I tossed my duffel bag onto the bed, listening with a faint, aesthetic sense of satisfaction as the springs jangled under its weight. I couldn't really appreciate it, or the beauty of the Scottish countryside surrounding the castle I was in, or the somewhat oppressive wood-panel-and-paintings-of-dead-British-people decor of the guest room I had been given, or anything else about my situation at the moment, though. I was too busy being mad at Zoner. "I'm impressed," my partner was currently rambling, through the open connecting door from his own adjacent room. "I figured they'd have gutted the inside and modernized it completely, rather than trying to preserve the ambience. Or maybe it was originally bare stone... " My irritation with him, which had been smoldering since we arrived in Edinburgh an hour before, reached a sort of breaking point. I stuck my head through the doorway into his mirror-image room and growled, "I wish you wouldn't go around getting me into fights and not telling me about them until after I'm committed. I haven't had time to prepare for this at all! What the hell were you thinking?" Zoner grinned an infuriating little grin through his dark beard, and tossed his six-and-a-half-foot frame backward onto the bed, making its springs jounce even harder. Folding his hands behind his head, he kept right on grinning. "Hey," he said, "you're the one who said you figured you were ready to take a shot at the World Warrior bracket." "For crissake, that was last Thursday!" I snapped. "I was just thinking out loud." "So? I saved you some time. You should thank me." "I should throttle you!" "Look, it makes sense, all right? You want to prove that you're good enough to be a World Warrior. What better way to do that than to take on one of the current ones? You win, you're in. You lose, sure, you go down hard, but you get respect for trying. Besides, you're not going to lose." I took a deep breath, let it simmer in my lungs for a bit, and let it out again. "And you chose to set me up against this particular one because... ?" "Come on, you can figure that one out for yourself. What with that little job we did for MI-6 last month, it was no big deal talking them into giving you a shot at their house champion." "With no time to prepare." "Back to that again?" Zoner asked, heaving himself up on his elbows and narrowing his dark eyes at me. "Prepare hell. You're a one-man wrecking crew. You won't get any more prepared than you are right now. You're in top form, and you won't get another shot like this one." What he said made sense, and that annoyed me even more. If there's something I hate more than Zoner being presumptuous, it's Zoner being right about it. I sat down in a wing-backed chair which was a lot less comfortable than it looked, and glared at him. "What's eating you, anyway?" he asked. "You weren't even this wired when you fought Killer Kosloski, and the poor bastard who fought -that- monster before you did bought a farm. What's the problem? It's not like any MI-6 fighter is going to go for a fatality in an arranged match. It's business, right? You know how the Brits are about fighting clean." He was way off the mark and we both knew it; he only said it to make my glare falter a little. He knows me too goddamn well, because as he said it, I felt it working. And he saw it working, and when he did his face broke into an even wider grin. "A-ha!" he announced. You don't want to fight her 'cause you've seen her picture. You're hot for her, and you don't want to mess up her face." I tried, unsuccessfully, to deepen my glare, which was slipping fast, and replied unconvincingly, "I'm truly insulted." "So what?" replied Zoner, his grin unwavering. "The truth burns. C'mon, you've fought cute girls before. Remember Savannah Firebrand? You took her out in forty-one seconds, and she was the hottest thing I've ever seen outside the Orient. You didn't even blink when she lost her top." I remembered all too well. A cheap trick, that one, and it bothered me still. "She did that on purpose," I grumbled. "Trying to distract me." "Didn't work, did it?" I shrugged, reminiscence outrunning indignance. "She probably wouldn't've scored with the backfist combo if I'd've been paying more attention." "Or less." Damn! I felt my face smile despite my best efforts to keep a scowl on it, and gave up. "Or less," I admitted. I slid into a slouch, trying to make the chair more comfortable. It didn't work. "It's not just what you're saying, though. I don't like fighting government agents, especially government agents I'm supposed to be on the same side as." "You've fought friends before," Zoner replied, going businesslike and returning to his hands-behind-the-head pose of ceiling-contemplation. "And you haven't even met this girl." I shrugged. When you got right down to it, I couldn't really identify what was making me feel so ambivalent about this fight, and I told him so. "Well," he replied after a moment's reflection, "like it or not, you're committed now. I've got a ton of money riding on you, and if you lose, we're walking home." My annoyance with him rushed back for a moment, then drained away, replaced by the weariness that usually overtakes me when he does something like that. I sighed, a long, tired, all-but-the-vital-capacity sigh. "Not only must I fight, but now I'm obligated to win." "In less than two minutes." "I hope your shoes are up to a trans-Atlantic hike," I replied resignedly. "If I do win, it's not gonna be in under 120. Not against a World Warrior." "What happened to that confidence you used to have?" "Replaced by an experienced optimism," I replied wryly. "I have to think about this some more, I guess." I got up from the uncomfortable chair and went toward the connecting door. "See you in the morning." "I'll be there," said Zoner, and he threw me a thumbs-up which I returned somewhat more than half-heartedly before shutting the door. I'm not sure how long I lay there on the bed, hands behind my head, thinking about everything and nothing at once. I do that sometimes, especially after a long time on a droning airplane, making conversation with MegaZone. I wasn't mad at him then, because I didn't know where we were going, or why. I figured we were off on one of our little junkets to Europe for lack of anything better to do; being richer than some small nations and a part-time spy has a tendency to make Zoner's schedule a little on the odd side. Me, I'm just along for the ride, unless I have a match, which I didn't know I had. I had been on a sort of working vacation for the past month or so. I'd been thinking of going for the World Warrior bracket since my fight with Art Lean in London, back in June. Art's a damn good fighter, and a year ago we were just about even, so I was surprised by the ease with which I took him out. I guess I've been progressing faster than I expected. At any rate, after fighting Art, I holed up in Worcester to train, preparing myself for a World Warrior bid, letting Zoner hop the globe having his adventures without me for a while. My fellow fighters extended a semi-professional courtesy and refrained from challenging me. I figured with another month of training I'd be ready to take a shot at it. Then I made the mistake of mentioning the reason for my downtime to Zoner. Somewhere in the middle of my ponderings, I fell asleep. Jet lag, don't you know. Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents A Third Universe from the Right Production of a Straight On Till Morning Film STREET FIGHTER: WARRIOR'S LEGACY BATTLE 01: FRIENDSHIP Benjamin D. Hutchins with the gracious assistance of (in no particular order): Martin Rose, James Rinehart, Phil Moyer, Rob Shannon, Derek Bacon, Rich Pieri, Amy Johnson, Pearson Mui, and, of course, MegaZone and abject apologies to anyone I might have forgotten to list (c) 1995 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited I awoke to the sound of a polite rapping on the corridor door, and after the brief shock of waking in unfamiliar surroundings, I remembered who I was, where I was and why. A glance at my watch told me that it was 6 AM Worcester time, which would put the local time at 11. I got out of bed, noticing that I'd managed to sleep in my clothes, and opened the door. The same tall, thin butler fellow who had greeted Zoner and I the night before was standing there. "Begging your pardon, sir," he said, in the accent they program into men like him at butler school, "but lunch is served in the Great Hall." "Oh, uh... thank you," I replied. "I'll be along shortly... just need to get cleaned up and such." "Very good, sir," the butler said, and moved on down the corridor to wake Zoner. I felt no need to stick around for that, having done it far