by P. S. Power
Orange Cat Publishing
Electronic Publishing Division
2012
All rights reserved.
Orange Cat Publishing books by P.S. Power:
The Infected:
Proxy
Gabriel
Cast Iron
Gwen Farris:
Abominations
Monsters
Dead End:
A Very Good Man
A Very Good Neighbor
A Very Good Thing
A Very Dark Place
Keeley Thomson:
Demon Girl
Keelzebub
Mistress of Souls
The Young Ancients:
The Builder
Knight Esquire
Knight of the Realm
Ambassador
Counselor
Slave Line
Stand alone titles:
Crayons
Unrelenting Terror
A Very Dark Place
P.S. Power
Chapter one
Jake hit the red glowing metal firmly with the heavy sledge. It was a bit dim in the blacksmith's shop and the noise was annoying, but he focused on the work in front of him to try and block it out. It wasn't the shock through his arm that was bugging him after all, or the ringing sound of metal against metal. It was the complaining that took place the second he stopped. It meant he was milking the heat a little too much, trying to forge metal once it had gone just a little too cool instead of putting it back on the coals like he should.
Looking at the ax head he knew it was time and sighed, trying not to hit the boy next to Colleen who was helping her with the bellows. He settled the metal in the hottest part of the brick forge and waved at them to start pulling on the levers that would make the carbon get even hotter.
"Go please." He always said please now. Mainly because he didn't mean it at all and that was starting to show pretty badly in everything he did. That sounded backwards, but the more he felt like that, the greater the need to show he didn't feel that way seemed important.
As if the hot air had to run through the thin pale sixteen year old before it could do its real work Henry started whining. Again. Every single time.
"I don't belong here." He spoke as if he hadn't said it fifteen times that day already. It was only his first morning too and they hadn't even been working for two hours.
"I should be out training or... I don't know, doing something useful."
That was his mantra. That working on something as mundane as making weapons was beneath him. That even a few hours away from "real work" was what they had the humans for, not someone special like him. A Denari.
That part almost made sense, because so far a lot of the Denari had been like that since they'd shown up. They had very high self-esteem as a rule and supposedly were just about the perfect fighters, though Jake hadn't seen any in action yet himself. It wasn't like with the Vals, who were strong and fast, as well as hard to kill. The Denari were different. They could take a beating, but their reflexes and ability to learn to fight were just different than a human's. In a pinch they could suddenly turn into killing machines. They also had really good endurance, so they could do it for a long time too.
And apparently they also a tradition of being little bitch men if they didn't feel properly utilized.
"It isn't fair."
Jake just nodded and adjusted the coals a little, finally at about the point where he'd had enough of this mental munchkin. Colleen shook her head first though.
"It's the job you have right now. You need to concentrate on doing it right and worry about that for a bit, instead of running off to play soldier in the snow. Trust me, there will be time for that later. If you don't insist on hiding inside all the time, you'll have to fight." She was always nice, but a tiny hint of exasperation crept into her voice. She didn't even look up at Jake or roll her eyes, just pulling after each push the boy made, doing the harder part of the work without complaint.
"I know." The kid looked at the door and leaned toward her, face tightened into a frown.
"I just... They stuck me in here to get me out of the way. I'm kind of a... goof, I guess you'd say. I'm not very good at fighting. I don't belong here, at the house of The Very Good Man at all. I guess that's why I'm being a pain. Sorry. I shouldn't even be here at all and I know it. I should probably have been left in the woods as a baby, but we don't do that anymore."
Jake nodded again, using the sprinkle can to cool the coals in the areas that they weren't actively using. It would save on fuel and he really didn't want to try for another charcoal burn that winter. It was January and that meant the ground outside was hard to about five inches down. Digging through that meant lighting fires on top of it first and that meant burning good dry wood that could be used to keep the people inside warm and happy.
Warm at least. No one was happy anymore, with the exception of Lois in the kitchen, who'd kind of lost her mind. She got her work done though and that mattered too. If she wanted toseem happy all the time, well, it was better than moping, right?
"Bull. Look, Henry, this is important work and the fact that you're here right now means you belong here. You can go out and practice later, if we don't make a run into town for supplies. Cam mentioned that Burt wants some materials for his latest generator. We'll need to make the gears for that too, so it won't all be bellows work." He smiled, hoping to make it sound like a treat, but the kid didn't get it at all.
He grunted instead.
"Yes sir. I suppose we'll have to walk in?"
Jake was tempted to say yes, but teasing the guy wouldn't help at all, not if he was actually as down on himself as it sounded. It might be fun, but it would confuse him and that would waste time later and erode trust.
"Teleporting in. I don't know where we'll have to go, but we might need to stand guard while others grab materials. Cameron, the cute redheaded girl? She'll be taking us, I think."
