by David Drake
"Hell, no, mostly the dinks were letting us alone for a change. We were out in the middle of War Zone C, you know, most Christ-bitten stretch of country you ever saw. No dinks, no trees-they'd all been defoliated. Not a damn thing but dust and each other's company."
"Well, what did happen?"Richmond prompted impatiently. Traffic had thinned somewhat among the blocks of old buildings and he began to look for house numbers.
"Oh, mostly they just died," Morzek said. He yawned alcoholically. "Stevie, now, he got blown to hell by a grenade."
Richmond had learned when he was first assigned to notification duty not to dwell on the ways his… missions had died. The possibilities varied from unpleasant to ghastly. He studiously avoided saying anything more to the sergeant beside him until he found the number he wanted. "One-sixteen. This must be the Lunkowskis'."
Morzek got out on the curb side, looking more skeletal than before in the dappled sunlight. He still held his AWOL bag.
"You can leave that in the car," Richmond suggested. "I'll lock up."
"Naw, I'll take it in," the sergeant said as he waited for Richmond to walk around the car."You know, this is every damn thing I brought from Nam? They didn't bother to open it at Travis, just asked me what I had in it. 'A quart of gin,' I told 'em, 'but I won't have it long,' and they waved me through to make my connections. One advantage to this kind of trip."
A bell chimed far within the house when Richmond pressed the button. It was cooler than he had expected on the pine-shaded porch. Miserable as these high, dark old houses were to heat, the design made a world of sense in the summer.
A light came on inside. The stained-glass window left of the door darkened and a latch snicked open."Please to come in," invited a soft-voiced figure hidden by the dark oak panel. Morzek grinned inappropriately and led the way into the hall, brightly lighted by an electric chandelier.
"Mr. Lunkowski?"Richmond began to the wispy-little man who had admitted them. "We are-"
"But yes, you are here to tell us when Stefan shall come back, are you not?" Lunkowski broke in."Come into the sitting room, please, Anna and my daughter Rose are there."
"Ah, Mr. Lunkowski," Richmond tried to explain as he followed, all too conscious of the sardonic grin on Morzek's face, "you have been informed by telegram that Pfc. Lunkowski was-"
"Was killed, yes," said the younger of the two red-haired women as she got up from the sofa. "But his body will come back to us soon, will he not? The man on the telephone said…?"
She was gorgeous, Richmond thought, cool and assured, half-smiling as her hair cascaded over her left shoulder like a thick copper conduit. Disconcerted as he was by the whole situation, it was a moment before he realized that Sgt. Morzek was saying, "Oh, the coffin's probably at the airport now, but there's nothing in it but a hundred and fifty pounds of gravel. Did the telegram tell you what happened to Stevie?"
"Sergeant!" Richmond shouted. "You drunken-"
"Oh, calm down, Captain," Morzek interrupted bleakly."The Lunkowskis, they understand. They want to hear the whole story, don't they?"
"Yes."There was a touch too much sibilance in the word as it crawled from the older woman, Stefan Lunkowski's mother. Her hair was too grizzled now to have more than a touch of red in it, enough to rust the tight ringlets clinging to her skull like a helmet of mail. Without quite appreciating its importance, Richmond noticed that Mr. Lunkowski was standing in front of the room's only door.
With perfect nonchalance, Sgt. Morzek sat down on an overstuffed chair, laying his bag across his knees.
"Well," he said, "there was quite a report on that one. We told them how Stevie was trying to booby-trap a white phosphorous grenade-fix it to go off as soon as some dink pulled the pin instead of four seconds later. And he goofed."
Mrs. Lunkowski's breath whistled out very softly. She said nothing. Morzek waited for further reaction before he smiled horribly and added, "He burned. A couple pounds of Willie Pete going blooie, well… it keeps burning all the way through you. Like I said, the coffin's full of gravel."
"My god, Morzek," the captain whispered. It was not the sergeant's savage grin that froze him but the icy-eyed silence of the three Lunkowskis.
"The grenade, that was real," Morzek concluded. "The rest of the report was a lie."
