by Jamie Davis
“But Kurt, you’re wrong. This changes everything. You told me you didn’t care about the woman. Yet here I find you helping her escape along with yourself.” The General pointed to Jonesey’s box. “You told me the box was nothing of value and that you didn’t know what was in the box. Yet here I find you stealing it back from me which tells me it has more value than you let on. What am I supposed to think about any other plans you might have made or told me about?”
“I understand how this must look,” Kurt said. His mind raced as he tried to think of something else to say. In the end, he ran out of time before he could come up with an answer or explanation.
“Take him down to the cells and keep him there until I decide what to do with him. Perhaps some time down there in the dark will make him more agreeable to telling me exactly what else he might be up to. I get the feeling there is more than one reason he is here in this world.”
Two more guards came in and grabbed him by the elbows. The General reached out and took the box from Kurt’s hands. The guards produced shackles, locking his hands together in front of him with black iron chains. They half dragged him from the room to a steep staircase leading down into the darkness below the ground floor. He knew it was going to be much more difficult to escape from down there.
Chapter 18
As dungeon jail cells went, Kurt had to admit this one was among the better ones he’d been stuck in over the years. He hadn’t seen a single rat, although he wasn’t sure if there were rats in this world or anything like them.
Still, at least it was dry and the mattress they had provided for him on the stone bench in the corner was not too uncomfortable. There was no light provided for him but as soon as the door shut, Kurt fired up one of the spells he knew and provided himself a dim light in the darkness.
This helped him keep his eyes used to the light in case an opportunity presented itself for him to break out. If he hadn’t done that, he’d have been blinded by even the dimmest light when the cell door was opened. That was, of course, the reason to keep him in the dark. It prevented him from making a run for the door or jumping the guards when they brought him meals.
Kurt made sure he cut off the spell whenever he heard the key in the lock and he was pretty sure the guards were none the wiser. He pretended to be blinded even as he examined the hallway outside the cell for any sign they were letting their guard down.
They did not.
He did notice one particular guard had his stun baton clipped to his belt every time they came and opened the cell door. Kurt filed that piece of information away for further reference. It might come in handy.
It wasn’t clear how many days Kurt was locked up. There wasn’t a window in the cell since it was underground, so he couldn’t see outside. He only had the meal schedule to judge by. If they were feeding him twice a day, which is what it felt like, then he had been there for just over two days.
Based on his reckoning, it was early on the third day when the guards came and told him to come to the cell door.
“Are we going somewhere?”
“You’ll see. The General said he wants you along on a little excursion he has planned.
Kurt knew the General planned on having his grand meeting with the other local warlords to show off his new acquisition. It was going to be awkward to be standing there when the General figured out the sarcophagus was a fake.
Clara had always shown a good eye for a high-quality forgery. In fact, he knew she had several excellent painters who could forge the works of the great masters and he had no doubt she had also found the best person to create a forgery of the gold sarcophagus.
No matter how good it was, it wasn’t the sacred relic he was expecting and whatever magical properties it was supposed to have were definitely not going to manifest as expected. That meant Kurt and Clara had very little time to get away. Being shackled and standing nearby as a witness wasn’t conducive to an escape. The General was not going to be happy at all once he discovered they had tricked him.
“Come on, human, we don’t have all day to wait for you to shuffle out of your cell,” The first guard said.
“I’ve been looking forward to getting out of here. I needed to work on my suntan. I hope we’re going somewhere outdoors.”
One of the guards moved behind him as they walked from the cell. He poked Kurt hard in the back with the muzzle of his musket. “Cut out the clever remarks. The General prefers his prisoners to be seen and not heard. One more word and we’ll gag you.”
Kurt didn’t want them to do that. He’d need to be able to speak to cast any magic that might be useful in their escape. One spell he knew would make it so he could slip the shackles right over his hands like they were made of elastic.
That particular spell only worked on iron-based alloys without any silver in them. His shackles looked to be simple wrought iron so that shouldn’t be any problem.
As he left the narrow stairs up from the dungeon and entered the main entry hall of the fortress, Kurt saw Clara standing next to the General waiting for them. He was happy to see she was not shackled like he was. That might make things easier if an opportunity to escape presented itself.
As Kurt approached the General, the alien reached behind his back and pulled out Jonesey’s box from a pouch that looked a lot like a standard fanny pack.
“I still haven’t managed to open this. The box and its wards are resistant to every tool I’ve applied to the task. Your woman was unable to help me with the problem either. You are going to have to show me how to get into this box. I am very interested in what its contents must be since it is protected so vigorously.”
“I told you before, your lordship, I have no idea how to get into the box. I never infringe on the privacy of my clients.”
The General grinned. “Yes, so you keep saying.” He let out an incredulous laugh. “Do you really expect me to believe that? I would never be able to avoid looking into a sealed box if I was delivering something that was warded like this.”
