by Weston Ochse
“We do that sometimes. But that’s also why we have Commander Holmes around. He’s our official stoic, silent, strong, and rugged SEAL team leader.”
“Enough already,” Holmes growled.
Walker pulled off the A3 into Godalming and followed Sassy’s directions until they came to a quaint house on a side street. One-story, made from stone, and with what looked like a thatched roof, it was right out of a storybook. He watched Sassy walk up the sidewalk in her dress and high heels. This whole experience seemed like it was out of a storybook. Witches … the commonplace, almost casual references to magic and all things magical … supernatural creatures … and faeries. Not the faeries that populated the stories he’d read when he was a child, but the faeries from which those stories originated. And much like the stories from the Brothers Grimm were watered down over the ages, so had the complexity and terribleness of these faeries.
She was gone for ten minutes, during which time the only sound inside the SUV was the occasional sweep of the wiper blade and the panting of the dog. When she returned, she wore black jeans and black high-tops with sparkles. A black blouse peeked out from her black down jacket. She wore a baseball cap with a picture of a witch on a broomstick inside a circle with a line through it. Holmes got out and let her in. She carried a heavy canvas bag, which she deposited on Yank’s lap. She slid into the seat, keeping a smaller bag on her lap.
“What’s this for?” Yank unzipped it and his eyes shot wide. “Sweet.” He pulled free a short sword made from a black metal.
YaYa leaned over the seat to peer into the bag. “What’s that?”
“Gladius,” Sassy said.
YaYa reached out to touch it, but Yank moved it out of reach. “As in what a Roman gladiator used?”
“As in what the common Roman soldier used. But this is no antique.” Yank tested the heft and weft. “My guess is carbon steel.” He counted. “There are six in here.”
“A gift. They’re gladius machetes. The young lady who helped me out has a boyfriend who works at a knife store. She talked him into letting us borrow them.” She smiled flatly. “You’re supposed to return them as good as new.”
Yank snorted, then turned the metal over in his hands. He stared at it the same way some men stare at a beautiful woman.
YaYa managed to reach in the bag and pull one for himself. He sat back in the seat beside Hoover, who could care less about the dull-colored piece of metal. “You’re giving this to us in order to…”
“Kill the hounds,” she said.
“And whatever other beegees there are that don’t like bullets,” Laws added.
Walker felt himself flinch when she said kill the hounds. He was acutely aware that Jen’s soul had somehow been co-opted and used to form one of the creatures. The idea of killing her all over again, killing her soul, made his breath shallow, his chest tighten. He fought back the emotion that threatened to take over his face and swallowed hard as he stared into the dawn of Christmas Day.
“What’s in the other bag?” Yank asked. “More goodies for us?”
“In a way. I need each of your body armor and those mask things you wear.” She unzipped this bag and pulled out a few small bottles of what looked like paint and a tiny brush. “I’m going to put protection runes on you. These runes will be from the Elder Futhark runic language, which is about two millennia old. Elhaz was used by the Norsemen when they invaded, ironically, to protect them from Christianity. Because of its rich history in the Isles, I’ve found it works considerably well against nature spirits, which you could call Tuatha.”
Yank turned to her. “I’m not giving you my armor or my ballistic mask.”
Holmes sighed. “Give it to her.”
Yank tried to draw in the other SEALs with pleading looks, but no one was biting. “But we can’t be sure if she’s—”
“Enough of that.” Holmes shrugged out of his body armor. “Do mine first and make it pretty. Walker, we going to sit here at the curb for the rest of the day?”
Walker shook out of it and put the SUV in gear. Soon they were heading toward Farnborough. When he hit the M3, he turned left. They’d traveled about ten kilometers when Holmes got a call from Preeti. A few moments into the conversation, he told Walker to pull over. There were no turnoffs, so he had to pull far to the edge. Luckily, there was hardly any traffic.
After a few moments, Holmes hung up and let them in on the conversation.