too often myself, so I ditched my slept-in clothes and went into the large bathroom connected to my room. It was a lot better-appointed than I would have expected a bathroom in a Scottish castle to be, with lots of marble and shiny brass fixtures. All mod cons, as it were. Hotel-style, the whole wall above the recessed marble sink was a mirror. I stood in front of it for a moment and regarded the fellow looking back at me; hotel mirrors always make me contemplative. After a while, the fellow in the mirror shrugged, his brows crooking as if to say, What do you want me to say? I'm just as much in the dark as you are. So, shrugging in return, I did what people do in the bathroom in the morning. The shower was cavernous, and the high-pressure spray made me wonder if the near-scalding water was being driven right under my skin. It felt terrific. Bounding out of the shower with renewed energy, I dried myself off with a towel so big I could have used it for a tent, and so thick it felt like it was made out of double-sided shag carpet. I wondered if the MI-6 folks would think it gauche of me if I made them an offer on a few of their towels, or at least asked where they got them. I used another to wipe myself a clear area in the mirror so I could watch the other fellow brush his shoulder-blades-long brown hair and tie it back with a stretchie, made sure his beard didn't look too scruffy, and gave him a wink before heading out to the bedroom to get dressed. I don't spend too terribly much on my working wardrobe. I've never particularly felt a need to get all done up in special fighting togs. My regular clothes are what I learned in; my regular clothes are what I feel best fighting in. Jeans and a t-shirt suit me fine, I'm a pretty simple guy. Today's t-shirt was my lucky Far Side shirt, a gift from my mother depicting the classic Midvale School for the Gifted cartoon. I sometimes adopt bracers rather than a belt to keep my pants up, but they make for a bit of a liability in a fight, so I don't wear them for matches. The weather in Scotland, even in August, tends toward chilliness, so I shrugged into my trusty old red flannel frostproof, clearly marking myself as a Maine native (plaid flannel is a Pacific Northwest thing; red flannel ain't the grunge look, kiddies). I sat down on the bed for a second to tie up my green All-Stars. A tip from my old pal Terry Bogard: expensive fighting boots get ruined in a fight and cost you a load of money; All-Stars give you all of the same near-barefoot sensitivity for thirty bucks, keep tacks and little rocks out of your feet, and if they rip you can patch them with duct tape. That magical substance, and faith, was about all that was holding the right sole on; it was about time for a new pair. I put on one of my many caps, this one my beat old gray-green soldier with no clever slogan or patch, just a daub of paint from a summer spent painting window frames and doors. Then I made sure everything I needed to be in my pockets was, and everything I didn't need was in my duffel bag, and met Zoner in the corridor to head for lunch. We're a bit of a Mutt and Jeff team, really. People tend to think, at six foot six and three hundred pounds, that he's the street fighter, all got up in black denim with his long dark hair and his deep dark eyes and his manner just screaming Way of the Warrior. They tend to miss the .45 automatic he packs under that black jean jacket. He's a pretty good fighter, but given his druthers he'd rather stay behind a rod and do the talking. His real talent is behind the controls of an airplane, anyway. He's the best pilot I've ever seen, and I've seen a few. If Zoner told me he was going to land our Hercules on a surfaced submarine, I'd believe him. I'd buckle my seat belt and offer up a prayer to Skuld, but I'd believe him. Those same people see me, ten inches shorter and altogether less imposing, and figure I'm the gunsel. They scan my somewhat oversized clothes looking for the hidden pistol they just know must be in there, not realizing that I really wear clothes that are too big because I just don't like the feel of tight clothes. That same feature of my wardrobe obscures my stocky build, so most people never realize unless they run up against it that my five-eight weighs just about the same as Zoner's six-six. You could call me solidly built. Fifteen years of studying Ler Drit, for my money the world's most demanding martial art, will do that to a person. After the obligatory round of insults and shoulder-punching, Zoner and I headed for lunch in the Great Hall. Mind you, we didn't exactly know where the Great Hall was, but we could smell the food, and that's all a couple of hungry Americans need. The Great Hall of Castle MacLir was appropriately named. It was an enormous vaulted room the size of the George W. Stearns Memorial High School gym, but with a higher ceiling. An enormous Union Jack draped one of the narrower walls, between two stained glass windows. The other wall was occupied entirely by the biggest pipe organ I had ever seen, and the Bach-lover in my heart ached for a moment to hear it played. There were long tables lining the flagstoned floor of the room, all of which had people dressed as if for the office seated and dining at them. The butler fellow met us at the door and took us to the table we were to sit at this morning. Halfway there we were intercepted by a young woman in jeans and a button shirt that looked too big, in the way that men's shirts often do on women, even when they really aren't. She was shorter than I, which is something that doesn't happen all that often, with very long blonde hair done up in a pair of ponytails that trailed off down almost to the ground, and wide, earnest blue eyes. She grinned at me with teeth that were way too white and even to be human, stuck a hand out, and said, "Hey there. You must be MegaZone." ... I hate it when that happens. But I grinned back just the same, stuck my hand out in return, and said, "Actually, my name is Ben, and I'll be your waiter for this evening." She looked at me quizzically, looked up at Zoner, looked back at me, realized her mistake, and laughed. "Sorry. Common mistake, right? I'm Cammy, and I take it you're Gryphon." This time, our stuck-out hands actually connected somewhere in the middle, and we shook. She had a nice grip -- firm, assertive, and dry, without any of that knuckle-crushing posturing that men in suits like to indulge in. She had a nice smile, too. In fact, considering it, I couldn't think of a single thing she had that wasn't nice, and most of the things she didn't have were nice in their absence. I nodded backward, nearly hitting Zoner in the chest with the back of my head, since he had kept walking for another couple of steps and had nearly rammed me from behind when I stopped. "This one's Zoner." I stepped aside and she shook Zoner's hand as well, and, sliding his eyes sideways toward me in one of those covert looks that says, "I approve," he said it was nice to meet her. I ignored him and sat down at the nearest table. The food was excellent, if basic, and not what I had half-dreadingly anticipated at a Scottish castle. The company, for my soon-to-be opponent sat with us, was effervescent, and the conversation as good as the food. We talked about the circuit, discovered that we had a few mutual friends (Art Lean among them), I rambled at length about New England, and Zoner put in his two dollars' worth about the spy biz. All in all, it was the best lunch I've had in a while, and it was too bad that it had to end. When it did, we all stood up, and Cammy said, "The match is scheduled for 2 o'clock this afternoon, so we have some time to prepare. Norris will let you know when it's time, all right?" "Sure thing," I replied. Her grin, and her good humor, were infectious. "See you then," she said, and trotted away. "Remember," said Zoner, leaning over to murmur into my ear, "it's a long walk back." "Get stuffed, Zoner," I said cheerily, and headed back to my room to prepare myself. My method of preparing for a fight is pretty simple. When I got back to my room, I kicked off my shoes, untied my hair, lay down on top of the neatly made bed, tipped my cap over my eyes, and went to sleep. I can't say I was thrilled with the venue chosen for our match. Of all the places I would choose for a fight, a narrow stone catwalk across a Yawning Emptiness isn't even on the list. It beats that training ground I saw in China once -- all poles and ponds -- but not by much. That Cammy had chosen this place to fight in told me something potentially useful: she is not afraid of high places. Unfortunately, I am. But, no worries. This is the part where I reminisce about my Honored Sensei, which