Once A Hero (59 page)

Gena knew Neal had good reason for his distance—he had become alive again in a world that had passed him by, but she could not help but judge him harshly for it. His inquisitive nature stood him in good stead in adapting, and the varied volume and cadence of the flashdrake reports suggested he had already begun to experiment with the weapons. Still, his willingness and desire to learn about the weaponry of the day mocked his resistance to let down his guard concerning her, and that hurt.

She toyed for a second with the idea of sleeping with Berengar, but she rejected it when she realized she would be doing that to punish Neal. She wondered if, in the same way bringing him back had allowed her to feel superior to Larissa in the realm of magick, seducing Neal would allow her to feel superior to her grandaunt. The instant that question entered her mind, she blushed and felt ashamed. To do such a thing for so petty a reason would dishonor her and mock what Neal and Larissa had shared. While Neal had been dead for five hundred years, to his mind not a day had passed since he died thinking of Larissa.

Neal returned to the camp with the flashdrakes in their scabbards, fastened against the flat of his stomach. "This is how Durriken wore them?"

Gena nodded. "He could draw them quickly and use them while riding."

"While riding?" Neal looked at Berengar. "And you said these required no skill."

"I stand by my statement. Weapons for old men who can no longer use a sword, or in Durriken's case, a small man who made good use of a weapon that extended his reach."

Neal shrugged his way out of the leather harness holding the flashdrakes in place. "I'm thinking I'm not that small, but I don't know if I'm too old to be using this sword."

Berengar smiled effortlessly. "I think it is good you have practiced with the handcannons."

Stulklirn made a rude buzzing noise. "Denman idle-speaks."

Berengar glared at the Dreel. "I have dogs that would not deign to take your scent, much less worry your ragged pelt with tooth."

Stulklirn's eyes brightened and his lips smacked together.

Neal frowned at the Dreel, "Stulklirn, be still. My lord Count, I was thinking I was, that you might honor me by teaching me all that I have yet to learn about swordsmanship. Same as these flashdrakes are new, this rapier you wear was not known in my time. The rapier Aarundel had made for me still isn't familiar. If you would be willing."

Berengar nodded gladly.

Neal smiled broadly. "Shall we pad the blades?"

The count shook his head. "I won't touch you, and I won't let you touch me." He drew his blade with a flourish, then saluted Genevera. "For you, my lady."

Being dead for so long must have played hob with my brain, because I should have seen the confrontation with Berengar coming more clearly than I did. I had been brought back to life to help him deal with a situation that he saw as incredibly important. I understood that, but given the magnitude of what I needed to understand about my own situation, his concerns slipped a bit back in line.

I also realized that I had been dealing with him as I would have the Red Tiger. While they looked very much alike, they were not the same person. They shared a drive to accomplish their goals, to be certain, but the Red Tiger had risen from poverty and slavery to revolt against the Reithrese. Berengar came from a noble family and seemed to have an underlying arrogance, which he needed to sustain his mission. As with most people, he saw himself as the hero of his own epic, but his arrogance made him think it others must see him as a hero as well.

His attitude toward the flashdrakes surprised me because I would have thought he was smart enough to see how powerful they were. Actually, he was, but of the two courses of action open to him, he chose the reactionary one. By restricting the handcannons he guaranteed his people would not be able to deal with them. He should have embraced them, learned about them, and learned ways to use and defeat them. An army armed with flashdrakes would be formidable, but knowing their weaknesses would make them vulnerable.

For example, it struck me that these flashdrakes would be singularly useless when a battle was being fought in a rainstorm. Granted, fighting under adverse conditions is never desired, but soldiers can be trained to deal with almost anything. Creating a unit like the Steel Pack that practiced moving and attacking in driving rainstorms would allow him to destroy flashdrakers and win against all sorts of odds.

