Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (17 page)

I grew up here. I trained here. I served here. I died here.

He stood in front of a large window. The glass was chipped and dotted with taped-over holes. Inside, a group of small boys and girls took turns punching at sand-filled bags hanging from the sagging ceiling. A short, bald man limped between them, tapping shoulders and turning hips, refining their form.

Don't just hit with your arm. Use your whole body. Turn. Make gravity your ally instead of your enemy.
Coldhand knew it all by rote.
Don't pull back so far, don't give your opponent any warning of what's coming. Just an inch. That's all you need.

He went inside. The palaestrum students looked up, but their instructor whistled sharply, pulling their attention back. "Eyes up here, nestlings."

"Send them home, Vorus," Coldhand said. "I need to talk to you."

Arctan Vorus beetled his white brows at the hunter. "I'm in the middle of class. You can wait your turn."

"I don't have time to stay in Highwind."

"That's your own fault, Logan. You'll wait."

The students looked curious, but knew better than to ask their stern old teacher about things that were not their business. Coldhand had little choice but to wait, standing on the edge of the patched practice mats.

The years had not been kind to Logan's teacher. Vorus looked much older than the last time Coldhand had seen him. The last wisps of thin white hair around his ears were gone, leaving his scarred scalp bare. The lines at the corners of Vorus' eyes were deeper, etched there by decades of hardship.

When their lessons were done, the children made their respectful farewells to Vorus and filed past Coldhand, out into the unfriendly Highwind streets.

Vorus beckoned to Logan. "Now, we'll talk."

The hunter strode out onto the mat. It was thin and he could feel the hard concrete of the floor even through the soles of his boots. Lessons in Arctan Vorus' palaestrum were no kinder than those taught out in the back alleys of Prianus, but they taught much, much more. Honor, strength…

Coldhand crossed his arms over his chest. "I wouldn't have come here, Vorus, but I need information."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. I'm hunting the Cult of Nihil and I think they're on Prianus."

"Hunting? I'd heard that you flew off and became a bounty hunter," Vorus said sourly. "Looks like the gossip was right."

"You're not the first old cop to curl his claws at it. The last good mark had a Prian captain – a retired officer, just like you. He set his hawk on me."

Vorus grunted and scratched his bulging belly, hard and round as a boulder. "And you want me to give you information. You can't go get it from the station, so you think you can get it from me."

"You still play cards with the city captains, don't you?"

"Yeah, I do," Vorus said. He looked at Coldhand for a long, heavy moment. "Your mother moved back to New Empyrean after you left. She couldn't bear it here anymore, not without you. Lynn died three years ago of trycho fever."

Coldhand did not answer.

"Jess got married a little after that. She has a little boy now, eight months old. He's a beautiful kid." Vorus took a step toward the bounty hunter. There was a storm brewing in his blue eyes. "She named him Logan. After you. Jess always thought you would come home. She never believed the things they said."

Logan's jaw clenched. "I don't care. Tell me about the Nihilists."

"You don't care? Don't you?" Vorus grabbed a handful of the younger man's shirt in a gnarled fist. "You were my best. Thirty years I've taught kids in this palaestrum and I never had one like you. You burned, Logan. There was fire in you!"

Coldhand did not move, did not rise to Vorus' anger. "And you were a good teacher, but that was a long time ago. Do you know about any cultists on Prianus? Large groups of new Arcadians?"

"What makes you think I won't go tell the police that you've come back?" Vorus asked, ignoring Coldhand's question. "There's a whole generation of cops in Highwind who would love some payback. They trusted you, Logan. You were the best of them!"

"I couldn't stay, Vorus. I had to go," Coldhand said flatly. "It doesn't matter anymore. You won't tell the cops I was here. You won't sell me out because you're an honorable man."

"As I tried to teach you to be, for all the good it did!" Vorus was still holding Logan's shirt tightly.

"It wasn't like that."

"What was it like then, little hawk?"

