Death at Dragonthroat

Author – Teel James Glenn

Chapter 1

T.K. hit the ground hard and lay breathing in short gasps, the weight of the backpack driving most of the air out of him. He lay with his eyes closed, feeling the damp, cool earth pressed against his right cheek.

That was the strangest bullet hit I’ve ever taken, he decided. I wonder where I’m wounded. He didn’t move for awhile, feeling his body for the pain or numbness that should be there. I must still be in shock. He remained motionless, afraid to find out just where the irate Indian had shot him. Finally, with great trepidation, he opened his eyes.

The only thing he could see was a clump of reddish weeds a few feet away, which impressed him in one respect; it was broad daylight!

I must have been hit bad, maybe in the head and they left me for dead! He waited a long moment before hauling himself up on his elbows.

It was then he heard the sound that marked a major turning point in his life. It sounded like "Zeth mey zo?" but in a whispered voice. T.K. looked up.

Seated astride a great black charger (it looked more like a horse than anything else, though the antlers and red mane marked it as most definitely not a horse) was a man. He seemed several hard years older than T.K. with a rugged face that had been handsome in youth. His hair and goatee were short cropped and jet-black. He was smiling.

This latter fact was good because he was also armed with a disturbing array of weapons: a saber with a hand guard in the shape of a skull at his left hip, two short poniard-like weapons at his right hip, a back sheathed sword of the two-handed variety under a cover, and four serpent shaped throwing knives in his broad sash.

The rider wore a rough sewn sleeveless leather shirt and trunks with a throat protecting cowl piece hanging open off his left shoulder. He wore knee high leather puttees and what appeared to be chaps strapped on in order to protect the insides of his thighs from his mounts’ sides while riding.

T.K. decided to smile back.

The stranger tried again. "Zeth mew eth mey zo?" he asked, his voice a harsh whisper. Still he smiled, so T.K. did not perceive an immediate threat. He studied the man further and found the reason for the whisper: there was an ugly scar almost from ear to ear on his throat. The scar was long healed and, from the look of it, had been poorly sutured. The other striking feature was a peculiar pattern of scar tissue in the center of the man’s chest that appeared to be some sort of brand. The scar was in the shape of triple interlocked diamonds.

T.K. pushed himself to his knees and then stood up, startled that he could find no wound on himself. The rider watched T.K.’s self-appraisal with interest. T.K. looked around him for the first time and realized a few things had changed. The train tunnel and the mountains were gone.

He stood on a flat plain by a small lake and as far as the eye could see were gently rolling hills. The quality of daylight seemed different. It took him a moment to realize it, but everything had two shadows, one tinted pink and one tinted blue, which gave everything a theatrical quality. He glanced up and saw that the sun was now small, pink, and not alone! A second orb, blue and smaller, sat neatly in the sky not far above the horizon.

The rider made as if to clear his throat to get T.K.’s attention, and then by sign language made T.K. understand he wanted him to put on the small, strangely carved crystal ring he held out. I hope this doesn’t mean we’re engaged, T.K. thought as he slipped it on. There was a sudden tingle in his head and a buzzing in his ears, but it passed quickly.

"Can you understand me now, Sirrah?" the rider asked in his hoarse whisper.

"Sure, but what I . . . " T.K. started and then froze. He did. He did understand, although somehow he knew it was not that the man was speaking English! "This sure as hell isn’t Kansas," he said. Then he managed an eloquent, "How?"

"All questions in their own rhythm, Sirrah, but answer me this first: are you a cannibal?"

T.K. stared at the man, and arched an eyebrow. "What?"

"An eater of sentient flesh?" The man’s manner was so straightforward and sincere that T.K. caught himself examining his memory for personal violations in line with the stranger’s question. He shook himself.

"Hell no, never touch the stuff," T.K. said emphatically. "Clogs the nervous system with toxins."

"Good," the stranger said as if from personal experience. "I can’t abide cannibals."

"I agree," T.K. said. "They’re a bore at parties."

The strangely costumed man slid gracefully from the saddle of his mount without so much as a clink from his frightening array of cutlery and walked back to one of the pack ‘horses’ (there were three which T.K. had not noticed before). He hunted through one of the packs and finally pulled out the blanket he was looking for. He also took out a length of rope and moved to one of the beasts that were not burdened with a pack.

