Once A Hero (6 page)

Rik dropped his flashdrakes and drew the rapier from his saddle scabbard. He brandished the blade as if he meant to slay the rest of the bandits by himself; then he pulled his pony away and invited pursuit. He moved off diagonally, heading away from the road, and drawing four of the bandits near the burning wagon as they came after him.

Genevera smiled and concentrated for a second. She thrust her left fist toward the wagon, cocked her hand back, and opened it palm-first toward the fire. She felt a tingle as a bluish spark leaped from her flesh; then the burning pinprick streaked all but invisible through the air to its target. Yes, it will hit!

The wagon exploded as everything that could burn, that would eventually burn, ignited all at once. The ravenous fireball engulfed the four bandits, consuming their flesh and swallowing their screams in its golden sphere. The thunderous detonation dwarfed the flashdrake's noise, and the hot wind from the hell it spawned had her long golden hair snapping behind her like ship's canvas in a fiery gale.

Two other bandits fell from their saddles as their horses reared up in panic. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the fireball's brightness, allowing her to see shadow-wreathed refugees descend on the fallen men. Another bandit chose to cross swords with Durriken while the last three galloped out into the night, each heading for a different point on the compass.

Durriken's pony stopped and turned quickly as the small man tugged on the reins. As his right-handed foe bore down on him, Rik shifted his rapier to his left hand and nudged his pony back to the right and across the line of the bandit's charge. He parried the bandit's awkward cross-body saber slash, then took him through the chest with a riposte.

The rapier came away wet as the bandit spurred his horse out into the night. Durriken turned to watch him run, but did not pursue him. He smiled as he trotted the pony back toward the glowing circle of coals in the middle of the road. "Lungstuck. Needs to staunch the wound. Someone spells it, he might live."

Genevera acknowledged his comment with a nod and dismounted. She moved slowly and deliberately as she slung the canteen over her shoulder and rummaged in her saddlebags for her healing bag. "Were you injured, Rik?"

Swinging his right leg up and over his pony's head, he kicked free of the left stirrup and slid to the ground. "Nay, nary a scratch, love." He slapped his pony affectionately on the neck. "Benison here got his tail toasted." Durriken leaned forward, bringing his ear near the horse's mouth. "He says if the Elven princess will give his master a kiss, she will be forgiven."

"I will, will I?" She tucked a strand of golden hair behind her pointed left ear. "Were his master a proper equestrian, Benison would not have been so close to the fire."

"Don't listen to her, Benison, she's a sorceress." The slender man led his horse to the edge of the road and dropped the reins. "Bewitch you, Gena will, as she has me."

Gena caught Rik's smile and returned it, then flicked her head toward the huddled shadows on the downslope. Her violet eyes saw through the gathering darkness as if it were but a thin fog. For all she knew of Rik being sharp-eyed for a Man, she knew he would see only crouching silhouettes. She envied him as he could not see the stark terror in the caravan refugees' eyes, nor read the fatigue in their drawn, pale faces.

Rik looked past her toward the figures and broadened his smile. He stabbed the rapier into the ground, then waved his right hand in a big welcoming gesture. "You're safe now, people. Come up, come up. Nothing here to hurt you. The bandits are running to the end of the world." He punctuated his comment with a hearty laugh that brought a smile to Gena's lips in spite of the grim tableau before her.

In describing the motley collection of wagons scattered along the road, "caravan" was an extravagant term to use. Four wagons remained more or less intact. One had overturned going off the road, while the others stood scattered on the hard dirt surface. The oxen that had been pulling them were dead, pinned to the ground by bandit lances.

The wagons themselves were all of different design and crude manufacture. A pair were two-wheeled affairs with a small bed ringed by crooked ribs of old wood. Sticks had been woven between them to provide some solidity around the base, and torn canvas stretched taut across the heavy load piled in them.

The third, like the one that Gena's spell had consumed, had been built like a box and mounted on four wheels. It required a pair of oxen to draw it and had wooden walls and a flat roof, which even provided an overhang to ward the driver from the sun. Ropes tied down a lumpy, canvas-swathed load on the top of it, and a water barrel mounted on the side bled moisture through a cracked stave.

