Though his muscles tore with the effort, he forced himself to his feet. His vision was blurred, but he could see the harbinger writhing on the ground before him. Its thrashing was lessening. It was recovering itself. He could not allow that. Raising Caliburn above his head with both hands, he turned it point downward. His arms shook as the serpent's head turned to him, and its eyes sought him out.
Health, it offered. I can give you your life back.
Legs wobbling, arms trembling, he felt his blood pumping from the wound that the harbinger had given him. It could heal him, he knew. But at what price? The Department's doctors had healed him, given him new life, and that price had been high. What greater price would this servant of the outer darkness exact?
If you use the sword, you kill your hope of life. In this place there is no help for you but rne.
It was true. He'd never reach a doctor in time.
I have tasted death. It is dust. Dust and nothingness. You need not die.
He didn't want to die.
Life. Life forever.
He did want to live. But how could he live without honor?
"Retro me, Satanas," he said.
And he drove the blade down, through smoky armor and insubstantial flesh, into the heart of the harbinger. A deep gonging note filled the air as Caliburn drove in and through, ramming itself into the ground below. The sword didn't stop until its point ground into stone.
The harbinger shrieked, shrill enough to shatter glass, but what shattered was the dark glass of its bodily form, exploding into a dozen pieces. A smaller form remained beneath, dark and pustulent, but no larger than it had been when he had first seen it. That shape spasmed, once, then lay still. Slowly it faded into nothingness, and Holger saw that he had impaled a cracked piece of smoky crystal that looked as if it had been shaped by a madman's hands into the image of a snake or a worm twisted upon itself.
Holger turned his back on what remained of the beast, and saw Dr. Spae and the others running down the slope toward him. It was over. He tried to walk toward them, but his legs buckled and he fell to his knees.
God, he was tired.
He pitched forward onto his face.
He'd done what he needed to do.
"Is he dead?" John asked. He mustn't be. Kun had beaten the harbinger. It wasn't fair that he die.
"Not yet," Dr. Spae said from where she knelt beside the dying man. She was crying. "But he will be soon. I don't think he'll survive the trip back to McMurdo."
"You're assuming that there will be such a trip," Bennett said. "The aircraft is damaged."
"I'll get McMurdo on the radio, and if I can't do that, I'll set the beacon," John said and ran to do it. When he returned Dr. Spae was seated on the ground beside Kun. She had kindled an arcane fire to warm him. Bennett had stepped a couple of yards away, and stood looking at Caliburn and the remains of the telesmon that the sword's gleaming steel impaled. John joined him. "Nasham and the dwarves are coming out in a pair of Snowhawks. They ought to be here in less than an hour. Do you think Kun has that long?"
"He was a warrior today. A hero," Bennett said staring at the sword. "Heroes seldom survive their great victories."
"Isn't there something you can do? Some kind of healing spell? Something?"
Bennett shook his head. "Nothing I know."
John suddenly wanted to think about other things. "We need to bring the sword back to Bear."
"I wouldn't advise that," Bennett said. "It's pinning the Wyrm to the earth. This closes the gateway that the Followers of the Glittering Path sought to open. The evil of the harbinger's kind is shut off from the earth and the convergence will proceed cleanly. Of course, if you care to test yourself against such monstrosities again, you could tamper with that arrangement."
"I think he's right, John," Dr. Spae said. "Caliburn has fixed the beast and closed the way."
"We can't just leave it sitting out here," John protested.
"I will bury this place again before we leave," Bennett said. "You can go back to Artos, and tell him that his man did what needed to be done, and let him decide if he wants his sword back. Your work for him will be done. You can return with me to the otherworld."
"Return? To what? Shahotain and the others made it clear to me that I don't belong there. Not with Morgana being my mother."
Bennett's eyes narrowed momentarily. "They were never meant to know about Morgana. They would not have learned about her had you not helped them."
"Don't try to put it on me! I don't even know why having Morgana as a mother is a problem. Hell, I don't even know who she is!"
"Do you want to know?" Bennett asked softly. "I will tell you all about her if you return with me to the otherworld."
John wasn't sure he wanted to know. Morgana, whoever she was, was as tangled in elven politics as Bennett was. He just knew that learning about her would get him in a deceitful mess, and he wanted no part of it.
"I don't think so," John said. "My place is here in this world." He had things he wanted to do. Among them, taking another shot at explaining things to Spillway Sue. "I am not going back to the otherworld."
"Don't be ridiculous. You are an elf."
"I know that."
"Then you know that this world is not your place."
"Isn't it?" John distrusted Bennett's insistence. If Bennett wanted him back in the otherworld, there was surely a scheme under way, and John had no interest in furthering Bennett's schemes. He'd had enough adventure, and more than enough of being Bennett's pawn. He had a home to go back to. "I think my place is where I choose to make it."
Bennett looked surprised. John had scored a point, though that didn't seem very important just now.
"You have learned some wisdom," Bennett said. "But do not think I have forgotten your promise."
John was about to tell Bennett where to stuff his talk of promises when Kun spoke.
"John?" Kun's voice was weak, barely audible. John went at once to his side and put his hand into the groping hand of the dying man. "Tell Bear—"
"I'll tell him that you're a hero."
"No."
"You are," John protested.
"Just a man, doing what he had to do."
Holger Kun said no more.
They stayed by him, and did what they could for him. It did not seem to be a time for words, and they said little to each other until the verries came to take them away. It was more than an hour before the dwarves arrived, and by then it didn't matter for Holger Kun. Neither John nor Dr. Spae said anything to the dwarves about the cairn that they had built, because it wasn't the dwarves' business. They boarded the Snowhawks, leaving Bennett behind to do as he said he would, and flew back to a world freed of the shadow of the harbinger and its voracious kind.
Epilog
The verrie came in for its landing without raising a lot of dust. A woman climbed out of the cockpit, shapely despite her military cold-weather flight suit, and walked toward him, smiling. She was as beautiful as an angel. There was no name strip on her uniform, and Holger questioned that.
"Call me Nym," she said. "I've come to take you away to the sleep that is the hero's reward."
Good. He wanted to sleep. He was very tired.
He took her offered hand, and she helped him up. His hurt was an old memory, fading further as they walked to the aircraft. He climbed aboard, nodding to the pilot and copilot as he took a seat. They were beautiful, too. He wondered what the crew might be doing when they got off duty.
The verrie lifted off. On the ground below Dr. Spae, John Reddy, and even Bennett waved good-bye.
About the Author
Robert N. Charrette was born, raised, arid educated in the State of Rhode island and Providence Plantations. Upon graduating from Brown University with a cross-departmental degree in biology and geology, he promptly moved to the Washington, D.C. area and entered a career as a graphic artist. He worked as a game designer, art director, and commercial sculptor before taking up the word processor to write
novels. He has contributed three novels to the BattleTech™ universe and four to the Shadowrun™ universe, the latter of which he had a hand in creating, and is now developing other settings for fictional exploration.
He currently resides in Springfield, Virginia with his wife, Elizabeth, who must listen to his constant complaints of insufficient time while he continues to write as well as to sculpt gaming miniatures and the occasional piece of collector's pewter or fine art bronze. He also has a strong interest in medieval living history, being a longtime knight of the Society for Creative Anachronism and a principal in La Belle Compagnie, a reenactment group portraying English life in the late fourteenth century. In between, he tries to keep current on a variety of eclectic interests including dinosaurian paleontology and pre-Tokugawa Japanese history.
Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves Page 35
