Once A Hero (58 page)

I nodded. "His great-great-something-grandson."

Berengar looked at all of us as if we were crazy. "Dreels are myths."

"I'm thinking I was a myth up until a week ago."

Gena bent forward and took a good look at the map. "Neal, did you ever fight a creature up in the Rimefields? A big Man-eating monster?"

I shook my head, then glanced at Aarundel. "I can't remember anything like that."

Aarundel shook his head as well. "We never ventured into the Rimefields. Closest we got was when you fought Shijef in Irtysh."

"Dreels again." Berengar frowned imperiously. "Myths."

Gena tapped the map under the shallow X the two lines had made. "I remember hearing something about an ice-monster living in a smoking ice mountain up here. It eats Men, it is said, and there is a legend about your fighting it, but I think that was cobbled together from other heroic songs from Rzyani sources."

"There's another myth for you, my lord." I smiled carefully at Berengar. "Genevera, does that monster have a name?"

"Bacorzi, Pacorzi . . . Tacorai perhaps."

Aarundel and I again looked at each other. "Takrakor? Smash down the middle and add the 'zi' for his living in a mountain."

The elder Elf nodded. "Had I thought he still lived, I might have made the connection myself and acted upon it."

I shook my head. "There was no way you could link that myth and Takrakor, and we still might be wrong about it. We won't know until we get there."

"And when you do?"

"I'll ask him politely to give me back my knife, and when he refuses, I'll do to him what I meant to do five hundred years ago."

In retrospect Gena saw how it had begun, though had she been asked at the start of the expedition, she would have said there would have been no trouble among the four of them. No one had been designated leader of the group, though she had still seen Berengar in that role, since he had initiated the whole thing. Neal functioned as a guide and adviser, and while she was certain that was how he would have characterized his role, he just naturally asserted himself and gave his opinion when any questions came up.

The Dreel had helped polarize things very quickly because of his devotion to Neal and utter lack of respect for Berengar. And Berengar, while an intelligent and skilled man, had not traveled much in the northern nations and not at all by the circus translatio. The exertion of using that route to get from Cygestolia to the grove to the east of Jarudin seriously wore him out. As a result his temper was shorter than usual, and he did not rein it back in.

Neal, on the other hand, seemed to weather travel by the circus better than even she did. She felt embarrassed awakening to the sound of Neal and Stulklirn dumping armloads of wood near the edge of the campsite to feed the fire that kept her warm. "How can you be so full of energy?"

The Man shrugged. "I'm thinking I must have rested a great deal while I was dead."

Gena yawned. "I apologize for awakening you. Had I known . . ."

Neal shook his head. "Now I'm the one who should be apologizing. Someone brings you back from the dead, and you get angry with them? I'm thinking I was more mannerly dealing with the Reithrese emperor in Jarudin than I was with you and Aarundel. Never was one to wake up all cheery, though."

Gena stretched and tossed her blanket across Berengar's feet. She stood and walked over to where Neal squatted. She held her hands out to the fire. "That feels good."

"Something about a fire that warms the body and prompts talk that warms the soul. Many's the friendship welded together over a campfire."

Gena sat down and poked a stick into the fire. "Did you and my grandaunt spend much time talking over a fire?"

Neal thought for a second, and Gena saw sadness flicker over his face. "Once, for a bit, but it didn't last. That was the night that Takrakor and his warriors took your grandfather away. We had more fires on that trip, of course, but we didn't do much talking."

The pain in his voice made her want to hug him, but as she reached out, he withdrew. "Neal, there is no prohibition against our touching."

He gave her a smile, but it died quickly. "I know this, but I fought so long to keep from hugging Larissa, that it's a habit I can't break."

"You could if you tried."

Neal shrugged. "True, but then I'd have to deal with the fact that I'd be hugging the grandniece of the sylvanesti I love. To go from living in a tomb to robbing a cradle is a bit much right now."

"Neal, I am only slightly younger than Larissa was when you met her."

"Which means I'm twice your age."

"I do not think the five hundred years you lay dead count against you. Would you deny yourself the charms of a woman just shy a score years?"

Neal seemed to consider that for a moment, then shook his head. "That would be a bit different."

