On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...
...ten Tricky Choices
Red Hoodie
Fairy Tales
Drama
FR-T
Text removed for possible publication
Fight or Flight
Harry Potter/The Worst Witch
Drama, Vignette
FR-T
They came at dusk, just as the school was settling down for the night. No-one would ever work out how the Snatchers found Miss Cackle’s Academy for Young Witches (in Exile), but at the time that was less important than the fact that they had. Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom had worked hard to shield the caves where they had settled the girls after leaving the school, and their defences gave what little warning there was, dispelling the Death Eaters’ Shadow Cloak charms.
The teachers and prefects hurried to organise a defence, but the Snatchers’ attack punched through their shield charms and weathered the curses they flung in their faces. At the Academy they had heard tell of the Snatchers coming in small bands, twos and threes striking fast and hard to incapacitate lone Muggle-borns, but this was different. In the first few moments of the attack, Ædrætha Hubble counted a dozen black-robed figures touching down and almost as many more falling under the prefects’ defensive fire.
“Run, girls!” Miss Hardbroom cried as she caught a paralysing curse and turned it back on its caster. “Scatter into the woods!”
The girls ran, some screaming, some in silence. They fled through the caves to the secret tunnel on the far side of the hill. They ran headlong, driven by fear and their teacher’s commands until…
“Wait!”
The cry brought them up short.
“Eddie, we need to go,” Annie Nightshade insisted. She gripped her hand, and it was only then that Ædrætha realised that she had called out.
“I… wait,” she said again, but the crowd was growing restless. “They knew where we were,” she insisted. “What if they know about the tunnel? We’ll be picked off as we come out.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Julia Beechbark insisted.
Ideas flitted through Eddie’s mind. Run and hope for the best? Try to conjure a shield over the class? Hide in the caves?
“We fight,” she said at last.
“What?” Mercedes Moonbeam was scornful. “You’re a fifth year student, Hubble.”
Eddie drew herself up straight. “We’ve all learned a lot since we left the school,” she insisted. “I’ve learned that the Snatchers take us when we fight alone. If we scatter they will take our teachers, and our sisters, and then they will hunt us down, one by one. They will take us all if we don’t fight back now.”
“If we fight, we could be killed,” Annie reminded her. “We could all die tonight.”
“If we don’t fight, we will all die before the year is out,” Eddie replied. “There are a few dozen of them, a hundred of us. They are stronger than we are, but they’re still reeling from going up against Miss Cackle and the Hardbroom. We will never have another chance.”
“To do what?” Karla Oldwise demanded.
“To show them that they can not do this!” Eddie snapped. “To stop running and take back our country, and our parents’ country. To tell the Snatchers and the Death Eaters” - a gasp ran around the cavern - “and He Who Must Not Be Named himself, that they can hunt us, and they can kill us, but they will never, ever break us!”
There was a hush; the drip of water echoed through the silence.
“Who’s with me?” Eddie demanded, and the Snatchers at the mouth of the secret tunnel heard the roar.
Overwhelmed and subdued, the teachers and prefects of the Academy were led to the cage. It was a small cage, but it didn’t need to be more; it wasn’t built to hold them all. As each woman or girl was placed within, a combination of Binding and Apparating charms woven into the metal would transport her to one of the Snatchers’ prisons with her magical abilities dulled. It was a monstrous device, and if she had ever doubted the hand behind the Ministry’s recent activities, Miss Hardbroom doubted no longer. She allowed herself a grim smile as the Snatchers gathered up their fallen, but she knew that - with the exception of the few who had tasted their own reflected killing curses - they would all be on their feet again in a matter of hours; she did not teach her girls to kill.
They took her first, dragging her into the cage and slamming the door closed. As the magic closed around her, she thought that she saw a wall of light rushing towards the Snatchers’ camp.
The first volley from the fifth and sixth year girls hit the Snatchers like a sledgehammer. Paralysing and stunning curses pulverised their ranks. In answer they unleashed a mass of curses too swift and powerful for any of the girls to answer, but the attack faltered on a Protection charm cast by the entire fourth form.
A second blast accounted for all but a handful of Snatchers, while a clique of mischievous second years found a productive use for their Unbinding charms at last.
A trio of Snatchers joined their powers into a Feedback curse which overwhelmed the Protection shield with such violence that nine girls passed out, but by then Miss Cackle was free. The prefects went for the bag which held their wands, but Miss Cackle worked without and yet unleashed a barrage of Confounding, Binding, Blinding and Incapacitating charms which would have made an Auror proud.
“Nobody hurts my girls,” she growled.
The sixth years sprang down the rocks and began working in pairs to disarm the unconscious foe. One of the prefects hurried to free Miss Hardbroom while Eddie went straight to Miss Cackle.
“Are you alright, Ma’am?”
“I told you to run,” Miss Cackle told her.
