Once A Hero

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Four, Neal, four," he snarled at me. Another two jabs and he opened a wound on my left shoulder that mirrored the one I had given him. "And that is five."

  "Five's not the game." I pulled my left leg back and drove at him. In his pursuit of me he had begun to move more laterally than straight forward, so as I came at him, I had his full body to target. I lunged at his eyes, then ducked beneath his slash-parry and slipped my blade around in a descent. I cut him on the left breast, leaving his jacket tattered and blood weeping from a flesh wound.

  He hissed and wove his silvery blade through a complex pattern that was more show than threat. At best, coming in that high and exploiting his reach advantage, all he could hit was my right shoulder, and he did. His blade bit into the scar Tashayul had left on my shoulder so long before, and I cried out as I retreated away from him.

  "There, Neal, that's six. Which of us will die marked a traitor?"

  "Which indeed, Berengar." I squared myself to him and hunched into a crouch. Sweat stung my eyes and set every cut on my body burning like torches. I shifted my blade so it covered the center of my body, hilt at my navel and bloodied point by my eyes. I breathed in through clenched teeth and took some relief in seeing his chest heave as heavily as mine.

  "You are closer than I." His blade started into a knotwork pattern. "Here is seven."

  For the sake of symmetry I knew he would go for my throat, navel, or right hip, since he was intent on mirroring the pattern of the Haladin ritual. Right hip seemed most likely, and his blade began the journey toward it. I did not move, did not begin my parry until Berengar had committed fully and could not withdraw his attack. In he came, his goal unguarded.

  Unguarded and, suddenly, unavailable. I dropped down and pushed off with my left foot. Sliding forward on my knees and twisting beneath his lunge, I got inside and thrust up through his body. Cleaveheart pierced him at the left hip and angled up. It scraped along inside his chest, then bounced off his right shoulder blade and punched out at his right shoulder. Overextended in his futile lunge, his body continued forward and began to fall on me. I shouldered him off to my right, landing him hard on his right flank.

  His blade clattered on the marble inlay as it fell from his hand. Cleaveheart, torn from my grasp, rang dully when the hilt hit the floor. Berengar rolled over on his back, his jaw working furiously. Blood bubbled up in his mouth in the place of words and ran down either side of his face. His body shook once, the spine arching, then he lay very still.

  His unseeing eyes stared up at the knotted sleeves in the cabinet.

  To the south I heard the sound of snapping wood and breaking glass before people started screaming. The crowd parted and I saw Stulklirn shake himself, spraying glass from the shattered remains of the garden doors. Behind me I heard the rustle of Gena's gown, but I held up my empty hands to forestall either one of them coming to my aid.

  My gesture also served to still the conversation in the room.

  I stood slowly, uncoiling myself like a monster new risen from a long sleep, for that really was what I felt I had become. I let the anger burning inside of me infuse my voice. "Aurdon was a city conceived in evil, and it has not escaped it."

  "That's right," shouted a Riveren. "The Fishers accuse us of treachery, but it's their Berengar that was bad."

  I skewered him with a stare. "Ah, and you claim the Riverens never did use their influence with the Haladina to bedevil the Fishers? You know you did, and that is just as treacherous."

  A Fisher shook a fist at me. "How can you claim to be the judge of what is treachery and what is not when you cheated in this fight?"

  I let my shock play over my face. "I cheated?"

  "Yes, you were not to the eighth cut when you killed him."

  "Only an idiot born of idiots would have assumed I would use a Haladin ritual on someone who was not Haladin."

  "Yes, but clearly you meant to do that. You broke the rules!"

  "Rules? Rules!" I reached over and ripped Cleaveheart from Berengar's body. "Rules are for games. That fight was not a game. Berengar's decision to interpret my remarks as implying rules means nothing." I slashed the blade in a vast arc, splattering party-goers from the Fishers to the Riverens and leaving a track of crimson droplets to course down the cabinet's glass. "But, then, that has always been the problem with the Fishers and the Riverens, hasn't it? You always interpret in your own way what I have stated clearly in mine. This was not a game. None of it, not now, not five hundred years ago, and not during the intervening years. I am not Haladina concerned with Eight Cuts.

