Dragon

M3 Margueritte: Burning Questions, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

A commotion could be heard in the fields as men ran, and many pointed when the creature circled in low.  Fortunately, the creature chose a back corner of the far quarter, by the Vergen forest to set down.  It did not look, from that distance, nearly as big as its’ shadow, but no one doubted what it could do.  It flamed the grain in that corner before setting down.

Margueritte and Elsbeth came to the edge of the wood, laughing and sighing for the stories they told and heard from Goldenrod’s storehouse of stories.  Some of them were about the Kairos, the Traveler in Time, and that embarrassed Margueritte a little.  She reminded Goldenrod that she was not supposed to talk about lives which Margueritte could not herself remember, but Goldenrod said they were elf perfected stories, so who knew how much of them was true.  Margueritte accepted that and listened while Goldenrod told about the three dwarfs at the bottom of the well.

“They should have been named Moe, Larry and Curly,” Margueritte said, even as Goldenrod became very agitated.

“What is it?” Elsbeth asked.

“Roan and Morgan again?”  Margueritte wondered because that was the only other time she saw Goldenrod in such a state.

“Worser,” Goldenrod insisted, and she flew into Elsbeth’s hair to hide.  “Dragon.” Her voice sounded barely above a whisper.  As if on cue, Margueritte’s horse reared up and Elsbeth’s horse stepped back from the field and shook her head vigorously, so both girls had a hard time staying up and keeping control of their mares.

“Get down.”  Margueritte commanded when she could, and Elsbeth did not argue. The horses, well trained, did not run, but they did step further from the edge of the woods.  The girls quickly tied them to keep from losing them, and none too soon as even then the dragon came to land in a great ball of fire.  The smoke and the acrid, acid smell came instantaneously, before the mere smell of burning grain and charcoal.  The beast roared once.  It sounded ear splitting.  Then something happened which shocked Margueritte to no end.  The beast spoke.  It said only one word.  “Hungry.”  It spoke in a strange tongue, and it looked to snatch up a horse from the edge of the trees.  The horse got cooked in an instant, and with great jaws and almost useless front claws the horse got quartered.  These bite-sized morsels were then taken into the worm’s mouth rapidly, one after the other, to become four lumps in the worm’s throat.  Margueritte watched the worm undulating to swallow the lumps as far as it could.

“Where did that horse come from?”  Elsbeth asked.  She peeked around Margueritte’s shoulder.  “Owien,” she shrieked.  The master at arms could not be seen, but Marguerite guessed he got injured and dragged somewhere behind a tree by the boy who now knelt behind his master’s shield, facing the dragon, with his master’s sword pointed up, though he could barely lift it.

“Stay here!”  Margueritte commanded her sister like she never before commanded anything.  Not that it would do any good, she thought, as she turned back toward her own horse.

Margueritte reached out in time, not for the Danna who said this was not the place for her, and neither for Gerraint, though he was a great warrior in his way, but for Festuscato, the Roman Senator who came north in the days just before Rome fell to the Goths and Vandals.  Festuscato had some practical experience with dragons.

“And several saints.”  She heard the words clearly in her head, paused and closed her eyes.  She went away, and Festuscato took her place, dressed not in her dress, but in the armor he called from home.  That armor was a gift of the gods and the last made before the time of dissolution, and the sword called Fate was one of the two that came after Caliburn.  At the moment, however, Festuscato felt mostly interested in the cloak which was woven by the hand of Athena herself.  It was fireproof, among other things.

Festuscato got up on Margueritte’s mare which he judged would give him the least problem, though he did not like his choices, and with a kick, horse and rider bounded out into the open.

Festuscato knew he had a few moments yet.  Dragons were quick to strike and eat, but then they had to take time to swallow and think about what to do next.  They had been bred by a strange race, the Agdaline, who bred a command language into their system.  Festuscato knew that language, but he felt uncertain if the dragon would respond.  “Do no harm.”  Festuscato shouted in the Agdaline tongue over and over as he approached the beast.  “No fire.  Do no harm.”

The dragon looked at him as he approached and turned its’ head at the sight almost a full one hundred and eighty degrees, so Festuscato could be seen upside down.  The head snapped back as the man came to face the beast.  He was ready to hide beneath his cloak on the least provocation, though the horse would have undoubtedly become toast.

“Do no harm.  No fire.”  Festuscato repeated.

“No harm.”  The dragon said in barely discernible tones.

“No harm.  No fire.”  Festuscato repeated, again.

The dragon looked straight up and belched a great roar of flame.  Festuscato was barely able to keep his horse under him.  The dragon still smoked when it came to look again on horse and rider.  “No fire.”  It repeated.

Before another thought might enter the dragon brain, Festuscato spurred to snatch up Owien.  Their other horse, the nag Owien got to ride was apparently too old and lazy to even run too far.  “Can you ride?”  He asked the sergeant at arms, who just came around from being knocked unconscious when the dragon snatched his horse.

“I think so,” he moaned.  His arm looked busted all to pieces.  Festuscato helped him up on the nag, put Owien in front and took the sword and shield to discard as an unnecessary burden.  At the edge of the woods, he knew the dragon had nearly finished swallowing.

“No harm.  No fire.”  Festuscato repeated the command.  The dragon said nothing in response.  It merely stared at them with the fire dancing in its’ red eyes.  Neither did Festuscato wait for an answer, but immediately rode towards Elsbeth, snatched her by the hands so she would ride behind him, and they did not stop riding until they were well away. They turned from the top of a small hillock by the woods and heard the dragon roar and spew fire once more into the sky. It took to wing and paused only briefly over the far pasture to snatch a cow in its’ larger hind claws.  It flew north and passed right over the rider’s heads, who followed its’ flight as well as they could until it got lost in the clouds.

“Owien, dear,” Festuscato said, inadvertently calling him by Margueritte’s term.  “You need to get your master to the house, but not too fast lest you worsen his condition by banging across the uneven ground.

“Yes sir,” Owien said.

“Your name, Lord?”  The sergeant asked, though the delirium of his pain came on him, so he had to struggle to keep conscious.

“Festuscato,” he said.  “And I will see to the girls and their safety.”

Owien started out at a slow and steady walk which he did his best to maintain even after he reached the flatter fields.  Luckily, the old nag seemed content to move at that pace.

Festuscato took Elsbeth back to her own horse.  When they got down, Elsbeth stared at him.  Goldenrod came fluttering back from wherever she had hidden and clapped both hands with delight.  Elsbeth squinted and cocked her head, though not nearly as far as the dragon.

“I can kind of see my sister in you,” she said.  “Only she doesn’t have any red in her hair and your light brown eyes don’t look like her green ones.”

“But Elsbeth.  Aren’t you forgetting what you should do when you are saved by a brave knight?” he said.

Elsbeth stiffened briefly, but then she saw he was teasing her.  She played along with a curtsy.  “Thank you, most brave and noble knight.”  Then she went one further and stepped up to kiss his cheek.  He laughed and immediately traded places with Margueritte, who continued the laugh, and Elsbeth joined her in the release of their fears, until they fell to the ground, laughing.  Goldenrod’s fairy laugh, a powerful enchantment in its’ own right, kept them at it until they could hardly breathe.  Goldenrod then broke the spell with her question.

“What are we laughing about?”

It got late, well after all the talk of dragons and other monsters had subsided, well after Owien had been praised and Elsbeth had kept silent for once, and well after bedtime when Margueritte sat straight up in bed.  It came to her like an electric shock.  She had no idea who Festuscato was.

