by Rick Shelley
"The land around the castle offers little concealment up close," Lesh said. "There's naught but fields right around it."
"But they might have sentries watching this road at a distance, almost anywhere now," I said.
"The way overland is difficult at any time. It might take extra hours in the dark," Lesh said.
"Time, lad," Parthet whispered. His arms started to tremble. "We must make time now." He turned away before he added, "If time remains." I don't think he meant for me to hear that, but my hearing is quite sharp.
"We'll make time, but we still need a few minutes now," I said. Lesh handed me a strip of beef, and I started chewing on it. There was no stream handy, so we had to settle for the tepid water in our canteens-leather pouches that gave the water a bitter taste. We ate and stretched and took care of the other things that needed doing. I checked my weapons. I even turned away from the others to make sure that there was a shell in the chamber of my pistol. I think only Timon noticed the gun, and he might not have known what it was. Timon had the metal skullcap out. He offered it to me.
"Not yet," I told him. "I've got my lucky hat." I adjusted the blue Cubs cap, pulling the brim a little lower.
"Lucky?" Parthet asked from behind. I turned. The old man could sure move silently enough when he wanted to. "Lucky? How many championships have they won in the last fifty years?"
I hate questions like that. "What happened to the last guy who wore this tin pot?" I asked. Parthet didn't have the answer, but Lesh did.
"He got an arrow through the throat."
"I rest my case," I said.
"Pardon me, Highness," Lesh said, "but cloth won't turn a sword blade. I think you should wear the helmet." He rapped his knuckles against his own. "It might save your life."
"We'll see when we get there," I said, to cut off the discussion. I had no intention of wearing another five pounds. Dad and I always emphasized speed, movement, for defense. Every ounce of weight slowed me. The mail shirt. The shield I hadn't toted since I tried it on, back in Castle Basil.
After our short break, we hit the road at a trot. Riding back home, I always hated the trot. On an English saddle, that meant posting, going up and down like a yo-yo, meeting the horse in the middle. With a Western saddle, it meant sitting there and having your spine hammered. I was surprised to find the trot fairly comfortable on the huge charger Gold. All four horses seemed to find the change of pace refreshing. When we got into the clear, we even stretched them into an easy canter for a time, covering ground nicely. Then we slowed to a walk, changing the pace every couple of hundred yards.
We caught our first glimpse of Castle Thyme just be-fore sunset. It was still some distance off, visible briefly through a long valley. The road became wider, more traveled. A number of trails led off from it.
Then Parthet called, "Hold!" and reined in Glory.
The rest of us stopped and looked to the wizard for an explanation. Lesh had his spear at the ready, searching the land around us for any threat. Parthet stood in the saddle and looked off into a distance he couldn't see with his eyes. "This way," he said after a moment. He led the way off the road, west of north, cross-country after all.
"What is it?" I asked, moving Gold up alongside Glory. We were riding through tall prairie grass, a plain broken only by solitary trees, easy going for the horses unless there was something to trip them up in the grass. And with twilight, we wouldn't be able to see anything low.
"Ride!" Parthet said harshly. "To your mother. Ride!"
I looked ahead, trying to see what Parthet was aiming for, but I didn't see anything but more of the stuff we were in. There was a low hill across our path at an angle from southeast to northwest. Parthet changed course enough to hit the northern end of the ridge. He pushed Glory to a gallop. Lesh and I had no problem keeping up, but Timon's pony was outclassed, even by old, sway-backed Glory. Or maybe Timon just wasn't an experienced enough rider for that kind of terrain. He couldn't have done much riding scrubbing pots. I tried to keep an eye on him, but I had to watch Gold and our course too. I held on, hoping there were no gopher holes to trip us.
