Guardians of the Flame - Legacy

by Joel Rosenberg

  "Perhaps," Doria said. "But . . ." She shrugged it away. "In any case, I don't want her to have any more shocks, not right now. When she's well, she's a lot stronger in body and soul than most people are, but—"

  "How do you know that? This 'feel' of yours?" Jason was skeptical. Doria had lost her persona as a Hand healer when she'd defied the matriarch in Melawei. He was grateful to her—hell, she'd defied the matriarch by using her spells to save Jason's life—but that didn't blind him to what she'd given up.

  Doria's face went stony. "Because after the two of us were gang-raped," she said calmly, levelly, almost mechanically, "she recovered from what sent me into catatonia. She was able to deal with it and, not too much later, to resume a normal sex life with your father. That takes a kind of strength of character that I doubt you have, boy," she said, her whisper momentarily vehement. She fought for control of herself, and found it. "But she's not at her best right now, which is why both of you are to play this up as an easy little vacation before you settle down to marriage and work or whatever—"

  "Doria?" Andrea's sleepy voice interrupted itself for a yawn. "What is—oh, Jason, Aeia," she said, sitting up in bed and smiling. She held out her hands to them.

  Awake, she looked dreadful. Her eyes were puffy and red, and there were crusts at the corners of her mouth and eyes. Jason took one of her hands in his. Hers were dry and hot, the skin loose as an old woman's. But Mother couldn't be getting old, could she?

  She smiled at them. "The two of you will watch out for each other, now. And be careful."

  Or maybe she could.

  He shrugged. "Nothing to it. Just a quick jaunt on dragonback, and a pickup in Endell. Nothing to it," he repeated.

  Why did the words sound insincere in his ears? That was about the size of it, in fact: it was just going to be a handful of days away from Biemestren, that was all.

  Andrea didn't seem to hear him. "I haven't seen Janie for years and years. My, she must be as big as you are. And I only know about little Doria Andrea from Walter's and Kirah's letters." She smiled at Doria. "Although I did notice that you got top billing."

  "Then again," Doria said, "naming her 'Andrea Doria' would have been a—"

  "No, don't say it!"

  "—it would have been a disaster."

  The two Other Side women giggled like a couple of girls. He didn't understand it; he spread his hands to confess ignorance when Aeia looked at him curiously, then shrugged as though to say that she didn't understand it either.

  But their laughter was infectious, and Jason and Aeia soon found themselves laughing, too. Laughter made the goodbyes easier.

  * * *

  Doria caught up with them in the hall. "She's not in the best shape. She's been substituting seeming for real health for too long, and that's an awful trap. So I want her to rest, and not worry. . . . And I also want both of you to get back when you're supposed to. Understood?"

  Aeia hugged her. "Understood, Aunt Doria."

  Jason nodded. "I'll miss you, too."

  She bit her lip and smiled. "There is that, too, boychick. Take care."

  PART TWO

  Home

  CHAPTER 8

  Outside of Enkiar

  Miscellaneous is always the largest category.

  —Slovotsky's Laws

  The night was clear and bright above, dark and threatening below. Off to port and perhaps a mile below, the murk of the Enkiar streets was relieved only by a precious few lanterns, and by the glowing coals of three garbage fires at the town's western perimeter.

  The stars flickered brightly, while distant faerie lights pulsed in a lethargic adagio of scarlet and cerulean. Again, Jason tried to look straight ahead, past the straining neck of the dragon, as the rush of air beat tears from his eyes. He wiped at the dampness at his temples and let himself ease back into the straps.

  A massive hand gripped his shoulder. "It shouldn't be too much more," Durine said, his voice pitched to barely carry over the wind and the flapping of wings. "Any time now." He gave Jason's shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

  Behind Durine, half-hidden behind tied-down canvas sacks, the others were strapped in their saddles, Kethol, still wide-eyed, looked down with more than a little apprehension, Tennetty watching everything with active indifference. Aeia took flying as a matter of course—she'd ridden on dragonback since before Jason was born—while Bren Adahan kept his expression under strict control.