you should have been expecting, if you've ever seen any movie by Bruce Lee or anyone who wanted to be him. Her name was Rose. I don't know if she had any other names to complete the usual set, or if, in fact, that was really her name. It doesn't matter all that much to me, either; Rose was always good enough for me. I always knew who I was talking about. I didn't know a lot about Rose. The rest of her names, if any; how old she was; where she came from. This much I knew: she was an old friend of my grandfather's, she had come to Millinocket, Maine (the geometric center, assuming Euclidean properties, of nowhere) by way of Thailand, but probably didn't originally hail from there; and I was, from the age of four, her only student. Rose was around the same age as my grandfather, as far as I know, and to look at she was ageless and around thirty. She had a fondness for trench coats and fedora hats which she passed on to me along with Ler Drit, and a sort of haunted look that always bothered me when I was a kid, mostly because she would refuse to explain it until I was nearly twenty. She was a hard teacher, but then, Ler Drit is a hard subject. Not as outright brutal as most who even recognize its name believe, but then, most of them are thinking of the mockery of the style that M. Bison has made of it in the twenty years since he started building his empire. It's certainly not as brutal as the training regimen for Muay Thai. I know -- I compare notes with a Muay Thai champion semi-regularly. Joe is fond of the "why, when I was your age" method of horror-story-from-my-training-days-telling. You're expecting me to tell you now about the time when I was ten or so that Rose found out I was scared of heights, and promptly made me walk some kind of a tightrope over a windy chasm, at the bottom of which awaited a nasty crunching death, to conquer my fear. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but she did no such thing. It's none of your business what she did. Suffice it to say that I'm still afraid of heights, just as I am afraid of many things, but I don't let it stop me. I took a deep breath of the clean Scottish air, let it out, and stepped off the outer curtain onto the catwalk, letting my arms hang loosely at my sides, willing the tension out of my muscles. I checked to make sure that my gloves were fastened securely; they were. It's more a nervous habit than anything else that I do that. Across from me, separated by perhaps fifteen feet of catwalk, Cammy awaited. She had changed into her battle gear, which consisted of a green leotard, a pair of nasty-looking combat boots, a pair of equally nasty-looking armored vambraces, a beret, and some shoe polish. Arrayed along the inner curtain at her end of the catwalk, the spectators began to cheer as we walked out, meeting in the middle, separated by only a few feet. She settled into a ready stance, feet placed as if she were standing on a surfboard, right fist raised in front of her face, left fist curled before her body, rocking slowly back and forth on the balls of her feet. I anticipated a couple of things about her fighting style. The first was that it would be longer on kicks than punches. She was clearly strong, but the simple, incontrovertible fact of her stature would limit her upper body strength. Train all she might, she could only throw a punch so hard. So I was betting that kicks would form the bulk of her arsenal. The second was that she would come as close as a Brit could come to fighting dirty. Special Forces fighters always fight on the verge of dirty. But that's OK. I can handle dirty fighting. I smiled, stretched my arms back until my sternum popped most satisfactorily, and adopted one of my own, knees bent, feet apart (left slightly ahead of right), left fist at the ready, right hand open and extended to the side as if for balance. Unconsciously, I found myself rocking to her rhythm. Norris, the faithful butler, stepped to the inner end of the catwalk and queried, "Champion ready?" "Ready!" Cammy replied, and threw me a wink. "Challenger ready?" "Ready!" I replied, returning it. /* ZZ Top "Sharp Dressed Man" _Eliminator_ */ "Fight!" Norris barked, and she came at me like a tornado, skipping forward with something that was like a spinning backfist, but with a fascinating little dance step in the middle. I ducked it, dropping low and throwing my left fist, and got in the first hit, hearing her grunt as my fist plowed into her midriff. Her knee bashed into my face, and only a quick turn of my head prevented her from it from bloodying my nose; I bounced away, coming up with a strange warm moisture on my cheek. Reaching up, I smeared it with my fingers and looked; it was green shoe polish, of course. While I was wasting my time with that pointless observation, she plowed a boot into my gut, sending me stumbling back toward the outer curtain. All righty, then! I dug in with my backmost foot and reversed direction, starting a run toward her, and gathered my Ler. I don't know what language "Ler Drit" comes from, but Rose always told me it translates into English as "Lifeforce Combat". I suppose that makes one's Ler equivalent to one's Chi or ki or the Force or whatever you want to call it. Thanks to Rose's teaching, I can do some pretty spiffy things with my Ler. Things like shoving it out of my body and making it flame up around my hand. It isn't a hot flame -- more like an electrical shock -- but it can sure pack a jolt. I flared it on my left fist and dove in for a good, old-fashioned left cross, but my opponent was already airborne. A year ago I would have been startled enough by this to lose my concentration and let the flarefist dissipate, wasting the energy, but not today. Instead I dug in with my forward foot and halted my charge, rocking back on my stance and going to block the flying kick she was trying to lay on me. Except that she wasn't trying to kick me at all. I'd heard about this move, and as appealing as the concept may seem to -you-, I didn't relish the idea of getting my head trapped between those steel-cord thighs. Not out here, anyway. Besides, we had only just met. So I did what anybody with half a clue would have done, and ducked, throwing myself into a forward roll and reversing as I came to my feet. She wasn't too thrown off by missing me; she was half-turned by the time she came down, and she landed on her feet, pivoting to face me. She was breathing a little harder, and smiling that nice smile. Having fun, and so was I. We traded a few more blows, boring ones; blocks, kicks. She tagged me across the jaw with a particularly nice kick; I spun the recoil into a backfist spin and zapped her with that flarefist I'd been saving. She backed off, shaking her head to clear the dazzle from her eyes, and complimented me. Then she did something very strange. She took two running steps, and her feet seemed to slide out from under her. She caught herself on her arms and pushed off so that she started to corkscrew, and flew toward me feet-first, spinning, in a manner which seemed to defy gravity. I might have been able to do it, using my Ler to hold me away from the ground; I had no idea how she was doing it. While I pondered the attack, it took me off at the shins. I really have to stop being so damn cerebral about fighting. While I fell, though, I wasn't idle; I used what little purchase my feet had left on the ground to push myself backward, and threw my hands out and down over my head to catch myself on. Cammy was getting to her feet as I hit my hands, and pushed off with all the considerable strength in my arms. This had the effect of bouncing me back to my feet like a spring-loaded silhouette target, much faster than Cammy had expected me to recover. Before she could react, I pushed off with my legs, throwing myself into a front flip over her. I told you before that Ler Drit fighters can use their Ler to levitate; well, I did so here, giving myself a little push to keep myself aloft a good ten feet beyond Cammy. I landed, back to her, nearly at the inner curtain, and closed my eyes, concentrating on what I could hear and feel around me, the vibrations in the stone under the soles of my feet and the flow of the energies around me. I had psyched her out. Seeing me fly past her like that, she had turned and come running after me, winding up for a flying kick. With my eyes closed I could see her coming, could visualize myself on the catwalk, as if I were seeing the scene from a camera suspended over the moat off to the side. She was flying toward me, foot extended, the kick guaranteed to bash my head right into the wall of the castle and knock me out for the count. Now. I threw myself up and back, pushing off with feet and Ler, and