************************

MONDAY

Margueritte and Elsbeth are surprised by Visitors from the Real World.  Don’t Miss it.  Until then,

*

M3 Margueritte: Burning Questions, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“If the Lord saw fit to make these little spirits, they must have some purpose in his plan.  And in the end, they must be accountable to him in some way, even as we are,” he finished.

“Now as to Margueritte’s place among them, that is something to think about.”

“But my Lord.”  Little White Flower spoke up.  “If the little ones did not have someone to watch over us and set boundaries for us, there is no telling how much mischief we would do to this world and to all the people in it.”

“I believe this,” Lady Brianna agreed.  “Even under Margueritte’s watchful eye they can’t seem to resist lying, cheating and stealing.”  She shook her head.

“But we’ve brought it all back.”  Little White Flower spoke for the defense.  “Or nearly all of it.”

Father Aden looked at the fairy and then Margueritte and prepared for two experiences for which he could hardly prepare.

“Margueritte, I do not know why you should have to be born again and again as you say, but I understand that only such a one would be graced with the gift of these little spirits of the Lord,” Aden said.

“Gift?”  Margueritte half-kidded to lighten the atmosphere.  She knew it was her turn to show something.  She took her Mother’s hand and held tight.  Taking Aden the Convert’s hand with her other hand, she closed her eyes.  She and her mother had discussed it.  This was not the place for the Danna.  But Gerraint, Son of Erbin, was willing to come through, and he was a well-known man of faith.  In only a moment, Margueritte disappeared and Gerraint sat in her place.  A tear came to his eye as he spoke in the chapel.

Good Father,” he said.  “I too do not know why I am reborn and never know the glories of Heaven, nor did any of the scholars of my day, not even Merlin, only one thing is needful to remember.  This is Margueritte’s life, and this fine Lady is her mother as surely as anyone was ever mother to a child, and this surprisingly quiet one is her good sister, annoying though she can be.”  Gerraint smiled a little as Elsbeth was not too old to stick out her tongue and make a face.  “And this one is part of her responsibility as it was part of mine in my time.”  He smiled for Margueritte’s mother and squeezed her hand and then he went home and Margueritte appeared back in her own place.  Her mother hugged her, and none too soon.

The last surprise became a surprise for all except for Aden who had been forewarned. Brianna looked at Little White Flower and spoke clearly.  “Get big, please,” she said.

“Must I?”  Little White Flower asked one last time.

“Yes, you must.”  Brianna affirmed, and the fairy did and stood tall and slim in a full-length white deerskin-like dress that made her swarthy skin stand out.  Her long hair that reached to her knees looked nearly as long as Margueritte’s, and certainly as dark, and her eyes, a rich loam brown appeared to dance with sparkles of Gold.

“Golly Gosh.”  Goldenrod said from one pew back where she had snuck in to watch.  Little White Flower appeared to be twenty something, much older than Elsbeth ever suspected, and much more beautiful, as fairies are, than human eyes normally get to behold.  Little White Flower immediately looked to her friend, but Elsbeth did not know what to think.  She always thought of her fairy friend as about her own age, which was not quite ten.  She never imagined her as a full-grown woman.  She did not know what to think.

Little White Flower looked again at the Cleric who was but thirty, after all.  And there was something in the look to make a heart stop.  Father Aden also did not know what to think or what to say, though it crossed his mind that many of the scholars at Iona were married.  They had not given into that silly Roman superstition concerning celibacy, and he felt glad for that.

Lady Brianna finally, and graciously, as was her way, broke the ice and hugged Little White Flower.  “Welcome to the family,” she said, and added, “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”

Margueritte nodded, and then got up to hug her too.  She suspected for some time that this might be the case, and probably could have known for sure if she thought hard about it.

Elsbeth got up last of all.  She neared tears and knew what would happen long before any of the others.  She had lost her fairy.  Little White Flower would be Father Aden’s fairy now, and she would remain his for the rest of his days.

They had peace in the triangle after that, or as much as there can ever be when there are little ones literally under foot.  The promised prosperity came to the farm, and everyone benefited from the bounty.

In the Lord’s year 711, Tomberlain got formally invested as a Squire as he turned seventeen.  All of those who had been calling him that already cheered.  The rest cheered as well and said it was well deserved.  Owien, age 12 cheered loudest of all as the two boys were indeed becoming fast friends.  Owien looked up to Tomberlain as an older brother and mentor, while Tomberlain found in Owien an alternative to having sisters.  He also did not mind the adulation of the youngster, but unlike some who would have swelled their heads, Owien’s adoration of Tomberlain drove Tomberlain to always do his best and try to be the best so as to not disappoint the boy.

Lady Brianna recognized in young Owien a quick mind and a sharp wit which she claimed would be wasted in the fens.  She brought him and his mother to the Triangle.  She set him to page for the master at arms, and when he turned twelve, she began to send him with Tomberlain and the girls to Lady Lavinia’s to learn his letters.

Thus, the children grew.  Margueritte turned fourteen in the spring of that year and showed every sign of becoming a fine young lady.  Elsbeth turned eleven that summer, and she also tried very hard to be grown up.  She was eleven, going on twenty, Margueritte teased, and there was some truth in that, though Elsbeth still had plenty of childish moments.  Elsbeth, Margueritte, and sometimes Goldenrod became fast friends again, and did nearly everything together.  They often rode far into the wilderness to picnic and play, and though Lord Bartholomew resisted the idea because, as he said, there are still spies around, and there were, Lady Brianna convinced him to let them go, because she knew the time the girls spent together was drawing short, and soon enough they would find nice young men, and after that they would never have such time together again.

“And they better be nice young men.”  That was all Sir Barth had to say.

Once again, everything changed when the fall came, and the leaves first began to change in the Vergen.  It seemed a warm day, what Little White Flower called a Navajo Summer, when a great shadow appeared, circling around the open fields.  The men came running in.  Sir Barth and Tomberlain were with Redux and Luckless by the forges, and from there, looking down on the grain, the shadow looked clear as a new cast bell.

“I can’t see it.”  Tomberlain squinted towards the Heavens.  He used his hand to help shade his eyes, but it did not help.  Bartholomew spoke after a glance upward.

“But it is big, whatever it is.  Where are the girls?” he asked.

“Riding,” Redux said.  “I helped saddle their mounts only an hour ago.”

“Damn.”  Lord Bartholomew swore, which he rarely did, and then he turned his eyes to the dwarf who seemed to be trembling with certainty.

Luckless swallowed hard.  “Dragon,” he said, and the men turned white.

M3 Gerraint: To the Lake, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The fight did not last long.  Both Bedivere and Uwaine killed their man, and the third Roman fled, wanting no part of it.  Gerraint’s encounter with Ondyaw was even shorter as Fate cracked the Roman’s sword on first contact and broke it in two.  Gerraint’s well aimed back swing sliced through the Roman’s jaw like it was putty, and the man’s jaw fell to the ground, his own eyes fastened on it.  “Tooth for a tooth.”  Gerraint muttered.  Then Ondyaw collapsed as Fate had also cut through most of the man’s neck.  Gerraint stirred himself, then.  He was not unaware of what happened elsewhere.

The words came from somewhere in time.  “No fire!”  He yelled in the Agdaline tongue, the command language to which all dragons were bred to obey.  “Do no harm!”  Gerraint was aware that when dragons went wild, when they generally shed their feathers and got big, the Agdaline commands did not always register.

