Sword Brother

'You said things are getting complicated.' Houghton chuckled with harsh irony. 'Given the way Jack and I got here in the first place, and all of the certifiably insane things you've had to say since we did, 'getting complicated' isn't exactly a phrase I'm delighted to be hearing.'

'I can see how you might feel that way,' Wencit conceded with a chuckle of his own. 'And I really didn't mean to sound mysterious. It's just that I've been continuing that wrestling match I mentioned to you earlier, and I think their glamour's sprung a slight leak. Unless, of course, they wanted to let me have a peek inside.'

'And why might they have wanted anything like that?'

'I couldn't really say . . . yet.' Wencit shrugged. 'It's rather like a game of chess, I suppose. Or perhaps the sort of misdirection in which a stage conjurer specializes. You show the other fellow what you hope he'll see in order to keep him from noticing the knuckleduster coming at him from an entirely different direction.' He snorted. 'As a matter of fact, I've done it myself, on occasion.'

'Somehow I fail to find that particularly reassuring,' Houghton said dryly while Tough Mama continued to snort along. The JP-8 in the LAV's fuel tanks had fallen to about the halfway point, and Houghton hoped they weren't going to end up running them dry before they got wherever the hell they were supposed to be going.

'Did that 'peek' of yours tell you how much farther we've got to go?' he asked.

'No,' Wencit said. 'But that-' he waved one-handed in the direction of the silent lightning bolt '- tells me quite a bit.'

'How?'

'That flash was Bahzell,' Wencit said simply.

'So he's a lightning rod, is he?'

'As a matter of fact,' Wencit actually laughed out loud, 'that's a remarkably good description of Bahzell Bahnakson, in a great many ways. But the lightning didn't strike him, Gunnery Sergeant. It came from him. Well, from him and Walsharno.'

'Sure it did.' Houghton decided he should have sounded rather more skeptical than he actually did.

'They can be a bit flamboyant,' Wencit said. 'Mind you, Bahzell is a Horse Stealer, too. He knows the value of creeping about in the bushes, and he's quite good at it, when he puts his mind to it. But he must have decided the 'bad guys,' as you call them, already know he's in the vicinity. You might say that was his way of warning them that he knows they are, as well.'

'And he thinks sending up flares to tell the other side he's coming is a good idea because -?'

'I could say it's because he's a champion of Tomanak. Or because he's a hradani. Both of those statements are true, and either one would be more than enough to explain it. But I imagine the simple truth is that he and Walsharno are angry, Gunnery Sergeant. And, believe me, you really don't want to be the person who makes those two angry.'

'But if you're already concerned about the odds, doesn't that mean . . . ?'

Houghton let his voice trail off. There was no need to finish the question, after all.

'Very few champions of Tomanak die in bed.' There was little humor left in Wencit's quiet reply. 'Bahzell is capable of remarkable subtlety, despite the slow-talking barbarian persona he's fond of presenting to the unwary, but at the heart of him, where all the things that made him a champion in the first place come together, he doesn't let the odds dictate his actions.'

'Great,' Houghton grunted in a long-suffering tone. 'I end up in an entirely different universe, and I'm still dealing with John Waynes.'

''John Waynes'?' Wencit repeated.

'Idiots who have trouble separating movies-stories-from reality and think they're immortal and bulletproof because they're the heroes of the piece. Or the kind who still think people win wars by dying for their countries, instead of encouraging the other guy to die for his country. Or, even worse, who just don't care what happens to them-or anyone else-as long as they're dying for 'the cause.' Whatever the hell 'the cause' happens to be this week. Trust me, I've seen more than enough of that kind of fanatic to last me two or three lifetimes, Wencit!'

'Bahzell Bahnakson is as far from a fanatic as any man you're ever going to meet,' Wencit said sternly. 'And he doesn't think for a moment that he's 'immortal' or invincible. In fact, I'm fairly certain he fully expects to die one day in the service of his god. Not because he 'doesn't care' or because he's eager to die, or because he thinks there's anything particularly glorious about it. He expects to die, Gunnery Sergeant, because he's constitutionally incapable of standing aside and letting the Dark triumph. Because he recognizes that all men die, but that some of them get to choose to do it standing on their own two feet, with a sword in their hands, standing between the Dark and its victims.'

Houghton started to throw something back at the wizard. Something flippant. The sort of witticism he and his peers regularly used to deflate pretension and guard against any belief in such antiquated and dangerous concepts as 'heroism' or 'honor.' But the flippancy died unspoken, because in that moment he realized those concepts weren't antiquated, after all. That they lingered at the very core of the code to which he and those peers continued to adhere, however unwilling they were to admit it to anyone else . . . or even to themselves.

No one knew better than Kenneth Houghton just how ugly, savage, and vile war truly was. How voracious its appetite was, how appallingly it chewed up and crushed the innocent, as well as the guilty. How little of 'glory' there was to its reality. Indeed, it was that ugliness and savagery which had sent Houghton into uniform in the first place. The belief - naive, perhaps, yet no less real for that-that he could make a difference, protect the things in which he believed, the people who could not protect themselves. The belief that there truly were things worth dying for, however much a man might want to live.

And be honest, Ken, he told himself. There was a reasonyou chose the Corps. 'The few. The proud. The Marines.'You wanted to be a part of that. To be known not just as a soldier, but as a warrior. As someone who'd chosen to make that commitment, to be one of the best in the service of what you believed in. So, are you really so different from this Bahzell of Wencit's?

'What can you tell me about the odds he's facing now?' he said instead. 'Do you have any better fix on that than you did have?'

'I imagine he's starting to suspect there's more going on here than the surface might indicate,' Wencit replied. 'What he may not have realized is that he's up against at least two separate Dark Gods' servants. By now, I'm sure he's figured out that what he's actually been following are servants of Sharna, which means he's expecting assassins and demons. But he probably hasn't realized that the raiders he's pursuing are working in concert with the wizards they're about to meet up with. Or, for that matter, that it's almost as important to the Dark to kill the mage those wizards have captured as it is to kill him and Walsharno.'

'Wait a minute. 'Mage'? You mean another wizard?'

'No, not a wizard at all. A mage's powers are those of the mind, and they come solely from within. They aren't like the art, at all.'

'Then what makes him so damned important?' Houghton knew he sounded exasperated, and didn't especially care. 'Just how many people are these 'Dark Gods' of yours gunning for out here, anyway, Wencit? I mean, is there anyone in Norfressa who's not on their 'Needs Killing' list?'

'I don't suppose anyone could blame you for wondering about that, under the circumstances,' Wencit said wryly. 'The problem is that a great many currents, plans, and possibilities are beginning to come together. It's not quite time yet, but both sides-the Dark and the