.  It would have been a pointless effort, and skin and wool would eventually dry, and none the worse for it.

There was a tearful goodbye between Duncan and Bridget, at least on Bridget’s part.  Connor noticed that his student was careful to make no promises or commitments, but still managed to salve the maid’s wounded heart with pretty, flattering words.  The lad obviously had been born with the gift of charm along with his extraordinary appearance, and it occurred to Connor that perhaps, in time, his student might be able to teach him something about the wooing of women.  It had never been a skill that had come easily for him, and his century of living had not revealed any great wisdom or revelatory secrets about their mysteries.  With the exception of Heather, he frequently felt awkward and graceless around women, and had badly mishandled any number of potential romantic encounters.

They had ridden for an hour or so in silence, each man content with mentally reliving the pleasantries of the recent past.  The gentle rain became a steady downpour, then sometime in mid-morning, it became a torrent.  Connor judged the time right, and pulled his stallion to a halt. 

Duncan rode on for a second, then turned the gelding.  “Is something wrong?” he asked.  He was soaked to the skin, his hair clinging limply to his head and shoulders, water dripping off his nose and chin.

“Aye.  It is time we had a little talk,” Connor announced, to the accompaniment of a rumble of distant thunder.

“Right now?  Can’t it wait until we’re out of the rain?”

“No.  For what I have to say, a thorough drenching is entirely appropriate.  You, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, are an idiot, a child, a raving lunatic.”

Duncan’s eyes narrowed and he stiffened in his saddle, waiting for an explanation.

“Do you really think your life, or the life of some poor sheepherder is worth a barmaid’s kiss?”

“Is that what this is about?” Duncan scoffed.  “The man stepped over the bounds of decency.  I was just going to scare him a little.”

“You practically choked him to death, and you drew unwarranted attention to yourself.  What if you had gotten cut, then healed right in front of everyone?  You were so damned afraid of people recognizing you, then you practically paint a sign on your forehead, pointing out that you’re Immortal,” Connor said in disgust.  “Then you bloody well drew your sword!  What were you going to do with it?  Do you think the sanctity of a barmaid’s lips was worth a man’s life? They don’t heal in a few minutes or come back to life, you know.  They are mortal and you are not!  Or have you forgotten that so soon?”

Lightning splintered the sky, the horses danced nervously and the rain managed to intensify until it seemed as though they stood under a waterfall.  Duncan settled his horse, looked down, then away, spots of color appearing on his cheeks. 

“Well?” Connor prodded.

“I didn’t think.  I…I was a little drunk, and…it had been so long since I’d been around people that I overreacted, to everything, I think,” Duncan admitted glumly through clenched teeth.

Connor had expected resistance and argument, and was unprepared for confessions of guilt. He urged the stallion forward again, and Duncan fell in alongside.  They were silent for a moment, before Duncan spoke again.

“For awhile, I felt so…normal,” he sighed wistfully.

“I wish it were so,” Connor observed.  “But you can never forget what you are.”

Duncan looked more than sufficiently chastened, and the rest of the trip back was made in sober, soggy silence.

Connor grew to know his student’s moods and silences over the next months, as their drills grew more sophisticated and intricate, and Duncan began to understand the value of strategy as well as strength.  The lad was passionate, hot tempered, and prone to quick judgment and strong opinions.  But given time and information, he would lapse into long silences, seek solitude, then come back with probing questions that demonstrated he had thought long and hard about whatever problem he was contemplating, sometimes to an amusing degree. 

But while Duncan could be very grim when it came to uncovering his own ignorance or error, he was almost childlike when it came to daily life and their regular chores and food gathering needs.  Everything was a game, a competition, a test of some kind or another.

“I did so!” Duncan insisted, his voice taking on a defensive whine as he successfully parried a move they had already been over a hundred times.

“You brought down a six-point stag, on foot, with one arrow from a bow and arrow you carved yourself?” Connor asked dubiously.  “Well, everyone is entitled to a little luck, I guess, especially the young and foolish.”  He thrust again, almost catching his student in the ribs when he saw an opening on Duncan’s weak left side, but the lad swiveled out of the way.  He was getting better, watching more carefully.  Ending each sparring session battered, cut and bruised tended to bring home the price of any lapses in attention.

“It wasna’ luck,” Duncan grumbled.  “It was survival, and what my Da taught me.  There was even a boar I managed to…,” but his voice trailed off, and his lips pressed together as though to prevent any more words from escaping, and he executed a distractingly quick, aggressive move that almost got past Connor’s guard. 