"How so?"

"Being as how I'm an old dog, and succumbing to the charms of a woman is an old trick, I can see myself doing it. Actually being able to touch a sylvanesti is a new trick."

"You could learn new tricks if you wanted." Gena laid a thick piece of wood on the fire. "I could teach you." Though it came out innocently, she immediately looked up to see how he would interpret her words. I didn't mean I could teach him about loving a sylvanesti—or did I?

Neal raised an eyebrow, then smiled. "I'm thinking there is one trick you might be able to teach me, if you wouldn't mind."

"Yes?"

He jerked his head toward her baggage. "I saw you packing away some things that Aarundel called flashdrakes. I gather they are some sort of weapon, but I don't recall seeing their like before."

"The Dwarves made them first, and still make the best, but even the Haladina have begun to manufacture them. It is a new weapon, however. These flashdrakes belonged to Durriken." Gena hesitated, instantly afraid of Neal's reaction to what she would say next. "He was my lover, a Man, like yourself. The Haladina murdered him in Aurdon."

Neal did grow a bit distant as she spoke, but remained keenly interested in what she said. "Your grandfather told me of Durriken and how he got the insigne nuptialis back. I think I would have liked him."

"Stories about you intrigued Rik quite a bit." Gena stared down at the fire. "He and I were together for three years, then the Haladina took him away from me."

"So Berengar wants to save his family in this, and you're looking to avenge Durriken's death?"

"I guess so. It started as an expedition to help a friend recover Cleaveheart and Wasp, but Rik's murder has made it personal. I carry the flashdrakes because they, and this ring, are all I have to remember him by. The Haladina killed him with the Death of Eight Cuts."

Neal winced. "That is not a nice way to die." He shook his head. "I guess things have changed a great deal, because I can't imagine a sylvanesti in the arms of a Haladina."

"Nor can I. The Haladina have taken to setting gems in their teeth to remind themselves of the days of the Reithrese."

Neal looked confused for a moment, then glanced again at her baggage. "So will you show me how to use these flashdrakes?"

She nodded. "We will have to walk away from camp, because they are very loud."

Neal stood and brushed his hands off on the thighs of his breeches. "Stulklirn, will you watch Berengar and make certain he is not harmed while he sleeps?"

The Dreel nodded and crouched down at Berengar's side. "Watch, I will." The creature's feral grin suggested to Gena that the Dreel would have waited an eternity just to see the moment of terror in Berengar's eyes when he awoke he found a Dreel hunched over him.

Neal hefted the saddlebags containing the flashdrakes and led her off on a little path away from the grove. They walked over a series of leaf-covered hills and descended into a little valley with steep walls that ran roughly twenty-five yards before it curved off to the south. "This should channel the noise away from the grove, I'm thinking."

Gena nodded and cast about for a suitable target. She took a large mushroom, from which she tore the cap and threw on down the gully. She leaned it up against a tree that had fallen across the ravine, then returned to Neal's side. "That should do."

Neal set the saddlebags down, then took a step back from them. Gena dropped to one knee and opened the one with the flashdrakes. She took them out and handed one to him, then carefully explained and walked through each step of loading her weapon. Neal aped her movements, watching her intently, and asked no question.

Gena found being under his scrutiny both challenging and thrilling. She worked methodically and slowly to load the flashdrake and, in doing so, found the job rather akin to the various ritualized forms of magick she had learned from Larissa. That helped her overcome some of her nervousness and gave her confidence. Neal seemed to appreciate her precision because he worked to imitate her exactly in all she did.

It struck her as being utterly incongruous that she was standing there in Ispar teaching a legend how to operate a weapon that had not come into use until well after his death. That she was even able to speak with him after she had spent her life idolizing him and seeking knowledge about him was unbelievable. That she might have something to offer him, that was the sort of thing of which fantasies were spun.

Finally she drew the flashdrake's talon back and pointed the weapon at the toadstool. "There will be one initial flash, then a larger one and some thunder. Brace yourself."

