Vahn and the Bold Extraction, The

by Mason, Shane A.

  ‘Sorry?’ Quixote said. ‘He deserved it. He not only cheated, but he killed all those kids.’

  ‘I read somewhere,’ Lexington said, ‘that you should not rejoice in a fallen enemy lest you should fall.’

  The boys stared at her aghast.

  ‘Okay, yes, there was something pleasant about watching him lose,’ she admitted.

  ‘Beating him meant beating New Wakefield,’ Melaleuca said. ‘He was the Vahn’s finest. We may now have their respect...though...,’ she looked sideways, pulling a funny face. ‘...somehow I think that the opposite is true. We have earned their ire.’

  Lexington dismissed all the worry with a flourish of her hand.

  ‘Does not matter. We have the power to defend ourselves, and anyway now, we shall start answering some of my questions. And besides aren’t we now to be prefects and in charge?’

  ‘Whether they will or not,’ Melaleuca said, ‘remains to be seen. Tomorrow we will start solving things. Today we just enjoy our victory.’

  ‘You know what is strange though?’ Lexington said. ‘How the power of the bracelets transferred to the ship. This suggests that we can control inanimate objects.’

  ‘Tomorrow Lex. Let’s just relax,’ Melaleuca said again.

  As they chatted and joked, they ran themselves through a clumsy clearing. By the time they reached the forest on the foothills, the High Galelain seemed a great distance in time behind them. So relieved was Lexington that not even the dead competitors bothered her much.

  Quesob appeared from out of the bushes, rushing at them with his sword drawn. Stunned, the cousins turned too late. Quesob smashed into Ari, thrusting his shoulder into him and kicking his legs out. Ari hit the ground hard, whacking his head. Quesob slammed his foot across Ari’s wrist pinning his bracelet arm down. He whipped his sword across Ari’s neck, trying to draw blood, though Ari’s skin would not slice. Instead Quesob edged the tip of the blade into the soft flesh covering his windpipe.

  ‘No one move and he will live.’ Quesob flicked his eyes amongst them. ‘Move where I can see you.’

  Lexington and Quixote looked to Melaleuca. She nodded and they shuffled into Quesob’s view.

  Quesob pushed the sword into Ari’s throat a little more

  ‘Remove the bracelet slowly and all will be well.’

  Unfazed and protected by the bracelet Ari eyeballed Quesob.

  ‘What bracelet?’

  ‘I know what you wear. Undo it and hand it to me. I swear by all the suffering in New Wakefield I will run you through with this sword. Your death means nothing to me.’

  ‘It is you who is in danger,’ Ari replied.

  Lexington edged toward Quesob and spoke with a firm gentleness.

  ‘Let him up and we might let you live.’

  She plucked a small flower from a bush and handed it toward Quesob. ‘This is my promise of peace.’

  Quesob had seen the fire in Melaleuca’s eyes from behind Daquan and had steeled himself to withstand them, but in Lexington’s eyes he saw something he had never seen before, gentle concern and beauty; softness and tenderness.

  ‘You are bewitching me.’

  ‘Let him go,’ Lexington said again.

  Ari moved his hand, earning a shaking head from Melaleuca.

  ‘I cannot leave without the bracelet,’ Quesob cried out in desperation. His voice lost its tough, raw edge. ‘I have been bidden so to get it.’

  ‘You have been warned,’ Lexington said, withdrawing the offered flower and stepping back. Melaleuca nodded at Quixote.

  A mini hurricane blurred toward Quesob at dead neck speed, throwing him high in the air. He flailed in midair, surprised at the speed of the attack and then fell hard, slamming his whole body onto the road. Winded and stunned, he gasped for breath. He tried to turn over but found his head spun and his legs would not work properly.

  Ari got to his feet and dusted himself off, watching Quesob struggle on the ground.

  Quesob pushed himself on to his knees, wobbled and through gasps of breath half-yelled at the cousins, ‘Ssstop..you d..d..d..don’t under..stand. Need them..t..t..to save the children.’ Speaking became too much and he collapsed. Again he half struggled to his knees.

