by CM Raymond
She almost smiled, as one would in a dream like this, but any chance of that ended when she saw the silver metal of a blade held in a clawed hand pulled back ready for attack.
Shifting to draw on her power, Hannah knew in her gut she was beat.
The blade struck fast for her chest, but before it could find its target a massive blur of scales and wings tackled the beast and rolled with the thing off to the side of the fire. Blood sprayed in every direction as Sal tossed the creature’s body like a chew toy in a puppy’s mouth, finally to lob the lifeless corpse against the broad trunk of a tree. Sal tilted his head toward the sky and let out a roar. Her friend was no lizard, but rather a formidable beast—her dragon—and nothing was going to get the jump on Hannah with him around.
Hannah got quickly to her feet, dagger in one hand and fireball in the other. Parker was already at her side, spear directed outward. She could hear the gentle swish of Laurel’s rope blade spinning at her side.
“What the hell are you?” the druid blurted.
Across the circle from them were a half-dozen more of the things. Standing well over six-feet tall and barrel-chested, they were clearly humanoid—upright posture, armed with daggers, and wearing clothing that looked like it could have been tailor-made in a shop in Arcadia.
But that was where the similarities ended. Their bodies were covered in spotted fur, and they looked like large cats. Their yellow eyes nearly glowed in the darkness of night.
They were evidently strong, since muscles bulged against their shirts and pants. The one in the middle lifted his chin and let out a screech that cut through the jungle night.
Parker grinned. “Nice kitty, kitty, kitty.”
He screamed again and crouched, as if ready to spring into an attack.
Laurel stepped forward. “I’ve got this.” Her eyes glowed as green as the foliage around them and she lifted her right hand in the direction of the cat-man.
Hannah held her breath, hoping that the druid’s powers worked better on the animals than the plant life they had walked through for hours that day. But another scream came, and with it her answer as the creature vaulted into the air with the grace of a Market Square dancer.
Parker pushed Laurel out of the way and lifted his spear toward the attacker, but the thing twisted midflight and landed at his side, swiping a clawed hand for his torso.
“Shit!” The cat’s claws had found flesh beneath his thick leather vest.
Instinctually Parker snapped the butt-end of his spear at the creature, catching him under the chin. Spinning off his back foot, he drove the point into the soft flesh of the cat-man’s belly. His yellow eyes went wide as he realized he was finished. Parker yanked his blood-drenched weapon from the thing and watched his body drop.
“I’m much more of a dog person,” he said, turning to find Hannah and Laurel holding their own against the cats.
Two of them, fur singed, lay lifeless at the edge of the woods. Another was sidestepping Hannah, trying to get an angle for attack. She moved with him, sizing the thing up. Parker knew this animal didn’t stand a chance against Hannah. She wasn’t fighting; she was studying. Trying to figure out exactly what they were. But he didn’t give Hannah much time to learn.
Parker could hardly believe his eyes as he watched this half-cat, half-man lunge knife-first toward the magician. She sidestepped it, but just barely. These things were fierce and fast, and filled with hate for the foreigners in their jungle.
As the knife slid past her, Hannah grabbed his shirtsleeve and kept its momentum going. Her knee rose and collided with the thing’s rib cage. She twisted his arm, driving his blade into his fur-covered jugular.
Parker turned to see Laurel choking one of them to death with her rope blade and Sal dismembering another.
The last of the creatures dashed into the dark night undergrowth of the jungle. Hannah sent a fireball after him, more to scare him and demonstrate her power than anything. Maybe they would be too afraid to attack again.
“Holy hell! What are those things?” Laurel said, coiling up the rope.
Sal walked across the circle and sat by his master’s side, jaws dripping with blood. Hannah looked down at the dragon and gave him a scratch under the chin. “Nice work, badass.” She looked back up at the druid. “I was hoping you could tell me. They weren’t lycanthropes, that’s for sure. Certainly not men, though.”