"I assume you are curious about where you are," the stranger said, "and how you got here." He cut a length of rope, threw a blanket over the animal’s back, and lashed it on with the rope.

"The thought had crossed my mind." T.K. said as he removed his torn denim shirt and stored its remains in the backpack. He donned a buckskin vest that Whitefawn had fashioned for him by hand; its surface had intricate beadwork in red, green, and blue with a stylized butterfly, which was the Lacota symbol for eternal life and memory. He smiled, thinking of Whitefawn one last time before consigning her to his mental hall of might-have-been loves.

The stranger laughed, something that seemed to come easily to him. "By the Rhythem, my manners seem to have fled me." He turned and bowed elaborately. "My name is Lord Erique Shoutte of Shoutte, and I am Priest of the Kova."

"Pleased to meet you, if somewhat puzzled." T.K. inclined his head.

This has got to be a drug-induced fantasy, T.K. thought, and I’ve got to find out who prescribed this drug and where he got it.

"My name’s T.K. Mitchell," he said aloud.

"Tee-Kay? Strange name." Lord Shoutte produced a small parchment-like scroll from a belt pouch and unfurled it to reveal a carefully drawn map. It showed three vaguely crescent-shaped islands with a variety of unreadable symbols and scrawlings.

"Well, Tee-Kay," Lord Shoutte said, "By the Rhythem, let me tell you where you are." He pointed first to the map and then spread his hands in an expansive gesture to take in the plain around them.

"This is the high road to Tolan, capital of Cosen. As you see, we are on the north continent of a world we call Altiva."

"Altiva? But how . . . here?" He held up the ring and looked questioningly at Lord Shoutte.

"The linguaring is a wizard charm. Ask me not how it works, I am but a simple priest," Lord Shoutte shrugged. "The Warp Wizards do many things better left unquestioned." He said the last as if he were quoting a rote saying, not as if he believed it.

T.K. leaned against his walking stick and, with a measure of disgust, said, "Come on, uh, Lord Shoutte, straight! How did I get here?" Even as he asked it the momentary fantasy of the old woman and the shadowy figures crossed his mind. Can you have an acid trip within an acid trip? he wondered.

"The warps, of course," Lord Shoutte whispered indignantly. "I heard a wizard once speak about them. He said that there was a civilization that used the warp portals as you or I would use a common door. Then something happened. The Rhythem was fulfilled and the civilization was gone. But the warps remained." He scratched his chin reflexively. "Now people and things are always dropping through one warp or another."

T.K. just stared at the man and nodded, more in shock than acknowledgement. "Yeah, sure."

Lord Shoutte walked back to his own mount and placed a foot in the ornate stirrup. "Well, Sirrah, hop aboard." He stepped up into his own saddle and motioned to the blanketed back of the pack animal. His expression changed to concern when, as he watched, T.K. looked around as if some unseen third party were the Sirrah in question.

"Hop aboard?" T.K. said.

"I believe I said that already." Lord Shoutte leaned forward and evidenced considerable annoyance. His whispered voice took on an edge. "You do want to find a Warp Wizard to help you find a way back to your world?"

"Off to see the wizard, huh? I believe it is the thing to do under the circumstances."

"You can ride, can you not?" Lord Shoutte asked.

T.K. jumped astride the former pack animal’s back. "Bareback, on my head, or blind drunk," he said. "Lead on."

The two of them rode off at a leisurely pace, but every once in a while T.K. looked up at the sky, as if he expected a house to drop on him.

The world that Lord Shoutte called Altiva (or at least the part that T.K. saw on the first day’s ride) reminded the reluctant visitor of Ireland, but it was an acid trip Ireland of gently rolling hills that seemed in constant motion because of the twin shadows cast by the two suns. The double shadow gave T.K. the most trouble in judging distance and relative size. He found himself doing a mental double take when something seemed to have moved that hadn’t. Unless large boulders on Altiva shiver, he thought.

Lord Shoutte proved an amiable traveling companion, full of anecdotes, bawdy jokes, and interesting trivia about Altiva, all of which had more than trivial value to T.K. The Earthman for his part entertained Lord Shoutte with his own considerable store of bawdy jokes and some travel stories that had been bizarre even back on good old Terra Firma.

At some point Lord Shoutte noticed the tattoo of the Marine Corps emblem on T.K.’s left arm and remarked, "I see you have a skill mark."

