Once A Hero

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Greetings, lads." He flicked the borrowed dirk down, sticking it quivering into the ground near the bandit's head. The boys jumped back startled, then stared at the dirk and the man who had so casually flung it down. "Are any of you hurt?"

  Most remained quiet, but the oldest nodded his head. He turned, and Durriken reached up, taking the boy's head in both his hands. He spread apart blood-matted hair above the boy's left ear. "Evil gash that, but closing." Rik glanced at Gena and shook his head, then released the boy and parted his own hair to reveal a small crescent-shaped scar. "I've one like it, but mine's not a relic of surviving a Haladin raid."

  Andra's mother came away from the glowing coals that had been her wagon and curtsied before Genevera. "That is my daughter, M'Lady Sylvanii. I will take her so she will not offend you."

  Gena shook her head and tickled the child beneath her dirty chin. "Your child is lovely and could not offend me. I thank you for letting me enjoy her."

  Gena chose her words carefully and fought to keep her tone light. The woman's comment to her had been full of fear, and her careful pronunciation of the Elven name for themselves told Gena that the woman only knew of Elves through the old tales. She was used enough to being considered exotic in larger cities, but the reverent terror displayed by the ^n of the countryside sent a shiver running down her spine.

  "Goodwife, are you injured?" Gena held Andra out to her, and the woman hugged her child close.

  The woman shook her head and swiped at tears. "No, m'lady, I am not hurt in blood or bone, but . . ." She looked at where her wagon had stood. "Our wagon is gone, my husband is dead. . . ."

  Gena grabbed ahold of the woman before she could fall down. She lowered her to the ground and freed Andra from her arms. "Here, have some water. I am Gena, my friend is Durriken." Gena unstoppered the canteen and let the woman drink long and deep. "How is it that you are here? Where did you come from?"

  The woman lowered the canteen, and a droplet of water lingered on the lower edge of her lip. "We are all from Beech Hollow. It is . . . it was a small village in the mountains on the border with Kaudia. You would not have heard of it, but it was a good place until people started coming through. They told us of raiders, Haladin raiders. We decided to come north to Aurdon. We wanted to be safe."

  Gena sat back on her haunches. "Durriken and I are bound for Aurdon. It is not far, barely a day's ride."

  The woman shook her head. "We can never make it. Our oxen are dead, our menfolk are dead. I have nothing now. . . ." Her lower lip trembled, and the water droplet washed a clean line down her dust-coated chin. She drew her knees up to her chest and lowered her face onto them; then her shoulders began to heave as she wept silently.

  Gena left her there and moved on to the other groups of people at the other wagons. She checked the unmoving men and boys for any signs of life, but found none. Stories told of how the Haladina pressed a dirk into the hands of every male child at birth. Haladin men were the product of years of warring against each other. Killing was their livelihood, and were the dead men here to be taken as a sample of their work, they knew their trade well.

  Once she had determined she could do nothing for the men, she turned her attention to the women and children. Aside from being badly frightened and road weary, most of the children appeared healthy, if not a little too skinny for their height. The women did their best to hold their terror and sadness in. They wanted to mourn their fallen husbands, fathers, and sons, but they seemed to know that to lose control would lead to even more disaster.

  Gena agreed with the thought expressed by a number of the women that they had been spared the sword or lance because the Haladina were planning to take them back and sell them into the seraglios of the Wastelands. She had her doubts about that, however, as only two of the women—girls, really—were soft and pretty enough for that sort of life. The other women looked tired and well-worn. Even allowing for her cultural bias, Gena felt certain that the women had been saved because they had not offered much in the way of resistance to the raiders.

  Despite the urgency of their reaching Aurdon, Gena and Durriken both agreed in a whispered consultation that they could not leave the farmers alone. One Haladin band ought have been driven off, but the possibility that another might be nearby and try to finish the job could not be dismissed. Moreover, they both knew that people who had been raised in a closed and close community like a farming village were utterly out of their element on the road in the Centisian heartland.

  "What we need is organization." Rik smiled and gave Gena a quick kiss. "I think we can take some steps toward that at this very moment."