  "I am Neal, and you will finally come to understand what that means."

  I pointed to the knotted sleeves. "Five hundred years ago I stood in this place when Aurium was little more than a squalid village. The Fishers and the Riveravens were ready to slaughter each other over what was then a collection of longhouses surrounding a small stone hall. None of you would recognize what you have here in what I saw with my eyes, but by all the gods, you'd recognize your ancestors because they were as petty and shortsighted as all of you are now."

  I glanced back at Gena and saw her watching me strangely. I did not know what she was thinking or even if Aarundel had told her about this night's analog, but I hoped she would stay with me and play along with me. I tried to communicate that to her with my eyes, but I did not know if she understood, so I just pushed on.

  "That night, so long ago. Lady Genevera's grandfather and Stulklirn's great-great-grandfather stood by me, so it is fitting they are here tonight. Back then we were set to slay all the Fishers and all the Riverens because we knew they could not live in peace with each other. But because there were innocents among them, and because we had a war to fight against the Reithrese, we relented and found a compromise.

  "That compromise, clearly, was a mistake." I snarled at all of them. "I have lain in my tomb for five centuries, and the only disturbance of my rest came from here, from Aurdon. Someone plots to kill someone else, so I must intervene. I am forced to act well beyond the time when I should be called upon to do so."

  I hesitated as I sorted through the various tales I had heard the day before. "Victor Riveren decides to kill Harald Fisher over a boatload of raw wool, so I have to pitch him down some stairs. Lucretia Fisher plots to poison Deryl Riveren, and I have to force her own draught down her throat. And now, this time, the Riverens are using the Haladina to destroy the Fishers, and the Fishers want to build an empire using Riveren bones as the foundation. This plotting is so widespread, my intervention as a ghost would not suffice. For this I had to come back to life.

  "This does not please me." I nodded to Gena and to Stulklirn. "I have the descendants of my allies at the first visit with me here for a reason. Stutklirn, as Shijef had agreed to do, please make certain no one leaves this room."

  Stulklirn stood up to his full height and physically blocked the doors to the garden.

  I looked at Gena. "And you, with your magicks, you will be able to slay the old quickly, and I will start with the young."

  An older Riveren man pointed at me with a palsied hand. "This is preposterous! You cannot get away with such murder!"

  "Can I not?" I stared incredulously at the lot of them. "I am Neal Roclawzi! I am the Knight-Defender of the Empire. I can slay each and every one of you and then simply send a note to the emperor telling him it was necessary. He will forgive me. Moreover, last time I had better things to do than to spend my time killing you foolish people off. Not so, this time.

  "You have to remember, I am five centuries out of my time. I have no ties, no duties, no one I know, and no one to visit. If I slaughter the lot of you, I can claim your wealth for myself. By the beard of Herin, I was walking in your city yesterday, and I know from talking with the citizens that if I skim you from the top, the people out there will happily proclaim me their lord. With your money and the soldiers you brought to Aurdon, I could even choose to make the emperor abdicate in my favor."

  I let myself go. I gestured wil
dly as I spoke. I fed off their fear and their vanity. I let them imagine their own sins, and I suggested I was there to punish them. I let them know that the doom their ancestors had delayed had returned to swallow them whole.

  "The opportunity represented by those knotted sleeves was the only alternative your people were offered to death. One by one, piecemeal, you have rejected the bargain struck that night, and you have paid as individuals. You all know it's true, and you have all feared seeing my shade when you plotted and dreamed. Now it is worse because I have been called from the grave and I have with me now the blade that longed to drink your blood centuries ago."

  "But the Knott family died out," someone pleaded.