"A skill mark?" T.K. idly studied the ruins of a building that had come into view over the next hill. Lord Shoutte made a face.

"Has anyone ever told you that you have an annoying tendency of repeating what has been said to you?" The dark haired warrior’s whisper drew T.K.’s eyes back to him. Lord Shoutte used the opportunity to indicate the design branded onto the center of his own chest. T.K. noted that the symbol had been made up of three separate brandings far enough apart to allow each prior wound to heal.

"This proclaims me as a priest of the Kova," Lord Shoutte said. "Priestsinger, healer, and warrior. What does yours mean?" When he pointed to T.K.’s tattoo, the Earthman laughed.

"It means that once I was mean, tough, and too stupid not to volunteer," T.K. said, and then added sagely, "I lived to be older and wiser." Lord Shoutte looked very puzzled, as if he were going to say something but then thought better of it. He reined up his mount next to the first of the ruins.

"Let us tether the vorns here," he rasped," and make camp. The wind blows cold at night here. The walls will serve us well." T.K. climbed down off his mount massaging his sore behind.

"You see to the beasties, then. I’ll gather enough firewood to last the night." T.K. handed his reins to Lord Shoutte and walked off in the direction of several low walls that appeared to have once encased an orchard or garden. Blue leaved trees stood in carefully staggered rows. Firewood was plentiful at the foot of the trees.

Holy shit, T.K. thought, it just doesn’t seem real. Last night I was with a sweet Sioux princess while we hid out from her brothers and now . . . He laughed to himself. Well, his legs aren’t as nice as hers, but at least he is nobility too.

When T.K. had carried his third armload of wood back to camp, he stacked some of it into a neat pile beneath a wide arch. Lord Shoutte had set down their gear beneath the arch and gathered some dried grass for kindling. T.K. removed a flint kit from his pack and began trying to spark a fire.

Lord Shoutte, who was feeding the animals in a makeshift corral of rubble nearby, laughed. "No need for that, Tee-Kay." Lord Shoutte finished with the animals and walked over to watch T.K.’s progress with interest.

"I ran out of matches," T.K. explained. Lord Shoutte looked puzzled.

"You’ve no need of the firebrands you speak of. I have Rhythemwand." He reached behind him and tapped the agate handle of the sword slung across his back. The handle was an intricately carved feathered dragon, which curved around a central grip serving as knuckle guard, its open mouth gripping a blood-red pommel stone.

Lord Shoutte drew the sword and held it aloft, clearing the sheath with practiced elegance. The blade looked as if it had been carved out of crystal, holding the last rays of the setting suns and throwing back a small rainbow. It glowed with an almost living brilliance.

Lord Shoutte brought the weapon down in a shallow arc that struck a rock near the kindling with a glancing blow. A spark leapt from the rock and the kindling was soon smoldering. With his haunted eyes still fixed on the sword, T.K. knelt close to the wood and nursed the fire into full life. Lord Shoutte sheathed the sword with almost melancholy reluctance, sliding the crystal blade into place on his back with casual perfection of motion that bespoke uncounted hours of practice.

"Neat trick," T.K. whispered as he fed branches into the fire.

"No trick, not Rhythemwand," Lord Shoutte said with a touch of pain in his whispered reply. "It was grown in my own blood by a Crystalsmith to bond it to me. It will shatter when I die, and I will die should it shatter. They say only another crystal blade can do it harm." He stood proudly, his fingers caressing the dragon handle that seemed to move in the flickering light of the fire. "Some say that a crystal blade molds itself to the purpose of the user at bonding so that if the user is evil it will be a cursed sword; if he serves a just cause only the just may hold it." He sighed with his own remembered adventures. "Rhythemwand," he said with finality.

T.K. finished teepeeing the wood and sat back. He looked up and pointed to the saber on Lord Shoutte’s belt. "What do you call that one?" he asked.

Lord Shoutte looked at him as if he were a bit simple. "Why, a sword."

T.K. caught the tone. He grabbed his walking stick and rose. "Come on, Fred," he mumbled to the stick, "let’s go take a piss."

Lord Shoutte watched him leave with a puzzled expression.

Dinner consisted of a stew of meat and vegetables (none of which T.K. could identify, but which went down with no great difficulty) and a grain, which was heated in oil and popped like corn. It had a sweet taste and finished the meal on a high note.