flared my right fist, corkscrewing through the air. Her outstretched kicking foot passed behind my back close enough that I could feel it just as I unloaded the backfist into her jaw. When we hit the catwalk, I was standing; she wasn't. "Challenger wins!" Norris announced, and he sounded a little shaken up. Opening my eyes, I straightened my cap. "Gryph!" Zoner bellowed, charging out of the crowd of onlookers. "That was fucking great! Seventy-three seconds! I'm rich! Again!" "Shh!" I said, kneeling at the side of my fallen opponent. "Cammy? You ok?" A field medic from the castle joined me, turning her face up to the sky, peeling back an eyelid and shining a light into the eye underneath. This made her squint, groan, and push the light aside. "I'm ok," she muttered, sitting up and putting a hand to her head. "Jus' get me some ice." She looked up at me and smiled an almost shy smile. "You're good. Better than I expected," she admitted. "Damn right he's good!" came a familiar voice from the crowd, and a tall, muscular fellow with a shock of thick dark hair pushed past Zoner. Even though he was already being obnoxious, I was very happy to see him. He's got a grin the size of the grille on a '58 Corvette and all the social grace of a supercharged V-8 engine, but for some reason, I love Joe Higashi like a brother. Even when he grabs me in a half nelson, raps the button on the top of my hat down into my brain pan, and says something stupid, like, "The name's Joe Higashi, miss -- I taught this clown everything he knows about fighting!" I helped Cammy to her feet, introduced her, watched Joe make a pass so widely telegraphed that Cammy could parry it easily even in her groggy condition, and submitted my hand to be squashed and pumped up and down for a bit. Joe slapped Zoner on the back as if he thought Zoner was choking on a chicken bone; Zoner gritted his teeth and refused to cough, although the effort probably took two years off his life. Now that the fight was over, I knew my opponent was OK, and the adrenaline rush had faded, I found myself wanting to get off the goddamned catwalk, now, this very instant -- so, as quickly as I could without being rude, I made my way to the walkway on the inner curtain. Cammy, Joe, and Zoner followed, Joe chattering about his current standing in the Muay Thai leagues and Zoner going on about how much money I won him. I love my friends, but sometimes, they can be a tremendous pain in the ass -- especially Joe and Zoner. They both know damn well that after a fight, when everybody else wants to party, all I really want to do is have another nap. For the third time that day, I was awakened by a rapping on the door to my room. This time, though, it wasn't faithful Norris waking me; the knock was too quiet for that, almost furtive. I sat up, listening to muscles popping grudgingly out of the positions they had set in, blinked, and looked out the window; it was nearly dark. The sky at the western horizon was a thick purple with a searing pink band just at the dividing point between sky and ground; it was magnificent, and for a moment I simply sat and looked at it. In the dark part of the sky, the Northern Lights were beginning a performance. Then, remembering the reason I awoke, I said, "Come in." The door opened, and Cammy slipped into my room, dressed as she had been before the match. She had, in the hours since the fight, developed a glorious shiner around her right eye, where I had tagged her with that first backfist. Oddly enough, the knockout blow hadn't left a mark. I'm sure I wouldn't've won any beauty contests myself -- my face, especially after the nap, felt like a wax mask. I still thought she looked lovely, though. "Hullo," she said. "I'm sorry, did I wake you?" "Yeah, but don't worry about it," I said, getting up and stretching out my protesting frame. Things made cracks and pops which would be disconcerting to the uninitiated. "I shouldn't be sleeping through the whole day, anyway. I got what I wanted... a couple hours of sleep and some time away from the cheering throngs." I grinned at the image. "I hadn't counted on Joe showing up for this." "Your friend the kickboxer?" I nodded. "He's funny. He's been down in the Great Hall telling embarrassing stories about your early days in the fights." "Not surprising. What brings you by? Rousing a sleeping Ben can't be as much fun as listening to Joe Higashi spout." She laughed. "I wanted to see if you had any plans for tonight." "Plans?" I shrugged. "I suppose Zoner's in no condition to fly us home, which means I'll have to impose on your hospitality for another evening. Why?" "Well, now." She leaned closer to me, dropping her voice conspiratorially, and said, "I'm thinking about getting out of this stuffy old place for the night and heading down into town to crawl the pubs. Care to come with?" I scratched at the back of my head for a moment, then shrugged. "Sure, sounds like fun." "Great! Let's go, then. The night's not getting younger." Sneaking out of Castle MacLir was an exercise in amusement. I felt like I was a kid at summer camp. We crept through secret passages; Cammy said she thought she was the only one who knew about them. They led down, down, down, through the side of the mountain and to a small cut off the side of the motorway from Edinburgh. There was a small white Land Rover parked there, so we made for it. It only dawned on me about halfway there that the -reason- we were sneaking was because Cammy was a government agent, and probably not supposed to leave the castle, which was after all a military base of sorts, without asking somebody first, which she apparently hadn't. I had just reached this conclusion when a throat was cleared behind us and an officious voice said, "And where do -you- two think you're going?" "Doh!" we cried in unison, whirling to confront the voice's owner. Seeing who it was, I sighed, my shoulders relaxing. "Joe!" I grumbled. "You just about gave me a heart attack." "Sorry," Joe replied, ambling over with a goofy grin on his face. "Didn't mean to scare you. Naughty, naughty children, sneaking off like this. I'm afraid you're going to need a chaperone." Cammy put on the most adorable "Oh, you have got to be kidding me" expression I'd ever seen, and was about to protest when Joe added, "Nah, I'm just kiddin' around. You two have fun. If anybody asks where you are... I'll, ah, make somethin' up." "You do that," I replied dryly, then grinned. "Thanks, Joe." "Hey, de nada, pal," replied Joe. "Joe 'Mr. Discretion' Higashi, at your service." The drive into town was a fascinating experience, to say the least. Cammy had clearly been trained as a Combat Driver, and she was apparently convinced that the Land Rover was pretty much the same as a Porsche, when you got right down to it. I spent most of the trip either plastered against the passenger door or clinging to my seat belt trying to avoid tumbling into her lap, not that I would have minded that, except that it would have been mortally embarrassing and would have made it hard for her to drive. I've never liked beer, and Zoner has always contended that that's because I haven't tried the right one yet. I've never particularly thought that this made any sense, since I usually stated my dislike of the stuff and provoked that response after trying something he recommended. So I suppose it was just as well that he wasn't there that night, to see me enjoying the stuff the pubtender at this particular Quaint Scottish Public House was serving me. It was thick, and bitter, and dark as sin, but for some reason I couldn't name, I loved it. The publican himself was the prototype from which all publicans in the Commonwealth had been put into production: fat, jovial, red-haired and red-faced, with a jolly laugh and a burr so heavy it could cut concrete. He apparently knew Cammy -- unless he happened to call every pretty young girl who came in "me bonny fightin' lass," which, I suppose, was possible. I've never felt very comfortable: 1) In bars; 2) With a drink in my hand; 3) Around people I don't know very well. So, you can see that I was absolutely in my element in a Scottish pub. I used to have a problem with hanging around attractive women -- I'd sort of freeze up, or, failing that, turn into Jerry Lewis, which was worse. It's another character flaw Rose cured me of, and that's another 'how' which is none of your business. So at least -that- wasn't causing me difficulty. All in all, it looked like pretty smooth sailing ahead. The folks in the pub obviously knew each other, and they could tell I was from out of town, but they didn't seem to mind that, and kept to themselves. Except for a couple of young guys I noticed, over in the corner; they kept glancing up at us and