John Ringo - There Will Be Dragons

These foods on the other hand had so much more diversity, not only in the secondary spices that they used but in the very fact that many of them didn’t taste as if they were going to eat the insides off their containers. Some were dreadfully hot. He had a few bites of a cabbage dish and after a chewing on it for a moment he wondered why it hadn’t eaten the spoon. But many of the others were not spicy at all. They were sweet or delicately flavored with subtle herbs.

He was spooning down mushrooms that had had simply been sautéed in butter, wine and just a hint of some herb, absolute ambrosia, when Shilan sat down next to him with two cups in her hand.

“Master Edmund has graciously agreed to let the town raid his wine cellar,” she said, handing him a cup.

Herzer took a small sip and inhaled gratefully. The wine was heavy and sweet, with an almost earthy aftertaste and a decided kick.

“Ummm. This is good,” Herzer said, setting down the cup and spearing more mushrooms.

“Are you referring to the mushrooms or are you being existentialist?” Shilan asked.

“Well the mushrooms, yes,” Herzer replied, holding out some on the fork. “But what I really meant was this, here.” He shrugged as she leaned forward and delicately pulled the mouthful off, nodding her head in agreement. “Better than being out in the woods.”

“Not better than it was a month ago,” Shilan said darkly.

“Yes, true,” Herzer said, pushing the remaining mushrooms around. But there was an odd thoughtful frown on his face.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Shilan said, cocking her head to the side with a smile. But then she laughed.

“What?”

“ ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ ” Shilan replied. “How old is that saying?”

“Yes,” Herzer said, chuckling. “I mean, are you offering to pay a lot of money, or very little? It all depends on the value of the penny.”

“I am willing to pay a lot for your thoughts, Herzer,” she said, leaning forward again and looking him in the eye.

“Hmmm…” he replied with a frown. A muscle in his left cheek worked for a moment. “You said that it was better a month ago and I agreed.”

“Sure,” she said with a slight shrug. That reality was inarguable.

“Yes… and no,” he said, the muscle working again. “This… this…” he said, waving his arms around at the groups talking and eating; in the distance was faint laughter.

“This is two things that were not a month ago,” he continued. “One, it is real . It is not some Renn Faire where if the ground is too hard you can port in a pillow, and when it gets too late you can port home. This is real. If you want a pillow, you had better go out there and figure out a way to make a pillow. I don’t know why that is important, but I can feel it in my soul.” He held up his hand as Shilan started to say something.

“Hang on a second,” he said. “Give me a little bit. The second thing is that it has soul . Before, did you ever see so much passion? So much intensity out of people as you see today? No. Why? Because this is real . Before, before the Fall, no matter what you were discussing, no matter what you were arguing, you knew that the next day you would be getting up and going back and doing more or less the same thing all over again. But the point was, you knew you were getting up! You knew that you were going to be alive the next day.

“Now, the questions are not trivial . Not only lives but generations depend upon them. These people know that not only for themselves, but for their children and the children that they will have, they must work and succeed. And that Mother will not catch them when they fall. That brings a passion and intensity to things that I have never seen before.

“Now if I could press a button and turn it back to the way that it was before, would I? Yes. But that does not mean that I would not have regrets. There is a soul to this, to everything thing here. A soul that did not exist before the Fall. So, yes and… no,” he concluded, picking out one last mushroom. “Damn, it’s cold.”

“Wow,” Shilan said, frowning. “That was like… a chit’s worth!”

“Nah,” Herzer laughed, shaking his head. “You know like… maybe a tenth.”

“I begin to understand why you seem to have a girl on your arm whenever I see you, Herzer,” she said, smiling.

“Maybe you could explain it to me. It’s been a very recent and very unexpected thing. If you’re talking about that philosophical wandering: Bast hadn’t said a word to me until she walked up, looked me over like a piece of meat and told me that I needed a bath but otherwise I’d do.”

“Hmmm…” Shilan replied thoughtfully. She took a sip of her wine and cleared her throat. “Speaking of baths…”

“They’re probably packed.” Herzer shrugged, taking a sip from his own cup.

“Nope, most people are still eating and sitting around,” Shilan said.

Herzer looked at the crowd and had to admit that it was the vast majority of the town.

“If we hurry ?” Shilan continued in a questioning tone.

“Okay,” Herzer replied, then paused. “Don’t baths…” he started then cleared his throat. “Don’t the baths make you feel uncomfortable?” he finally said in an absolutely neutral tone.

“Yes,” she said. “But it would be less so if you were along.”

Herzer started to smile, then an alarm bell went off in his head.

“Shilan, uhm… Cruz…”

“Cruz doesn’t have me staked out,” she replied, tartly. “I’m not planning on bedding you, Herzer. The operative term here is ‘bath.’ ”

“I’m aware of that,” Herzer said, not sure if he was aware of it or not. “And you’re aware of that. That the operative term is ‘bath,’ I mean. But Cruz’s feelings are going to be hurt if we go wandering off.”

Herzer suddenly realized, by the expression on Shilan’s face among other things, that he was in a situation where he was going to piss someone off, either Cruz or Shilan or, possibly, both. Shilan was not taking his careful hints and Cruz was not going to accept his explanation. Look, buddy, it was either have her all pissed off at me or you all pissed off at me. All it was was a bath. Okay, so I saw your girlfriend nekkid and you haven’t yet. Big deal! Nope. Definitely wouldn’t work. And this image of an axe or a mallet descending upon his sleeping head, wielded by either Cruz or Shilan, kept flashing through his mind. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. He finally came to the conclusion that if he was going to get bludgeoned to death anyway, he might as well see Shilan, who after all was a comely wench, naked before he died.

All of this flashed through his brain in well under a half a second, hardly a pause. He had just opened his mouth to seal his fate when he saw Rachel coming through the crowd.

“Hang on a second, there’s a friend of mine,” he said to Shilan, waving his arm. “Hi, Rachel! How’ve you been doing?”

“Hello, Herzer,” she said, walking over with a slightly abstracted frown. “How are the hands?”

“They’re fine,” Herzer said, holding them up, palms outward to show the heavy calluses. “I think you guys have met, but I don’t think you’ve met, met,” he continued. “Hsu Shilan, Rachel Ghorbani. Rachel, Shilan.”

“We met when you came out to the camp and gave us a briefing on… uhm…” Shilan said then paused.

“Mother has dredged up the ancient term ‘feminine hygiene,’ ” Rachel said with a smile.

“Oh, Lord, you’re not going to start talking about that, are you?” Herzer chuckled.