  Durriken whistled, and his pony trotted over to him. He boosted the oldest boy into the saddle and pointed out a circular route. "Take Benison out and around so you come up on the bandits' strays from [the south] there. Approach them slowly, and they'll trot in toward us. Let the pony do all the work, he knows how it is done."

  As the pony trudged off, Durriken pointed to the rest of the boys. "Quick, now, gather up some firewood. Make a big pile right over here." Walking away from them, he dug the heel of his boot into the ground and scuffed out a cross.

  "Right here, now. Those what bring the most can help me feed my flashdrakes."

  Durriken stooped and recovered the weapons from where he had dropped them. Blowing dust from them, he inserted each into the holding straps and crossed to where Gena crouched near Andra's mother. Kneeling at the sobbing woman's feet, he settled his hands on hers. "Have no fear, goodwife, we will get you to Aurdon." He stood as the other refugees began to drift in toward the reddish glow and warmth of the burned wagon. "All we need is a plan, but that is why I am here."

  Gena watched Durriken as he began to pace back and forth. She knew him well enough to know he was putting on an act, assuming a role of brave importance and leadership—a role he hated when he saw it in others. He was a curious man, in that, when needed, he would slip into roles that he disdained. He became what he had to become, to do what had to be done.

  "Now we have one bold lad out there on my pony—is he your son?" Durriken gave a plump woman a smile when she glanced off at the boy on the pony. "A fine youth. He will bring the bandits' horses back here. That will give us four."

  Another woman, with twin daughters clutching her thighs through thick homespun skirts, shook her head. "Four horses will not pull our wagons to Aurdon."

  "No, they won't, my good woman." Durriken paced over near the Haladin body he had studied earlier. As he turned back to face the women, he raised his left hand and pointed off behind them into the night. "Is that a light? Are the Aurdon Rangers this far out?"

  When everyone turned to look back into the night, Durriken brought his heel down on the raider's mouth in a quick, sharp blow. He squatted down, using his crouched body to shield the corpse's ruined face from the women and shrugged as they all looked back at him. "It was nothing, a twinkling star mayhap."

  He pried the raider's broken mouth open with his right hand and worked one of the canine teeth loose. "Now, as you were thinking, four horses are not enough to get your wagons to Aurdon. Luckily for you, these Haladina like to decorate themselves." He stood and held up a tooth set with a small sapphire. "Unless oxflesh is valued beyond good conscience and fair reason in Aurdon, a bandit smile will buy you a whole herd."

  In silent agreement Genevera and Durriken split the work that needed to be done between benign and grim. Durriken dragged the bandit bodies off and harvested their valuables in the evening darkness. Gena encouraged the women to set their daughters to preparing food while she helped wives and mothers clean their dead and dress them for burial. They laid them out in the grassland beside the road, each family in turn bidding a tearful and private farewell to their loved ones.

  With a borrowed shovel on his shoulder, Durriken looked at the eight bodies and shook his head. "I have been glad, over these three years with you, to know your schooling in magick came in the areas of combat and healing. I have benefited fro
m both, but there are times I could wish for your having other knowledge."

  Gena shook her head. "If I knew the earth magicks, I would tear a hole open for you."

  Rik caressed her right arm. "Not that, love. I was thinking necromancy. It would be a just thing for the Haladina to dig the graves for their victims."

  "That it would." She glanced back beyond Durriken, toward the fire on the road and the people grouped around it. She saw one silhouette standing away from the others. "The boy who rode your pony . . ."

  "Keif."

  "Yes, Keif. He is looking this way. I think, if you ask, he will help you dig graves."

  Durriken nodded. "I know. He's a brave lad. I will take him with me for the ride to Aurdon, but I will not have him dig." He gave Gena the half smile that she knew covered a hurt within him. "No boy should have to dig his own father's grave. I'll spare him."

  She reached out and squeezed his shoulder. "It will be a night's work. I do not think many will be sleeping, but it might help . . ."

