The Ides of Matt 2017

by M. L. Buchman

  One thing was for certain, though. It made him look even more out of place in Medieval France than she did.

  She couldn’t react, couldn’t find it in her to move as he stepped among the hurrying townsfolk until he was standing just an arm’s-length away. A thin red line scored his cheek.

  He noticed the direction of her attention and raised a hand to brush at it.

  “I’ll have to remember to move faster in future encounters.”

  “Move. Faster.” People didn’t step aside from bullets moving at 890 meters per second.

  His smile was brief, but dazzling and she could only blink in surprise.

  “But…” She didn’t know “but” what, but it was the only sound she could make.

  “I’m Horatio.”

  “Horatio?”

  “Yes,” his voice was impossibly deep and sounded more like flowing water than spoken words.

  “Is that like ‘Go West, Young Man’ Horatio Alger? Or ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ in Hamlet?”

  “Nor Captain Horatio Hornblower. Just Horatio the Herder.”

  “The herder of what? Who…” No. “What are you?” She forced herself to look away from his dazzling blue eyes. Her gaze landed on a prominently pointed ear where the chill wind blew aside an elegant length of his hair like some runway model’s. He was both the handsomest and the prettiest man she’d ever seen, even if he wasn’t one.

  A group of children, ones she’d have labeled as beggars, gathered together in a group and began to sing in Latin. As a child, she’d chosen to do her confirmation into the Roman Catholic church in Latin. As an adult, she could only wonder why she’d bothered with any of it.

  Orientis partibus

  adventavit asinus,

  pulcher et fortissimus,

  Sarcinis aptissimus.

  “From the east, the pretty Advent donkey carries the sacred baggage?” Maybe not so much with her Catholic school Latin.

  “It is an ancient Latin Christmas carol, popular in twelfth-century France,” the man waved his long-fingered hand negligently about as if that was somehow where they were. “In your language it is called The Friendly Beasts and relates the legend of the animals who helped with the birth of Jesus. That verse is the donkey telling of carrying Mary to the manger.”

  “Oh.” What else was she supposed to say to such a crazy statement. She considered for a moment. This definitely wasn’t Range 37. She rose to her toes and tried clicking the heels of her Army boots together three times.

  Nothing changed.

  Maybe it only worked for ruby Army boots.

  Horatio smiled at her as if he knew exactly what she was doing.

  “Allow me to escort you elsewhere,” he turned sideways to her and offered his arm. At a loss for what else to do, she shifted her rifle to her other hand—in shooting, all Delta operators were ambidextrous— left the safety off, and slipped her fingers about his elbow. He felt as thin as he looked, but he felt as strong as a seasoned operator who could hike fifty kilometers with a full pack, just to get into battle.

  He led her down the street to a doorway that had a wooden sign hung above it depicting a cluster of grapes, and led her inside. The smoke from the big, ill-vented, stone fireplace stung her eyes and there was a rank smell like an entire Delta platoon that had been in the field for a month without bathing. But beneath that, the cinnamon and nutmeg of mulled wine and the richness of mutton stew filled the air.

  Horatio sat with the elegance of a powerful man at a small, rough table close by the warm fire. She propped her rifle against the wall close to hand and sat across from him. Their knees brushed together comfortably. He didn’t draw away, but neither did he press. It was merely comfortable, friendly even. Not something she was used to with men. For the most part they either wanted sex or wanted her to get the hell out of the boys’ club military unit. Horatio the Herder was harder to read and she rather liked that bit of mystery.

  In moments, they were served with clay mugs of wine—enough to plow her under the table if she tried to finish it—and a steaming bowl of stew.

  “The wine is quite acceptable, but I would exercise a degree of caution regarding the stew,” Horatio winced as if it was bad memory.

  She sipped at the wine and decided that if this was good wine, she’d definitely be avoiding the stew.

  Betsy pinched herself, no change.

