“It is much too dangerous,” Elliot said. “It would be really dumb to go out there.” He paused. “Well, even I can’t be smart all the time.”
He got up quickly, before she could stop him, dropped a kiss in her hair, and went out the door into the chaos of a battlefield.
It was obscene, his camp becoming the backdrop for this horror. There was someone dead on the ground, facedown: Elliot could only be thankful. He did not want to see if it was someone he knew. There was a man in chainmail bearing down on him.
“I come on a mission of peace,” said Elliot, and got backhanded with a chainmail fist. Elliot tasted blood and saw stars in a gray daytime sky. “Did I stutter?” Elliot asked, feeling his mouth fill with blood. “I said I come on a mission of peace, moron.”
The chainmailed guy drew his sword. Elliot hated his life, especially when he saw two of the guys’ buddies closing in to help him slaughter an unarmed student. Elliot tensed, wondering if he should run toward the sound of fighting, where there might be assistance, or away.
The chainmailed guy collapsed, spat blood, and dropped his sword: Luke had his own blade out of chainmailed guy’s back and in the chest of the second man before the group realized what was happening. In less than three seconds the three men after Elliot were dead.
Elliot tried not to be sick, and tried not to think of how Luke had been sick once, killing someone. Now Luke had been through a war and killed people easily, effortlessly, as if it was routine.
Luke grabbed Elliot’s arm, which led to there being blood and dirt on Elliot’s arm. This was not routine for Elliot. “What are you doing out here?”
“I need to get to the—”
“You need to get back inside right now!”
“No!” Elliot shouted back, since they were shouting, which he found to be unnecessary and rude. “I need to get to the commander’s tower. Take me there right now.”
“And if I don’t?” Luke bit out.
“Then I’m going on my own!” Elliot snapped. “And I bet I get stabbed, and Serene will be annoyed with you.”
He wrenched his arm out of Luke’s grip and strode toward the tower. He heard the sound of Luke killing someone else behind him, so he presumed he was protected: Luke caught up with him, and nobody else stopped them until they reached the commander’s tower and the four unfamiliar guards at the door.
“I urge you to surrender,” said Elliot, and stood aside.
Three guards down, and the fourth had his hands up, weapon loosely clasped in one of them, but his intent clear. Only Luke was a whirlwind of murderous movement: blade shining and singing through the air.
“Not that one,” Elliot said, and when Luke didn’t listen Elliot had no choice but to eel his way in between the two men and their blades. “He’s surrendering!”
Luke was already swinging his sword: Elliot was very glad he trusted Luke to be fast enough to catch his own swing. As it was there was a nasty moment where Elliot felt Luke’s sword graze his throat and the other man’s swordpoint at his back.
The enemy soldier could have run Elliot through right then. But he put up his blade, and Elliot opened the door and went into the commander’s tower, Luke following him.
“Oh my God,” said Luke, and sat down heavily on the stone steps, in the dark, his head in his hands. “He could have killed you. I could have killed you!”
“No, no, I had every faith in you,” said Elliot. “I did think he might kill me, but there was a life to be saved in the balance, so you see it was worth it.”
Elliot also found war very traumatizing, but he’d thought that Luke would be more used to it by now. He reached out in the dark, found Luke’s shoulder, and patted it.
“I know, violence is terrible,” he said. “I’ll be more supportive later. I have to go see Colonel Whiteleaf now. Don’t let anyone come up these stairs.”
He ran up the stairs and into the commander’s office, where Commander Woodsinger should have been. Instead there was a man, burly around the shoulders with a fiercely bristling black beard.
“They send brats from council training to offer surrender and command to my son?” barked Colonel Whiteleaf, hand on his sword hilt.
“No,” said Elliot, and took the rolled-up pieces of paper from his belt.
He found ripping pages out of books sacrilegious, but not as sacrilegious as letting people die.
