Soldier of Fortune: Gideon Quinn Adventures Book One

Chapter 21

"Hallo!"

The greeting, as brittle as it was chipper, had Gideon groaning as it shredded through the fog of his concussed dream.

"Still feeling poorly, are we?"

Gideon cracked an eye open to see Rory, crouched at his right side. "Poorly is how a guy feels when he's hung over," he said. "What I'm feeling is an order of magnitude past that."

"Good!" Rory said, giving Gideon a vigorous slap on the shoulder before setting a cold pack, somewhat less vigorously, against the back of his head until Gideon's right hand rose to hold it in place. "That means you'll think twice before trying a cocked-up move like that again."

Gideon wasn't so sure of that, but at the moment he had other concerns, first among them not being able to recall precisely what those concerns were.

Then another man crouched down on the wet tarmac to Gideon's left, and he remembered one of them.

"I saw you die," he told Eitan Fehr.

The man who'd been his second-in-command so many years ago shook his head—which sported much longer hair than it had back in the day.

"You saw me fall," Fehr corrected. "A bad fall, but into the river below, so not quite fatal."

Gideon's gaze held a moment, then tracked down, pausing at the point on Fehr's left arm where his hand used to be. He looked up again.

"That came after," Fehr answered the unvoiced question. "After the river carried me into Illyria."

Which would have been bad, Gideon thought—very bad, as Illyria, being an Adidan protectorate, held with the practice of slavery.

The locals preferred the term indentured servitude, but few, if any, ever managed to become outdentured, and prisoners of war, as Fehr would have been, weren't even offered the chance.

"I'm sorry," Gideon said.

Fehr looked down at the hand that wasn't there. "You could not have known. I understand," he continued, "others were not so fortunate. Walsingham, young Carver..."

"Them, I saw buried." Gideon pushed himself to a seated position, so he could look his former lieutenant in the eye. The world wobbled some, and Fehr set a steadying hand on his shoulder. Once certain he wasn't about to pitch over, Gideon continued the thought, "With you among the living, we lost five, all told."

Fehr nodded, once up, once down. "I know."

"Yeah?" For some reason that just made it worse for Gideon. "And how exactly do you know? Was it Pitte who told you?"

"Most of it, yes."

"And you're okay with it?" Gideon asked, uncomprehending.

At this point Fehr looked at Rory, who cleared his throat. "I'll just get back to yon engine pod, shall I?" The young man sprang to his feet. "Be sure t'keep that cold pack in place."

Gideon slapped the pack back in place, then remembered something. "Wait!"

Rory paused, looked back.

"What about Jinna?" he asked. "And where's Mia?" He was going to ask about Elvis too, but a chirrup and a flutter of wings told him the draco was parked atop the gondola.

"Jinna is aboard the Errant, as it seems she'll be traveling with us for a spell," Rory said, his pleasure in that fact obvious. "Mia's keeping her company for the nonce, and Jagati's off t'fetch supplies and dig up some intelligence on your man, Del."