Son of the Hero

The process of bandaging hurt so much that I almost passed out again, but when it was finished, I did feel a little better. The pain wasn't nearly so acute. The tight gauze girdle exerted pressure all around my middle. I got my shirt back on, but not the chain mail. I didn't even want to think about putting all that weight back on, even though the armor had undoubtedly saved my life.

I sat on the ground for a few minutes after the tape was secure, then got to my feet gingerly. I could feel sweat beading up on my face, but we had to press on.

"We'd better get moving again," I said, my voice low as I tried to get by without breathing very deeply.

"We head for home now?" Lesh asked. I nodded. "Back to Arrowroot?"

"That's where Parthet is due to meet us." I recalled the feeling of danger there, but I had to go to Arrowroot. "We'll stay on this side of the isthmus as long as we can, try to get south of the swamp before we turn west." The elflord might be confused further by that-assuming that we had confused him at all. Dorthin, Varay, and Xayber all met at the southeastern corner of the isthmus. If we couldn't convince the elflord that we were an enemy out of Fairy, maybe he would think that the Etevar were feeling him out. Setting Xayber against Dorthin couldn't hurt Varay.

We had been stopped long enough getting me taped up that the horses had cooled down and Harkane had watered them. Harkane helped me back into the saddle. The pain was still there, but I thought that I would be able to deal with it. I had to. We rode slowly for a time. The pain didn't go away, but it abated a little-or I simply became used to it. I could breathe a little more easily.

Trusting my danger sense a little more-and worried about what riding the rough terrain of the countryside would do to my back and ribs-I didn't try to keep us concealed. We rode the main road south, bold as could be. I shoved my Cubs cap in a hip pocket. A

Shortly after we started riding again, I felt the questioning presence again, but more lightly than before. The elflord hadn't yet identified us as his irritant. I forced my mind as blank as possible, like before, and the presence passed.

A little later, Harkane moved his horse up next to mine. "You've made it past the dangerous stage," he whispered softly. "You have the magic of the Hero working to mend your wound. By the time we get home, it should be only a memory."

"I hope you're right," I said. "And I hope we don't come up against anything serious before then." We had a lot of Fairy to cross before we could reach Varay and even temporary safety.

Near sunset, we left the road and moved into the hills to find a campsite that would shelter us but not bottle us in. I settled on a flat ledge halfway up a gentle slope, with trees on three sides. There was ru

Despite the way I was hurting, I might have felt less nervous riding by night and hiding by day if not for the warning that darkness couldn't hide us from elves and the corroborating evidence that even a half-elf like A

A

"What will you do when this fight is over?" she asked me. Harkane and Lesh were already settling down to sleep. I was sitting propped up against a tree trunk, as comfortable as I was likely to get. The pain did seem to be fading somewhat. Maybe Harkane had been right. In any case, I wasn't feeling quite as bad as before.

"Which fight? We haven't started the real battle yet," I said. Dusk hadn't quite fled into darkness.

"After you beat the Etevar."

"I haven't started to think past that. I know what everyone expects, that I'll stick around and play prince and occasional Hero. Become King of Varay someday." That was a gloomy thought. I wasn't stodgy enough to play Prince Charles or loose enough to be randy Andy. But I couldn't see going home to play with computers at the moment either. It was difficult to think of computers as real just then. "I don't know what I'll do. Maybe go back to my world and do some traveling."

A

"What will you do when you've killed all the people you've spent your life hating?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I'll find something if that time ever comes."

"You think it'll be that easy?"

A

The attack came while I was still awake, still on sentry, but that didn't help. For once, my danger sense didn't scream soon enough. The Elflord of Xayber had finally located us, and the gap between my danger warning and his assault weren't enough to let me do any more than whip the claymore off my shoulder and get it out in front of me. It was pure luck that I was already on my feet. I had decided that I had better get up and move around a little to keep from getting stiff. Then it came.

There was no direct physical attack.

My mind was suddenly in the grip of an incredible power-a psychic bearhug. There was intense pain at the start, worse than the pain in my back had been at its worst, and then a feeling of utter helplessness. I struggled against the force and the void behind it. I fought to open my eyes, scarcely aware that I had closed them in the first onslaught. I blinked and found myself standing on a featureless plain that was unbroken to the horizon in every direction. It was a gray nothingness. There wasn't even real ground beneath my feet, just an unidentifiable, almost undetectable surface. I was standing alone with just the elf sword. I turned slowly, sword at the ready. My back didn't hurt-I noticed that right away-but my danger sense was ru

"Okay, Xayber, come on out and let's get this over with. Time for all good rats to come out of their holes." Bravado. Also a poor choice of words. Huge rats started rising right out of the ground-something like Claymation. The rodents were the size of the goat I had killed, and nearly transparent, their i

"Okay, what's the next act?" I asked when the stream of rats finally dried up.

A giant face appeared in the distance, in what passed for a sky in that gray void. It was an oblong face with pale complexion, black hair, thin mustache, and short goatee, haughty-looking beyond words. I don't suppose the resemblance was really all that close, but it made me think of that three-view portrait of Cardinal Richelieu that seems to be in all of the history textbooks. The face stared at me. When the mouth moved, I heard the words as if they were spoken right in front of me.