“I know. It seemed like a bad idea.”
Miss Cackle scowled at her for a long moment, but then smiled. “Get your army together,” she instructed. “We’re leaving.”
Miss Hardbroom stepped over several of the Snatchers, visibly fighting the urge to put her pointy-toed boot in. “With your permission, Miss Cackle, I would like to leave a little something for them to think about.”
Eventually, the team waiting at the tunnel mouth realised that no-one was coming, and that the Echo charms cast by the younger girls were nothing but illusion. With howls of rage they flew back over the hill to be greeted by the ruin of their main force, bound and gagged around the cage, which held but a single woman.
In a passion of fury, the lead Snatcher forged past her fallen comrades, ignoring their muffled cries.
“You at least will cause no more trouble!” she spat at the woman in the cage. With a flick of her wand she activated the magic of the device.
The woman in the cage smiled.
The woman in the cage snapped a wand up in salute.
Miss Hardbroom cast her reversal charm as the magic closed around her.
In the blink of an eye, the Snatchers were gone, swept up and Apparated by the cage to their own prison, their magic neutered. The cage itself, overloaded, fell into burned and twisted pieces. Miss Hardbroom surveyed her work with satisfaction and then took off to follow her girls.
Consequence
Sapphire and Steel
Vignette
FR-T
It’s one of the ways that Time has the advantage of us. It’s always there first and the choice it offers is easy: ‘Do you want to live?’ ‘Do you want things as they were when you were happy?’ ‘Do you want another chance?’
It’s never that simple, Sapphire.
It is for them. Life or death; which would you choose?
Whatever was better for the universe.
I was speaking hypothetically.
You can’t divorce the choice from the consequences. One life isn’t worth all of existence, and even one life altered will put everything at risk.
But they can ignore the consequences, because they don’t know them. Time knows, but it never tells, and there’s no-one there to gainsay it.
I take your point.
Which leaves us to offer the tough choice.
Is it so hard? One life for all of existence?
But it’s the only life they’ll ever have. Is it so surprising that they want so much to hold onto it. And so few of them have any concept of their own significance.
If they did, they’d just think it was a reason for them to survive.
Steel; you’re being uncharitable.
The impending destruction of the universe wears on my temper.
Be nice.
That’s your department.
Of course. They’re calling us. We’ve been assigned. Time to go.
Oh yes; time indeed. Time to offer another hard choice to someone who thought they’d made an easy one.
The New Order
Visionaries
Drama
FR-T
First there was the Cataclysm; the day when the three suns aligned and the world changed. At the time, what Heksyl really noticed was that his games console stopped working, but soon even the children began to realise that things would never be the same.
With the school computers out and the shuttles down, the teachers scraped together what knowledge they could and taught whichever pupils made the journey on foot in their cold, dark buildings. Very few made the effort and soon the streets of Valaric were overrun by gangs of teenagers.
Heksyl joined one of these gangs in its earliest days and soon established himself as a force to be reckoned with. He could run faster, climb higher and fight harder than any of the bigger boys, and his ready wit and good looks made him a hit with the girls. He was one of the first to stop going home and move his gang into one of the many abandoned buildings in the capital. That was how he got the name he would use for the rest of his life: Feryl.
The city decayed. First came the rats, then the rot. Grass began to grow back through concrete and tree roots undercut foundations. As the buildings collapsed, the larger animals moved in. The street gangs became hunters and Feryl was the best of them once again.
Finally, in the north the city rose again. It had been almost a decade since Valarak fell when the first towers of New Valarak rose and Lord Leoric vowed to bring order back to the land. This was hardly good news for the gangs, and when Ectar’s police militia came back to the old city many of them moved south. They set up a frontier and declared that all beyond the boundary was to be the Anarchy Zone, a place with no law but that of the blade and the bow.
When word came that Ectar’s militia was moving on their den, Feryl’s gang prepared to move out, but Feryl was nowhere to be seen. His lieutenants were not slow to take charge, and only one person actually went looking for him.
She found him in his quiet place; the balcony of a fallen skyscraper, one of the few high places in the city that had not yet fallen down.
“Feryl,” she called softly. “They’re coming.”
“I know, Cyn,” he replied. “I can see them.” He held out his hand and she moved to his side, pressing herself against him. He pushed his head against her shoulder and kissed her cheek.
“We’re leaving,” she said, “heading into the Zone. You can be great there.” She stroked his hair.
“I could be dead there,” he replied. “Come with me; there’s something I want to be.”
Quick and agile he sprang from the balcony and leaped and slithered down the canted wall of the skyscraper, catching his fall on ledges and window frames until he could spring neatly to the ground. Cyn took a deep breath and followed him, stumbling at the last and falling into his arms.
Feryl grinned at Cyn, steadied her and grasped her hand. He ran through the streets, laughing wildly, until he reached the militia line moving through the sector.
