by Peter David
“Your jaw must be exhausted, considering you’re using it so much,” I said. I was beginning to tire of the snide remarks, the backhanded insults. “If you’re going to kill me, then be done with it.”
“I told you … she has to witness it. She has to understand, to know, to …”
Entipy was sitting up, her eyes bleary, her attitude confused. She was trying to make out the interior of the cave, and was looking directly away from us. “Apropos … ?” she called out in a gravelly voice.
“He’s right here, my beautiful girl.”
Naturally she knew his voice in a heartbeat, as she looked at him and gasped. “Tacit!”
“The one and the same. My beautiful girl, I’m here for you, as I said—”
He reached for her … and she flinched back. She squinted at him in the darkness.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“I have … looked better, I admit,” he said. “But—”
“What did you say? It sounded like, ‘I have … look becker, dammit.’ “
My heart was leaping with delirious joy as inwardly I chortled at Tacit’s discomfiture and frustration. Entipy was not reaching out and falling into the arms of her long-lost hero. Instead she was looking at him like a squashed bug, and with about as much affection. She seemed confused as to why he should even be here, as if … as if his time was already past. This was just getting better and better, provided I could survive it.
Tacit displayed a momentary flare of impatience, but he quickly stifled it. Instead he went back to speaking very slowly, very carefully, and once he’d repeated the first sentence, continued—just as precisely—“Entipy … I know that you are someone who has always been capable of seeing beyond the surface. When you first met me, you were able to see through the exterior of a young cutpurse … and your belief gave me the strength to pursue my heroic undertakings. You have been my strength, my support, my—”
As if she hadn’t heard a word, she commented, “No, you don’t understand, you really look terrible. You’re not handsome at all anymore. You’re disfigured, you’re unkempt.”
“It’s what is inside that—”
“And you smell ghastly … .”
“What would you have me do?! Bathe in snow?!” he shouted. “It’s been freezing! I could barely find enough fresh water to drink, much less—”
“Don’t yell at me. I’m a princess. You’ve no right to yell at me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, steadying himself. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud as I watched. “You’re right. But you have to understand … everything I’ve done of any note has been for you. For you, I accomplished the three tasks of the Elder Giant. For you, I sought the Ring of Poseidon, which enabled me to command the loyalties of the Naiad … which wound up saving me from certain death when the Harpers Bizarre sent me hurtling into—”
“That’s all very nice,” Entipy shot back, “but in the meantime, while you were off gallivanting from one epic task to the next, I was being made a personal slave of the Faith Women, and then I was attacked by the Harpers, and then I wound up cleaning tables in a tavern in the Outer Lawless regions. Did you think I enjoyed being up to my ass in menial tasks while you were out adventuring? If it weren’t for Apropos …”
“If it weren’t for Apropos?!” He looked on the verge of having a seizure. “Entipy … they’ve written songs about me! Epic poems! You compare me to him? What have they written about him to celebrate his ‘great deeds,’ eh?”
I leaned forward and offered, “I heard one of the squires came up with a couple of obscene limericks … .”
“Shut up!” he snapped at me. “It was a rhetorical question! Entipy, you would turn your attentions, your loyalties, to him? Him! Virtually all of the troubles you’ve encountered were because of his actions!”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded.
I braced myself, not daring to interrupt considering that Tacit looked ready to take my head off if I said another word. Tacit proceeded to tell her everything. How his epic journey and series of adventures had led him to the birthing place of the phoenix. How he had witnessed the creature’s death and rebirth. How he had been about to reach the culmination of his personal crusade … only to be blindsided by the wretched and scheming Apropos. How his phoenix had been absconded with while he’d been left to suffer owing to the unworthy and cowardly attack.
In short, he told the truth.
Entipy took it all in, listening without interruption, nodding in places. When Tacit finally stopped speaking, she did not answer immediately. She turned to look at me … and then back at him. Her face was unreadable.
“Tacit,” she said softly.
“Yes, my love.”
“That is, without question,” and her voice hardened, oozing with contempt, “the most appalling set of fabrications I have ever heard.”
“F-fabrications … ?” He could barely believe she was saying it. No, not barely. He really couldn’t believe it.
“How dare you,” she continued. “How dare you try to foist off blame for your own shortcomings upon Apropos …”
“Shortcomings! Foist off blame!” He seemed to have lost the ability to do anything other than repeat what she had already said.
“Here Apropos was resourceful enough to find the phoenix after you had clearly failed … and then he risked himself to come back and rescue me, and watch out for me all these months … and now you have the temerity to sit there and tell me that this brave squire—”
Oh gods, I did it. I actually pulled it off.
“—that this brave squire mounted some sort of sneak attack on you, just for the purpose of stealing your glory!”
“He did! That’s exactly what happened!”
“Have you considered, Tacit, that maybe it wasn’t your glory to have in the first place?”