The last one showed the most work and had four wheels rimmed with iron. Its long, flat bed nearly overflowed with filled grain sacks. Above them, swinging like gallows, rested highwaymen, crudely built cages containing chickens and a pair of geese hung from a latticework of stout poles.

Around each of the wagons, or lying bloody and slumped over the dead oxen, Gena saw the bodies of the men who fought and died defending the caravan. The pitchforks and scythes they had used in their efforts lay bloodless on the dusty roadway.

Gena looked over at Rik. "Farmers heading for Aurdon. That grain should be in the ground, not heading to market."

Rik crouched next to the first man he had shot. "And these men should be burning in the Outlands."

"Haladina?"

Rik nodded and peeled the dead man's upper lip back. Gena easily saw the filed front teeth and the dark dots on the canines that meant each tooth had been drilled and fitted with a small gemstone. "Haladina they are, or I'm a Centisian noble out hunting marmosets."

"Haladina raiding this deeply into Centisia? Perhaps now we have an answer to the question of why Count Berengar Fisher sent for us." Gena turned away from the body as Rik ripped open the tunic and used a dirk plucked from the bandit's belt to probe the hole his flashdrake had made in the man's chest. She understood Durriken's fascination with his Dwarven weapons and the destruction they caused. She even applauded the determined and methodical way he experimented with them; but his willingness to poke, prod, and even cut corpses left her uneasy.

It is a strange Man you have chosen to love, Gena. She smiled unconsciously as she recalled fond moments of their time together, then looked up as the first of the refugees came up onto the roadway. Gena slowly squatted down and focused her smile on a young girl clinging to her mother's hand. The Elf held her arms open and nodded to the child.

The little girl ran forward a few steps, her bare feet slapping against the ground, then stopped and looked back toward her mother. The woman did not look down at her daughter, but continued to stare at where ashes and embers smoked, hoping perhaps the wagon that had been destroyed by magic would magically reappear. The darkhaired little girl ran toward Gena again, slowing and stopping shyly before she got within arm's reach.

"Hello," Gena whispered in a gentle tone. "I am Gena. What is your name?"

The little girl folded her arms and looked down. She smiled, but refused to look up or speak. Then, quick as a bird on the wing, her head tipped up and her brown-eyed gaze flicked over Gena's face seconds before the girl hid her face behind her hands. She mumbled something, and Gena caught enough of it to puzzle out what had been said.

"Andra? Is your name Andra?"

Peering out from between splayed fingers, the girl nodded silently.

"I am pleased to meet you, Andra." Gena held her left hand out, and the child took it. Slowly straightening up, the Elf lifted the girl up in her arms and perched Andra on her left hip. The little girl giggled, making the first happy sound in the vale for what, Gena would have guessed, had seemed like a very long time to the refugees.

As they came in, Gena saw them segregate themselves. The male children, the eldest standing as tall as Durriken but appearing barely past puberty, and the youngest no more than a year older than Andra, walked over toward Durriken. They approached him cautiously, clearly curious about what he was doing and likely a bit afraid of him because of his flashdrakes. As they crowded around him, he looked up and smiled, then stood and nodded at them.

"Greetings, lads." He flicked the borrowed dirk down, sticking it quivering into the ground near the bandit's head. The boys jumped back startled, then stared at the dirk and the man who had so casually flung it down. "Are any of you hurt?"

Most remained quiet, but the oldest nodded his head. He turned, and Durriken reached up, taking the boy's head in both his hands. He spread apart blood-matted hair above the boy's left ear. "Evil gash that, but closing." Rik glanced at Gena and shook his head, then released the boy and parted his own hair to reveal a small crescent-shaped scar. "I've one like it, but mine's not a relic of surviving a Haladin raid."

Andra's mother came away from the glowing coals that had been her wagon and curtsied before Genevera. "That is my daughter, M'Lady Sylvanii. I will take her so she will not offend you."

Gena shook her head and tickled the child beneath her dirty chin. "Your child is lovely and could not offend me. I thank you for letting me enjoy her."

