The Buchanans, Lady Elizabeth, and the Men in Black examined the escape pod. Clyde and his father hauled it up on shore. It had been there, underwater, for as long as anyone in the clan could remember. People ignored it, not knowing what it might be. Elizabeth explained the basics. Jack Horner, David, and DeWindt seemed to grasp things well enough. Duchamp took notes which he said he did not understand. MacDonald and Campbell gave up arguing and started telling jokes which Conner O’Neil did not find nearly as funny as their arguments. Bram and Clyde Buchanan explained their part in this fiasco.
“Clyde heard the wolf. So did his mother. Between them, they pinpointed this old Roman thing. We always thought it was some old Roman thing. The wolf was not seen in the nearby wetlands at this time, as it had been in the past, but we got the men of our family and neighbors to help us drag the thing to shore. It took all day, and we gave it a rest. We feasted in Bramwell Hall, my home, but young Clyde, being a curious boy, stayed to examine the globe more closely. He found the door. Then he found some buttons which he just had to push, and for which he has been rightly whipped.”
“Come and see,” Elizabeth called to the men, and they squeezed into the pod as well as they could. She began to point out things against the wall. “The power gauge. It is about half-charged since it came out from the water and is getting the light, even if it is just the poor light of a Scottish winter.” She moved her hands along the wall in that place and console pushed out from the wall. She studied it for a second before she made her pronouncement.
“There are six sleep chambers in this pod. Three have been emptied. Three still have Wolv inside, but the life signs are gone. To be blunt, they are dead. My estimate is these have been here since the incursion into the Black Forest around a thousand AD, only about six hundred and fifty years ago. The Romans left long before that. These arrived about the time the Vikings began to attack the shores.”
Elizabeth pushed a button to uncover all six sleep chambers at once. Several men screamed at the sight. Three chambers were empty as she said, though they all showed residue as if they had been used. Three held Wolv. One Wolv looked long dead, like melted in some way so it was hard to distinguish the form and features. One looked like a soldier at attention. All the men recognized that when they stopped screaming. One, a female, might have been a queen. She stood tall and looked proud, in so far as they could read Wolv expressions.
“This is the distress call.” She turned it off. “There is a short in the system besides. But basically, this and all the other systems function under full power, but when the power level drop below a certain point, all the systems get shut down except the life support system designed to keep the occupants alive. Underwater, the pod had filtered Scottish sunlight at best, which probably charged things slowly. It might have taken years to charge up enough to turn the systems back on, and even then, the distress call would have flickered and might have been off for most of the time. Bram. Are there any legends in the clan about livestock going missing or being shredded, or maybe people?
Bram appeared to be thinking hard. “Around the time you mentioned, some six hundred or so years ago, lots of things happened and I always imagined the stories got blended together, somehow. “We had reports of wolves seen around the lake. We had reports of a monster in the lake. Mostly, the stories talked about the big jaws and teeth, but it was like a monster that would suddenly appear and then disappear just as suddenly. We had reports of Vikings. Some came to the loch. They got blamed for most of the shredded livestock and people. There was a great wolf hunt in those days, and the wolf got killed, but then there have continued to be reports now and then of a wolf being seen around the lake.”
“Probably picked up by a small number of people sensitive to such things,” Elizabeth said, partly to herself. “The other earth is out of phase right now, so there are no actual, active witches presently. But back seventy-five years and for all those years before, anyone sensitive to the magic might have picked up on the distress call.”
“What do you mean, there are no actual witches?” Jack Horner sounded more surprised than offended.
“Later. I promise,” Elizabeth responded to him before she talked to the rest. “At least one of the Wolv got out when the escape pod crashed. It probably could not figure out how to get the pod up out of the water without help. But then, it got hunted down, so you see they can be killed. Now, we have one or two Wolv on the loose. They will require some careful hunting.”
“People have been eaten,” young Clyde Buchanan spoke up for the first time. “And livestock has gone missing as you said.”
“I have littered the woods with traps,” Bram said.
