Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  "Yes, sir," he said.

  Errol fretted for the rest of the day, his mind going back to the device in O'Brien's desk. In the best case scenario, his grandfather was going to be pissed that Errol had grabbed it instead of the box of arrowheads. If O'Brien looked at it, there were so many things it could be misconstrued as. All of which risked involving those who could figure out what it really was. Hephaestus Rickard III had grown to be a gnarled old man without being caught, now Errol's blunder risked exposing him. Errol's distraction was the sort of thing the teachers at Leyden Academy homed in on and hammered relentlessly with questions related to the subject at hand. It was humiliating, but the risk of public disgrace kept the students on task. Worse, the creepy kid with the eyepatch seemed to have noticed Errol's state of mind. Why did they have so many classes together?

  At the last bell, Errol bolted for O'Brien's classroom. He caught a demerit from the assistant headmaster for running in the halls. As it turned out, he shouldn't have bothered. There was a note on the door, "Had to leave early, forth and fifth period, meet Professor Ilic in library. Review pages..." Errol tried the door handle, but it refused to budge. Forcing himself to calm down, Errol made his way to the office, an alternate plan forming in his head. The secretary looked up at him with a disinterested eye. She didn't say anything before Errol started talking.

  "Mister O'Brien took something that he said I could get back at the end of the day. But, he left early, could I-"

  "You can get it on Monday," she said, turning her attention back to whatever was on her computer. Errol tapped the hard case against the side of his knee, trying to think of something to get them to unlock the chemistry classroom. "Why are you still here?"

  "I really need to-"

  "Monday." Errol turned to slink out of the office. His eye passed over the Heartstrings poster and the notice taped to it. He sheepishly looked down at the case in his hand and scurried towards the gym. The Leyden Academy Gymnasium was an annex behind the main building. The connecting tunnel ran between the locker rooms and emerged below the seats. The seats reminded Errol of a stadium. The way it was built into the hillside, people coming from the parking lots could enter on the seating level, a full story above the gym proper. At the far end of the gym sat a row of targets. A handful of people milled about the near end of the gym. Most were in gray shorts and T-shirts. The outlier was dressed in black trousers and a long sleeve shirt. Mister Ostberg had a narrow build, narrow face and short black hair. He glanced towards the new arrival.

  "Gym clothes only, Rickard," Ostberg said. Errol nodded and hurried into the boy's locker room. Finding his locker, he pulled out his gym clothes and changed as quickly as he could manage. By the time he got back to the gym, the other students had lined up along a paint stripe on the floor. Errol's attention wasn't on them, it was on the new arrival. Dressed in a pair of brown corduroy pants and a blue plaid shirt. A yellow visitor's pass hung around his neck. Hephaestus Rickard III was twisted and bent, his neck almost horizontal from the bend in his spine. Hatchet-faced and hawk-nosed, his gaze darted about. His hands were gnarled, his fingers knotted and curled. Errol all but shrank as his grandfather's steely eyes turned on him.

  "You left this on my workbench," Hephaestus said, holding out a small plastic box bearing the logo of Uberwald Archery. He grumbled like an unbalanced hammer mill. Gravel would have sounded smoother than his voice.

  "Thank you, sir," Errol said, taking the box of arrowheads. The look in Hephaestus' eyes asked the question he did not. Errol set his case on a nearby table. He extracted his bow and a quiver of arrow shafts. He walked to the line, affixing target points to his arrows.

  "Mister Ostberg has been talking about your poor performance in earlier meets. He seems to think you're incapable of hitting the target," Hephaestus said. "Prove him wrong." Hephaestus moved to the side of the table and folded his arms as best he could.