Parker drew the end of his spear across the ground, trying to clean the blood off. “They were more man than animal. They knew exactly what they were doing, and if you ask me, they were here to get information.”
“If that’s true,” Hannah replied. “Then there are more of them. Many more. We’d better get moving.”
“Yeah,” Parker wheezed, looking down at his bleeding side. “I’m gonna need some help here first.”
Hannah exhaled. “You’re so damned needy,” she said as her eyes blazed red with power to heal him.
*****
A blue orb floating over Hannah’s head provided light for them in their silent night-walk through the jungle. For the first hour they were on high alert, expecting a cat-creature to bound out of the wet leaves at any minute. After another hour, Parker began to grow restless.
“You getting any closer to connecting with this place?” he asked Laurel, who was walking by his side.
“You can’t hurry love,” she said, giving him a light punch on the arm. “It’s really different here. Like nothing I’ve seen before—more different from the forest than New Romanov was, that’s for sure. I think they’re warming up to me, though.”
“Better stoke the fire. We are going to need you.” He motioned around them. “And look at all these weapons at your fingertips.”
She laughed. “You’re telling me!”
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
“You just did,” she replied, eyes on Hannah’s back.
“All that stuff you shared about the mushrooms and the Queen Bitch. You really believe that?”
Laurel shrugged. “We’re a believing people. I mean, the druids are. Our connection with the natural environment, the fact that we know it is something other than us but still a world we can connect with…that takes some faith. Makes it a bit easier to believe that she exists.”
“OK, but it also helps you believe that she can connect with you during a funky trip on mushrooms from beyond the stars…if that’s where she really is.”
“Sure. Why not? And even if she didn’t, what difference does it make? I’m not in the forest, and I think that I came upon you, all of you, at just the right time. Now here I am, poised to save the whole damned world. If that isn’t un-fucking-believable, I don’t know what is.”
Parker laughed. “You’ve got a point.”
“Why? You don’t believe?”
“Me?” He went silent and walked like that for a while. “I did as a kid. My mom is a sincere believer, but when you grow up like Hannah and I did in the Boulevard with Adrien and shit, it’s… Well, it’s a bit harder to trust in some benevolent badass who’s protecting the world.”
“What would you call Hannah, then?”
He thought for a second. “That’s a pretty good point.”
“Look, nothing can make you believe,” she said, “but keep your eyes open to what’s going on around you. Hard to imagine it’s all just chance and luck and possibility. I mean, if it were, our luck would have run out by now.”
“Careful…” He laughed, then turned his eyes up toward the sky, which was starting to grow light. The stars were fading, and he wondered if she might really be up there. “I’m planning on making my own luck for many more years.”
Through a gap in the trees, he saw the outline of the dragon fly overhead in the light of the coming dawn. He hoped that Sal would be able to find some indication of the location of the technology they were hunting soon. It wasn’t about the bet he held with Hadley—though he’d be happy to beat his mystic friend—but the clock was ticking back in New Romanov.<
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And Matriarch or no, he’d be damned before he let this world suffer when he could stop it.
CHAPTER NINE
“The noise is coming from there,” Gregory said, pointing at the spot where the trail dipped out of sight. “Come on.”
He rushed ahead, his heart racing in its all-too-familiar way. Still, he didn’t feel as he usually did. “Filled with courage” would have been an overstatement, but the boy who a year earlier would rather have crawled under his desk than looked someone in the eye was gone.
At the top of the first rise, he crouched and looked into the little valley that had been out of view at their last stop. His eyes widened at what had been hidden from them. The path dropped, and then all at once it opened into a giant bowl in the side of the rock. More buildings spotted the ground near the rock as if hoping to find a bit of shelter, but the rest of the place was an enormous flat frozen plain.
The change in landscape only held his attention for a moment, since there were two figures fighting and cursing in the middle of it. Gregory sized them up as his companions crawled into place next to him. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to determine perspective.