Elizabeth shook her head. “I would be surprised if a Wolv stepped in one. They might step on a well disguised landmine, but a trap would just bloody them without holding them. They would get out of the trap and be extra angry. Trust me, they are naturally mad. You don’t want to make them extra angry.”
“My friend Ella’s grandmother got shredded in her bed,” Clyde said. “Ella went to take some treats to her grandmother’s house in the woods and found the old woman half-eaten. It was terrible.”
Elizabeth grinned, though there was nothing humorous in the story. “Let us go up to the house where it is warm to plan our attack and have a bit of lunch,” she said, and people began to walk with her. “I will tell you all a story from Bavaria in the Germanies. The story is called Little Red Riding Hood.”
David perked up. “I have heard that story.” He smiled before his expression turned sour. “I never imagined it might be a true story.”
Two days later, with plenty of Buchanan help, Elizabeth and her Men in Black backed the Wolv into a marshland beside the lake. Plenty of bushes and trees littered the area, but the ground had turned mostly to slush in the winter—ice mixed with freezing rain. Even the spots that appeared frozen over might crack and cover the foot with ice-cold water.
“It won’t be easy getting them out of there,” Sir Leslie admitted.
“Normally, I do not recommend backing dangerous people into a corner. Some tend to lash out when they feel trapped,” Elizabeth said. She looked carefully left and right and figured only the Men in Black would see. She called for the armor of the Kairos, which replaced her dress faster than a blink. She imagined the sword called Salvation, which she used in the past, worked out with, and knew she could lift, but she found Wyrd, her biggest and heaviest sword at her back. She pulled Defender, her long knife, and saw Clyde slide up to the group. He came with a message but could not resist commenting first.
“Lordy-lordy! Where did you get that armor? You look great.”
Elizabeth smiled. She knew she was not the prettiest girl. Far from it. But she appreciated the compliment, in part because she got so few of them. “We have to be extra careful. You have a message?”
“Yes,” he began, but people all stopped when the group next to the Men in Black got suddenly attacked by the Wolv. They had seen it twice in two days. One time, a man said he got a shot off and swore he hit the beast. Now, they all saw the caked on and frozen blood on the beast’s shoulder, but only for a moment as the blood there went everywhere. The three men there did not have time to draw their knives, much less fire their guns. The Wolv appeared to be making a way of escape from the trap, and it looked like he would make it before they all heard a gunshot, followed by several gunshots in rapid fire. Finally, a streak of power hit the Wolv, and the upper portion of the Wolv burst into flame. The Wolv collapsed and Elizabeth heard Sukki in the distance.
“Sorry. Sorry. I hope none of the people got burned.”
Soft words got spoken in return, and the travelers rode up, the locals getting well out of the way, given the power they just saw. Elizabeth alone was not surprised.
“Lockhart. Good timing for once, but I think there is another one.”
“Elizabeth?” Lincoln asked.
“No. I just look exactly like her and borrowed the armor on a whim to show off my legs,” she said in her sarcastic best. She might not be pretty, but she had nice legs. She opened her arms and called for Sukki. As she hugged the girl, she said kind and very motherly things to her. Then she had a request, and Sukki was willing. “I need you and Elder Stow to fly invisible over the swampy area and see if there is another Wolv hidden in the bushes. You need to let us know. Then let Elder Stow become visible over that spot, because he has a personal screen, but you need to stay invisible in case the Wolv has a handgun. We will come to that spot, but you need to keep us appraised as to what the Wolv is doing. Can you do that?”
They did that while Nanette, Tony, and Lincoln patched up the one Buchanan that would survive and gave what they had to the other two to make their last moments more comfortable. The rest of the travelers with the Men in Black moved as soon as Sukki found the Wolv. The old, gray haired Wolv never moved, and when they arrived, they saw why. Its rear legs looked shriveled and useless, and it looked old enough to where some of its fur was missing, showing bald patches of skin. The Wolv looked at them and growled, but there was no strength in the sound. It looked old and tired and ready to end life.
Storyteller Tales & Thoughts 