“No fire!  Do no harm!”  Gerraint shouted again while the dragon cocked its’ head as if in confusion.  Gerraint decided it would not be worth the risk of his own skin.  Besides, there was something he needed to check out.  He found Amphitrite once more, but this time Danna pushed her way in front.  He traded places with Danna, exchanging one life in time for another.  The Don floated right up to the dragon’s face, repeated the commands for the sake of those below, but concentrated on looking for that fingerprint.  It showed there, but looked covered by another.

The dragon breathed as it faced the goddess.  Fire came, but Danna merely felt warmed by it.  She was the Mother goddess who touched the fires of the sun itself as well as the fires that ran like blood through the earth.  She was also, as Amonette, the serpent of Egypt and inclined to commiserate with this worm.  And again, she was the cold north wind and the frost that hardened the metal beaten on the anvil.

“Rhiannon.”  Danna commanded immediately as she floated back to the ground.  The goddess showed up instantly and kissed Danna on the cheek.

“Mother.”  Rhiannon said, lovingly.

“Rhiannon, dear.  What is with the dragon?”

Rhiannon looked pained for a minute.  “It was his suggestion.”

“His who?”  Danna spoke with some sternness in her voice.  “Don’t tell me this is the worm’s fault.  Eve already tried that one.”  The dragon moaned, softly and the women turned.

“Go home and take a nap.”  Danna commanded.

“Sleep?”  The dragon barely mouthed in Agdaline.

“You heard me.  No arguments.”  Danna insisted and the dragon shot flame straight up into the sky with a moan loud enough to make the few men who were still near cover their ears against the sound.  The dragon took to the sky and was soon lost in the clouds.

“He, who?”  Danna returned to the former conversation, not having forgotten.  Rhiannon had that pained look again.

“Young Abraxas,” she said, and then she struck a pose.  “Master of light and dark.  God of good and evil.  He has such an ego.”

“Sounds it,” Danna said.  “And you listened to him?”

“Well,” Rhiannon hedged.  “You were hurt and seemed in such trouble.  He suggested the dragon might help you escape.”

“Help?  It went straight for the tent where we were held prisoner.  If we had not escaped already, we would have been toast!”

“I did not know,” Rhiannon admitted.  “He is a very slick character.”

Danna stopped walking and Rhiannon stopped with her.  “Daughters don’t usually take a mother’s advice on such things.  And I don’t honestly remember if you are a granddaughter or great-great, whatever.  Not that it matters.  But he does not sound like the sort of young man a mother, any mother, would like.  Please avoid him in the future.”

“Oh, yes I will,” she said.  “Most assuredly.”

Danna leaned over and returned Rhiannon’s kiss and barely kept her tongue from saying, “You lie like an elf.”  She traded places then with Gerraint and came straight to the point.

“The Welshmen,” Gerraint said.

“I have them,” Rhiannon admitted.  “They wanted me to open a door to Avalon, Gwynwas as they call it.  Abraxas seemed keen on the idea as well.”

“You didn’t.”  Gerraint needed to hear it.

Rhiannon pretended offense.  “No,” she said.  “You have told us a million times how the Island is private, even if we are your children.  That is your place, shared with Mannanan in the old time.  Mine was in Tara, before it was deserted.”

“Yes, about that,” Gerraint said.  “I thought after Lancelot you were going over to the other side with the others?  The time of the gods is over.  What are you still doing here?”

“Galahad,” she said.  “And you did ask me to keep Meryddin under wraps for the rest of his life.

“Oh, yes.  And how is the geezer?”

“Gone.”  Rhiannon said, sadly.  “And I’ve been thinking of moving the court elsewhere.  I don’t want to stay and be reminded.”

“What is it with you and the wrong sort of men?”  Gerraint asked with some tenderness in his voice.  He wiped the tear that formed in the corner of her eye.  “But seriously, if Meryddin is now gone and Galahad is grown, why are you still here?”

“Apparently, there is one more young man.  But I do not know who it is yet.”

“Yes, well you must not dawdle.  Nearly all of the gods have already passed over centuries ago, you know.”  Gerraint still spoke with some tenderness.  Dying was hard enough when it was involuntary, not that her spirit would cease to function in the world, only she would no longer have flesh to touch the world, or eyes to see, or ears to hear.  She would be more like a force in this world, deaf, dumb and blind, and subject only to the directions of the Spirit of the Most-High God.

Rhiannon looked at Gerraint and smiled.  “Don’t worry,” she said.  “Festuscato has already scolded me enough.  “Keep away from Patrick!  You should not be here!” OH!”  Rhiannon read the look on Gerraint’s face and stopped.  “He was a past life of yours, don’t you remember?”

He remembered, but he wanted to have a bit of fun.  “Past would be the only ones you would know,” Gerraint said.  “But that doesn’t mean I know.  You know the rule.  Never tell the Kairos about any life he has not yet experienced.”

“Oh, yes, but then you trade places sometimes with the future lives,” she responded.

“Festuscato?”  Gerraint grinned, and she knew he was teasing.

“Stop it.  You’re embarrassing me.”  They came to Uwaine and Bedivere.  She named them, looked gently into their minds, and welcomed them to the lake.

M3 Gerraint: To the Lake, part 1 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

They slept in the wilderness, and in the morning, headed straight for the North road.  “The main way down the center is just as quick and probably easier traveling,” Gerraint explained.  “But this way will take us by the old Cairns, the burial places of the kings.”

“You think the Welshmen came this way?” Bedivere asked.

“No.”  Gerraint spoke plainly.  “I think they must already be at the Lake, or near enough.  But we are less likely to be pursued in this direction.  I doubt any trouble would guess we even know about this road.”

“Trouble?”  Bedivere asked.  “I thought last night you said that was all cleared up.”

“Odyar,” Uwaine said.  Gerraint liked his old squire.  He had a gift in the judgment of character.

They stayed at a coastal inn that next night, and again, on the night after that.  The following evening, they had hopes of reaching the lake, but they were surprised around midday by the last thing Gerraint expected.  Instead of swords from behind, they ran smack into swords ahead.  Even as they turned to the Southeast and toward the actual lake, they were surrounded by about thirty swords of the Romans coming up from the south.  Gerraint knew the lake area was like a kind of no man’s land that separated the Romanish lands from Amorica.  He felt distressed to see the revived Romans making incursions across the border and again, he did not doubt Howel’s concerns about a possible war in the near future.

Gerraint would not let Uwaine draw his sword against such odds.  They surrendered quietly.

Ondyaw was the Captain of the Romans, despite his obvious Gallic name.  Gerraint looked at him closely and immediately saw the family resemblance.  “Odyar’s brother?”  He asked.  Ondyaw confirmed as much with a slap across Gerraint’s face.  Bedivere struggled against the ropes, but Uwaine knew better and kept still.  Bedivere only hurt his own wrists.

“And where are you headed?” he asked.  “My brother’s message was rather vague on the details and said only that I should stop you.”

“To the Lake of the Vivane,” Gerraint said.  He saw no reason to hide it.

“That accursed place.  I should take you there and dump you.  I doubt you would last the night.”

“Fluff and mirrors,” Gerraint said.  “Rhiannon just likes her privacy is all.”

Ondyaw slapped him again.  “That great Lady’s name should never touch your lips.”  Gerraint felt it in his jaw, and for a moment, he was sorry his hands were tied so he could not put his hand up to help wiggle his jaw back into place.

“Sorry,” he said.  “But I thought you were Roman.  Shouldn’t you be defending Diana and Venus instead?