Five constables reached for their truncheons. Feryl sprang with a wild laugh and knocked the first down. Cyn swept the legs from under a second and kicked a third in the chest, while Feryl dropped the other two with swift blows of feet and fists.
“Anarchist scum!” one of the fallen men hissed. Cyn drew her belt knife and lunged at him, but Feryl caught her wrist.
“Let me go!” she snarled.
“You’ve never killed anyone, Cyn; don’t start now,” Feryl cautioned. “You!” he told the man. “Tell Ectar I want to see him. If he’s the man they say, he’ll know where.”
They stopped in the shelter of fallen house.
“You’re insane!” Cyn snapped. “And when did you get soft? You’ve killed before now.”
“Gang killers, slashers and psyks,” he replied. “Never anyone fighting for their turf and that’s what they’re doing.”
“This is our turf!” Cyn argued.
Feryl shook his head. “The turf they’re fighting for is up here.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “You see, I’ve been thinking about it, and what have we been doing here?”
“Whatever we need to,” Cyn replied.
“Exactly. We’ve been surviving, and doing it well. But that time is over, Cyn; it’s time for something new.”
“Yes; the Zones. What brought this on?”
“Kara,” Feryl replied.
Cyn was silent for a long time. “Kara? You know what we need to do about Kara. She killed Spark; she has to die.”
“And then what? If we kill Kara, what will Nactos do? If we kill Nactos to make sure, what will Pyro do? And if we wipe out the whole SteelCorp Tower gang, what will the other gangs do?”
“They’ll know we’re the force to be reckoned with!”
“Or a threat to be wiped out. That’s what the Zones stand for, Cyn. No rules; only strength and fear.”
“And what else is there?” Cyn demanded.
“The militia is still well-short of SteelCorp Tower. With our help, they could go straight through abandoned territory and round up the whole lot; bring them to trial for Spark’s death.”
“And then what?”
“There’s an alternative to the Zones, Cyn. We were strong when we needed to be strong; we lived by our wits because we needed to be smart. But this is different. Now it’s time for us to choose our way forward.”
“What alternative?” Cyn demanded.
“We need to choose between order and anarchy,” he told her. “We have proved that we can live this way, but we don’t have to. I don’t want to. I don’t want to have to fight everyone who wants my spot and I don’t want you to have to fight every day to prove you don’t belong to any man.” He kissed her. “I’m going to New Valarak and I want you to come with me.”
Cyn pulled away from him. “You’re mad!” she snapped. “They’re what we’re running from.”
“Only if we choose it,” he told her.
She shook her head. “You’ll see,” she said. “You’ll join us. I’ll be waiting,” she added.
“Don’t,” he told her. “Don’t go; but if you go, don’t wait.”
“You belong with us,” she assured him. “You’ll see.”
Feryl watched her go for a moment, then tipped his head to one side. “Let her go,” he said. “You know what I can offer, but she goes free.”
“As you wish.” Ectar jumped down from the wall behind Feryl. “Anything else you want?”
Feryl shrugged. “I’ll serve any time you think right, but after that… I want in. I want to join you. That’s my choice. I choose order.”
“You choose justice over revenge, Heksyl,” Ectar told him. “That makes you okay by me.”
“Then tell me what you need from me. Oh; and my name. It’s still Feryl.”
Slayers
I Am Legend
Drama
FR-T
There were seven of them; five men and two women, although with their hard faces and dark armour they seemed almost sexless. They wore webbing harnesses, holding an array of curved swords and heavy knives, and each held a long, serrated spear in one hand. There was something about them that reminded Ruth of the others, the ferals; the unrestrained vampires.
“They’re killers,” she said.
“Yes,” Dumont agreed. “That is what we need. Fences aren’t good enough anymore. We have to take the fight to them.”
“Then we shall do so,” Ruth agreed, “but do we really need these? Are they any better than the beasts.”
“They might be worse,” Christian warned. “After all, the beasts know no better; these have chosen to devote their lives to violence.”
The leader of the seven stepped forward before the council. “The decision is yours,” he said, “but know this. There are other enclaves where our kind have gathered, and many have already been overrun. We are all survivors of groups, like yours, who thought that rising above our killer instincts meant leaving killing behind for ever.
“One day, I hope that there will be no need for us. Tonight, you have to choose: Take us in, or face them alone.”
Despite Ruth’s doubts the council was not long in choosing, but it was not their fear of the beasts that decided them in the end. It was Dumont who said what they were all thinking.
“After all; we’ll need them if the human comes for us.”
Reparations
The Lord of the Rings
Drama
FR-T
It was the fourteenth day of talks and Prince Faramir of Ithilien was on the brink of suicide.
“Once I yearned for days of peace, when men might settle their difference by talk instead of war,” he complained. “Now I have those days and I would close my doors and arm my borders against all the world to have but half an hour’s silence.”
