Once A Hero (67 page)

His cut missed as he reflexively pulled up short to protect his face. Continuing my spin, I presented my back to him for a tantalizing moment. I knew he had to strike at it, so I cranked my sword down and let it precede me in the spin. My blade picked up Berengar's forehand slash, but the weak block did allow his blade to kiss my right flank and lay open the flesh over my ribs.

Sweat poured fire into the cut, but I did not retreat. As he pulled his sword back for another, heavier cut, I ducked and snapped my blade up. His slash passed over my head as I leaned in toward him and raked my blade obliquely over his stomach. I sliced a cut open on his belly, by his right hip, and that made him yelp. Already low, I rolled back onto my tail and somersaulted back out of his range, then stood.

"That's two cuts, Berengar."

He growled out a chuckle. "Again we are even. But we shall not be at the end of this game."

Berengar settled into a guard and wove the point of his blade through a figure-eight pattern. I kept mine circling, but brought my hand up so my hilt remained at shoulder height. My blade pointed at his right knee. I stamped once with my right foot, then feinted at his leg. He brought his blade down and around in a tight circular parry, but I snapped my wrist back. Bringing Cleaveheart back to where it almost touched my right shoulder, I then lashed it forward and razored open a wound on his right flank.

"Three cuts."

Berengar fought back fast. He lunged, then withdrew as my parry started. I went to riposte, but his blade extended again in a stop-thrust. I twisted back to my left and avoided being skewered, but only just barely. His point ricocheted off a rib, leaving with a cut beneath my left nipple, and sweat seared into it as well.

As I pulled back, he pressed his attack with short jabs at my legs, groin, and belly. Circling, I managed to fend them off more by moving out of range than by parrying them. Finally he got me on my left hip with a little stab wound. I could have parried it with my free hand, but it would have cost me fingers.

"Four, Neal, four," he snarled at me. Another two jabs and he opened a wound on my left shoulder that mirrored the one I had given him. "And that is five."

"Five's not the game." I pulled my left leg back and drove at him. In his pursuit of me he had begun to move more laterally than straight forward, so as I came at him, I had his full body to target. I lunged at his eyes, then ducked beneath his slash-parry and slipped my blade around in a descent. I cut him on the left breast, leaving his jacket tattered and blood weeping from a flesh wound.

He hissed and wove his silvery blade through a complex pattern that was more show than threat. At best, coming in that high and exploiting his reach advantage, all he could hit was my right shoulder, and he did. His blade bit into the scar Tashayul had left on my shoulder so long before, and I cried out as I retreated away from him.

"There, Neal, that's six. Which of us will die marked a traitor?"

"Which indeed, Berengar." I squared myself to him and hunched into a crouch. Sweat stung my eyes and set every cut on my body burning like torches. I shifted my blade so it covered the center of my body, hilt at my navel and bloodied point by my eyes. I breathed in through clenched teeth and took some relief in seeing his chest heave as heavily as mine.

"You are closer than I." His blade started into a knotwork pattern. "Here is seven."

For the sake of symmetry I knew he would go for my throat, navel, or right hip, since he was intent on mirroring the pattern of the Haladin ritual. Right hip seemed most likely, and his blade began the journey toward it. I did not move, did not begin my parry until Berengar had committed fully and could not withdraw his attack. In he came, his goal unguarded.

Unguarded and, suddenly, unavailable. I dropped down and pushed off with my left foot. Sliding forward on my knees and twisting beneath his lunge, I got inside and thrust up through his body. Cleaveheart pierced him at the left hip and angled up. It scraped along inside his chest, then bounced off his right shoulder blade and punched out at his right shoulder. Overextended in his futile lunge, his body continued forward and began to fall on me. I shouldered him off to my right, landing him hard on his right flank.

His blade clattered on the marble inlay as it fell from his hand. Cleaveheart, torn from my grasp, rang dully when the hilt hit the floor. Berengar rolled over on his back, his jaw working furiously. Blood bubbled up in his mouth in the place of words and ran down either side of his face. His body shook once, the spine arching, then he lay very still.

