Steven Brust - Dragon

"Are you all right?"

"I think so."

"I don't like it that I got hit in the back, though. I mean, was I run-ningl"

"Maybe, but I don't think you're smart enough for that. More likely you got turned around during the fight. Or—" He broke off.

"Or what?" I said.

"Well, it's possible it was our own people. I mean, if they were counterattacking, reinforcing us, and using spells … "

"Right."

Over the next several months, by the way, I started to remember more and more of it. I eventually got a pretty clear memory of getting hit: the feeling of having my muscles contract almost to the point of breaking my own arms and legs; the feeling that my eyes were trying to pop out of my head; the peculiar sensation of every hair on my body suddenly standing up; and watching the battle progress around me as I slowly fell over. But I still have no memory at all of what led up to it—the time between the beginning of the charge and the point where I was hit is completely gone.

All of which is to say that if you want war stories to tell your grandchildren, don't get hit by sorcery.

There, you ask for a story and you get useful advice out of the deal.

At the time, however, I remembered none of it, and that was scary, too. "Wish I knew how bad I was hurt, Loiosh."

"What good would it do to know?"

"I'm scared anyway. It would be nice to know if I had cause to be."

"Well, Boss, if we can judge by what remains of your jerkin, your back got hurt pretty bad."

I thought that over and decided I didn't care for it, and I suppose I fell asleep for a while, but I didn't sleep well; I had all sorts of odd dreams.

16—A Walk in the Park

"Got it," said Daymar into my mind and into the silence of Fornia, his honor guard, and his sorcerers all staring at me and waiting for me to do something. Relative silence, I should say; there was still a battle moving toward me. Had Daymar actually succeeded? Pulled the information out of Fornia's mind, just like that? Well, I had to believe it.

"Let's have it, then," I said.

"Wait!" said Fornia to those of his honor guard who were moving forward to search me. They stopped and looked at him, while he stared at Daymar, then at me, then back at Daymar. He had evidently felt Daymar invade his mind and he had evidently taken it personally. I wondered if that had pushed him over the edge—if he would now order us killed out of hand. Hell, I would have.

The trouble was, that wouldn't help him any, and would undo the good fortune—from his perspective—of my having arrived here, because, of course, my being here would likely draw Morrolan; so the Easterner's showing up, while puzzling, and thus worrisome, had fit in so well with his plan to have a face-to-face meeting with Morrolan in the middle of the battle and engage him so he could—Oh, that's what was going on.

"Good work, Daymar," I said aloud. And to Fornia I said, "You don't know exactly what it is, either. And you're only guessing about how to bring it out. That was a possibility that hadn't occurred to me."

Ori stared back and forth between me and Fornia, and the other sorcerers and the bodyguards also seemed uncertain about what had just happened and what to do about it. Fornia said, "I suspect killing you here will draw him to me anyway; I think I no longer need you alive."

Now, that was unfortunate for me.

I said, "Remember, I surrendered."

"Spies can be executed."

"I'm in uniform," I said, remembering from somewhere that that might matter.

"Then you'll look properly military when—" He broke off, staring over my shoulder.

"Boss, don't look now, but we've got company."

"Who?"

"Napper."

"What?"

In spite of his warning, I looked. And there, about fifty yards away, was Napper, sauntering up the hill, come, no doubt, to get in on the action. Did this change anything? Well, yeah, it did change one thing—it put my back to Ori, and that caused a panic that, I suppose, was inevitable after what I'd been through the day before, so I spun back and almost set off a melee right there. I can't believe, with Napper showing up right then, that Fornia would have done anything except have us killed at once if there hadn't been sudden cries from the honor guard—Morrolan's band was on the verge of breaking through—thus giving him other things to think about than this pesky Easterner and his odd friends.

He addressed those of his guard who had been about to bind and search me, and said, "Guard them, all of them. Kill them the instant they do anything suspicious," then he turned back to his war.

That was good. Twice in two days would have been uncalled-for, even if I lived through it.

I almost hadn't lived through it the first time. I even dreamed that I didn't. I half remember several of the dreams, but in one that I remember most of I was sent over Deathgate Falls, and in the Halls of Judgment (which looked a lot different in my dream than they did when I'd actually been there) the Gods all thought it was the greatest joke in the world that I was asking to be admitted, and in the confusion of the dream I tried to explain that I deserved to be admitted as a Dragon, and they just couldn't stop laughing. It sounds funny to tell, but I woke up in the middle of the night in a sweat, breathing hard, and shaking.

I got out of bed because I suddenly couldn't stand to be lying still. I walked out into the quiet of the camp; the mountain air was cold on my chest, but felt good on my back, which was hot, like I had a localized fever.

"Where are you going, Boss?"

"I'm not sure. I need to walk."

"The physicker's tent is this way."

"I've gotten plenty of physic."

I slipped past the pickets, almost out of habit. "Am I going the right way, Loiosh?"

"What do you mean, Boss? You're not heading toward the enemy, but you're going downhill."

"That's what I meant. I wouldn't want to present myself to the enemy just yet."

"Then where are we going? Are we finally getting out of here like sensible people?"

"I'm not sure."

"Because if we are, you've forgotten a few things."

I made my way down into the darkness, my eyes straining to pick out a path from the bits of light from distant campfires. Loiosh landed on my shoulder.

"Ouch"

"Sorry, Boss. You should have a jerkin on."

He was probably right. I had no jerkin, no cloak, no boots, no sword, Spellbreaker was back next to my bed, and the only weapons I carried were two paper-thin throwing knives concealed in the seams of my trousers. I hadn't been out of doors this naked since I joined the Jhereg, and there was something exhilaratingly spooky about it. It was a cleaner fear than what I'd felt in battle, and the pain of stepping on rocks with my bare feet was clean, too, and so was the cold. I hadn't realized how much I needed to feel clean.

I slipped past another line of pickets, effortlessly, and for a while I entertained the illusion that I was the wind itself, that I didn't feel the cold, rather I was the cold, and none could see where I went, but they would feel me pass by a prickling of the hairs on their necks. I was naked but invisible, helpless but omnipotent, and I was lost in the world I all but owned. Certainly, it was false; in the streets of Adrilankha I owned the world, but this was a desert filled with soldiers; the feeling was different, and illusory, but it was there. I made no sound, and, had anyone been looking, I don't think he'd have seen more than my breath in the night air. My awareness of those around me came, above all, from the faint sounds of breathing, and I knew that Loiosh, as silent as I, was above me in the night, in the wind.

A single bush, like a sentry, waves to say with a laugh that it, at least, sees me, and I wave back though my arm doesn't move; a pebble between my toes is a burden which I reject, so it rolls away in search of its own reason for being; my time is filled with empty space, and my space with empty time, and my legs can't move so I must float float float through the armies of the world, clashing forever on the battlefield of my mind where all is in motion and nothing moves and the Cycle looms overhead, and at its top is the Dragon, glaring, plotting, scheming, protecting its young by devouring the souls who are cast loose to roam the night and come to me for protection that I cannot give, for I am in no place but everywhere, and there is no end to the night that is me.