The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (22 page)

“Your thoughts?”

Trebor paused. “I think you’re right in your assessment of
the quartermaster and of your friend there. And I agree with your next plan of
action.”

“You promised you wouldn’t spy,” Gerard said warningly.

“I haven’t, sir,” Trebor replied, “but I know you well
enough to know that I wouldn’t want to be that quartermaster for anything in
the world.”

Gerard glanced at him, then suddenly broke into a rare
smile.

“When you return to camp, I’ll trust your judgment on what
to tell your people,” he said. “They’ll likely pick parts of it up anyway, so
you may as well give it some official weight and perspective. I expect you to
inform me of what’s common knowledge and what’s not yet known, however.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now go back to your friends and enjoy your weekend,”
Gerard said. “I assume there were no problems in locating those other supplies?
Good. Take as many of the bowkurs and padding back with you on your buggy as
you can manage, then bring them to camp when you return. They should disguise
your other cargo.”

They walked another dozen steps together before Trebor
peeled off down a different hallway.

“If you forget those cloaks, I’ll skin the three of you and
use your hides instead,” Gerard said by way of parting and treated Trebor to
one of his baleful glares that had caused innumerable trainees to tremble. Now
that Trebor had come to know the Red paladin better as a person rather than as
his trainer, the look no longer held the same gut-twisting power it once had.

Temperance – from the dwarven word
tempatiir
,
which is a self-imposed delay between the desire for a thing and the act of
reaching out to grasp it.

- “An Examination of Prismatic Virtue” (801 AM)

- 1 -

When they returned to
Faldergash’s
house,
Gabruella
and Alicia had both returned, but
everyone was already asleep. The three friends moved quietly through the house
and turned in for the night without waking anyone. Danner breathed an inner
sigh of relief that he wouldn’t yet have to face Alicia. Instead, he lay awake
in his bed for over an hour, straining to hear even the lightest of footsteps
in the hallway outside.

The painful pleasure of seeing Alicia was postponed until
the morning, when she approached Danner and asked him to teach her how to wield
a sword. Alicia said she never wanted to feel helpless again, and he agreed
without question or comment.

Danner rummaged through the equipment they had brought from
the chapterhouse and found a suit of practice padding that fit her adequately,
then they chose a bowkur that was more or less equal to the wooden weapon he
normally wielded. Faldergash provided a pair of battered shields he had
intended to melt down as scrap metal, then the pair moved outside to start the
first lesson. Alicia already knew the basics of how to hold the sword and how
to stand ─ she had observed that much on her own by watching them during
Garnet’s impromptu training sessions on their free weekends ─ but she
knew little to nothing about how to actually swing the weapon or put proper
force behind the blow.

Sometime during the night, the snow Marc had promised had
arrived, and now a thick layer of snow blanketed the ground in a dazzling layer
of crystalline whiteness. It wasn’t the most ideal of environments to begin
swordsmanship training, but they had to make do. Neither was heavily bundled;
they were counting on their exertions to warm their bodies once they started.

“First, try adjusting your grip like this,” Danner said,
observing her form. “Put your forefinger on top of the hilt, inside the small
arc there and against the unsharpened ricasso of the blade. That’s called
fingering the cross-guard. It will give you a bit more agility and control, but
it’ll take a little off your power.” Danner paused. The mist from his breath
made a brief cloud in front of his eyes, then dissipated. “No offense, but I
don’t think strength is going to be your strongest asset, Alicia. You’re much
stronger than you look, but you’re never going to overpower a strong swordsman,
so don’t try. Your technique is going to be skill and dexterity.”

Alicia nodded, smiling at Danner in a way that made his
knees go weak. Danner shook his head to clear his thoughts and focused on
correcting her grip and stance.

“Good. Now, from here you can move to various attack and
defense positions as necessary, like so.”

Danner demonstrated in slow motion the changes from high to
low guard, then to middle guard, and the variations of moving from one to
another. Alicia mimicked him as best she could, watching him carefully.