Rose Lunkowski reseated herself gracefully on a chair in front of the heavily draped windows."Why don't you start at the beginning, Sergeant?"she said with a thin smile that did not show her teeth. "There is much we would like to know before you are gone."
"Sure," Morzek agreed, tracing a mottled forefinger across the pigmented callosities on his face. "Not much to tell. The night after Stevie got assigned to my platoon, the dinks hit us. No big thing. Had one fellow dusted off with brass in his ankle from his machine gun blowing up, that was all. But a burst of AK fire knocked Stevie off his tank right at the start."
"What's all this about?" Richmond complained. "If he was killed by rifle fire, why say a grenade-"
"Silence!" The command crackled like heel plates on concrete.
Sgt. Morzek nodded. "Why, thank you, Mr. Lunkowski. You see, the captain there doesn't know the bullets didn't hurt Stevie. He told us his flak jacket had stopped them. It couldn't have and it didn't. I saw it that night, before he burned it-five holes to stick your fingers through, right over the breast pocket. But Stevie was fine, not a mark on him. Well, Christ, maybe he'd had a bandolier of ammo under the jacket. I had other things to think about."
Morzek paused to glance around his audience. "All this talk, I could sure use a drink. I killed my bottle back at the Federal Building."
"You won't be long," the girl hissed in reply.
Morzek grinned."They broke up the squadron, then," he rasped on, "gave each platoon a sector of War Zone C to cover to stir up the dinks. There's more life on the moon than there was on the stretch we patrolled. Third night out, one of the gunners died. They flew him back to Saigon for an autopsy but damned if I know what they found. Galloping malaria, we figured.
"Three nights later another guy died. Dawson on three-six… Christ, the names don't matter. Some time after midnight his track commander woke up, heard him moaning. We got him back to Quan Loi to a hospital, but he never came out of it. The lieutenant thought he got wasp stung on the neck-here, you know?" Morzek touched two fingers to his jugular. "Like he was allergic. Well, it happens."
"But what about Stefan?" Mrs. Lunkowski asked. "The others do not matter."
"Yes, finish it quickly, Sergeant," the younger woman said, and this time Richmond did catch the flash of her teeth.
"We had a third death," Morzek said agreeably, stroking the zipper of his AWOL bag back and forth. "We were all jumpy by then. I doubled the guard, two men awake on every track. Three nights later, and nobody in the platoon remembered anything from twenty-four hundred hours till Riggs' partner blinked at ten of one and found him dead.
"In the morning, one of the boys came to me. He'd seen Stevie slip over to Riggs, he said; but he was zonked out on grass and didn't think it really had happened until he woke up in the morning and saw Riggs under a poncho. By then, he was scared enough to tell the whole story. Well, we were all jumpy."
"You killed Stefan." It was not a question but a flat statement.
"Oh, hell, Lunkowski," Morzek said absently, "what does it matter who rolled the grenade into his bunk? The story got around and… something had to be done."
"Knowing what you know, you came here?" Mrs. Lunkowski murmured liquidly. "You must be mad."
"Naw, I'm not crazy, I'm just sick." The sergeant brushed his left hand over his forehead. "Malignant melanoma, the docs told me. Twenty-six years in the goddam army and in another week or two I'd bewarted to death.
"Captain," he added, turning his cancerous face toward Richmond, "you better leave through the window."
"Neither of you will leave!" snarled Rose Lunkowski as she stepped toward the men.
Morzek lifted a fat gray cylinder from his bag."K
now what this is, honey?"he asked conversationally.
Richmond screamed and leaped for the window. Rose ignored him, slashing her hand out for the phosphorous grenade. Drapery wrapping the captain's body shielded him from glass and splintered window frame as he pitched out into the yard.
He was still screaming there when the blast of white fire bulged the walls of the house.
The Elf House
Bill Fawcett, a friend and a book packager, put together for Baen Books what was supposed to be an original anthology of novellas by Dave Weber, Eric Flint, and me. (It was a little more complex than that to begin with, and a lot more complex before the book eventually came out.) For that volume I wrote a Hammer novella which became part of an episodic Hammer novel.