"I didn't forget the things you taught me. That Emberguard cut them out. He cut it all away and they replaced it with metal!" Logan closed his mouth with an effort. He did not need to justify himself to his old teacher.

So why am I?

"You got hurt, and so you ran away? You never used to be afraid of pain," Vorus snarled.

He shoved Logan back a step and then jabbed stiffened fingers into the bounty hunter's chest, just below his breastbone. The breath vanished from Logan's lungs and he folded nearly double. He pulled back and then straightened to find Vorus standing there, right in front of him, as though he had not retreated at all.

Vorus swung a scarred fist and Logan jerked back, but the old Prian kept coming. Coldhand parried another strike, but it turned him to one side and he did not see the next flat-handed blow. It connected hard against his neck. The bounty hunter's blood pulsed hard and his vision went dim for a computerized heartbeat.

"Did that hurt?" Vorus asked.

Logan slid away again. He held up his illonium left hand and curled it into a fist. The high whine of servos was loud in the quiet palaestrum. "It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts. This metal the doctors gave me only has twenty percent feeling, Vorus. That's it. That's all I get."

The bald old cop came at him again, hands raised in the close guard stance of a Lowland boxer. Logan feinted one way and then dodged the other. Vorus was not so easily fooled. He cut the angle, jabbing and swinging. Logan threw himself back and rolled away across the mat.

Vorus grunted. "Just not as fast on my feet as I used to be, am I? But I make do with what I have. I'm scarred, not dead. Scars are lessons, little hawk. What did you learn from yours?"

Coldhand looked at the door. He was faster – much faster – than his old teacher. He could get away easily enough, but Vorus was his only lead, the only one who might give him information. He could not leave, not yet. Logan had nowhere else to go. He approached Vorus warily.

"Just tell me what I need to know and I'll go," he said. "You never have to see me again."

"You're not listening, little hawk. Looks like I'll have to give you a few more scars."

Vorus shuffled forward and launched into a new attack. He had taught Lowland boxing to all of his students, including a younger Logan Centra. Coldhand knocked aside the flurry of punches. He brought his left hand up and slammed it into Vorus' wrist. The old cop grunted and rubbed at already bruising flesh.

"I'm not here to fight, Vorus," Coldhand said. "You're not my mark."

"No, I'm your teacher. I taught you how to fight with honor, how to live with honor. You've forgotten that. Have you forgotten how to fight, too? Stop dancing around and stand fast!"

Vorus pressed a hard, furious assault, but Logan was young and agile. He moved only at the last second to duck or block a punch, staying just out of Vorus' reach, hoping to tire out his teacher. But the old man showed no more signs of tiring than making Logan a cup of tea. He was going to have to end this fight somehow, and quickly.

Logan circled Vorus, turning aside the old man's attacks. Every other step, Vorus' left foot dragged just a little. Long years ago, during his days on the police force, he had jumped onto the rear fender of a fleeing suspect's car and been dragged nearly two blocks before climbing up over the cab, smashing through the window and taking control of the vehicle. He lost a great deal of flesh down his left leg. Without cloned replacements, Vorus had received grafts for the damaged ligaments and tendons, but he still bore a limp that Logan knew very well.

Coldhand aimed a low kick at the weak joint. Vorus crouched down onto his good leg to meet the kick. He curled his fingers into claws like a scythe-bird's and sank them into the meat of Logan's calf. The hunter's nerves jolted. Before he could recover, Vorus stabbed those viciously hooked fingers into Logan's thigh and then groin. Logan staggered back, jaw locked and limping on his own left leg.

"What's the matter, little hawk? Does that hurt?" Vorus seized Logan's illonium wrist and twisted against the joint. The machine whined loudly in protest as it resisted. "Now this? This doesn't hurt. This is metal, and it doesn't feel. Just twenty percent, right?"

Coldhand pulled, but could get no leverage to get free.

"This?" Vorus chopped the edge of his hand down on the elbow joint just above the place where Logan's living arm joined the illonium hand. "This is flesh, and it hurts like all the hells."

