It wasn’t a bundle of sticks; it was Siofra’s smug, smiling face.
Brayden had been right—there was a healthy recoil to the thing. Had Wil been gripping it tight as he’d done the first few times, his arm would likely right now be several yards behind him. His ears rang dully, the sharp, acrid bite of gunpowder in his nose, and oily smoke wafted in a thin cloud about his head. He blinked, turned first to Brayden, and then followed Brayden’s surprised gaze to the target.
The sticks were still held together in what used to be the center of the bundle, but now they spiraled crazily on the end of the string, the trajectory lopsided and erratic, Wil’s shot having sheared them in half. One end of ragged splinters twirled against the string at a sharp angle, the other end dipping and weaving in a wild orbit of unscathed kindling. Wil blinked some more, turned to Brayden again, who peered back with a surprised look that might have been somewhat insulting if Wil wasn’t so stunned himself.
“I hit it.” It was rather stupid and redundant, but…
well, he’d hit it. He’d actually hit it.
“You did,” Brayden agreed, the faint lurking smile of approval doing things to Wil’s pride he refused to admit.
“All right, what next?” Brayden wanted to know.
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Wil had to think about it. He’d never expected to actually get this far; the instructions about what came after still lived in a haze of It’ll never happen so why bother.
“Pump the forend,” he heard himself say. “Expel the spent shell and reengage the safety.”
“Good,” Brayden approved. “Do it.”
Wil did, gripping the forend barrel-up in his left hand like Brayden had shown him, then giving the rifle a sharp jerk down then up. Ordinarily, or so Brayden had told him, one would keep the gun braced to one’s shoulder and maintain their firing stance while completing this task, but Wil had tried and hadn’t been able to pump the thing with his damaged right hand, so Brayden had shown him an alternative. This way held the risk of too much time between shots, Brayden had told him, and vulnerability of exposure, but it was better than trying to fumble through clumsily re-cocking the thing and getting shot while you stood there cursing at it.
“Anyway, this way I could shoot from the saddle and still keep hold of the reins,” Wil had enthused—back when he was still more bloodthirsty than tired.
“Right,” had been Brayden’s laconic reply, “and end up on your arse from the recoil or from the horse getting spooked and throwing you. Not all horses are made for the Cavalry, y’know; they have to be trained not to bolt at loud noises, which is why we left them back at the campsite.”
The man just seemed to revel in bursting bubbles.
“How d’you know that?” Wil had asked, somewhat truculently, refusing to let go of his bubble just yet. “Do you know every thing?”
“Because I was in the Cavalry,” Brayden had informed him; Wil could distinctly hear the proper name status in Brayden’s voice. “And yes, I do know everything, or at 46
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least more than you do, so if you please—show me how you load that cartridge.”
Wil had rolled his eyes, sighed out loud like a five-year-old, then did what Brayden instructed. Now, he completed the task of pumping and expelling one-handed, swaying back a little to avoid getting hit by the spent cartridge as it spun out from the bolt. He pointed the rifle’s barrel at the ground and slid the safety into position, then looked up at Brayden with a grin he couldn’t’ve kept from his face if he’d just shot his own foot off.
“Very good.” Brayden nodded. “Now, let’s back you up a few dozen paces and see if that was just a lucky shot.”
Wil gaped. “A lucky shot?” He followed Brayden back to a new position, mouth flapping. “It was bloody beautiful; what d’you mean ‘lucky shot’?”
Brayden merely shrugged. “It may well be that you’re a naturally brilliant shot,” he told Wil, calm encouragement in both his hint of a smile and his tone. “It may also be that we have just witnessed conditions that will never be repeated. The only way to tell for sure is to repeat them.”
Damn the man—there was that annoying reason again.