“Well, that’s where you and I differ, General. I, apparently, have scruples.”
Clara glared at him when he insulted their host. Kurt didn’t care. He was pissed off at this point. If the General had damaged the box in any way, Jonesey was going to take it out on Kurt. Plus, he decided he was going to get away from the General with Clara today one way or another.
The General frowned at Kurt’s flippant attitude. He waved towards the main doors. “Guards take them out and get them situated on one of the trucks. We’re leaving immediately for the rendezvous.”
The two guards with Kurt grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him towards the front courtyard where the trucks were parked. Kurt stumbled along for a few steps before he regained his balance. After that, he kept up a quick pace to stay ahead of the guards so that they wouldn’t try to shove him down again.
Walking through the main doors, Kurt stepped outside and saw the trucks all lined up. Their noisy engines were already sputtering and growling as they idled, waiting for the General and his forces to get on board.
Kurt climbed up into the back of the second flatbed truck in the row and then turned and help Clara clamber up behind him. They were joined by a group of six guards.
The lead guard, Kurt’s baton clipped to his belt, ordered them to sit down. Kurt sat with his back against the bench seat that would hold the driver and Clara sat next to him. Other guards and soldiers came out and loaded onto the additional trucks until all six of the flatbed trucks were full. Kurt counted over a hundred soldiers, all armed with the long muskets.
The General climbed up and sat next to the driver of the lead truck and once he saw all were loaded he called out, “Let’s go!”
They drove through the main gate and out onto the dirt road that led away from the fortress. The drive across the countryside was a bumpy one. They did not have paved roads here and the trucks had little in the way of anything Kurt would call a suspension.
He decided if he ever came bac
k here he could make a fortune showing the local manufacturers and craftsmen how to implement a simple leaf spring design for their axles. It would create vehicles that rode much more comfortably than these flatbed trucks.
They continued cross-country in what appeared to be a generally north-easterly direction. Kurt had no idea if the sun in this world rose in the east and set in the west like it did on earth, but thinking that way gave him a frame of reference for the approximate location of the gate back to Earth Prime.
They traveled for about an hour and a half until they crested a small rise and the line of trucks drove down into a broad, bowl-shaped valley.
They were not the first to arrive at the meeting. Craning his neck to look ahead of them, Kurt noticed three different groups gathered. The three clusters of what must be the opposing warlords’ forces were arrayed on the opposite side of the small valley.
Each of the three groups was much smaller in size than the General’s forces. Even combined, the General’s troops outnumbered them two to one. Two of the groups had trucks similar to theirs. One group, the smallest of the three, had no trucks at all and apparently had ridden there on a cluster of strange beasts. The creatures had six legs and each had two saddles on their backs. It looked like each of them could apparently carry a pair of riders.
If he could get to one of the creatures with Clara, the two of them could strike out across the hills and probably make much better time than the slow-moving trucks could.
The General had his trucks pull in a line across the side of the valley directly opposite the positions of the other three groups and then ordered his men to dismount. Kurt waited until everyone at climbed out of his flatbed before he got down and turned to help Clara jump down.
Two of the guards came and walked them over to stand next to the General. Kurt noted their host had Jonesey’s box peeking out from under the flap of the fanny pack hanging from his belt.
The General offered them a broad, toothy grin as they approached. He stood with the sarcophagus set on the grass next to him.
“I want you to stand here next to me so that you can see the way I cause my opponents to cower before me.”
Things were about to get pretty dangerous and Kurt scanned the area for an opportunity for the two of them to break away. He searched for some distraction that would give them the chance to reach the strange, six-legged mounts before the General found out the bad news about the fake artifact.
Kurt continued to ponder this question while he studied the three groups opposite him. His gaze stopped and his eyes widened in surprise.
Clara must have seen the same thing and nudged him with her elbow. “Is that—?”
“Yes. Yes, it is. That is our Marci.”
Marci met Kurt’s gaze and winked at him. She had a huge satisfied grin on her face. That probably indicated she had some plan to help the two of them escape.
Kurt knew he was about to get a huge “I told you so” from her. Given the circumstances, he’d let her say it without grumbling or arguing her point. If they got out of this mess, she’d have earned that much.
Marci stood with the group who’d arrived on the strange, six-legged mounts. There were about fifteen total in that group. The first thing Kurt noticed about them was they weren’t armed with the smoothbore long guns the others all carried.
Turning his attention back to Marci, Kurt squinted his eyes against the bright sun’s glare and studied her. Then he saw it. She had what looked like the butt of a modern pistol poking out of the holster on her right hip. If she had acquired a new weapon after the guards had taken hers away during their initial capture, that meant she’d returned to Earth Prime and come back.
Now it was Kurt’s turn to smile. He had some idea of what she might have planned. He nodded and smiled at her and Marci’s grin broadened.