The Lady Eowyn laughed brightly. “Do you wonder now that I yearned to ride out? Who is it taxes my lord so this day? Has Lord Korta al-Badan wearied your ears once more?”
Now it was Lord Faramir who was moved to mirth. “Lord Korta speaks with the eloquence of a poet and the honest sincerity of a Halfling. It is the Lord of the West who tire me with their calls for blood and vengeance. Think they that Ithilien suffered not in war with the Haradrim? Do they believe that I sat abed and never fought, that I must be reminded of the horrors of those days?”
He sank wearily into his chair. “I understand their anger, but do they not see the destruction they will invite if they insist on exacting harsh reparations from Harad? I was charged by King Elessar to seek an accord and a treaty with the Haradrim and they want me to bleed the Southlands dry and parcel up Near Harad for settlement.”
Eowyn poured wine for her husband and herself. “They see the wealth of the Haradrim and they are envious,” she noted, “and they anger the Lords with their pride. I have seen those we hold captive and even as prisoners they hold themselves as kings.”
“Why would they not?” Faramir asked. “Do you know how few of them were free, even as soldiers? The Lords of Harad raise their warriors from among their slaves and slaves they remain. Lord Korta was a slave until the orcs killed his master over the lives of Ithilien prisoners.” He shook his head. “You have spoken with those who were taken. What did they make of their captors?”
“They speak highly of them. Their ferocity in battle can not be questioned, but I have heard only of honour and gentility in their dealings with those they take as slaves.” Eowyn shook her head. “Few would wish to meet with their captors again, but as few truly wish for blood vengeance.”
“And what do you make of them, my Lady?” Faramir asked.
“I think that they have honour enough to treat with, and pride enough that it would be folly to abuse them in our strength. With the Shadow gone, the men of Harad have no stomach for war, but whet their appetite and we shall learn that their taste for vengeance is as keen as that of any Lord of the West.”
“The White Lady is as wise as she is brave,” Faramir sighed. “I think I am of your mind. I think it best to require that the men of Harad help with the remaking of the West and the clearing of Mordor; to ask that their soldiers and their workers help to undo the damage which they caused.”
“No reparations? No settlement?”
“Perhaps the Lords of the West should look to healing their own lands before fomenting fresh war,” Faramir sighed.
“I think that my Lord is also wise,” Eowyn said with a smile.
“Wise is as wise does,” Faramir laughed. “What is needed now is diplomacy, if I am to bring the Lords of the West into agreement.”
Eowyn lifted her glass. “To days of peace,” she proposed with a laugh.
The Skullbearers
Harry Potter
Drama
FR-T
Zaccheus Myrth entered the shrine with his heart fluttering in excitement. Since he had joined the Skullbearers he had committed various acts of terror; destroyed homes and precious artefacts, inflicted curses of pain and binding on Muggle and Muggle-born alike and discovered besides all a real talent for arson. He had worked with the other young recruits to the movement, and particularly with his former schoolmate Sorrel Hollyhock. Sorrel, a Slytherin in their Hogwarts days, was a witch whose sadism was a tribute to her former house, but he had also found in her a ready wit and a loyal comrade. After a year, their services and dedication had at last been rewarded and they were to be brought before the altar of skulls to become a full member of the order.
Zaccheus was surprised to be brought in alone, but he said nothing. The Magisters of the Chapter stood at the altar, their skull-masks blank and unreadable. He had never seen their face, knew them only as the Black Magister and the White, and knew only that the Black was a witch and the White a wizard. Their Skullbound servitors hovered at their shoulders, their eyeless socket sucking in light and magic alike. The altar loomed high behind them, two columns of skulls flanking a basalt table adorned with strings of finger bones.
He stepped forward, trying to hold himself steady, but his eyes kept straying to the ragged bundle which lay on the altar steps between the Magisters. The final test, the last initiation; to commit the one act that he had not yet committed in his service to the Skullbearers: Murder.
“Why does he come?” the Black Magister demanded in her high, reedy voice.
“He thinks himself worthy,” the White Magister sneered.
Zaccheus took a deep breath. “I come before the altar to dedicate myself to the cause,” he said.
“What will he do?” the White Magister asked.
“Let him speak it himself,” the Black Magister responded. With a sudden rush, one of her Skullbound flew from her shoulder to hover in front of Zaccheus, staring sightlessly into his eyes.
“I… I devote myself to the order,” he stammered. “I shall do all that is asked of me, flinching not from terror, nor cruelty, nor mayhem, nor chaos, nor destruction, nor murder. I shall be the hand of the darkness, the destroyer of impurity.”
“He says that he will kill,” the Black Magister mocked.
“Test him,” the White Magister agreed.
