Winterfall

by John Conroe

  Mack touched the broken ends of the sword with the splinter of steel and this time it tacked itself to the metal, requiring a good tug to break free.

  “Okay, here we go,” he said, grabbing his tongs and the tongs from Alwyin. Using both, he picked up the two pieces of sword and brought them to the anvil.

  “At least it’s a big surface to work on,” he said to no one in particular. He lined up the halves, working quickly to get them aligned. When all was set to his very particular liking, he nodded for the other smith to steady the hilt half Then he began to hammer. Steady, precise rhythmic blows, working the flattened, widened portions of metal together, folding extra wide parts around the core and pounding them together. He worked the metal steadily till the white changed to orange and then started to fade toward red.

  “Back in the fire,” he said to Alwyin. The now-nominally-whole blade went into the coals and Mack nodded to his sister, who began pumping the bellows again. When the metal was back to white, he pulled the sword, using both tongs, and again worked the metal together, now starting to push and prod the soft steel back into a semblance of its original edge shape.

  He did this two more times before he sent Jetta to his gear to find a magnet that was fastened to his vest. Kellan moved over to watch her, dividing his attention between Jetta and Mack. Then she came back and Mack took the magnet, holding it in his pliers and testing the glowing sword where it lay, again, in the fire.

  “What is that?” Clacher asked.

  “A magnet, ah, metal that is aligned with the planet’s magnetic field,” he said, looking at Jetta for help.

  “A lodestone, Lord Clacher,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said, eyes widening in recognition. “What is it telling ye?”

  “When it stops attracting or sticking to the sword, I know the temperature is perfect for quenching,” Mack replied, now moving over to the length of pipe. It was capped on one end and with Alwyin’s help, he got it braced upright, then filled it with oil from the small barrel that the guardsman had brought.

  “It’s colder than I like,” he said, looking perplexed.

  “Heat up a rock and put it in the pipe,” Jetta suggested.

  “Wow, Jet, good idea,” he said, finding a chunk of basalt that had fallen from the bigger anvil block some time in the past. He stuffed that in the coals and waited, testing the sword every few minutes with the magnet. After a time, he dropped the rock into the oil and let it sit, touching the oil with his fingertip to check it. Finally, the magnet stopped sticking and the oil was warmer than it had been.

  “All right. Here goes,” he said, picking the glowing sword up by the hilt with the bigger set of tongs and quickly aligning it with the pipe full of oil. Then he plunged the blade into the oil, listening closely while paying attention to the vibrations in the tongs. The surface of the oil burst into flame, startling the other men, but Mack paid it no attention, still focused on the sword. He pulled it from the oil, the still-hot blade igniting the oil that clung to it in a pyrotechnic display that ended when he stuffed it back down into the pipe. “Didn’t hear any tinks or snaps,” he said, turning to Jetta with raised eyebrows. She shook her head and he trusted her better hearing.

  He pulled the blade out of the oil and let it drip dry for a moment while he inspected it for warps or cracks.

  “Hmmpf. Looks okay,” he said, almost grudgingly. Looking around, he located his sister’s Leatherman with its file blade still out. He dragged the file down the edge of the sword, smiling at the file skating over the steel.

  “It’s hard,” he said, looking at Clacher. Then he walked near a floor-to-ceiling beam, holding the bare hilt in his hand. “Here goes nothing,” he said. Experimentally, he gave the sword a two-handed swing into the beam. It stuck, a little, but more importantly didn’t break.

  “Okay, now I just have to clean it up and re-leather the hilt,” he said to Clacher.

  The lord of the keep held out his hand for the blade and Mack handed it hilt-first to him. Clacher held the blade in his hand, his face glowing with triumph, admiring the heft and swing of it. Finally he grunted and tossed it to Mack. “Make it pretty. I will show it and your work off tonight at dinner. You’ve proven your skills, Smith.”

  Then he turned and walked away, beckoning to Kellan to attend him. Two guardsmen stepped in at the sergeant’s command and then the big guard leader followed his boss outside.

  Mack’s Bluetooth earpiece, which oddly none of the guards had messed with, came to life.

  “Clacher is telling Kellan to guard you carefully, to use Jetta as collateral for your cooperation. He is excited and claiming you are the weapon they need to defeat something called Demyne. I surmise from additional use of the word that it is a place, possibly a rival holding, one that appears to have held the upper hand in conflicts past,” Omega said in his ear and from the expression on Jetta’s face, hers as well.

  “Father has been in conversations with a Watcher of the Veil and is getting close to understanding portal magic. You must continue to demonstrate your value to Lord Clacher and be as prepared for extraction as possible.”

  “Omega, don’t translate the next part, please,” Mack requested. “Did you get anything from the gear?” he asked Jetta. The phones did not translate his words.