“Looks like the Red Grove is marshaling its forces. Preeti’s been monitoring the CCTV cameras and discovered that there are seven roadblocks, all at major intersections that would bring us to Glastonbury Tor.”
“But we’re not going there,” Laws said.
“As it turns out, their roadblocks have put the whole area out of reach.”
Ever in need of a fight, Yank shrugged. “Why not run them? We have the firepower.”
“This part of our mission requires a little subtlety and surprise.” Holmes shook his head. “Suggestions?”
Walker continued staring out the window. “We could jump in.”
YaYa laughed. “Like we’re going to find a plane and chutes on Christmas Day. Nice try.”
But Laws wasn’t so dismissive. “That would work if we had a place to go.”
“What about that?” Walker pointed out the front windshield to a billboard that read: “SKYDIVE COTSWALD—Five Locations,” with a picture of two grinning civilians making a tandem jump.
“But it’s Christmas,” YaYa persisted.
Walker turned to Laws. “My guess is that they have the chutes and the plane. All we have to do is jerk someone out of bed and have them fly us to altitude.”
“Let’s do it.” Holmes got on the phone to Preeti. She checked the locations. The closest was in Salisbury, but it was on the other side of a roadblock. So the next nearest location was Redlands Airfield in Swindon. Holmes ordered Walker to take them there. He told Laws to plot them a drop azimuth because they’d be using commercial chutes, which would force them to remain in the air longer.
Laws called Genie and ordered some weather data.
“So we’re really going to jump in?” YaYa grinned. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.” He scruffled Hoover’s neck. “Hear that, girl? You’re gonna jump. I’ll need to work up a Palmer rig, but it’ll be good.”
Sassy looked up from where she’d been concentrating on Holmes’s body armor and ballistic mask. She’d painted what looked a lot like an upright pitchfork on the forehead of his mask and several dozen symbols on the front and back of his body armor.
“Did someone say ‘parachute’?”
Holmes nodded.
Her eyes narrowed. She pointed at her hat. “This witch doesn’t fly.”
“You will today,” Holmes said. Then he gave her his stoic, strong look. “Suck it up. It’s the only way in.”
She had no response other than to stare at him in stunned silence.
For the first time that day Walker found something to laugh at. So he did.
CHAPTER 39
WARWICK CASTLE, WARWICK, ENGLAND. 0730 HOURS.
It had stopped snowing. Cold fog hugged the sides of the road. Dawn had just come. Ian had wanted to get on-site before light, to take advantage of the night, but it looked like he wasn’t going to make it. The drive from Warwick had been too long.
They were headed southwest on the A361 and less than three kilometers away from their objective when Ian saw the roadblock. He knew in the pit of his stomach it was there for him. Each driver had been issued a radio. He ordered the last van to pull up and continued to the roadblock with the rest of the vehicles. Two police sedans were pulled across the road. Three men in jackets stood to one side. They had pistols in holsters on their hips, which meant they weren’t just police. They all wore military uniforms, although their name tags had been removed. One was a large Irishman with the flattened nose of a professional fighter. Another was a young kid, his eyes wide and nervous. The last one was a mousy man with a
weasel’s face.
Magerts pulled the BMW to a stop so its nose was a few feet from those of the police cars.
Both Ian and Magerts got out.
Ian decided to take the offensive. “Can you move these out of the way? I need to get through.”
The big Irishman stepped forward. “Easy there, mate. You’re not going nowhere.”
Ian allowed a look of surprise to cross his face. “What do you mean? We’re on a mission from the Queen. You stop us at your own peril.”
A slim mousy-haired man with glasses frowned. “What’s he talking about, Bill?” His ill-fitting uniform showed he was a lance corporal.
“Take it easy, Geoff. Man’s all bluff.” To Ian, Bill said, “Now run along. No one’s getting through this way for quite a while.”
“What’s going on?” Magerts asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” sniffed the man named Bill.