giving me strange looks. It looked like they might be psyching themselves up for some sort of action. I didn't like the looks of them, even with the warm, benevolent haze that the beer was settling over me. Inwardly, I shrugged. I didn't want any trouble. I rarely do. I turned to Cammy and said, "How much trouble will you get into for this?" "None, if nobody knows I'm gone," she replied with a grin. "Why? Your friend promised to keep it quiet." I snorted. "Joe Higashi is to discretion as a Sherman Tank is to subtlety. What's worse, even if he only tells one person, that one person is Zoner. If loose lips really did sink ships, Zoner would be the Helen of Troy of shipwrecks." She shrugged. "So, M. will give me that 'disappointed' look and I'll have to pretend to be sorry and tell him I won't do it again. And the Brigadier will yell at me and I'll have to pretend to be sorry and tell him I won't do it again. Then I'll knock over another mission with my usual aplomb and all will be forgiven. Don't worry about it." I shrugged and took another drink. "What exactly is this stuff, anyway?" I asked, gesturing with my mug and almost causing a catastrophic peanut spill. "I usually hate beer, but this is wonderful stuff." "Why thank ye, lad," the publican, who had overheard me, said. "I brew it meself, from a recipe handed down t'me from me dad, who got it from his dad, and so on. There's been a MacGregor at the Iron and Wheel since 1656." I was going to reply to this, but I felt a rather hard tap on my shoulder. "Hold that thought," I said, and turned to face my shoulder-tapper. He was one of the young fellows I had seen eyeing me earlier, a young man little or no older than I, with bushy, dark-blond hair and somewhat unfocused brown eyes. "I don't want no trouble in me place, Johnny," the publican said in a warning tone. This gave me two pieces of important information: the man's first name, and the knowledge that the publican considered him more than likely to be looking for a problem. "Relax, Angus," Johnny replied. "I just want to ask this fella a couple of questions." "Go ahead," I said, putting as pleasant a smile as I could on my face, which was feeling considerably less sore than it had when I arrived. I was hoping I could keep it that way. "What's yuir name, first of all?" "Ben Hutchins. Friends call me Gryphon," I replied. What the hell! I wanted this guy to be my friend. Currently, I wanted all of Scotland to be my friend, and was considering expanding that mandate to include all of the British Isles, including Ireland, whether they really wanted to be my friend or not. "Where'd yon lass get that shiner, then?" I shrugged. What'd be the point in making something up? "I hit her," I replied flatly. "I see," Johnny replied, equally matter-of-fact. "And where'd you get yuirs?" "She kicked me in the head," I said, and heard Cammy giggle a bit off to my right. "Ah." Johnny looked satisfied. "All right, then. That's all I wanted to know." He turned to Cammy. "Did ye win, lass?" "No," she replied cheerily, "but it was close, an' there are no hard feeings." I noticed that her burr was deepening as the evening progressed, and I liked that. I wished I had a burr of my own for the beer to deepen. Maybe if I hung around here long enough I'd develop one. "Oh aye," said Johnny. "Thank ye, then. That's all I wanted to know." "Here," I said, fishing in my pocket and slapping some more anonymous brown change on the bar. I know nothing of British money. It could have been six cents or twelve bucks, I dunno, but it seemed to satisfy Angus. "Let me buy you a drink, concerned fellow that you are." Johnny cracked his first smile of the evening. "Why, thank ye," he said. An hour or so later, I felt like -I- had been at the Iron and Wheel since 1656. I lost track of the amount of brown change I fished out of my pocket, but it seemed I was only paying for every other drink anyway. Before long everybody in the pub was sitting that little bit closer to the bar and we were all singing some song about lost love and the bastard English. I felt just about ready to head out and get on with my quest to ask every man, woman, and child in Scotland to be my personal friend, one by one. We watched a rugby match on the TV in the corner. I lost track of who I was rooting for about six times, but the people in red ended up winning, or at least they walked away. What a violent sport. And people get down on street fighters for wanton violence. Somebody started a darts game; Cammy and I both did pretty well, but there was one fellow with a scar on his cheek and grey in his thick hair who was inhumanly good at it, and I felt an irrationally strong desire to be just like him for a moment. It was that kind of an evening. Time blended away into insignificance and the camaraderie was thicker than the steam in a ship's boiler room. There was a pool table; the man with the scar whipped my butt two out of three times at eight-ball, and then I taught the pub a billiards game my friend Andrew Petrarca had invented, called base-eight-ball. Somewhere along the line I smoked a cigar, which is something else I hardly ever do. It was nearly a religious experience. I was high on life and good beer, and in love with the whole damn world. I finished beating the scarred fellow four-of-five at base-eight-ball and relinquished my cue to young Johnny Kane, who was anxious to try his hand at it. Cammy was standing by a gang of people at the darts line, watching Mr. MacGregor's son Tommy hurl 'em, and, bemused, I watched in floating detachment from inside my head as I did something uncharacteristically bold; I walked up behind her and put my arms around her, clasping them over her midriff and hugging her from behind in a sort of low-impact Heimlich maneuver. To my surprise, she didn't react in a startled or outraged manner; she merely made a small noise in the back of her throat and settled back against my chest, looking backward-up and smiling. "Yui're doon embarrassin' auld Dan, then?" she asked, and her burr was just about as thick as I had ever heard from anyone now. I loved it. I loved her. I loved this whole damn country. My head was spinning with the goodwill I felt, I was bursting with it. So I did my second crazy thing and kissed her forehead. And she did her second not-what-I-expected thing, closed her eyes, and made that noise in her throat again. "Yui're a nice lad, aren't ye?" she asked without opening her eyes. "I try," the man who was using my head at the moment replied. "I try." She smiled again. "O'course," she said, "y'know we're both completely drunk." "I'm aware of that," said the man in my head, and my voice was so steady I could hardly believe that he had been drinking at all. "An' neither of us really knows what we're doing." "Au contraire," I replied. "I know exactly what I'm doing." "Och," she och'd. "What'd me mum think? Proper young girl like me, standin' here in a pub in the arms of a fella she's known fer what, thirteen hours. An' he's gettin' ready to announce his undying love fer me, an' I'm gettin' ready t'believe him." I was momentarily shocked by that statement -- not just the fact that she had said it, but the fact that I knew it was true. I knew that -everything- she was saying was true -- the fact that we were drunk and had no clue what we were doing first of all. Still, I knew I wouldn't be lying if I said what she expected me to say. I'm strange that way. Generally, I know within a matter of seconds if that statement is true or not. I flicked her forelock with a fingertip and said, "You'd do well to believe it. I never lie. Not about that sort of thing, anyway." Around us, the pub caroused on, oblivious to the minature drama being played out at the corner of the bar. I smiled a bit wider. "But you're right about one thing -- we're completely plastered, and so we really shouldn't do anything we think might be a good idea... " "Yui're a regular white knight," she said with a grin. "Let's have a drink on it, at least." Grinning, I released her and got up on a stool; she did the same. Angus appeared with two more of his endless supply of pint mugs, and this time he didn't seem to care about the brown change, because he immediately vanished again. I smiled and raised mine. "To us, then," I said, "and the beginning of a long friendship." Cammy smiled all the way to her eyes and replied, "Aye, I'll drink t'that." Then we linked our arms Russian-style and drank. That was when the throwing iron hit the wall just beyond us, sending a chilly wind over my ear as it passed. Neither of us were really fazed at all by that; we finished our drink, unwound our arms, put our tankards down, and then turned to face the door. The silence was deafening, as everybody