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The Aisling Book Two Dream

they were covering a lot more ground than Wil had ever done walking.

Wil stood unmoving, concentrating, his back straight, head slightly bent to the left, one eye closed as he took careful aim at the target, licked his lips. He vibrated just a little, anticipation leaking through as though the cool metal against his skin was resonating eagerly beneath his touch. A long, calm breath drew itself evenly into his lungs, held for a moment while his finger twitched on the trigger, pulled…

He blinked. Frowned.

“No, you’re forgetting the safety again.”

“I’m

not
forgetting it.” Wil took the gun’s butt plate from his shoulder, pointed the barrel at the ground as Brayden had instructed—six
thousand
times—and tilted it so he could point at the little catch behind the trigger.

“Every time I go to shoot, my finger slides the safety back on.”

“Mm, well, that’s because it’s designed for right-handed people, I expect. You’ll just have to get used to it.”

Wil scowled and began the process once more. There was a lot to remember, and he hadn’t even got a shot off yet. Stupid-picky-bossy Constable Brayden had made him learn the various parts of the gun first, and what they did, quizzing him relentlessly as they’d ridden through the day. Once they’d finally stopped for the night—earlier than yesterday so they’d still have some light left—Wil was then instructed and quizzed on how to load and pump it. And all of that before he was even allowed to touch the poxy thing except to point at various parts and name them. Even though the rain had let up before dawn and the day was alternately bright and gray and not as cold, Wil found himself in a somewhat sour mood, and Brayden’s patience was noticeably thinner than usual.

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Carole Cummings

The combination was either going to result in one of them with the shotgun up his arse, or Wil in eventual giddy hysterics on the ground.

He supposed he should be more accommodating.

Brayden hadn’t slept at all and Wil had, quite well, in fact, as soon as he’d convinced himself Brayden wasn’t going to try following Wil into his dreams again. He’d been fairly sure he’d believed Brayden’s horror the next morning, and believed very firmly that if it had been possible for Brayden to convince himself it had never happened, he would’ve done. Still, there was blissful relief this morning when Wil had woken to the smell of coffee and the knowledge that he’d been as alone inside his head as he could be. Brayden’s dark shape had been behind him as always, at his back, Watching, but that was all, and strangely, it hadn’t unnerved him.

“All right, start over,” Brayden said sternly. “Cock it first and slide the—”

“—slide the safety on, right, I can’t apply the safety without first cocking it, then I brace the butt plate to my shoulder like so—”

“Not too firmly—”

“—because there will be a kick—”

“Recoil.”

Wil dipped the barrel back down, sent a sideways glare at Brayden. “What bloody
difference
does it make?”

“The difference,” Brayden said slowly, “is that it’s called a recoil and not a kick.”

Wil held back a growl, turned his attention back to the gun and the target. “Not exactly the strong, silent type, are you, then?” he muttered through his teeth, then:

“
Fine
, there will be a
recoil
, and if my grip is too firm I’ll end up with a broken shoulder.” Wil rolled his eyes a little, forcibly relaxing his jaw before he ground his teeth away, and sighted down the long barrel and across 43

The Aisling Book Two Dream

the clearing, aiming for the bundle of sticks Brayden had strung from a branch as a target. “If you’d just let me use one of the handguns, I wouldn’t be having this—”

“I keep telling you, they’re not as accurate and they don’t have—”

“—don’t have the same range, yes, so you’ve said, but I bet they’re a lot easier to use one-handed.”

“You’d think, but not really.”

“Easy for you to say,” Wil grumbled. “You don’t have to pump this thing with a broken hand.”

“Your hand isn’t broken,” Brayden replied, voice tight, “a couple of fingers and a few bones are—”

“Right, like the fact that it’s ‘a few bones’ and not
all
of them is supposed to make some kind of difference?”

“—and your wrist is only sprained, don’t whinge, and we’ve already taken care of pumping, you did just fine when you did it the other— Why am I even—?

You know…” Brayden took a long breath, a low growl rumbling in his chest. “Do I look like I don’t know what I’m doing?”