“The high and low guards are used for swinging and cutting
blows, since the blade is coming around from behind you,” Danner explained as
he shifted to a low guard. His bowkur was an extension of his arm behind him
and angled toward the ground, then he raised and bent his arm, bringing the
sword tip above his head and into the high guard position. Without warning, he
slashed the sword forward toward an imaginary opponent.

“The middle guard is used for thrusting motions and to
recover from an attack or defensive block,” he continued, bringing the sword
back in front of him and angled forward past his extended shield. “It’s a
fairly neutral position where many people shift after they attack.”

The lesson continued, with Danner explaining the various
uses of each position and why certain techniques were important to practice and
others important to avoid. Most of the basics he was showing her went back to
his original training under Maran in his youth, though they had quickly moved
beyond simple forms. Danner’s training in the Prism had been much more intense
and built on the foundation he already had. Alicia was starting from scratch.
She was a quick study, but every now and then Danner had to reach over and
correct something in her stance, or else her grip shifted on the blade and he
adjusted her fingers. Whenever their skin touched, Danner felt a tingle in his
body, sometimes starting at the point of contact and sometimes from the back of
his neck. He didn’t think he showed any outward sign of it, and if he did, he
hoped she took it as a reaction to the cold.

They practiced for more than an hour before Alicia was too
tired to keep her sword aloft properly. While her hands were well-calloused
from some of the heavier work she’d done at the Dragoenix Inn and since, there
were just enough differences in grip to leave her hands rough and tender in
places. Her muscles weren’t used to the exertion and sensation of the sword
training, much as Danner’s hadn’t been when he first started his paladin
training. Danner smiled slightly as he came to appreciate anew some of the
training techniques Gerard had inflicted upon him and the other trainees. He
didn’t think he could bring himself to force Alicia to run laps around the
building with her sword over her head or hold it at arms’ length while
screaming the answers to questions.

When they were finished, they started back toward
Faldergash’s
house. Halfway there, Danner realized he only
heard one set of footsteps crunching through the snow. He turned just in time
to dodge a snowball hurtling toward him from a grinning Alicia. She giggled at
his reaction, then turned and ran as Danner dropped his equipment and made his
own snowy weapon. He chased after her, throwing a few badly aimed snowballs to
prevent her from feeling safe enough to stop and make another missile to strike
back at him.

Danner chased Alicia through the streets in a circle back
toward
Faldergash’s
house. Alicia rounded the corner
of the neighboring building, and Danner grinned as he realized he was closing
in on her. He stooped in his run and gathered more snow, quickly forming it
into a ball as he rounded the corner.

He looked eagerly to see where she had gone, and saw that
instead of running away, Alicia had turned and was waiting for him, two
snowballs in hand and ready to throw. Danner tried to stop to avoid the
inevitable, but his foot slipped on a patch of ice and his ankle twisted out
from under him. His body contorting wildly, Danner was well on his way to
crashing face-first into a snow bank when the two snowballs hit him in the face
and his groin.

Danner twisted at the last second and avoided a face-plant,
but he was still doubled over in pain when Alicia came to stand over him,
concern etched on her face.

“I’m sorry, Danner,” she apologized, “I didn’t mean to hit
you, um,
there
.”

“Don’t worry, that’s not what hurts, Alicia,” Danner said
through clenched teeth. “I twisted my ankle on the ice.”

“I thought you couldn’t be hurt like that,” she said, then
immediately snapped her lips shut like she had said something wrong.

“What?” Danner asked, trying to focus on healing his leg. He
grimaced as he gripped the injured ankle, then gritted a healing prayer through
clenched teeth and sighed as relief flooded through his leg. The hardest part
about healing yourself, he’d discovered, was visualizing the damage that needed
repairing while simultaneously suffering from varying degrees of agony from the
injury. He rotated his ankle a few times to be sure he’d completely healed it,
then looked back up at Alicia. “What?” he repeated. “Why would you say that?”

“Well,” she said, hesitating. “It’s just… I overheard you all
talking and that you’re part angel or something. Part immortal.”