Ian addressed the mousy man and the young kid who hadn’t yet spoken. “You men are participating in an illegal action. Stopping men of the Queen in a time of war is treason.”
That had the intended effect. The other two men were suddenly very nervous. “Listen, we’re just here because Bill says—”
“Shut it, Tim. I told you, the man is all bluff.”
Ian shook his head. “No bluff here.” He pulled the Queen Letter out and proffered it for them to read but held on to it. As Tim and the mousy one read it, their eyes widened. “You’ll notice the official seal and Her Majesty’s signature.”
Tim backed away. “I don’t want to be part of this.”
“Like you have a choice, Tim Thompson.” Bill squared his shoulders and addressed Ian. “How do I know this is real?”
“Seriously? When’s the last time someone tried to get through a roadblock with a fake letter signed by the Queen?” Ian flicked a hand at the cars. “Now get out of the way.”
Even Bill seemed worried now. He’d begun to step forward when the sound of a vehicle approaching from behind him caused everyone to pause. It was a pickup with four men in the back and two in the cab. They got out when it came to a stop. The four in back were dressed all in black with body armor and balaclavas. One of the men in front was a civilian. The other was dressed in fatigues. An SAS patch and colonel’s rank stood out against the camouflage.
“What’s going on, Bill? These men refusing to turn around?” The colonel stared imperiously at Ian.
The four men in black brought up MP5s with silencers,
“They have a letter from the Queen which says they should be allowed to pass.”
The man held out his hand.
Ian merely stared at it.
The man snapped his fingers.
“To whom am I speaking?” Ian asked.
“Colonel Wilson Picket. Now give me the goddamned letter.”
Ian handed it over. “You’re a little out of your jurisdiction, Colonel.”
Colonel Picket glanced at the letter, then unceremoniously ripped it in two and dropped it to the ground. “It’s a fake.”
“So you’ve seen one of these before?” Ian struggled to keep the anger from his face.
This stopped Colonel Picket for a moment. But he recovered and said, “It’s obvious. Why does the Queen need someone like you to—”
Ian stuck out his hand, “Colonel Ian Waits. Section 9, Special Services.” He’d watched Colonel Picket’s eyes and it was obvious he’d heard the name before. Even the twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth gave him away. “But you knew that already. Let’s cut the bullshit.”
“Yes. Let’s.”
“Someone convinced you to come out here and stop me. I’d like to know who!”
The colonel paused a moment, then shrugged. “You’ll know soon enough. Sir MacDonald swore out a warrant for your arrest.”
“Oh, he did, did he? On what grounds?”
“I’m not privy. All I know is he asked a few trusted men of Sheffield to assist him and he decided to call on me.”
“Us,” Bill added.
The colonel frowned at Bill’s addition but nonetheless concurred. “Us.”
Ian couldn’t help himself. He started to chuckle.
The colonel didn’t like being laughed at. “What’s so damned funny?”
“You’ve been played.” Ian pointed to the four men in black. “Those four are part of a group planning the overthrow of the British government. Sir MacDonald is part of it. A man of Sheffield or not, he’s hitched his tail to a kite being flown by men from an organization called the Red Grove who have brought back King Arthur and the Wild Hunt.”
Everyone was silent for a moment as the words sunk in.
Then they started laughing.
Ian waited for the laughter to die down. “As funny as it sounds, it’s true. I’d like to offer you and your men a chance to surrender to me now.”
Everyone began to laugh once more. Ian and Magerts joined in.
“You ever play poker?” Ian asked when they were done. The colonel responded, “Yeah. Sometimes.”
“Good, then I’ll see your squad and raise a platoon.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
A squad of Royal Marines appeared out of the darkness behind the four men. A corporal called out, “Put down your weapons and lay flat on the ground. You so much as twitch I’ll have my men go full auto on your asses.”
The look on the big Irishman’s face was priceless.
