Once A Hero

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Floris nodded proudly. "He is. The emperor acknowledged the count's mother as a legitimate member of his family, though she had not been born of a first wife."

  "Ah, that is most beneficent and doubtless pleasing to the count," Genevera recalled that five years before, when she met then Lord Berengar in Filistan, he had not worn a tiger on his crest. "This honor must have been bestowed recently."

  "A year hence, m'lady." Floris held his head up a bit higher. "The Seventh accompanied him to Ispar for the ceremony."

  Durriken gave Floris a wry grin.

  "And doubtless he needed the Seventh to fight his way to the capital."

  "It was an interesting journey to Jarudin, Durriken, but we were not hard-pressed despite some unpleasantries." Floris smiled and wiped sweat from the side of his face. "Once we arrived in Blackoak, we traveled with the earl's household troops, so the Seventh was able to relax somewhat."

  "The Earl of Blackoak is known for his appreciation of discipline and martial order." His saddle creaking, Rik dropped to the roadway and stamped the dust from his boots. "Gena, the count would like us in Aurdon as soon as possible, so the good captain here has offered us some fresh horses and a company to ride back to the city. It's really not that far now, barely six hours at a fast ride."

  Floris nodded in agreement. "We would have been here sooner, but when Durriken found me, I was reuniting my squads after they had been chasing Haladina through the hills. We took the night to get some sleep and repair our equipment in case of fighting this morning."

  "The offer of an escort back to Aurdon is most welcome, Captain Floris, but I find myself reluctant to leave these good people behind here." Gena looked back at the ragged camp and took heart in noting the smiles and laughter from the refugees. "Though they appear to be happy now, we just had a scare with a snake, and they see Haladina in every shadow. I wonder if their joy will last into the night."

  Floris looked the camp over, then nodded. "I understand your feelings, m'lady. I will send a company back with you, but keep the other two companies here. The oxen and my last company should be here in a day; then I will bring all back to Aurdon. No Haladina would dare attack a force or over one hundred fifty men. The welfare of the refugees is now my duty."

  "Then I know their safety is assured. If you will excuse me, Captain, I will prepare my kit and we will be on our way." Gena smiled, curtsied, and turned away, Rik followed her, leading Benison by the reins, as she circled around the main camp to the small area she had set up for herself. One of the wagons largely screened it from the main encampment, affording both her and the Men a polite degree of privacy.

  Rik took advantage of it by catching her arm and turning her around, then enfolding her in a warm embrace. She lowered her lips to his, once, gently, then again more passionately. She normally would have been more reserved and would have held back when others could watch them. While no prohibition on relations between Men and Elves existed, conservative Men often had as much difficulty welcoming Elven/Human relations as the Consilliarii did. Feeling Rik's arms around her and tasting his lips almost made her giddy with relief and nearly banished her concerns over other's reactions to their relationship. While she had been alone in camp, her sense of duty had overridden the anxiety she had felt concerning Durriken's safety away from her. With the troops taking responsibility for the refugees from her, she luxuriated in the cessation of pressure and felt happy that her silent prayers to Kyori to bring Rik back to her safely had been answered.

  Rik broke the embrace and smiled. "As much as I hate being parted from you, I must admit returning almost makes going away seem worth it."

  Gena reached down and plucked her blue woolen blanket from the ground. "I suspect you had the more interesting time." She handed the end with the broad red stripe to Rik, then took the green-striped end for herself. Together they shook the dust out of it, then began to fold it in quarters, making it a narrow strip. "The children asked for another story, so I told them of another of Neal's adventures—the one where he bested the Dreel king and made him his slave. Many of the mothers seemed to disapprove, though."

  Rik nodded as he began to roll the blanket up and move toward Gena. "You must remember, my love, that Neal's not the greatest of human heroes."

  Genevera blinked her violet eyes. "How can you say that? What he did to the Reithrese alone . . ."