Connor disengaged and stepped back, signaling a break as he reached for a skin of water.  Duncan wiped his streaming, flushed face with the back of his arm, and waited his turn for the water. 

“Managed to what?”

“Nothing.  It wasn’t important.”

Connor handed the skin over, thinking how best to get his student to talk more easily about what troubled him.  When it came to the period after his first death, Duncan had little to say.  Connor was sure Duncan’s reticence was rooted in some experience during his three years of isolation, something that roused fear or shame, or both.  It was something he would eventually have to talk about or it would eat away at him for centuries.  Teaching Duncan had given Connor insights into his own past, and his own teachers.  Whatever wounds his original banishment had caused had been quickly healed by Heather’s absolute acceptance and love.  And he had been fortunate to have one of the great ancients as his teacher.  Even if it had been for a relatively short period of time, it had given him the knowledge, skills, strength and confidence to survive.

Ramirez had the experience and power to do so many things, to easily convey so many concepts as though he could reach directly into his student’s mind, understanding his fears, overcoming his stubbornness with the sheer power of his thoughts and personality.  It was terribly frustrating to know that his first student, his own clansman, and a person he was growing fonder of by the day, could not benefit more from what he had learned from his old teacher.

“Let yourself feel the stag,” Ramirez whispered behind him, touching him at shoulder and elbow.  “His heart, beating.”  With the soft instructions came the gentle touch in his thoughts, as only Ramirez could do, edging open the closed and secret places in his mind, letting understanding seep into his body, even when his mind refused to grasp it.  His chest expanded, his muscles warmed and tensed, his heart sounded strong and steady, his blood coursing inside with unbounded strength.  He felt so incredibly alive, every sense alert and active.  He could feel…need, fear, sex, all crowding together at once.  His feet moved, digging into the soft earth.  He needed…to run!

And so he had learned.  Everything from complex sword techniques, to world history, to chess, to surviving in places and under circumstances that went beyond magic and became real, although not truly understood, even now. 

Ramirez had called him “brother.” How much more, then, was Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod?  A student, a clansman, someone from his own time and place and history.  And yet Connor had not the magic Ramirez had so easily used, the gift to open Duncan’s mind and show him the things he needed to know.  Instead, he could only teach him, tell him again and again, and hope the lad would be smart enough, strong enough, to find the magic on his own. 

Connor was distracted from his frustrating thoughts as he caught the speculative gleam in his student’s eyes, and he could tell the lad was scheming up some distracting adventure.  Duncan seemed to love contests and bets, even when he consistently lost to his older, wilier clansman.  The lad seemed to have a bottomless well of optimism when it came to competitive clashes with his teacher. Or perhaps the lad was simply acknowledging the lessons learned, even in the losses. 

Sure enough, Duncan thoughtfully wiped his blade, casting speculative looks at his teacher as he did, obviously weighing his words carefully.  “How about I do the hunting for a week or two, and you do the chores around the croft, and we’ll see who can bring home more meat for the fire?” he offered.

“Oh, no,” Connor chuckled.  “You just want to get out of doing chores and drills.  I may be old, but I’m not a doddering fool.”

“Connor!” Duncan protested, “I’m not a lad, you know.  I lived on my own for three years without you watching me every minute.”

Connor looked up from cleaning his own blade, eyeing his student speculatively.  “It must have been hard,” he observed.  Duncan shrugged enigmatically and slid his claymore into its scabbard, but Connor reached out and touched his shoulder before he could turn away.  “I’d like to hear about it, Duncan.”

“Not much to tell, and not very interesting. Guess I’ll bring some water up from the loch for dinner, and you can tell me some more stories of Ramirez, eh?”  He slid his scabbard up to his shoulder and headed off back towards the house.

“Duncan!” Connor called after him.  “It’s your turn for stories, tonight, I think.”  His student paused for a second, but didn’t turn, then continued on down the hill.

Connor broke out his whiskey that evening.  There was a damp chill in the air, a precursor to the cold season lurking just a few weeks away.  He took a careful sip of the liquor and passed it to his companion, suppressing a slight shudder at the contrast between the heat of the liquor and the chill of the evening.  “We could go south, you know,” he offered.  “To Greece or Italy.  I have a lovely apartment in Ravenna.  And it is much warmer there in the winter.”