Ondyaw struck him one more time just for that, or perhaps just for fun, because he could.  Gerraint decided silence was called for.  He had to pause in any case until the dizziness passed.

“Tell my brother all is well.”  Ondyaw spoke to the man who was waiting.  “The men are still watching the lake and I will send more when I know more.”  The man left and Ondyaw turned as if he had something else to say, but then decided against it.  He left and the three were alone in the tent.

“Are you all right?”  Bedivere asked while Uwaine spoke at the same time.

“Now what?”  Uwaine asked.

“Now we leave.”  Gerraint showed anger.  They had freely surrendered and honorably submitted to being captive.  They did not need to be tied.  They certainly did not deserve to be beaten, not by any standard of civilized behavior. “More like barbarians than Romans,” Gerraint said and spat out a tooth.  “Damn.  Now I’m really mad.”  He had to calm down and think for a minute.

Margueritte came immediately to mind and when he traded places with her once more, her feminine, eleven-year-old hands and feet slipped right out of the ropes.  She had on her red dress, of course, and would from then on until she changed it.

“Let me see your wrists,” she said to Bedivere.  They were chaffed raw from his attempts to tug himself free.  “Now you were so smart with the horses,” Margueritte scolded him.  “How could you be so stupid now?  How are you going to hold your sword with your wrists hurting so?”  She shook her finger at him and frowned.  Bedivere melted.

“But she’s so cute,” he said to Uwaine.

“Yes, and dangerous I’ll warrant.”  Uwaine responded.

“Not.”  Margueritte insisted, but she was getting nowhere with her young hands and fingers against the knots.  She felt obliged to trade once again with Ali.  He still wore the Armor, and though his nimble thief’s fingers would soon have them free, he pulled his long knife, not wanting to take forever.

Once Bedivere and Uwaine were up, and Ali had to say hush three or four times, they got their weapons back as they had simply been dumped in a corner of the tent. Ali then cut a small slit in the back of the tent which grew bigger as he looked and saw no one back there.  “Allow me to steal our horses,” he said.  “Must keep in practice, you know.  Be right back.”

Ali slipped from the tent and, quiet as a snake in the grass, he wound his way around the camp to where their horses were tied but unguarded.  He considered the problem, and then went back for his companions, believing the men might move more quietly than the beasts.  Perhaps they did, but they were still too loud.  The Romans would have got them but for the noise from above and the shadow that crossed over their heads.  As soon as the beast landed, the tent they had just vacated went up in flames and a roar and fire shot up into the sky.

Uwaine stared.  Bedivere screamed, though not nearly as loud as some of the Romans.  The camp turned into chaos while the dragon nosed through the burning tent.  On finding nothing edible, the dragon set its’ sights on the scattering men.

“You!”  Ondyaw saw them and pointed.  “Cursed.”  He shouted and he and three other Romans attacked.  Gerraint came back, of course, Ali having returned to his own place in time at the first sign of trouble; and none too soon as far as Ali was concerned.  Gerraint drew his sword and the long knife he had sheathed and he and his friends went at the Romans, even as the dragon contentedly swallowed a piece of charcoal which only vaguely retained the shape of a man.

Avalon 6.0 Monkey Brain Fever, part 5 of 6

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Lockhart spurred forward, but his horse would only get so close before it refused to go further.  Lockhart had to shout, enunciating the alien Agdaline words as well as he could.  “No fire.  Do no harm.  Friends. Friends.  No fire.”

The worm had very stubby arms and legs.  This kind looked more like a true worm, or serpent, and it still had plenty of asbestos-like feathers, like an infant dragon.  It did not look like an infant.

“No fire.  No harm. Friend.”  Lockhart kept yelling, and the dragon paused to turn its head and look at the people and horses, as it were, upside-down.  The head snapped back right-side-up, and the dragon made a very different sound.  It almost sounded like the dragon repeated the word “friend”, before it looked up and let out a stream of fire at the sky.

“That can’t possibly be Puff.”  Katie came up near to Lockhart.  Her horse, Black Beauty, seemed even more leery of the dragon than Lockhart’s horse.

“I can’t imagine.  Maybe a child or grandchild or something.”  They met puff roughly two-thousand, five hundred years ago, back when people first started moving into the area that one day would become the Olmec civilization.  That happened when they first met Maya and her children.

“Chac was the storm and Kuican, the wind,” Lockhart tried to name those children.

“And Ixchel, the rainbow after the storm,” Katie said.  “I remember.”

“Ixchel.” Lockhart nodded.  “I couldn’t remember the girl’s name.”

“And Puff poked her nose right between a Pendratti and a Gott-Druk shuttle and scared everyone half to death.”

In timing, such as the little ones had, they heard a woman’s voice. “There you are.”  They looked up and saw a beautiful woman floating up by the dragon’s head, which lifted up near the tree tops to greet her.  She appeared to scratch under the dragon’s chin. The dragon purred.  The travelers could not imagine getting that close to the dragon’s jaw, though they had seen it done before.

“Friend,” the dragon said, and looked at Lockhart, and the rest who came up to stand behind Lockhart and Katie.  The woman looked, squinted, and appeared curious, until Katie spoke

“Maya?” Katie asked, though she knew it was not.

“Quetzalcoatl,” the woman spouted through her smile, as she zoomed to the ground, to face them.  “Maya said you were here, but I didn’t believe her.  I am Ixchel.”

“You didn’t believe your own mother?” Boston sounded surprised.

“Yes, I suppose she is my mother.  After going on three thousand years, since you were in this part of the world, some things blur.  Other things don’t make sense at all.  I mean, my father is a girl.”

“That must be interesting,” Decker said.

“I love her dearly,” Ixchel said, before Lincoln interrupted.

“I don’t suppose you can take us to the city the quick way.”

Ixchel took a moment to figure out what he asked, before she shook her head.  “I am not really here.  I came to collect Kuku.  She got set out to guard the ways to the city.  She can smell the disease, but not being native to earth, she cannot get the sickness.  She wandered off.”  Ixchel smiled a lovely smile.  “But I will welcome you when you arrive…” she vanished, and reappeared straddling the dragon’s neck.  She said something in Agdaline—the world from which dragons came.  It sounded like, “Come along, baby.”  And the dragon spread its wings and took to the sky.

Lockhart turned around and saw Ota on his knees, weeping.  He breathed through his tears. “Kukulkan.  Man of the dragon.”

Mister Crow returned from whatever safe perch he visited.  “I guessed, you know.”

“You guessed?” Alexis asked.

“Well, there weren’t any dragons around before now to know for certain.” The crow settled down on Misty Gray’s back.  “So, what did Kukulkan say to the beast, anyway?”

“He said we were friends,” Katie spoke up.

Mister Crow appeared to nod.  “Good choice of words,” he said.

“Man,” Lockhart said, as he got Ota to stand.  “Man of the dragon, but the important word is man.  I am as human as you are.”

Ota looked uncertain, but Mister Crow spoke again.  “Not if you are three thousand years old. The great goddess, Ixchel herself said she knew you three thousand years ago.”

“More like twenty-five hundred years,” Lincoln responded, as he helped Ota get up on Cortez, his horse.  “I’ll have to look it up.”

“That is a long story,” Alexis said.

“We need to ride.  The way appears to be clearing,” Lockhart said.

Lockhart rode out front and avoided looking back at the local man and the crow.  He heard Alexis and Lincoln trying to explain things, but tried not to overhear the actual conversation.