That was the truly irritating part—it would be so much easier to maintain annoyance with Brayden if he
did
look like he didn’t know what he was doing. As it was, it was too obvious that Brayden knew exactly what he was doing, and if Wil ever wanted to defend himself from a range longer than whacking-distance, all he could do was listen and try to learn. He sighed, checked the safety by feel—he’d slid it over again when he’d slipped his finger over the trigger, damn it—and put it back into firing position.

“All right, I’m sighted, the safety is off and my grip is as relaxed as I can make it. Can I shoot now?”

Brayden took a step to the side. “As you will,” was all he said.

The reply was so unexpected, Wil had to stop himself 44

Carole Cummings

from releasing his firing stance in exasperation before he realized he’d been given a
Go ahead
, rather than a
No, no,
stop, you’re doing it wrong, start again
. He had to blink a few times and flex his fingers. Despite himself, he checked the safety another three times before determinedly curling his finger about the trigger, slowing his breathing to a low, even in-and-out. The bundle of sticks hung maybe fifty feet away, and he concentrated on the brown of the wood, the tan of the string holding them together, the over-and-under loop of the knot…

It wasn’t a bundle of sticks; it was Siofra’s smug, smiling face.

Brayden had been right—there was a healthy recoil to the thing. Had Wil been gripping it tight as he’d done the first few times, his arm would likely right now be several yards behind him. His ears rang dully, the sharp, acrid bite of gunpowder in his nose, and oily smoke wafted in a thin cloud about his head. He blinked, turned first to Brayden, and then followed Brayden’s surprised gaze to the target.

The sticks were still held together in what used to be the center of the bundle, but now they spiraled crazily on the end of the string, the trajectory lopsided and erratic, Wil’s shot having sheared them in half. One end of ragged splinters twirled against the string at a sharp angle, the other end dipping and weaving in a wild orbit of unscathed kindling. Wil blinked some more, turned to Brayden again, who peered back with a surprised look that might have been somewhat insulting if Wil wasn’t so stunned himself.

“I hit it.” It was rather stupid and redundant, but…

well, he’d
hit
it. He’d actually
hit
it.

“You did,” Brayden agreed, the faint lurking smile of approval doing things to Wil’s pride he refused to admit.

“All right, what next?” Brayden wanted to know.

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The Aisling Book Two Dream

Wil had to think about it. He’d never expected to actually get this far; the instructions about what came after still lived in a haze of
It’ll never happen so why
bother
.

“Pump the forend,” he heard himself say. “Expel the spent shell and reengage the safety.”

“Good,” Brayden approved. “Do it.”

Wil did, gripping the forend barrel-up in his left hand like Brayden had shown him, then giving the rifle a sharp jerk down then up. Ordinarily, or so Brayden had told him, one would keep the gun braced to one’s shoulder and maintain their firing stance while completing this task, but Wil had tried and hadn’t been able to pump the thing with his damaged right hand, so Brayden had shown him an alternative. This way held the risk of too much time between shots, Brayden had told him, and vulnerability of exposure, but it was better than trying to fumble through clumsily re-cocking the thing and getting shot while you stood there cursing at it.

“Anyway, this way I could shoot from the saddle and still keep hold of the reins,” Wil had enthused—back when he was still more bloodthirsty than tired.

“Right,” had been Brayden’s laconic reply, “and end up on your arse from the recoil or from the horse getting spooked and throwing you. Not all horses are made for the Cavalry, y’know; they have to be trained not to bolt at loud noises, which is why we left them back at the campsite.”

The man just seemed to revel in bursting bubbles.

“How d’you know that?” Wil had asked, somewhat truculently, refusing to let go of his bubble just yet. “Do you know
every
thing?”

“Because I was
in
the Cavalry,” Brayden had informed him; Wil could distinctly hear the proper name status in Brayden’s voice. “And yes, I
do
know everything, or at 46

Carole Cummings

least more than you do, so
if
you please—show me how you load that cartridge.”

