Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(72)

And suddenly I remembered Listens-to-Wind’s cryptic words. River Shoulders wasn’t a coward or anything, but it had to be tough to shift from a long lifetime of avoiding notice to showing up at a gathering of the most dangerous supernatural beings on the planet. “Oh, right,” I said. I turned to one of the staff behind the buffet and said, “Is there somewhere a little quieter we can go?”

The staffer was mostly staring up at River Shoulders, but he said, “Uh. Yeah. Sure.” He started to turn away.

River Shoulders put out a hand, rested fingertips lightly on the man’s shoulders, and said, “Hey, Einherjar.”

The man froze and turned to stare at River Shoulders, and then his hand, with hard eyes.

River nodded and withdrew his hand carefully. “Listen up. Grendel was a bad egg. Spawned mostly bad eggs. Most of my people thought he was a lunatic. So right now, the only quarrel you and me got is what you’re bringing with you.”

The man peered at River Shoulders and then at his tuxedo and spectacles. He gave a slow nod and said, “Yeah. Sir. Come up to the gym.”

I took a look around the room and noted how many red jackets were casually blending in among the crowd. Yeah. Marcone had plenty of people here.

We followed the Einherjar back through a set of doors to a short hall, up a flight of stairs, and into the gym I’d visited before, in spirit. It wasn’t big, but it had everything you needed, including a small boxing ring. There were a couple of lights on, but otherwise the place was dark and quiet. Our guide gave River Shoulders another thoughtful look and departed in silence.

River Shoulders let out a sigh and sank down to the stone floor, resting his back against a wall. He took the spectacles off and tucked them into a pocket.

“Why the glasses?” I asked.

“Make me look less threatening. Like that gorilla in the video game.” I arched an eyebrow. “You play video games?”

“I study human cultures,” River Shoulders said. “How you guys think about us, and creatures you think are like us. Video-game gorilla thought of better than King Kong, you know?” He shook his head. “Humans are scared of just about everything. Problem is, their first reaction to being scared—”

“Is to kill it,” I said, nodding. I considered my super-nice suit and decided that I didn’t much like suits anyway. I sat down on the ground next to River. “I’m familiar with the problem.”

“Hah,” the big guy said. He shook his head. “Thank you, getting me out of there.” He grimaced. “There’s just too much tension there. Too much hatred. Lust. Greed. Fear.”

I looked up at River for a moment and realized that he’d been frightened to be there. Exposed, in the midst of more noise and movement than he could adapt to readily. I knew River could wield Power in his own way, and if the poor guy was an empath, too, that room must have been torture. “Yeah, these parties are a hoot,” I said.

He grunted, took a deep breath, and exhaled. He sounded like a racehorse. “Einherjaren here, too. That’s always trouble.”

“How come?” I asked.

He scrunched up his nose, enormous brows beetling. “My people follow three paths,” he said. He gestured at himself. “Sky path, like me. We learn. We remember. Watch the stars. Read. Talk to you people, mostly on the rez. Think about things.” He sighed. “There’s not too many of us.”

I frowned and said, “You’re like wizards are to humans.”

He shrugged. “Not entirely the wrong way to see it. Why you and me get on pretty good, probably.”

“I’ll buy that. Okay.”

“Second path is the forest path. That’s most of us, maybe nine in ten. Forest path thinks that humans are good example of what not to do. That we should stay close to nature. Avoid contact. Fire. Tools. All that. Stay quiet and unseen mostly and live in harmony with the natural world.”

“And humans see them once in a while,” I said.

River nodded. “Though me and the guys on the rez watch those shows about you looking for them. Pretty darned funny. Little bit sad.”

I tilted my head and made a guess. “The Genoskwa. He’s on the third path.”

“War path,” River agreed. “He thinks our people are the first people. Thinks we should kill most of you. Make the rest into cattle and slaves.” He mused for a moment. “They’re assholes,” he said frankly. “Kind of stupid. But there’s not too many of them, either, so they can’t get what they want. Settle for hanging around national parks, making people disappear once in a while, when the sky path don’t stop them.”

“And the first Grendel was on the war path?”

River nodded. “Taught his tribe. They had numbers enough to make a go of it, back then. The other paths left them to their madness, walked over the ice, joined our people here. Grendel’s people drove the humans from some places. Humans were tied to their lands, their crops. Not much they could do about it.”

“What happened?”

“They picked a fight with the wrong humans,” River Shoulders said. “Vikings. Vikings had a champion. A teacher.”

“Beowulf?” I asked.

“Beowulf. Vadderung. He got a lot of names and faces.” River Shoulders nodded. “Lived and fought like a mortal. Showed them how to have courage. Helped build a warrior culture. Fight the giants. Some of his people even came across the sea, found us, and didn’t waste any time on talk. But there were too many of us here, and they left.”