The Skullbound swept back to form a semi-circle and the two Magisters pounced on the ragged form and ragged it to its feet. The White Magister held the sacrifice by the shoulders while the Black ripped the hood from its head.
“Sorrel!” Zaccheus cried.
“Kill the witch,” the Black Magister crowed.
“Take her head,” the White Magister goaded.
“Bind her soul.”
“Yours forever.”
“But… she’s my friend. A member of the order. She’s pure.”
The White Magister cackled with laughter. “Did you think our servants would be anything but?”
“Your bond is strong,” the Black Magister insisted. “You care for her and she for you, her skull will serve you truly.”
“Take her. Bind her.”
“Join us.”
Zaccheus drew out his wand and prepared to unleash the killing curse. He had always known what would be asked of him and had thought himself prepared, but now that the moment came and his victim was someone he knew; someone he cared about; someone who, for all her cruelty, he had come to depend upon, even to love.
He lowered his wand. “I can’t,” he whispered.
“He does not take his oaths seriously,” the Black Magister hissed.
“He has failed,” the White Magister agreed. “Take him.”
Once more, the Skullbound rushed towards him. Its eye sockets seem to fill his vision and he fell.
He woke to darkness, his eyes bound with cloth and his head covered by a hood. Muffled voices came to him through the cloth.
“What will she do?” The White Magister asked.
“Let her speak it herself,” the Black Magister responded.
In a nervous, cracking voice, Sorrel Hollyhock began: “I devote myself to the order…”
Saving Private R’zann
Torchwood
Drama
FR-T
The Netherlands,
September 17th 1944
The muffled stutter of silenced gunfire faded away, leaving only the low hum of gravitic stabilisers to break the silence. Bodies littered the floor, surrounding the low, metallic dome which hovered just above the ground. After a moment, four figures broke cover and moved towards the centre of the chamber.
Dr Jena Hansen gingerly stepped over a white-coated corpse. “Did you have to?” she asked. Like her comrades she carried a De Lisle silenced carbine, but the barrel of her weapon was cold.
“Told you not to bring her,” Sister Lucy Jones noted. She bent down beside one of the wounded and finished him off with a quick, precise dagger-thrust.
Jena scowled at Lucy.
“Jena is not an option on this, Lucy,” Captain Jack Harkness replied. “I only wish you had been,” he added, addressing Jena. “And yes, we had to. This part of history is in constant flux; the temporal rubberneckers but enough strain on the fabric of time, even without the various group who choose to try and intervene in this particular episode. Any knowledge of this technology could result in a catastrophic shift in the course of the war, even at this late stage.”
“I understand that,” Jena agreed sadly. “I just wish…”
“I know,” Jack agreed. “Take a look at the ship; see if we can make it fly. Lucy, find our pilot. Archie; get out there and organise the lads. I want a secure perimeter and lots of warning in case of company.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Hector ‘Archie’ Andrews agreed. He shifted the weight of his heavy pack and left the main chamber.
“Sister Lucy, where do we stand?” Jack asked.
“About a hundred miles northwest of nowhere,” Lucy replied, calling back from one of the smaller labs. “Files; lots of files,” she explained.
“Firebomb,” Jack ordered. He checked another of the side rooms himself; it had been set up as a staff canteen. Jack checked under the tables and behind the chairs, but there was no-one there. The toilets, similarly, were empty.
“I don’t think I’m going to get this thing airborne,” Jena told him as he emerged. “The propulsion system seems alright, but the power plant is badly damaged; it’s leaking radiation as is and trying to increase the yield will only make things worse. We’ll have to load it up and drive it back to Arnhem, but there’s a hoist all set up and…”
“No,” Jack interrupted. “Go grab Archie; tell him we need to set charges.”
“But, Jack…”
“I don’t have time to argue, Jena!”
Jena put her hands on her hips. “Well, you’d better make time!” she declared.
Lucy paused in a doorway. “Are you two going to fight?” she asked hopefully.
“Pilot,” Jack ordered. “I’m sorry, Jena, but we don’t have time to drive this thing anywhere. The British lose the bridge at Arnhem in four days time and the fighting is fierce. We’re doing this on foot or not at all.”
“Lose the bridge?” Jena was horrified. “But Market Garden…”
“Total bust,” Jack sighed. “I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t change the way the war is run, but this” - he gestured around them - “is something I can take part in. I’m sorry, really, but if it won’t fly we have to destroy it.”
Jena nodded sadly.
“Last door!” Lucy called. She pushed it open and ducked back as a bullet whined against the frame. “Looks good.”
Jack nodded. “Get Archie,” he told Jena.
“Alright.”
Jack touched her hand briefly and then hurried over to Lucy. “What’ve we got?”
Lucy unslung her De Lisle and cocked it. “At least one enemy, taking cover behind a table; Luger or a Walther. If you put a couple of shots over her head…”
“Slow down, Tiger!” Jack chided. “We don’t want to catch the pilot in a crossfire. Let me try something, and try not to kill this one. If they were working with the pilot, we might need to talk to them first.”