  "Love, I've come to see him through your eyes, so I know what Elves think of Neal. True enough, he was a hero, but to Men weaned on the Eldsaga, well, his alliance with your kind is viewed with suspicion." Rik held the bundled blanket tight while Gena wrapped a heavy canvas ground cloth around it and tied it with leather thongs. "The stories you tell of Neal are grand, and I love the way you tell them, but to many a Man who actually knows them, the tales of Neal Elfward are tragedies to make tears flow into beer on a long tavern night."

  Gena nodded distractedly. She'd seen the gulf between her image of Neal and the standard Human image of Neal—if the Humans to whom she spoke knew of him at all. There had been but five Elven generations born since the time Neal walked the earth and fought his battles, but among Men there had been at least ten more than that. Here in Centisia, near Aurdon, or up in Ispar, Neal was remembered by Men, but elsewhere he was as much a myth as the Reithrese or the Dreel.

  Count Berengar Fisher had been one of the few Men she had ever met with a keen interest in Neal. He had confided in her, when they met, that the standard stories told of Neal Elfward in Aurdon had only whetted his appetite to know more. She had obliged him by relating a couple of her more favorite tales and even went so far as to tell him that she had heard them from the lips of her grandfather, the Elf known to men as Aarundel—a confidence she had not yet shared with Rik.

  "You are correct, of course, Rik." Gena shrugged her shoulders, highlights slithering through her hair like gilded serpents. "Neal's tradition, among Elves, is tinged with that same tragedy, I think. I suppose my campaign to emphasize his heroism is doomed to failure."

  Rik tapped the tip of her nose with his index finger. "Well, you have one convert, at least." He glanced slyly this way and that, his hands resting on the butts of his flashdrakes. "Any man that decides to weep at one of your stories will have to deal with me."

  Gena laughed aloud, the overture of melancholy banished by Rik's antics. Though she had known him for only three years, he seemed to be almost prescient in his ability to make her laugh or change her mood. She had once thought, after a century and a half spent studiously learning her magick, that simple things could no longer delight her. In a drive to combat that diminution of her soul she had tried to recover much of the innocence of her childhood and had worked hard to study and gather together the stories of Neal Custos Sylvanii.

  Yet even that, she reminded herself as she neatly packed her saddlebags, had not been sufficient to reawaken her sense of life. She petitioned the Consilliari for permission to travel outside Cygestolia, and they had reluctantly granted it. At the same time they began a subtle campaign to blunt her wish to travel by telling her all manner of horror stories about the world outside the Elven Holdings—prime among them the danger that she might meet and believe she had fallen in love with a Man. Far from dissuading her, it only made her more interested in leaving Cygestolia, and in the dozen years since her departure, she had felt no desire to return to her home.

  And having met Rik, she did not regret her decision to travel in the first place.

  Unfolding her saddle blanket, she plucked a thistle from it, then draped the thick cloth over Spirit's spine. She wrested her saddle from the ground and settled it on the back of her horse. Rik cinched the saddle up tight while Gena coaxed the gelding into taking the bit and accepting the bridle. She fastened her bedroll behind the cantle, then laid her saddlebags over the horse's haunches.

  Swinging up into the saddle, she reined the horse around and followed Rik back to the road. There they lined up with a company of soldiers under the command of a Man whom Floris introduce
d as Lieutenant Waldo Fisher. With him in the lead and the soldiers riding behind, they set off for Aurdon.

  Gena found herself taking a slight dislike to Waldo, but she found it difficult to isolate the reason behind that feeling. He clearly knew his business because he had outriders on both sides of the column as well as a screen of scouts forward and a squad given to lagging back behind the main body. While short and a bit broad in the waist—almost built like [all] Reithrese were supposed to have been—he was not an unpleasant-looking man. The attention he paid to his surroundings marked him as intelligent, for he constantly looked around and once sent a rider to direct his scouts to investigate the fire-blackened ruins of a croft up off the road.

  Then she saw it when Waldo glanced over at Rik and the soldier's face soured. It was a momentary thing, barely a heartbeat in duration, but the expression had carried with it a mixture of hatred and contempt. It was not the first time she had seen such an expression, but when she had, most often it had been directed at her—and then only by ignorant Men despising her because of her heritage.