"Whatever that grain was," T.K. said as he picked his teeth with a twig, "it was good." He gathered the wooden plates and, after scraping them down with some of the sandy soil, washed and dried them.

Lord Shoutte returned to the campfire with the empty feedbags from the animals, determinedly chewing a piece of licorice that T.K. had given him.

"I have to thank you again for the hospitality, Lord Shoutte," T.K. said.

"It is both a pleasure and a duty," Lord Shoutte said. "Pity though you have no dice. I crave a game and, uh, lost my dice in the last town." He contentedly chewed off another hunk of the licorice. "Hmm. I like this Lick-or-ish."

"That was the last of a batch I picked up in Bismarck," T.K. said with a smile, remembering the circumstances. "Not a stick left."

"Pity. It would have made the rhythm of days more enjoyable. To the Rhythem!" he exclaimed. Then he reached into a saddlebag and pulled out a small package wrapped in oilcloth. He unwrapped it to reveal a green gelatinous cake, which he tossed to T.K. "I do have this tranya to satisfy my sweet tooth. Cut yourself a piece. And a small piece for my sweet tooth."

"I’ll pass," T.K. said, his tone suddenly overfriendly. "The law of averages is stacked against three alien dishes agreeing with my stomach in one night." Lord Shoutte cut off a chunk of the green cake and returned it to its wrapping.

"I thought you wouldn’t," Lord Shoutte said in his hoarse whisper. "I saw that you made no use of the dinner knife either." He bit off a healthy chunk of the tranya and chewed it slowly, his eyes never leaving T.K.’s.

T.K. returned the stare with gentle animosity. "I just don’t like things with blades."

Lord Shoutte let out a deep breath. "You’ll not do well on this world with a dislike of that nature, Tee-Kay. This is a sword’s world." As if the statement needed reinforcing, Lord Shoutte touched the hilt of the saber lying beside him.

T.K.’s glance at the weapon held an emotion closer to fear than annoyance. "I’ve made do in some pretty tough places without resorting to knives," T.K. said with bravado.

Lord Shoutte’s reply, couched in his hoarse whisper, was a chilling one. "Altiva is not a tough place. It is a deadly one." He spoke matter-of-factly and touched the long scar at his throat. "My people, the Kovar, are the most tolerant, perhaps the most peaceful, loving people on this world, yet we are always armed."

T.K. was becoming annoyed, but forced jocularity into his answer. "I’m not defenseless." He forced a laugh. "Not by a long shot. Hell, you’re a priest, right? So how come you preach killing?"

Lord Shoutte stopped in mid-chew of the tranya and drew himself up to full-seated height. "I preach the Kova, Sirrah, the principle of change eternal." He swallowed the last of his snack. "The only constant in the universe. Life to death, day to night." All anger was gone from his voice; he even smiled like a devout man imparting truth. "The Kova," he continued. "I preach change, but then if some fool wishes to try and harm me or an innocent against the Rhythem of the Universe, I just help his transition to the next plane."

T.K. smiled back. "I heard a Hell’s Angel give a speech like that in Phoenix. He tried to beat me up right afterward."

T.K. rose, threw a few more branches on the fire, and began laying out his bedroll. "Was he successful?"

"Actually," T.K. said, stripping off his vest, "Yeah. He beat the shit out of me."

Lord Shoutte stared at him for him for a moment, and then began to laugh, the sound made strange by his inability to talk above a whisper.

T.K. realized what he had said and joined in.

"Well, chum," T.K. said when the moment had passed, "I’m beat. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a trip to another world." He unlaced his hiking boots and settled down.

"Sleep with the Rhythem, Tee-Kay. And, again, welcome to Altiva." The priest moved to the other side of the fire and stretched out his bedroll near his saddle.

T.K. listened to him settle in and begin to breath rhythmically. He lay awake for a long time, listening to the unfamiliar yet oddly calming night sounds of Altiva. The dual moons lit the countryside around the ruined buildings as brightly as a summer twilight or a harvest moon back on earth. My god, he thought, this is so real yet so freakin’ bizarre.

Lord Shoutte was real and the earth (or was it Altiva?) beneath him was real enough, particularly the stones beneath his bedroll. It was like the world had taken a right turn at reality somewhere, except for that phantom woman, Meegana.

