Son of the Hero (30 page)

“I’m going to soak off some of the sweat and dirt,” Annick said. It sounded like a good idea, but I wasn’t prepared for the casual way she stripped. The tunic came over her head. She dropped her trousers and stepped out of soft boots. That was all she was wearing. She draped her clothes over a branch, “to let the wind blow some of the stink out of the them,” she said when she turned to me.

Despite the way I felt about Annick, seeing her naked roused me quickly, fully. Her skin was milky white from forehead to toes. Against that almost albino pallor, her nipples looked purple, twin wine-colored birthmarks. Her pubic hair was as blond and fine as the hair on her head, and so sparse that it scarcely blurred the skin beneath it. When she moved, the muscles in her arms and legs flexed smoothly, strength without bulges. She stepped down into the water and moved away from shore, sinking until only her head showed. Then she turned toward me again.

“Aren’t you coming in?”

“I’m coming,” I stuttered, and I almost made a bad pun of it. I took off everything but my jockey shorts and turned away from Annick when I got that far. I didn’t want to show her how she affected me.

The water was cool, but not cool enough to deflate me. I went under and swam a few strokes downstream, then back. We swam and washed for twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, letting the water clean and relax us. As much as possible, I avoided looking at Annick, but that didn’t help much. The look I’d had before was imprinted as deeply in my mind as the doorways I had prepared at Arrowroot and Coriander. I was still in the water when Annick climbed out—slowly, temptingly, her backside wiggling gently. I ducked underwater again as she cleared the top of the bank and stayed down nearly a full minute before I got out.

“I never expected you to be bashful,” Annick said when I got to the top of the bank and started stripping loose water from my skin. “You’re going to be mighty uncomfortable riding with wet drawers.”

“We don’t have time for anything but bashful,” I said, trying to concentrate on getting rid of water. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll burn?” She sprawled on her back in a sunny patch of grass, arms and legs stretched out—like a snow angel. But there was no snow and she was certainly no angel.

“I never burn,” she said. I shook my head. With skin that pale, a candle ought to pop freckles out on her, but she didn’t have a single freckle visible. More of her elvish heritage, I assumed.

I didn’t have to worry about the misery of riding with wet shorts, though. I had a change of socks and underwear left in my pack. I changed, keeping my horse between Annick and me. When I had everything but my shirt on, I took both horses to the stream for their drinks. Annick flipped over to dry her back in the sun. She spread her hair out to the side. Not a single freckle anywhere.

I stayed with the horses while they drank and grazed a little more. They had every right to expect a long holiday from work, but the work wouldn’t be done until we got to that orchard and cottage, set up the doors, and pulled the army through from Arrowroot and Coriander. If then. When I finally led the horses away from the stream, Annick was dressed. I had her pull the old, wet bandage off my back. When she said that the wound was scabbed over nicely, I decided not to bother having her put another gauze patch over it.

Annick ran a hand up and down my spine, and when I spun around to face her, she gave me a teasing little smile that added a painful twist to my groin. I almost told her about groupies. Almost. Another time, another place, I might want to take advantage. After all, you don’t have to be
completely
pure at heart to be a Hero.

* * * * *

By midafternoon, it was obvious that we weren’t going to reach the cottage before dark. Even with the rest, our horses couldn’t maintain anything like their full speed. We had to pace them as best we could, just to keep them moving at all. A little before sunset, we turned off the road and started moving cross-country, the way Parthet, Lesh, Timon, and I had the first time out. I wasn’t completely certain about this part of the route, but it seemed safer than parading right past Castle Thyme. I described what I remembered of the route to Annick, since she would soon be picking our path.

We were close to the orchard—near the end of the low hills—when we stumbled across the army that Baron Kardeen had sent on ahead by road.
Army—
a few hundred men who were waiting for the promised reinforcements. They were glad to see us, but they would have been happier to see a lot more.

“There are Dorthini patrols everywhere between here and the border,” the commander, Sir Hambert, said.

“Any sign of the main Dorthini force yet?” I asked.

“The last scouts who made it back said that they couldn’t reach Castle Thyme before noon tomorrow—probably a lot later.”