  She tickled Spirit's ribs with her heels and came in close beside Rik. "How much did you tell them about yourself last night?"

  The small man shrugged nonchalantly. "Not that much, really. We were all sharing war stories. I mentioned an adventure or two, but nothing to reflect badly on you."

  Gena nodded. She had met Rik through a Nakani dealer in antiquities. She had been invited to the merchant's estate to see if she could possibly determine the nature of some enchantments on two pieces of jewelry. She had been told these recent acquisitions were supposed to be Elven, but so seldom was Elven metalwork seen in the world of Men that the dealer needed her expert opinion on it.

  As the merchant brought out the chest in which the items had rested, Gena had wondered about the small, silent man who stood behind the fat merchant's chair. His brown eyes seemed to take in everything and were bright with inquisitiveness, but his tension told in his crossed arms and in his swift attention to even the slightest wind-whisper or floor creak.

  Genevera instantly recognized the style of the two pieces in the mahogany casket. The merchant lifted one from its black velvet bed and handed it to her. Hammered out of silver and set with an onyx oval, the metal bracer had two features that distinguished it for her. From the cuff a strong bit of chain connected it to a silver ring set with another piece of onyx. The other edge of the bracer, which came to a point almost four inches from the cuff at the midpoint where the onyx had been set, had silver mail decorating it. Its mate was smaller and more delicate and had been set with ovals of lapis and opal.

  She considered for a moment how much she could tell them about it without compromising traditions and customs her people preferred to keep secret. "These two pieces are of Elven manufacture. They are wedding tokens. This one is for the groom, and the other, which you can see is smaller, is for the bride. The mail indicates the groom was a warrior. The ring was worn around his middle finger."

  The merchant smiled. "And the magicks?"

  She turned the bracer over and back again, and concentrated to pick up traces of the magick worked into it, even though she well knew what the spell would be. "It is an enchantment related to the marriage ceremony." She hesitated and the merchant missed it, but the small man caught it. "It roughly calls for the love between them to outlast the metal making up the tokens; then it prevents the silver from tarnishing." The magick really did much more and in the hands of an enemy the tokens could become very powerful weapons if used against those who had worn them; but Genevera felt the Men had no need for that information.

  The smaller man spoke, prompting the merchant to frown, "Is there any way, my Lady, to determine for whom these have been made? I assume they'd not be abandoned lightly."

  "No, they would normally be destroyed if the marriage was dissolved." She turned the bracelet over and up so she could see inside the cuff. "Ah, there are maker-marks here. Yes, I . . ." She stopped as her throat tightened. She recognized the marks instantly and bit her lower lip to stop it from trembling. "I know for whom these were fashioned. The pieces are nearly five centuries old. They belonged to my grandparents."

  "Who are now dead?"

  The ghoulishly hopeful note in the merchant's voice shocked her and clearly angered the smaller man. "They are still alive. I would like to know where you got these."

  The merchant looked back at the small man, disappointment evident on his face. "You may tell her what you wish. I abide by our agreement."

  The smaller man unfolded his arms, depositing the twin flashdrakes on the table, then bowed to her. "I am Durriken. I supply Frigyes here with things. We've agreed that he can sell anything we can't get back to the owner or an heir. These bracelets, as I understand it, were found about a hundred years ago by someone digging in the Dead Mountains. Various connoisseurs traded for them, and they recently came into my possession. But now they're yours. I hope your kin will be happy to get them back."

  "If they do not want them," the merchant smiled solicitously, "I am certain the original owner would love to regain them."

  Durriken snarled at the merchant, and the man sank back in his chair. "Her kin are the original owners. Sell Polus the imperial goblets I obtained a year ago to salve him, and let Avner console himself with getting the marble goddess that accompanied these beauties when they left Polus's vault."

  Gena looked at the small man. "You're a thief?"