  Rik's smile broadened. "Yes, love, I will come to the fire from time to time to let them know I am still here." He winked at her. "You should tell them one of your stories, one that will banish the terrors. Seems to me, last night, you told me about a battle waged against the Haladina by that hero . . ."

  "Neal." The hair on her arms rose as she remembered the story, and her smile blossomed as she remembered how the night was spent after its telling. "Neal Custos Sylvanii."

  "Aye, the Dun Wolf." He jerked his head at the refugees. "I doubt they know much about him—before I met you, I thought of him as the tragic hero of some dirges—but he's hero enough the way you tell things to keep the night frights away."

  Gena bent down and kissed Durriken lightly on the lips. "Thank you, Rik, for doing all you have."

  "I have the easy part. Killing and burying take no effort. The dead don't weep." He smiled at her and walked away from the fire. "You have to heal the living. Fortune smiles on them, because you are quite skilled in that way."

  Gena returned to the fire and gratefully drank in its warmth. She gently refused a wooden bowl of steaming gruel, then looked up when she saw Keif [pulling] a piece of wood from the pile that had been collected and testing it for weight. The other little boys looked ready to follow his example.

  She smiled. "That is a good piece. Keif, it will burn well."

  The boy shook his head. "No, m'lady, I want it in case they return."

  "The Haladina?" Gena forced a laugh that caught everyone's attention. "They will not be back."

  A woman's head came up. "How can you say that?"

  Gena sat down, pulling her crossed ankles in. "The Haladina are a fearsome yet fearful people. You know, of course, that they had not raided this far north in many, many years—centuries, in fact. Do you know why?"

  Keif shook his head, as did others in the circle of the firelight.

  Gena nodded and raised her voice enough to cover the cough of spade turning earth. "Five centuries ago, when the Red Tiger fought to rid Centisia of the Reithrese armies and their Haladin mercenaries, he had a hero leading a company of mercenaries. That hero was Neal Elfward, the Dun Wolf." She pointed back up into the dark hills. "Very near here it was that Neal destroyed a Haladin army and scattered them. He won through an ambush and even saved Aurdon itself from destruction. That is a tale for a night like this, and no Haladina will brave its telling to harm us. . . ."

  Chapter 2:

  An Encounter On The Way To Aurium

  Late Summer

  Reign of the Red Tiger Year 1

  Five Centuries Ago

  My Thirty-fifth Year

  ***

  I WAS THINKING, as I flew through the air, that being unhorsed by an ambush was not a good thing. The wisdom of it ranked with my thinking that Haladin plainsmen would have no use for the thick-forested hills of Centisia. Clearly they did, the main use being to set ambushes for fog-brained warriors riding hell-bent through the night.

  My weighing more than a bird and having neither wing nor feather to aid me meant my nocturnal flight ended in a tooth-rattling crash. The ground did its best to swap my spine for my breastbone, but I heard nothing snap and only a few things creak. The gods, taking perverse delight in complicating the lives of mortals, let me live with the pain and embarrassment instead of killing me outright. Being ever so appreciative of their efforts on my behalf, I let the gods carry my somersault into a poor tree and use my armored bulk to punish it for whatever offense it had given them.

  My hauberk lost no rings in its war with the tree, but it graciously passed all the impact right on to me through my padded jerkin. Growling out an oath against the sharp stab in my ribs, I pulled in my feet, rolled back onto my haunches and stood. It surprised me that I managed it, and threw a quick scare in the Haladina coming out of the trees to dispatch me with a little finger-knife. The fact that I towered over him made him reconsider and step back.

  I used the time it took him to draw his scimitar to raise my fingers to my mouth and blast out a whistle. I had been riding point, albeit too fast for being tired and night-blind, so I felt a duty to warn my friends of the ambush. I had no quarrel with my stupidity being the death of me, but I wanted a place in Fool's Hell, not False-Friend's Perdition.

  The Haladin warrior came in at me with the fearless abandon I'd seen in his people throughout the war with their masters, the Reithrese. Curved sword slashing in at hip height, he clearly expected to cut me quick, then scarper off to help his allies kill my companions.