The travelers came out of the forest and found themselves in a meadow, the road clearly delineated by mud between fields of grasses and flowers. They saw a river, far in the distance, and a hint of pale green beyond, which everyone guessed might be the city. They traveled for nearly an hour before Boston had a thought.

“No,” Boston shouted, but it was already too late.

Lincoln and Katie both slipped from their seats at about the same time.  Ota hung on to Cortez’s saddle, but he weaved in his seat, like one ready to fall. Boston looked back and saw Decker leaning forward, hanging on to his horse’s neck, trying not to fall, and trying to stay awake.

“Decker,” Elder Stow reached out to the man.  The Gott-Druk did not appear as affected by whatever it was.

Boston looked at Sukki.  The girl yawned, but did not appear to be in danger of falling asleep.

“No,” Boston said again, and looked to the front to see Lockhart and Alexis slip to the ground.  The crow followed Alexis, and Boston’s hair felt like it stood on end.  “Arm up,” she said.  “Elder Stow.  I think we are going to need your weapon, especially.”

“What is it?” Sukki asked.

Elder Stow checked his scanner.  He stopped focusing on it after they got out in the open where they could see around with their own eyes.  His eyes shot toward a small rise in the landscape.  People began to come over the rise.  Maybe a hundred or more, and they all looked insane with disease.

“I don’t think the dragon just wandered off,” Sukki said, as Boston handed over her Beretta.  Boston pulled Decker’s super advanced military rifle she could turn to automatic fire.  She didn’t wait.  She sprayed the oncoming horde with bullets, even as Decker became the last to slip to the ground.  Boston felt glad that the horses were magically tied to their riders and would not wander off.  She also felt glad they got sent back from the American wild west, and would not be spooked by gunfire.

Boston tried to confine herself to bursts of five to seven bullets. The rifle would never run out of ammunition, thanks to the Kairos who set that up at the beginning, but it could overheat, and she could not afford for it to jam.

Sukki fired her pistol as she had been taught.  She only paused, and dropped her jaw, when Elder Stow’s weapon let out a line of light that turned the ones in front to ash and the ones behind to charcoal.

Even with all that power, Elder Stow admitted, “Some are going to reach us.”

“I know,” Boston wanted to panic, when a wind came up that nearly pulled her off her feet.

The people on the ground remained unaffected.  The horses turned into the wind and lowered their heads to keep from being tipped over.  Elder Stow and Sukki, with their strong and squat Neanderthal bodies, appeared to hold on to the earth.  But across the way, the diseased people got lifted up and blown away, until they moved out of sight.

Boston, who eavesdropped on Katie and Lockhart when they talked about Maya’s children, thought to say something.  “Thank you Kuican.”

Lightning, coming out of a perfectly blue sky, struck in the direction of the diseased people, and the thunder clapped loud.  The cloudless sky instantly filled with deep gray clouds, and the rain came, pouring, turning the mud road into puddles and a little river, an inch or so deep.

Boston, Sukki, and Elder Stow ran to the others to get their heads above the water; but found them coming out of their sleep.  People turned their fairy weave clothing into rain slickers, hats, and rain boots, though they got rather soaked at first.  It took some time to shake off the effects of whatever got into their systems, but soon enough they got ready to move on to the city in the distance.

R6 Greta: Land of the Lost, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“The big bird is after the big worm,” Bogus said it, and they all ran to the door in time to see the dragon grabbed by the bird beak and tossed into the trees.  The dragon protested with fire, and it looked like it held its own for a while, but the bird kept grabbing it and shaking it and banging it against the trees, until at last, the big worm ran out of strength.

The bird picked up the worm with its claws and headed into the sky.  It punctured something, as the people smelled the gas.  The hydrogen bladder that ran along the whole belly of the beast had a leak. The dragon waited until they circled enough to gain some altitude, then Nameless said a quiet, “No.” as the dragon flamed himself.  There followed a massive explosion. People screamed at the horror.  Pieces of dragon rained down on the forest along with all of the insides of the Raven.  The bird plummeted in a streak of flame, and Berry and Fae raced out to where the dragon fell.  The rest of the crew followed.

Nameless saw something in his mind, picked everyone up with a thought and transported them to where the dragon head had turned into a very old and broken man.  Nameless also caught sight of the spark of light that came from the Raven.  It shot to the south, well beyond the dome, but he said nothing as Berry and Fae fell down beside the broken old man and began to cry.

The man could hardly speak, but he looked first at Bogus and breathed.  “Sorry father.”  Then he spoke to the girls.  “You have my permission and blessing.  They seem fine men, such as they are.”  Then he turned to Nameless and stumbled over his thoughts.  “None of the parts of Mithras mean good for the human race. They want to be the new gods and they all want to lead their way.  Beware Mithras.  He is the Pater.”

The old man’s voice trailed off and Nameless raised his head and commanded attendance.  “Willow,” he called, and his command went all the way to the Ural Mountains where a snow fairy vanished and reappeared at Nameless’ side.  The fairy spun around several times, but halted on sight of the Nameless god.  “Your grandson,” Nameless pointed to the old man, “And your great-granddaughters.”  He stepped back, and let Willow find her own way.

Willow flew up to face the old man.  She took on her big form, which made her appear like a beautiful, older woman, perhaps just shy of fifty.  She knelt beside the old man and looked briefly at Fae and Berry before she smiled for the man and spoke.  “You are Oren?”

“I am,” Oren whispered.  “And now my days are complete.”

Willow took Oren’s hand, the one Berry was not squeezing, and found one tear to protest.  “But you are so young.”

“More than a hundred,” Nameless said softly. “More than long enough for a half-human.”

Willow looked up at Fae and Berry.  “Berry,” she said.  “Queen Thumbelin has told me wonderful things about you, and young Mab said you were all right, which I think at her age is a great compliment.” Berry’s eyes teared up so she could not say anything.  “And Fae. I have heard from far away, from my dear old friend, Thissle, that you are a kind and wonderful person.  How you ever got involved with the old stinker, Hobknot, I will never know.”  Willow paused to wink at Hobknot, who scowled appropriately in return.  Clearly, they had some history.  “But love is a strange and wonderful thing, and that is worth holding on to.”  Willow turned her eyes toward Bogus who stood that whole time, quietly worrying his hat.

“Mother.”  He spoke when her eyes fell on him.

Willow smiled for her son.  “Sometimes love takes us places where we could never imagine. Love had its way with me and your father, and though it was only for a short time, he gave me you, my son.”

“I’ve been not much of a good son,” Bogus said. He lowered his eyes and shuffled his foot.

“But you have.”  Willow smiled for her son. “I have been thinking about it now for more than a hundred years.  I was wrong. You loved your human woman, Clarissa. The Kairos has taught us that we are not to mingle with human mortals, but even she knows that love will have its way. I treated her badly.  I was terrible.  I was wrong, and I went away, and I am sorry.  I missed my grandson’s whole life, and now I can never get that back.” Willow looked down and a few precious fairy tears fell to dampen Oren’s side.  Oren extracted his hand from Berry’s grasp and with a great effort, he covered Willow’s hand and patted it twice.  Bogus found a few tears of his own and stepped up to hug his mother. Nameless spoke.

“There are only two things in life that everyone experiences.  Love and death.  And we have no control over when they will come.”  Nameless went away so Greta could return and finish the thought.  “Who would have thought I would end up with a Roman?”  She stepped up and looked down at Oren.  “Sleep now,” she said.  “The old life has gone.  The new life has come.”  Berry reached for the cross she wore around her neck and Oren closed his eyes and stopped moving.  Immediately, they heard a howl.  The Wolv were not far away.  Greta lifted her voice to the sky.  “Nameless! You are mean.”  He brought her back to face her own Wolv.