Gena chose her words carefully and fought to keep her tone light. The woman's comment to her had been full of fear, and her careful pronunciation of the Elven name for themselves told Gena that the woman only knew of Elves through the old tales. She was used enough to being considered exotic in larger cities, but the reverent terror displayed by the ^n of the countryside sent a shiver running down her spine.

"Goodwife, are you injured?" Gena held Andra out to her, and the woman hugged her child close.

The woman shook her head and swiped at tears. "No, m'lady, I am not hurt in blood or bone, but . . ." She looked at where her wagon had stood. "Our wagon is gone, my husband is dead. . . ."

Gena grabbed ahold of the woman before she could fall down. She lowered her to the ground and freed Andra from her arms. "Here, have some water. I am Gena, my friend is Durriken." Gena unstoppered the canteen and let the woman drink long and deep. "How is it that you are here? Where did you come from?"

The woman lowered the canteen, and a droplet of water lingered on the lower edge of her lip. "We are all from Beech Hollow. It is . . . it was a small village in the mountains on the border with Kaudia. You would not have heard of it, but it was a good place until people started coming through. They told us of raiders, Haladin raiders. We decided to come north to Aurdon. We wanted to be safe."

Gena sat back on her haunches. "Durriken and I are bound for Aurdon. It is not far, barely a day's ride."

The woman shook her head. "We can never make it. Our oxen are dead, our menfolk are dead. I have nothing now. . . ." Her lower lip trembled, and the water droplet washed a clean line down her dust-coated chin. She drew her knees up to her chest and lowered her face onto them; then her shoulders began to heave as she wept silently.

Gena left her there and moved on to the other groups of people at the other wagons. She checked the unmoving men and boys for any signs of life, but found none. Stories told of how the Haladina pressed a dirk into the hands of every male child at birth. Haladin men were the product of years of warring against each other. Killing was their livelihood, and were the dead men here to be taken as a sample of their work, they knew their trade well.

Once she had determined she could do nothing for the men, she turned her attention to the women and children. Aside from being badly frightened and road weary, most of the children appeared healthy, if not a little too skinny for their height. The women did their best to hold their terror and sadness in. They wanted to mourn their fallen husbands, fathers, and sons, but they seemed to know that to lose control would lead to even more disaster.

Gena agreed with the thought expressed by a number of the women that they had been spared the sword or lance because the Haladina were planning to take them back and sell them into the seraglios of the Wastelands. She had her doubts about that, however, as only two of the women—girls, really—were soft and pretty enough for that sort of life. The other women looked tired and well-worn. Even allowing for her cultural bias, Gena felt certain that the women had been saved because they had not offered much in the way of resistance to the raiders.

Despite the urgency of their reaching Aurdon, Gena and Durriken both agreed in a whispered consultation that they could not leave the farmers alone. One Haladin band ought have been driven off, but the possibility that another might be nearby and try to finish the job could not be dismissed. Moreover, they both knew that people who had been raised in a closed and close community like a farming village were utterly out of their element on the road in the Centisian heartland.

"What we need is organization." Rik smiled and gave Gena a quick kiss. "I think we can take some steps toward that at this very moment."

Durriken whistled, and his pony trotted over to him. He boosted the oldest boy into the saddle and pointed out a circular route. "Take Benison out and around so you come up on the bandits' strays from the south, there. Approach them slowly, and they'll trot in toward us. Let the pony do all the work, he knows how it is done."

As the pony trudged off, Durriken pointed to the rest of the boys. "Quick, now, gather up some firewood. Make a big pile right over here." Walking away from them, he dug the heel of his boot into the ground and scuffed out a cross.

"Right here, now. Those what bring the most can help me feed my flashdrakes."

Durriken stooped and recovered the weapons from where he had dropped them. Blowing dust from them, he inserted each into the holding straps and crossed to where Gena crouched near Andra's mother. Kneeling at the sobbing woman's feet, he settled his hands on hers. "Have no fear, goodwife, we will get you to Aurdon." He stood as the other refugees began to drift in toward the reddish glow and warmth of the burned wagon. "All we need is a plan, but that is why I am here."