Now the guards, a bit slow on the uptake, advanced on the flames, swords ready.
I am impressed with your gun, Fiera thought.
Job’s not finished. I scanned the flames for the others.
A guard returned to stand beside me. He thought it was all over?
Something flashed from a low tangle. I realized that it was another bandit, this one with a crossbow, so I hadn’t seen any motion of drawing an arrow. I whirled to plug him, and knew I got him, but the bolt was already on the way. It was too late even to duck.
The guard beside me extended the flat of his sword in a lightning motion. The bolt smacked into it, emitting a cracking sound and a spark before dropping to the ground. Right in front of my face.
I stared at the fallen bolt, then at the guard. He had acted with precision, the moment it was required, intercepting the bolt in mid air. He had known exactly what he was doing.
“You boys didn’t even need my help,” I said. “Reflexes like that—”
He merely turned away.
The last two bandits are fleeing. They have seen your weapon in action. The numbers are no longer in their favor.
Oh, shit! Can you point me to a bandit?
Why? We have won this engagement. There is no longer danger from them.
Just do it, please.
Then through the brush and diminishing flames I saw a figure, hunching down, running clumsily away. Thanks! I launched myself into pursuit.
I think the bandit might have outrun me, but it never occurred to him that I would be reversing the attack. By the time he saw me I was close enough to tackle him. I brought him down hard, then wrestled one of his arms behind in a hammerlock. “Stop struggling,” I told him.
Realizing that I had the advantage, not to mention the pain hold, he obeyed. I let him go and stepped back, holding the gun on him. “Make my day,” I said.
He might not know the reference, but he was pretty sure I could hurt him if he gave me reason. Certainly the two guards could. He stood up, facing me, silent.
Dubi and the princess came up. “Kill him,” Dubi said. “He’s dangerous. He will strike the moment he gets the chance.”
“Not yet,” I said. “I’m waiting for the dragon.”
Fiera was already approaching. Kill him. He’s a treacherous knave.
I spoke to the bandit. “What’s your name?”
He paused briefly, then answered. “Boffo.”
True. But that’s about all he’ll tell you.
“Boffo, I need to know who sent you here, and why.”
He gazed at me with something like a sneer hovering in the vicinity of his ugly face. He was concluding that I was an ignoramus who could be fooled. “You’re obviously wealthy travelers with gold to steal and a pretty wench to rape. So we went after you. It’s what we do for a living.”
He’s lying.
“Now Boffo, there are two ways we can do this,” I said seriously. “You can answer my questions as fully and honestly as possible, and I will let you go unharmed. Or you can be balky, or try to lie to me, and I will have the dragon roast you alive. It will take you a while to die in utter agony with your skin fried; you wouldn’t like it. You have three chances. You have used up one. I ask you again: who sent you, and why?”
“I already answered you, idiot!”
“That’s two.” I glanced at the dragon, who obligingly puffed out a little cloud of smoke. “Final time: who?”
Now the bandit realized that he was done. “We were ordered to intercept you here. To kill the men and take the princess captive, for ransom.”
True.
“That’s better. Who ordered you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, alarmed. “I swear! I’m just a lowly bandit; our leader got the order. He’s gone.”
True.
I considered. So I had gotten the wrong man. It had hardly been worth it. All I had done was confirm what we pretty well knew already: they were after the princess.
I sighed. “Okay. I gave my word. Take off.”
But Boffo just stood there. “I can’t.”
This was curious. “Why not?”
“Because now I’ve squealed, I’ll be marked for death. You might as well kill me. Only not by burning alive. Make it fast and clean.”
True.
I sighed again. That would teach me to give my word ignorantly. Well, I would have to work it out. “We now have a spare horse. We’ll take you to where you aren’t known, and let you go there. Will that do?”
He eyed me cannily. “Sure. But they’ll track me down regardless.”
I thought fast. “Okay. We’ll garb you like the dead guard, and you’ll take his place. We’ll put your clothes on his body and scorch it so it’s unrecognizable. Then they’ll figure you’re dead and won’t look for you. You’ll be free and safe as long as you stay well clear of your former associates.”
Boffo nodded. “That might work.”
He takes you for a fool for keeping your word. He’ll back-stab you when he has the chance and make a run for it. He’s a complete rogue; he can’t be trusted.
Damn. Why had I ever messed in with this business? I just kept getting in deeper.
The princess stepped forward. “I will handle it.”
I was surprised. “You will handle this rogue? How?”
“I will kiss him. Then he will behave.”
“You can’t trust him!” I protested. “He’d as soon rape you as look at you!”
“You got that right, rube,” Boffo muttered. “She’s a looker.”
The princess went to the bandit. She took his head between her hands, held it in place, and kissed him on the lips. I simply stared, appalled by her naivete.
Then Boffo dropped to his knees. “Lady!” he cried. “I worship you! Command me.”
“Just do as Sir Roan says.” She turned away from him. “He is now my love slave,” she told me. “He will not harm me or betray me in any way. The effect will last about three days. That should be time enough.”
True.