Neal nodded and she pulled the trigger. The talon struck a spark down into the pan, and the priming powder flared up bright red, then collapsed into a gout of smoke that obscured the target. She held her hand steady, then the pistol charge went off. The thunder from the flashdrake hid any sound of the lead ball hitting the target, but when the smoke cleared, the toadstool was gone, as well as a bit of the tree.

Neal smiled sheepishly, a yard back from where he had been standing. "It was loud, wasn't it?"

"Indeed. Come, let's see how I did."

The both of them ran down to where the toadstool had been and laughed as they pulled up short. The fallen tree showed a splintery furrow where the ball had plowed into the wood a bit to the right of the toadstool. The beige target had been knocked from the log by the impact and lay on the ground. Gena picked it up, inspected it, and frowned. "We are shooting a long way off, and I am not that good a shot."

Neal fingered the bullet groove. "Were that ball an arrow and the toadstool a warrior's chest, you'd have skewered his liver. And the way it splintered the wood, I'm thinking armor's of little use."

Gena set the toadstool back in place. "Your turn." They returned to the saddlebags, and Gena watched as Neal loaded the weapon. The only mistake he almost made was in reaching for the finer-grained priming powder for the primary charge, but when she pointed out the difference, he nodded. "Big grains for the big fire, small grains for the small fire."

"Exactly."

He smiled and cocked the flashdrake. "I'm ready, am I? How do I aim?"

"Close your left eye." She reached up to block it, but he pulled his head aside. "Sorry. Look down the barrel and keep it pointed at your target. At this range the bullet will drop an inch or two. Compensate."

"Done." He smiled like a child playing with a new toy. "Brace yourself."

The talon fell, and in the second before the main charge exploded, Gena noticed how Neal's thickly muscled arm held the heavy flashdrake rock-still. Then the flashdrake vomited fire and smoke, and an earsplittmg roar echoed through the forest. As the thick white smoke evaporated, Gena saw no trace of the mushroom's cap.

Neal looked at the smoking flashdrake. "It has quite a jolt to it."

"Rik used to call that 'recoil.' It varies with how much powder you use, and too much can make the flashdrake explode in your hands." Her ears ringing, Gena started to walk down to the target area. "Poor-made imitations of these Dwarven handcannons have been known to kill the person using them."

Neal fell into step beside her. "Slower to use than a bow, but not an arbalest." He stopped as they came to a circle of toadstool fragments, and squatted. Using the gun, he pointed at some of the larger pieces. "Looks like I hit it a bit high and to the left."

"But you hit it on the first shot!" Gena clapped her hands. "You are very good."

"Or very lucky."

"Or," called Berengar from the firing line, "you have discovered what we did in Aurdon—these things take no skill at all to use. This is why they are restricted from the lower classes."

Neal stood and nodded to Berengar. "Had the Steel Pack had these weapons, we would have swept the Reithrese from the face of Skirren a year or two before the Elven crusade."

"Thank the gods there are few enough of them, and most of those so wretched that they kill those who use them." Berengar dropped his left hand to the hilt of his rapier. "Those flashdrakes require no skill and bring no honor on those who use them."

"Still, they are clearly effective." Neal looked at Gena. "This Durriken of yours must have killed at least two of the Haladina who took him before they killed him."

Gena shook her head and remembered how small Rik had looked stretched out on the table at the Fisher mansion. "He did not shoot his assailants."

Berengar's head came up. "When we found his body, the guns had not even been drawn from the scabbards he had fashioned for them."

Neal's eyebrow rose. "In the time I have slept, the Haladina have become very stealthy, it seems."

"Very." Berengar spat on the ground. "And they have Riveren allies who provide them a safe haven in Aurdon."

"Well, we shall see about that, will we not?" Gena smiled and tried to mediate between the two of them. She headed off any growing argument by agreeing to let Neal practice more with the flashdrakes while she enlisted Berengar in helping her forage for some herbs to spice the gruel she intended to prepare as their meal.

Away from Neal, Berengar could not have been more pleasant or solicitous. He did not shy from her touch and bantered with her effortlessly. He worked to anticipate her needs and very much assumed the leadership role she had expected of him. He did not shy from performing tasks that would have been beneath his station in Aurdon, and some of the camaraderie they had shared on the road returned to their camp.