History died this night. Whichever swordsman prevailed, a millennium of memories would end, consumed in electric flame. Only the essence, transported on purifying tongues of fire, would live on in the man who remained.
If he was a man.
Janos watched the battle from the trees, dangerously close to the imminent display. He might singe his whiskers, as the old joke went, half in humor, half in warning. But Janos, emboldened by youthful expectations, did not fear for his own safety. He considered himself a combat journalist, recording his observations for a select readership.
The clash of steel came plainly to his ears, but the night obscured his view as the fight flowed up a rise and over. Recklessly, Janos followed, dropping to a crouch and then to all fours to peer through tall grass at the two men bent on destruction.
Cavandish was a skilled swordsman, but the Count, his Count, had more guile. In seventeen months, Janos had personally witnessed six Quickenings - a lifetime's ambition for an ordinary Watcher. The average Immortal might go half a century without taking a head. But then Aldur Petrovic was not an average Immortal. He took his first head when Constantinople was young.
Janos bared his teeth. He thrived on the fast track. No backwater assignment for him. He'd worked hard to snag the Count when the post came suddenly open. Normally the purview of more seasoned Watchers, occasionally a choice assignment fell to a quick-thinking novice. And Janos was nothing if not enterprising.
He parted the blades of grass to afford himself an unobstructed view. Sparks flew off the flashing steel, sending an electric shock of anticipation up his spine. His tongue flicked across his upper lip. He never felt so alive as when he watched this dance of death. Was it like this for Immortals, knowing Death called the tune, even for them? Did the Count taste the tang of fear on his own tongue?
Janos doubted it. The Count was fearless, justifiably so. No one stood against his attack. Young, old - the experienced and the green - they all succumbed to his fiery blade. The Count was not particular. He was a one-man army, laying waste to legions of Immortals over the centuries. No one escaped the Hungarian Horseman, as he had once been called. The Count had many names, to go along with his many-lived existence.
Count Petrovic was slight of build, but quick and agile. He more than made up for his lack of stature in his acrobat's ability to be where he was not expected. Cavandish was thwarted again and again, frustrated in his attempt to drive home an attack. The Count simply slipped beneath his guard and pressed his own attack.
Cavandish, the better swordsman, was beginning to flag. His opponent's gyrations were wearing him down. It showed itself in a flash of anger that cost him his footing, but he turned the blade in time to recover. He renewed his attack, fighting feverishly. The Count danced in and out of range.
The music of the blades increased in tempo. Janos' heart beat in time to the tattoo So close now. His Count would prevail again, adding this English dandy to his awesome collection.
And Janos would record it all in the Count's own Watcher Chronicle. The worn leather-bound tome dug into his leg as he lay along the crest of the hill. Almost as old as the Count himself, the precious chronicle had passed from Watcher to Watcher across the ages, linking them in a kind of extended lifespan. It gave Janos a sense of longevity to match his subject's, a share in an expanded existence. And one day it would be his turn to pass it on to another.
Not that he intended to relinquish his post any time soon. The Count was a challenging subject, but Janos had youth and ingenuity on his side. He had managed to stick with the Count half way across the Eurasian continent, even following him to this - to Janos - new unexplored continent of America. What fresh vistas lay before him - what new prey for the Count? It was exhilarating, living a life of vicarious adventure.
And it had its dangers. Immortals did not always restrict their attentions to their own kind. A Watcher who got too curious could end up like the proverbial cat. Janos considered it an occupational hazard, one he could live with. After all hadn't he proved his ability to track the Count even as the Immortal tracked his own prey - all unbeknownst to anyone? He was swiftly acquiring a reputation among his peers that one day would rival the great Ian Bancroft or Joe Dawson.
It was over. Janos' calculating eye registered the moment the Englishman lost the battle. A small error, but one the Count seized on and magnified to deadly proportions.
The end came swiftly. The Count dispatched his foe with surgical precision, slicing his head clean off his shoulders. Cavandish's head still wore a sickly smile even as his body slumped to the ground. Janos held his breath.
This was the terrible moment when every electron in his body cried to be free of its mortal bonds. The hairs on his head crackled with electricity, and his whole body tingled. He knew instinctively to plaster himself against the ground, making himself a smaller target than the trees or even the grass. His life depended on it. This close, he could not hope to escape unscathed, should luck go against him.