  Ari picked up Quesob’s sword feeling the heavy realness of it caress his palm. It sat well in his hand. He plonked his foot on Quesob’s shoulder, pushing him back down to the ground and pressed the sword into Quesob’s neck.

  Lexington scowled at Ari, while Quixote placed his foot on Quesob’s rump.

  Melaleuca approached.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Quesob held his silence.

  ‘Take him prisoner?’ Ari asked.

  Quixote giggled.

  ‘Yeah take him prisoner.’

  ‘No such thing of the sort!’ Lexington said. ‘This man knows of the bracelets. He can help us. Treat him nicely.’

  Melaleuca shot a glance at Lexington.

  ‘Lex! Ssssh!’

  ‘Nicely?’ Ari said. ‘He would have killed me.’

  ‘So!’ Lexington said. ‘I think most of New Wakefield might want us dead now for showing them up. Are we going to kill them all?’

  Quesob’s years of hardened discipline kicked in. Despite the pain in his body, his injured hand, his spinning head and want to give in, he pushed up against the sword pricking into his flesh.

  ‘Stay down!’ Ari said.

  Quesob uttered a loud guttural roar and with one mighty push, thrust himself upwards and knocked the sword out of Ari’s hand, embedding it into the back of his shoulder. He stood, blood trickling out of his nose and ears, and with dusted eyes and a pained expression, swayed as if the road buckled beneath him, and said, ‘I, Quesob, first adjutant to the great Lord Daquan will die before I submit.’

  Ari fixed his gaze on his impressive stalwartness. Lexington shook her head tut-tutting him. Unafraid, she stepped close to Quesob. Through his tough endured pain, she sensed in him a great want that had never been fulfilled.

  ‘Everyone is…is so keen to die. Perhaps, it’s stronger to want to live.’

  Her words flew into Quesob, carried on the delicate tones of her lilting voice, touching something deep in him, deep and buried, long forgotten and repressed.

  ‘Stop it,’ he said, though he could feel himself already wanting to give in to something unfamiliar.

  The sound of thundering hooves pounding the ground came from down below the hill. They heard Pembrooke crack a whip and Aunty Gertrude scream unintelligible words at him.

  Melaleuca leapt toward the bushes.

  ‘Time to disappear.’

  Ari pointed at Quesob.

  ‘What about ─ ’

  ‘Leave him,’ Melaleuca said, and then in a quiet voice said to Quixote, ‘Mmm. Don’t want to be followed. Speed boots. Take his clothes.’

  Quixote let rip with one his loudest laughs yet, tearing into the task. A second later, Quesob stood butt-naked, displaying his years of scars, callouses, gnarled skin, scratches and mottled gray flesh. He dropped to the ground shamed by his failure. The pain in his shoulder gnawed up into his head.

  The cousins headed into the bushes searching for the secret track home.

  ‘Who do you think that was?’ Ari asked.

  ‘He stood by that new Ramathor man,’ Melaleuca said. ‘This is a cause for concern. If he knows of the bracelets, then Ramathor, Daquan, or whatever he is called now, knows about us. That means it is possible that everyone on the platform could know.’

  Quixote drew an imaginary sword.

  ‘Avast ye unbelievers. Who cares? We won! We proved that we could beat them. And we did not just rely on the bracelets. Well, I mean I did, but you guys, you used your brains. We are unbeatable.’ He thrust and parried with the bushes, jiggling his tiny frame along.

  He carried on entertaining them with a constant replay of his antics, glad that he had done the right thing.

  ***

  In the horse drawn cart with Pembrooke gee-ing the
horses along, Aunty Gertrude sat staring as they trotted toward Quesob writhing on the ground. Pembrooke slowed down upon seeing him. Aunty Gertrude reached over and plucked the horse whip out of his hand, telling him to get a move on, whipping Quesob as they passed by and yelling at him to get out of the way.

  ***

  By the time the cousins had wandered through the barn where the secret track came out, Aunty Gertrude had stormed through the house yelling at everyone, and had sent herself to her room with strict orders not to be disturbed.

  In the girl’s room the cousins found Argus and Uncle Bear-Nard waiting for them. Elated, Argus ran to them, congratulating them all.

  ‘Brilliant, amazing. I saw the whole thing.’