  His blade hit solid and would have cut clean through my hauberk, excepting my mail had been pounded out of ore by Roclawzi craftsmen who prided themselves on doing proper work. The scimitar skittered across my belly with a raspy hiss like a snake slithering across a bed of gold coins. I felt the blow and even grunted as it doubled the aching in my ribs, but I didn't feel the need to die or even let my knees kiss the ground because of it.

  The Haladina's smile slacked as I lunged forward. He tried a backhanded stroke at me, but I had already moved inside his range. I let his right forearm smack into my right flank, then I slammed my right hand into his throat. He gurgled and, spittle flecked his lips while his face turned dark; then he went over backward.

  Coming down, his head met my left knee. I felt nothing through the knee-cap I wore, but the impact jarred him hard enough that his little steel helmet bounced off into the night. Soundlessly, his body went slack. I dropped his body, then took a step back and ground my right heel down onto his wrist, both to free the sword and to see if he was truly unconscious or feigning it.

  He was out, and just as well, as his shattered wrist would have hurt him far worse than my bruised ribs did me. I scooped up his scimitar and started running back up the hill. Even though I could not see well in the dark, the sound of battle provided me all the guidance I needed to tell where I was going.

  The tripline the Haladina had used to bring my horse down had been placed on a good little downhill run. Had we all been running tight-packed, they would have had the lot of us all in a tangle. Their man at the line would have cut it, then their horsemen would have fallen on us and we would have been able to offer little in the way of a fight. The slaughter wouldn't have been worth a bard's chorus, much less a song all for itself.

  Because I had been running the point a good hundred yards in front of my squad, my whistle gave them time to slow and time to stop before they fell to the same trick that got me. The Haladina, having learned to cut with a knife before they cut their teeth, decided to take a run at my people anyway, to see what they would see.

  What they would see was blood and lots of it.

  Cresting on foot the hill I'd descended in air, I hefted the Haladin scimitar. It wasn't my Cleaveheart, but it was a hard ribbon of war-steel. I'd seen more than enough men and boys who hadn't survived opening with a Haladin blade to denigrate it. The scimitar's broad sweep robbed me of a lunge, but fighting cavalry from foot meant the finer points of dueling were
denied me in any event.

  The Haladin horsemen had descended on my men thicker than wing-maggots on meat. I had been traveling with a small, handpicked squad that included a number of my officers. Though they were battle-hardened veterans all, being caught in an ambush still presented problems. Nighttime and fatigue likewise contributed to the confusion that greeted me at the top of the hill.

  The ambush, which any leader would have seen as a nightmare, split the night with the ringing of steel on steel and the cries and shouts of men angry, desperate, and dying. Horses screamed and hooves pounded the ground, sending tremors up through the bottoms of my feet. The swirling martial maelstrom made it impossible for me to judge which side was getting the better of the other.

  At my whistle Aarundel had immediately assumed command of the Pack. There were those who, mindful of the Eldsaga, would have mistrusted an Elf, but not my warriors. They'd too many times seen him as I did now, giving his Dwarf-made war ax a twist and jerk to free it from a Haladin corpse. Looking at him, none of us doubted the truth of the Eldsaga, and all were glad he fought with us rather than against us.

  Being stupid enough to fall to an ambush infuriated me, and I wanted to vent my anger on the Haladina. I howled out my war cry and settled both hands around the scimitar's hilt. The wolfish call brought a Haladina around, and he drove at me. With his scimitar pulled back for a running-slash, he'd already figured where he'd weave my hair into his scalp-coat.

  I raised the scimitar to my high left guard and blocked the slash all but hilt to hilt. The stout blow sent a shiver through my arms, but the blade stayed locked in my grip. Turning toward him as he rode past, I cut down with the scimitar. He had already begun to pull his arm back for another slash, so had no way to parry when I chopped into and through his knee.

  I ducked beneath his weak return slash while his scream drowned out all but the last of Aarundel's shouted warning. I looked up to see another Haladina bearing down on me. He had a lance centered on my chest. Off balance as I was, I could have barely managed a weak parry, and my mail wouldn't stop a horse-lance.