His mouth moved. It made a sound; a sort of clicking where the jaw had been forced back into place. I think it was top and bottom teeth clicking against each other because they were out of alignment. Otherwise no words emerged at first. “Not … my glory?” he finally managed to get out. “Of course it is! All the tasks I had to accomplish, the quests I performed! All the work that I went to in order to track down a mythic creature that was to take me on the final leg of my grand undertaking! A creature snatched from my hands by that … that ingrate! That nothing! You are asking me to believe in a world that does not recognize merit, or striving, or a heroic ideal, but instead rewards duplicity and sneakery and whoever is fastest to watch out for their own self-interest. A world where there is no justice! What sort of world is that!”
“The real world,” I said softly.
His jaw twitched, which probably hurt him. Then he said tightly, “I refuse to accept that world. Po … tell her. Tell her what happened. She will believe it if it comes from you.”
“You expect Apropos to admit to your demented view of things?” she asked contemptuously, as if the very notion was laughable.
“There is nothing demented about it! Apropos,” and his voice sounded very dangerous, and his eyes were glittering with near madness as he said, “tell her. If you value your life … tell her.”
And that was when I opted to roll the dice.
You see, I had slowly become convinced he wasn’t going to hurt me. Not really, no matter what he’d said earlier. Oh, he would have no compunction about making me think he was going to hurt me, kill me, whatever. Try to trick me into blurting the truth to Entipy. But the Tacit that I had always known would never simply cut someone down, murder them in cold blood. And Tacit, for all his annoying traits, remained a hero. Heroes didn’t do things like that …
Which meant I was safe. Which further meant that I didn’t have to play his game if I didn’t feel like it.
But I decided to be diplomatic about it.
“I regret to say,” I said carefully, “that Tacit’s view of things … is how he sees them.” Then I settled back on my bed of hay
and sat there complacently.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean!” Tacit fairly shouted, which was naturally the reaction I’d been hoping for. It was entirely to my advantage to get him to lose control. “You make it sound as if I’m deluded.”
“Couldn’t imagine why anyone would think that,” Entipy said caustically.
He turned back to me, and he actually sounded pleading: “Apropos … putting your own life aside …”
“Something I am loath to agree to do, obviously,” I interrupted.
He spoke right over me. “The bottom line is, we both know the truth. Lying to her is doing her a disservice. You cannot let your ego get in the way. She deserves the truth. She deserves the person destined for her. She deserves—”
“You, is what what you’re saying. She deserves you.”
“More or less,” he admitted.
“Rather more the former than the latter,” she said. “And have you considered, Tacit, that I’m quite capable of deciding for myself just what I do and do not deserve?”
She stared at him challengingly. He was slowly shaking his head back and forth, apparently still unable to believe what he was being confronted with. “This can’t be happening,” he was saying, over and over in a quiet voice. Ironically, I knew exactly what the problem was. How long had he thought about this moment, dreamt about it? It was probably what kept him going. And he had had much time to decide just exactly how the entire confrontation was going to play out. Entipy was going to believe him, of course, because he was the hero. He was Tacit. If he tried to lie his head would likely explode. She would believe him, and recognize me for the thorough going bastard I truly was.
Except that wasn’t happening.
For a joyful moment as I watched him muttering to himself, I thought his mind was gone. In that event, we could simply slip right out of there, ideally without his even noticing. But apparently it was not going to be as easy as all that. Then again, what aspect of my life ever was?
Tacit suddenly refocused himself on me, and his voice dropped lower. In a tone that carried with it the unspoken message I’m not joking about here, he said, “Po … tell her. Now.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, trying to sound sincerely sorry for him.
“Tell her now.”
“I wish I could help you, old friend, but I’m afraid that it’s beyond my—”
That was when he grabbed me by the arm in a grip that could probably have torn my arm out of its socket and he started to drag me to the cave mouth. I tried to pull free but realized that, even in his fallen state, Tacit still had a grip of iron.
“Now, let’s discuss this—!” I tried to say, but he wasn’t listening.
“Go to, squire!” Entipy shouted encouragingly. “Show him! Show him he cannot spread lies about you in that manner!” If this was designed to inspire me somehow, it failed utterly.
Tacit dragged us out into the sunlight. The air was biting again, the kindly influence of the unicorns not spreading to this relatively forsaken clime. In the brightness of the day, Tacit swung me around and released me so that we were facing each other. I stood on unsteady leg and blinked against the sudden light.
“Your sword,” Tacit said. It was at that point I saw that he had picked up my weapon when he proceeded to haul me out into the morning air. He tossed it to me and I caught it smoothly. He reached behind his back and pulled out his own sword. It was gleaming and pure and I could swear I heard a musical chime as it sliced through the air. It probably had a story behind it. Everything about the damned man had a story behind it. “Use it, Apropos.”
“For what, trimming my stubble?” I demanded.
