Once A Hero by Michael A. Stackpole Read Free Book Online

the fallen men. Another bandit chose to cross swords with Durriken while the last three galloped out into the night, each heading for a different point on the compass.
    Durriken's pony stopped and turned quickly as the small man tugged on the reins. As his right-handed foe bore down on him, Rik shifted his rapier to his left hand and nudged his pony back to the right and across the line of the bandit's charge. He parried the bandit's awkward cross-body saber slash, then took him through the chest with a riposte.
    The rapier came away wet as the bandit spurred his horse out into the night. Durriken turned to watch him run, but did not pursue him. He smiled as he trotted the pony back toward the glowing circle of coals in the middle of the road. "Lungstuck. Needs to staunch the wound. Someone spells it, he might live."
    Genevera acknowledged his comment with a nod and dismounted. She moved slowly and deliberately as she slung the canteen over her shoulder and rummaged in her saddlebags for her healing bag. "Were you injured, Rik?"
    Swinging his right leg up and over his pony's head, he kicked free of the left stirrup and slid to the ground. "Nay, nary a scratch, love." He slapped his pony affectionately on the neck. "Benison here got his tail toasted." Durriken leaned forward, bringing his ear near the horse's mouth. "He says if the Elven princess will give his master a kiss, she will be forgiven."
    "I will, will I?" She tucked a strand of golden hair behind her pointed left ear. "Were his master a proper equestrian, Benison would not have been so close to the fire."
    "Don't listen to her, Benison, she's a sorceress." The slender man led his horse to the edge of the road and dropped the reins. "Bewitch you, Gena will, as she has me."
    Gena caught Rik's smile and returned it, then flicked her head toward the huddled shadows on the downslope. Her violet eyes saw through the gathering darkness as if it were but a thin fog. For all she knew of Rik being sharp-eyed for a Man, she knew he would see only crouching silhouettes. She envied him as he could not see the stark terror in the caravan refugees' eyes, nor read the fatigue in their drawn, pale faces.
    Rik looked past her toward the figures and broadened his smile. He stabbed the rapier into the ground, then waved his right hand in a big welcoming gesture. "You're safe now, people. Come up, come up. Nothing here to hurt you. The bandits are running to the end of the world." He punctuated his comment with a hearty laugh that brought a smile to Gena's lips in spite of the grim tableau before her.
    In describing the motley collection of wagons scattered along the road, "caravan" was an extravagant term to use. Four wagons remained more or less intact. One had overturned going off the road, while the others stood scattered on the hard dirt surface. The oxen that had been pulling them were dead, pinned to the ground by bandit lances.
    The wagons themselves were all of different design and crude manufacture. A pair were two-wheeled affairs with a small bed ringed by crooked ribs of old wood. Sticks had been woven between them to provide some solidity around the base, and torn canvas stretched taut across the heavy load piled in them.
    The third, like the one that Gena's spell had consumed, had been built like a box and mounted on four wheels. It required a pair of oxen to draw it and had wooden walls and a flat roof, which even provided an overhang to ward the driver from the sun. Ropes tied down a lumpy, canvas-swathed load on the top of it, and a water barrel mounted on the side bled moisture through a cracked stave.
    The last one showed the most work and had four wheels rimmed with iron. Its long, flat bed nearly overflowed with filled grain sacks. Above them, swinging like gallows, rested highwaymen, crudely built cages containing chickens and a pair of geese hung from a latticework of stout poles.
    Around each of the wagons, or lying bloody and slumped over the dead oxen, Gena saw