“There’s still danger,” Calvus said. “One of the Guardians remains.”
The agent shrugged. “It going to have any hardware beyond what the other ones did?” he asked. He had resumed his task of stripping Gaius of his armor.
“It won’t use area weapons that would threaten the brood it guards,” said the woman cautiously. “But Aulus, the – thunderbolts – can kill despite your armor.”
Perennius blew a rude sound between dry lips. “I could
be run down by a hay cart, too,” he said. “And it’d serve me right if I let something like that happen.”
Perennius rose to draw off the mail shirt by the sleeves. The right sleeve showed great gaps burned in the rings by the energy channeled up the out-thrust sword. The leather insulation beneath was seared, but the vaporizing iron had protected Gaius even as it burned away. “Sure,” the agent said. He was puffing a little with exertion magnified by his heavy garb. “You just keep back where you won’t get hurt. In a few minutes, this’ll all be over and we can both start thinking about the future.”
Perennius did not notice the expression that flashed across Calvus’ face as she listened to him.
The first thing Perennius used his short sword on that day was a sapling from a clump of dogwoods. The blade hacked through the base of the soft trunk and pruned the lesser limbs away with single blows. There were three larger branches splaying up to form the crown, bright with shiny leaves. The agent set each branch separately on the stump. Using the stump as a chopping block, he lopped off those upper limbs a foot above their common fork. When that task was completed, Perennius had a straight, sap-globbed pole eight feet long from its base to its triple peak.
The agent wiped his sword. That only smeared the sap further over the blade’s dull sheen. He swore without heat. Too much of Perennius’ being was concentrated on greater problems for him really to care about a glitch which did not impair function. “Lucia,” he said, “if it’s not down there – the, the Guardian – it’s going to be up here. Best if you – ” and he looked away as he choked back the words that wanted to come, “stayed with Gaius and Bella”; but that would endanger the mission – “got back over the rim where there’s some room to move. Safe enough with the dragon gone.” Perennius paused. “You’re cold meat for those thunderbolts, and the armor we got wouldn’t fit you well enough to help.”
“It’ll be down there,” Calvus said, “somewhere. They’re raised – engineered, Aulus – never to leave the brood without an adult until the hatching. There’s only one left. That’s where it will be.”
“That’s not the best way to protect what they’ve got,” the agent said as he draped the extra suit of mail over the forked end of his pole. “I don’t like counting on the other guy to be stupid. It’s a good way to get your butt reamed.”
Calvus lifted her chin in disagreement. “It isn’t a matter of choice,” she said, “any more than it was your choice that your right hand be dominant.”
“I can do a pretty fair job with my left, too,” the agent said, accepting the metaphor as a judgment.
“All right, than it’s choice that you don’t see with your ears!” the woman snapped. She paused as she heard herself. An expression of beatific wonder spread across her face. “Aulus,” she said, “I shouldn’t have been able to do that. To become angry.”
“Everybody gets mad,” Perennius said. This time the misinterpretation was deliberate. The agent was begging the implied question of the tall woman’s humanity, because he cared enough about the answer that he was not willing to hear the wrong one. Not about a friend. Blazes, he did have friends, now. “Well, we’ll assume you’re right till we learn different,” Perennius went on. He thumbed toward the rim of the gorge. “I still want you the hell out of the way.”
Calvus smiled. “You’ll need light when you get into the cave.”
“Listen, you wander around holding a light and you’re dead,” the agent said. His anger did not flare as it normally would have, because he knew the traveller was not stupid – nor even naïve enough to be saying what he seemed to have heard. “He’ll just shoot past me, won’t he?”