“I read this interesting account of your battle with the mermaids long ago, Colonel Whiteleaf,” he said. “The one in which you first won acclaim as a military leader. The battle on which all your fame is based. It’s funny, because your account of how the mermaids behaved was not at all in accordance with a book I read in the Sunborn library called 1,000 Leagues Across a Sea of Blood. Have you read it? It’s very good.”
“What does an ancient book have to do with me?” Whiteleaf snapped, going rigid.
“Moreover,” said Elliot. “A few years ago, an explorer from my world called deWitt went on a voyage to the same place you claimed you fought your battles, and he saw there no sign that they had ever taken place. There were mermaids there: their numbers had not been decimated and their habitat had not been destroyed. It was very clever of you, Colonel Whiteleaf. You can’t claim to have had a battle with trolls or harpies or elves—people will expect to see evidence, people will expect to see bodies. But a battle with mermaids, out at sea? Nobody but you and your sailors would ever know the truth. Or so you thought.”
“No one will pay attention to what a stupid cadet claims,” bluffed Whiteleaf, his eyes less confident than his voice. “Or to a stupid book, or to a voyage of exploration, whatever foolish thing that is. I’ve never heard of one, or this deWitt fellow either.”
Elliot raised his eyebrows. “You’re right, the voyage isn’t very famous, because exploration isn’t as exciting as war, and deWitt is regarded with suspicion since he wouldn’t even take an otherlands surname. But Rachel Sunborn was one of the soldiers with the explorers. She described what she saw to me very accurately. I think she could do the same for anybody . . . and I think a Sunborn would be believed.”
Whiteleaf’s face was red as dawn.
“One more thing,” Elliot added casually, and saw Whiteleaf turn pale. “I know the birthdate of Captain Whiteleaf. He’s not your son. He can’t be. By your own account, he was conceived while you were at sea. But you know that, don’t you? You and your wife never had any other children. You wanted him to be your heir, and you wanted him to have command of the trainees’ camp, which is a stepping stone to real military command. You wanted a lot of things, and you’re not going to get all of them. So now you have a choice. I left a letter describing the truth of your long sea voyage, just so I wouldn’t get murdered.”
Elliot made a courteous gesture to Colonel Whiteleaf’s sword, already half drawn.
“If I die, the story gets told. So if you keep fighting, you maybe take the camp, maybe not, but everybody knows that your son is not your son, and he is disgraced and you are both a famous coward and the laughingstock of the otherlands. Or you were overpowered by the brave young heroes of the Border camp and came to realise that your doubts had been wrong and that Commander Woodsinger was a brave and inspiring leader. You stood your troops down, and you and your son declared your support for the commander,” said Elliot. “Which is it going to be?”
Whiteleaf’s hand clenched on the edge of the desk.
“If I let you live,” he said, “and follow your terms, do you swear to say nothing?”
Elliot bit back a smile at the dizzy joy of victory, and said: “I swear.”
When he left the room, he found Luke still waiting on the steps, his head still in his hands. Luke leaped to his feet when he saw Elliot.
“Now explain to me what you were doing,” he snarled.
“Oh . . .,” said Elliot. “Nothing, really. I had an idea, but it didn’t pan out.”
“Nothing?” Luke repeated. “You risked your life for nothing? Do you realize how short-
sighted and selfish and irresponsible you were being? Do you think this is a game?”
“Yes, yes,” said Elliot. “My behavior was very wrong. I see that now. But I do have good news.”
They held a feast to celebrate the truce between Colonel Whiteleaf and the reinstated Commander Woodsinger. Serene sat beside Elliot at the feast and told him about how she and Luke had argued down students who wanted to go over to Whiteleaf’s side.
His friends always seemed to be fighting different battles than the ones Elliot was fighting, and Serene was always fighting on the war-training side. But Elliot liked to think Serene had used her council-training skills when she convinced the vast majority of the camp to keep faith with their commander.
He saw Commander Woodsinger look over at their table occasionally, and once he caught her dark, watchful gaze. It felt like she was trying to tell him something, but Elliot looked away. She was probably looking at Serene.