  “Any chance that you’d know how badly I was injured or when I’m getting off these drugs? Or are you just a gorgeous hallucination named Horatio?”

  Horatio hid a smile with a big draught of wine, but his blue eyes twinkled. They actually twinkled. It made him look very merry. If he really was in full elf-character, which his pointy ears indicated was likely, maybe it was part of his job to be merry. But that didn’t explain how he’d made those pretty blue eyes twinkle. Of course “Elf: identification and interaction with” wasn’t in any part of Delta Force’s Operator Training Course.

  Maybe she didn’t want off these drugs, whatever they were. She’d had morphine after being shot up in Nigeria once and been completely loopy but calm as well. She still remembered portions of that helo ride while the combat search-and-rescue medics struggled to stabilize her. An incredibly handsome stranger, even in a seedy medieval pub, was a far more interesting reaction.

  “I can place you back in Range 37 at any moment you should choose to request it. But I would like to discuss a special mission with you prior to such an eventuality.”

  “A special mission?” She tried the wine again while considering where he might have learned such speech patterns. British sit-coms came to mind. The second sip of wine slammed the back of her throat with its tannic bite. This time it only made her want to gag rather than rip her throat out, which was an improvement. She could also taste the high alcohol content. That, she decided, could be a good thing in the current situation and managed to brace herself through a third taste, but couldn’t manage a fourth.

  “Yes,” Horatio spooned up some of the stew, apparently ignoring his earlier warning—at least until he put it in his mouth. Then looked as if he didn’t know where to spit it out.

  “In the fire.”

  He did so, creating a brief flurry of sparks.

  “Back to my question,” Betsy nudged her own stew bowl a little farther away as a safety precaution. “What are you and why am I hallucinating you?”

  Not finding anywhere to wipe his mouth, he used his fingers, then wiped them on the edge of the table. “You are not hallucinating.”

  “Just what I’d expect a hallucination to say.”

  Horatio sighed before forging on. “This is real. Or mostly real. We see each other, but the locals merely observe a pair of strangers in locals’ clothing.”

  “Uh-huh.” Betsy could only assume this was one of those accidents that was bad enough for amnesia to kick in. Most of this she wouldn’t mind losing, though Horatio himself was a real pleasure to look at. She’d been in the field a long time and dallying with a squad mate just wasn’t an option. Horatio however… He looked far yummier than the wine.

  What had happened?

  Maybe a stone wall of Range 37 collapsed onto her? Or perhaps one of her shots at the metal targets had ricocheted back. At this point it wouldn’t surprise if one of the targets had shot her back. Talking to a reindeer herding elf in a twelfth-century pub made anything seem possible.

  “And as pertains to your earlier question, I am an elf—of the Christmas variety. The one entrusted with the care of Santa’s reindeer, if I may be specific.”

  “Hence, Horatio the Herder,” Betsy didn’t think her imagination was strange enough to cook up this one, which was tipping the scale—impossibly—toward the side of this experience being somehow real.

  “Precisely. My dilemma lies in the fact that it is only three days to Christmas and I can not find the lead reindeer anywhere. I have need of aid from a professional.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “You need me to t
rack down…Rudolph?”

  “Well, his name is Jeremy, but essentially yes.”

  “Jeremy the red-nosed reindeer. Doesn’t exactly have the right ring to it, does it?”

  “Robert L. May was prone to agreeing with you, which is why he changed the name for the Montgomery Ward children’s book he wrote regarding Jeremy’s tribulations as a young reindeer.”

  “Wow!” Betsy managed a large swallow of wine to fortify herself. “You actually delivered all that as a straight line. I’m impressed.” Then she stared down at the wine and wondered what exactly was in it that she almost believed him.

  Chapter Three

  So, lay it out for me.”

  “Lay it out? What needs laying out of it?”

  Betsy pulled out her Benchmade Infidel knife, thumbed the release, and the four-inch, double-edged blade snapped out the front of the handle. She began carving the Special Operations Command shoulder patch into the wooden table with the point—a stylized arrowhead with a knife up the middle.