‘Emperor’, Meegana had said. He smiled, and me busted back to PFC three separate times! Then he thought of Sphona, his mother. He saw her in his mind’s eye, bringing a hot lunch down the hill from the house to the shed where his father chipped and shaped heaps of stone into grave monuments. She brought down his lunch so he wouldn’t track dust into her immaculate house, and to share his work with him for a little while.

So strong, so proud, so gentle a woman, it was easy enough to imagine her the daughter of an emperor, and so sad a woman. As a ten-year-old boy he heard her one night seated at the kitchen table crying. He was about to rush to comfort her when his father’s calloused, gentle hand stopped him.

"Why is mother crying?" young T.K. asked.

"Your mother likes to go home in her memory now and again, Son," his father had said quietly, "because it is the only way she can go home." His father was a great bear of a man who was never angered, yet at that moment young Teel Kantos Mitchell could see the anguish in him, the utter helplessness that suffused his entire being.

I think I see now, Dad, T.K. thought. You loved her so much, yet there was one thing you couldn’t give her--a simple trip home.

He thought about the story of his parents that Meegana had told him. He searched his childhood memories for facts that would verify the story. Could all the frequent moves when he was young--the suspicion of strangers that his parents drilled into him, and the attitude of self-reliance his father had raised in both he and V.J.--had been because they were on the run from an empire on another world?

The sense of being pursued faded by the time T.K. had reached his teens and his folks had felt safe enough to settle down and buy a house. It seemed too fantastic, too absurd to consider, save that with the template of that fear of pursuit superimposed over a million tiny actions that otherwise would have no connection, a pattern emerged.

In the most sensible of ways, the nonsensical made perfect sense.

I guess you two had it a lot tougher than I could have imagined, he thought. And to his parents, Thanks.

The mounts snorted and kicked in their corral, and Lord Shoutte rose from near the fire to go check on them. T.K. watched him go with a stray thought about what sort of nocturnal creatures roamed on Altiva, but it was a rhetorical thought because he didn’t really want to know.

You were always so evasive about our family background, Mom, T.K. thought, but it seems just about right that you were a fairy tale princess. His parents had died of pneumonia a week apart. Right up until the end they had been as affectionate as newlyweds. T.K. pulled his sleeping bag tighter around him against a sudden gust of wind. He rolled over and ignored the distant cry of a nightbird.

His final thought before sleep claimed him was his usual last thought, one, which had become almost a litany to him. "God, let me have just one night without dreams. Just one night without the NIGHTMARE."

***

From somewhere beyond the mounts the shrill cry of the Ko-ta bird sounded a second time and Axe knew his men were in place at last. The camp was now surrounded. The first of the scouts had trailed the priest and the Outworlder since late afternoon, but the rest had not arrived until only an hour ago.

Axe, crouched in the shadows of a large boulder, had been with the scout team and had stayed behind to keep an eye on the Outworlder. It was the Outworlder that the Wizard Emperor had instructed the group to kill. The priest was a problem. He was the reason Axe had sent for reinforcements; it was not wise to face a skill-marked Kovar priest without the odds being in one’s favor.

The priest’s mounts had caught scent of the arriving band, but no one had been seen. Axe had deployed his men around the camp after making them leave their mounts far enough away so that changes in the wind would not carry either scent or sound to alert the priest. Nothing would go wrong with this ambush; the cost of reporting failure had been made all too clear in the Wizard’s message.

Axe watched the priest return to his bedroll and was a little surprised when the careless priest doused the bright fire

Stupid holy man, Axe thought when his eyes had readjusted to the dark so he could see the shape of the priest’s bedroll. So confidant of your superiority that you don’t care if there might be bandits about? He chuckled viciously.

The priest had rolled himself into his bedroll with his back to Axe, a bundle of bedding ready for the slaughter. The Outworlder was already snoring loudly.

"Stupid priest," Axe whispered. He spit and rose grasping the long-handled war axe from which he took his name. He tucked the Serpent Pendant, which hung about his neck, into his tunic and leaned his head back to cry "Kooo-ta!" a third time to call his men in for the attack.

A circle of steel detached itself from the shadows as fifteen shapes moved forward on the call.

Let the others deal with the priest. Zomar damn him, Axe thought. It will be my axe which takes the prize for Lord Gavilon in one clean stroke. He smiled with anticipation.

Death at Dragonthroat
by Teel James Glenn

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