Elliot did not know, and perhaps could not appreciate, exactly what the war-training class and soldiers of the Border camp had done. But for once, because it was the way to peace, he was happy to let them take the credit.
He let Luke tell him off over and over again for being dumb enough to go out in the midst of a battlefield. He let Serene, and Dale, and Luke tell him all about their adventures. He sent Dale on his way with the sweet smile Elliot used on the elves, and Serene looked at him sharply from her place beside him on the bench.
“What did you do?” she asked.
Elliot smiled a real smile. “I might have helped a little. In my fashion.”
Serene said nothing, but she helped him to his feet, and they left the feasting hall together. She paused once they were outside, then stepped up to him and kissed him again.
A lot of the buildings had been torched, but there were tents set up around the Border camp. They found one and tumbled inside it, still kissing, kissing and kissing: Elliot did not want to let her go, not ever, and perhaps he would never have to.
“I have struggled against my passions, and I can struggle no longer: they have me in an irresistible grasp,” said Serene.
“Grasp away,” Elliot advised her.
“A man cannot understand the force of a woman’s desire,” Serene continued.
“I’ll give it a try,” said Elliot.
“And I cannot—I do not offer you marriage,” Serene added, the words almost lost between their mouths, kissing and clinging. “You should send me away. You should preserve your virtue. I find I cannot help myself in the face of your charms and I fear if you do not spurn me from your door at once I will besmirch you utterly.”
There was no door to speak of, since they were all in tents. Through the rough cloth of the tent, Elliot could hear the murmur of people passing by, the crackle of fires and sound of blades being sharpened and all the other sounds of a battlefield settling back into peace. War was over, at least for a time, and he was warm, his head on a soft pillow, tangled up in soft blankets with the only girl he had ever loved tangled up with him. She hovered above him, murmuring words that only meant, to him, that she did want him after all.
Elliot could not help but smile, and he felt her smile blossom against his mouth in response to his. He curled his fingers around her long dark hair and tugged her down the last fraction of an inch toward him.
“Besmirch away,” he said.
He didn’t know whether he had Peter’s educational manuals or Serene’s helpful instructions to thank, but Elliot thought the whole thing had all gone rather well.
He was lying amid tumbled sheets, looking up into Serene’s flushed face, when he finally had the courage to bring up a certain matter. Moonlight and starshine were growing faint behind her dark hair, diffused into the pale glow of morning.
“You know,” Elliot said, a little shyly, “I used to think that you . . . maybe liked Luke.”
Serene was levered up on one elbow, looking at him with pleased soft eyes. She liked it when he was shy: he’d noted that before, on the rare occasions that it happened.
“Luke?” she repeated blankly. “Our Luke?”
She started to laugh.
“Hahaha, I know, so silly,” said Elliot, greatly gratified. “Why are you laughing, exactly?”
“Luke and I have always had a relationship that was firmly platonic and based on our shared passion for honor and weaponry.”
“Oh,” said Elliot. “You were bros the whole time?”
“That’s a human idiom, but yes,” said Serene. “Moreover I do not find golden-haired gentlemen sexually appealing. They remind me of Golden-Hair-Scented-Like-Summer, than whom there is nobody more infuriating.”
“This is awesome news.”
“Golden thinks he is so pretty, and so well-behaved,” Serene continued.
“Sounds like the worst,” Elliot contributed.
“He called me a rogue last summer, you know, in front of his whole clique of snotty friends, and everybody laughed.”
“Okay,” said Elliot. “I’m no longer worried about Luke, but I am starting to be a little worried about someone else.”
Serene glanced over at him, an odd expression on her face. Elliot thought it might be simple surprise: it only lasted a moment, and then was gone, replaced with what Elliot was incredulously pleased to identify as an admiring look.
She leaned down, close enough to kiss but not quite kissing yet, and her dark hair fell down all around him so the dying night was veiled and the only starshine was her eyes.