  Horatio eyed her carefully. “I expect that you are a hard woman to buy Christmas presents for. What’s your Christmas wish?”

  “I gave up on wishes a long time ago.”

  Horatio looked at her aghast.

  She held up the blade. The black-coated D2 steel appeared bloody in the dim firelight. “This one did nicely as a gift to myself. Start talking, Elf.” She returned to her carving.

  “We permit the reindeer to run wild during the summer season.”

  “I could do with a little running wild myself.” Betsy could feel her inhibitions slipping away. She hadn’t had that much wine. But knowing that you were injured and in some drug-induced dream made it difficult to care much about propriety. And if she was going to run a little wild, who better to do it with than a gorgeous man-elf-herder-thing.

  “They always return when the fall lengthens the wavelengths that leaves reflect.”

  “Lengthens the wavelengths? Oh, reds and golds. Never mind. Keep going.” Keeping her gaze averted from his intense eyes didn’t help much. His slightly hoity-toity way of speaking didn’t diminish the fact that his voice was just as beautiful as he was. She couldn’t be so shallow that a beautiful man with a liquid voice was getting to her, even if he was.

  “Jeremy has failed to return.”

  “That was the fall. And you’re just contacting me three days before Christmas? That is not what we’d typically call adroit mission planning.” She began digging the arch of the upper tab of the shoulder patch. What if she carved in the word “Airborne” as it should be and the table was discovered eight hundred years from now? Cause a hell of a stir. Perhaps she should drop into wherever this village was in the real world and find out for herself.

  “Actually, yesterday was the final day of fall. We have now traversed the threshold of the winter solstice and such matters are suddenly come to a head.”

  “Maybe a hunter got him.”

  Horatio actually flinched. His oddly light complexion paled even further.

  “Sorry, but you have to consider all of the possibilities.”

  “That is one I shall not be considering until all other hope is lost.”

  “So, where do we begin?” It wasn’t often that an impossibly beautiful man asked her to do something so highly unlikely. Usually it was requests for sexual favors, which wasn’t something she doled out to any Tom, Dick, or Horatio.

  “At the stables, I suppose.”

  “Of course. Because why wouldn’t Santa’s reindeer have stables. Are you nuts, Horatio? I was thinking it was me, but maybe it’s you.”

  “I have not considered the possibility,” Horatio’s beautiful brow actually furrowed for a long moment as he studied his wine, then shook his head, causing his hair to flutter attractively. “No, I find your premise unlikely.”

  Could she ever be with a man prettier than she was? If he looked like Horatio, in a heartbeat.

  “Do elves kiss?” It was amazing what could be done within a drug-induced haze.

  “We do,” the color returned to his cheeks, brightly.

  “Do they marry?”

  “Is that a proposal, Betsy?”

  Now it was her turn to scoff. “I just don’t like my fantasies to already be married before I kiss them.”

  “Then you may do so without further concern if that is your wish.” The bright color high on his cheeks wasn’t going away, which was rather cute.

  It would be a little like kissing a movie star. He was too perfect. But that wasn’t exactly a complaint worth filing with the Fantasy Dream Department—a division of the US Army Personnel Services Branch she’d never thought of submitting a requisition request to before.

  Betsy reached across the table to snag the lapel of his body-hugging black leather suit and pulled him closer. She leaned in and briefly tasted the mutton stew on his lips. Thankfully, she was past that before it could put her off completely. Past that, he tasted of cinnamon and the wild outdoors of a snowy night. Of luscious hot cocoa and a crackling fire.

  Horatio’s kiss was warm, attentive, thoughtful…and masterful.

  If she hadn’t been dreaming before, she most certainly was now. Dreaming of how fast they could go somewhere there weren’t any other people, just the two of them and a big, warm bed.

  Her pulse was soon chattering faster than an M134 Minigun on full auto, yet Horatio was still only exploring the first steps of a kiss.