Arrogance sometimes leads to vanity, and that often causes an overvaluation of honor. I should know because part of my anger at Aarundel and Larissa in using Genevera to bring me back to life revolved around my pride at not having used magick for healing during my career. Vanity, pure and simple. Granted, I had a lot to learn about the world, but being alive definitely beat eternity in a stone house in Cygestolia,

Being brought back from the dead left me with a few questions about myself, which was why I asked Berengar if he would be willing to fence with me. Going into the assault on Alatun, I had seen myself as old and slow and breaking down. The magick that had revived me had not cleared up any old scars, but it might have taken the edge off the damage done by aging. Then again, my attitude slowly turning positive might have done the same thing. Either way, the result was the same—I had no idea how good I was in comparison to the contemporary world.

Berengar appeared ready to go immediately, but I held up a hand and stretched my legs out a little. "Lying in the tomb left me a bit stiff." Joints popped and muscles slowly loosened. I laughed when my right shoulder cracked like a dry twig under heavy tread, Berengar smiled, and Gena winced.

I wish she had not done that. She looked too much like her grandaunt to me, which meant I kept thinking back to times Larissa and I had spent together, trying to remember if I had seen that expression or heard those words before. I did not mind drifting back into memories of Larissa, but coming out of them hurt quite a bit. Whatever resentment I built from that pain I found myself directing toward Genevera—none of which she deserved.

Just as I realized I should not judge Berengar by the Red Tiger, I knew comparing Gena with Larissa was unfair. Genevera was very intelligent, witty, friendly, and beautiful. She compared favorably with her grandaunt, yet because Larissa was untouchable, there remained an aura of mystery around her that held her apart from me. It left her a creature of fantasy, and while I had seen Larissa under similar circumstances to those I was experiencing with Genevera, Gena's approachability helped distance me from her.

The other factor that kept a wall between us was how Berengar acted around Gena. Though she might not have been aware of it, I had seen enough moon-eyed warriors chasing after women in garrison towns to know the look of one smitten. His deference to her, respect of her, and resentment of time she and I spent together told me just how much he thought he loved her. As is true with many honorable men, he hid his intentions so as not to complicate our mission, but I suspected when we returned to Aurium, he would make a clean breast of his feelings.

Suitably stretched out, I drew my rapier from my baggage, raised it in a salute to Gena as had Berengar, then dropped into a low guard. I kept the point of my blade in line with his chest at heart level, with my right hand and blade hilt at waist level, just off my right hip. The blade's balance and slender tapering told me that the thrust was the most important tactic in sword fighting now, but the razored edge on the blade also suggested that it had its uses as well. Even so, the crushing, slashing attacks to which I had become accustomed and in which I had become accomplished were clearly archaic.

I took a quick step forward, extended, and lunged, but Berengar parried me wide, then twisted his wrist and riposted to my chest. He whipped the blade away before it could skewer me, but he was fast and very steady. The parry had been strong, and Berengar recovered from his lunge before I had brought my sword back into a proper guard.

I nodded respectfully to him. "You are very good."

"You did not come at me hard."

"That does not diminish your speed and your skill." I raised my sword and saluted him. "Perhaps you would be willing to instruct me in the current ways of fighting?"

The question surprised him, but after a moment's consideration he consented and my lessons began immediately. He started with forms and guards in that first session, and over the next three weeks we progressed on up to some of the more complicated systems of fighting. The lack of spare rapiers meant we had to use sticks to simulate a second sword when we tried that form, and we likewise had to improvise bucklers from tree bark. Berengar professed a preference for sword and dagger fighting, and I could definitely see that as likely the most common sort of swordplay in an urban setting.

When we fenced, Berengar maintained an edge, and he took great pride in remaining my master at swordplay. While he had taught me everything I knew about this new way of fighting, he had not taught me everything he knew. On the other hand, I think I learned a bit more than he expected me to pick up. I knew I had not seen him fight full out, nor had he seen all I had to offer, which made our fencing matches exciting.

From the grove outside Jarudin, Stulklirn had taken us directly to his normal range in Irtysh. Aarundel and I, when Stulkhm joined us, postulated that a Dreel could either use the Elven circus translatio or end up in any place he knew well enough to identify inside his mind. We also discovered we did not need the chains to travel when working through a Dreel. In the same way that Shijef had taken us directly from Jammaq to Cygestolia, Stulklirn was able to take us from Jarudin to Irtysh without using any of the circuii groves along the way.