That got a reaction and not the one that Jake would have expected from a sixteen year old boy when it was mentioned that a cute fourteen year old girl was going to be around for a while. Instead of asking the normal questions, like if she was seeing anyone or if she might put out on the first date, Henry growled.
"Fucking thieves. I shouldn't have to work with that sort of trash. We should just kill them all and make the world a better pla-" He didn't get to finish the statement, staring at the nine millimeter in his face like he was.
It had just appeared in Jake's hand. Oh, it was a horrible idea for him to try and do forge work armed, but he didn't go without now, even when it was a bad idea. Things like this kept coming up. The shocking thing there wasn't that he'd drawn on the kid, or even that they weren't fighting yet. No, it was that little Colleen Becks, his oldest remaining friend, had jumped to the left and was aiming her own pistol at the back of the guys head. It was a twenty-five, but she was holding it decently steady and starting to squeeze the trigger slowly, exhaling a bit like Jake had showed her.
"Hold." Jake said the word darkly, and for some reason it worked even though waiting wasn't something that he'd taught her to do at all.
She was a bright woman though. She always had been.
"Henry, we don't say things like that about our friends here. Not ever. Don't even think them please, because some of the people around here can read minds. The sooner everyone learns to play nicely, the fewer bloodstains I'll have to wash off my walls. Now, if you'd fix that and stop whining like a little girl... Oh, wait, the little girls here don't whine like that either..." Jake shook his head, not smiling at all.
"Well, stop it anyway, or well have to change the phrase to "stop complaining like a little
Henry". You don't want that. It will play havoc on your self-image. I know, you don't think it will get to you, but it will."
"OK. Sorry. I was told, I'm... Damn it!" He looked ready to hit something, but the forge area didn't offer a lot for that.
Besides if he did Colleen was clearly going to kill him. He stopped and looked at the others, then shook his head.
"See? I can't do anything right."
Jake was just about to get whiplash from the fast pace of the kid's mood changes, so slipped the weapon in his hand away and motioned for them to start on the bellows again. Colleen was a little slower putting hers away, but half a minute later the hiss of air was the only thing that could be heard again. Like it should be. Nice and restful.
No one spoke for the next two heats, just communicating through hand gestures in the dim light, enjoying the warmth without having to fight to be next to the woodstove inside. That part of things kind of surprised Jake a bit. It would seem to him that more people would have volunteered to work the blacksmiths shop with him. They had room for another person or two and it was both useful and not that hard. Oh, a bit boring at times, if you were stuck on bellows, but no one had mentioned to him that they wanted to try doing the work or anything. He'd have to ask for volunteers again then. It was a pain, but sometimes people didn't want to do things just because speaking up was hard, not because they were truly lazy.
Finally the boy spoke again.
"The Very Good Man... He's really serious about making us all work together? All the different cousin races? My father said that was the case, but it seems impossible. How can we work with thieves or mind stealers? It's bad enough that we have to work with Valkyries. At least they're halfway useful. Plus you can have sex with them all you want, since they can pick when they get pregnant and can't carry diseases. Not like Human women, who are all slutty and often oozing puss from their lower parts I hear." That last bit was said almost academically, rather than as a dismissive thing.
Jake was about to correct him again when Colleen laughed at the boy.
"Where the heck did you get that idea? That's both gross and sounds like it came from someone that had never met a regular woman before at all."
The boy shrugged.
"Everyone knows it. All Human women are obsessed with sex all the time and will force you to have sex with them if you fall asleep in their presence. We were all told to be on our guard against it, to prevent infection that might slow our battle reflexes. My father told me to either sleep in the middle of the Denari or if I have to, to sleep alone outside. Plus Human women are always pregnant. We were briefed on all this before we came. They can't help it though, so we're supposed to not show that it's wrong, to save their feelings."
Colleen smiled tightly and gestured that they should keep working the Bellows.
"You do understand that not one part of that is correct, right? That you were told things, probably by someone that doesn't have all the facts, based on what they believed to be true, but... it just isn't?"
Jake snorted, "except the part about the Vals. They really can control when they get pregnant. Some of the women here do have herpes too, they got it from Holsom." He pulled the metal to work it again, decided it would need three more passes most likely, then finishing on it, an edge first hammered in, then fired for soft tempering. Then he'd use a file to get it almost sharp and get it to Robin, who was making the handles for it.
"Still, to answer your question and back up Colleen here, yes I expect you to work with everyone, and do it without mentioning anything you just said at all. No forgetting. If you can't manage that I'll have to send you away. We can't afford to have people running around making problems here. We have God knows how many refugees headed this way and have to be ready for attack at almost any time."