  "Candy apple red?" Sarah asked. Errol glanced to the side, just now realizing who he'd lined up next to. "Is that a hand-me-down or something? Sheesh, my bow is less girly." Errol clenched his teeth, trying to blot out the comments. He'd stuck with school equipment because he knew someone would say something. But the bright red compound bow was the one he'd had the most practice with. It was adjusted to his build and draw. In the corner of his eye, he watched Sarah pull the string back dry, draw bead on the target and ease the string forward again. She repeated this a few times as a warmup. The powder blue bow was set for a draw length an inch or so too short for her current stature. The worst part was the fact that she hadn't noticed. Errol wondered if that was why she'd had trouble qualifying.

  "All of you have probably heard this spiel before, but I'm required to repeat it," Ostberg said. "While our normal archery program uses Olympic rules, Heartstrings does not. The key differences are: distance to target: thirty yards. That's yards, not meters. Each round is three sets of ten split into ends of five. There is nothing special about the X ring, it is ten points. To qualify for competition is one round with a minimum of two hundred forty points. No sights allowed. Elimination in the tournament proper is the bottom half of the field each round. There are no one-on-one tests. Both compound and recurve bows are permitted, though it's been a while since I've seen a recurve at this competition. The judges will probably repeat all of this tomorrow. We're only having this last round of qualifiers because we came in short on contestants this year."

  Ostberg shoved a clipboard towards Errol. "Anyone who forgot to sign in, please do so now." Sheepishly, Errol signed in and passed the clipboard down the row. When Ostberg got his clipboard back, he looked over the gym. "Range is clear, you may begin your first end."

  Nocking an arrow and drawing bead on the target, Errol felt his grandfather's gaze boring through the back of his head. Despite the chilly air of the gym, sweat beaded on his forehead. Time crept slowly along as he loosed his first arrow and watched it wobble through the air. It plunked into the target anticlimactically. Whipping another from the quiver into nock, he all but planted it in the same hole. With the third, he knew it was wrong the moment the string slipped from his fingers. He wanted to reach out and snatch it back to try again. The bright red fletchings waved at him mockingly as the arrow planted itself in the nine ring. Errol flinched, even before he heard the 'hmph' from Hephaestus. Errol planted the last two of the set close to the first two.

  "Nine?" Hephaestus asked. "What do you call that shot?"

  "A marked improvement," Ostberg said.

  "I call it not good enough," Hephaestus said. Ostberg shot the old man a quizzical look. "How lazy did you get without me looking over your shoulder that the coach is impressed with such a poor showing?"

  "I think that's enough," Ostberg said. Hephaestus' glare all but melted the man. Ostberg took a noticeable step away from Hephaestus. Trembling under his grandfather's gaze, Errol's next end landed off-center. Neatly clustered on the edge of the ten ring, it landed two nines this time. Hephaestus' disappointed grunt made Errol shrink, unable to turn and face the old man. Drenched in sweat, Errol tried to get into the zone, but that withering stare of disapproval burned a hole in his back. On the last end, he almost found it, each arrow scraping along the others to plunk into the heart of the target. That is, until his very last shot. Shearing off a red plastic feather from one arrow, shattering the nock of another, it bounced away, ripping into the face of the target almost sideways.

  "Pathetic," Hephaestus muttered. Errol all but dropped his bow as he slumped.

  "Mister Rickard, your commentary isn't constructive," Ostberg said, mustering his courage.

  "And your coddling will not lead to improvement. I've seen the low standards for praise from you. You should be ashamed for spoiling these children. Pack up Errol, it's time to go."

  "The students have not been dismissed yet," Ostberg said. "The totals have not been tallied, and those who've qualified have no
t officially signed up for the tournament."

  "Two-ninety, two-seventy-one, two-seventeen, two-eighty-four, one-sixty-three, two-fifty-two, two-thirty-three and two-seventy six," Hephaestus said, his back to Ostberg. "By your middling criteria, lanes three, five, and seven are disqualified."

  "How-" Ostberg ran through the totals on his clipboard.

  "I paid attention."

  "I'm afraid Mister Rickard's math is correct, three of you didn't make the cut. The rest of you, if you wish to compete, I have the forms here."