  "Frigyes prefers to call me a Practical Antiquarian, but 'thief' sums it up nicely." He shrugged and pointed to the bracelets. "I've accepted as my life's duty preventing collectors from becoming too comfortable with their loot."

  Gena came out of her reverie as one of the scouts rode back to the main body of troops. He reported to Waldo; then the soldier turned to face the two of them. "They found a dead Haladin bandit in the croft. He had been wounded in the chest. One of yours?"

  "Likely." Durriken nodded curtly.

  "More of the warrior in you than I would have imagined."

  "I do my best to hide it, but there are times it slips out."

  Waldo raised an eyebrow at that remark, then faced forward and kept riding.

  Gena frowned at Rik. "In these stories you told, did you mention you were a thief?"

  "How they'd have figured that, I don't know." A smug smile and playful wink put the lie to that statement. "You think that's a problem?"

  "Rik, Aurdon is a city founded by and run by merchants!"

  "And a bigger den of thieves we'll not likely find this side of Najinda. Merchants are just thieves who prefer robbing you while making you think you're getting a bargain."

  "Rik!"

  The thief smiled and patted her left knee. "Don't worry, Gena, I'll be on my best behavior, I promise."

  "Promise?"

  "My solemn oath." Durriken placed a hand over his heart for a second. "Besides, until you pass through the city gates, Aurdon has nothing I want."

  The road itself followed the valley floors as it wound its way through the hills to Aurdon. Waldo, either impatient to get back to the city or complying with orders, took numerous shortcuts. At all times he kept his scouts and outriders in place even though their unorthodox route made the chance of ambush much smaller.

  Riding up and over the hills provided Gena with breathtaking views of grasslands stretching as far as the eye could see. Farms dotted the landscape, their sod houses looking like warts raised on the bare hillsides. Gena shivered unconsciously when she looked at them and was thankful Waldo had not suggested stopping at one. She understood the necessity of sod houses in a land of so few trees, but growing up in Cygestolia had left her feeling as if dwelling in the mud were somehow blasphemous.

  The sun had begun its descent into the underworld when she saw the first hint of Aurdon. She doubted the Fishers and Riverens would have enjoyed knowing what her first clue to the city's presence was. Even before the city itself came into view, she saw a brownish haze hanging at the lower end o
f the river valley toward which they rode. Recalling the cloud raised by the Seventh Regiment's approach, she wondered at first if it might be the oxen being driven back to meet the refugees. That speculation lasted only a minute longer, dying when a breeze brought to her the woody scent of thousands of cookstoves. Only then did she realize the haze had been created as the city devoured what were once proud forests to feed its hunger for building materials and fuel.

  Riding in on the river road, Gena first caught sight of the city as they came around a bend. The moment she saw the metropolis, she shuddered. The ivory stone used to build the city's walls and largest buildings reminded her of aged bone. It appeared to her as if the earth's flesh had been gashed open and people had taken up residence in the wound, reshaping bone to suit their needs. It struck her that her revelation would have been better suited to a Dwarf, for the gods had used them to create the world—yet she knew her dismay came from the scarcity of green in the city before her.

  Aurdon sprawled over a half-dozen hills, and three stone ribbons of wall surrounded the municipal core. The tallest buildings had been constructed within the second ring, and some more prosperous and ambitious dwellings lurked within the third. Outside the walls, smaller dwellings and various business establishments had spread across the valley, with a fair amount of the riverbanks near the tri-river confluence given over to warehouses and docks for servicing the barge trade.

  A trumpet blast from the scouts parted traffic on the main road, so the company made quick time riding north to the first set of city gates. The guards up on the ramparts looked down at them, but did not challenge them, nor paid them overmuch attention. Waldo led them off on the first wide street that headed east and uphill around to the second gate.

  The second gate had been placed facing north-north-east, requiring an army that breached the south gate to fight its way uphill to get to it. The Rangers, save Waldo and his scouts, rode off to their barracks while the lieutenant continued out and around, leading Gena and Rik to the third and final city gate. After riding down into a valley between two hills, they rode up again and around to the northwest to make another uphill approach to the gate.