The boy shut up then at least, which left Colleen fuming a little, being one of those "slutty Human women", but she didn't mention it.
That let them actually get some work done, which was a brilliant and lovely thing to Jake's mind. Next he started on a knife, which was meant for Billi, a friend of his. It was kind of practice, since he needed to make a lot more weapons. The fact there was that he just couldn't do it all alone. That was getting obvious. They needed at least one more forge and probably six to ten blacksmiths. That way they could keep things running around the clock.
The commotion that started was done without yelling, at first. Jake nearly missed the sound, having been pounding as he was, the ring of metal making it too hard to keep his awareness on everything around him like he should. He used the black iron tongs to return the knife to the coals before responding though. Picking up the heavy short sledge he turned to jog into the yard outside the open door.
It was cold out, and bright, but he could make out the problem almost instantly. A T'srith woman was busily fighting with one of the new Denari men. It was an odd, but fairly even battle and except for the fact that the Denari made the mistake of yelling, some kind of battle chant it sounded like rather than an actual string of foul language, it was nearly pretty.
Jake shot him in the leg and readied himself to hit the head if he started screaming. The man was taller than almost anyone else in the area, thin and muscular, but like a swimmer compared to the blocky dark skinned woman in white that he'd fought with, went down to one knee, gasping. He didn't scream though, biting the sound off. He stopped the stupid chanting too.
Looking at the tree line Jake saw the half dozen zombies slowly moving toward them anyway. That meant that they needed to make a point of clearing the woods again. It was a never ending battle, it seemed. The undead were hungry and most of the easy prey had already been eaten or turned and they weren't wild about eating others of their own kind. That had put them on the move, restlessly searching for new prey. Following the scent of warm Human flesh in the cold.
At least that got everyone to pay attention for a little bit, and some rifles came out, in the hands of some fit looking Nordic women that took turns taking head shots. Carefully so as to not waste ammo. Vicki, who was in charge of them pointed silently to each of the younger girls and then at a target. One of them, a new blond girl he didn't know that looked to be about twenty, took three shots, which made her frown, but no one said anything. The rest got it done in two each.
After that was done axes got handed out to each of the shooters so they could go take the heads. The girls didn't move though, even though the zombies were still flopping around on the ground. They were already dead of course. Shooting them in the head just made it harder for them to hunt you. Or walk. They could still infect you though and as far as anyone knew wouldn't stop moving until they disintegrated totally. Taking the heads off helped keep them from doing that though. So did burying, but the ground was too hard for that, so they had a huge moving pile about a quarter mile away from the house made of writhing headless bodies.
Jake thought he got it when he saw what was happening. The Denari, the other eight that had come as part of a work agreement, were gathering around him looking more than a little angry. That was getting the T'srith to move in behind them, guns in hand, already taking aim.
He shook his head and spoke softly.
"Noise discipline. At all times. This man was chanting. It may be culturally significant, but it will also call in the dead on us. I shot him in the leg as a courtesy, because he's new. If any of you do that again in my or anyone else's presence here, or speak too loud, we'll be forced to shoot you in the head. I don't want to, but this is the one warning we can afford to give you. Do you understand? Just nod if you do." He waited, but only one of the men did it. He had a full beard, black shot with gray, and looked like a thin mountain man.
"Understood Smith. Let's see to William and then get back to work." His voice was sensibly soft as well. Almost more so than Jake's had been.
Jake tried to remember the face, since he was clearly one of the smart ones. Maybe the one in charge even. He kind of hoped so, since it would make things easier.
Holstering the gun as he moved, Jake put out a hand to the man on the ground, who took it, but struggled up without so much as a whimper. It was only a flesh wound after all. The man glared at the woman he'd been fighting though, which was odd, because she hadn't shot him at all. They'd been going at it with empty hands. It wouldn't have been a problem if not for the chanting thing.
The wound bled freely, but one of the others came out with a bucket of water and some cloths to staunch it. It was Ken who limped out, still recovering from his own bullet wounds. He was twelve, or maybe thirteen, black and growing into more strength than would be expected from someone that young who was living in as hard of a world as they all had been.
"Lois said that if we let him bleed in her kitchen she's finishing the job and serving him up for dinner." It almost sounded playful, as soft as it was, which got smiles from half the people standing around.
Vicki gestured her people out to take care of their "kills" but stood near Jake anyway, not leaving herself. After a few seconds he realized it was because she was worried that the Denari might attack him for having shot one of them. Jake didn't think so though. He tended the man's wounds silently, finally getting it packed enough they could move him to the living room to chat about what had been going on. That got everyone available to come, including about fifty of the people in the house that just didn't have anything better to do at the moment. A lot of the women were visibly pregnant, a few looked almost ready to deliver. That got most of the Denari to avert their eyes.