It wasn’t until his second shot that Wil began to appreciate the undeniable power in his hands. He’d thought he’d known what to expect the first time, but it had all happened so fast that he didn’t really remember any individual, distinct impressions. This time, everything made an impression: the line of focus from the end of the barrel to the target, and how it fuzzed out everything in its periphery; the feel of cool metal against his cheekbone as he sighted down; how the forend made itself a gentle cushion against the bandages on his right hand; the almost-tender resistance of the trigger against his finger as he steadily pulled it back…
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The awesome punch of the recoil as it vibrated from his hands and up his arms, through his shoulder and chest, and on down his backbone to the ground.
Wil was still standing there in his firing stance, feeling it all, when Brayden’s big hand clapped to his shoulder, gripped tight and shook.
“Un-bloody- believable!” Brayden laughed, shaking Wil again in his enthusiasm. “I have never seen anyone shoot dead-on like that, not the first time. You’re brilliant!”
Wil felt pretty brilliant. He lowered the gun, cocked it and ejected the cartridge, then slid the safety into place, breathing deep the scent of oil and spent gunpowder.
He hadn’t just taken off the other end of the twigs this time; he’d pulverized the string from which they hung and turned it all into a shower of fluttering splinters and smoking twine. He’d never known destruction could be so beautiful.
A grin curled his mouth, and he looked over at Brayden, seeing his own pleasure reflected back at him.
Even the heavy hand gripping his shoulder wasn’t very heavy.
“I want to shoot something bigger,” Wil said.
It was growing too dark to see when Brayden finally managed to drag Wil away from their makeshift target range to head back to camp. Wil’s arms were sore and a little shaky, and his shoulder was probably going to be bruised, but he was still too high for any of it to worm through the euphoric haze. Brayden had been more than accommodating, finding bigger and bigger things to shoot from farther and farther away, until he got tired of setting up targets and just had Wil shoot the trunks of trees. Not 48
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quite as satisfying—they didn’t fly apart like sticks and piles of leaves or small stones did—but it did help Wil adjust his aim.
“We’re blazing a trail miles wide for anyone to follow,”
Brayden had muttered. “Let’s just hope they miss where we turned off, and they might miss us altogether.”
Wil absolutely could not bring himself to care.
“So, did you learn to shoot in the army?” he asked Brayden as they walked back to camp, the rifle a comfortable weight against his back, hanging from its strap about his shoulder.
“No, my foster father taught me,” Brayden replied.
“The one who gave you the knife?”
A lift of sandy eyebrows. “I only had the one.”
“Did you like him?”
“I like him just fine. And my foster mother, before you ask. They still live in Putnam, and I have dinner with them almost every week.”
Huh. Interesting. Brayden really did have an actual life. “But you don’t live with them?”
“No,” Brayden snorted. “Not for a very long time.”
“Well, why not?”
“Because when children become adults, they move out on their own. It’s just the way it’s done.”
Wil took this in with interest. “So, you don’t hate them, then?”
“Of course not. Why would I hate them?” Brayden sounded genuinely mystified by the question.
“Well, you said your foster father gave you that k
nife, and you just sort of… handed it over to someone you barely know. I thought, if you liked him, you would’ve wanted to keep it.”
“You do have a different way of looking at things,”
Brayden said; Wil tried to find condemnation in the tone but couldn’t. “I gave you the knife because… well, did 49
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you look at the inscription?”
Wil considered the casual assumption in the question, thought about dodging it, but… well, dodging was seeming less and less necessary anymore. “I can’t read,”
he answered bluntly, the challenge in his tone more overt than he’d meant.
Brayden, as he seemed to do with everything, rose to the dare in his own way. “No?” he drawled. “You’ve not taught yourself that, too?” He didn’t allow Wil time for a retort. “I’ll show it to you once we’ve a fire going. It’ll explain it better than I can.”
They walked in silence for a moment before Wil frowned, asked, “You were an officer in the army, weren’t you?”
“I was,” Brayden answered. “Captain.”
“For how long?”
“I did two four-year tours.”
“Volunteer or conscripted?”
“Volunteer.”