The Count had not moved from the grassy hollow. He still held his sword but he had not looked at the headless body since it fell. Instead, he waited in patient resignation, for the inevitable, his blade barely brushing the tips of the rippling grass.
A gossamer wraith rose like a tendril of smoke from the headless body at his feet. It twined its way around the Immortal, rising higher into the black night until it towered above him. There was no sound but the shreeking of atoms as they relinquished their electrons...from the nearest copse of trees...a patch of weeds...the grass at Janos' shoulder...
Then the first blinding flash as the maelstrom of energy released from the dead Immortal sucked up a hapless stream of electrons. The crown of the nearest giant pine burst into flame, raining molten drops of resin onto the clearing. Then another and another as lightning licked out from the pillar of fire. Flames danced all around him as Janos drank it in from his worm's eye view.
And at the heart of the maelström twitched the Count, sword raised, taking hit after hit. His body fluttered in a fiery wind, rooted to the spot, an inhuman lightning rod. His mouth was open on a bestial cry, but the winds from hell whipped the sound away from Janos' ears.
As his own cries were swallowed up and whisked away.
Too much - too much energy! Janos smelled the acrid odor as his own clothes began to smolder. He had to get away. If his body burst into flames, the chronicle would be lost!
Janos scrabbled to his knees, jerked at a sudden jolt, then hit the blackened ground, rolling back down the hill he'd climbed with such anticipation minutes earlier. He rolled like a dead log, not daring to breathe, until he crashed into the base of a tree. It knocked the super-heated air from his lungs, and for several moments he lay there, gasping in the earthy loam of the forest floor. Tears from grass smoke stung his eyes as the Quickening played itself in after images across his field of vision.
Gradually the fiery tendrils faded from his sight as his breathing slowed to normal. Janos climbed shakily to his feet, buttressed by the tree. With a quick glance back toward the flickering clearing, he ran a shaky hand through his singed hair and grinned. If he weren't clean-shaven, he certainly would have singed his whiskers that time.
He checked to see the chronicle was undamaged in its pouch, then hobbled away from his Immortal as fast as his rubbery legs would take him.
#
Joe Dawson polished glasses behind the bar, surveying his domain with - overall - a sense of satisfaction. JOE'S was a moderate success for a bluesy kind of jazz bar - just enough patronage to pay the bills, but not so much he was wedded to the place. He never knew when MacLeod might get it in his head to go abroad for a week or a decade. As his Watcher, Joe had to follow...or find someone who could.
It was the little things that made up the whole, whether polishing glasses or dusting books - or shivering in a dank back alley - Joe had always been content to put in his time.
He'd put in better than fifteen years on Mac alone. He knew his Immortal's habits and handicaps better than he knew himself. And now that he'd crossed the line between observer and the observed, he was free to pick his brains as well.
He knew his - situation - was not without controversy. Hell, he never would have spoken to the Highlander at all, if Mac hadn't come searching for the Watchers with murderous intent. The day MacLeod waltzed into his bookstore carrying the fabled Fifth Chronicle of Darius was as big a shock to Joe as it was to the Immortal. But Joe was never one to shirk from conflict. And though MacLeod might easily have killed the pesky salt-and-pepper-bearded antiquarian who stood so precariously on his pins, he let him live. And so began the strangest acquaintance in centuries.
Their friendship came at a high cost - one Joe paid periodically with bouts of conscience over his broken vow and split loyalty. The Watcher Organization was his lifeline - had been since that pivotal day in Nam when he'd chosen life without legs to a bullet in the head. An irritating young field agent named Ian Bancroft, with an uncanny grasp of Joe's crisis, had opened his eyes on new vistas. That day Joe embarked on a life of intrigue and adventure, boredom and ennui - depending on the circumstance and who was asking - and he hadn't looked back.
Only sometimes in the lees of the night, when phantom pains chased elusive dreams, his shattered oath of silence shouted down the tenuous cries of friendship that linked him to Duncan MacLeod. Those nights were the worst, when he woke twisted in bed sheets and drenched in his own acrid sweat. Which was the greater good; to whom did he owe the greater loyalty?