Duncan sipped at the bottle, grimaced at the burn of alcohol, and passed the bottle back.  “Leave Scotland?  Why would you want to do that?” he asked.

Connor had to control his smile.  “Because there is much more to the world than wet and cold and sheep, Duncan MacLeod,” he replied.

“But this is your home,” Duncan gestured to the small house they had built.  “And we just spent half the summer making it tight against the weather.  And there is so much left to learn, why I’ve barely begun to understand half what you’ve shown me.”

“And why should we both be cold and uncomfortable while I teach you?”

“The same reason you brought me here in the first place.  This is who we are, Connor.  We are Highlanders, and those hills and mountains, the snow and the wet, the heather and the lochs, are as much a part of us as our blades, our kilts or our clans.  How can you teach me what I need to know about survival as an Immortal in a place where I know naught about the land, its people or its language?”

Connor smiled.  When Duncan felt passionately about something, as he did about so many things, he had a knack for expressing himself, and no hesitation about doing so.  “Perhaps part of survival is learning about those lands, those languages and those people?” he offered.

“Och, I’ll have plenty of opportunity to do tha’,” Duncan dismissed the notion.  “I need to learn what you know about the sword, about strategy, to win against men many times my age and experience.  Tis better if…”

“And women,” Connor inserted.

“What?”

“There are female immortals, you know.”

Duncan just looked at him blankly for a long moment, then reached for the whiskey, and took a drink.  “I’d have to fight a woman?” he asked in a small, tight voice.

Connor looked his student in the eye.  “Yes, Duncan.  There are women who are many times older than I, wily and strong and dangerous.  They will take your head as easily as any man you have ever met in battle.”

“A woman?  With a sword?” Duncan started to laugh, but saw that Connor was quite serious. “But how could she…?” he didn’t seem to be able to articulate the rest of his question.

Connor laughed, but stopped when Duncan flushed at what he assumed was his teacher’s ridicule.  “Don’t be fooled by man or woman who is smaller or less muscular than you.  I am smaller than you, but who is the better fighter, eh?  And smaller can also mean quicker, and if you meet up with a woman Immortal who has managed to survive past her first century, you know you are looking at someone who is very canny and who has learned what she needs to do to remain in the Game.”

Duncan looked thoughtful for a moment, then took another drink of whiskey and wiped his mouth.  “Is that where we come from, then?” he asked, handing the bottle back.

“What do you mean?”

“Who our parents are,” Duncan explained.  “But why would they just abandon us?” he went on, not waiting for an answer.  “Don’t they care, or do they think that one day they might have to kill us, so they don’t want to love or care for their own bairns?”

Connor took a large swallow of whiskey.  This part was going to be hard to explain, and one aspect of immortality he had avoided discussing.  Duncan, who viewed clan and family as sacred, probably couldn’t even grasp the concept of abandoning a child, and, Connor guessed, had always assumed he would raise a gaggle of bairns of his own.  “We cannot have children, Duncan.  We are barren, as are Immortal women.”  He met Duncan’s blank, uncomprehending stare.  “No one knows where we come from.”

Duncan sputtered a harsh laugh.  “Very funny, Connor.  First you tell me I’m not a demon, but now you say we are changlings, left by the fairies to be raised by mortals.”

Connor handed him the jug of whiskey.  But Duncan didn’t take it, just narrowing his eyes at the gesture.  “I’m sorry, Duncan, but I’m telling you the truth.  We cannot have children, and no Immortal knows his parents or his origins.”

Duncan abruptly stood and left the house, slamming the door behind him. 

Connor waited awhile, put a little more wood on the fire to keep it going, then went in search of his clansman.  He found him on the top of the hill across the glen, looking out over the dark expanse of the craggy mountain range shadowed against the night sky, his kilt rippling in the slight breeze.  Their breaths fogged gently in the mild chill, but Duncan was hugging his body as though protecting himself from bitter cold.

“I’m sorry,” Connor finally said after they had stood side by side for a moment.  “I should have told you before, but I knew you would have a hard time understanding.”

“Oh, I understand!” Duncan said bitterly.  “We are to outlive all those we care for, and are not allowed to care for our own kind, or even have families to love, or to love us.  We are not to trust anyone, not to share what we are with anyone, and with a sole purpose being to kill those most like ourselves.  And all for some Prize that no one can describe.”  Duncan shuddered, and Connor rested a calming hand on his shoulder.  “Why?” Duncan insisted sadly.  “Can you just tell me why?”