His unseeing eyes stared up at the knotted sleeves in the cabinet.

To the south I heard the sound of snapping wood and breaking glass before people started screaming. The crowd parted and I saw Stulklirn shake himself, spraying glass from the shattered remains of the garden doors. Behind me I heard the rustle of Gena's gown, but I held up my empty hands to forestall either one of them coming to my aid.

My gesture also served to still the conversation in the room.

I stood slowly, uncoiling myself like a monster new risen from a long sleep, for that really was what I felt I had become. I let the anger burning inside of me infuse my voice. "Aurdon was a city conceived in evil, and it has not escaped it."

"That's right," shouted a Riveren. "The Fishers accuse us of treachery, but it's their Berengar that was bad."

I skewered him with a stare. "Ah, and you claim the Riverens never did use their influence with the Haladina to bedevil the Fishers? You know you did, and that is just as treacherous."

A Fisher shook a fist at me. "How can you claim to be the judge of what is treachery and what is not when you cheated in this fight?"

I let my shock play over my face. "I cheated?"

"Yes, you were not to the eighth cut when you killed him."

"Only an idiot born of idiots would have assumed I would use a Haladin ritual on someone who was not Haladin."

"Yes, but clearly you meant to do that. You broke the rules!"

"Rules? Rules!" I reached over and ripped Cleaveheart from Berengar's body. "Rules are for games. That fight was not a game. Berengar's decision to interpret my remarks as implying rules means nothing." I slashed the blade in a vast arc, splattering party-goers from the Fishers to the Riverens and leaving a track of crimson droplets to course down the cabinet's glass. "But, then, that has always been the problem with the Fishers and the Riverens, hasn't it? You always interpret in your own way what I have stated clearly in mine. This was not a game. None of it, not now, not five hundred years ago, and not during the intervening years. I am not Haladina concerned with Eight Cuts.

"I am Neal, and you will finally come to understand what that means."

I pointed to the knotted sleeves. "Five hundred years ago I stood in this place when Aurium was little more than a squalid village. The Fishers and the Riveravens were ready to slaughter each other over what was then a collection of longhouses surrounding a small stone hall. None of you would recognize what you have here in what I saw with my eyes, but by all the gods, you'd recognize your ancestors because they were as petty and shortsighted as all of you are now."

I glanced back at Gena and saw her watching me strangely. I did not know what she was thinking or even if Aarundel had told her about this night's analog, but I hoped she would stay with me and play along with me. I tried to communicate that to her with my eyes, but I did not know if she understood, so I just pushed on.

"That night, so long ago. Lady Genevera's grandfather and Stulklirn's great-great-grandfather stood by me, so it is fitting they are here tonight. Back then we were set to slay all the Fishers and all the Riverens because we knew they could not live in peace with each other. But because there were innocents among them, and because we had a war to fight against the Reithrese, we relented and found a compromise.

"That compromise, clearly, was a mistake." I snarled at all of them. "I have lain in my tomb for five centuries, and the only disturbance of my rest came from here, from Aurdon. Someone plots to kill someone else, so I must intervene. I am forced to act well beyond the time when I should be called upon to do so."

I hesitated as I sorted through the various tales I had heard the day before. "Victor Riveren decides to kill Harald Fisher over a boatload of raw wool, so I have to pitch him down some stairs. Lucretia Fisher plots to poison Deryl Riveren, and I have to force her own draught down her throat. And now, this time, the Riverens are using the Haladina to destroy the Fishers, and the Fishers want to build an empire using Riveren bones as the foundation. This plotting is so widespread, my intervention as a ghost would not suffice. For this I had to come back to life.

"This does not please me." I nodded to Gena and to Stulklirn. "I have the descendants of my allies at the first visit with me here for a reason. Stutklirn, as Shijef had agreed to do, please make certain no one leaves this room."

Stulklirn stood up to his full height and physically blocked the doors to the garden.

I looked at Gena. "And you, with your magicks, you will be able to slay the old quickly, and I will start with the young."

An older Riveren man pointed at me with a palsied hand. "This is preposterous! You cannot get away with such murder!"

