She confirmed her suspicion by drawing the fingers of both hands along the length of thin chain. It reached around the neck of the corpse. Birgit didn’t relish the idea of touching the skull, which she imagined was grinning at her in the dark. She tried to drag the chain under the skull with both hands, but it caught on something and wouldn’t move further. Grimacing, she used one hand to lift the skull and the other to feel for where the chain was caught. It was snagged in the hair on the back of the skull. She yanked the chain hard and it came free.
She examined her new treasure. The chain had torn some of the hairs free from the skull, so she picked them off. The hoop at the end of the chain was about as wide as her hand, thin and hard. After touching it for a minute, she couldn’t tell what it might be, so she slipped the chain over her head and tucked the object into her tunic.
The worst of her shivering had stopped, though it was still cold. She wished she had something to stuff in her ears to drown out the unceasing noise of the torrent. Time to find out how big this ledge is.
Carefully, she eased herself over the corpse, her injured leg protesting vehemently. Her reaching hand encountered slick, stone wall almost immediately. She pressed her weight against the wall and used it to help her stand, hoping all the while that she wouldn’t crack her head against a low ceiling. Once she was erect, she inched to the left. She came up short against some large boulders. She reversed direction and after a mere four paces came to another dead end. There’s no way out, at least not that I can find without light. She supposed there could be some sort of opening somewhere, even high up on the wall, but without the use of her eyes she had no chance of finding it. The thought of reentering the freezing torrent was daunting, but staying here with the corpse appealed to her even less. What else can I do? I sure wish I could get warmer first!
She knew that was a vain hope. The longer she remained here the more the cold would seep into her bones. She hunched down near the edge of the raging river. Before she could find excuses to linger, she took a deep breath and leapt out from the ledge into the icy torrent.
* * *
A faint noise caused Fridrik to snap awake. What was that? He twisted in his blanket to look at Anja, who snored lightly, her back pressed up against him for warmth. Faint light limned the edges of the mountain above them. Morning at last, he thought.
Most of the night had been a grueling trek down the crumbling, boulder-strewn road twisting down the mountain in utter darkness. Even when Anja had turned an ankle they had refused to halt for fear that the baby dragon might issue forth from above to hunt them down. When they had finally neared the base of the mountain, exhaustion had caught up with them, and they had wrapped themselves in blankets and cuddled in the hollow of a large boulder near the road.
Now Fridrik heard the sound again. It was clearer this time. A creaking sound. Something else...hooves! He leapt up from his blanket and peered into the gloom. He heard a jangle of harness, and saw a mule-drawn wain approaching, two dark shapes on the driving board, one larger than the other.
In the chilly air, Fridrik felt a spike of warmth down his spine. He had been dreading the long walk home, especially with Anja’s injured ankle. Wrapping the blanket tightly about his shoulders, he stepped carefully over Anja’s sleeping form and went to meet the wain.
The cart was slow, the road little more than a bumpy track. Rays of sun broke over the mountain and Fridrik saw that the forms on the wain were those of an elderly man and boy a few years younger than Fridrik himself. The old man pulled on the reins and called out to the mule, which stumbled to a halt.
Hair prickled on Fridrik’s arm. Their clothes. Their faces. These two were from the neighboring clan, one not friendly to their own.
He felt a presence beside him, and looking over he saw Anja, one hand covering a great yawn.
“You two look to have had a rough night,” the old man said. He handed the reins over to the boy and clambered down from the cart.
“Sir,” Fridrik said, “might we beg a ride? Anja has hurt her—”
“You’re fools to be out in the cold like this,” the man said, “and so near the dragon mount. Makes me think you must be friends of the other one.”
Fridrik felt his breath catch in his throat. As he fumbled to find words, Anja took a step forward and with a hitch in her voice said, “Other one?”
“Come,” the man said, and beckoned them toward the bed of the cart. “Nearly frightened us to death, she did. My grandson and I were tending our flock beyond the mount.” The man pointed back at the dragon’s mountain. “There’s a pond below a waterfall where we like to water our sheep.”