Wil had rolled his eyes, sighed out loud like a five-year-old, then did what Brayden instructed. Now, he completed the task of pumping and expelling one-handed, swaying back a little to avoid getting hit by the spent cartridge as it spun out from the bolt. He pointed the rifle’s barrel at the ground and slid the safety into position, then looked up at Brayden with a grin he couldn’t’ve kept from his face if he’d just shot his own foot off.

“Very good.” Brayden nodded. “Now, let’s back you up a few dozen paces and see if that was just a lucky shot.”

Wil gaped. “A lucky
shot
?” He followed Brayden back to a new position, mouth flapping. “It was bloody
beautiful
; what d’you
mean
‘lucky shot’?”

Brayden merely shrugged. “It may well be that you’re a naturally brilliant shot,” he told Wil, calm encouragement in both his hint of a smile and his tone. “It may also be that we have just witnessed conditions that will never be repeated. The only way to tell for sure is to repeat them.”

Damn the man—there was that annoying reason again.

It wasn’t until his second shot that Wil began to appreciate the undeniable power in his hands. He’d thought he’d known what to expect the first time, but it had all happened so fast that he didn’t really remember any individual, distinct impressions. This time,
everything
made an impression: the line of focus from the end of the barrel to the target, and how it fuzzed out everything in its periphery; the feel of cool metal against his cheekbone as he sighted down; how the forend made itself a gentle cushion against the bandages on his right hand; the almost-tender resistance of the trigger against his finger as he steadily pulled it back…

47

The Aisling Book Two Dream

The awesome
punch
of the recoil as it vibrated from his hands and up his arms, through his shoulder and chest, and on down his backbone to the ground.

Wil was still standing there in his firing stance,
feeling
it all, when Brayden’s big hand clapped to his shoulder, gripped tight and shook.

“Un-bloody-
believable
!” Brayden laughed, shaking Wil again in his enthusiasm. “I have
never
seen anyone shoot dead-on like that, not the first time. You’re brilliant!”

Wil felt pretty brilliant. He lowered the gun, cocked it and ejected the cartridge, then slid the safety into place, breathing deep the scent of oil and spent gunpowder.

He hadn’t just taken off the other end of the twigs this time; he’d pulverized the string from which they hung and turned it all into a shower of fluttering splinters and smoking twine. He’d never known destruction could be so beautiful.

A grin curled his mouth, and he looked over at Brayden, seeing his own pleasure reflected back at him.

Even the heavy hand gripping his shoulder wasn’t very heavy.

“I want to shoot something bigger,” Wil said.

It was growing too dark to see when Brayden finally managed to drag Wil away from their makeshift target range to head back to camp. Wil’s arms were sore and a little shaky, and his shoulder was probably going to be bruised, but he was still too high for any of it to worm through the euphoric haze. Brayden had been more than accommodating, finding bigger and bigger things to shoot from farther and farther away, until he got tired of setting up targets and just had Wil shoot the trunks of trees. Not 48

Carole Cummings

quite as satisfying—they didn’t fly apart like sticks and piles of leaves or small stones did—but it did help Wil adjust his aim.

“We’re blazing a trail miles wide for anyone to follow,”

Brayden had muttered. “Let’s just hope they miss where we turned off, and they might miss us altogether.”

Wil absolutely
could
not
bring himself to care.

“So, did you learn to shoot in the army?” he asked Brayden as they walked back to camp, the rifle a comfortable weight against his back, hanging from its strap about his shoulder.

“No, my foster father taught me,” Brayden replied.

“The one who gave you the knife?”

A lift of sandy eyebrows. “I only had the one.”

“Did you like him?”

“I like him just fine.
And
my foster mother, before you ask. They still live in Putnam, and I have dinner with them almost every week.”

Huh. Interesting. Brayden really did have an actual life. “But you don’t live with them?”

“No,” Brayden snorted. “Not for a very long time.”

“Well, why not?”

“Because when children become adults, they move out on their own. It’s just the way it’s done.”

Wil took this in with interest. “So, you don’t hate them, then?”

“Of course not. Why would I hate them?” Brayden sounded genuinely mystified by the question.

“Well, you said your foster father gave you that knife, and you just sort of… handed it over to someone you barely know. I thought, if you liked him, you would’ve wanted to keep it.”