by John Conroe
“My phone’s got like thirteen percent power. I’m going to use it first,” she said matter-of-factly.
He pulled his own phone, aware that the spear girl was still watching him in wonder. His smartphone had twenty-two percent power so he just watched as his sister unfolded the soft solar panel, laying it in the sun and plugging it into her phone.
Sounds of something large brought them all to their feet. Scratch that. Many large somethings.
The Sutton kids exchanged a look and then both climbed up on the ledge with the girl and her brother.
The sounds got louder. Suddenly, men on horses burst through the trees, two, three, no… seven in total. Dressed in thick leather armor and carrying spears and crossbows, the latter immediately pointed at Mack and Jetta. The Sutton kids already had their rifles pointed back. The obvious leader, a large bearded blond man on a huge black horse, shouted a command at them.
“Put down your weapons and kneel or die,” Omega translated into their earpieces.
The spear girl shouted back at him. “They saved us from a pack of earth eagles, Sergeant.” The translation came at almost the same speed as her words. There was the smallest of delays, but Mack and Jetta were effectively hearing it real time.
“Put down those weapons,” the leader repeated.
“Yours first,” Mack said back at him, crosshairs on one of the crossbowmen. “I’ve got left and center.”
“I have right,” his sister said, affirming her target coverage.
“Sergeant, they have rendered us aid and protection,” the girl said.
“They will put down their weapons or die, Lady Iona,” the burly horseman said.
“Their weapons speak thunder and throw lightning and they are wearing dragon skins,” the girl, Iona, said. “I do not like the odds for you and your men, Sergeant Kellan.”
“Your father’s men, my lady. If they kill us, remember it is your father’s men who died,” Sergeant Kellan said, giving her a meaningful look.
Mack sensed the girl moving closer and started to turn to look. A truck slammed into the back of his head and everything went black.
Fire. Fire burning through his skull was what woke him. That and the rhythmic pounding of his face against warm skin and fur. He was draped over something—something big that was warm and walking. Horse. It was called a horse.
Mack opened his eyes and instantly regretted it. Shooting pains and bright light and the momentary blurry vision of moving ground. Not worth it. He took stock. Arms were bound and dangling in front of him. Feet also seemed bound. Head hurt like Thor had been pounding it with Mjölnir for hours. He tried the eyes again. Still too bright, still much hurting. Third time was the charm—they stayed open. The forest floor moved by beneath him. His horse was brown. A yellow-green and black-striped leg wearing a familiar boot was about a foot from his face in a stirrup. He tried tilting his head but sharp, biting pain brought tears to his eyes and a sharp gasp of air.
“Don’t move around. You might be concussed,” his sister said softly from above him. “The girl knocked you into Tuesday with her spear. By the time I got my gun on her, she had the point drawing blood from your throat. Not many options. Plus one of the bastards shot me. Didn’t penetrate the dragonskin, but it hurt like hell.”
“They shot you?” he said, anger replacing the pain.
“It was just pointed wood at the tip. Maybe their version of a rubber buck shotgun round,” Jetta said. “We’re being taken to the kid’s father’s keep.”
“Quiet, girl.” The translation came as Sergeant Kellan spoke.
Mack wriggled a bit, taking more stock of himself. He felt the hard lump of his little .44 Special revolver pressing into his armpit and the matching two speed loaders under the other arm. It felt like at least a couple of his smaller hideaway blades might have been missed, but most of his gear seemed gone. Still had the paracord bracelets on both wrists though. The rope binding his arms was tied right over them. There was lots of stuff in those two woven bundles of parachute cord. His fingers found the X-Acto hobby blade tucked into the buckle of his left bracelet.
“Father is aware you have been taken prisoner. He had Ashley petition the dragons to fly him and Stacia out here but they refused. He’s very upset,” Omega said softly in Mack’s ear.
“Hhhowmuchhhh,” Mack coughed.
“I have never seen him quite this angry. He is arguing very forcibly with the dragons and the queens. Ashley has refused to continue to translate for the negotiations. That may have been the purpose of dividing the party in the first place. It is a very tense situation. I fear that Father will do something rash and irreversible.”
“Declan rash? Let me put on my surprised face,” Jetta murmured.
“I said quiet,” Sergeant Kellan said, coming alongside them on his black stallion.
“We should have let the raptors eat Lady Iona and her brother. And we should have shot you and your men on sight, Sergeant,” Jetta said, her phone translating her words into gibberish.
“You are both trussed and helpless. Threats seem ill-advised,” Kellan replied, his voice even and calm.
