“After what I witnessed earlier, I have no trouble believing that,” said Grast, almost shyly.
Was this guy a fan of mine or something? I wondered if he was going to ask for a personal blessing. It sure seemed like it.
“Another sip of brandy?” he asked.
“Sure,” I answered, and this time, I took a much more cautious sip. Even a seasoned drinker like myself needed to take it easy when it came to grog like Yorish brandy.
“Would it be okay if I ask you,” said Grast as he took the wineskin back from me, “about some of your famous exploits? I’ve, well, I’ve heard the stories, y’see… but it’d be quite something to hear ‘em from the mouth of the star of the epic.”
“Go right ahead. We’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”
“Yes, please,” said Elyse, leaning forward and smiling strangely at me. “Tell us all about your wondrous deeds, Vance.”
“I’d also like to hear the tales from the lips of the man who lived through them,” said Rami eagerly, her dark eyes glowing with excitement.
“All right, all right, one at a time, one at a time now,” I said with a chuckle. “I’m not any different from the next guy when it comes down to it, you know. I’ve just done some… interesting stuff.”
“Like the time you killed the Viscount of Ilinera,” Grast said, “and then slept with his wife. While his corpse was still warm in the bed next to her!”
I laughed out loud at that one. Elyse stared at me with a look of horror on her face (although in her eyes, there was an unmistakable sparkle of mischievous amusement), while Rami gasped with unabashed delight.
“That’s not the whole story,” I said, “and I’m sure the version you’ve heard has been embellished.”
“Well, if that’s not the whole story,” said Rami, “go on and tell us what really happened.”
“First of all, I didn’t sleep with the viscount’s wife after I killed him.” I paused for effect, and I laughed when Rami started slapping me on the arm to make me continue. “Well, okay, I did, but I was just finishing what I’d started with her before that asshole walked in on us.”
“Wait, wait,” said Elyse, staring at me with a look that was half amazement, half mortification, “you were in the process of… making love to the viscount’s wife. Then, he walked in on you two, and then you killed him in front of his wife, who you’d just been… doing that to, and then you, you two just carried on doing it, with his fresh corpse in the room?”
“In the bed, next to us,” I said with a matter-of-fact nod. “And it was her idea. I felt a little weird about it, but she was really into it. I mean, I don’t know, maybe she was just into what we’d been doing before so much that she couldn’t get around to thinking about her dead husband with me still there, and still… ready, if you know what I mean.”
“She wanted to have sex with you next to her dead husband?” asked Rami, her sensuous mouth hanging open with disbelief.
“Look, in my defence, the Viscount of Ilinera was a serial cheater. He spent more time at the local whorehouses than he did with his wife, who was young, sexy, energetic, and beautiful, so who the hell knows why he did what he did? But anyway, she was more than sick and tired of it, so for her, it was the ultimate revenge. Though he’d been unfaithful for a long time, he’d only been able to do it with women who wanted his cash. His wife more than bested him by doing it with someone… well, like me. And if she wanted to screw me, who was I to complain? The man was less than nothing to me.”
Everyone laughed, especially Grast, who was sucking back Yorish brandy like there was no tomorrow.
“You truly are like a hero of legend!” he exclaimed, still roaring with side-splitting laughter. “No, scrap the ‘like’; you’re a living legend. Tell us another story! Like, uh, let me think… How about when you wrestled a giant from the north to settle a bet and won the Thunder God’s warhammer from him, with which you can strike down your enemies with bolts of lightning.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “That one, I have to admit, has had so much added to it that it’s just gotten ridiculous. Don’t you think, if I actually had the God of Thunder’s warhammer, I’d have whipped it out and used it by now? No, there was no warhammer. I did wrestle a giant from the north, but he wasn’t an actual giant. He was a giant of a man, a big,blond northern barbarian, seven foot tall and with as much meat on him as a big bear, and I wrestled him to make a point. Yeah, a huge man, but not an actual giant. It was a game, really, just me having some fun. I don’t know how that one made it to the annals.”
“What was the point you were trying to make?” asked Rami.
“Oh, you know how those types are. Their menfolk look down on us southern men. They say we’re a bunch of pussies because we don’t live in year-round frostbite-inducing cold. I told that big asshole that enjoying beer in the summer sun didn’t make me any less of a man than him. He disagreed, so I told him I’d prove it… and I did.”
Grast sighed, looking disappointed. “I really wanted to believe that story. The God of Thunder’s hammer. What I’d give to see that in person, to watch it blast out a fork of lightning!”
“Well, we shouldn’t be talking about all this nonsense and superstition about old, dead gods anyway,” muttered Elyse sourly. “The Lord of Light is the one true god, and the others are just… old rumors.”
I figured that she perhaps wasn’t quite
