His loyal affection brought a smile to my face for the first time since I had taken up my lonely vigil. It was a welcome antidote to my nervous insomnia.
I was leaning against a tree, watching the pinpoints of light that marked the enemy's encampment. Even though the day's events had left me exhausted, I found myself unable to sleep, my mind awash with fears and anticipation of tomorrow's clash. Not wishing to draw attention to my discomfort, I had crept to this place to be alone.
As stealthy as I had attempted to be, however, apparently Gleep had noted my movement and come to keep me company.
"Oh, Gleep," I whispered. "What are we going to do?"
For his answer, he snuggled closer against me and laid his head in my lap for additional patting. He seemed to have unshakable faith in my ability to handle any crisis as it arose. I wished with all my heart I shared his confidence.
"Skeeve?" came a soft voice from my right.
I turned my head and found Tanda standing close beside me. The disquieting thing about having an Assassin for a friend is that they move so silently.
"Can I talk to you for a moment?"
"Sure, Tanda," I said, patting the ground next to me. "Have a seat."
Instead of sitting at the indicated spot, she sank to the ground where she stood and curled her legs up under her.
"It's about Ajax," she began hesitantly. "I hate to bother you, but I'm worried about him."
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Well, the team's been riding him about falling asleep today when he was supposed to be covering you," she explained. "He's taking it pretty hard."
"I wasn't too wild about it myself," I commented bitterly. "It's a bad feeling to realize that we really were alone out there. If anything had gone wrong, we would have been cut to shreds while placidly waiting for our expert bowman to intercede!"
"I know." Tanda's voice was almost too soft to be heard. "And I don't blame you for feeling like that. In a way, I blame myself."
"Yourself?" I blinked. "Why?"
"I vouched for him, Skeeve," she whispered. "Don't you remember?"
"Well, sure," I admitted. "But you couldn't have known-"
"But I should have," she interrupted bitterly. "I should have realized how old he is now. He shouldn't be here, Skeeve. That's why I wanted to talk to you about doing something."
"Me?" T asked, genuinely startled. "What do you want me to do?"
"Send him back," Tanda urged. "It isn't fair to you to endanger your mission because of him, and it isn't fair to Ajax to put him in a spot like this."
"That isn't what I meant," I murmured, shaking my head. "I meant why are you talking to me? Aahz is the one you have to convince."
"That's where you're wrong, Skeeve," she corrected. "Aahz isn't leading this group, you are."
"Because of what he said back on Deva?" I smiled. "C'mon, Tanda. You know Aahz. He was just a little miffed. You noticed he's called all the shots so far."
The moonlight glistened in Tanda's hair as she shook her head.
"I do know Aahz, Skeeve. Better than you do," she said. "He's a stickler for chain of command. If he says you're the leader, you're the leader."
"But-"
"Besides," she continued over my protest, "Aahz is only one member of the team. What's important is all the others are counting on you, too. On you, not on Aahz. You hired ‘em, and as far as they're concerned, you're the boss."
The frightening thing was she was right. I hadn't really stopped to think about it, but everything she said was true. I had just been too busy with my own worries to reflect on it. Now that I realized the full extent of my responsibilities, a new wave of doubts assaulted me. I wasn't even that sure of myself as a magician, and as a leader of men....
"I'll have to think about it," I stalled.
"You don't have much time," she pointed out. "You've got a war scheduled to start tomorrow."
There was a crackling in the brush to our left, interrupting our conversation.
"Boss?" came Brockhurst's soft hail. "Are you busy?"
"Sort of," I called back.
"Well, this will only take a minute."
Before I could reply, two shadows detached themselves from the brush and drew closer. One was Brockhurst, the other was Gus. I should have known from the noise that the gargoyle was accompanying Brockhurst. Like Tanda, the Imp could move like a ghost.
"We were just talking about Ajax," Brockhurst informed me, squatting down to join our conference. The gargoyle followed suit.
"Yeah," Gus confirmed. "The three of us wanted to make a suggestion to you."
"Right," Brockhurst nodded. "Gus and me and the Gremlin."
"The Gremlin?" I asked.
The Imp craned his neck to peer around him.
"He must have stayed back at camp," he shrugged.
"About Ajax," Tanda prompted.
"We think you should pull him from the team," Gus announced. "Send him back to Deva and out of the line of fire."
"It's not for us," Brockhurst hastened to clarify. "It's for him. He's a nice old guy, and we'd hate to see anything happen to him."
"He is pretty old," I murmured.
"Old!" Gus exclaimed. "Boss, the Gremlin says he's tailed him for over two hundred years... two hundred! According to him, Ajax was old when their paths first crossed. It won't kill him to miss this one war, but it might kill him to fight in it."
"Why is the Gremlin tailing him, anyway?" I asked.
"I've told you before, kid," a voice boomed in my ear, "gremlins don't exist."
With that pronouncement, Aahz sank down at my side, between me and Tanda. As I attempted to restore my heartbeat to normal, it occurred to me I knew an awful lot of light-footed people.
"Hi, Aahz," I said, forcing a smile. "We were just talking about-"
"I know, I heard," Aahz interrupted. "And for a change I agree."
"You do? "I blinked.
"Sure," he yawned. "It's a clear-cut breach of contract. He hired out his services as a bowman, and the first assignment you give him, he literally lies down on the job."
Actually, it had been the second assignment. I had a sudden flash recollection of Ajax drawing and firing in a smooth, fluid motion, cutting down a signal standard so distant it was barely visible.
"My advice would be to send him back," Aahz was saying. "If you want to soothe your conscience, give him partial payment and a good recommendation, but the way he is, he's no good to anybody."
Perhaps it was because of Tanda's lecture, but I was suddenly aware that Aahz had specifically stated his suggestion as "advice," not an order.
"Heads up, boss," Brockhurst murmured.
"We've got company."
Following his gaze, I saw Ajax stumbling toward us, his ghostlike paleness flickering in the darkness like:.. well, like a ghost. It occurred to me that what had started out as a moment of solitude was becoming awfully crowded.
"Evenin', youngster," he saluted. "Didn't mean to interrupt nothin! Didn't know you folks was havin' a meetin'."
"We ... ah ... we were just talking," I explained, suddenly embarrassed.
"I kin guess about what, too," Ajax sighed. "Well, I was goin' to do this private-like, but I suppose the rest o' you might as well hear it, too."
"Do what, Ajax?" I asked.
"Resign," he said. "Seems to me to be the only decent thing to do after what happened today."
"It could have happened to anyone," I shrugged.