Bill then sold a fantasy equivalent and asked me to write a short story in the Isles universe. Each volume of my Isles fantasy series has four individual viewpoint strands which combine for the climax. If Bill had been able to use a novella, I might've written a sequence which I'd spread out over five or six chapters when it appeared in the next Isles novel. A short story didn't fit that novel format, so I simply wrote "The Elf House" from scratch with no expectation-then or now-of ever reusing it as part of an Isles novel.
I wrote the story to be self-standing. If it had any value at all beyond doing a favor to a friend, it needed to be accessible to readers who had no previous familiarity with the Isles series. That meant limiting it to a single character.
I picked Cashel because he's friendly, cheerful, and very direct. Basically, I like him. (I identify with Cashel's sister Ilna, who's angry, harsh, and generally depressed, but that's another matter entirely.)
I knew the concept of the "The Elf House" wasn't original to me, but until I'd finished the rough draft I couldn't have told you from whom I'd stolen it. In reading it through for the first time, the source was obvious: "Kazam Collects," an early work by Cyril Kornbluth.
If I needed proof of how much better a writer I could be than I am, all I'd have to do is reread any of a dozen or more pieces which Kornbluth dashed off before he was twenty. Because I don't need that proof, I reread Kornbluth simply for the pleasure of discovering new flashes of brilliance with each reading. I suggest that all of you read him also.
Cashel didn't need to carry his quarterstaff in the corridors of the Vicar's palace-what'd been the Count of Haft's place till Prince Garric arrived the week before-but he was more comfortable holding the smooth, familiar hickory than he'd be otherwise. He didn't dislike big buildings, but he disliked being in them; and this palace had a nasty feel all its own.
Besides, the staff had been a friend in places where Cashel had no other friends. He wouldn't feel right about leaving it alone in the huge suite assigned to him while he went off to dinner with Garric in the roof garden. If the servants, officials, and the amazing number of other people crowding the palace stared at him, well, a man as big as Cashel or-Kenset was used to being stared at whether he carried a quarterstaff or not.
For a wonder there wasn't anybody around at the moment. Cashel sauntered down the hall looking at the cherub mural painted just above shoulder level. In the dim light through the transoms of the rooms to either side, there was something new to catch every time he passed.
Cashel started to grin at the little fellow with his wings spread as he struggled to lead a goat who didn't want to go. The sound of a girl crying jerked his head around.
He'd been holding the quarterstaff straight up and down in one hand. Now, without him thinking about it his left hand slipped into position a span below the right and he slanted the staff before him. "Ma'am?" he said, ready to deal with whatever was making a woman cry.
The girl wore servant's clothing, a cap and a simple gray tunic set off by a sash of bleached wool. She knelt a little way down a corridor which joined the main one from the right. Cashel didn't remember there being anything but a blank wall there, but he guessed he'd always missed it because he'd been intent on the mural opposite.
She gave another vain push at the inward-opening door in front of her, then looked up at Cashel with eyes glittering with tears."Oh, sir!"she said."I dropped the key and it slipped under the door. The steward will beat me if I don't get it back!"
"I don't guess he will," Cashel said. The notion that somebody'd beat a little slip of a girl surprised him into speaking in a growl. He didn't know her, but he didn't think men ought to hit any girls. He was real sure no man was going to try that twice in front of Cashel or-Kenset.
He cleared his throat and went on in a normal voice, "But anyhow, let's see if I can't get your key."
The door stood a finger's breadth ajar. Cashel pressed with the fingertips of his right hand without budging it further. It was stuck, that was all; rusty hinges, he figured, since the panel didn't bind to the lintel or transom. Through the crack at the edge he could see a glint of gold in what was otherwise darkness; the key was there, all right. It must've bounced wrong off the stone floor.
Cashel leaned his quarterstaff against the wall beside him and placed his hands one above the other on the latch side of the panel. The girl looked up at him intently. She seemed older, all of a sudden, and there was no sign of her frightened despair of a moment ago. He made sure his feet were set, then put his weight against the wood.