I closed my eyes in relief for a moment. We had made it in time. If it mattered. After the long ride I couldn’t help but think that it might still come down to simply bringing more people through to be mowed down by the Etevar’s army. I didn’t share my gloomy misgivings, though.

“Be ready to move up right after dawn,” I told Sir Hambert. “I’ll open the passages then and we’ll bring the rest of the army through.” I asked about the orchard and cottage, if Dorthinis were using the place.

“Not that I know of,” Hambert said. “None of my scouts has reported any activity around there.”

“How many Dorthinis in the main force?” I asked.

Hambert hesitated. “I don’t trust the numbers my scouts give me,” he said. “They’ve reported as many as five thousand. I hope that’s an exaggeration. My own guess would be half that.” I tried to tot up the rough numbers I had. Even if the Etevar had only twenty-five hundred men, he would still outnumber us nearly two to one. And he had Castle Thyme. That might be worth another thousand soldiers if he used the advantage wisely. I didn’t count on him to be stupid.

“Annick and I will go on to the cottage tonight,” I told Hambert. “Bring your men up at dawn.”

“Two miles, that way.” Hambert pointed just north of east.

Annick led the way. We rode slowly, giving our horses a chance to cool down. Since darkness had already fallen, we had all night to wait.

“We’ll have to wait for dawn,” I told Annick. “With Dorthini patrols around, we can’t show a fire for me to try to finish the passages tonight.”

“That’s still plenty of time, isn’t it?”

“If those scouts were right about how far off the Dorthinis are.”

Riding at a slow walk gave my aches a chance to make themselves felt again, and when I took a nip of painkiller—the flask was getting low—exhaustion flowed over me. Off and on, I had dozed a little in the saddle coming east, but you can’t get much rest that way. I looked forward to some real sleep, but at the same time I was afraid that Annick and I might both oversleep, snore on through the morning while the Etevar got closer and our men fretted at the delay. I mentioned that worry to Annick.

“I wake at the first hint of dawn, no matter what,” she said, waving her hand in a dismissing gesture. “It
never
fails.”

I hoped that she was right, even though part of my mind was trying to remind the rest that we would have Sir Hambert and his men coming up to the cottage at dawn, that
they
would certainly wake us, but when you’re as tired as I was then, irrational fears seem saner than logical thought. I even got to the point of
Perhaps my danger sense will keep me from oversleeping with the enemy so close
, with the nervous tag
but it might not wake me until the cottage is surrounded
.

We reached the orchard and dismounted to lead our horses the last stretch. They were near the end of their endurance. Even Gold seemed hard put to keep up with my own slow walk. There were no lights on in the cottage, no sign of people or horses already there, but we checked the cottage and orchard out thoroughly before we put our horses in the tiny attached stable, unsaddled them, and brought in water and hay for them. Then we carried our stuff—and the sea-silver—into the cottage.

There was no real bed, just the hard bench where my father’s body had been. I had no intention of sleeping there. Ghosts had been in my mind all too much lately. I got my thermal blanket and my saddle and found a spot on the floor where I thought the morning sun would get me in the face, just in case. The night was a trifle chilly after the heat and sweat of the long ride. I shucked my weapons and boots and settled myself in, wrapping the blanket around me. I had my elf sword close—and my own regular sword. I took a couple of deep breaths and started to drift off, doing a fairly good job of not thinking about Annick and the way she had looked naked earlier. I was much too tired to let my mind cook over her.

I thought.

I yawned, relaxed, sliding down the incline. Sleep was waiting to jump all over me for a change. There would be none of the long tossing and turning that I usually have to wade through to reach slumber. I could hear Annick’s soft movements, but they didn’t bother me—until I sensed that she was very close.

When I opened my eyes, Annick was kneeling right over me. There was enough dim light filtering in to let me see milky white skin as she came down and kissed me. Her hair slid forward off her shoulders and covered my face. Then she was in the blanket with me, pressing her body against mine.