“But…”
“Ready?”
“Well…”
Jack stepped out into the doorway. He caught sight of blonde hair and blue eyes behind the muzzle flare as he advanced. He felt the bullets slam against his torso, hard as fists even through the flak jacket. One bullet creased his cheek and another found a weakness and punched through his shoulder. He slumped against the wall, bleeding freely, and was barely aware of Lucy leaping past him.
He came to in a rush, his recovery sudden and total enough that he knew he must have died. He pushed himself up and looked around. Lucy was standing over a terrified young woman, while a thin, blue creature lay on a gurney nearby.
“Okay, Jones; what’ve we got?” Jack demanded.
“She says she’s a local doctor,” Lucy replied, “drafted in to treat a prisoner of war. This was the prisoner.”
“R’zann of Tharis,” the woman added quickly and in broken German. “He is good man, sir.”
Jack looked the woman over. “Dutch?” he asked in Dutch.
She nodded eagerly. “Yes.”
“Okay; well, we’re not here to hurt you, Miss…”
“Uttë van Loewen,” she replied at once.
“Captain Jack Harkness. Good to meet you, Uttë van Loewen.”
“Oh!” Lucy exclaimed. She switched back to English. “Oh, no you did not!”
“What?”
“Even you have to draw a line somewhere before flirting with someone you’re about to kill,” Lucy insisted.
“I do,” Jack assured her. “No German survivors; Dutch is okay. After all, who’s she going to tell?”
Lucy shook her head. “You’re as soft as Jena,” she accused, but for once she sounded relieved.
“Oh, I wish. Anyway, the pilot looks in a bad way. You may need her help. See what you can do while I check on the others.”
“Right.”
Out of the infirmary, Jack hurried back to the perimeter, which was being held by ten soldiers of the 1st Airborne Division. He quickly located their leader, Sergeant Tom Evans, a dour Welshman.
“Keep the perimeter secure, but be ready to move out at short notice,” Jack ordered. “We’ll fall back and cross the Rhine at Driel.”
“Our orders were to retreat via Arnhem, sir,” Evans noted.
“I know, but the forces there will be surrounded before we can reach them.”
“Sir?”
“And no, we can’t move up in support. We’re too few and our mission is too important.”
“With respect, sir, my commanding officer…”
“Sergeant, you’ve seen my clearance?”
“Well… no, sir.”
“Right. Scary isn’t it.”
Evans barely blinked. “Driel it is, sir.”
“Good man.”
Jack hurried back to the labs and found a scene of chaos.
“Hey!” he snapped. The room fell silent. “Archie; how’s it going?”
“Charges set, sir, but Dr Hansen won’t let me attach the detonator.”
“R’zann is dying, sir,” Lucy jumped in. “Hansen wants to use the ship’s distress beacon to signal for rescue, but if we do that…”
“We’ve lost everything anyway,” Jena insisted. “We’re blowing up the ship and the pilot is dying; why not just let this one go.”
Jack sighed. “Lucy; is there anything…?”
Lucy shook her head. “Uttë is with him still, but she really doesn’t know enough about his biology and I’m completely new to it. There’s nothing we can do except make him more - or less - comfortable in his final hours.”
Jack hung his head and closed his eyes in thought.
“Jack,” Jena whispered. “You know what’s right.”
“Alright,” he said at last. “Put the pilot inside and trigger the beacon. Clear the charges, Archie, and let’s collect up all the notes we can before Lucy’s firebombs go off. I want everyone clear in five.”
The team and their escort moved away across the Dutch countryside. Behind them a spear of light stabbed out of the sky and began to peel open the laboratory building.
“What the hell is that, Sarge?” one of the soldiers asked.
“If you take my advice, lad, you didn’t see anything,” Evans replied.
“Not our finest hour,” Lucy noted sourly.
“Oh, I don’t know. We got to do a good thing for once.” Jack shrugged. “And if we don’t have the ship, neither do the Nazis.”
“I wish I had your optimism,” Lucy sighed.
Jack clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Just keep an eye on van Loewen for me.”
“A pleasure,” Lucy assured him. She moved away and Jena eased up alongside Jack.
“She’s incorrigible,” she noted.
“A lot of that about,” Jack replied. “Thanks.”
“For nagging?”
“For being our conscience. It’s something we could use more of in Torchwood.”
The Second Principle
Arthurian Myth
Drama
FR-T
In the years immediately following the fall of Uther Pendragon I struggled with my various studies. The insight I had learned from Gorthyn Tinsmith and his daughter Anwyl stood me in good stead in most areas - I could read any opponent like a book, in combat or diplomacy; I never failed to find game in the forest; I always knew which of the beasts would go lame before even the herdsmen did; I could even use my understanding of the ebb and flow of the world to achieve small acts which others might have called miraculous, or magical - but in my practice of the art itself I was frustrated. Gorthyn’s own art had been, by his admission, incomplete and I soon found that I could not take my gifts past a certain point without a teacher.