It was not for Joe Dawson to say. And so he kept his own counsel and muddled along, doing the best he could.
So far so good. He was still here, tending bar and collating his data as mother hen for this sector. He still watched the Highlander, recording only the relevant bits in his Watcher Chronicle, while the rest wrote itself on his soul.
Now as his gaze washed over the evening's crowd, it came to rest on a gangling youth at a corner table. He nursed a beer Joe hoped someone carded him for and pretended to listen to the band, but his attention was divided between the door and the bar.
Joe knew the look. Another baby chick, waiting his opportunity to check in. He didn't recognize the face; not a local. Well, Immortals knew no boundaries - the kid could be anyone's Watcher. Younger than Joe liked to see them - the young ones knew no bounds, either. It wasn't cost-effective to recruit a Watcher before age twenty-five or so. The rash ones tended to weed themselves out before they acquired a healthy sixth-sense for self-preservation.
This one had eager eyes. A bad sign.
Joe put down his rag and reached for his cane. He'd better let the kid report before he popped a gut.
The young man started to rise, but Joe waved him down.
"Relax, kid. We can talk here. No one can hear us over the music." He lowered himself on to a chair, hooking his cane on the back. "I'm Joe Dawson."
He held out his hand - his left hand - palm up, exposing his wrist. The young man studied the tri-foil tattoo carefully, then pushed the sleeve up from his right wrist, to reveal an identical mark. "Janos Speros," he said solemnly, ducking his head in a brief nod.
"Welcome to JOE'S, Janos." Joe liked playing the host. The Watcher Organization might have bank-rolled this location, but it was his bar, and he was proud of it. "What brings you so far from home?"
Janos relaxed, visibly expanding. "Aldur Petrovic," he smiled, watching for Joe's reaction to the name.
"The Count." A cascade of emotions washed over him, just behind his eyes, but Joe knew how to play poker. Petrovic had been known to decimate a region of its Immortals. Joe was certain to be making new assignments. He just hoped-
No, it was not his place. He was a Watcher, and he had no right even hoping for an outcome, once a challenge was proffered. Mac might be his friend, but he was also a Player in the Game, who would fight when challenged.
A Watcher's place was to watch and record, and if it fell to Joe to pen the last line in the Highlander's chronicle, so be it.
"Ya, the Count." Janos beamed with proprietary pride. He knew the name struck fear, and he took obvious pleasure in it.
Joe frowned, noting the signs of possible infatuation. "It isn't good to get too attached, son," he chided, but the kid blew him off. How did you dissuade someone from hero worship when the object of his attention was a demigod?
Immortals by their very nature attained heroic proportion. What sports figure or rock star could compete with a race of creatures who lived forever, only succumbing to mortality with the severing of their heads? Legends grew up around them. Some, like Duncan and Darius, lived up to such homage. Others, like the Count, were less worthy.
But there was no telling the kid that. He drew his sense of self-worth from the relationship. Joe really hated to see that in a Watcher. Maybe he should recommend reassignment. Better keep his eye on the kid and see how he handled himself.
Joe took a closer look at Janos, who stiffened and bore the appraisal with a hauty air. A patch of scalp showed frizzing, and there was a burn mark on his cheek, near his right ear. "Been playing it a little close, haven't you, kid? Looks like you got fried."
"I do my job." A sly grin wormed its way from the corners of his mouth. "Perhaps I do too good a job, no? But I am still here. And maybe it is you who will be needing reassignment, when my Count comes after your Highlander."
Joe shook his head and gave the kid a sour look. "He's not my Highlander, any more than he's your Count. I'd remember that Janos, if I were you. Believe me, kid, you'll live longer."
He heaved himself up from the chair and lurched away. The kid did need watching closely. Attachment could dull the edge - who knew better than Joe, who worked constantly to whet his? Immortals were not large pets. They were dangerous, wild beasts who could turn on the unwary or inattentive.
Janos might need rescuing from himself. He'd see if Mike was free for a little extra recon tomorrow. Then he remembered: Richie Ryan was back in town and Mike would have his hands full just keeping tabs on the young Immortal.
Richie. No older than Janos, and fated to remain so - for as long as he could keep his head. But with the Count in town...
Joe shook his head. Oh, it didn't pay to get too close to demigods. It didn't pay at all.