  *They weren't at the first of the usual campsites,* Ellegon reported. *So we'll try the next one.*

  While Enkiar was militantly neutral, and the Home warriors were free to make camp in the forests to its west and north, the enforcement of that neutrality was sometimes more theoretical than actual outside the city proper. Though Lord Gyren's troops enforced the neutrality in the city itself, the discipline tended to fade toward the edges.

  There were advantages to all that. Enkiar's neutrality didn't stop the Home raiding teams from gathering information. A few times, Home warriors had managed to parlay that information into the ambush of a slaver caravan. It worked both ways, though; once, slavers had managed an ambush of Frandred's team, an attack that had left twenty of his warriors dead. So Home raiders never camped twice in a row in the same spot, and always kept a good watch.

  Rising on a pillar of smoke and flame, a signal rocket flared green ahead of them.

  *Nope. They're at number five,* Ellegon said. *They have a dwarf standing guard.*

  How could you tell?

  *Think about it. At this distance,* the dragon said, *human eyes couldn't spot me against a night sky. Dwarves are different.*

  The dragon's wings slowed as Ellegon swooped down, then broke into a furious flurry as the ground came up quickly.

  "Torches!" a familiar gruff voice called from below.

  *Daherrin, what are you doing on watch?*

  "We was short of dwarves," came from the darkness.

  Three shadowy shapes ran up in the darkness, holding bundles of unlit torches in front of them; Ellegon's flame flared briefly, judiciously, lighting the brands one by one.

  Jason quickly unfastened himself from the saddle and dropped heavily to the dew-slick grass, flexing his knees to take up the shock.

  As the torches cast their flickering light around the meadow, Jason found himself face to face with Daherrin and Mikyn. Mikyn was Jason's age; they'd been friends since early childhood. Now Mikyn looked older, a bit world-worn since Jason had last seen him: his sparse brown beard just a touch fuller, the hollows under his eyes darker, and the bones of his face more prominent in the flickering firelight. If Jason hadn't known better, he would have put Mikyn's age at perhaps twenty-five, maybe thirty. Old.

  The big change was in his expression; Jason's childhood friend was looking at him as if he were a stranger.

  "Jason," Daherrin said, his voice shockingly cool, no tone betraying warmth or anger. The dwarf hadn't changed in the many tendays since Jason had last seen him: a solid, seemingly unchangeable stump of a person, almost as wide as he was tall. While Daherrin's head barely came to the top of Jason's chest, his shoulders were every bit as broad as Jason's father's had been. Above a mouse-brown beard shot with gray, two beady eyes peered out over an absurdly aquiline nose.

  The dwarf's lined face was unreadable in the flickering torchlight.

  Then he broke into a smile so broad it would have torn apart a human's face. "Jason," Daherrin said, hugging him so hard bones threatened to break. "Jason, boy, it's good to see you." He released Jason and stepped back. "Damn me if you ain't a bit less skinny across the shoulders." His face sobered. "Heard about your father, and I'm sorry."

  Jason nodded. "So am I."

  Mikyn didn't say anything; he watched Jason.

  The dwarf slapped Jason across the shoulder, almost bowling him over. "I also heard that you did for Ahrmin. Nice going." He smiled. Killing didn't bother Daherrin; it was by way of his business. "You sure the bastard's dead? I recall that your father thought he'd killed h
im once."

  Jason returned the dwarf's level gaze. "I saw his brains."

  "Good man. Betcha your mother's proud a' you." The dwarf started to turn away. "One more thing?"

  "Yes?"

  The dwarf turned toward the dragon. "Hey, Ellegon, keep a lid on things for a minute, would ya?" he called out, then turned back to Jason.

  *I'd rather you didn't—*

  "Chew on this, fucker," the dwarf said. A huge fist caught Jason on the cheek; the world came up and slapped him in the back, knocking the wind clean out of him. He tried to sit up, but curtains of darkness threatened to enfold his mind.

  The distinctive clicks of rifles being cocked cut through the darkness.

  "Tennetty, ta havath," Durine said. "I say ease up, all of you."

  "Shove it up your ass," Tennetty shrilled. "You're ready to kill me for fucking putting my hands on him, and you're going to let—"

  "Tennetty, shut up. Everybody put your weapons down, now," Aeia shouted into the night. "Ellegon!"