Fridrik mouthed silent prayers to the gods as they reached the back of the wain. A blanket-wrapped form lay still on the dirty straw in the bed of the cart. Its face was so pale that at first Fridrik’s mind refused to recognize Birgit. Then he saw the two moles on her left cheek and he gave a whoop. “It’s her, Anja! It’s Birgit!” He jumped into the cart and knelt to grasp Birgit by her shoulders. He looked up at the boy on the riding board. “Is she dead?”
The boy scowled and said nothing, but the old man finished helping Anja up into the cart and said, “Nay, not yet, leastwise. Her mind is with the gods. Twice in my life I’ve seen men in such a state, and only once did one of them wake.”
“What happened to her?” Anja murmured.
“Fell right down off the waterfall into the pond,” the man said. “Worst scare I’ve ever had. Sheep scattered to the wind. We’ll have the gods’ own time rounding them up.”
“Oh, Birgit,” Anja cried. Fridrik saw tears streaking her cheeks as she knelt and flung her arms around her friend’s shoulders.
“Both her legs are broke,” the man continued. “Probably some ribs as well. Come, I’ll drive you on to your village.”
As the old man clambered up next to his grandson, Fridrik settled into the straw and put a hand on Anja’s shuddering back as she wept over Birgit’s broken body. He glanced up at the man and said, “Why did you decide to help us?”
The man was silent for a few moments. “Not all of us believe there should be conflict between our peoples. If my son got lost and wandered onto your lands, I could only hope you would show the same mercy to me.” The man snapped the reins and the mule began to plod forward.
“What’s this?” he heard Anja whisper, and from the neckline of Birgit’s tunic she drew forth a tarnished silver circlet, strung on a thin chain. She met Fridrik’s gaze and he saw wonder shining in her eyes. “The talisman – I recognize it from the shaman’s scrolls. This is Aivgaifa! Birgit found it!”
Fridrik pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them. He knew he should feel shocked, but somehow he didn’t. He looked up at the warm sunlight streaming over the mountain, then looked back at the pale face of Birgit. Against all odds they had survived. An enemy tribesman had shown them kindness. Against the backdrop of horrors that was this day, there shone the faint glimmer, in all their lives, of hope.
A Word from Ted Cross
I developed a love for fantasy very early by discovering Conan, first in comics and later in Robert E. Howard’s amazing novels, and that led quickly to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I was smitten, so it was no surprise that I plunged headfirst into the Dungeons & Dragons craze of the early 1980’s. I never actually imagined myself as a writer, though, and I stuck mainly to reading over the next couple of decades.
I went to work with the Foreign Service, a life that took me all over the world, living in countries from Russia and China to Hungary, Croatia, and Azerbaijan. But it was a move to Iceland in 2007 that helped dredge up vague ideas of wanting to write my own fantasy stories. There was a faerie-like quality to Iceland—in its people, the language, and especially in the landscape. It felt as if I might spot an elf or a troll around any bend of the mossy volcanic paths I walked each day near my home.
The official Dungeons & Dragons-themed books had always disappointed me. To my taste t
hey always felt cartoonish, or made the protagonists into superheroes. What I wanted was a book that lent gravitas to the subject matter, that treated it not as a game but with a level of gritty realism as if George R.R. Martin had written it. Reading Martin’s A Game of Thrones and living in Iceland were the catalysts for me to write my recently published epic fantasy The Shard.
Developing back stories for characters in The Shard led me to a fantastic science fiction idea, though I had thought I would only ever write fantasy. I set aside edits to The Shard and wrote a cyberpunk thriller called The Immortality Game. Hard as it may be to believe, the two books share a couple of characters, something I explain in old posts on my blog http://tedacross.blogspot.com.