Logan twisted out of the stubborn leverage and planted his elbow in the center of Vorus' chest. He followed with another swift kick to the old man's scarred leg.

"Got two steel pins in there, myself," Vorus said. He lifted his knee with a groan and jammed it into Logan's inner thigh. "Aches when it rains. Does that make me a barometre?"

Logan willed his legs not to buckle and closed in more cautiously this time, throwing kicks only to gauge distance and keep his opponent at bay. When Vorus tried to strike at his feet and knees, Logan slid forward and struck out with his metallic fist. Vorus fell to the mat with a loud thump.

He rolled to his feet with a grunt. "Low blow, little hawk. Are you angry? I sure hope so. Heart's just a muscle, Logan, or just a computer-driven valve. Forget that poetic shit about them. Your soul isn't hiding behind your ribs. No one can cut it out. A cybernetic heart can't stop you feeling any more than a cybernetic hand can stop that leg from throbbing."

"You're wrong. I don't feel. You don't know what I went through, what happened to me," Coldhand shouted. The echoes bounced jarringly from the walls of the palaestrum. He advanced on Vorus again. "I couldn't play my guitar anymore. I couldn't feel Jess' hand when she held mine. It's all gone! I can't feel any of it!"

Logan jumped, kicking out in the air and punching even as he landed. Vorus' teeth clenched as Logan's fist found an old dueling wound in the hollow of his shoulder. But through the pain, Vorus' lashed back, instinct honed by years of training.

He jabbed a pressure point in Coldhand's arm, slammed his knee into the bounty hunter's diaphragm, stomping on his booted instep. As Logan pulled back, Vorus seized him by the hair. He held Logan in place as he grabbed the younger man's face in a clawed grip, fingers digging into nerves in his cheek and jaw.

It hurt. Coldhand cried out.

Vorus dropped Logan to the mat and stood over him. There was nothing broken, nothing even really damaged. Every one of Vorus' blows was meant only to cause pain, but Logan curled on the floor like a newborn.

Vorus turned his head and spat a gobbet of thick blood to the mat. "I don't know anything about your Cult of Nihil, little hawk. But Arcadians are going missing in Pylos, on the other side of the mountains. Somehow, there's actually more fairies in Pylos than ever. These new Arcadians are a hard lot, not like the ones we're used to. Might be worth looking into."

Vorus turned and stalked away to his office in the back of the palaestrum. He closed and locked the door behind him.

Logan's heart detected the lowered rate of exertion and reduced his pulse accordingly. The floor mat was rough and bumpy under his right palm and just a vague firm sensation under his left. He pushed himself slowly to his feet. The blazing pain was already fading. Logan took one last look around the palaestrum, at Vorus' closed door, and left.

"History doesn't repeat itself. We do. Scholars love to hear themselves talk."

- Kemmer Andus, Prian archeologist (229 PA)

The two archeology teams spent that first day cataloging and calibrating their instrumentation. Kemmer brought only two generators up into the Kayton Mountains. They were barely enough to power his own systems. But Xen, unsure what sort of situation he was shipping himself and his team into, made sure to bring more than enough batteries and generators. Gruth got to work setting them up and running cables out to the rest of the camp.

That left erecting the Tynerion team's tents to Tiberius and his crew. About an hour before sunset, a dirty Prian man and slightly older woman appeared at the edge of the moraine. They stopped at a safe distance until assured that the newcomers in camp were not thieves or worse. Tiberius explained their presence and that they were, in fact, there to protect the archeologists. The Prians introduced themselves as Darius and Ava Jaenes, a brother and sister team who worked for Kemmer as diggers.

"You don't have anyone else to help you?" Duaal asked. He seemed more than happy to have an excuse to take a break from setting up camp. "It's just the two of you?"

"We had Dannos to help with the microexplosives," Darius said.

"Until those rats killed him this morning," his sister added.