“I have no answers, I’m afraid.  Each of us has to find one for ourselves, I think.  I found happiness with Heather, and can only hope to someday have it again.  The blessing is that I have that chance.  Otherwise,” he shrugged.  “I learn to survive, and every once in a while I form a bond with someone that reminds me that, whatever mysterious purpose our existence may serve, there are other reasons to live.”  Connor gently squeezed the thick, tense muscle under his hand, and Duncan’s square jaw clench and unclenched in silence. 

After a moment, he felt a small shudder under his hand, and Duncan turned his head. To Connor’s surprise his student’s face had a crooked, sad smile.  “What?” he asked.

“I had been worried that, as many times as Bridget and I…, you know – that she would get with child.  She’s a sweet and willing girl, but I’m hardly in a position to marry anyone now.  I guess that isn’a something to worry about anymore.”

“True,” Connor answered.  “See, there are blessings in everything, my friend.  You just have to learn to find them.”

“Aye,” Duncan agreed softly.  “Tis a blessing for me that you were the one to find me, to be sure, and I don’t mean to seem ungrateful.  My own clansman, someone who understands what it is to be part of a clan, to be born and raised in this land.”  Duncan squeezed Connor’s shoulder with a big hand.  “I have nay thanked you properly, Connor MacLeod.  You are the closest I will ever come to having a true kinsman, a real brother. I care not what happens in this Game you talk of, I will never raise my blade against you to do you deliberate harm.”

Connor laid his hand on his student’s forearm.  “For an Immortal to say “never” is dangerous, Duncan, but I know I would never willingly raise a blade against you, either.”

Duncan chuckled, breaking the uncomfortably serious mood.  “That didn’a seem to stop you from practically cutting my leg off this afternoon.”

“Och,” Connor dismissed him with a guttural sound he had gotten used to hearing from Duncan, and gently urged the man back towards the house, where it was warmer and more comfortable.  “That was just a tickle, lad, naught to trouble yourself about.  If I were truly after your head, you’d not have any doubt about it.”

Even as the summer ended and the cold, blustery winds moaned through the shutters, Connor didn’t press Duncan to leave Scotland for warmer climes.  The lad had dealt with more than enough changes in his life and needed time to adjust to what he was, and what he needed to learn to survive.  They wintered at the cottage, going into Glencoe once a month or so, when the weather permitted.  Connor taught Duncan about strategy and planning and thinking ahead, and each day, regardless of wind or rain or snow, the two men sparred or exercised with their blades, and Connor found himself in better shape than he had ever been.

They had many long conversations in front of the fire, while Connor taught Duncan the intricacies of chess, and after several months, Duncan reluctantly revealed some of his experiences during the three years after he had been banished from the clan.  Connor realized that his student was deeply ashamed he had not done better, had not achieved more, had not managed to overcome his clan’s fears and suspicions.  The stories had to be dragged from him, using a lot of patience, and more than a little liquor.  It took a heavy snow storm and a half-bottle of whiskey before the lad admitted that he had frozen to death for half a winter season.

Connor told Duncan about his trip to the far eastern islands, where people had strange eyes and different colored skin. He confessed that, there, just as with Ramirez, his life had been spared while his teacher died.  Connor didn’t realize how heavily the guilt had burdened him until he had told the story.  The image of Nakano ….. , but he was pulled out of his sad reverie when he realized that Duncan was talking softly, telling him of a raider that had decimated his village and killed his father. 

Connor forced himself back to the present, listening carefully.  Getting Duncan to talk about himself was like squeezing water from a rock. The lad was an odd combination of arrogance and uncertainty, full of a sense of his own strength and power, yet with expectations of his abilities set so high that he was doomed to inevitable failure.

Duncan’s endless worry over every failure could be irritating, and press Connor’s patience to its limits and beyond, just as Connor’s never ending demands that Duncan perform menial, sometimes useless chores and exercises were destined to press Duncan to his own limits.  Eventually, Duncan would rebel, Connor knew.  He only hoped he would be able to handle the explosion when it came.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.  I said, no!”

Connor took a deep breath before he turned to face his student.  “That was not a request, Duncan.”

“I agreed to be your student, not your personal slave,” Duncan snapped.

Close confinement due to severe weather had kept them indoors much of the time for weeks, and tempers were growing short for both men.  There had been days when they had barely managed to be civil to one another.  They had not been to Glencoe in over two months, and Duncan had been chafing more and more at taking orders from his clansman.  So Connor was not at all surprised at Duncan’s open rebellion at being asked to empty their slop pot, which meant he would have to step out into the cold, icy rain and sleet that had kept them confined for so long.