Wil hadn’t really needed to ask that question. Brayden was definitely the volunteer sort. And Wil would bet that he’d volunteered and served out of honor and duty, and not the three square meals and respectable pay many others did it for, or even the opportunity to shoot at people with impunity. Wil didn’t think Brayden shot at anyone with impunity, even if the censure was only from himself.
“I saw a regiment of the Cavalry once.” Wil smiled a little at the memory. “They looked very sharp in their red and gold. I quite envied their boots, and they all had brilliant mounts; they even made those stupid helms look good.”
“Hey!” Brayden seemed like he was trying to be offended but he couldn’t keep the smile from out his voice.
“They might not be the sexiest things in the world, but 50
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they serve the very useful purpose of resisting all manner of sharp implements aimed at one’s head.”
“I just said they made them look good,” Wil defended with a snort, slid his gaze over to Brayden with a sly bit of a smirk. “I’ll bet the pretty girls got all swoony over you, kitted out in your officer’s surcoat and all, didn’t they?” Brayden didn’t answer, just rolled his eyes, pursed his mouth, and watched his boots. Wil grinned. “Ha, I knew it—the pretty boys, then.”
Brayden shook his head with a low chuckle. “Now who’s the chatty one?”
“Hey, I answer all your questions. And you ask a bloody lot of questions.”
“Maybe,” Brayden sighed. “But you make me walk through fire first.”
“Then you’ll never have to worry about ticks,” Wil countered.
Brayden stopped, chuffed out a small laugh, and ran a hand through his hair. “You’ve a very odd sense of humor.”
“I’m a very odd person,” Wil informed him.
Brayden shook his head again, resumed his pace.
“You’re not, you know.” His voice was quiet and frank, but still quite amiable.
Wil frowned. “Not what?”
“You’re not odd.” Brayden stopped again and looked at Wil steadily through the thick-falling darkness. “You could be a maniac who runs about attacking children.
You could be a drooling imbecile. You could be a depraved cutthroat who lurks in dark alleys and murders for a billet or two. You could be an infinite number of foul things. You could have lain down and died and let Old Bridge be your grave.
“Instead you’re a man who is more than capable of killing, but only does it when he has to, and you don’t 51
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let anyone else’s mores tell you when ‘have to’ is. You take hold of every single thing in your grasp and value it, things I’ve taken for granted my whole life and never had the first clue were precious. You learn things faster than anyone I’ve ever seen, and yet you keep thinking you have to defend your intelligence. You’ve invented your own way of being, and perhaps it might be ‘odd’ to one who has no idea of the life you’ve led, but to one who does…” Brayden paused, shrugged. “To one who does, it’s… it’s… I haven’t got a word. It’s astounding.” He took a step closer, dark eyes strangely alive and perceptive in the murk. “You’re not odd—you’re just who you are and I think you’ve done bloody well, for all you’ve been through.”
Wil stared, narrowed his eyes against the dark. What was he on about, and what was with the… Well, Wil wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but he was pretty sure it was at least close to flattery.
“You know,” he said slowly, “I meant it when I said I didn’t intend to murder you in your sleep.”
Brayden snorted again. Then he laughed. “And that’s something else. You wouldn’t believe a kind word from the Mother Herself.” His laughter dried up, and he cleared his throat. “Sorry, bad example. But, you know, you should be… I don’t know, you should have been another Siofra. You should have imprinted on him like a kitten imprints on a goat, if it’s the first thing it sees. But you didn’t—you fought him every way you could, and you don’t even know how impressive that is.”
That was the second time Brayden had said that to him— impressed. Rising discomfort was very nearly making Wil squirm. What the hell?
“I thought I was a vicious little shit,” he muttered.
“You are,” Brayden said simply, turned and started 52
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walking again. “But you say it like it’s a bad thing. C’mon, I hear the horses.”
No shelter was necessary that night, so setting up camp was relatively quick and easy. As it had been last night, Wil took care of the horses—sneaking them each another of his dwindling store of apples, getting those disgusting horse-kisses as thanks—and Brayden took care of supper.
