Her face fell. “Father took my hunting knife, saying that I wouldn’t need it anymore.”
Turning, Max winked at Casey. “Still have that spare Fairbairn Sykes combat knife?”
The lanky man reached down, unstrapped the knife and sheath from his leg, and slid it across the table to Shyilia. As Casey dug a replacement from the small bag at his feet, Shy looked first at Casey then at Max.
“I don’t know what to say,” she murmured as she touched the knife.
Max chuckled. “‘Thank you’ is usually the appropriate response.”
Her cheeks reddened. “Thank you. I thank both of you, especially after how badly you were treated by the elves.”
“By the elves, but not by you.” He grinned, looking down at his empty plate. “When you three have seen to your traveling gear, we will be on our way.”
The team had finished their second breakfast and Max and Moses were deep into a discussion of magic, magic spells, quantum physics, and the methods of forming a beam of coherent light by magical means when the three elves returned, suitably attired in disreputable clothes and armor. Wynn and Shyilia were grinning, while Filvendor had a face as dark and angry as a thundercloud.
Under heavy drizzling skies, Max led the group to the small, deserted town square. The dirt streets squished underfoot, and the air smelled of worms. “We’ll go pick up the tug and our armor first,” he said, ticking items off on his fingers, “and then I’ll use Shy’s memories to open us a gateway to the elfin embassy in Jagatika. Movement order will be Moses and Xia entering first, sweeping right and left. Casey and I will follow next, and then Shy and her companions. Lastly, the tug will come through, followed by Mérilla. We will be in Dark Territory Condition two.”
Someone sighed.
“As elves, who are vastly superior trackers,” Filvendor began, “we should have the honor of taking the lead into…” His speech stumbled to a halt as the human team dropped their makeshift disguises and activated the chameleon suits. The big elf stared at the color-shifting monsters the team had suddenly become, his mouth hanging open.
Max turned to face the elf, his face set. “One thing I’d like to reinforce, Sir Filvendor, is to be quiet and follow my hand signals. A raised closed fist means stop. If I begin strangling you, it means that you are making too much fucking noise, and I will not endanger my team any longer. Clear?”
The elf was still staring when Max turned away.
They were lining up when Shy touched Max’s arm, and he looked down into her troubled face.
“Tell me what this ‘Dark Territory’ thing is.”
“It comes from an old movie and simply means we will be going into harm’s way and without backup. Condition two means that armor and sensors will be activated, weapons armed but not drawn.”
She swallowed. “Thank you.”
Max drew the runespell and muttered a word, and the gateway shimmered into existence.
Chapter 10
TROLL HUNTING
The mountainside west of Sloobork, where they’d hidden the tug, showed no signs of activity, human or otherwise. Moses worked with a reluctant Filvendor to remove the rock easily enough, and Max activated the tug through his small remote.
Checking the stored supplies as he passed out the hidden armor, Max gave Shy a quizzical look. “We have your old chameleon suit and armor you used on the trip out, right here. It would keep you safer and certainly drier than those leathers you’re wearing. Since you’re familiar with the com unit, that would be available to you too.”
She glanced at the wet, scruffy-looking elf that was Filvendor and smiled. “That would be wonderful.”
Since she would be completely “buttoned up,” Max gave the elfin woman a quick course on recognizing friends and enemies in her HUD, and she watched carefully as he explained that the green carets represented friends, red hostile, and yellow unknown. The two blue carets, Max explained, were noncombatants—her guardsmen. Finally, he showed her how to remove her combat knife from its leg sheath with one hand.
Over the private channel to Max, Shy sounded excited. “These suits make me feel invulnerable.”
Max chuckled as the group adjusted their armor and made ready to enter the next gateway. “That’s one of the dangers of these suits—the suits themselves are no more than reinforced cloth with an active camouflage mesh woven in, and they are barely capable of stopping knife cuts. In order to save weight, most of the protection in the armor is located in the chest and the helmet. The back is thinly armored. A newer, more heavily armored version is planned for next year but will require electro-hydraulic systems to help the soldier carry the load.”
“Your race spends much time developing weapons of destruction, don’t they?”
“Yeah,” Max mused, “but rumors say that these new suits will be good for operations in full death vacuum.”