“And I suppose you haven’t used the pot, yourself, eh?” Connor inquired.

“Use it or no, it's not fair that every damn chore you don’t like, you give to me, aye?” Duncan was looming large in the small house, his big fists opening and closing, opening and closing.

“I give them to you because you are the student, and from the first you have had a difficulty learning obedience and humility,” Connor snapped.

“You give them to me because you don’t want to do them yourself, and I am a convenient servant!”

“You are my student, and part of a student’s role is to learn when to do what he is told, without question or defiance.  You think I haven’t done the same thing, felt exactly the same way?” Connor shouted back.  “Ramirez treated me like a child, said I had the manners of a goat, and smelled like one as well.  He rowed me out into the loch and made me balance in the bottom of a boat, when I didna’ even know how to swim, then deliberately knocked me into the water, knowing I was terrified of drowning.  You think I’m hard on you?  You’ve had it easy, Duncan.  I’ve treated you gently because I felt sorry for you, but maybe that was a mistake.”

“Sorry for me!” Duncan bellowed.  “You felt sorry for me?  Well, I dinna need your pity, or your charity, Connor MacLeod.”

Connor immediately realized he had used the wrong words, but his own temper was master of his tongue now.  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot.  The great Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod doesn’t need anyone or anything.  He’s the chieftain’s son and heir, caretaker for all the weak and helpless.  Well, who is taking care of your clan, now?  Not you!  And why is that, do you suppose?  Because you have no idea how to deal with what you are, and because of that your mother is left defenseless, and your village without the leader they had come to expect.”

All the blood drained out of Duncan’s face, his dark eyes becoming deep glittering holes, his nostrils flared wide.  Connor looked away and took a deep breath, knowing he had pushed too far, said too much.  He was the elder here, after all.  The teacher.  He shouldn’t have lost his temper.  He swallowed, turned and opened his mouth to find something, anything, conciliatory to say – and had it closed with a fist.  He was lifted off his feet by the force of the blow, his back and head meeting the rough stone wall hard enough to force the breath right out of his body.  Stunned, he started to slide down the wall, but he was caught and lifted, and another blinding blow smashed into his cheek.

Survival instincts kicked in at last and he lifted a knee hard, aiming for his attacker’s groin.  He hit something, and Duncan grunted, and for a brief second, the grip on Connor’s shirt loosened.  He twisted away, diving for his sword, but his student was fast and strong and enraged, and the back of his shirt was grabbed, bouncing him back against Duncan’s chest.

“Duncan!” he managed to croak.  “Stop!”  Connor twisted his body, using Duncan’s own weight to pull him over his shoulder and onto their roughly made table, where it collapsed underneath the sudden load, sending splintered wood flying around the room.

“You want to fight me?” he snarled at the huddled, glaring man on the floor.  “Fine!”  He slammed out of the house and into the sleet and icy rain, the wind catching the door and blowing it back to the wall with a bang.  He walked into the clearing in front of the house and turned to see Duncan outlined menacingly in the doorway, the fire flickering behind him.  His student looked larger, somehow, the shoulders broader, the legs thicker, and tall – taller than Connor ever remembered. 

Two thoughts flickered almost simultaneously across his mind.  The first was an odd pride:  this was his clansman and friend, a Highlander and an Immortal, someone whose life and destiny he would have a hand in molding.  The second was a consideration of his own folly:  what the hell did he think he was going to accomplish?

Then all thoughts except survival fled as Duncan lowered his shoulders and charged like a Spanish bull, plowing into him and sending them both sprawling into the freezing mud and grass.  The fight quickly turned into a wrestling match, with Connor’s speed and agility and experience competing with Duncan’s nearly equal speed and somewhat greater strength, and no small experience of his own, evidently.  Any Highlander worth his salt was a brawler practically from the time he first managed to wobble alone on two legs.  Friendly and not-so-friendly wrestling matches were a part of the social fabric of life, and one of the traditional ways Highland boys learned about themselves and each other.  While clansmen would fight one another as quickly as the weather changed, they would also defend one another to the death.

“Geroff me!” Duncan growled, pushing at Connor’s limp, gasping body until he rolled off into the mud with a squish and a grunt.