But not as priceless as Ian wanted. He took one step forward and delivered a right hook to Colonel Picket’s jaw, delivered with all the outrage of a man trying to save his country only to be delayed by the grossly incompetent. The man fell hard to the ground and landed on his ass. “It means you lose and I win, you pompous ass.”
CHAPTER 40
POINT BRAVO, WARWICK, ENGLAND. 0700 HOURS.
Preeti was beyond exhausted. But there was no way she could sleep. Now that she’d assisted SEAL Team 666 and Section 9, it could be argued that she deserved some rest. But she just couldn’t bring herself to stop. The feeling of helplessness only served to accentuate her fear for Trevor. She’d loved him from the dizzying moment when he’d waded into the group of hooligans and saved her and her brother. Perhaps she loved Trevor too much. She was constantly pulling back, trying to mete out her love, fearful that if he ever knew the true breadth of it he’d run away. Was that a missed opportunity? Had she denied herself and him some true joy because of her fear? She made a promise that when this was all over and he was returned to her she’d confess to him, profess to him, trusting that their love was strong enough.
She’d been organizing files on her server for half an hour before she ran into an audio file she’d recorded. She listened for a moment; then it came to her. She’d heard the Tuatha Dé Dannan speaking once when Van Dyke was asleep. It had sounded like a song. She’d only gotten thirty seconds of it, but she’d wanted to capture it in the event it was something they might need.
First she ran it through a filter to remove the graininess of it. The question was what language was it. Was it Welsh? It had the tonal structure. Or was it Middle or Old English? In her mind the words lacked some of the hard notes of those languages, so she searched for translation engines. She found several, three of which were commercially available and two from universities. The university engines required a log-in, so she pushed them to the side and concentrated on the commercial engines. Two of them were text-to-text translations and would do her no good, but the third looked promising.
She dropped the file into the search engine and watched the hourglass spin. After thirty seconds, the screen flashed and text spit out beneath the drop box. Sheer gibberish. Or almost gibberish. She recognized a few words like “men” and “sword” and “head.” Farther down she saw the word “Arthur.” Was it the same as King Arthur?
She felt a rush of excitement. If this was about King Arthur, perhaps it could help the teams. Maybe this was more than an effort to keep awake after all. She copied the text
into a Word document and saved it.
She checked out the two university links. One was for Wales and the other for Oxford. It would take some time to hack into the membership directories and find a suitable name and password to use. So which one? Although Oxford held prestige, it seemed obvious that any serious study into the Welsh language would be occurring at the University of Wales.
She spent the next hour hacking into the system. Genie came over and asked what she was doing. She told him and he went away uninterested. But then he returned sometime later with some hot tea and an orange scone. She devoured the pastry and sipped the tea. Then half an hour later she was in. It wasn’t long before she found the internal links to the language engines. To her surprise, there were four of them: Primitive Welsh, Old Welsh, Early Welsh, and Modern Welsh. A quick check online told her that “Primitive Welsh” referred to the language spoken from roughly AD 300 to 800. “Old Welsh” referred to the language spoken from roughly AD 800 to 1200. “Early Welsh” referred to the language spoken from AD 1200 to 1800. Modern Welsh was the current incarnation of the lyrical language.
All this was good, but it did nothing to help her, especially since these were text-based search engines. She searched the directory trees but could find no place to drop an audio file. Which only made sense, especially since there was probably no one except for a few eccentric literature professors who could speak Primitive or Old Welsh.
What to do?
She opened the Word document and stared once more at the gibberish. What if it wasn’t all gibberish? What if it was some version of Welsh the engine couldn’t translate, but it still recognized it as Welsh and rendered it in the language?
She selected the oldest engine first—Primitive Welsh—thinking that if there was a King Arthur link then it would be here. She copied the text, then dropped it into the translation engine drop box, then clicked on the TRANSLATE button.
After a few moments, it spit out the text, revealing a more succinct translation, but still with words she didn’t understand. There were several whole phrases that appeared:
In Llongborth I saw the rage of slaughter