Parthet led us across the shoulder of the long hill, down into another valley. The trees disappeared and the grass became sparser in rocky soil. The footing was more difficult. Now and then a horseshoe sparked off stone. There was a track along the flank of one of the bordering hills, and Parthet angled up to that. Glory started to tire and slow. Parthet's eyes remained fixed on the horizon. He seemed to strain forward, either trying to see something that was still out of sight or trying to urge more speed from his animal. I had to rein back on Gold to keep from running over Glory. I could hear Lesh right behind me, and see him too, when I turned to look for Timon. The boy was fifty yards behind Lesh, but he wasn't losing any more ground. Glory's slower pace made it possible for Timon to keep us in sight.
The evening shadows were getting thick and long. Soon it would be impossible to see anything well enough to continue this mad dash.
"How much farther?" I shouted. Parthet didn't answer. Perhaps he was too deep in magic or concentration to hear. All I could do was follow and hope that our horses could still find footing.
At the end of that valley, Parthet cut left across a low pass between two neighboring hills-neither more than about thirty feet high-then went north again into the next valley. This one widened out quickly, and the bottom was flat. I could see a thick patch of trees ahead-moderate-sized trees with rounded shapes. When we got closer, I could see that it was apples and pears in an orchard. There was a cottage at the far end of the orchard, between two garden-sized fields.
Parthet headed straight for the cottage.
We were a hundred yards off when I saw a brief glint that had to be the cottage door opening and closing. A figure moved in front of the doorway and notched arrow to bow. We were a lot closer before I could tell that it was my mother, dressed in a Robin Hood costume without the cap, her black hair pulled back and tied behind her head. She didn't ease the tension on her bowstring until we were reining in our horses.
I was the first out of the saddle, but Parthet was less than a step behind me. Mother had been crying. She looked at me, then at Parthet.
"I was too late," she said, her voice wavering.
7 – The Hero
My insides seemed to lock up on me. I knew what she was saying. There was no point in questioning it. Even the blind instinct to repeat bad news was blocked. I don't think I had ever seen Mother cry before. Parthet and Lesh stood with us. The four of us remained silent for a time and a time. Timon arrived, dismounted, gathered up the reins of all our horses, and took them off to the side without saying anything, while the rest of us remained locked in tableau. Timon must have felt the grief. When I finally spoke, the words seemed to isolate themselves in the air one at a time, like crystal bubbles, fragile explosive charges.
"Where is he?" I asked.
"Inside," Mother said, without any hint of gesture.
I looked at the door behind her, walked to it-very slowly. I hesitated before I pulled it open, and hesitated again between the dim twilight outside and the blackness within. As my eyes started to adjust, as well as they could, to the internal darkness, I saw a few vague shapes inside. I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned, Parthet handed me my flashlight. I nodded and he backed off, leaving the moment to me.
I turned on the flashlight and stepped into the cottage. It was as simple and mean a hovel as Parthet's. Dad was lying on a bench at the side of the room, over to my right. Carl Tyner, King's Champion, Hero of Varay. Dad.
Dead.
He was dressed for the outdoors, leather tunic over fatigue trousers like mine, Robin Hood cap on his head. His head rested on a small shield with a piece of fabric, something like burlap, folded over it into a thin pillow. His hands were clasped on his chest, over the hilt of his sword. I stared, looking for some trace of his chest rising and falling as he breathed, but there was no movement, no breath. I knew that there wouldn't be,
but that impossible hope nagged at my mind. His eyes were closed. His face looked serene, at peace. I saw no sign of wounds.
An emptiness swelled up inside and reached out to engulf me, a series of sensations that I had no precedents for. My throat got tight. My heart seemed to flutter. But even those commonplaces were somehow different, strange. The pain was there, but something bottled it up tight, sealed it off in a cold chamber somewhere to wait for a more appropriate time. My mind tried to reject the reality. Maybe I was trapped in a fairy-tale world with dragons and wizards, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't con myself into believing that death was any less final because of that. I looked at the body at the side of the room. I had never let myself dwell on this possibility. Deep down, I guess I had never been able to completely shake the feeling that Varay was some kind of mental aberration, that none of my adventures were real.
Too late the waking. I walked across the room and stood next to the bench. I played the light along the supine form and kept staring. Death was real, and reality was an ulcer's fire in my gut. Closing my eyes didn't make the pain go away, and opening them didn't alter the reality.