It only took a moment to confirm his suspicion. Two men clothed in leathers with thick fur on their heads and feet exchanged attacks with short swords and small shields.
But it wasn’t their clothing or the fight that shocked Gregory. It was their size.
They were only as tall as the rearick.
The short thick beards and barrel chests nearly convinced him that two Karls were down there battling to the death.
Aysa cooed, “Ooh! They’re so cute.”
Karl’s face reddened. “Not another word, ya spider. They swing like drunk women from Baseek. Them ain’t rearick—I don’t care if they’re a hair shorter than ye lowlanders.”
“A hair shorter?” Hadley laughed. “That’s a long-ass hair.”
Watching the two men have it out, Gregory’s mind raced. What would Hannah do? he thought to himself. “We’ve gotta stop this.”
“And, um, who are we saving?” Aysa asked.
Gregory nodded. “Good question. Whichever one is losing, I guess.”
“Looks like they’re both losing,” Hadley chirped. “In fact, they look like a couple dogs in heat trying to hump each other.”
“Enough talk. Let’s just go pull ‘em apart. Ask where we can get them damn crystals, and get off this hill,” Karl said.
“What?” Aysa asked. “Not feeling so much like home anymore?”
He ignored the question and turned to Gregory, who gave him a nod. Karl hopped up and raced down the hill, pulling his hammer from his side as he ran. Aysa was right behind him, her new shield catching the light of the sun that had just broken through the clouds.
****
Karl charged toward the fight just as it began to turn deadly. When he got closer the rearick could tell that, while they were both shorter than the average human, these two mountain men were not of equal size.
One was thick as a tree, and he wielded his sword with a violence bordering on glee. The target of his attacks was a kid, barely past puberty.
And the kid was getting his ass handed to him.
The brute pushed forward with his shield, a brutal move that drew blood from the kid’s face and knocked him to the ground. The kid raised his own shield in a pathetic attempt to block the next attack, but Karl recognized a killing blow when he saw one. The larger man raised his short sword high and was about to let it fall when Karl hit him.
With a grunt, Karl lowered his shoulder and rammed straight into the aggressor’s side, knocking them both into the snow. Before the man could recover, Karl had his hammer out and across the man’s chest, pinning him to the ground.
“What the hell?”
“Lay off the kid, ya maggot,” Karl growled through gritted teeth. The man was fighting to free himself, but Karl leaned in, giving him no room. “Now what the hell is—” But before Karl could finish his question, something smashed into the side of his head. Karl shook the stars away and turned to see who was attacking him.
It was the kid. He was standing there shaking like a leaf, but he held his sword out as if he meant to use it.
“L-let him go!”
“Dammit, kid, can’t ya see I’m tryin’ ta help ya?”
The young man looked confused for a second, but then he tightened his grip on the sword.
“I said, ‘let him go or else.’”
Before the kid could make good on his threat, a snowball the size of a coconut plowed into his face.
The kid stepped backward, holding his bleeding nose.
Karl turned and there was Aysa, a rock in her hand and a smile on her face.
“The first one was a warning shot. The next one breaks your jaw.”
The young man’s eyes opened wide, and when he saw Hadley and Gregory running toward them, he knew the fight was over.
He dropped his sword and held his hands up. “OK, OK, just don’t hurt him.”
“What’s the deal?” Aysa said. “That guy was about to chop you in half. Where I come from—”
The kid cut her off. “I don’t know where you come from, but here in Heema, when two men train for battle we actually look like we’re fighting.” The young man looked back and forth, then turned his eyes toward the rocky ledge where they had just been. “And where the hell did you come from, anyway?”
“Two men?” Aysa said. “No offense kid, but you look like you haven’t hit puberty yet. And if that was you training for battle, I’d recommend that you stay away from it. It looked to me like that big lug was beating the shit out of you.”
“Aysa!” Gregory yelled, his face burning. Before leaving the Unlawful, Hannah had put him in charge of the mission. He hadn’t made too much of it then, but he now realized it was his job to step in and play diplomat. He raised his hand toward Karl, who was still holding the other man down. “Let him go, Karl.”