  Hephaestus took the clipboard from Ostberg and filled out a page for Errol, his knobbly fingers surprisingly deft as he scrawled in the information. Signing it, he handed the clipboard back. "Pack up Errol." Errol collected his arrows and removed the heads. He packed everything as neatly as he could, despite the two broken arrows.

  "You have no right to be so rude," Sarah said.

  "What are you going to do? Complain to your daddy that I have strict standards? Please do, it would be an entertaining conversation."

  "I have to get changed," Errol muttered, putting his bow case on the table.

  "Enunciate, boy. There's no point in speaking if you don't speak clearly." Errol scurried off under Hephaestus' piercing gaze. Hurrying into the locker room, he changed back into his school uniform. Seeing how sweat-drenched his gym clothes had become, he stuffed them into his backpack instead of his locker. He was already on his way out when the other boys were on their way in. He meekly followed Hephaestus toward the parking lot. "Where is the pheromone synthesizer?" Hephaestus asked. "The one you grabbed this morning."

  "It's locked in the chemistry teacher's desk," Errol said.

  "Why didn't you get it back?"

  "I tried."

  "That's not a why."

  "I'm sorry. Mister O'Brien left early, and I couldn't get the office to open the classroom without good reason."

  "You will recover it tomorrow. And you will not put on as embarrassing a showing as you did today. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, sir," Errol said. His mind rolled through the logistics of the issue, since it was still behind at least one locked door.

  Feldon Hall was one of the stately manors in the Barons, a neighborhood of old money in the northeast of New Port Arthur. Errol rarely saw the main house, a row of evergreen hedges separated the back access road from the main lawns. He usually only laid eyes on it when Hephaestus needed help sodding or spreading fertilizer. In the gloom of the winter evening, all he spotted before the hedges got in the way was a single rectangle of light from a window. At the end of the access road, past a pickup truck wearing a snow plow, sat a much smaller house. Simple, vinyl-sided and cheap looking, it was hidden from all casual observation.

  Errol climbed out of the rattling gray hatchback and made for the house. Hephaestus grabbed the back of his coat, stopping him in his tracks. "To the range," Hephaestus said. Errol tried not to sigh as he turned to an icy flagstone path along the side of the house. Behind the house, along the lowest part of the overall property, was a gallery of vine-choked trellises. Arches of thick wooden posts held up smaller potted hedges to disguise the space as an extension of the hedgerow when viewed from above or from the main house. In the ground lay a network of camouflaged tracks hidden from an observer on the back porch.

  A device hooked to the back door had a counter and two timers with cheap red LCD readouts. Stepping halfway inside, Hephaestus adjusted the controls for the device, setting the counter to thirty. Errol handed off his backpack and bow case. Hephaestus gave him back the bow and three small quivers with ten arrows each. The message was plain: don't miss. "Give me your coat," Hephaestus said. Errol blinked, staring at the fog each exhalation brought. After a moment's hesitation, he doffed the coat and handed it off. The cold cut through him at once.

  Hephaestus closed the door and the lock engaged. There were only two controls on Errol's side of the door. One button marked 'start' and one marked 'restart'. Slipping the quivers over his shoulder, Errol readied his bow, exhaled a cloud of mist and tapped 'start'. One timer started counting down from five minutes. Off in the distance, a red LED lit up. The other timer started counting up, adding up all the time between when targets appeared and when he hit them. In the darkness, he couldn't see the target it was attached to, but knew it had to be just above the light. The unseen target moved along the tracks, and was no bigger than the ten ring on a normal target. It took time to gauge how far he had to lead the target, but taking too long counted against him. Drawing back the string, Errol loosed his first shot.

  Three times the clock ran down, or he ran out of arrows, or took too much time lining up hits. Three times he had to scour the dark for his arrows and hit 'restart'. Each time, his limbs grew more sluggish. His ears and nose hurt, then went numb. The fourth round, he got lucky and the random selector served up a set of easy targets. With the thirtieth arrow, the lock clicked open. Errol collected his arrows and scurried inside. His grandfather sat calmly at the kitchen table, a plate of food in front of him, another across from him. Shivering, Errol locked the door and sat down at the steaming plate.