“I wasn’t threatening; I was learning from my mistakes. I’ll leave the threats to my friends back in Idiria,” Jetta said.
“Last time. Quiet,” the sergeant said. Mack felt the prick of something sharp on the back of his neck and heard his sister’s angry hiss. But she kept quiet and they plodded on, Mack moving only the fingers of his right hand.
After a time, the point in his neck was removed and Sergeant Kellan moved off. After what seemed like days but was likely only an hour or so, the ground under his horse became a flat, packed road. Fifteen minutes after that, they heard voices yelling out greetings, and the sounds of other horses, as well as the bangs, clangs, and general sounds of a village.
Heavy vertical log walls appeared in Mack’s limited vision and then they were inside a fortified structure of some type. More men yelled greetings and the horse he and Jetta shared came to a stop.
Hands grabbed his legs and pulled him over and down, letting him fall to the ground. Legs too numb to fully do his bidding, Mack let his body collapse in a bastardized version of a judo break-fall. The flash of searing pain in his head was probably not as bad as if might have been if he’d fallen differently, like say, head first.
Hands gripped his ankles and the sound of a blade clearing leather came just before he felt someone sawing through his leg bindings. Then he was pulled to his feet, his blurry eyes noting the bronze seax knife that a warrior-type was holding, its edge looking quite sharp.
They were inside a big palisade wall, and the horses their party had ridden were being led away to a stable built against one of the walls. He shuffled around, finding his sister looking at him with a worried expression, her own hands bound in front of her.
Kellan was carefully taking the wounded boy from one of his riders, and the spear girl appeared by his side to grip the boy’s good hand. “We must see Father, Sergeant. Right away,” she said, the slight delay between words and translation adding to Mack’s disorientation.
“You alright?” Jetta whispered.
“Silence!” Kellan said before turning to the girl. “Seeing your father is first on the list, Lady Iona.” The big warrior turned and led the way, two men coming up on Mack, one to either side, grabbing his arms while another grabbed his sister.
Mack stumbled as he was shoved and yanked forward, his sister hissing immediately. “Leave him be you assholes. He’s hurt.”
The phone in her pocket translated and the men all came to a stop, Sergeant Kellan turning with questioning eyes. “You have magic?”
Jetta shook her head. “We have tools… tools that translate your words. No offense, Omega, but I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“No offense taken, Miss Jetta, although I believe there are multiple connotations to being called a tool,” Omega replied in their earpieces.
“Seems like magic to me,” Kellan said, h
aving missed the earpiece conversation.
“We’re not the ones with magic. That’s our friend. He’ll be following us here soon,” Mack said, his own phone making the translation.
Kellan exchanged a look with Iona and then turned, moving forward brusquely.
They entered a giant stone and log building, tramping through a center entrance hall and into a massive great room with vaulted log ceilings and balconies all around it. A stone fireplace big enough for a pig roast held pride of place in the middle of one long wall directly across from a big raised chair that Mack could only call a throne.
The man sitting in the boss’s chair was middle-aged, large-framed, and bearded, his black hair shot through with wisps of gray. He was surrounded by a mixed group of men and women, all of whom turned and regarded the new arrivals with different looks of surprise or wariness.
A tall, handsome woman of middle years rushed forward to Iona and her brother, but where the boy allowed himself to be gathered into her arms, his older sister held herself back and kept her eyes on the man in the chair.
“Father, these strangers saved us from a pack of earth eagles,” she said, waving a hand at Mack and Jetta. One of the guards moved forward and dropped a bundle of things on the ground at the lord’s feet. Mack realized it was their weapons and gear, and he moved a bit to his left as he realized the muzzle of his own rifle was jutting out of the heap and pointing right at his head.
“This one treated Aillig’s wounded arm and that one is an Iron smith,” Iona said. “And they wear dragon skins.”
Her father looked from his daughter to the two of them, eyes narrowed as he took in their details for himself.
“Iron smith?” he asked.
Iona moved to the pile of weapons and load-bearing gear, pulling Mack’s bowie free from its Kydex sheath. She held the Damascus blade up for all to see.
Mack, whose head was still splitting itself over and over, saw caution, greed, outrage, and fear on the faces around them, but the lord of the settlement just looked thoughtful, holding out his hand for the weapon.
Iona placed the blade in her father’s hand and stepped back as he inspected it. He looked up suddenly, eyebrows raised. “You made this?”
Mack started to nod but thought better of it. “Yes,” he said, his phone in his pocket translating it.
“Magic!” a new voice cried and a skinny man with sallow skin and greasy black hair separated from the crowd to point his finger accusingly at Mack and Jetta.