  "Ah, but my proscription against fighting with each other did not! Are you people stupid? Did you think the deaths of your kin were random events, superstition? When I make an oath, it is not broken. When individuals plotted against each other, I could take one or two lives and be satisfied that my honor had been upheld, but now, now you plot to conquer nations. The prize was bigger, the dishonor greater, and the penalty must be commensurately larger!"

  Gena's features sharpened into an inhuman mask when she scowled. "You have heard Neal Gustos Sylvanii. As he has said, so it will be." She casually gestured backward toward one of the windows in the eastern wall. The wooden lattice holding glass in place exploded in fire, spraying flame and glass out into the darkness. Another magickal spark sailed off through the middle of the conflagration, but I soon lost sight of it. I nodded to her and she smiled most cruelly. "We will need ventilation, for the sanguine aroma from termination will be overwhelming."

  "Leave it to a sylvanesti to think of these details." I turned toward the assembly. "If the youngest would line up here on my left and the eldest here on my right, we shall begin."

  "We can rush them," I heard someone cry, but before I could even begin to think of a counter that would forestall that winning strategy, the sun dawned very bright and very early to the east. It rose fast and shrank as it did, but by the time the fiery sphere had begun to dwindle significantly, a horrible roar and fierce rumbling echoed over the landscape. The ground shook and the chandeliers started swaying back and forth.

  I looked from the windows to Gena and back again.

  She shook her head, her eyes and voice as strong as they were implacable. "Berengar's weapons' store at Lake Orvir exists no more."

  That display of raw power cowed the crowd. They began to shuffle toward the ends of the room I had indicated earlier; then Floris Fisher stepped from the crowd. "I'll be damned if I will let you slay my family, I will fight you, if I must, to prevent it."

  I brought my head up and gave him a sidelong glance. "Would you do something even more difficult than face me across a sword?"

  He came to attention. "I consider the sacrifice of my life nothing if it will save my family."

  "I see." I looked over at the Riverens and pointed Cleaveheart at a comely young girl. "You see her?"

  "I do."

  "She is yours."

  Floris shook his head. "I will not murder her to save even my life."

  I smiled genuinely at him. "Good, for another Fisher slaying a Riveren would displease me even more than I am displeased now. She is yours to be your wife, to unite your families again."

  Floris looked stunned. "But that is what you did last time. You said the penalty had to be greater."

  "And so it shall be." I shifted the point of my sword to indicate a raven-haired woman among the Fishers who had been a favorite subject of gossips during my travels. "You are?"

  "Martina, my lord."

  "Good. Martina, Titus Riveren is now your husband!"

  She shook her head adamantly. "He is just a boy."

  "Then perhaps you can make him into a Man." I met her dagger stare with a grin. "And perhaps he can make you into something other than a milk-bathing repository of vanity."

  That brought a blush to her face and a hearty laugh from the rest of the crowd. Titus looked up from the ground and wiped his face with his sleeve, smearing blood across both.

  I looked hard at Martina. "Woman, see to your husband. Now!"

  As she reluctantly crossed the floor, I addressed the rest of them. "This is how it shall be from this time forward. Any eligible Fisher will wed a Riveren and vice versa. All families thus united will be known as Knotts. All the wealth of all the families shall be commingled and shared. All business dealings will be held in common between the Fishers and Riverens until there are no more Fishers and Riverens, but only Knotts. That is the way it shall be, because I have no desire to return here in five hundred years or a thousand years or ever. If I am forced to, I shall not stay my hand."

  I lowered my voice, and the background noise in the room sank appropriately. "Go, call your priests and sanctify these unions. Do it now!. This second chance at life I give you because I have a second life. Let none of you give me cause to return a third time."

  Epilogue:

  Night's Adventure In Aurdon

  Winter

  A.R. 499

  The Present

  My 536th Year

  ***

  STANDING IN THE darkened gardens of the Fisher estate, the cold winter night air leech-sucked warmth from me. The holes in my clothing made that easy, though the bandages over my wounds meant the cold did have to work a bit. Still, the chill did sink into my joints and bones as I leaned on my elbows on the stone balustrade that ringed the garden. Despite the flickering lights in the city below me, the shadows moving through the streets, and the strains of solemn wedding music from the gathering back in the ballroom, nothing felt truly alive to me. It seemed as if I had begun to slip back into my tomb, with my awareness of the outside world slowly evaporating the way light drains from the day at dusk.