in the pub had noticed that little hullo. The fellow who had thrown the iron into the wall was still standing in the doorway. He was tall, thin and dark, with a waxed mustache and expensive clothing that screamed, "I Wish I Were A Bullfighter, But I'm Really Just A Rich Spanish Git." I suppose he was handsome to people who like thin-faced, unctuous Spaniards. "Good evening," he said in an accented voice. "Allow me to introduce myself: I am Luis Fernandez. I seek a man called Gryphon." I recognized, not him, but his style. He was one of the so-called Spanish ninja being cultivated by a Spanish aristocrat by the name of Antonio de la Vega. I'd heard of them first through a friend in the traditional Japanese ninja scene, and lately they'd been becoming a bit of an annoyance to Zoner and I. My ninja friend and I both suspected that Vega was thick with Shadolu, the international crime syndicate, but we had nothing to prove it -- except the fact that we were both openly anti-Shadolu and we had both been attacked by Spanish ninja. I took a couple of steps forward and said, "I'm Gryphon. What do you want with me?" "It is my understanding that you became a World Warrior today. Is this true?" "Yes, it's true. So?" "My friends and I have come to ensure that you do not continue on the circuit after this achievement," Fernandez replied, moving aside in the doorway to make room for three similarly-dressed companions to enter the pub. "We, and our employer, encourage you to retire while you still have your health." He adopted a look of concern so mock it wouldn't've made a good Halloween mask. "Fighting on the World Warrior level is so risky, after all... and your family would miss you if anything were to happen to you." I was filled with anger at this prissy creep. How dare he come here and ruin my good time with this nonsense? Threatening me? Threatening my family, however obliquely? It boiled up from the bottom of my gut, all of the goodwill I felt toward the world transmuting to rage at this little punk and his friends. "It'll take better men than you to make something happen to me, chum," I replied. "Push off or they'll carry you back to your master on a stretcher." "I don't want any trouble in me place, boys," said Angus, emerging from behind the bar with a large hank of wood -- what the heck was that word, shillelagh, I think -- to confront the ninja. "Supposin' ye took yerselves outside and bothered somebody else?" "Supposing," Fernandez replied with an icy smile, "you minded your own business?" I tried to cry a warning to MacGregor, but it was too late. Fernandez had already moved, and the publican was stumbling backward with the handle of a small dagger protruding from his shoulder. The wound would not be lethal, or even permanent, but it had to hurt. I was at MacGregor's side in a moment, easing him onto a stool; then I turned to face Fernandez and his pals. "You heard Mr. MacGregor," I snarled. "Let's take this outside!" /* The Mighty Mighty BossTones "Holy Smoke" _The Mighty Mighty BossTones Don't Know How to Party_ */ Then I launched myself in what is probably my fastest maneuver. I'm not built for speed, and I'll be the first to admit it. Sprinting, I could probably outrun a locomotive, if the locomotive were not on tracks. But in a forward slide kick, I'm not so much running as flying, my Ler holding me a centimeter or so above the ground -- I'm sliding on the near-frictionless buffer of my own energies. I launched myself into this, and my knee connected with Fernandez's gut with a thud that seemed to reverberate in my skull, which felt larger than usual and uncharacteristically hollow. The momentum of the kick carried us through the open doorway, out into the street. Much better. Fernandez rolled away from me on the pavement, coming up with one of those little knives in each hand. I dropped into a bent-knee stance and watched him for a moment, wary of being attacked from behind; but his pals, although they had emerged from the pub, seemed interested only in watching us fight, not in helping him. He lunged as I was glancing back at his friends; I shoved his arm aside and palmed him back with my other arm, and then swung into my double kick -- one high kick which spun me half around, a hop to the other foot and a backward high that put me back where I started. Hit by both salvos, Fernandez staggered, bloodied, but recovered rapidly enough. So be it, I didn't really care. I threw a low slide kick, catching him at the ankles; one of his blades whistled past the top of my head and my sweeping left arm stopped him from sticking his other one in my chest, hard enough that he lost that knife to the street. I was all over this fight. Another hard block and his other knife was out of the picture for a second or so -- still in his hand, but way out of position. I fed him a flying knee to the center of the chest that had him gasping like a fish and weaving, and then I went in for the big finale. This was sheer instinct, the kind of fighting trance that Rose always tried to instill in me, and out of it came a move I had never used before, but had seen earlier that day. I started to throw a backfist, but in the middle of it I took that little skipping step that Cammy had thrown into it earlier in the day, winding myself into even more energy. Just for the hell of it I put a flare on my left fist at the same time. As I skipped I weaved off the direct attack line for a second, and Fernandez's remaining blade whistled past; then I connected with his face, and he connected with the street and stayed there. Smiling, I turned to his three pals and, taking a deep breath, said, "Okay -- who's next?" The second one to come at me was even more into the bullfighter motif -- she had a rapier in her hand. Where did she think she was, Pamplona? I'm no bull. Almost contemptuously I stepped inside its reach, put my elbow under her chin, stood on her foot and broke her wrist, taking it away from her. Then I shoved her away with a palm strike and threw a roundhouse kick across her jaw, and that was all she wanted. The last two tried to rush me together, one with a nunchaku and one with a hand-claw similar to the one Vega himself was said to use. The one with the claw only got about three steps before Cammy intercepted him, so I ignored him and turned all of my attention to the 'chukker. Don't let their silly appearance fool you -- 'chuks are dangerous weapons indeed. A spinning length of hardwood can get up to some pretty good kinetic energy, and it only takes so much force to shatter bone. Fortunately, I had more than just the strength of flesh and bone with which to block it; I had my Ler to reinforce the physical. I fed it to my left arm, feeling the muscles start to almost hum, and used that arm to block the 'chuk as I looked for an opening in his defense to attack him through. He was better than the girl with the rapier -- he didn't try to close with me, knowing that his weapon was better at a bit of range. He was also quick and nimble enough to stay out of my reach; he knew that with my strength and his slenderness, if I got hold of him, I would crush him like a tinfoil ash tray. For a bit, we circled, at a stalemate. I heard a disconcerted cry to my left, and stole a look; the poor sucker Cammy had intercepted had just fallen victim to the attack I had ducked earlier in the day, a maneuver known through the fighting world as the 'thigh press'. What she did, basically, was jump up in his face, get his head between her knees, and flip backward, whipping the poor bastard almost 360 degrees by the neck before slamming him down flat on his back on the ground. It looked very painful, and in my state I could have sworn that the ground shook when he hit; she scrambled to her feet and whirled to face him, but he wasn't going anywhere. Unfortunately, I had now spent far too long concentrating on this, and my nunchaku-wielding friend took advantage of that inattention to step in and plant his weapon across my face. The world tumbled as I fell in a combination of impact and trained reaction, throwing myself back away from the impact. Stunned, I turned my backward fall into a roll, springing back to my feet; then I took a moment to get my bearings. When my vision cleared he was coming in from my left, apparently assuming it to be my weak side like it would be in any right-handed fighter. His mistake. I built my Ler a bit higher in my left arm, flaring the fist, and, spinning to fully face him, let him have a little taste treat I like to call my Stark Fist of Removal. Essentially, this is a short, jabbing uppercut, repeated about once every half-second for three seconds or so. I have to work myself up a bit to get this to work, and I can only