10-03-2009, 09:49 PM
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 "Me start anything with them?" he asked, furrowing his eyebrow; it seemed as if the thought hadn't occurred to him. "Well, I guess I could, given all the bad things people say they've done. They wouldn't last long if I brought my pack down on 'em...could be they're fierce as all get-out, but they wouldn't have seen anything close to the bloodshed we have if they've been living in this place. Plus, there's four dozen or so of us at Snow-Capped Pine, and we've all done more than our share of fighting." He smiled to himself before looking down to Finn walking beside him. "No. For all they might deserve it, I didn't come here to drive them out. My friend Skoll was particular about letting these people handle their own coyote problems." He tapped the head of his metal club lightly. "I just brought this thing along in case there's so many of them in one place that they can gather the courage to attack someone my size." He chuckled to himself at that. Skoll had been furious about the coyotes, and it had been something he'd liked about the old man. He'd said that the members of Inferni had gotten away with murder on more than one occasion, and most of it had been unprovoked. Jantus had a less idealistic view of the world than Skoll had, possibly because he was less of a stand-out than Skoll in combat, and figured he wasn't as responsible for what other people did. It didn't bother Jantus all that much to see a people get hurt for being too averse to violence. After all, if there wasn't some penalty for not defending one's self and one's territory, places like the Snow-Capped Pine wouldn't have put up with it for so long. "Well, you'd better find yourself a two-legged form if you're going to brawl all the time. Like you said: you'd have to watch out if someone like me challenged you to a fight. Might be some day a person like me will, especially if you're not as charming as now to all your other acquaintances." His advice was plenty serious, but there was warmth and ease in the way he said it, like it was a concern for down the road and not something to be addressed immediately: as if all of her and his problems were safely on hold while they talked. "Or, I suppose, you could always get a shifter friend, though I think it'd go against your grain to let others fight for you?" He sniffed the air for a moment, but whether he was scenting after food, scouting for enemies, or just curious, was hard to tell. "It's okay to like fighting, Finn, but I could see how an alpha might be a bit worried if you fought your own packmates. One thing I should ask, though: have you ever fought for real?" He spared her an appraising look through his good eye; he had a habit for tactlessness, especially after having spent so long as alpha in a region where peace-time niceties and keeping up forms mattered less than getting down to brass tacks. "Seems a silly question to ask, given all the scars, but you mentioned fighting with your brother as being too rough, and even most border fights are meant to drive off. You ever been in a fight to the death? You ever been in a pack feud or somethin' bigger?" Jantus had been in his share of "somethin' bigger"'s, but he didn't necessarily want to start out talking about that. He'd been in many conflicts before and since Skoll's war, but all of them paled in comparison. Nonetheless, from bronze wolf's description, even his life aside from the big war would be sufficiently impressive to most people he'd meet in Souls' territory. |