“What are we going to do?” Hans asked.

“Oh, Hans.”  Greta stepped to the side and amended her word.  “Hansel.”  She grinned as she waved her hand in the air.  A great archway formed, a doorway to Avalon in the second heavens.  Greta and Berry had been there once.  Now, the others were coming, but then her little ones were always welcome.  “Hans and Hobknot, carry Oren,” Greta commanded.  “Quickly now.  Through the door before the Wolv catches us by the heel.”

People scrambled as another howl came, closer than before.  They heard the yip-yip of the Wolv before they crossed the threshold and stepped out on to a perfect, green lawn beneath a beautiful blue sky and a magnificent castle on a hill.  A small river ran through the grasses and emptied into the sea at their backs.  To their left were great rock pillars, like guardians against the sea.  To their right stood a field full of grain ready to harvest.  The air felt crisp in the late fall, but they saw no snow to cover the ground.  Directly behind them all, in the doorway to Earth, Greta stood and waited.

A Wolv ran up, but stopped as it tried to make sense of where it stood as opposed to what it saw through the archway.  A second and third Wolv arrived and stopped as well.  The third Wolv looked like an old gray-haired Wolv.  Greta spoke to the gray hair, and since she spoke from Avalon, she knew her message would be understood.

“You know this planet is off limits.  Your fleet will be destroyed in space before it can arrive if your commander is foolish enough to come here.  As for your transport, I have other tasks to perform, but as soon as I am free, I will attempt to repair your ship so you can leave. You would be wise to confine yourselves to the forest of the dome in the meanwhile.  Do not interfere with the war between the humans, unless you have a wish to die and be no more.”

Greta snapped her fingers and the door to Avalon blinked out of existence.

************************

MONDAY

After a stay on Avalon, Greta and her family need to visit her brother who lives on the north border of Dacia.  She sees only blood being spilled, and fears the war to come.  Until Monday…

*

R6 Greta: Land of the Lost, part 1 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“Son,” Bogus began like he had a long speech prepared, but there came shouts and a great commotion among the horsemen in the distance.  The horses at the parley screamed and swords got drawn, and a hundred men broke from the ranks of horsemen and charged.

The dragon turned and slithered up between the two giants.  It rose up and held itself a matching twenty feet from the ground.  The snow and cloud giants looked briefly at the dragon while it looked back and forth between the two, then all three let loose with everything they had in the face of the oncoming charge.

The snow giant shot sharp pointed icicles, like a machine gun.  Those icicle bullets penetrated everything, wood, bronze, iron, leather, horsehide and human flesh.  The cloud giant let loose one lightning strike after another.  The ground, people and horses exploded, and the thunder boomed for miles.  Greta mumbled.

“There was a reason the ancient gods put all the little ones, the sprites in her hands.  They would not give them to another immortal because it would have made that immortal too powerful.”

The dragon, of course spewed flame and created crispy critters, but after only seconds, that whole line of horsemen turned and ran for their lives.  Greta shouted up.

“Oren, you must take us now.”

The dragon turned.  “I feel the strong urge to cook you and eat you,” Oren said.

“You are still half mine,” Greta responded.  “You have a powerful half that belongs to the sprites of the earth, and you can resist the control over your human half.”

The dragon turned its head up and shot flame into the sky before it lowered its neck for Greta and Bogus to climb on board. “Hold tight to my scales,” the dragon said.  “You will not hurt me.”  They held tight, and as they rose into the air and circled several times to gain some height, Greta got a good bird’s eye view at what happened down below.

The Scythian horsemen made a massive army. Greta feared for her friends, even if they had two giants protecting them, but then she caught sight of an army coming from the east.  Slavs, she thought, and quickly turned her head to see an army coming from the west. “Goths,” she shouted.  Then she looked once more and saw three horses racing back from the parley, and then she saw no more as they shot out over the trees.

After that, Greta looked side to side, but decided she would rather not look down.  She looked for Mithrasis, and felt surprised the goddess had not already picked them up.  She decided that she guessed correctly.  As long as Mithras and Mithrasis canceled each other out, they were vulnerable to more ordinary things.  Mithrasis probably feared the dragon fire, not to mention the dragon claws and teeth.

Greta finally looked down when she felt the dragon begin to circle for a landing.  She saw the river and had to think about that.  Four thousand years ago the river came down more from the north, above the dome.  Now it had shifted to south of the dome which no longer appeared a dome.  She saw no more than a few dozen blocks of stone, even if they were ten ton blocks, but even they started crumbling under thousands of years of relentless weather.

They landed, a rough landing for Greta and Bogus, though one the dragon probably thought of being as soft as he could make it. Bogus said nothing as he slid to the ground and raced into the gap between the stones.  Greta paused.

“Thank you, Oren.  I hope I live long enough so I can bring your grandmother here for a visit.” She wanted to say she would change the dragon back into a man, but she was not sure how to do that, and besides, the gods never made promises.  Greta learned that four thousand years ago when the dome was whole and the Titan who lived in it still lived.  She could do one thing though, and she leaned over carefully and kissed the dragon on the nose.  A great, hot tear rose in the dragon eye before they both heard something that made Greta jump and made the dragon lift its head.  The distant howl of a Wolv echoed through the trees, and someone started coming through the bushes.  Greta ran through the gap in the stones that let her inside.

Bogus closed his mouth.  He had been yelling at his granddaughters, and mostly Berry whom he knew so well from her years among the little ones of the forest.  But when Greta popped into the room, he quieted and everyone stared for an instant of absolute silence before they shouted and Berry ran into Greta’s arms, tears in her eyes.  Fae followed Berry, and a grinning Hans and Hobknot began to nudge each other, like they had some sort of bet.

Greta took a moment to look around that great round space.  Most of the wall looked one block high, though plenty of places still had part of a second block on top, or two whole blocks which made a wall as tall as Greta. A couple of places were three blocks high where Greta could begin to see the slight curve in the stone that once rose up to the top of the dome, but there were not many three block places. There were more blocks and worn down blocks and partially crumbled blocks on the floor of that space, and Greta could see where they were turned into seats and tables for their furniture.

“I never stopped believing,” Berry managed to say before she started to cry again.

“We all kept believing,” Fae said.  “It’s what kept us going on those long winter nights.”

Greta nodded, but she moved Berry into her grandfather’s arms so she could face the old man who sat quietly in the corner. He stood and spoke when Greta’s eyes focused on him.

R6 Greta: The Road of Dreams, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Greta sat alone.  She still had plenty to think about and she was not at all finished with her worry.  There were no guarantees here and she imagined a million things could go wrong. She felt panic coming on, but fought the feeling.  She did not do well in panic situations.

She thought she might be leaving her moody stage and entering her paranoid stage.  She wished Darius was there.  He always made her feel like everything would be all right, even if he had no way of knowing. He was her rock, and she missed him. She took a deep breath of the cold, fresh air, and set her mind to the task.

It did not add up.  She understood Mithras and Mithrasis trapped each other in the woods. When the two gods cancelled each other out, neither one could work many miracles.  She knew it had nothing to do with the old Gott-Druk electric fence because that equipment had surely rotted away after more than four thousand years, and she could not be sure if it had been picked up and moved to Avalon all those millennia ago.