“You have no need to be worried about anyone,” murmured Serene, and kissed him. Her mouth was warm and lingering, her hand tight around his arm. Elliot felt the calluses from bow and sword against the sensitive skin on the inside of his elbow. He shivered.
“Unhand me, you vile seducer, you virtue bandit. I feel sullied by your irresistible yet immoral touch!”
Serene’s eyes widened and her grip went loose.
“No, I didn’t mean it!” Elliot exclaimed hastily. “I was teasing. Maybe also role-playing a little bit? I’ll tell you all about role-playing. I read about it in a book.”
Serene’s eyes got even wider, and she lunged at him. They went rolling across blankets and grass, her hair winding around his hands, him laughing helplessly and her murmuring amusement in his ear and in between kisses.
“Oh, you did, did you,” said Serene, rolling her eyes and smiling so wide that Elliot knew in a human it would have been a laugh. She held him pinned down to the ground. “You are such a minx!”
“You know that’s right,” murmured Elliot.
“There is something I want to ask you. I was talking to your friend Myra,” Serene said. “I had a few questions for her, but as it turned out I find her company most congenial. She too is often puzzled by the strictly human way of doing things. She told me, though, about a facet of human romance, in which people are romantically involved not with the specific purpose of marriage but with the intent of providing companionship for each other. I must say that seems efficient. Everybody’s needs are met and neither party is in any way disgraced.” Serene paused. “She called it ‘dating’ or ‘being boyfriend and girlfriend.’”
Elliot hardly dared to breathe, in case it interrupted Serene’s flow of thought. He knew her better than that, though: knew her serious face when she was intent on a purpose.
“How about it?” asked Serene. “Do you want to be my boyfriend?”
Elliot smiled, and the smile drew Serene down to kiss him, so the smile might have been answer enough. Just in case, though, just to show her how much he meant it, he murmured, “Yes” just before their lips met.
Later, Serene slept through her morning archery practice. Elliot looked at the sunrise, golden rays caught in the treetops and sky catching fire. Warm light spilled over Serene as she slept, her skin illuminated and her shoulderblades golden crests and her back a valley, her bare skin a wonderful and strange landscape. Elliot rested a hand gently at the dip in her lower back, and felt both awed and scare
d.
He had been wishing for love his whole life, and if he’d had just one wish that wish would have been her. He was not sure how it had happened, or why: but the wish granted, he had to prove he could deserve it. He did not know how to be grateful enough.
“This is my plan,” said Serene as they entered the lunchroom, and Elliot gazed at her with deep appreciation of her strategic mind. She steered him toward the table where Luke was sitting. “I will tell Luke of the newfound status of our relationship, for I wish to express that I am in no wise ashamed of you.”
“Thank you, Serene, excellent decision!”
“And then I will go get my nourishment and you two can have a longer conversation about feelings. I know boys like to gossip about girls and romance.”
Elliot’s squawk of protest was cut off when Serene pushed him forcibly onto the bench opposite Luke and said: “Elliot and I are dating now. You have four minutes to gossip about it. Good-bye, blossom!”
She pressed a firm kiss to Elliot’s horrified mouth and strode off. Elliot loved to watch her go, but he really hated her leaving.
“We don’t have to gossip,” Elliot informed Luke. “Let’s be strong and silent. In a manly way. That would be awesome, right?”
“So you were . . . serious about . . . all that?” asked Luke Sunborn, secret gossip fiend.
Elliot was disappointed, and then he actually listened to what Luke was saying and took a sharp left turn into being offended. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Luke fiddled with his pudding rather than looking up. “You were always so . . . exorbeetent . . . about it.”
“Ex or bee tent? . . . Oh. You mean ‘exorbitant,’ loser. And as opposed to all the other reasonable well-balanced sides to my personality, you mean?” Elliot scoffed at the very idea that he might not have been serious. “Like you’d know anything about how I feel.”
In Other Lands Page 20