  "I should fix the programming on that thing," Hephaestus said. "If it weren't a random number generator, I'd swear it takes pity on you." Errol kept his mouth shut, waiting while the elder Rickard said grace. If not for the chill in his limbs, Errol would have attacked the plate with more gusto. As it was, he didn't want to end up wearing it and restrained himself. "So tell me, why were you deliberately missing at school?"

  "I... I wasn't."

  "Not today. The more I think on it, the more I'm convinced the only way you did as poorly as Ostberg claims you have is if it were on purpose. Why?"

  "I didn't want to draw attention to us."

  "You're not this stupid. How would your archery implicate us?"

  "If they looked into my family..."

  "It would be a nice, sanitary official history. Not even my father figured out what your parents did, and he figured out who I was. The only thing you've done that could expose this family was bringing the pheromone synthesizer to school. How could you not see that it didn't have a big white logo on the side?"

  "I'm sorry, sir," Errol said.

  "I'm too old to put on my mask again, but I can throw together a lock scrubber in the workshop in a few hours. Used to be I made something that simple in fifteen minutes. This damned arthritis is slowing me down."

  "Thank you, sir," Errol said.

  "You'd better not screw this up. It's up to you if you want to go through your collection of trick arrows. It should be easy to smuggle them inside when you go to the tournament."

  "I'll have to think on it, sir."

  "You're in your own hands once we're there. I can't justifiably slip into the school. You have better chances of getting in there unremarked or unnoticed little Eros." Errol tried not to flinch at the nickname. With three Hephaestuses still alive when he was born, dubbing him Hephaestus V seemed absurd. So they'd gone with the son of Hephaestus, Eros. His official name was chosen because it was close enough, and relatively normal. Only after the Robin Hood comments began did Errol realize he was stuck in a no-win situation. Either he let them jibe about him being named for Errol Flynn, or he took the barbs for being Cupid.

  Errol finished the meal with conflicting options rattling around his brain. Hephaestus retreated into his workshop, and soon the sound of power tools filled the house. An ignored fact popped out of the back of his mind. The Community Fund was a sponsor of the Heartstrings tournament. There were decent odds of at least one costumed hero, probably an archer, being in attendance. A shiver unrelated to the subsiding cold ran up his spine.

  Because of the design of its gym, Leyden Academy had the most room for spectators of any of the participating schools. That remained true even after two-thirds of the space was roped off for being past
the firing line. Supplemental bleachers built into the wall between the gym floor and the stands had been extended to provide even more seats. The bleachers were less comfortable than the stands, but were closer. Equipment tables sat in front of the bleachers, directly behind where the archers would be standing to shoot. The judges' table sat in front of the gap created by the tunnel to the school.

  To get into the locker room, Errol had to feign calm as he walked right past the costumed hero seated at the judges' table. The man was dressed in a typically tight-fitting hero suit in navy and white. Two stripes ran over his cowl in a pattern that reminded Errol of a skunk. The geometric pattern on his torso probably told hero watchers exactly who he was. Errol couldn't put a name to him. Despite his nerves, Errol didn't get so much as a glance when he walked past. Stepping into the locker room, he found it less than abandoned. A great many guest competitors were making use of it to get ready.

  Visiting his locker, Errol stashed a bag and his quivers. Finding a spot private enough that he felt comfortable getting changed was difficult. In the end, he forced himself to pretend he was alone. It wasn't as if he had to completely undress. Returning to his locker to stash his street clothes, Errol recovered only one of the quivers. The other, he left inside with his bag. Returning to the gym, Errol found an empty space on the bleachers near where Mister Ostberg stood. He glanced up at the general seating and caught Hephaestus' piercing gaze. Closer to him was a more pleasant visage. It was the redhead he'd almost managed to introduce himself to. She was sitting next to the creepy kid with the eyepatch and a dutch girl who got called on last because she always had the right answers.