“What?”
“In space, Shyilia. Out among the stars.”
“Oh,” she replied in a very small voice.
Max glanced at the line of people and equipment before he turned to the elfin woman. “I need you to open your helmet, Shy, so I can touch your face.”
She fumbled to retract her helmet.
“Concentrate on the embassy. If they have a courtyard, bring us there. When I have the gateway open, reseal your helmet. It will do no good stowed on your back.”
“I understand,” Shy said, moving a step closer.
Removing his suit gloves and tucking them under his belt, Max reached out to place one hand on each side of Shyilia’s face. Her skin was soft and warm, and Max noted that Filvendor had reddened with barely contained fury. Ignoring the fuming elf, he concentrated on Shy’s image of their destination. A picture built up in his mind of a thirty-meter courtyard surrounded by balconied terraces. When the scene seemed as real as it was going to get, he spun the runespell and opened the gateway.
Xia and Moses disappeared through without a word. Max, with Casey at his side, stepped through the shimmering gateway only moments later.
“Movement!” Xia and Moses said at exactly the same instant. “Appear to be armed and potentially hostile.”
Max drew his pistol just as Shy and her two guardsmen stepped through the gateway. “Could they be elves?” Max asked, looking at the half score of red carets surrounding them.
“Unless the elves are bigger than Moses in his armor and ugly as hell, no,” Xia replied.
“I hate fucking goblins.” Max cursed. “Weapons free.”
A dark arrow streaked from a balcony, ricocheting harmlessly from Shy’s pauldron as she stepped aside to make room for the advancing tug. Four weapons fired as one, and the crash of noise was deafening—or would have been deafening to anyone without tactical armor. The two elfin guardsmen clapped their hands to their ears in agony just as Mérilla stepped through the gateway to add the familiar hiss-crack of her mag-lev to the general cacophony of sound.
A huge wart-faced goblin charged the group from an open doorway, his curved sword raised over his head. Filvendor had his own sword only half drawn when the upper half of the goblin chief disappeared in an explosion of sound and bloody chunks. The sword clattered to a stop centimeters from Filvendor’s feet. Max raised his Colt, sighted on a running figure, and squeezed the trigger, the familiar recoil transmitting up his arm all the way to his shoulder. The top of the goblin’s head vanished in a spray of bone and brains, and the creature dropped limply. More dark arrows fell, and Wynn managed to deflect one with his small round shield. There were a few more shots… then silence.
“Two are rabbiting, boss,” Xia muttered in a bored-sounding voice.
In his HUD, Max saw two red carets, the last still moving, breaking for the destroyed front gate of the compound. “Run them down and kill them.”
The two green carets
labeled Mackey and Chéng bolted off in pursuit of the goblins.
Max turned a full three hundred sixty degrees, studying his displays, before he removed his helmet. “Casey and Mérilla, you have cleanup.”
The two nodded, drew their weapons, and moved off among the fallen goblins, occasionally stopping to put a round into a still-breathing body. They didn’t have to fire often.
Shy lowered her own helmet, looking at the scene of the slaughter. Her face was white, and she looked as if she were about to throw up. The crack of a pistol made her jump. “Do you have to do that?” she asked in a sick voice.
“The opposition outnumbered us two to one, Shy. I can’t risk a wounded goblin either going for help or loosing another arrow.” He touched the gouge in her armor. “You were lucky.”
Her face was unusually pale, and her green eyes looked sick. “It wasn’t luck. I owe you my life again.” She sighed, moving closer to him, and Max heard Filvendor actually growl in annoyance as the two moved together. “This is getting to be a nasty habit I’m developing.”
He looked down into the elf woman’s green eyes. “I don’t mind a bit, Shy, but bear in mind that someday I might not be around.”
She shrugged. “We all die sometime.”
Max smiled, touching her cheek. “Not on my watch.” He turned to the rest of the travelers. “Is everyone okay?”
A pale-faced Wynn simply nodded while staring wide eyed at the black arrow embedded in his shield, while Casey and Mérilla both shot him a thumbs-up. Filvendor grudgingly gave him a small nod.
“Good. Casey and Mérilla, you can unhelm if you wish.”