  ‘I hope no one saw you,’ Uncle Bear-Nard said.

  ‘No one saw me. Any way these kids are heroes.’

  Quixote acted out his exploits for the hundredth time, while Melaleuca and Lexington flopped on the bed.

  Ari stood proud.

  ‘You now need to withdraw,’ Uncle Bear-Nard said. ‘If you want the bracelets to carry on working, then you will have to stay away from New Wakefield for the next few months. All you need do is play. That is it. Get back to what you used to do when you were in your valley. Don’t worry about the Vahn coming to drag you back. I will take care of that.’

  ‘Why?’ Lexington asked

  ‘Please just do it and all will become clear,’ Uncle Bear-Nard answered back.

  ‘I must understand Uncle. It is what I do,’ Lexington replied back.

  ‘Yes. Let me tell you when it is time for that understanding. I have the knowledge that will keep you and the bracelets safe. Please, for now, just forget the last few months and return to your former state. You need to get to a point with the bracelets where all you can see is the play and fun options, even if a thousand should die.’

  ‘I have had enough of killing and dying today,’ Lexington said. ‘I am going outside to pick flowers.’

  ‘Good,’ Uncle Bear-Nard said. ‘You should all do something to enjoy yourself. You have earned it.’

  ***

  Lexington found the costume she had wanted to try for quite some time, that of a 19th century botanist. She donned it and took herself to the fields around the Throughnight Cathedral-Mansion. At least there, wild flowers still grew.

  Ari climbed onto the roof, feasting his soul on the mountains and forest, listening again to the earth. Quixote celebrated by finding a craftsman costume and started figuring out how to make a model pirate ship.

  Melaleuca did not relax, deciding instead to track Uncle Bear-Nard down and question him further. She knocked on the door of his study, though no reply came. The door sat ajar. She pushed on it a little, calling her Uncle’s name. Seeing it empty, she entered. Their bracelet room key sat next to their Uncle’s bracelet room key on his desk. She saw that one had an eagle on it, and the other one had an eagle and a cow.

  More mysteries, she thought, wearied by it.

  Tomorrow we shall start sorting through all we know.

  She turned away, thinking she must write it on the sheets of white paper in the costume room or tell Lexington.

  ***

  Aunty Gertrude felt soured by the turn of events. She fumed inside, looking out the window to the far reaches of the western fields, longing for the cousins to be hurt now more than ever. Fearing their success would only go to their heads, she had to think of something else to bring them to heel. At least her name stood intact, though what repercussions would come from this, she could not tell.

  ‘Urrgh!’

  Either way, win or lose, she lost.

  Far away in the field she could see someone that looked like Lexington picking flowers and studying them, an all together deplorably slack past time, totally useless for hardening the spirit. She looked somewhat different, yet despite this anomaly, Aunty Gertrude wished someone would just turn up and take her away.

  To her surprise she watched as a large man pounced on Lexington and held her down. Out from behind him another man appeared, bound Lexington and together carried her away. The large man looked suspiciously like the newly appointed Overlord Ramathor and his assistant.

  Miffed that someone dare trespass on their estate, she nearly roared off outside to castigate them, but of course stopped, glad that someone had answered her desires. Curiosity intrigued her and she went to investigate anyway.

  ***

  Jerkin Bod’armor held tight to the floating debris, hidden under a collapsed sail. Numb with cold, his mind seethed with failure. He had listened as the crowd had cheered and boo-ed, listened as the outsider children received and rejected the shield, and then waited for the Inquisat, or any one to stop the ceremony and kill the outsiders, or at the very least banish them.

  But none of that had happened. Instead he heard the sound of the crowd clearing, and then the Inquisat searching around the water’s edge and a few surviving competitors die. All the while he knew he should have been dead, and that if he had been found, then he too, would have been killed. But he wasn’t and far from shame filling him, thoughts of hate and revenge plagued him. Perhaps he would wait until dark and then sneak out, find the outsiders and have his revenge, have his chance to get into the history books.

  By late afternoon the Inquisat had gone and he had kicked his way over to the southern end of the lake. He poked his head out getting the shock of his life. The Overlord Ramathor stood there grinning at him.