From there we worked almost directly north. We bought more horses and what little supplies we could convince folks to surrender, then headed on our way. People appeared concerned with our traveling toward the Rimefields at this time of year less because of the weather than because Tacorzi was known to extend his range in the winter. Going north during the winter, a number of people asserted, was akin to committing suicide.

While no one would sign on with us as a guide, everyone was willing to share stories about Tacorzi. Descriptions ranged from a pale-blue multitentacled squid-thing that waited in the snow for travelers the way an antlion ambushes its prey, to a ghoul with a legion of skeletal zombies at its beck and call. The latter suited Takrakor better than the former, but we heard about the ice-squid enough that I began to wonder if it was not one of those bone-creatures I had seen the Reithrese use at Alatun.

Ultimately we did not need a guide, because I knew exactly where we were going. I could not have pointed it out on a map, but this close to Tacorzi and Wasp, I just knew where we were headed. Of course, knowing the creature laired in the ice caverns at the base of a smoking mountain helped a lot, especially when we crested foothills and saw the snow-clad mountain with a plume of gray smoke smearing the blue sky.

We found the entrance to the ice cavern late in the afternoon, so we pulled back from it and made a camp a considerable distance up in a mountain valley. Not only could I get a sense of Takrakor's presence, but some of the malevolence was leaking through as well. I recalled quite well the last time I faced him, and I doubted five centuries would have diminished his power.

"I think we may have made a mistake, my friends." I looked away from the small fire burning in our little cave as I shared my conclusion. "Takrakor was very deadly the last time we met. We should have had the Consilliarii send a troop of wizards to root him out."

Berengar frowned at that idea. "I hardly think a powerful sorcerer would willfully lair in a hole in the ice. I agree that caution is warranted, but we are not as weak a group as you might think. You and I are formidable warriors, and the Dreel is very strong. Lady Genevera is a magick user of unparalleled skill in my experience. Could nor this malevolence you feel be nothing more than his residual hatred of you for killing him?"

"Berengar does make sense on that point, Neal."

"He does, Gena, but then we have to wonder what this Tacorzi is and how Takrakor got here."

Berengar nodded. "I agree, Neal, these are questions we need to answer. Let us reconnoiter the ice cavern tomorrow. If we cannot destroy the creature we find there—if there is any creature there—we will retreat and summon more help. With the Dreel we can have more people here in a day or two."

I frowned for a moment because Berengar had advanced the course of action I saw as most logical—if nothing else we had to see what was there. "I agree." I leaned over and pulled the saddlebag with the flashdrakes in it into my lap. "If you do not mind, Gena, I will take these with me tomorrow."

"And I thought you more confident in your abilities with a rapier, Neal." Berengar shook his head. "You do not need those things."

"No disrespect to you as a swordmaster, Berengar, but I will bring these for one very simple reason."

"And that is?"

I smiled. "I had no idea what they were when I first saw them. I'm thinking that if Takrakor is behind the Tacorzi legend, up here he'll not have seen them either. And that means, dishonorable or not, these might be just enough to surprise or distract him so we can get away from him."

The next day dawned bitter cold, with the sky so blue that it might have been an ocean suspended over our heads. No snow had fallen in the night, and the wind had scoured the snowscape down to the hard crust. The snow's frozen skin supported us for a second with each step, then gave way, plunging us knee-deep in snow. We barked our shins on the crust with the next step, repeating the whole cycle with monotonous regularity and fair discomfort.

The crunch of snow under my feet, and the wind's cold kiss where my scarf and hat left the skin near my eyes open, reminded me of my days as a youth in the Roclaws. As a child, I had always welcomed snow because it transformed the world into a wonderful playground where forts could be built and snowball wars fought. Growing into adulthood, I had seen another side to winter and did not relish the expeditions mounted to find survivors of villages swept away by avalanches. The images of stiff and frozen corpses perfectly preserved danced through my brain, and all too many of them wore my face.