Helmets folded away soundlessly.
Mérilla wrinkled her nose as her face took on a slight greenish cast. “What the hell is that smell, eh?”
Max looked around. “Probably the former occupants of this embassy,” he declared, pointing through the wide-open front gates. Fifty meters away, set at the edge of the tree line, was a large cast-iron cookpot, steaming over a well-stoked fire.
Mérilla’s eyes went wide as her face paled, then she began a long tirade in French. The one in four words Max understood made him wince, although he had to give her top credits for creativity.
“Why don’t you and Casey go and check for survivors,” he said gently. “The chances are small, but someone might have escaped notice.”
Mérilla gave Max a grateful nod then reached over to take Casey by the sleeve, dragging him after her. “Come on, mon ami, we have a job to do, n’est-ce pas?”
Max was studying the front gates when Shy came up to stand beside him, Filvendor following like her trained dog.
“What did you find?” she asked in a wary voice.
Max frowned at the thirty-centimeter-thick oak gates. “Nothing. Not a damned thing. There is no sign of forced entry at all, no sigh of a battle to scale the walls.” He turned a sympathetic look to Shy. “It looks as though someone opened the gates and let the enemy in.”
“Probably a bloody human,” Filvendor hissed under his breath.
While Max was still deciding whether or not to commit a political faux pas and drive the arrogant knight into the dust, Shyilia solved the problem for him, backhanding the smirking knight and sending him sprawling into the dirt.
It was Shy’s turn to hiss in anger at the groveling elf. “You’re a pain in my ass. These humans just saved your life as well as mine. Had you gone first, liked you wanted, the goblins would have had you for lunch… literally. You oak-headed, stupid son of a…” Shy was looming over the white-faced knight, her combat knife pointing unerringly at the elf’s heart. Taking her arm gently, Max turned her away.
“That’s enough, Shy,” he said in a calming voice. “You’re working yourself up to kill the asshole, but don’t do it like this. Don’t soil yourself with murder. Put your knife away before you hurt someone.”
Glancing down at her shaking hand, she seemed surprised to see the weapon there. Sheathing the Fairbairn Sykes, she turned to Max. “I was overwhelmed by what happened to my people here, and then this idiot”—she glanced down at the elf, who was still struggling to his feet—“set me off. Thank you again for stopping me from doing something stupid.” Taking a step forward, she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him. Her smile was fleeting as she turned away, and Max was only slightly amazed that her kiss had tasted of strawberries.
“Not stupid,” he said to her retreating back, “only messy.”
Xia ran her fingers through her dark hair and looked around at the wreckage of the elfin embassy. A short distance away, Filvendor was sitting on the edge of the tug, casting ominous glances at Max and Shy. Wynn was having an animated discussion with Casey and Mérilla, laughing and waving his arms about, while the others looked on, smiling dutifully. Even the rubble about him didn’t seem to slow the irrepressible youth. Max wondered fleetingly if he had ever been that young or enthusiastic. He decided not. A hand touched his shoulder, and he looked up and smiled.
“Deep thoughts?” Xia asked softly.
“Dark thoughts,” he corrected. “This whole operation is beginning to smell of a setup.”
“Oh?” Xia raised a single eyebrow, and Max knew that she was gently laughing at him. She had been laughing at him for years, and when it came right down to it, he didn’t mind; her laughter, more often than not, helped him to keep his perspective on what was important.
“On Earth, I’d be looking for the person pulling the strings to make sure we were in the right place at the right time. Here… I wouldn’t know who, or even what, to look for.”
Her eyes scanned the courtyard. “Do you think anyone got out?” she asked, changing the subject.
Max shook his head. “Not a chance. A building like this serves to keep people within, as well as out. The original attack occurred several days ago, maybe even a week. The goblins arrived perhaps two days ago to feast on the carrion.”
Xia shuddered.
“There is a small fishing village on the coast, ten leagues from here and perhaps twenty nautical miles from the archipelago that is our destination. We’ll steal a boat at the village and time our arrival for an hour before dawn. I hope to wait out the day under cover and then make our move as soon as darkness falls.”
“How do we enter?” Xia moved closer, all hints of laughter gone from her demeanor.