  *Everyone, be still. There's nothing going on that's worth dying over.* Dragonfire brightened the sky, penetrating through the haze around Jason's brain. *He's fine. —Jason, get up.*

  Mikyn looked down at him. "That didn't square things. But maybe, just maybe, it's a start." He offered Jason a hand.

  Jason took it, and for a moment considered kicking his boyhood friend in the balls. Twice. Hard.

  But he dismissed the idea and accepted Daherrin's and Mikyn's help to his feet.

  "You coulda gotten half my team killed." The dwarf's nostrils flared as he gripped Jason's hand with painful strength. "I should give everyone a paddle and make you run the gantlet over bare coals, and if you was anybody but the future fucking Emperor, that's exactly what I'd do. But you are, so I can't, so we're all going to have to live with the way you fucked up.

  "You can be Heir, or boy Emperor, or his son, or whatever you wanna be, but you never, never do that again, or what I'll do to you'll make you think this was like the kiss on the butt your mother used to give you when she was done changing your diapers. You hear me, Jason Cullinane?"

  "I hear you." Jason released their hands and stood, wobbly.

  *Everybody, calm down. There has been no harm done.*

  Off in the darkness, Tennetty and Kethol still faced off against Daherrin's three warriors, Aeia and Durine standing between them. Guns and swords were drawn, but there hadn't been any shots fired or blood spilled, or damage done.

  No harm done.

  The dragon loomed above them all, whisps of smoke issuing from his nostrils. *Tell them that.*

  "Ta havath." Jason raised a hand. "Everybody, ease up, eh?" He took a step and reconsidered. Except for his head; he had a bitch of a headache.

  * * *

  Close to a hundred warriors gathered around the campfire as Daherrin's quartermasters divided up Ellegon's supplies. The supplies were divided into three categories: clothes, weapons, and miscellany.

  Clothes were plentiful. There was a change for everybody. Warriors would pick up fresh clothes and disappear into the night down the lamplit path to a nearby stream, soaping up, then shivering as they sluiced off in the cold water and changed into fresh clothes to return, damp and cold but clean, to bag the dirty laundry for washing at Home.

  There was plenty of powder and shot to go around, and a few spare rifles to be exchanged for ones damaged beyond field repair.

  Miscellaneous was, as Walter Slovotsky used to say, the largest category. There were: spare lamps, sewing kits, a few precious flasks of healing draughts, leather thongs, coils of rope, bundles of arrow stock and fletching equipment, a small bag of mail . . . but no food. While raiding teams were expected to buy staples and fodder locally, dried meat and fresh vegetables were a great treat on the road.

  Not this time.

  Daherrin swore softly. "An' it's real good to see you," he said to Aeia, his voice only a trace sarcastic, "and your noble baronship," he added, with a too-deep bow toward Bren Adahan, "and all that, and Durine's a real treat for the eyes. . . ."

  The big man chuckled.

  The dwarf expectorated into the fire and considered the sizzling gobbet of spit for a moment. "But I'd have rather had your weight in carrots and prunes than all of you."

  His second, a lanky man who was missing most of his front teeth, shrugged. "Well, sho we shend shomebody in to town tomorrow to pick up shome more shupplies."

  "We could. But—" The dwarf considered it for a moment. "I don't like facing the slavers if we don't have to."

  Jason raised an eyebrow.

  "Slavers in town." The dwarf spat again. "Big caravan—too big fer us ta take right now. But they are headed back toward Pandathaway, and I've got a runner off to Frandred; mebbe we'll join up and jump them around Metreyll, if they take that route."

  *A large caravan?* Ellegon's wings fluttered nervously.

  Large slaver caravans almost always meant a lot of dragonbaned crossbow bolts.

  The dwarf nodded. "Yeah. Which is why, if I'm sending somebody into town right now, Enkiar being neutral or not, I'd like you to hang around until tomorrow. Fly up into the hills and get lost fer a day; but we might need some quick rescue."

  Steam hissed from between the dragon's teeth. *But if I'm that far away, I can't mindtalk to anyone, and I can't even get distant thoughts and impressions from anyone except Jason.*

  Thanks a lot.