Wil kept the rifle with him, unwilling to release his new friend yet, until they sat by the small fire to eat, at which point he laid it carefully on the ground beside him. Talk, being unnecessary, was fairly scarce, until they’d finished eating and cleaning up, and Wil, intrigued by Brayden’s earlier hints, slipped the knife from out his boot. It had been a comfortable weight against his calf all day. It was bulkier than the little dirk had been—he was grateful all over again for the thicker stockings—and he had to wear it on the opposite side in consideration of his right hand, but he’d grown used to it almost immediately.
He held it slanted into the light, finger lightly tracing over the string of finely etched symbols engraved in its surface. “So, what does it say?” he asked Brayden.
“That?” Brayden moved in closer, smiling a little.
“That’s just my name. The thing I wanted to show you is on the other side.”
Wil’s eyebrows went up. He turned the knife over, examined the wider swath of glyphs on its opposite side, then turned it again. “That’s awfully long for just your short little name,” he observed.
“Well, it’s both my names.” Brayden leaned closer and pointed at one little group of runes. “Dallin.” And then the next. “Brayden.”
“Your name is Dallin?” Wil frowned. Why had he 53
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never even considered the fact that Brayden must have a given name before? Dallin. It was… nice. Not as harsh-sounding as Wil would’ve expected, considering Brayden’s build. Wil would’ve guessed Stone or Bear, or something equally descriptive. He peered over at Brayden, more interested than he would have thought. “What’s it mean?”
“Why d’you want to know?” Brayden’s voice had gone just slightly cagey; not unkind but just edging on suspicion.
Wil blinked, shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just interested.” Perhaps because he didn’t have one of his own, but he didn’t want to say that out loud, not now.
Blatantly sh
oving Brayden’s face in the fact that Wil had liberated the name he used now from a dead man could only take that edge of suspicion blooming in Brayden’s tone to a full blossom. “The people of the Commonwealth seem to put a lot of stock in what names mean,” Wil said instead, hesitated, then skirted around the point with, “I was very glad to learn what Wilfred Calder meant.”
“River of stones,” Brayden murmured, staring into the fire with a frown. “And much peace.”
“Peaceful River.” Wil nodded. “It’s nice, isn’t it? I want to live by one someday. I want to stare into the water all day long and then watch the stars dance over it all night. I want to listen to the music the current sings and nothing else until I get tired and hungry and can’t listen anymore.”
Brayden was looking at him now, gaze penetrating and eyebrows drawn slightly inward. “That’s a very good wish,” he said quietly. “And perhaps you’ll get it—there’s a river runs through Cildtrog, you know. That’s the valley below Lind.”
Wil hadn’t known, though with the amount of time he’d spent spying there, he wondered why. Perhaps it was 54
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the very one for which Wilfred Calder had been named.
He frowned into the fire, unsure how that thought made him feel.
“Dallin,” Brayden said, “means pride’s people. It also means from the valley. Brayden means brave.” He shrugged, pensive. “My father told me that as long as I never forgot my name, I’d always know my way home.”
“Well, I expect forgetting your own name isn’t much of a danger,” Wil observed with a smile; he’d meant it lightly, but it made Brayden’s frown deepen.
“You’d think,” Brayden said, distant. “But She seemed to think I have done.”
Wil couldn’t help the way his stomach dropped a little.
He also couldn’t help the curiosity. “What did…?” He paused, chewed his lip. “What did She tell you?”
Brayden turned his gaze slowly from the fire and fixed Wil with it. “She said I’d forgotten my name.” And then he shook his head, troubled eyes flicking over Wil’s shoulder and taking an absent sweep about the camp. “I am Dallin Brayden from the valley of Cildtrog, Lind’s Cradle,” he told the darkness. “I am the twelfth Brayden, possibly the last of my line, son of Ailen and Aldercy. I know my name, I haven’t forgotten, I know my way home, and I’ve no idea—” He paused, frowned. “What?”
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