There was no way she came back with just a pistol. Knowing her, she could’ve brought back an entire Ranger battalion after picking them up at a bar back in Atlanta. She liked her overkill. He needed to be ready for whatever she’d planned.
Kurt figured even if she’d enlisted the aid of all three of the General’s opponents, they were still outnumbered. There would only be a narrow window of confusion to get away when the shooting started, and with Marci involved, there would almost certainly be shooting. He had to be ready to exploit it on his end.
Three people detached from the groups standing opposite the General’s men and walked across the grassy plain towards the center of the valley.
The group of three stopped. There were two men and one woman. Kurt was surprised to see the woman since there was no evidence that women held any positions of rank in the General’s army. Kurt had assumed that was a universal cultural standard in this world. Apparently, it was not.
The woman came from the group with which Marci had associated herself. Leave it to her to find the empowered clan matriarch in a place full of misogynists.
The group of three walked forward a short distance and then waited halfway across the grassy field. The general motioned to two of his soldiers who came forward and lifted the sarcophagus between them using convenient handles still attached from when Kurt had brought it through the portal. The general glanced at Kurt and Clara. “You two may come along as well. I want you to see how I make my enemies bow down before me.”
Kurt and Clara started forward with the general and his two soldiers hauling the ungainly sarcophagus. They reached a point about two meters away from the others and stopped. The General pointed to the ground in front of them and the two soldiers slid the sarcophagus across the grass to rest at the General’s feet. It sat so that the opposing warlords could clearly see the relic.
“I am glad the three of you decided to meet me here. It was the prudent thing to do. Now I will show you why you must accept me as the supreme overlord of this region.”
All of the others stared at the sarcophagus on the grass for a few long seconds before anyone answered the General.
It was the woman who spoke first. “General, while you have the biggest army in the area, you do not control all of the resources of the region. Even with our smaller forces, we have the ability and the necessary resources to hold on to what we already have. Yes, it seems you have secured the holy relic of legend. What makes you think that is enough to make us decide to give up our positions of power and follow you.”
The General laughed and pointed at each of them in turn. “First of all, the three of you and all your people are starving because, while you have access to many natural resources, you do not have control of the central valley as I do and therefore do not have access to the food you need to feed your people. As long as I control that, I control everything.”
The first of the other leaders, a tall man with a broad, flat nose between his cat-like eyes, pointed at the General. “You are the one who killed the leader of this valley and forced the rest of us to take up arms against you. If you had any sense at all, you would realize we will never give up.”
“I was hoping you and the others would be defiant, Quentin, that way I can use the power of this relic to destroy you and all of your followers with a single magical utterance. All I have to do is activate the relic and I will control magic such as no one has seen in this world for a thousand years.”
“According to the legend, that is so. What if it is wrong?” The woman opposite them sneered at the General. “I, for one, don’t believe in fairy tales. Do your worst.”
The General growled deep in his throat. He knelt down and laid his hands upon the golden sarcophagus and after glaring at the three of them began shouting out odd, guttural words in a language Kurt could not understand. As he spoke, his fingers traced the runes on the lid of the golden sarcophagus.
The two male leaders opposite them begin to step backward, wary of the pending spell. The woman held her ground.
The general continued speaking what could only be some sort of magical incantation. He continued tracing the runes with his fingertip. He shou
ted one last word and then pointed his free hand at the woman fingers splayed out wide and held it there.
Nothing happened.
The General looked at the sarcophagus and then at his outstretched hand. He shouted the word again, this time leaning forward and straining with every bit of his body.
Nothing.
It wasn’t going to work and the General was beginning to realize it.
There was no magic coming out of those fingers, Kurt knew that much. He muttered the iron plasticity spell under his breath to remove the shackles. He slid them off his hands but held on to the iron cuffs so the guards didn’t notice them drop to the ground. He nudged Clara with his elbow. She glanced his way and then at the General. She nodded and together they started to back up.
The General, still struggling to understand why his magical plan wasn’t working, looked at the sarcophagus and then turned back to glare at Kurt and Clara, backing away from him. He snarled something under his breath and turned back to the sarcophagus, prying at the sealed lid with both hands. After a moment he flung it open.
From where he stood slightly upslope from the General, Kurt could see into the wood and gold box. There was nothing inside but sand. No body, no holy relic, or bones. Just ordinary sand, from earth.
“The holy bones are not inside. This is not the relic. It’s a fake!” He spun around and pointed an accusing finger at Kurt and Clara. “I’ll kill you both, slowly and painfully, for this affront.”
The General started to shout at his two guards. Because his back was to the other warlords, he failed to realize what else was going on.
At that moment, the female warlord opposite them reached into the pocket of her long, flowing coat and pulled out a semi-automatic pistol of modern Earth design.
Pointing it at the two guards to either side of the General, she shot each of them with a pair of expertly aimed shots. Kurt was impressed given how she couldn’t have had much time to practice with the weapon.