  "Jason." Daherrin toyed with his beard. "You got a problem with going into town?"

  Not again, he thought. I'll not run again. "There's no problem, Daherrin." Jason shook his head. "I can handle it."

  Tennetty nodded. "Right. I'll watch your back."

  "No." Bren Adahan said.

  Heads turned toward him in surprise.

  "I don't recall asking your opinion, Baron," Tennetty said.

  Bren Adahan waved her objection away. "You're too well-known. Anybody sees Karl Cullinane's one-eyed attack bitch and they'll start looking at who she's protecting. Jason will be safer if he's less visible—just him, and a few others. Jason will be just one of the crowd."

  "The baron's making sense." Durine nodded. "Count us in."

  "No." Bren Adahan shook his head again.

  Kethol cocked his head to one side. "What's your problem with that?"

  "Mixed teams. Do you like working with mixed teams? It's better if Jason is protected by a team that's used to working together. They're used to working in concert; they can read signals from each other that you and Durine and I would miss."

  Kethol bit his lip, and then nodded. "You may be right. I don't like it, but you're right. Rather have Daherrin work with his own people—Jason will be safer that way."

  "It's my call, not any of yours," Daherrin said. "I go in with my people, plus Jason. Jason, me, Mikyn, Arrikol and Falherten. Now, what do we call you? Any name you prefer?"

  "Taren," Jason said. "I'm used to answering to it."

  The dwarf raised his voice. "Okay, everybody—this is Taren. You all get used ta calling him that, and just that. Five extra watches and a twentieth-share penalty on the next haul for the first one who miscalls him. Double the penalty for the second. There won't be a third." He slapped his meaty hands together. "Okay. Let's get this shit unpacked."

  CHAPTER 9

  "The Warrior Lives"

  Fundamentally, every bar is the same as every other one, if it's the kind you're drinking in, to end a sentence with a preposition, which I haven't.

  —Walter Slovotsky

  On the road ahead, a soldier at the guard station began working the wooden arms of a pair of signal flags. A tall, lanky man, he moved easily, as though the weight of his steel helmet and rusty chainmail didn't matter, or couldn't be allowed to matter. The red and white cloths fluttered madly as the long wooden arms clicked and clacked in the warm noon air, then halted for a few moments, only to start up again.

  Jason, sitting astride a big brown gelding, caught Daherrin eyeing the motion intently. "Can yo
u read that?"

  Daherrin nodded briefly. "A bit, Taren." He shrugged. "'Nough to know that's not one of their danger signals. Alarms tend to be short. We shouldn't have much trouble; Enkiar's an open city, remember?"

  "We don't usually have any trouble in Enkiar, Taren," Mikyn said. Like the others, he was giving Jason's assumed name a thorough workout. Jason hoped that would all wear off before they ran into anybody; folks might wonder why it was Taren-this and Taren-that all the time.

  "You still in touch with the dragon?" Daherrin asked.

  Jason shrugged. It was hard to say. He thought he could feel Ellegon's distant presence, but he wasn't sure. Besides, it didn't matter if he could now; the issue was whether he could if and when things went sour in Enkiar.

  A better question was whether that would do any good at all. It would take Ellegon at least a few minutes to arrive in response to even the most plainly heard call for help; it took only a moment to turn a live person into a corpse.

  They rode in slowly, hands away from weapons, although none of them was heavily armed: each of the four humans carried only a beltknife and sword, while Daherrin sported a bastard combination of a short staff and a mace. There were five rifles in the flatbed wagon that Falherten drove, but those were props, not intended for use; real rifles weren't brought into Enkiar.

  The outer guard station consisted of a pair of low stone buildings that might have concealed as many as twenty men each, no more. No more than a bowshot beyond that was the curtain wall surrounding the town, the only visible access an open gate.

  Daherrin was known in Enkiar, certainly by one of the guards, possibly by the half dozen manning the station; it took only a few moments, a palmed coin and a handshake to get them inside, after the most cursory of examinations. They did have to surrender the guns, but since the only ones they were carrying were the five slaver blunderbusses that required the magically compounded slaver powder, leaving them behind presented no problem. Slaver powder wasn't particularly a secret, not for years; it was just horribly expensive.