The Trouble With Heroes.... (10 page)

She was committed now.

Chapter 7

She waved at Gyrth, whose blond head was
sticking out of the hole to make sure she was all right, then
turned toward that glowing fire.

She shivered under the swamp of chill air
and dark infinity. Once again she couldn't see the ground beneath
her feet and Dan wasn't guiding her. She made herself step forward.
She knew this was smooth grass, but she still felt for each step as
if an abrupt crevasse might pitch her into destruction.

Then light shimmered, forming a silvery path
across the grass, a path to the fire. To that figure by the fire,
even though he hadn't moved.

She froze. He could do this. What else could
he do?

Then he turned. "Hello, Jen."

He was still just a shape against the glow,
but it was Dan's voice for sure, just the same as before except for
the tone. She searched that tone for welcome, for warmth, and found
none. Something inside shrank, wanting to run away. What if he
didn't even remember the night that was so important to her? Combat
stress caused neural damage that could show in many ways.

"Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."

She walked forward, picking that apart. I
won't hurt you. Not, I can't hurt you.

She'd known that -- that he was controlled
not by what he could do but by what he allowed himself to do -- yet
she was suddenly crushed by the mission she'd so carelessly chosen.
Who was she to decide the fate of a town? Of a world, even. Who was
she to assess Dan’s capacity to harm and destroy?

When she arrived close to the fire and was
touched by its light and warmth, she finally saw him clearly.

Changed. Very.

Dan. Still.

She realized what made him look harsher –
his hair was drawn back in a plait, into that rope of hair hanging
down his back.

Hair didn't grow that much in the time he’d
been away.

"Would you like to sit,” he said, “or did
you just come to stare?" She flinched at his tone, but then he
added, "I have tea, and two cups. It's not stewed."

She sat suddenly on the grass, on the
opposite side of the low fire.

He remembered.

"How are you?" It was a stupid question, but
had to be asked.

"Better." He poured tea into a cup she
remembered so well and passed it to her.

Better than what? she wanted to ask, but she
was groping through the dark here, afraid of rocks and
crevasses.

"Have the governors sent you any message?"
she asked, sipping. It was perfectly made tea, delicate and fresh.
It made her want to laugh and cry.

"I thought perhaps you were it."

"Unlikely."

"Sometimes messages are judiciously
indirect."

It was a subtle point, made with a cynicism
that was strange from him.

"So?" he asked. "What's going on?"

"They've formed a committee."

His lips didn't even twitch. He might as
well know the truth. "They're afraid of you, Dan. Grateful, mind,
but afraid."

"That's fair. I'm afraid of myself."

Well, there was the answer to her question.
She put down the cup because her hands had started to shake. "Then
why do you want to come back?"

"It's my home."

"A person doesn't bring danger to their
home."

"Why are you here, then?"

Truth. "A group of us -- Tom, Yas, you know
-- thought we needed to find out about you. Before doing
anything."

"And you drew the short straw?"

She sighed. "I was the only one
willing."

He suddenly smiled, a flickering hint of the
old Dan. "Ah, Jen. That's part of why I've come back."

"For your doubting friends?"

"For you."

Her heart missed a beat. "Why?"

"Do you have to ask?"

"Yes."

He looked down. "Perhaps because you
commanded me to."

Coward that she was, she didn't want that
burden. "Really?"

"Partly."

She realized then that he was being as
painfully careful of truth as she was.

He looked back up, faced her. "I need you,
Jen, to have a chance of survival."

"You have survived! The war's over. Isn't
it?"

"I'm not sure wars are ever over. The
repercussions rumble on and on."

"You don't need me." She meant it to be
cheerful, bracing, but truth tumbled out after it. "I don't want to
be needed that way, Dan."

"I don't want to need you that way.
Sometimes we run out of choices."

He reached into the fire and grasped a
burning brand. He lifted it, flames licking his fingers. She
waiting for him to drop it, but he didn't.