  ‘I’m not here to run you through with my sword.’ Daquan said with great majesty. ‘If I hear correctly, you are a hard, bloodthirsty brute, worthy of the cruelest in your year. Then you will be looking for revenge. Here.’ He offered him his hand. ‘I can deliver the outsiders into your hands this very night.’

  *****

  By late afternoon the cousins could not find Lexington.

  Melaleuca stood dressed as the detective, while the Ari clad himself as the North American Indian. Together with Quixote wearing the speed boots, they tracked Lexington to the last spot she had sat on before being kidnapped.

  ‘Look,’ Melaleuca said. ‘There are tracks, two men judging by the depth of their prints and they must be carrying her, look.’ She bent down and parted the grass a little. ‘Lexington’s footprints disappear and their prints get a little deeper.’

  Ari tracked the footprints from the field across the lawn, right up to the base of one of the giant trees where the prints vanished into thin air.

  ‘They just disappear,’ he said, searching up in the tree in the unlikely chance that Lexington and the kidnapper had climbed up there.

  ‘And look what we have here!’ Ari shouted. He pointed to some smaller daintier footprints, heading toward the spot and then back to the Cathedral-Mansion.

  ‘These are Aunty Gertrude’s footprints. She had something to do with this.’

  ‘Right!’ Quixote said.

  With his speed boots on, he raced back to the Cathedral-Mansion searching for her whereabouts. Locating her, he tore back and forth, until he had transported all of them to outside the room she sat in.

  Together they barged in, finding Aunty Gertrude sitting there, smirking to herself and looking down.

  ‘My my, if it isn’t the heroes. Not so smart now,’ she said, and then slowly looked up expecting to see the cousins. She froze with fear.

  ‘Where is she?’ Melaleuca said.

  Aunty Gertrude saw and heard a large, sleek, detective figure demand the whereabouts of Lexington. Next to it, a ruddy-skinned, half naked, muscled, North American Indian stood, and beside him, a shimmering figure of a winged man, hovered.

  ‘W..w..wait...I had..n..n.n.nothing to do w..w..with it.’

  She stumbled up and backed away from them, fumbling in her pockets.

  ‘Here see for yourselves.’

  She shrieked and threw a piece of paper on the floor.

  As their eyes drew to the paper, Aunty Gertrude made a dash for the door screaming at the top of her lungs, ‘MARAUDERS!’<
br />
  Melaleuca bent down, picked the note up, and read it out loud.

  ‘….you may have fooled the others. If you are so clever and struck in the same mold of your parents, then you have until noon tomorrow to meet me in the forbidden place where your parents used to meet, or the girl dies...You know I know what you have and will trade her life for them...’

  Signed Nap Retep.

  Chapter 37 - What to do??

  ‘Who’s Nap Retep?’ Ari asked.

  Melaleuca faced the doorway.

  ‘Let’s find Uncle. Answers to questions or not. He will answer my ones.’

  All three ran to find Uncle Bear-Nard. After checking his study and his bedroom, and not finding him, they set Quixote and his speed boots to the task.

  ‘Tell him to meet us in the barn, out the back, away from Aunty,’ Melaleuca told him before he set off.

  Within the hour Uncle Bear-Nard and Argus had joined the cousins, coming up to speed on what had happened. They stood in a darkened part of the barn, a handful of candles illuminating them - Uncle Bear-Nard looking old and tired.

  Melaleuca handed him the note. Reading it wearied him even more.

  ‘The note Uncle. What does it mean?’

  He slumped onto a bale of hay shaking his head.

  ‘No, not yet. This is too soon.’

  ‘What is Uncle?’

  ‘How could he know? He’s merely a madman and what use would the bracelets be to him. His time is over.’

  Melaleuca kicked the bale he sat on.

  ‘Uncle!’

  With an intense worry, he stared individually at the cousins.

  All at once it hit Uncle Bear-Nard; kidnapped kids; Daquan out of reclusion; Daquan now the Overlord Ramathor; a meeting by the secret place. It seemed so obvious now. Daquan had kidnapped the children of New Wakefield for their innocence, and now he wanted to reclaim the bracelets to use on them.