“Use it to try and kill me, for God as my witness, if you don’t I will certainly try to kill you. And I will succeed.”
More and more, I was sure he was bluffing. It just wasn’t Tacit, to threaten and then annihilate someone, especially me. The Tacit I knew would hold out hope unto the very end for some fundamental good in another person. He was a humanitarian, someone who just never gave up hope in the human race.
“The only thing you’re going to succeed at, Tacit, is to show what an unfortunate specimen you are,” I informed him. “Admit that it’s over. Turn around and—”
He did not turn around. He came at me.
The thing was, he had no idea of the training I’d undergone. How I’d been taught, night after night, thanks to Sir Umbrage, the manly art of knightly battle. No longer was I the desperate urchin he had once known. I was more than capable of defending myself. As a matter of fact, there was nothing to say that I might not even be superior to him. Yes, that was quite possible.
It was a pleasant enough delusion, and lasted me for the three seconds it took for Tacit to cover the space between us and swing his sword. It sang through the air and I barely got mine up in time. When they came together, I felt a crash so violent that my arms vibrated furiously from the impact.
He came at me again and, by luck as much as design, I deflected the second blow as well as the first. But then he stepped in fast and slammed the hilt of the sword itself against the side of my head. Stars exploded behind my eyes and I wavered in place, and that was when he swung the flat of the sword and took me in the back of the head, sending me to the ground.
“Tell her,” he said tightly.
Determined to overcome my momentary feeling of surprise, I came at him again. I swung the sword so quickly I felt as if it was a blur. He blocked it with no effort, and seemed to be moving in a most leisurely fashion. For a moment our hilts locked, and then he shoved me back several steps. I almost toppled as my weak leg nearly betrayed me, but I shoved the sword down into the snow encrusted ground and steadied myself.
“Out of consideration for our past … and for your last moments … I’ll let you make a good showing,” Tacit said. I could see Entipy emerging from the cave a distance away, blinking against the brightness of the sun. “But you will tell her, even if I have to chop you apart one limb at a time, like a tree.”
“Get away from him!” shouted Entipy, and she started to charge toward us. But I put up a hand and cried out, sounding as heroic as I could, “No! This is my fight, Princess! If you have any respect for me whatsoever, you’ll allow me to see it through!”
To my utter astonishment, she actually came to a halt and nodded. Her face was alight with excitement and there was genuine bloodlust in her eyes. She was completely caught up in the moment, anxious to see a hero and villain battling it out with, naturally, the hero triumphant in the end. The problem was, lines had become so blurred that I was no longer sure which of us fit into which category.
Tacit looked at me in momentary confusion, but then his face cleared. “Of course,” he said, understanding. “You want to keep her far enough away so that she doesn’t hear anything we say to each other.”
I didn’t bother to nod. He knew he was right.
“I’m impressed, Po. You actually care what the princess thinks. I didn’t believe you cared what anybody thought of you. You’ve changed.”
“So have you,” I shot back. “And only one of us has changed for the better.”
His easy smile thinned into a frown and then he came at me again.
I tried to remember everything that I’d been taught. I watched his sword less than I did his body movement, looking for signs that would telegraph which way he’d come at me: a twist of the hip, an angle of the shoulder. At first it seemed as if I was doing an excellent job. I felt my confidence building as his preliminary attacks did not get through my defenses, and I was actually contemplating launching an offensive of my own when his sword suddenly slashed across my right thigh. I’d blocked his first five thrusts, but his sixth had gotten through. It was just the tip, a light scratch at best, but there was a thin line of blood where the point had cut across.
“Tell her,” he said.
“Tell her yourself if you think your diction’s up to it,” I suggested.
He charged a
gain. Once more I defended myself, but again after initial success, he scored, this time across my left thigh, and just a touch deeper than the first. Again a series of engagements as he drove me back, back across the ground, and at one point I almost slipped but then quickly recovered, and again his sword flashed, and again I had a cut, this time across my upper shoulder.
Then I realized: He was scoring every sixth attempt. It was like clockwork. I wasn’t truly defending myself. He was toying with me, striking at will, allowing me to block five times before hitting home with the sixth. He was in complete control the entire time. He must have seen the dawning realization in my eyes, because he nodded and smiled grimly, and of all the bastards that I had encountered in my life, I swear to you I have never seen such an evil expression in my life as I saw on the face of Tacit One-Eye at that moment.
“Tell her,” he whispered, and I could see from his face, hear in his tone, that he was approaching the point where he was going to stop fooling around. “You don’t seem to understand yet, Po. I’m going to kill you no matter what. No less a fate can be left for you after what you did to me.”
He was bluffing.
“The only question at issue here is,” he continued, “do I kill you cleanly and quickly with your limbs attached … or do I hack you apart and leave you to bleed to death from four stumps, sobbing for mercy. It depends upon whether you tell her the truth, and how quickly you do it.”