I heard a slight shuffling behind me. Mother and Uncle Parthet had come in together. I turned around while Mother lit two candles.
"How did it happen?" I whispered instinctively.
"Nine days ago," Mother said, answering a different question. I turned to look at the body again, another question leaping to my mouth. Mother answered this one before I could get it out. "He was Hero of Varay. The magic of his initiation protects him now, more than it could in life. His flesh will remain whole until he is properly interred."
"But no magic can bring him back," I said. It wasn't a question.
"No magic can bring him back," Parthet agreed softly.
I moved between Mother and Parthet and walked outside, flicking off my flashlight. An appropriately chilled breeze did what grief had been unable to do, bring tears to my eyes, blur my vision. When I blinked my eyes clear, I saw Lesh and Timon, both looking apprehensive, perhaps in echo to my pain.
"The Hero of Varay is gone from us," Parthet said behind me. His voice wasn't loud, but the words seemed to hang in the air and reverberate.
Lesh was a soldier, but at that moment he was no more hardened to death than I was. Muscles rippled under the skin of his face as he fought to hide any display of grief. "We share your loss, lord," he said, and his voice nearly betrayed him. Timon cried openly, tears streaming down his face, leaving tracks in the dust we had all picked up along the way. He turned and clung to Lesh, who held his shoulders, hardly aware that the boy was there.
"What about the men he had with him?" I asked when I turned and saw that Mother had also come out of the cottage.
"The two soldiers fell with him," she said. "The squire survived. Harkane's duty is to see to Carl even in death, until he is properly laid away. I sent him on toward Basil as soon as we moved your father here and got the others buried."
"We didn't meet anyone on the road," I said.
"Likely he would have hidden at the first hint of riders," Mother said. "He was quite distraught, frightened. He was on foot, so he could hardly have reached Basil yet. I didn't know for sure that you would come. I couldn't be certain."
I shrugged to take some of the sting from my reply, but my voice left the bitterness in. "Perhaps if I had known something about Varay before this came up." I stared at Mother. She didn't say anything, but she didn't look away either. "What do we do next?" I asked.
"Take your father back to Basil, where he belongs," Mother said.
"We'll need a wagon," I said, I didn't want to just drape Dad across the saddle of a horse the way the old westerns used to show.
"There's a wagon and horse here," Mother said.
"What about the farmer? We can't just waltz off with his property."
"He has no further use for them. The Etevar's warlord laid a heavy hand around Thyme in his haste to draw your father. Dozens of people have been killed or taken as slaves. We thought there was just a small band of soldiers at Thyme, but the Etevar sent at least forty soldiers and his new wizard as well."
"Is he still here?" Parthet asked. I assumed he meant the other wizard. Mother shook her head.
"Lesh, will you hitch the wagon and bring it around?" I asked.
He bowed. "At once, Highness."
"Just back of the house, Lesh," Mother said. He bowed to her and left, taking Timon with him.
"You've learned of your heritage," Mother said to me.
"Some of it." I didn't want to talk about that yet. All it could was make me angry, and there wasn't time for that. "Can you tell me what happened here?"
"The telling takes time." We walked to a bench that leaned against the front of the cottage. Mother and I sat. Parthet stood facing us.
"We had the call for help some three weeks ago," Mother started. "Word had reached Basil that the Etevar had taken Castle Thyme again-a castle your father wrested from him once before. It was a direct challenge, a slap in the face. We knew it might be a trap, but your father left the same day. He had a good idea what he would do, what to expect. He did have more than twenty years' experience at this sort of thing. He knew how long he should be gone too. When he didn't get home or send word, I came after him. Only Harkane, his squire, was still alive. He had found this place and had started to carry your father here. They had been ambushed. Perhaps the attack on Thyme was staged just to draw your father, as we feared. The young Etevar held an old grudge over the death of his father. There were soldiers in Castle Thyme. Your father knew that, of course, but he didn't know that there were more lurking outside, waiting for him. The wizard shielded them. There was a long running battle, but time wasn't working right. That's the way Harkane explained it. The Etevar's warlord could bring out fresh troops from the castle and keep up the pressure far too long." Mother turned her head away from me.