While writing novels seemed to come naturally to me, I seriously struggled to write short stories. I was rarely satisfied with my endings. So I’m grateful to join this group of amazing writers that you find in this anthology. The idea for this story came from remembering what it is like as a child to dream of being a hero and imagining the worst possible scenario for trying to live that dream—sneaking into a dragon’s lair.
A Diversion in Time
by Nina Croft
THE FORWARD SCREENS showed the end of the tunnel, a gaping hole surrounded by flashes of bright white light, and beyond that Angel could make out a blue-green planet.
Earth.
In the rear screens, the eerie violet of the wormhole snaked out behind them.
All around the bridge of the Blood Hunter, the crew were busy doing whatever they did. Everyone had a job. Except him. He was nothing but dead weight, a passenger, and only that because he’d stowed away.
“We’re almost there,” Rico said from the pilot’s seat. “I’m guessing it’s going to be a smooth ride, but you might want to strap yourselves in just in case.”
Angel backed up until his knees hit the seat behind him, and sank down, his hands fumbling with the harness as he fastened the buckles and pulled it tight. Captain Tannis took the seat next to his and fastened her own harness with zero fumbling. He turned and found her watching him out of those inhuman violet eyes. He knew she couldn’t read his mind, but all the same, he always felt twitchy under the intense stare.
“You okay, Kid?” she asked.
He gritted his teeth. Of course he was okay. Why shouldn’t he be okay? And he wasn’t a goddamned kid. He was twenty-three. “I’m fine.”
“No need to get snippy. I promised your sister we’d look after you.”
And he didn’t need looking after. Whatever his sister—the brand new Empress of the goddamned Universe—believed. Candy was a whole five minutes older than him and had never let him forget it.
“I’m—” His words were cut off as the ship pitched violently then picked up speed, the sudden acceleration pressing him back against the seat and shoving the rest of his words down his throat.
“Holy freaking hell, Rico!” Tannis snapped. “Slow the fuck down.”
Rico glanced over his shoulder. He grinned, flashing the tip of one sharp white fang. “Sorry, but as of this moment, I am no longer in control. Just hold on tight and hope she doesn’t crash.”
Angel’s fingers tightened on the arms of his chair. The hole filled one screen now, the light almost unbearably bright. His eyes hurt and his chest ached; he’d been holding his breath. Now he gulped down air, but couldn’t drag his attention from the screen. At least they were heading dead for the center.
At the last moment, the wormhole lurched sideways as though lashing its tail. The Blood Hunter slammed into the wall with a dazzling flare of purple and they were spiraling out of control. The interior lights flashed on then off, finally going out completely, leaving them in the half-light from the screens. The ship spun faster and faster, the scenes on the screens changing too rapidly for him to get any sense of what was in front and what was behind.
For a second, everything went dark.
He blinked, and the lights came back, and they were out into open space. The spinning slowed to a languid rotation giving alternating views of the blue-green planet and the gaping maw of the wormhole twisting across space behind them.
Saffira was on her knees in the center of the bridge, her eyes tight shut. Then she crumpled to the floor. Devlin unstrapped himself and ran across, crouching down beside her. “Saffira, sweetheart, are you okay?”
She blinked. “Fine…I think. Just sooo tired.” Her eyes closed again and she relaxed.
“Passed out,” Devlin said. “All her vitals seem fine, though.” He looked up, his heated violet gaze fixed on Rico. “You did it again. I can’t believe you did it again.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Devlin ignored the comment. “It was supposed to be easy. All you had to do was think of a date. The day before you left earth. Not difficult. But no—you had to let your mind wander.”
“My mind did not wander. 2050. It was stamped on my brain.”
2050 was the year man had fled to the stars, because supposedly the Earth was dying. Rico had been part of the exodus—the vampire was nearly two thousand years old and had been born on Earth. But no one actually knew what had happened after they left, and Rico wanted to find out. They’d had nothing better to do, so the crew had taken a vote, and here they were. Unfortunately, Saffira wasn’t very good at controlling the wormholes yet, though she was getting better.