“They say it is just smith work, Father. Not magic,” Iona said hastily.
“True,” Mack replied. “We’re not the ones that do magic.”
“Who are you?” the lord finally asked.
“I’m Mack, this is my sister Jetta, and we are part of the Speaker for the Dragons’ party,” Mack said.
“Do you take Lord Clacher for a fool, boy? There is no Dragon Speaker. There hasn’t been one for an age,” the greasy skinny man said.
“Actually, there hasn’t been one for over a thousand years, at least that’s the figure that Queen Morrigan used. Ashley Moore is the first,” Jetta said.
Silence greeted her words. After a second, the skinny man went to speak, but Lord Clacher raised one hand for quiet.
“Ye used the queen’s name, girl. This is her land. She’ll know you spoke of her,” he said, both warning and curiosity in his tone.
“That’s fine. She already knows we’re here. Our friend told her,” Jetta said. “He’ll be coming for us soon.” The last part was said almost as a warning.
“Ye speak of the queen of this realm as if ye know her,” the lord said.
“Yeah, we’ve met her. As we said, we’re part of the Speaker’s party. The Speaker and both queens are in Idiria for negotiations. We got knocked into a portal trap and sent here. But Declan and Stacia will be coming for us,” Jetta said.
“Knocked into a trap, you say? Dropping the queen’s name and talking about a person who has been dead for, as you say, a thousand years? And someone coming to get ye?” Lord Clacher asked.
Mack tried to catch his sister’s eye but she was staring at the lord of the keep.
“Ashley is the new Speaker. She translates for Gargax and Trygon, whose molted skins we wear, by the way. We came with her from Earth,” Jetta said. “Declan will find a way to open the portal to here or get one of the dragons to fly here.”
Her last words drew a gasp from the entire crowd, which then got instantly noisy with side conversations.
“Quiet!” Lord Clacher yelled. “Ye come from the old world? And who’s this Declan yer going on about?”
Mack coughed to get Jetta’s attention but she ignored him. “Declan is the most powerful witch ever born,” she said.
The lord’s face went slack for a second, then came back together in anger while the skinny man hissed in shock and fear. “We do not suffer witches!” he said.
“Yeah, Queen Zinnia said the same, but the law about witches doesn’t apply to the Speaker. She gets to bring anyone she wants, and she brought a witch,” Jetta said.
“Ye’ve met the Summer Queen as well?” Lord Clacher asked, rubbing his beard with one large hand.
“As well as Eirwen and Neeve and Neeve’s brother Greer. I told you. We’re part of the Speaker’s party. You need to release us,” Jetta said.
“Ye come here throwing names about and waving fancy blades and presume to tell me what I must do?” Clacher asked.
Jetta froze up, her default reaction whenever she realized she’d overstepped.
“What my sister means to say, Lord Clacher, is that we arrived some distance away, rescued your children from vicious predators, and were taken prisoner by your guardsman. Obviously this is your land and your keep so we are at your mercy, but she thought you should be aware that eventually, people will be coming to find us,” Mack said smoothly, wincing and rubbing the side of his head with his bound hands.
“Smooth talk. Too smooth. I almost prefer the girl’s version. What proof of any of this do you have?” Lord Clacher asked.
“Why, Father, look at these wondrous weapons and forgings,” Iona said, reaching down to grab a rifle barrel.
“NO!!!” Jetta and Mack roared simultaneously. The rifle, which happened to be Jetta’s, resisted coming out of the pile, part of Mack’s leg holster buckle getting caught in the trigger guard. The gun roared and high above their heads, one of the smaller beam braces exploded into splinters. Iona dropped the gun and shook her hand while the rest of the onlookers covered their ears and crouched.
“Magic,” the greasy man exclaimed.
“Think of it as a type of crossbow,” Mack said, his ears ringing. “Not magic… ah… smith work.”
Lord Clacher had risen from his throne and was staring up at the broken brace, a peeled log maybe three or four inches in diameter. Then he moved over to the dropped rifle and cautiously picked it up.
“Ye made this?” he asked.
“No. Guns… er, weapons like that take an entire team of special smiths to make. I make knives, axes, and swords, mostly,” Mack said.
“Swords?” the lord asked. At Mack’s nod, the lord turned and looked thoughtfully at Sergeant Kellan, who raised both eyebrows before shrugging.
“I need proof, boy,” Clacher said. “Ye’ll have to make something for me.”
“Lord Clacher, this is magic most forbidden,” the skinny greasy man protested.