Specifically, insight allowed me to see what others missed, but could not guide me in action. Sometimes I could feel my way through, but mostly I was only more aware than others of how badly I was going wrong. All too often I would squander an advantage by pressing too fast, startle the quarry in a hunt, and I still got more slaps than kisses from the kitchen maids and village girls.
Word would reach us from time to time of another warlord who had emerged to proclaim himself High King of Britain and, soon after, been defeated in battle. Some did well, overthrowing two or even three of their rivals, but success only hastened their demise, drawing others to ally briefly against them. None ever succeeded in seizing and holding Uther’s abandoned stronghold at Camelot and none had yet been able to produce his sword. Many seers foretold that Uther’s blade would reappear only with the coming of a new High King, and it remained lost in the Forest of Arden.
One of the seers who predicted the return of the sword was Blind Cadoc, known to us as the Augur of the Alehouse. It was in my thirteenth year, when Arthur was just two, that he installed himself in the Sign of the Goshawk and began to offer his services as ‘oracle, soothsayer, guide and counsellor’ to anyone willing to pay some part of the shilling a day he needed to keep himself in bed, board and drink at the tavern.
I can’t say I took Cadoc very seriously at first, but the tavernkeep at the Goshawk was a good friend of my father and his daughter was my age, pretty and enjoyed flirting with rich boys.
Not that I flirted with her much. Flirting with pretty yet superficial girls is one of the simple pleasures that insight denies one. This is not to say that I never tried, only that the experience was inevitably soured as the awareness of Gwenlyan’s grasping mind crept over me. It was usually as I felt her sizing up how far she would need to go to level a claim of promise and how much my father might pay to secure her silence that my attention slid from her to the patrons of the tavern.
It took some time to realise that of all those present, the one my insight never took hold of was the blind seer, and that it was something he was doing that prevented me reading him.
The next day, I went back to the tavern and set five silver shillings before Blind Cadoc. “Teach me,” I told him.
He turned his blind eyes towards my face. “Not here,” he declared.
The next stage of my education in the art of enchantment began in a clearing in a forest. “You know something of insight,” he noted. “Now you must master the second principle; that of intuition. Insight gives you warning; it alerts you to hidden pitfalls and dangers, like the wickedness in young Gwenlyan’s heart. Intuition tells you how to deal with those dangers; how to avert and avoid them. It is the warning voice inside your head which cautions you to hold back when fools rush in.”
He had me describe the clearing to him, dwelling on what my insight told me: the trees which might have hidden an ambush; the shadows where wolves might lie in wait; the branches which lacked strength; the mushrooms which held poisons in their soft flesh. Then he guided me to find ways of avoiding each danger.
“But what of these bandits?” I asked. “Aside from the fact that I sense no actual bandits, if they were in hiding I could circle around behind them instead of turning back.”
“And then what?” he demanded. “The art does not make you indestructible, no more does a sword or a shirt of mail.”
“Of course not…”
“So; caution. And you say you sense no bandits, but insight is not infallible. If your enemy possesses some understanding of the art, they might cloak themselves; or you may simply be wrong.”
“Or I might not be.”
“Enough!” he snapped. “We continue tomorrow.”
That was all the thrust of Cadoc’s teaching: “Never press, never question, never risk. He taught me for five days and for ten days more, and by the end of that time I was barely willing to meet him in the woods so wary had I grown. I used to leave all but the day’s shilling in my chambers so I had nothing to rob; wore a sturdy leather jack against the chance of a sneak attack; carried a dagger on my hip and covered all with a ragged cloak. I even took Anwyl’s spoon from my belt pouch, for fear that it might betray the affection I still felt for her. As for Gwenlian, I barely looked at the girl, let alone spoke to her.
Such was the boy that Cadoc made of me, and it perturbed my father. “Prudence is one thing,” he told me, “but skittishness is unbecoming in a youth of almost fourteen. What man would follow a coward, and what wench betroth herself to such a worry-wort? Why, Arthur shows more pluck than you these days!”
And that was true as well, and frighted me terribly, for I saw in every least thing a threat to his life and limb which could not be tolerated. I made his young life a hell and all-but confined him to his bed, and left only the lightest blanket on that for fear he might smother.
And then, Evalac the Seer came to Dinas Cynyr and installed himself in the Goshawk. He named himself a seer and wore a cloth across his eyes to prove it, with the symbol of an eye upon the cloth so that none could doubt him. His left leg was crippled, from a wound suffered in the service of Lord Damas of Dolorous Gard, he explained. Cadoc’s market share plummeted in the face of such illustrious competition and he left the village during the night, following a rather heated discussion with Evalac in the stable yard.