  “Got my KelTec. And when I got the magnet, I palmed your grenade. Got both tucked away,” she said.

  “All right then. Let’s clean up this bitch and keep the boss happy till Dec and the others can get here,” Mack said, grabbing a rag and wiping down the blade.

  “We’ll sharpen it, use some of this sand to clean it up, and I think I have a little tube of toothpaste in my back pouch that might polish it a bit. Jet, I’m gonna have you cut new leather lacing for the hilt. Let’s get started; dinner’s not far off.”

  Chapter 18

  Chris

  Rome, Earth

  The witches had landed. Landed, arrived at Castle Senka, as I like to call the place, and been briefed on the situation. Now they were being broken up into teams with the best sympathetic magic trackers, which tended to be the Air and Water witches, being paired with an Earth or Fire witch. These skill pairs were then integrated into one of the response teams. Thirty-six of the young Arcane students, all of them female, had made the trip across the Atlantic and were now part of eighteen teams. The remaining team members came from the ranks of Senka’s Darkkin, the Vatican’s Swiss Guards, and the Italian military. Tanya and I were on separate teams, as we each had effective secondary weapons against the enemy. My team had my Carabineri escorts, Greco and Pero, myself, Lydia, as well as Tami Keonie and, somehow, Erika Boklund for witch support. We also had ‘Sos. I originally planned on leaving him with Gramps, Nika, and Doc Singh at Castle Senka with the babies, but he wouldn’t stay. I was pretty sure he was itching for a rematch with the alien zombies and I decided that few things could stun un-killable zombies better than an almost one ton Kodiak bear.

  Armenia had been a mess. The government had ended up firebombing the village, long before we could even get a flight plan set up to get there. As horrific as that was, it appeared to work. None of our witches could get any kind of reading on zombie infection in that area.

  But the lesson was learned. Our teams would be sent out across Europe, stationed nearest the most likely places for portals to emerge. Omega had found the likeliest ancient temple sites in Germany, France, England, and Northern Africa. All of the portals had been Mithrian temples, but not all temples appeared to house portals. We had found the three in Rome and Armenia had had at least the one. Now we had teams checking out the best candidates for new incursions.

  The two most likely emergence locations, according to Omega, were Mainz, Germany and Caesarea, Israel. Each of these villages had housed truly ancient temples, dedicated to Mithras. They were some of the earliest known temples. Omega speculated that the race of people who came through the celestial doorways at these geographic cross-dimension hotspots had inspired or even purpose
ly directed the formation of the Mithrian religion. However, it appeared that they, themselves had fallen victim to a stronger race and their pathways to Earth had become the enemy’s.

  So we organized the teams, trained them as units, and parked them at potential alien beachheads. And waited and… trained some more.

  Omega, during all this time, had been tirelessly refining his drones; his hired fabrication companies turning out designs that the builders didn’t entirely understand. The latest models, when combined to about German Shepard size, could burn a pig carcass to ash in less than a minute and a half, as long as they were connected to a steady power source. That size was too big to easily fly, but once separated into two smaller pieces, the units could hover, burn, and maneuver with grace. I think I preferred the mobility of the smaller double units over the firepower of the dog-sized unit, at least for underground zombie fighting. Power was ever an issue for the drones, as battery technology hadn’t advanced far enough to keep up with the rest of Omega’s innovations. The super AI was working on new designs for that, but for now his creations used mega capacitors, lithium batteries, and any handy electrical power source to give them the needed energy to fire their formidable particle cannons.

  But as advanced as they were, they took a distinct backseat to the skills of a Fire witch.

  “And…. go!” Sergeant Greco yelled. I Moved, not full speed but much faster than human level. Through the swinging barn doors and full into a mass of black-armored figures that were moving like robots. Grim started to shoot—nine rounds from my right gun, seven from the left. The attackers froze, or in some cases, fell over. I cleared the open barn floor then circled clockwise, coming back to the front just as Tami came through, carrying a shotgun. She took in the stunned figures, eyes a little wide, started just a tiny bit when she realized I was already back beside her, then focused and got down to work. Behind her, Erika strode into the barn, also carrying a shotgun, looking somewhat Viking-ish. My memories of my visit to her family’s lodge in the Michigan wilderness were choppy, but she and her twin looked more mature than I remembered. Didn’t act it though, at least in Erika’s case. Still desperate for attention, especially male attention. Built as she was and dressed as she did, she tended to draw plenty of admirers. But here, on the team, she was much more focused than I would have guessed.

  Beside me, Tami raised her shotgun and fired, then pumped and fired again. Cones of fire shot out the barrel as shards and pellets of magnesium ignited and burned at 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. The shower of fiery bits blasted into the stunned enemy, mostly just bouncing off. Tami raised her right hand and the first four figures burst into flame, followed by the three behind them, as she redirected the magnesium’s thermal content. She hissed and spoke sharply in what I presumed was Navajo. Four more attackers burst into flame before she spoke again. “Now,” she said calmly, eyes narrowed at her victims.