More people lived in the palace than did in all Barca's Hamlet where Cashel'd grown up. Even though there wasn't any traffic in the main corridor, sounds constantly echoed through the hallways and made the floor quiver. All that stopped; Cashel pressed against the panel in dead silence. Maybe it was the effort, because the door still didn't want to give And then it did, though with creaking unwillingness. It opened another finger's breadth, twice that…
The girl stuck her arm in, calling something that Cashel could barely hear through the roar of blood in his ears."I can't quite…" she said, so he kept pushing and the door gave some more, enough that she squeezed her torso into the room beyond.
Cashel shoved harder yet. He could feel the wood fighting him like the staff of a bent bow, ready to snap back if he let up the pressure. "I've got it!" the girl said, only her legs from the knees down out in the hallway where Cashel could see them. "I've-"
And then she shrieked, "Milord, I'm falling!"shrilly. Her legs slid out of sight, following the rest of her. She was wearing sandals with straps of green-dyed cut-work.
Cashel didn't understand what was happening, but as the girl slipped inward he slammed his shoulder hard against the panel instead of just shoving with his hands. He hadn't done that before because he didn't want to smash the door, but now he didn't care.
The door didn't break, neither the thick fir panel nor the squealing hinges that fought him all the way, and he swung it open at right angles. The room within was small and dingy. There was no furniture, and part of the rotten wainscoting had fallen onto the floor.
The girl had the key in one hand and reached toward Cashel with the other. She looked like she was sliding backwards, but she was already farther away than the far wall of the room.
Cashel grabbed the staff with his left hand and stretched it out to the girl. She couldn't reach it and screamed again. Her voice was growing fainter; he could see her body shrink as the distance increased.
"Duzi!"Cashel bellowed. He strode into the room, holding the quarterstaff out in both hands. The girl grabbed it, but Cashel's feet slipped like he was standing on an icy hillside.
The door slammed behind him. The only light was a dim, yellow-brown glow that silhouetted the girl's body and he and she plunged down an unseen slope.
***
Cashel felt himself spinning as he dropped, but his body wasn't touching anything. The girl held the other end of his staff; he couldn't see her expression, but she didn't bawl in fear or make any sound at all that he noticed.
They skidded onto a gritty hillside and stopped. Cashel looked over his shoulder. All he saw was gray sky and a rising slope. There wasn't any sign of the room where they'd come from. He looke
d all around and didn't see anything he liked better.
The bare hills ranged in color from yellow-white to the red of rusty iron. For the most part the rock had weathered into gravel, but there were outcrops where the stone must've been harder. The general landscape wasn't pretty, but the outcrops were worse. Whenever Cashel looked hard at one, he started to see a large, angry face.
He got up, brushing crumbled rock from the back of his tunic. He hadn't come down hard, for all that they'd seemed to be rushing headlong through emptiness. He glanced at the girl, already on her feet. She smiled and said, "My name is Mona, Lord Cashel. Do you know where we are?" "Just Cashel, please, mistress," he said with a grimace. "I'm not lord anything."
He cleared his throat, looking around again. The landscape wasn't any more appealing on a careful survey than it'd been when he first landed in it. "And I don't know anything about this place, except I wish we were someplace else."
"It's where the house elf lives," Mona said. She was looking at the landscape also, turning her head slowly."Used to live, I mean. There can't be anything alive here except the dwelling itself."
She held her arms across her bosom; her expression was coldly disapproving. From Mona's features she was younger than Cashel's nineteen years, but her eyes were a lot older than that.
Cashel followed the line of her gaze up a series of streaked, ragged slopes. On top of a butte was what at first he'd taken for white stone weathered into a spire. When he squinted and let it sink in angle by angle, he realized he was seeing a man-made tower with battlements on top. A slant of windows curved around the shaft the way they'd do to light a circular staircase.
"You mean that castle?" Cashel said, nodding toward the structure instead of pointing. "That there's people living there?"
"There's no people here and no elves either," the girl said as she stared toward the tower. "Only us. And I don't mean the building, Cashel. This whole world was the dwelling for the house elf."
Cashel cleared his throat. He took out the pad of raw wool he carried in his belt wallet and wiped the smooth hickory surface of his quarterstaff as he thought.