Connor lay there on his back, feeling ice pellets bounce off his face, trying to pull in enough air to stay alive, at least for another moment.  He could hear Duncan’s wheezing gasps beside him.  They had pummeled each other for what seemed like half the day, and both were barely moving any more.  Connor felt warm blood gather in the back of his throat, and he swallowed, too tired to roll over and spit it out.  The tingle of healing tickled his split lip, and he hissed as his nose realigned, hurting as much in the healing as it had when Duncan had broken it the first time…and the second time.

A low groan sounded to his right and he managed to turn his head, maliciously pleased to see his student was in at least as bad a shape as he was.  Blood had streamed from a cut over Duncan’s eye, washing down into his face.  Darker blood from earlier injuries had smeared around his nose, and an ugly bruise purpled the side of his face.  The bruise was fading, but its presence added to Connor’s sense of satisfaction.  He didn’t know if he could be called the winner of this particular battle, but at least he could not be considered the loser, either.

His body shuddered involuntarily at the cold, and he forced himself over to his side, then pushed up with a groan, making it unsteadily to his feet.  He looked down at his student, still lying on his back, his kilt and shirt soaked, bloody and heavy with mud, his hair so thick with it, it looked like it had changed color entirely.

“Feel any better?” he asked carefully, through lips still tender and bruised.

Duncan opened his uninjured eye and balefully considered his teacher for a moment.  “Depends on which part I’m considering,” he answered hoarsely.  A corner of his mouth managed to twitch upwards.  “If you ask my face and my ribs, I’d have to say no.  But,” he added, pushing himself up on his elbows, “there are certain parts of me that are verra’ satisfied.”  Both corners of his mouth were curving upward by this time, and he held out a hand.  Connor helped lever his student to his feet, and both lurched unsteadily, holding on to each other for balance.

“I need a drink,” Connor observed as they staggered into the house.

“Aye.  A wee dram would not be amiss,” Duncan agreed breathlessly, following him inside.  He leaned against the wall and slid down until he was sitting on the floor, his clothes and hair forming a dark, wet puddle around him.

Connor shut the door, shuffled over to the chest he had made to store their foodstuffs, and pulled out his bottle of the precious usquebagh, pulling the stopper out and taking several large swallows.  His eyes watered, his damaged lips stung and he coughed from the burn and the fumes, but after few careful breaths as he cradled the bottle against his chest, he felt the warmth spread from his stomach through the rest of his battered, cold body.

“Are you planning to drink it all yourself?” Duncan asked, petulantly.

Connor looked down at his immortal clansman.  “Are you planning to try to thrash me again any time soon?”

“No,” Duncan answered, after considering the question for a moment.  “So long as you don’t order me to carry out the slop pot.”  At that, Duncan pushed himself to his feet, went to the corner, grabbed the pot in question, and went out of the house. 

Connor just stood there, staring at the closed door, then realized he was still clutching the bottle, and took another long swallow.  Already his head was beginning to swim, but he decided circumstances warranted a little excess.  A moment later, the door opened, letting in another gust of icy rain before Duncan got it closed, then set the pot back down in the corner.  Then he stood expectantly in front of his teacher, his bloodied head cocked to one side, his muddy, tangled hair looking like a particularly haphazard bird’s nest draped around his head.

Connor handed him the bottle, and Duncan put his head back, taking three great long swallows, before he stopped, his lips pursed, spots of color showing through the blood and dirt on his face.  He blinked rapidly and finally took a quick, gasping breath.  “Aye,” he finally managed hoarsely.  “Now I feel much better.”

They were both too exhausted to even consider dinner preparations.  Instead, they just sat on the floor and finished the bottle, telling each other stories about various fights they had won and lost over the years, each trying to outdo the other, both in the glory of their heroic victories or the utter humiliation of their defeats, until they dissolved in drunken giggles over Connor’s tale of a duel in which he had been so drunk, he kept getting stabbed, but would then just get up, healed, utterly confounding his poor mortal opponent.

Duncan eventually passed out on the floor, snoring noisily, leaving Connor listing dangerously over to one side as he sat propped against the wall.  Connor frowned at the empty bottle, and decided that the next time they started getting on each other’s nerves, no matter what the weather, a trip into Glencoe was probably the better alternative.  Then he slowly let his body slide over until his cheek was resting against something warm and resilient.  He twisted around a little to get comfortable, but his movement prompted a snort and a hand pushing him away until his face plopped onto the cold floor.  His last thought before his eyes became too heavy to keep open was that at least he held his drink better than his student did.