sustain it for about that long so far; but that long is usually enough. His teeth chattered as if he were cold, and when I knew the next impact would be the last before my arm gave out I let him have the flare as well. There was a blue flash, and he went up, up, over, and landed on his face. Goddamn! That was fun. Even more fun was lingering in the post-punchout position for a second and finding myself with Cammy in my arms, laughing. The pub crowd came outside and milled around, cheering. The Spanish ninja picked themselves up off the ground and regrouped, to find themselves faced by a large crowd of people who didn't need much provocation to become very angry with them, and it was only a brief matter of time before the cops showed up. Sullenly, Fernandez snarled at me, his voice thick around a fat lip: "You'll regret this, fool. You will suffer for crossing us!" "Get stuffed, Fernandez," I replied cheerfully. "I'm drunker than I've ever been in my life and I just kicked four of your asses. You don't scare me. You come over here, you interrupt the first date I've had since 1990, and you stick a knife in good old Mr. MacGregor, and you have the -gall- to tell me that -I'll- regret crossing -you-? Fuck off, Fernandez. And tell your pretty-boy boss that he can fuck off right along with you." Fernandez spat some bloody phlegm at me, but it fell short, much like my common sense at the moment. I flipped him the good old American Finger, and he and his buddies limped away into the night. Cammy looked me in the face with eyes that contained a small measure of concern, a look that said You probably shouldn't've said that, but what the hell. Then she grinned and kissed me, and I willingly traded the entire day for that one moment. I'd gladly have similar days for similar moments any time. But even in this drunken, celebrative haze -- both of us boiling with a stew of alcohol and adrenaline and endorphins -- we retained a bit of decorum and responsibility, a lot more than the level that people my parents' age usually give our generation credit for. I figure we only stood in the street like an old Big Red commercial for about five minutes before Tommy MacGregor dragged us back into the pub and gave us free drinks while his father went up to the hospital to get his shoulder seen to. All in all, it was a fascinating evening. Of special note was the drive back to Castle MacLir. Suffice it to say that I re-acquainted myself with all my relevant gods. The castle loomed dark and silent against the deep-blue sky as I extracted myself from the Land Rover. All of my senses were keyed up, hyperextended. The stars were shouting down at me from their perches, congratulating me. I was stumbling down the off-ramp of the best day of my career and heading for a big, bright future. Assuming we found our way back into the castle. There were no lights on; apparently the gang had given up and sacked out. That meant there was little chance we hadn't been missed. Idly, I wondered what Joe had made up in his inevitable, well-meaning attempt to cover for us. The adrenaline was burning off and the alcohol overture was getting set for its big finish; my coordination was starting to suffer, but my mind felt fairly clear, all things considering. We stumbled up the six zillion stairs from the road to the castle interior, snickering inanely and trying to keep quiet. Fatigue started to set in about halfway up, and it became a challenge -- albeit, in our condition, a hilarious one -- to keep from falling all the bloody way back down again. Somehow, we made it, fortune favored the foolish, and there we were, treading the dark and silent halls of the castle. Of course, by this time, I had no idea -where- in the castle's great grey bulk I was. Cammy seemed to know where all of the corridors went, though, so I followed her, and eventually, magically, the door to my room materialized. Off came shoes, hat, and overshirt; I paid a brief visit to the bathroom, and when I returned I was pleased to find that Cammy had stayed. She was sprawled on the bed, her boots and beret discarded next to my own shoes, her hair unbraided (I finally had an appreciation for just how long it was), her hands behind her head, looking content. I felt a surge of absolute adoration rush up my spine and blow the top of my head off. I felt remarkably good for a man without the top of his head, so I made my way over there, and she made room for me, not a difficult task on a bed of that size. I put an arm around her shoulders, and she curled up against my side as if she had always been there, and made that contented sound in her throat again. She moved up a bit, so that my arm was across her shoulder blades now, and looked at me with sparkling eyes. I swear I could see my reflection in them. They didn't look like the eyes of a woman who had been drinking. They were clear and bright, and I felt myself being carried away by them. "What'd me mum think," she repeated softly, the smile in her eyes never wavering. "Proper girl like me, in bed with a man she's known less'n a day. I wouldn't even know yuir real name if y'hadn't told it to Johnny Kane. Ben Hutchins," she echoed. "A local boy, of a sort." I shrugged. "We left Scotland sometime in the 1500s. Family legend has it we were sick of getting beaten up by the Macleods for stuff the Hutchinsons did." She laughed. "The way I've always heard it y'were chased off, but who really cares today?" "That's probably closer to the truth," I admitted, and the next thing I knew, we were in the middle of one of those long, convoluted conversations which two people who are too tired to sleep and in the process of discovering that they like each other very much tend to have in the middle of the night. I talked about my parents, Rose, my grandfather, my hometown, my friends on the fight circuit, my reasons for fighting, and all sorts of similar junk. I should have expected this to happen -- the adrenaline had burned off, taking most of the alcohol with it, and the endorphins were floating. I get chatty when that happens. Cammy had comparatively little to say on those topics, for a somewhat disturbing reason: she couldn't remember much of that. The earliest memory she could pin down was turning up at the gates of Castle MacLir a year or so previous, with a suitcase full of generic, untraceable clothes, five pounds sixpence, and a world of confusion. She knew her name was Cammy -- probably short for Camille -- but outside of that, nothing. Her fingerprints had turned no records up anywhere in the civilized world. Her picture elicited no response from the various missing persons bureaus. It was as if she had sprung full-grown from the brow of Zeus and landed in Scotland. That analogy was made all the more apt by the fact that she had, apparently, shown up possessing the well-honed combat skills she had already demonstrated to me. The style was fairly generic -- it could have come from any special forces organization. US Navy SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets, SAS, SBS, GSG9, Mossad (that seemed rather unlikely), Spetznaz, NKVD, GRU... others surely existed, which I either couldn't think of or simply didn't know of. Her Scots burr sounded genuine, and got more genuine as she got drunk, which meant if she -was- from anywhere other than Scotland, she had been conditioned damn well. I just wasn't getting that kind of resonance from her. Okay -- so that meant I was busily falling for her, and didn't want to be bothered with piddling little details like her background. But the fact remains that my training had made me sensitive to other people's Ler as well as my own, and there were no shadows obscuring Cammy's. Of course, I reflected, all this might be nothing more than an illusion, the camaraderie of a late night and an adrenaline high. Tomorrow she might be embarrassed at how close she had let me get, and push me away; it's happened before. I always forget about that when I let myself get into a situation like this one, and remember it later, when it's too late to help. I have a lousy track record with women. During my abbreviated college career, I dated a grand total of two women, both of them once. One of them could never reconcile her views with the violence inherent in my world. The other thanked me for proving that she was still attractive to men after a bad breakup, and proceeded on to the guy she actually wanted. I threw up my hands at that point. Once, when I was feeling particularly bitter, I came up with the following equation: martial artist = code of honor = mistreat without fear of repercussion. I can get -really- bitter sometimes. Cammy, who I thought had fallen asleep, stirred and opened her eyes again. I must have had an upset