“I’ll be dipped in spit,” I breathed. I had just learned something astonishing about the princess. She was not at all defenseless. In fact, no member of this party was any pushover. Then it hit me: Sir Roan?
She gave you a title to facilitate your work. That is her prerogative.
Oh. We made the exchange, while the princess discreetly faced away, laying the dead guard in the path in the bandit’s clothes and scorching him enough. The others we left where they had fallen. The surviving bandits would discover them in due course and perhaps take warning.
“We shall have to notify the guard’s kin that he died honorably,” I said. “But that we could not recover his body.”
“It shall be done,” Dubi said. “These men are accustomed to hardship and death. His kin will be well taken care of.”
“They shall be,” the princess agreed.
Boffo was now in the guard’s clothing and armor, girt with his weapons. It was a reasonable fit, considering he was not as large or muscular as the guard. “I had hoped to take this outfit as booty,” he said. “Now I don’t care, as long as I can serve the princess.”
Then we all mounted and resumed our trek. “I think we found the right man,” Dubi said.
“No way! I fouled everything up and had to be bailed out by the princess.”
“You did not lose your wits in a crisis,” he said. “You acted with dispatch, organizing an effective counterattack. You used your weapon to excellent effect. You obtained necessary information. You worked out a feasible continuation when there was a problem. This is the kind of assistance we require. Neither the princess nor I are good organizers or fighters. You will do.”
“I just did what I had to do. If I’d had more time, I would have figured out something better. As it was, it was ragged.” And I had needed to be saved by a guard.
“Cease debating, or the princess will kiss you.”
I glanced at the princess, and she met my gaz
e and smiled faintly. She didn’t need to kiss me to wipe out my individual volition; she was well on the way to doing that already. I shut up.
I realized that when Fiera had teased me about the princess becoming my mistress, she had meant it in the same way as Boffo. My absolute ruler. She had literal magic.
True.
And what other significant things did I have to learn about the Realm? I feared I was in way over my head. Yet such was the inherent magic of the situation, I did not mind. Much of what I had daydreamed about before, was actually coming to pass, in its weird fashion.
I noticed that Boffo, riding in the guard’s place just ahead of us, was scowling. I moved up to talk to him. “You look angry. What’s the problem? Haven’t I treated you fairly?”
“I don’t have to talk to you, pisshead!” he said gruffly. I was intrigued by the way the language translation spell handled insults. “We made a deal. That’s all.”
“A deal in the interest of protecting the princess,” I reminded him. “I’m still learning about this Realm.”
“I love her, not you.”
He was starting to get to me. “I am working for her. She would be dismayed if you balked my helping her.”
He was rebelliously silent. I glanced back to catch the eye of the princess. She cleared her throat loud enough to be heard.
Boffo melted. “What do you want? I’ve told you what little I know.”
“I want to know why you were scowling.”
“That’s relevant?”
“It could be.”
“It’s not you,” he said. “I am not your friend. You’re a foreign simpleton, but you kept your word. I’m not mad at you.”
So he was being honest. “Who, then?”
“At the traitor who gave us the assignment. We were set up.”
“You were set up?”
“Sent to ambush a party with masked Class A Warriors. Might as well ambush a dragon with a toothpick. We weren’t supposed to succeed. We got wiped out just to make a stupid point. We’d never have taken the mission if we had known.”
This is interesting. I am reading his thoughts as they come to the surface.
I found it interesting too, remembering the almost casual way the guard had saved my life. Those were inhuman reflexes. A Class A Warrior? I had sudden respect. The bandit didn’t even know about the mental powers of the dragon, and I was not about to tell him. This was a truly high-powered party. “Why, then?”
“That’s what I’m figuring out now. The only thing I can think of is as a warning to the princess: she faces real danger if she persists in trying to be independent.”
“And what about me?”
“What about you? Why did they make a risky trip to pick up a doofus like you? They certainly didn’t need you to defend them, even with your deadly alien weapon. There’s something else going on.”
Exactly my conclusion. Too bad it had required a scoundrel bandit to reason out the obvious. I suspected it would be pointless to ask either Dubi or the princess. Especially if I, too, were being set up in some way.
Those guards had been slow to react, letting me take the lead. Why? Because they were under orders to let me do my stuff, as long as I didn’t hurt myself. So I had performed, like a seal at a water show, and it seemed Dubi and the princess were satisfied. Did they really need a foreign private eye? That seemed unlikely. But that left the mystery of why they had gone to the trouble of fetching me from L.A., and why the princess was being nice to me.
Are you in on this, Fiera?
No. I share your confusion. They clearly need you for something, but not for what we thought.
That was vaguely reassuring. The others might have secrets, but the dragon was being straight with me.
True.
“You’re catching on,” Boffo said. “You’re another patsy, like me.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“No? At least I know my love for the princess is magic, and will wear off. The irony is that I don’t even want it to; I want to grovel at her hem forever. But she didn’t kiss you. What’s your excuse?”
“You asshole!” I muttered.
He merely looked knowingly at me.