“Well something diverted us,” Tannis said. “And we were so close, almost there.”
“It looks like we’re not too far out,” Rico murmured, tapping into the systems. “2015.”
Tannis ran a hand through her short spiky hair. “Thirty-five freaking years from when we’re meant to be. And I’m not sticking around.”
Angel wasn’t sure they had a choice. A glance at the rear view screen showed the wormhole was a distant ripple across space, black on black, and getting further away each second. With Saffira unconscious, they had no way of calling it back.
“We’re not going anywhere right now,” Rico said. “The guidance system is fucked and the primary thrusters aren’t responding. We’ve also sustained considerable external damage. We’re going to have to land and do some repairs. Luckily, the stealth mode is still functioning. Otherwise we’d be a little conspicuous—not too many star cruisers around in 2015.”
“Great, just great,” Tannis muttered, pacing the length of the bridge.
“Relax. We’ll go down to Earth, fix the ship, by that time Saffira will be recovered, she’ll call us another wormhole, and this time we’ll get it right.”
Tannis narrowed her eyes as though she wanted to complain some more, then she nodded. “So where are we?” she asked. “Are we at least where we’re supposed to be?”
“Wait a sec.” Rico tapped his console, and the screen zoomed in to get a close up of the planet below. They were in a partial orbit, circling a small area. “Scotland,” he muttered, his eyes narrowing on the screen. “Well, that makes it a definite—even if my mind did wander, I can guarantee it would not wander to Scotland.”
“Not good then?”
“It depends if you like men in skirts, eating sheep’s stomachs, rain, and cold, and…”
Angel hadn’t unstrapped his harness, and decided he might as well stay where he was for now, just in case things went wrong. Again. He stared mesmerized as the Earth grew larger, filling the screens. It was different than he’d expected. He’d thought there would be more people, but the area they were heading for appeared devoid of life. A flat green expanse, dotted by grey lakes of water, and bisected by what was obviously a man-made track—the only sign of any civilized life. Rico finally touched down, the ship bumping once or twice as he fought for control.
Outside, the light was dim and eerie. Off to the west the sky glowed red where the single sun was sinking behind the horizon. Angel’s heart was thumping as his blood raced. He was on Earth. Not only on Earth, but Earth a thousand years ago. He was going to visit the birthplace of mankind.
“Rannoch Moor.” R
ico sounded less than happy. “One of the most godforsaken places on the planet.”
Angel thought it looked interesting. He’d been brought up on the dark side of Trakis Two where nothing was green. He liked the look of the wide open spaces and inside, his wolf woke and whined in agreement. “Can I go explore?”
“No. Don’t leave the ship,” Tannis ordered. “It might not be safe.”
At that moment, the piercing ring of an alarm cut across the bridge and a whole load of red lights started flashing.
Rico swore. “The docking bay. It’s been breached. Could be due to damage when we hit the wormhole.” His gaze wandered around, finally settled on Angel. “Hey, Puppy, go check on our other stowaway.”
I am not a puppy. But he kept his mouth shut and unfastened the harness. At least he had something useful to do for once.
“Docking bay,” he murmured as he stepped into the transporter bubble. It carried him down and the doors opened onto the vast expanse of the docking bay. The shuttles had all been moved to one side to make a big space in the center. A big empty space.
Where the hell was Kronus?
The alarm light was still flashing crimson, the whine shrill in his ears. He found the control panel, pressed the keypad, and the noise and light cut off abruptly. He spoke into the comm unit on his wrist. “Kronus has gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” Tannis asked, her tone irritated.
“As in he’s not here.”
“Well, someone that large is unlikely to vanish in a puff of smoke.”
“No smoke.” In fact, the air felt damp and chill. Angel rubbed his arms and stepped out into the docking bay, looked around. “The outer doors are open.”
“No shit. Well, I guess that’s why he’s not there.”
“I’ll go have a look.”
“Don’t you dare. I promised your sister—”
The Dragon Chronicles Page 19