sort of look on my face, because hers adopted an expression of concern. "What's wrong?" she asked softly. "Nothing," I lied. "I was just... thinking." She didn't believe me, of course. She held me a little tighter, and kissed me softly, and then said, "I know yuir worry. It's been a wonderful evening, but we both know it's too early to tell yet where we'll go from here." Her hand found mine, and our fingers laced together. "But I meant what I said back at auld Angus's pub, and I know you did too. No matter -where- we go from here, we go as friends." I raised my other hand and traced a line from her hairline to the tip of her nose, and smiled. "Works for me," I said, and settled back to get some much-needed sleep. The last thing I knew of that day was the gentle brush of her lips against mine, in a gesture laden with little passion, but more affection than I had felt in years. It colored my dreams a delicate shade of calm. We got the expected chewing-out by the base commander, one Brigadier Lethbridge-Stuart, when we wandered into the Great Hall for lunch the next day, tired-looking but content. I smiled, nodded, and apologized until he seemed stuffily satisfied; Cammy took it in stride, cheerily telling him to lighten up and stop being such a sodding tyrant. He seemed like a nice enough sort, for a career military man. I didn't get to meet the mysterious "M.", who I took to be an intelligence supervisor of some sort, but that was just as well. All too soon, it was time for us to leave. A car had met us at the airport, but Cammy decided to drive us back herself, which was amusing mostly from the point of view of a man who has been wanting for years on end to see someone else's driving unnerve Zoner. Joe, who had decided to fly back to the States with us, couldn't decide whether to be exhilarated or terrified. When we arrived at the airport, Joe and Zoner promptly disappeared. I wondered momentarily where they had run off to, and to do what, because when the two of them get together and then vanish like that, it often makes life harder for me in the long run. Then it was time to say goodbye. We were standing on the tarmac next to the civil aviation terminal. Behind me, the great black bulk of Zoner's C-130H Hercules, affectionately dubbed "Prince of Thebes", loomed like a fat, contented bird, waiting for its master to guide it into the air for another journey. In the last couple of years we had been all over the world in that plane, getting into and out of all sorts of trouble, acting not so much as spies as freelance troublemakers. We didn't work for anybody who would pay -- after all, the last thing Zoner needed was more money -- but rather took jobs which piqued our interest or struck our fancy. Airlifting refugees out of Kampuchea, dropping an SAS team in Mriganka, flying medical supplies into Bosnia, running guns to the Fredonian rebels, pulling that same SAS team -out- of Mriganka. If it was dangerous and for what we thought was a good cause, we did it. I looked at Cammy; Cammy looked at me. For a long moment, we didn't say anything. We just stood there and regarded each other across the space of a couple of feet, a chilly wind ruffling the sleeves of my Army-surplus field jacket and the tousled forelock of hair escaping from the front of her beret. Then we fell into each other's arms, and she hugged me hard enough that for a moment I thought I heard my ribs creaking. She made me promise to stay in touch, something I gave my word to do readily, and she promised to do the same. "Let me know when yuir next match is," she said. "If I'm not working on something important I'll be there." "Absolutely," I said. We separated, and I held her shoulders in my hands for a moment, rejoicing in the fact that the morning light had not weakened the bond we felt, the one we had forged the evening before. Behind me, the Hercules whined as Zoner, who had somehow gotten aboard without my noticing it, started up the turboprops. "Go on," said Cammy with a grin. "Before he leaves you here. Not that I'd mind that terribly." I laughed, pulled her to me for one last warm kiss, and then I was off, waving as I ducked through the forward hatchway and slammed it shut behind me. "Sorry about that," Zoner called from up on the flight deck. "Didn't mean to rush you, I just wanted to get everything warmed up." I climbed up the ladder to said flight deck, squeezing past Joe, who was sitting at the little-used flight engineer's position, to slip into the right-hand co-pilot's seat. "No worries," I replied. "You know how I hate long goodbyes." Joe said something, but it was lost in the roar as Zoner throttled up to taxi out, which was probably just as well. I slipped on my headset and radioed for takeoff clearance; we fell into the well-practiced rhythms of getting the Prince off the ground. Only when we were heading west at 20,000 feet did we get around to conversation. "Nice girl," Zoner remarked. "Cute, too." "Mm," I replied noncommittally. I figured my actions would speak for my opinion on the subject. "I'll say," Joe added. "Quite a fighter, too. She's my kind of woman." I snorted, getting up from my seat and slipping past him to the pair of bunks along the back bulkhead of the control cabin. "Your kind of woman needs help tying her shoes, Joe." "Hey! That was uncalled-for," Joe protested, as Zoner stifled laughter. "I'll admit my last girlfriend wasn't exactly a rocket scientist, but -- " "Your last girlfriend couldn't remember her name when I met her," I reminded him as I climbed up to the top bunk. "Remember? She was too whacked-out on whatever that stuff was she liked to smoke. You remember, the stuff that 'expanded her consciousness.' Before her there was the one who told you that clothing was 'a manifestation of the shackles of oppression we inherit from our ancestors.' You got arrested for running around Knight City in your altogether." Joe was reddening and Zoner was howling; he had to switch on the autopilot to keep from knee-slapping us right into the Atlantic. "All right, all right, dammit," Joe said, flushed with embarrassment. "So I've had bad luck, I admit that. It comes from jumping in before I look too closely, I'll admit that, too. But you're a hell of a one to talk, Mr. Night-After-The-Match," he remarked, his wily grin reviving. "Get your mind out of the sewer," I grumped. "We're friends, we're interested in seeing it go on to be something more than that, but we both agree it's too soon to tell yet if it'll work out. I realize that one sentence encompasses more thought than you have ever put into a liaison with a female, but do try to at least understand it objectively." I knew he understood; I knew he was just ragging me. We all understand the code of trust and respect that the honorable ones of the world's fighters adhere to; it's what makes us friends, too. On another level, though, some primal response encoded in the Y chromosome makes us occasionally harass each other like frat brothers. We can't help it; we just do. I tipped my cap over my eyes and added, "I'm going to get some more sleep, if nobody minds. Wake me if anything really interesting happens." "Good, catch up on your sleep," said Zoner. "You'll need it. While you were having your big goodbye, Joe and I arranged your next match; you fight next month." "Oh yeah?" I remarked from under my hat. "Who with?" "The Russian Open League champion -- Sergei Zangief." I sat bolt up right, banged my head against the ceiling, and lay down again whether I wanted to or not, managing to blurt out a startled, "WHAT?!" in the process. I had heard, you see, of Sergei Zangief. Seven feet or so of Siberian fortitude, the man supposedly wrestled with Arctic bears in his spare time, just to keep the edge on, and wandered the frozen wastelands naked to build up his resistance to the harsh weather. I didn't know at the time if any of that was true, but any man with that sort of reputation must be pretty tough to have his exploits inflated to that level, anyway. I knew a couple of fighters who had seen him fight; their assessment was that if he -did- wrestle bears, they probably came out of it worse off than he did. Also, it was widely known that, especially since the collapse of the Communist Soviet Union, he hated Americans, and tended to skirt the fringes of fighting fair when pitted against one. My second match as a World Warrior, against that monster? Sure, I had always wanted to visit Russia (sometime when I had enough time to stop and look around, and wasn't being chased by people with guns). Sure, the breathtaking beauty of the Arctic was something I would usually look forward to. But right now, I couldn't appreciate any of that. I was too busy being mad at Zoner. END BATTLE 01