Tired as I was, I couldn’t ignore her. I could feel both our hearts beating, not in time. Between us, we got my clothes off. Annick had stripped before she came down on me. Passion replaced exhaustion, and we went at each other as though it were a contest, a joust—bruising kisses, frenzied groping, inarticulate grunts and moans. We seemed to be all over the cottage, rolling around, bumping into things, rolling back. Annick eventually straddled me and reached down to join us. Locked together, we continued to roll around the floor like wrestlers. The build-up was maddening, the climax explosive. I felt almost as drained as I was after the duel with the elflord. My back didn’t waste much time reminding me that it wasn’t completely healed yet, but even that wasn’t enough to slow us down.

Afterward, when I fell asleep, Annick was half on top of me yet—not on my injured side luckily. She had collapsed, as spent as I was, but still holding on. Neither of us could have found the strength for an encore.

19
The Congregation of Heroes

I guess I slept soundly through most of the night—what was left of it—but it wasn’t a peaceful sleep. I had a long dream, very detailed. It seemed so real that I never realized that it was a dream until after I woke, and even then it didn’t fade away the way dreams normally do.

It started with a long walk down the stairs leading to the burial crypt below Castle Basil. I was alone on the stairs, not part of a procession. My footsteps echoed. I looked around almost constantly, as if I were trying to tie the echoes to someone else. There was a nervous knot in my gut, but my only companions were the multiple shadows I cast in the torchlight.

When I reached the doorway to the crypt, I hesitated for a long time, or so it seemed, before I entered. I didn’t want to go into that chamber. I felt a powerful dread.

A long table had been set up inside, parallel to the burial wall. The capstones of the burial niches for all the Heroes of Varay were missing. The dead Heroes were sitting along one side of the table, my father at the center. They all stood and raised golden goblets in toast when I appeared in the doorway. They looked as though they belonged in a reunion picture of victims from slasher movies. Dad’s wounds were all open, gaping, both the wounds that had killed him and those that had scarred over long before—the scars that had once made me believe that he was a spy like James Bond. All of the other Heroes sported similar wounds. There was no blood—just open gashes in skin and clothing.

The man standing next to Dad at the center said, “Hail the Hero of Varay,” and then he took a long drink from his golden goblet. The rest of the Heroes echoed his toast and drank. Then each introduced himself—in chronological order, I think. The one who had offered the toast called himself Vara. Dad was the last. I caught a few other names in between that I recalled seeing on the missing capstones back in Basil.

Even Dad introduced himself formally when it finally came down to his turn.

“We’ve been waiting for you, son,” he said after he drank his toast. He raised his goblet again. “I had hoped that the wait would be much longer, though. Your mother and I had such great dreams for you. Come, your place is waiting.”

I didn’t move from the doorway. I
couldn’t
move. I was frozen in place. Moving would mean—at least in my mind—that I was accepting this … this
verdict
, and I wasn’t ready to do that. I held on to the doorjamb.

“What’s this all about?” I asked. My voice echoed over and over, so thickly that the words were almost obliterated by the interference. None of the other voices had raised even a hint of an echo.

All of the Heroes but Father and Vara sat down. Most seemed to busy themselves refilling their goblets from a row of decanters. Father looked to Vara. Vara spoke.

“My dying vow was that no other Hero of Varay should ever die alone,” he said.
No echo
.

“I haven’t died,” I said.

“We will be with you,” Vara said.

“I see.” I shifted my gaze to my father. “At the same place you died?” He didn’t answer. He looked away from me. I had little choice but to look to Vara again.

“Does this mean that you can see the future?” I asked.

“There is no time on our side,” he said, which wasn’t an answer at all. “Come in and have a drink with us.” He pointed at the one empty chair at the table.

I stared at the chair for a while—I can’t even guess how long. Finally, I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I said, opening my eyes to focus on Vara. “It’s too soon. I can’t give up yet. I’ve still got a job to finish.” I looked to my father again. “Your job.” He acknowledged that with a nod.

“I’m leaving now,” I said. And then, I wasn’t sure that I
could
leave. I experienced some kind of split-existence thing. My
mind
had me turning around and walking back to the stairs, but my
body
wasn’t responding. It took a moment before I figured it out—a dizzying realization. My hands gripped the jambs of the door yet and I had to consciously relax my grip and remove my hands.