“Shyilia seems to think that the castle walls are thirty meters tall. We have a shoulder-fired grapnel and a thousand feet of spider line, with climbers. We go over the wall. Mérilla will take her Barrett up to the top of the closest tower to provide overwatch, while we head for the dungeons.”
“That sounds like fun,” Xia said dryly.
“Yeah. I expect all the cells and doors will be spell proof, and that is why I brought enough explosive with us to level the castle, if necessary.”
“I was wondering about all the boxes. How about escape?”
“Shyilia said there is a ferry that makes hourly runs from the mainland to the archipelago, docking at the castle overnight. We take out the guards on the ferry before we scale the walls. When we finish, our ride will be waiting. The team can follow in the fishing boat if necessary.”
She bit her lip, studying Max. “This plan seems a little sketchy compared to your usual precision.”
Max grunted a laugh. “Well, usually, my intelligence goes a little beyond ‘There’s the castle. Storm it and rescue the prisoners.’ By the way… there may be a fire-breathing dragon involved too.”
“And what is your plan B? You always have a plan B and a plan C and usually a GOTH plan too, in case everything GOes To Hell.”
Max nibbled his lip nervously. “Maybe we could discuss that some other time. Suffice it to say I do have a plan B, plan C, and a GOTH plan, but you wouldn’t like them.”
“That’s a given, Max. Your a
lternate plans usually make me cringe and, at the very least, give me nightmares.”
“The best plans always do.” He smirked.
Her blue eyes were steady and as deep as bottomless pools. “And where does that leave your little elfin girlfriend, Maximilian?”
Max blinked. Xia liked to change subjects in midstream, just to trip him up.
“Ahhh,” he stumbled as Xia watched calmly. Taking a breath, he regained his composure somewhat. “I’m a conventional sort of man, Xia.”
The Asian woman laughed softly but said nothing, although a smile remained as she watched him struggle.
“I’ve made it a new rule to have only one woman per lifetime, and Princess Shyilia Iangwyn, jewel of the throne of Ideryn, is not my girlfriend. Friend, yes, girlfriend… no.”
Xia frowned for several long moments, then her eyes widened. “Did you just say what I think you said to me?”
Max gave her a quizzical little smile. “Why? What do you think I said?” he asked in the most innocent voice he could manage.
Xia leaned forward, gripping his arm. “You asked if…”
“We’re about ready to leave, boss.” Moses interrupted the conversation, and the look Xia threw at him spoke of pure unadulterated murder. Moses raised one bushy eyebrow. “Yes?”
Xia opened her mouth and closed it without speaking several times. “Never mind,” she hissed through clenched teeth as she turned away.
Moses watched her retreating back for a moment then turned to Max. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important, boss.”
“Nothing that Xia won’t return to at the first opportunity,” Max replied calmly.
“I’m so glad.”
When both men turned back to the waiting team, their faces were expressionless.
The track was virtually empty of both people and animals, Max noted as they walked the hard-packed dirt road under a cerulean sky. Tall oaks and black walnut trees bordered the road, making the trail more like a long green tunnel through which they could occasionally glimpse the distant sky. Mérilla and Casey were out of sight, pulling point, while Xia and Moses came next and Max trailed the steady little tug, which was, in turn, following the transmitter he’d handed to Moses. The temperature was mild, with a gentle mid-spring feel, and birdcalls abounded from invisible residents in the sweet, jasmine-scented air. Max wished that he could shed both armor and the heavy chameleon suit shirt, but despite the beautiful weather, the countryside was still dangerous. Only an hour ago, they had found the body of a man nailed to a large tree with a black goblin arrow. Three hours had passed since the group left the ruined embassy, and to his best guess, they had another four hours of walking before they reached Bexley Landing. Unlike the buildings in South Brosthik and Peapend, the houses Max had seen tucked between the trees had been tall and narrow, with high, sharply pitched slate roofs. Unlike the earth-toned mushroom buildings, those in the forest were vibrant jewel tones in every color of the rainbow. They appeared to have been abandoned, their residents killed or driven out. For a world filled to overflowing with magic and beauty, Aeyaqar felt sad and defeated.
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