Danner stared at her dumbfounded.

“You mean you know?” he managed, and Danner thought he had
never sounded so stupid before in his life.

“Well, yeah.” She stared at him. “So it’s true?”

“We think so,” he said, controlling himself at last. “It’s
kind of hard to be sure.”

“And do you really have… wings?” she said, barely breathing
the last word.

Danner nodded.

“Can I see them?”

“Not now, okay? I’m a little tired,” he said, not exactly lying.
He knew this wouldn’t be the end of her curiosity, but he just didn’t feel like
dealing with it at the moment. “And I’m hungry, too. Let’s go warm up and get
some food.”

Alicia nodded slowly, then helped him to his feet. She
pulled him upright, and Danner nearly blundered into her as he steadied his
balance. Danner gripped her shoulders and Alicia braced her hands against his
chest to help, and for a moment the two of them stood perfectly still. Alicia
turned her head upward slowly, her misty breath steaming across Danner’s
shoulder, then his face. Danner looked down at her, and their eyes met.

Then Alicia turned away and the moment was broken. Danner
swallowed a sudden heaviness in his throat, then shook his head slightly and
moved to pick up the training gear he’d dropped earlier.

- 2 -

On the front door of the house was a note saying that the
others had all gone to help Faldergash find and load a supply of scrap metal
for the gnome to melt down and use. A pot of stew was still warm for the two of
them, and they ate together in silence. When they cleared the table, Danner
went to sit in front of the living room fire. He had recovered from their time
outside in the frigid air, but the allure of the roaring fire was too much for
him.

“Do you want a cup of cahve, Danner?” Alicia asked from the
kitchen. “There’s half a pot left on the fire in here.”

“Please.”

Danner pulled a few cushions from the couch and laid them in
front of the fire, then sat back against them. Alicia came into the room a few
moments later, two steaming cups in hand. She handed him one, then settled on
the ground, leaning her back and head against him. Danner wrapped one arm
around and began to idly run his fingers through her hair. Alicia sighed.

After a few minutes of silence, Danner’s hand drifted down
without his really thinking about it, and he began to trace light patterns on
Alicia’s upper arm with his fingertips. She snuggled more closely against him,
and Danner leaned his head forward so it was resting against her dark hair. Their
exertions outside had colored them both with the musky scent of sweat, but he
could still smell the natural fragrance of her hair. Danner closed his eyes and
lost himself in the moment.

One of Alicia’s hands found its way around to his side, and
she made her own light motions with her fingers. Danner’s entire body began to
tingle. His fingertips pressed a little more firmly against her and it became a
caressing motion. His hand wandered over more of her arm, not quite pulling her
against him, but something more than just idle motions.

Alicia responded by shifting her body and turned herself
more toward him, which brought more of their bodies into contact as she leaned
against him. Taking this as a good sign and praying he wasn’t misreading
things, Danner leaned his head farther down so his face was near Alicia’s. All
she had to do was turn a bit more and lift her face and… Danner tried not to
get his hopes too high, but it was hard to fight against the heavy thudding in
his heart.

They lay in a timeless moment that was agonizing for Danner
as his uncertainty battled against his desire. He didn’t know whether to wait
and see what she would do next or to make the next move on his own. Or should
he even make a move? Was he misinterpreting her actions and reactions because
of his own feelings?

Eventually Alicia solved his dilemma by turning her head and
lifting it slightly. Her eyes were half closed, and her lip trembled gently.
Their faces were so close! Danner fought not to tremble, and his breath felt
unnaturally heavy. He leaned forward that extra half inch and their noses
brushed each other.

Then he hesitated and felt her lean forward. Their lips
brushed. Danner closed his eyes and practically screamed a prayer in his head,
then pulled her toward him ever so slightly and kissed her. Alicia practically
melted against him, and they gripped each other tightly and held on with a
feeling that was almost desperation, as if either one of them might only be a
dream in the other’s mind that would disappear without warning. Their lips
parted for each other, and Danner lost himself in a swirl of confused passion
finally released.