  A very cynical part of me wanted to believe I actually had been an avenging ghost over the past five hundred years. I wanted to lay claim to the righteous anger I had shown the people back in the mansion. I wanted to shake my head and speak to all the people who had fought for freedom as my allies, complaining to them that our sacrifices had been forgotten because nothing changes and people are no better now than we were then.

  I could not do that because I knew it was not true. I did know that the Riverens had forged an alliance with the Haladina as a way to destroy the Fishers without engaging them directly, and they had done this without any intention of seeing the Haladina as true Men. Still, by inviting them into their city, by trading with them, working with them, and learning how they lived, the Riverens demystified the Haladina. The people of Aurdon helped humanize the image of the Haladina. Over time, over generations, that could lead to relations that would mean the Haladina might no longer raid in Centisia.

  Only a fool would suggest the change would be easy, but the Elven change toward Men showed the change could take place. The Elven change and the change in attitudes toward the Haladina could mean the world would be a better place than the one I had known, or the one I was coming to know now.

  I heard the light crunch of gravel and smiled without turning around. "Your destruction of Orvir was very convincing at a time when we needed to be convincing."

  Gena came to stand beside me with her arms folded across her chest. "I am pleased you approved."

  I shifted to lean on my left forearm and left hip so I could watch her, then shifted a bit to relieve the pressure on the holes I had in me at each point. "You played along well with what I was doing. I had been afraid you would think me crazy."

  She smiled, dispelling some of the chill. "My grandfather, in recounting your exploits here the first time, mentioned something called the Codex Mercenarius. I did not know if you planned to actually kill people in there—and I hoped you were not—but I am not certain I would have stopped you if you had."

  "Only Berengar needed killing. He was the most ambitious, and not everyone agreed with him and his plans. I suspect he had his brother, Lord Orvir, killed when his lordship discovered the foundry, flas
hdrakes, and powder-store at his lake estate."

  "So Berengar's giving Rik Orvir's ring to prove he had the right to carry his flashdrakes was a joke?"

  "I suppose so. I am actually surprised Berengar did not lecture us more on his plans for empire—the ego needed to come up with the sort of plan he did is not one that shies from bragging."

  Gena looked out over the city, the light breeze toying with strands of her hair. "He actually did, once, when I pressed him. It seemed like idle conversation at the time—something to make the miles move more quickly as we rode to Jarudin. He was secretive. I had no clue that he wanted Cleaveheart to win an empire before, but now that I think of it, he was always insistent on getting the sword, and not as concerned with finding Wasp."

  I shrugged. "I suspected something wrong when I heard the Haladina had not looted your Durriken's body and again when you gave no indication he was a Haladina, yet he was killed with Eight Cuts." My shrug had shifted my weight so my hip hurt, and as I moved to get comfortable, I hit the cut on my left forearm on the balustrade. I turned and sat my rump on the cold stone and frowned. "Even the whispers in the city didn't fully explain everything. What it all came down to was Berengar's desire to get his hands on Cleaveheart."

  "I am glad you did not surrender the sword to him." Gena shook her head as I squirmed a bit in getting settled in my new position. "I could heal your cuts, you know. I took care of Titus, and I am still able to help you."

  I shook my head. "These will make six nice new scars. When I'm old . . ."

  Her eyebrow arched.

  ". . . older, I mean, in body as well as age, these scars will be worth many drinks and meals in some tavern somewhere."

  She snorted politely and refrained from laughing. "Are you certain?"

  "I've never . . . well, never intentionally had magick reverse the trouble I've gotten myself into. At five hundred and thirty-six I think I am a bit old to change my ways."