"Are they still there?" I asked.
"There's still a garrison. I don't know if the warlord remains, but the Etevar's new wizard left before I arrived.
"We've had rumors of this new wizard in Dorthin," Parthet said. "No one knows who or what he is, but the talk is that he's a completely new force out of Fairy."
I wasn't sure what significance that might have, but I knew that my immediate future had been decided. Talking about it after the fact, it sounds like a moment of sheer stupidity, or some sort of cosmic hocus-pocus, but there was no time of considering options, no hesitation, and if it sounds like something from a bad movie script, I can't help that. Back at Castle Basil, everyone had talked about me as the Son of the Hero. The Hero was dead, though. I had a new trade now-short-term, at least. In fact, my entire future might be extremely short-term. High drama. Stirring music in the background. All that hokum. A certainty wrapped itself around me and squeezed like an anaconda. Louisville and Northwestern belonged to a past that could never be the same. For the present at least, I belonged in Varay. It wasn't even a matter of conscious choice. Maybe the decision would have been harder if there had been a special girl back home, but there wasn't, not at the moment. There were a couple I might miss from time to time, but that didn't matter. Nothing mattered outside Varay just then-at least, not outside the seven kingdoms. I had a score to settle, a Mission to complete.
One time, I asked my father why he had enlisted in the army on his eighteenth birthday. I had asked that question before. His usual response was that after years in an orphanage and in foster homes it was simply the fastest way out. This one time though, he hesitated a long time before he said, "I think I just OD'd on John Wayne movies." That made a lot more sense once I knew what he had been doing in the years since he came back from Vietnam.
When I got up off the bench and looked around slowly, I think both Parthet and Mother saw the change in me, even in the new darkness. Parthet bowed almost low enough to push a peanut along the ground with his nose. Mother stood, straightened up, and nodded. Nothing was said. A few minutes
later, Lesh led up the horse and wagon. The wagon was narrow and high, with a shallow bed set completely above the wheels. It looked as if it might tip over much too easily despite the reverse camber to the wheels.
"It's sturdy enough, lord," Lesh said. "It's been well cared for."
I nodded. "I'll need your help inside, Lesh," I said. It was too late to be starting out-twilight was gone, the night's early stars were out-but I had to make the start regardless. I wouldn't stay there, so close to the enemy. Lesh followed me inside. He knelt at Father's side for a moment, then we carried him out and set him in the back of the wagon and covered him with a light blanket. Mother brought her horse, a beautiful black mare, around from the side of the cottage. She didn't want to wait either.
"Uncle Parker, you'd better drive the wagon. If the enemy's still about, we need Lesh mounted, ready to fight."
"I'm ready for different bruises," Parthet said quietly.
"I want to put some miles between us and Castle Thyme before we camp. Are we going to be able to get that wagon to the road?"
"There's a path that keeps us out of direct sight of the castle, but it goes close," Mother said. "It's the only way."
"Then we'll have to chance it," I said.
Lesh led the way after Mother made sure that he knew the route. Parthet followed with the wagon. Glory was tied behind the wagon. I put Timon up next to Glory, or as close behind as he could get on the narrow path. Mother and I brought up the rear, with her moving ahead of me when the track got too narrow for our horses to ride side by side. We rode ready for trouble. Lesh had his lance. Mother kept her bow in her hand. I left the bottom two buttons of my shirt undone so I could reach my pistol quickly. Parthet had his staff plus whatever sorceries protected a wizard.
The path was narrow but might have been designed for the wagon… or vice versa. We rode for an hour before we reached what Lesh said was the main road and turned away from the castle and what was left of the village of Thyme. In the dark, we had to ride slowly. I gave Lesh my flashlight so he could pick our path through the trickiest stretches.