  Erika stepped up and raised her right hand to her mouth. She blew on her palm and a small cloud of sawdust billowed out from it. A foot from her face, the cloud picked up speed and strength, the sawdust somehow expanding and spreading throughout the sixteen frozen attackers. More fire flared as the sawdust caught flame in mid-air, the incendiary storm billowing out across the whole space. Erika spoke softly, but my more-than-human hearing picked out the word. “Widdershins,” was all she said.

  The wind driving the sawdust suddenly twisted counter-clockwise, swirling the entire fire-cloud around and around the burning figures, catching the last five enemies on fire and fanning the flames immediately to ultra-hot. Tami spoke again and the burning zombies went almost white hot.

  “What do you think? Pretty vicious, right?” Erika asked.

  “I think it’s perfect,” I said, glancing at Lydia, who was watching from the doorway.

  “Just as good as Declan, right?” Erika asked. In the last six hours, she’d only mentioned the boy warlock like fifteen times. Everything came back to the kid witch.

  “It’s real good,” I said, very impressed with their combined efforts. It’s possible I didn’t sell it hard enough.

  Both girls frowned at me. “No way he can duplicate the combined wind and fire. We’ve worked on that for like three weeks,” Erika said in disbelief. Lydia says my poker face is non-existent. Grim’s is awesome, but mine sucks. Apparently she’s right because both girls weren’t buying it.

  “Ladies, it’s exactly perfect for what we need,” I said. “What’s the issue?”

  “He could somehow pull something different out of his ass, couldn’t he?” Tami asked.

  Greco and Pero grabbed fire extinguishers and moved into the barn, putting out the burning robots. Each fake zombie was one of Omega’s simpler bots, covered with pieces of plywood, which was in turn layered with carbon fiber sheathing. Omega had indicated the design would be close enough to an armored zombie for training purposes. Neither the carbon fiber nor the diamondoid armor really burned well unless it was surrounded by fuel burning at over four hundred degrees. The plywood was a surrogate for the fat and muscle of the robotic zombies’ bodies, which would burn nicely if heated enough.

  Not wanting to depress my team, I started to say something positive. Lydia intervened. “Listen, that dorky beanpole can light stone on fire in a thunderstorm,” she said. “Your abilities are, as Chris said, exactly what the job calls for and beyond what we’re seeing from the other teams.”

  “Fucking freak,” Tami said.

  From his spot outside the barn, Awasos raised his head and chuffed, staring straight at Tami.

  “Oh relax. She’s just annoyed, that’s all,” Lydia said to the massive bear. Moving closer she, shook her head at Tami. “Ixney on the insults, eh? He doesn’t like when you insult his friends and they’re not here.”

  “Really? That… beast knows when we’re insulting Declan?” Erika asked, incredulous.

  “He’s extremely intelligent and he doesn’t like aggression toward his friends and family. Word of warning. Never, never say anything negative about the twins,” Lydia said. “He’s violently protective of them.”

  “Why is he here anyway? What’s he gonna add to what we just did?” Tami asked.

  “He’s our shock force. We run into a whole mess of these things bunched up and you’ll see what he does,” I said. “Where’d the idea for the Dragon’s breath rounds come from?”

  “Declan’s girlfriend. She’s a little nutty about shotguns and when he said something about wondering if he could handle a dragon’s firebreathing, she said she could shoot him with these things if he liked,” Tami said.

  “Did she? Shoot him?” Lydia asked.

  “Yup, just hauled off and blasted him with both barrels of that little gun of hers,” Tami said.

  “What’d he do?” I asked.

  “Just sucked all the heat and flame right up like a damned vacuum cleaner. Then he turned around and slagged a pile of sand into glass. Anyway, I liked the idea of using the heat from the rounds and focusing it to make it really useful,” Tami said.

  “Great idea,” I said. “You Arcane students seem to come up with some really cool stuff.”

  The two witches looked at each other and then back at me. “Wytch War,” they said in unison. Erika giggled and Tami shrugged. “You have to think outside the box and innovate to win,” the Fire witch said.

  “So are they a good substitute? For real dragon fire?” Lydia asked.

  “Ashley said they were nothing close to what a dragon could do,” Tami said. “Said dragons could melt rock.” Beside her, Erika shuddered at the thought.

  “So the beanpole would be bean toast,” Lydia said with a little grin.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Tami said seriously. “I would never bet against that kid, particularly with fire.”

  Erika, who was smiling at Sergeant Greco, snapped back around. “Personally, I’d feel sorry for the dragon.”

  “Well, they work with the dragons, so it’ll never come to that,” I said.