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I
of powers," he said. "I'm not an Old One, after all. I'm just a ... just a
man."
"But you hold the spear of a god, and it doesn't harm you. And you... seem to
have cast Odin's Curse on Horcel Tyrson."
Ian shook his head. "I... if I did, and I don't think I did, I don't know
how." He spread his hands. "I just don't know."
His mind raced. It was obvious that Odin could cast his curse from some great
distance. Was it the ring? No; that didn't seem likely. The only thing the
ring had done was to pulse on his thumb every now and then. If it had simply
been Ian extending his arm ...
Not the right time to test it. But it should have felt different, or it at
least should have felt like something.
'Truly, I meant no harm," Ian said. "I don't know..."
"Then it's clear that you have to prove yourself," the Duke of Bight's Bay
said. "All this talk of you being the Promised Warrior or not the Promised
Warrior, of curses that aren't curses, and spell that aren't spells." He
looked up and down the Table. "I... I find myself uncertain. I had no
inclination to war with the Dominions, not now, not with " He stopped himself.
"Not with the present situation, by and large, as it is, by and large." He
shook his head. "But I must say to my fellows that I'm torn. Putting a hand in
the
Wolf's Mouth has long been a privilege, not a right." He held up his metal
hand. "We all have faced the Pain, but we faced it to prove ourselves worthy
to lead, worthy to follow, worthy not to prove ourselves not... untruthful."
He walked to the curtain behind the Table, and pulled it to one side. It moved
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silently.
Behind it lay a stone table, just short of chest high. And on the stone table
was a stone sculpture of the head of some animal.
It took Ian a moment to decide it was a wolf; it was too large, the teeth too
many, the jaw too broad, giving it an almost cartoony look.
A rack behind the table held what Ian at first would have guessed were a dozen
lances. Instead of being tipped in a spearpoint, each was topped by a wooden
disk, about the size of a dinner plate.
"Each of us has, like our Father Tyr, faced the wolf, and put our hand in his
mouth, and gripped the Pain."
"And that's how you lost your hands, eh?" Torrie said, startling Ian. Torrie
had been silent, which was too quiet even for him.
"No," the duke said. He held up his metal hand. "That is how we sacrificed our
hands, demonstrating our worth and virtue." He took one of the poles down from
the rack. "It is the right of those who think the candidate worthy to attempt
to push him off, after he's gripped the Pain; it is the right of those who
think him unworthy to block those attempts." He replaced the pole. "But the
Promised Warrior, of course, will feel no pain when he grips the Pain; his
hand will not wither and burn." He gestured toward
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Hidden Ways 2.htm where the spear Gungnir lay on the hard floor. "Just as you
grip the spear of Odin without harm."
Bullshit. Ian had touched the spear while he wasn't wearing Freya's gloves.
Just once, in his sleep. He rubbed at the still-sore spot on his left arm
where the blister had been.
"And you're asking me to stick my hand in that statue's mouth, and grab hold
of this Pain, while you stand around and decide if
I'm going to die or not."
The duke nodded. "Yes." He sat back down, and waved a hand toward it. "That is
precisely what we ask."
Ian swallowed, heavily, but it didn't remove the metallic taste of fear from
his mouth. They expected him to burn his hand off at the very least. And what
if one of them decided that they were all better off without Ian?
"But what if he doesn't?" Maggie stepped forward. "What if he says, 'So be it,
you've received the warning, do with it what you will I'm going home.' What if
we just turn our backs and walk out?"
The Margrave of the Hinterlands rose. "You have appeared in front of the Table
by your own choice, all of you. Do you think you will leave without being
judged? Do you think that we are helpless old men for you to taunt and then
just walk away? Step forth and be judged."
Torrie's mouth was dry. Time had run out. "Wait," he said. "Wait." He took a
step forward. "Judge me, instead. I'm his champion."
Arnie remembered a smile.
He couldn't, for the life of him, remember what village that crossroads was
just outside of. But it was somewhere between Nam'po and Sindae-Dong. Dog
Troop had been cut off from the rest of the Seventh. The Old Man the captain's
name was Young, and while he was really in his midtwenties, he looked like he
was about eighteen, maybe; he was destined to be known as the Old
Man, although not to his face had gotten his orders over the radio, and had
ordered what was probably officially called a strategic withdrawal, but
everybody knew was a retreat down the road until they met up with some
support.
The Old Man had left behind a two-man machine-gun team with orders to hold out
as long as they could, and then get away, if they could. They'd probably slow
the lead elements of the oncoming division for a few minutes, and minutes were
in short supply.
The gunner's assistant was an acne-faced kid from somewhere in Georgia; he
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just nodded, once, his face white as a sheet. The gunner, though, was that
loudmouth Petrocelli, from New Yawk, and for once Petrocelli didn't mouth off.
He just nodded, said, "Understood, Cap'n," and smiled.
Arnie still remembered that smile, the smile of a man about to spend his life
to buy his brothers-in-arms a few minutes, a distraction.
But shit, this wasn't that bad. Petrocelli had been a kid, maybe twenty-three,
twenty-four. He'd thrown away maybe a half century of life.
But what did Arnie have?
Not a damn thing worth keeping.
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Not his life. He wasn't afraid of dying. It had already happened, more than
not. The best part of him had died in his arms not so long ago, and the only
reason he hadn't gone along with her is that she made him promise not to, and
Arnie wouldn't lie to Ephie, not on her deathbed, and not any other time.
Besides, he had been lucky. He'd had it all. It just hadn't lasted forever.
You get lucky enough to live with a good woman for ten, then twenty, then
thirty years, you get to the point where you can't even remember how long it's
been that you've known that the old cliché about your "better half" was just
the plain truth, no embellishment.
And then, after he had finally retired, and after he had just started to enjoy
spending every remaining hour of his life with her, an old friend in a white
jacket had called them into his office. He had known from the start that Doc
had bad news: Doc only put on the professional look of concern when he had bad
news.
But Arnie hadn't been prepared for how bad the news was. Nobody could be ready
for that obscene, ugly word: metastasis. The pain got worse, and only ended
with a needle that brought her, finally, easily, to the end of all pain.
Somehow, he had gotten through each day since then. And sometimes it didn't
hurt for minutes.
So it was with not even the slightest twinge of regret that Arnie took a
running start to leap to the surface of the Table, then jumped over an empty
seat, toward the Wolf's Head.
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