"Can I not?" I stared incredulously at the lot of them. "I am Neal Roclawzi! I am the Knight-Defender of the Empire. I can slay each and every one of you and then simply send a note to the emperor telling him it was necessary. He will forgive me. Moreover, last time I had better things to do than to spend my time killing you foolish people off. Not so, this time.

"You have to remember, I am five centuries out of my time. I have no ties, no duties, no one I know, and no one to visit. If I slaughter the lot of you, I can claim your wealth for myself. By the beard of Herin, I was walking in your city yesterday, and I know from talking with the citizens that if I skim you from the top, the people out there will happily proclaim me their lord. With your money and the soldiers you brought to Aurdon, I could even choose to make the emperor abdicate in my favor."

I let myself go. I gestured wildly as I spoke. I fed off their fear and their vanity. I let them imagine their own sins, and I suggested I was there to punish them. I let them know that the doom their ancestors had delayed had returned to swallow them whole.

"The opportunity represented by those knotted sleeves was the only alternative your people were offered to death. One by one, piecemeal, you have rejected the bargain struck that night, and you have paid as individuals. You all know it's true, and you have all feared seeing my shade when you plotted and dreamed. Now it is worse because I have been called from the grave and I have with me now the blade that longed to drink your blood centuries ago."

"But the Knott family died out," someone pleaded.

"Ah, but my proscription against fighting with each other did not! Are you people stupid? Did you think the deaths of your kin were random events, superstition? When I make an oath, it is not broken. When individuals plotted against each other, I could take one or two lives and be satisfied that my honor had been upheld, but now, now you plot to conquer nations. The prize was bigger, the dishonor greater, and the penalty must be commensurately larger!"

Gena's features sharpened into an inhuman mask when she scowled. "You have heard Neal Gustos Sylvanii. As he has said, so it will be." She casually gestured backward toward one of the windows in the eastern wall. The wooden lattice holding glass in place exploded in fire, spraying flame and glass out into the darkness. Another magickal spark sailed off through the middle of the conflagration, but I soon lost sight of it. I nodded to her and she smiled most cruelly. "We will need ventilation, for the sanguine aroma from termination will be overwhelming."

"Leave it to a sylvanesti to think of these details." I turned toward the assembly. "If the youngest would line up here on my left and the eldest here on my right, we shall begin."

"We can rush them," I heard someone cry, but before I could even begin to think of a counter that would forestall that winning strategy, the sun dawned very bright and very early to the east. It rose fast and shrank as it did, but by the time the fiery sphere had begun to dwindle significantly, a horrible roar and fierce rumbling echoed over the landscape. The ground shook and the chandeliers started swaying back and forth.

I looked from the windows to Gena and back again.

She shook her head, her eyes and voice as strong as they were implacable. "Berengar's weapons' store at Lake Orvir exists no more."

That display of raw power cowed the crowd. They began to shuffle toward the ends of the room I had indicated earlier; then Floris Fisher stepped from the crowd. "I'll be damned if I will let you slay my family, I will fight you, if I must, to prevent it."

I brought my head up and gave him a sidelong glance. "Would you do something even more difficult than face me across a sword?"

He came to attention. "I consider the sacrifice of my life nothing if it will save my family."

"I see." I looked over at the Riverens and pointed Cleaveheart at a comely young girl. "You see her?"

"I do."

"She is yours."

Floris shook his head. "I will not murder her to save even my life."

I smiled genuinely at him. "Good, for another Fisher slaying a Riveren would displease me even more than I am displeased now. She is yours to be your wife, to unite your families again."

Floris looked stunned. "But that is what you did last time. You said the penalty had to be greater."

"And so it shall be." I shifted the point of my sword to indicate a raven-haired woman among the Fishers who had been a favorite subject of gossips during my travels. "You are?"

"Martina, my lord."

"Good. Martina, Titus Riveren is now your husband!"

She shook her head adamantly. "He is just a boy."

"Then perhaps you can make him into a Man." I met her dagger stare with a grin. "And perhaps he can make you into something other than a milk-bathing repository of vanity."