“Aye, Gregory. Me pleasure. This ‘un smells of rotten flesh,” he said with a wink. Karl released him, and the large man scrambled to his feet.
Gregory stepped toward them and extended a hand, which the men just looked at. “Forgive us,” he said with a slight bow. “We thought we were, well, helping.”
The big guy sneered and made a low growling sound before storming off. Gregory watched him go, worried that it was a bad sign for things to come.
“Don’t worry about Hendrix,” the younger man said. His face had lost its earlier indignation. “He’s always like that. I’m Broderick. Welcome to Heema.”
Gregory’s red face broke into a smile. He introduced himself again, and then the others. Broderick shook everyone’s hand, stopping when he came to Karl.
“Finally, a normal looking fellah,” Broderick said as he grabbed Karl’s hand, giving it a firm squeeze. It was clear that he was trying to be seen as an equal, not the youth he was.
“Aye, good ta meet some mountain folk,” he replied, applying his own pressure against Broderick’s grip. “Bein’ around these lowlanders alla time is enough ta drive ye mad.”
Broderick grinned. “That’s why we stay up here, brother. Our lowlanders look a bit funnier than your lot here, though.” He narrowed his eyes at Karl. “Now level with me… What the hell are you all doing up here on our mountain?”
Karl nodded. “I can understand yer apprehension. I feel the same when furriners creep inta the Heights. But we’re on a mission of sorts—somethin’ good fer everyone, even yer men and women up here. We hear ye got some crystals in these hills, and we’re gonna need some of ‘em.”
Broderick lost a little bit of his smile, but quickly recovered. “Well,” he finally said, “I think you’re going to need to talk to Aardash about that. I’ll lead you to him.” He eyed the others, taking extra time to inspect their weapons. “But no funny business, brother, or we’ll throw your bodies where not even the ravens will be able to pick them apart.”
Grinning through his beard
, Karl replied, “Not a problem, friend. We come in peace. This Aardash, is he your leader?”
“He’s the king of the mountain,” Broderick said. “Come along,” They turned and walked in the direction of the mountain village, with Karl and Aysa on their heels.
“Hadley?” Gregory whispered to the mystic who walked beside him, his eyes already covered in white.
“He’s OK. Confused and cautious, which makes sense, but confident. They don’t have any reason to fear four wanderers on their doorstep—at least none that they know of.”
Gregory nodded. “Sure. But are they, um, nice?”
Hadley laughed. “Nice? Well, I didn’t have to read that Hendrix’ mind to see that he wanted to hit someone, but Broderick seems nice enough. He’s more embarrassed than anything, I think, by the way he was getting manhandled. We’ll have to wait until we meet their king, but I think we’re safe.” Hadley paused. “For now.”
****
The Heemites stopped milling about as Broderick walked the strangers into the middle of their village. The young man strode with a puffed-up chest, proud of the fact that he was playing such an important role. He gave everyone he passed a knowing glance and a wave, and most of the villagers responded in kind.
Children in leather clothing trimmed with thick rings of fur stopped running about and stared at the party. Most of them never seeing a person taller than five and a half feet. They were particularly taken by Aysa’s long arms and giant feet.
A cute blond girl approached her cautiously, stopping in Aysa’s path. “What happened to you?” she asked in a squeaky voice.
Aysa held up left arm and smiled, and then bent down to the girl’s height. “I lost it when some very bad people tried to take me away from my home.”
The girl giggled and shook her head, blond curls swimming around on her shoulder. She pointed at Aysa’s right arm. “I mean why are they so long.” Her face twisted in thought. “Did you get stretched?”
Aysa laughed at the girl’s innocence and bravery. “I was born this way.”
“Why?”
She bent and picked up a rock in her massive hand. “So I can do this.” Aysa turned and launched the rock as far as she could over the side of the cliff.
