Day of Honor 01_ Ancient Blood - Diane Carey [46]
At the bow, the grenadier sergeant snapped to look at him suddenly, and seemed about to say something, but Alexander spoke up without noticing that the sergeant’s blue eyes were fixed on the two of them now.
“Honor,” the boy began,
“is winning.” Picard nodded, and gave him the courtesy of a pause. “But many win through dishonoring themselves. So there must be more to it.”
The boy frowned, trying to visualize what he was talking about, and seemed to accept that things like that happened. He searched for another answer and finally decided to try one.
“Honor is … how you win, then.”
“Mmm,” Picard uttered, and glanced one more time at the ship. “I see I’ll have to be more creative about this.”
The Grenadier turned partly around, readjusting his stance in the shifting boat. “I’m sorry, sir, I do not know you. What is your name?”
“Picard.”
“French?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Jean-Luc.”
“But you sound quite British. And you serve the Royal Navy.”
“Yes. I was educated at Oxford.”
The marine puffed up a little, smiled with mischievous collegiate rivalry, and said, “Cambridge.”
“You speak exceptional English,” Picard observed, “but you’re not English either, are you?”
The sergeant smiled. “My name is Alexander Leonfeld. I am Austrian. My father is the Fifth Duke of Leonfeld and my mother was born to the family of Gosch-Embourg.”
Picard nodded as if he understood the significance. “Very nice.”
And not really surprising. If Picard remembered his military history, marine sharpshooters were usually of high standing, even royal or peered birth. They were the most intelligent, the most educated, and were favored as choices if they came from respected, established families.
Mindful of his duty, Sergeant Leonfeld turned back toward the land and continued scanning for movement. He fitfully caressed his loaded rifle.
Alexander stared and stared at the sergeant, and finally he scooted closer to Picard in the stern of the boat.
“It’s him!” the boy whispered.
“Pardon?”
“That’s my ancestor!”
“How do you know?”
“Because his name is Alexander! I was named after him!”
Chapter Ten
WITH HER KEEL BALLASTED by new revelations, the small rowboat surged toward the land, heaved up on a new tide every few seconds by the oarsmens’ pull.
Picard drew Alexander very close and put his lips to the boy’s ear. “Any other clues?”
The boy nodded vigorously. “He wasn’t American or English,” he whispered back.
“Mmm,” Picard murmured. “Good clue.”
“Alexander” was not an uncommon name in these times, and the Justina was tightly packed with crew and soldiers. Still, the holoprogram would likely shove Picard and Alexander together with the person they were supposed to be meeting, in a kind of cyber-destiny.
How clever that Alexander’s relatives hadn’t told him the name of the ancestor, but made him hunt for the man. Rather than striking straight for their quarry, Picard and Alexander had spent considerable hours, and a notable adventure, learning to understand the lifestyle, rather than just sitting and listening. Far better.
And now, here the man knelt, in this little boat. Alexander was watching the other Alexander with new eyes, the eyes of a boy gazing upon legend embodied.
Picard grimaced as the boat’s keel rasped against the stony bottom, and they were ashore. Embarrassed by the flinch, he noted how very real all this had become for him in the past few hours, and hoped Alexander—the boy—felt the same. Of course, he realized again, this had happened. It wasn’t a story. In moments, he and Alexander would step out onto a shore with young men who had been here, in these very woods at this very moment, for this was Alexander Leonfeld’s journal of his American experience.
That night these woods had held this cloying chill, left over from the day’s humidity, still tacky beneath their wool uniforms. These were times far before the sweat-wicking fabrics of Picard’s age. That night, the moon up there had hovered in its shroud of haze and looked down with unhelpful dimness upon the H.M.S. Justina, and