Greta considered Avalon, her home in the Second Heavens, the Castle of the Kairos, her little island sanctuary where all her little ones were welcome to come and rest from their labors.  She looked at her companions who sat quietly, enjoying a wonderful meal.  She briefly thought she could open a door to Avalon, go there, and open a new door in the dome of the master, to step out and thus avoid the woods of the Wolv entirely. But she would not do that.  It would go against her every rule. Somehow, the need to burn her own bridges included walking her own walk.  As she often said, if she was supposed to die on the road so she could be born in her next life, then she had to be on the road to do it.

Greta blanched and thought again about Mithrasis. Mithrasis did not exactly threaten her life, truth be told, though she said it might come to that.  The Nymphus really just wanted to prevent her from coming. Then there was Lucius.  At first, Lucius kept trying to convince her to return to Roman lands.  True, he got a bit carried away with the rock slide, unless it really was the accident he claimed, but otherwise he did not get hostile, uncooperative, or even unhelpful. Jupiter seemed to want to kill them, but then he proved not as accurate with his lightning strikes as he got in her nightmare.  Maybe he just wanted to scare her.  She wondered. Certainly, she felt a strong urge to go home before she had that nightmare.

Greta stopped.  She started getting confused.  But she could not help thinking that even the Persian did not outright attack her, not counting that jackass thing.

“Lady?”  Her faithful centurion, Alesander, got her attention.  Greta looked up and appreciated his faithfulness over the years more than he would ever know.  She saw that Briana still sat by the fire.  She tried not to be obvious, but clearly, she payed strict attention, so Greta knew it was something she and Alesander discussed.

“And what have you and Briana decided?” she asked, and watched Alesander turn red.

“How did you—?”

“It is not our way to question how the druid knows what she knows,” Vedix spoke up.  Vedix sat nearby and listened in.  They probably all listened, especially Mavis.

“I cannot marry you two before I go into the Land of the Lost.  There is not enough time.  My ride is already on the way.”  Greta paused and stood.  “And we have company.”  Her eyes stared off to Alesander’s left so he turned to see what she looked at. Everyone looked.  An army of horsemen stretched across the south from one end of the horizon to the other, and they were drawing near.  Lucius appeared out front, leading them all, and Alesander spit, but held his tongue.

A fine mist followed by several clouds drifted down from overhead and formed into the shape of a giant between them and the oncoming horde.  The cloud formed figure stood twenty-feet tall, and inside the cloud they saw sparks and a kind of blue flame, which said the cloud giant had started to build up enormous amounts of electricity.  The horsemen in the distance slowed.

Then the snow gathered, even from beneath their feet, and it built itself up, higher and higher, until it made a kind of twenty-foot-tall snowman.  It had a grin with great, sharp icicle teeth.  A very small head, upper torso, and arms stuck out from the butt of the snowman. “We came down with the snow.  We were worried about you.” The baby snow person grinned and his own ice teeth filled the grin in a frightening way.

“Bubbles,” Greta named the sprite who disappeared again into the mass of the giant snow body.  Greta went on to speak her thoughts out loud while the rest of the crew got ready to defend her.  “I need to be gone.”

“They look to be sending out a group to parley,” Hermes pointed.  The horsemen stopped a thousand yards off and three men followed Lucius to a spot half-way between the horsemen and the giants.

“Briana, Hermes and Vedix,” Alesander took charge. “Get your horses.  Bogus, Pincushion and Mavis, guard your mistress.” The horses had to be saddled before the horses walked between the giants toward the meeting.  As the horses moved out of earshot, there came a great flapping sound heard from behind, like the leather wings of an enormous bat.  A dragon came over the tree tops and landed beside Greta.  It looked easily forty feet, perhaps fifty feet long, and it raised its head ten feet up to stare down at Greta’s party.  The snow giant and cloud giant paid close attention, but no one made a hostile move.

“Do no harm.  No fire,” Greta shouted in the dragon tongue that all dragons were engineered to obey.  Of course, when they got as big and old as this one, they tended to develop selective hearing.  “No harm.”

The dragon cocked its head, turning it much further than a human neck could turn.  “I still understand the words.”  The dragon spoke in the Gaelic tongue of the people of the forest.

“We need your help,” Greta shouted.  “Your father and I need to reach the dome to save your daughters.”

The dragon turned its head further until it stared, upside down.  It looked hard at Bogus.  “Father?”

************************

MONDAY

Greta and Bogus enter the Land of the Lost.  Until Monday, Happy Reading

*

R6 Festuscato: 9 For Peace, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

They arrived in the woods and held the men back so the chiefs and lords could get a good look.  Saxons covered the grass below the fort, looking as numerous as the blades of grass themselves.  Festuscato wondered how Pinewood came up with the number of five thousand, unless he counted everyone.  It mostly looked like a lot, and several men whistled softly at the sight.  It looked for the moment that the Saxons were stymied by Cadbury Hill.  They had to overcome the three or four terraces that ran all the way around the hill before they could get to the fort itself.  Presently they had no easy way up, but the Saxons had catapults and slings so it would only be a matter of time before the wall came tumbling down.

Festuscato grabbed a handful of grass and let it fall. He felt the wind in his face, and it felt strong, but he knew in Somerset it could be changeable.  He looked at the grass which felt dry, perhaps dangerously dry, and tall where it still stood despite the Saxon footprint. As far as Festuscato knew, it had not rained in the three weeks since he had been back on the island.  He called to his little ones.  Yes, they could keep the wind at ground level blowing in the right direction and could easily set fire to the grass.  He explained what he wanted them to do, and then divided his men.

He had five hundred horse and added five hundred foot men to the count.  He sent them through the trees to the head of the open fields.  Their job would be to prevent any Saxons from escaping, especially horsemen.  The other fifteen hundred men had bows, or prepared themselves with long spears to protect the bowmen.  When things started, they would happen fast.

“Not a very good siege to leave these woods unprotected,” Mirowen commented.

“It isn’t a siege,” Festuscato said.  “They figure the Welsh are busy fighting the Irish, and York and North Britain are too far away to bother, and even if York sends some men, they still have the advantage in numbers.  Obviously, they have their men concentrated in these fields because they have brought the necessary equipment to smash down the walls. Once that onager, that primitive trebuchet makes a big enough hole in the wall, a concentrated charge with massive numbers of men will get the Saxons inside well enough.”

“And now?” Dibs asked.  He knew what an onager was.

“Now I want the siege engines burned along with as many Saxons as possible.  I expect the Saxons to try and escape out from the line of fire.  So we have a thousand men, half on horseback to hunt them down.  I expect most to make for these woods, and we might not survive such an attack, but we should take most of them with us, and the ones who break through will find Dumdiddle and his dwarfs waiting.  I expect some will try to jump the line of fire, but they won’t live long.”  He did not repeat the part about their not surviving, and no one asked, so he gave the signal to begin.

A long line of fire rose up on the other side of the fields and started to move across the field like disciplined soldiers on parade. The Saxons fought the flames, but fire sprites kept it burning and the wind stayed relentless, blowing smoke in the Saxon faces.  When the fighting got fierce on the edge of the woods with all those Saxons that slowly decided to try to escape, Festuscato got word that Constantine and Cador of Cornwall were ready to come out of the fort and attack the Saxons head-on if Festuscato could stop the moving fire.  He did, and sent word to his foot soldiers on the end of the fields to hit the Saxons from behind when those Saxons turned to fight off the men from the fort.  The elves stayed behind the fire line, so any Saxons who tried to jump the fire would be picked off.   Festuscato brought up his dwarfs to hold the trees while he organized a charge of his own.