  “Get me out of here,” her own voice sounded desperate and needy.

  “As you wish.”

  Chapter Four

  The cold slapped her so hard that she lost her breath—as well as her lip lock on Horatio.

  “What the hell?”

  “The stables.”

  “You brought me to a freezing cold barn?”

  “I brought you to the source as you requested. These are the reindeer stables of St. Nicholas of Myra.”

  Betsy could only look around in astonishment. A long line of stalls appeared to be made out of living yew trees, all trained into walls and stable dividers. Their roots were lost beneath a luxuriant layer of living grass—the brightest green she’d ever seen. The stables were lit by fireflies swarming among the branches.

  And the sky.

  The ceiling was of glass so clear that she could hardly tell it was there between her and the magnificent night sky. As she blinked away the worst of the pub’s smoke and her eyes adjusted, she began picking out constellations.

  “That’s the North Star.”

  Horatio looked up as well. “It is.”

  “It’s directly overhead.”

  “Point six seven degrees from directly overhead to be precise. We are at the celestial north pole rather than the magnetic or geographic one. Nice, isn’t it?”

  “But the North Pole isn’t over land. It’s over sea ice.”

  “It is, in most planes of reality.”

  Betsy couldn’t think of what else to do…so she hit him. Not hard—it had been a very nice kiss after all. Just squarely enough in the solar plexus that he wouldn’t be able to speak for a few moments so that she could do some thinking.

  Horatio dropped to his knees and wheezed a bit.

  North Pole.

  A missing reindeer named Jeremy.

  An elf, a very handsome elf who could kiss better than any human—a kiss that also left her wondering what else he could do better.

  St. Nicholas beneath Polaris the North Star in some very adjacent reality.

  Real? Surreal? Digital? Drugs?

  No way to tell.

  She sighed, and helped Horatio back to his feet.

  The only way out is through. Old axiom. There were times she hated old axioms.

  “Last spring. Did anyone see which way Jeremy went?”

  Chapter Five

  It had taken the CIA years to find bin Laden. And another half-year to actually get around to taking him down after “Maya” had found him.

  She had three days to track a reindeer. Her total
assets? One elf who didn’t want it to be known that he’d lost Santa’s most famous reindeer, Jeremy.

  The first break came when they were questioning the other reindeer. They didn’t like having her around and were very standoffish, until she dug around in Horatio’s larder and found a bag of carrots. They warmed up to her quickly after that. Who knew that reindeer had a major weak spot for carrots.

  A small portion of St. Nick’s deer herd—mostly the younger set—had gone south and west last spring, rather than south and east to their normal habitat in Finland. It turned out that reindeer had a particularly low-brow sense of humor—even worse than most Delta operators. They liked spending their summers mingling with the Finnish herds and teasing them about not making the cut to become a Christmas reindeer. They also weren’t above tripping them into mudholes and the like.

  The breakaway herd had crossed down over the Canadian tundra, mingling with the caribou herds in some sort of convention. But they quickly grew bored as the Canadians had even less of a sense of humor than their Finnish counterparts.

  That had led to any number of fights and endless head butting. The younger members of the herd whined about it no end.

  “Teenagers,” she scoffed to Horatio after he’d translated that for her. “Hard to deal with.”

  “Gift cards.” Apparently that was his harshest epithet. “It is the only way St. Nick has found to deal with them at Christmas.”

  Betsy had been such a good girl as a teen, of course taking care of her ailing mother had made that an obvious choice. She’d even been well behaved as an Army grunt then a Delta operator. And now, just three days from freedom, she’d been injured and was drugged up in some Fort Bragg hospital. It didn’t seem fair.

  She tossed out some more carrots to get the rest of the story. Most had continued west to roam with the big herds in Alaska. But Jeremy had turned south once more, toward the heat and bright sun. He’d said he was headed to a place called Mont-a-land or something like. None of them had ever heard of it.