"I can hold a burning brand, Jen. You can
hold me."

She tossed her remaining tea over the
flames. They hissed, but then burned on undaunted.

Burning what?

He released the brand in mid air, and it
hung there as he showed her his unmarked hand. "You'll survive,
too. I think."

When he'd left, a small piece of glowing
wood had burned his fingers. Sharp as a knife, Jenny knew everyone
was right. Dan was more dangerous than she'd ever imagined, too
dangerous by far for a peaceful town.

Or for her.

"You can't force me, Dan."

"I can, in fact, but I'm trying not to."
Abruptly, the brand fell back into the fire, scattering golden
sparks. "I've learned many things, Jen, and one is that we do what
we have to do to win." Suddenly, he lowered his head, his fingers
digging into his bound hair. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have put it
like that. I've not talked to real people for a long time. Rusty
skills...."

Oh, if he was looking for a weapon he'd
found a good one. It was if she were back by the lake again, with
Dan facing death, and the ashes gritty in her mind. She longed to
reach out and soothe those anguished hands, but she held back. She
had taken on a greater role, had accepted the responsibility of
judge. And she was scared. She felt a lick of fear that might be
what a hellbane victim felt, and a pull toward him that was almost
as bad.

"I need you, yes," he said, with the kind of
calm that takes great effort, "but there's more to it than that."
He looked up, eyes densely dark in the fire's shadows. "The world
needs you. Needs both of us. You say you can't. You don't have that
choice. You must."

She blocked that. He was powerful, and he
was wounded. He might be very dangerous indeed.

But he needed her, and she knew what she
must do. "I'm yours, Dan. Forever, if you want me. I'll come with
you to Hellbane U."

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Thank
you for that, love, but it isn't so easy. I need the town."

The word "love" collided with the rest of
it. "The town doesn't need you."

"Same argument as before. They have no
choice."

"Then why are you sitting out here instead
of going in?" She pointed at the closed gates. "Blow them
open!"

The brand rose again without touch and began
to whirl, shooting flame into the dark. She glanced at the wall.
Was that damned camera recording all this? "Put that thing back
before someone sees it!"

It stopped, then settled with perfect
gentleness into the fire bed. "Better?" he asked.

Her heart raced and tea and ale churned.
"Was that demonstration of control designed to reassure me, because
it failed? What are you doing?"

He inhaled and she thought she saw
impatience, frustration, anger -- an army of dangerous emotions.
Every bit of her flinched, but she made herself meet his eyes.

"All right. I hoped if I just turned up,
they'd let me in before they thought about it. Once in, I knew it
would be a different game. I didn't expect the guard on the gate
now it's over."

"It's become a habit."

"A bad one. Once I was stopped, I could only
try persuasion. Nothing would work if I stormed my way in. It's
like that night in Surrey Green,” he said, “and you. I
need...welcome, Jen."

"The town's not going to fall in love with
you." It was an indirect response to his declaration of love and
she saw him note it, and put it aside as she had. Their feelings
were not the crux of this matter.

"What do you mean `nothing would work? What
are you trying to do?"

He flexed his hands in a gesture of
frustration. "I don't know. I know I need the town, and I need you.
I can pay my way," he added, almost pathetically. "I'm still a
fixer."

"More than a fixer."

"True. But I could only do what a fixer
did."

His desperation tormented her. Whatever he'd
become, he'd done it for them all -- for the town, for Gaia. They
should be welcoming him, but a wounded animal is a wounded animal,
no matter what the cause.

"If you could pretend to be the old Dan
Fixer...." She answered herself. "But you can't. We all know, or at
least guess. You're a hero of the Hellbane Wars, mighty and to be
feared. Do you know they renamed Bond Street Dan Fixer Way?"

"That's ridiculous."

"But you're stuck with it." She eyed him
"Why do I feel comfortable all of a sudden? Is it magic?"

"I don't think so."