I left him and fell back to rejoin the princess, saying nothing about anything. What would be the point?
Chapter Five
We continued on.
Admittedly, I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. In fact, I wasn’t even entirely sure I hadn’t completely lost my mind back there in my office in Los Angeles. Maybe I had. But if riding high upon a powerful horse, with a telepathic dragon flying above and a beautiful princess before me meant that I was going crazy...well, sign me up.
If this is crazy, I don’t want to be sane.
True, I may not know what the hell was going on, and, yes, I might currently be babbling incoherently in some insane asylum, but the one thing I was sure of was this: I had been hired to do a job. I had been hired to track down a killer. An assassin.
Insane or not, I was damn well going to finish the job—and collect that pouch of gold, too.
As I was idly wondering just how I would actually deposit a pouch of gold over at my bank, the forest trail opened onto a grassy meadow and, in the far distance, I could see an actual castle.
We soon came upon all manner of dwellings, from small thatched homes, to bigger stone structures. All who saw us bowed deeply, many smiling at the princess. I noted the guards closed ranks around her, although she didn’t notice. She smiled back and even waved.
So she was a kind ruler, well-loved by those in the Realm. Although I was not surprised, this greatly relieved me. I would have questioned my judgment had I discovered I was smitten by someone cruel and reviled. And the one thing an investigator can never do is question his judgment or assessment of people. Sometimes that was the only thing we had.
The grassy meadow soon turned into a cobblestone road and now we were in a bustling village. Everywhere we went, people bowed and smiled, but if they got too close the guards gently pushed them aside.
Fiera, I noted, had briefly disappeared.
Where are you? I asked the dragon.
Nearby. The villagers tend to panic when they see me or my shadow.
But you are a good dragon.
Not always. I’m a protective dragon, which means I will burn you to a crisp, too, if I think you are a threat to my mistress.
Understood, I thought, and shivered a little.
Few looked at me or the ruffian, although I did garner a stare or two. As we entered the open market, which was filled stalls selling everything from meats to weapons to clothing, I noticed one man in particular watching me.
Every good investigator is alert for a tail, and this guy was definitely tailing us. We’d picked him up at the entrance into the village, where I’d first spotted him lounging against a bale of hay.
Now, he was plodding along on an old nag of a horse, and keeping pace at a safe distance. Maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. Perhaps the princess making an appearance in the village was a rarity. Maybe it was common for people to follow along.
No, not necessarily. Most smiled and waved at their princess, while she smiled and nodded back—and then returned to their work.
I kept my eye on him—a short man with a long, blond beard—but never so long that I gave away that I knew we were being followed. As far as I was aware, none of the guards had noticed him, and Dubi seemed to almost be asleep in the saddle.
We came upon a stall selling freshly-baked breads, and the princess held up her hand, and her two remaining guards—and one faithful—if briefly enchanted—scoundrel, instantly stopped. As the princess slid out of her saddle to survey the breads, I tugged on Dubi’s robe. “I’ll be back,” I said.
The wizard snorted and nearly fell out of his saddle. Son-of-a-bitch, he had been asleep. “Where are you going, Roan?”
“Business,” I said, kicking my heels and pulling on the reins.
“What kind of bus
iness?”
“The kind you hired me for,” I said, and shot through an opening between the stalls, scattering something that might have been chickens but looked like winged furry balls.
Once out of the busy market and behind the milling crowds, I saw the bearded man. He’d been keeping pace with us. But now he saw me, too, charging at him. His mouth dropped comically—and he heeled his mount, slapping its flank, but the old nag barely got faster than a light trot. He quickly gave up and leaped from his saddle, rolling twice, and found his feet. He stumbled and dashed off through the high grass.
I bore down on him. My own mount was a true war horse. Massive, powerful, fast. And, above else, fearless. It charged through the high grass. It snorted and almost seemed to take delight in the chase.
Of course, human, came a deeper thought. This wasn’t Fiera. I love nothing more than to engage in battle.
Who said that?
Who do you think?
I tore my gaze off the fleeing little man. Had the horse spoken telepathically to me?
Would be the more likely answer, would it not?
The fleeing man looked over his shoulder, tripped, rolled once or twice and was back on his feet. We were getting ever closer. In fact, the horse even seemed to pick up speed.
Of course, I’m picking up speed. We’re going to lose him.
I saw what the horse meant. The little man was making a mad dash for a row of buildings.
Hurry!
My pleasure, human.
And the horse hit another gear, pounding faster through the grass than I had ever ridden before. Yes, a war horse indeed!
Still, as fast as we covered the ground, the little man was just too far ahead. He hung a sharp right and darted between two buildings. The horse slowed on its own volition, and I dismounted, too, stumbling but not falling. Soon, I was dashing down the same narrow alley—and quickly found myself on another bustling street. A very different kind of street. Cops would have called this the red light district. Women of questionable morals loitered on street corners. Taverns everywhere. Two men fighting across the street. One man vomiting just to my right. Nowhere to be seen was the little, bearded man who had been following us. I frowned, frustrated, then headed back to the horse.