When the men with the dragon tunics and the men with the lion of Cornwall tunics poured from the fort, the Saxons turned to meet the threat, as expected   The fire hemmed them in, but there remained plenty of room to fight.  When the five hundred fell on the Saxon rear, the Saxons were shaken. When Festuscato lead a thousand men from the woods to hit the Saxon flank and push the enemy into the fire, the Saxon resistance fell apart.  Some tried to force past the five hundred and escape south, back to Sussex, but the Welsh and British horsemen tracked them and caught many.  Others still found the woods their best bet, if they could make it past the dwarfs.  Not many escaped, but some did.  When the Saxons found enemies pressing in on every side, one great line of Saxons jumped the fire at once with the plan to make for the far woods and turn south under cover.  Some got passed the elfish archers, but only by sheer numbers, and they got tracked by Pinewood and his fairies in the late afternoon, and the goblins and trolls after dark.

Only dribs and drabs of Saxons returned to Saxon lands tell the tales, and they were tales to frighten the children, tales of the Roman and his sorcery, of elfin magic and demon terrors in the night. One tale that made it back to Saxony on the continent, and from there up into Danish lands and across the water to the Swedes and Geats was the tale of miraculous dwarfish armor, magical, made with such skill and cunning no sword or ax could break it.  In truth, six dwarfs caught sixty Saxons trying to escape through a gully near the fort.  Six Saxons survived and four made it home alive.  Of course, the tale got stretched, in a literal sense, and expanded until the chain of armor came with a whole trove of cursed treasure, but that came later.  In the near term, the chain of Weland showed up again, but that is a different story.

In truth, Luckless found his Uncle Weland in a pool of blood.  The unbroken chain did not protect everything.  Weland was missing a hand and a foot and leaking from innumerable cuts around his face and neck.  “The jinx of the family,” he breathed out his recognition of his nephew.  “Make your way well in the world.  I never believed in that unlucky stuff.  Here, take the chain.  It may protect you and bring you luck.”  That was all he said when he died, and Luckless cried in the night and said his Uncle was the only one who ever believed in him, and what was he going to do now?

************************

MONDAY

R6 Festuscato: 10 Londugnum:  After the battle is cleaned up, and the people of Britain, Wales, and Cornwall are convinced that this Pendragon idea might work after all, Festuscato and his crew escape to London…and then, from London.  Until Monday, Happy Reading

*

R6 Festuscato: 9 For Peace, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Danna spanked Talesin so hard he took to the air, involuntarily, and landed somewhere out in the channel.  “Now, Addaon,” she smiled for the boy.  “Never forget.  That was your sire, but Dyrnwch is your father.  Always honor your father.”

“Dyrnwch is my father.  I will not forget,” Addaon said, and he added, “Mother.”

Danna put her hand to the boy’s cheek again, and patted it softly.  “Good boy. Marry and have children of your own, and I cannot say if I will see you again.”  She turned away and shouted and clapped her hands.  “Rhiannon.”

“Now what?”  Rhiannon appeared.  “I was just about to take Clugh for a good wing stretchy.”

“I know,” Danna said.  “You can do that here.  Do you see those towers, building?”

“Of course.”

“I would appreciate it if you and Clugh practiced setting them on fire.”

“Yes.  But there are men there.  Aren’t you afraid we might be teaching him the wrong sort of lesson?”

“Perhaps.  But you know Festuscato.  He crosses one bridge at a time.”

Rhiannon nodded.  “He makes it up as he goes along.  By the way, I heard Talesin scream all the way in Amorica.”

“He broke the rules, a thing you should consider as long as you still have work to do.”

Rhiannon changed the subject by peeking around Danna. “Addaon.  Hello brother.  I think I will call you brother A.”

“Hello?”  Addaon got the word out in the face of the goddess, but he did not sound to certain, as Rhiannon vanished and Danna let Festuscato come home.

“All right,” Festuscato shouted and saw the various Lords of Wales were dismounted and waiting patiently.  They all saw what happened, but Danna made sure they did not hear, and she made sure Addaon knew they did not hear.  “Ogryvan,” Festuscato called.  They were hearing now.  “When the dragon attacks, the rest of us will attack this end of the Irish line. Ogryvan, I want you and your men to take the town.  Try to kill only the Irish, and there is nothing wrong with driving them to their ships and letting them cut loose.  Do not burn the Irish ships.  Anwyn should be allowed to keep them as a small payment for his troubles.  Okay?”

Ogryvan nodded.

“Bryn and Dyrnwch, you and your men take the point. You men from the coasts need to back them up.  The idea is when the Irish run away from the dragon, the rest should be running away from us, and when the two groups run into each other, hopefully, in the confusion, they will surrender.  Allow them to surrender.  We don’t want an all-out war with the Irish.  We just want to hurt them enough so they don’t try this again.  Got it?”

Men nodded, and Bran whispered.

“Good plan.  Good luck.  They are not trained Romans.”

Festuscato heard a scream come all the way from the back of the woods.  “Dragon! What do you mean you smell dragon!”

“I was kind of hoping the clerics would keep Mousden quiet.  I forgot about the dwarf’s nose,” Mirowen said.

“You better go see to them,” Festuscato told her, and she gave him a dirty look for using that as an excuse to keep her out of it, but she took her horse and went without arguing.  “Mount up,” Festuscato yelled, and it took only moments before they charged the Irish line.

Things did not go as expected, which was expected. Ogryvan’s men took no prisoners and burned the Irish ships, the docks, several fishing boats and one merchantman from Lyoness which happened to be in port when all of this started.  Ogryvan apologized, profusely, but could not hide his pleasure.  When Festuscato pointed out that Ogryvan would have to pay for the fishing boats and merchant ship, he lost his smile.

“Of course, you can appeal to the Pendragon, but I would not expect sympathy from the lords gathered there.”

It took more than expected to get the Irish to give up their position and collapse the line, and when they gave up ground, they did not run in panic but pulled back, slowly.  Bran lost his horse to an arrow early on, but that proved worse for the Irish as he showed what an artist he was with that big sword of his.  Dibs and the monks Cedrych and Madog joined him as he led a company of men along the wall of the fort where the horses could not go. Meanwhile, men ran well enough from the dragon, but Clugh got distracted by all that motion and fried a number of men. Rhiannon tried to keep her baby to task, but did not begrudge him some fun since getting the Irish to run was the plan.

In the end, there were plenty of Irish soldiers who tried to escape to the woods.  Half of their ships were a number of miles away in a cove the Saxons would use in Gerraint’s day.  Festuscato knew the escapees would never make it to their ships, and indeed, the guards they left around the ships would not survive the night, and he felt bad about putting his little ones in danger, but he also felt bad about the fact that his little ones interpreted orders in whatever way felt convenient.  He knew surrender would not be convenient.

The only thing Festuscato insisted on was finding Sean Fen.  It turned out to be easy.  The man had been killed by an arrow the day before Festuscato arrived, and he said so in the letter of condolence he wrote to MacNeill.  Then they had to get everyone to Cadbury, because the Saxons were definitely moving, an army of about five thousand strong.  Fortunately, there were twelve hundred men coming down from the north, from York and Fort Guinnon and Edinburgh, and Festuscato thought if he timed it right, he could meet up with them somewhere around Bath.  With his little ones added in, he might move three thousand to meet the Saxon threat, and hopefully south Britain, Cadbury and Cornwall could make up the number difference.