The relief only lasted a moment. "Are you
saying you don't know? Don't know what you're doing?"

"No, not that. But I can't say there isn't
any... radiance from it. If there is, I can't do anything about it.
Does it matter?"

It was an anxious question, and she didn't
know the answer. She raised her knees and rested her weary head on
them. "Explain, Dan. Please. Explain what you're trying to do."

He picked up a dead stick, an ordinary one,
and poked at the fire. "The remaining fixers are all more or less
as I am now. In power. Hellbanes are a powerful potion."

"Is that why you let everyone think you were
dead?"

He nodded. "We had to decide what we’d
become before we could decide what to do. We could have
disappeared, let everyone think us dead. The thing is, some of us
are... out of control. Mad, I suppose. But mad with great power.
We're guarding them, but it takes nearly all our resources. Perhaps
they'll heal. If not...."

"You’ll kill them?" She was proud of her
calm voice.

"We'll have no choice. We can't spend all
our resources on them."

“
Why not? We miss fixers, but we can
cope.”

He shook his head. “Gaia needs fixers. We
have to rebuild the system.”

“
What, with a handful of you? Perhaps
Agnes Cottrell had the right idea and you should stay at Hellbane U
and come when called. For important things only.”

“
I’m not talking about that kind of
fixing.”

“
What, then?”

“
If the blighters come back. We have
to be ready, and we have to find a better way.”

Blighters back? But her mind fixed on the
pain at the end of the sentence.

"What happened, Dan? What did you have to
do?"

"You don't want to know."

She gripped her hands together. "Tell me
anyway."

He tossed the stick into the fire and it
burst into wild flames, making her flinch away.

"All right. It was my idea, clever lad that
I am. Fixers were dying one by one and the blighters only grew
stronger. We all wanted to rush out and fight, but I persuaded
everyone to play with their magic like I'd been doing, to find the
stuff training had locked up in us."

His eyes brightened for a moment. "It was
amazing what some of us could do, Jen, the power we could draw on.
It became clear that the presence of so many blighters was making
us stronger, day by day. But what to do with it?"

Any light in him died. "Do you remember what
I said about power gained and lost? We figured out that we could
act in a group and have even greater destructive force but we still
couldn't modulate it. What we needed was blighters bunched in huge
numbers, and that doesn't seem to be their way."

Jenny was trying to follow his logic, but
mostly she was following something that ran beneath his words.
Something terrible.

"So we baited a trap."

Her mouth dried. "With what?"

He leaned back on stiff arms. It might have
been a relaxed posture, but it wasn't. "They like people more than
animals, but they really love fixers -- like I love Walker's spiced
meat pies, and you love those big strawberries your father grows. A
solitary fixer draws blighters from all around. Perhaps they fight
over the prey. I don't know...."

She stared at him, but apart from that
betraying pause, his tone was flat.

"So, we formed troops of the ideal size --
about forty, as it happens. We’d form a circle and put the bait in
the center. When the blighters rushed in to feed, we cleared the
area. We'd get thousands, sometimes, and the juice would flood into
us, making us stronger still. Then the troop moved along and did it
again. And again. And again. Troops had to merge, of course, in
time...." After a moment he said, "It was mostly my idea, and it
worked."

She was still trying to form words when he
added, "We drew lots. My name was never drawn."

After three swallows, she managed, "How...
how many of you were there in the beginning?"

"Just over a thousand-" Like a violently
untethered spring, he curled forward, hands over face. "One
thousand, two hundred and twenty three."

And eighteen came home. Day after relentless
day, numbers dwindling, lots drawn, goodbyes said....

“
We all wanted to be noble sacrifices,
but the fear’s too strong. So we used magic to hold the bait. Right
in the middle. It’s most efficient that way."

She scooted around the fire and gathered his
pain tight into her arms.

"You dread being chosen," he whispered. "You
dread not being. You dread living-

"Dan. Dan.... Don't. Don't think about it."
Oh, how crushingly stupid.