I could see at once that Evalac possessed some measure of power. He was clearly more skilled than I, and while I deemed he might lack a true gift, the caution instilled in me by Cadoc meant that I was unwilling to approach him. I sensed a risk there and I backed away from it. He, however, guided by senses beyond mere sight, made straight for me.
“A fellow seer,” he greeted me in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Tell me, lad; are you trained.”
I explained that I had some teaching and outlined my understanding of insight and intuition.
“Cadoc?” he scoffed when I was done. “That womanish fool? He would not know intuition if it bit him on the arse. Come; lead me to where you practised and I shall show you some real technique.”
Unwilling to cross him, for he was wiry and strong besides possessing some power of enchantment, I led him to the clearing. There he had me describe our surroundings, just as Cadoc had done, but where Cadoc had focused on the dangers to be sensed, he made me dwell on possibilities.
“If you were laying an ambush, where would you choose?” he asked. “Those mushrooms; how could their poison serve you?”
“And what of the dangers?” I asked.
“Run towards them,” he replied. “Embrace them. Let your insight guide you safely past them, but do not shrink from them! Be a man, Cai ap Cynyr!”
I admit, I liked his teaching far more than Cadoc’s. For another two weeks I studied with him, growing ever more reckless and fearless. I diced in the tavern, losing often but winning more as my insight guided me. I took many blows in my sparring matches, but emerged ever victorious as I pummelled my opponents with furious strength. I kissed Gwenlyan, earning a slap and another kiss by my boldness, and almost revelled in my understanding of her games.
I thought that my father must surely approve of this new direction, but once more he seemed displeased. “Excess of prudence may become a vice, but profligacy in any degree can never be a virtue,” he told me. “I have had complaint of you for gaming and brawling, and report of drinking to excess, and at such a tender age. The nurse tells me that you twice allowed Arthur to wander unprotected in the garden and my old friend Hugh Tavernkeep tells me you have given rash promises to his daughter!”
I confessed to some confusion, but agreed that he should speak to Gwenlyan and her father on my behalf in the morning. Of course, as soon as I left his chambers I ran to the Goshawk myself; my insight and intuition would guide me, I was sure, far better than my father could.
Gwen was not in the taproom and her father angrily told me I would find her in the yard, fetching water. “Although I thought you must already have found her, the time she’s taking.”
Insight; I knew his words boded ill. Intuition; I sprang into the fray, racing through to the yard. The bucket lay abandoned on the cobbles and the horses shied nervously in their stables. I ran to an empty stall and saw Gwenlyan wrestling with Evalac. He held her head and whispered in her ear.
This much I saw. Insight told me that the seer was pouring words of power out upon the girl; words which caused her limbs to tremble as though palsied and robbed her of the will to fight him. Intuition told me to act, but what to do? Cadoc would counsel me to leave well alone, but there was Gwen to consider; Evalac himself would have bade me attack at once, but her held her too close for comfort.
I chose a third way.
“Let her go!” I roared, putting my power into my voice, just as he was but to an opposite purpose. Evalac stumbled and Gwen, her mind freed of his grasp, pulled away and clawed at his face. She caught his face with her nails and tore away the cloth upon his eyes, revealing the ragged, empty sockets beneath.
Evalac howled like a wounded beast. He thrust Gwen away from him and seized a lantern from the wall, brandishing it like a mace. “Damn you both!” he shrieked, groping blindly towards us. “You’ll pay for this, girl! And you, boy, I’ll teach no more!”
“I’ve learned enough from you!” I replied. “Cadoc went blind because he drew back from what he saw, but you lost your sight for going too far. You led your lord to ruin and he had you blinded and lamed for your sins.”
Insight; I knew that Evalac would attack. Intuition; run or fight? I stooped and pulled Gwen to her feet, drawing her out of range as he swung the lantern. Had I run, he would have hit her; had I lunged at him, he would have hit me. As it was, he struck the wooden wall. The lantern shattered and fire spilled across the straw.
“Go!” I told Gwen, and I moved towards Evalac, shielding my face from the heat. “Come with me,” I called, but he swung the shattered lantern at me and I had to back away. It was his instinct, his intuition, to attack; he could not help himself, even now that it was killing him.
I turned and fled the flames; there was nothing else I could do.
The yard was full of plunging, panicking horses and I helped Gwen to lead them to safety. Behind us the stable roof collapsed and we heard one last, defiant shriek as the flames took Evalac.
“Thank you,” Gwen said. I held her close and kissed her, because that was what she needed me to do and because it was what I needed after witnessing the horror of Evalac’s madness.
I promised Gwen’s father that I would marry her and we agreed that we should be betrothed on my fifteenth birthday. Four months before the day she begged to be released to marry another and I readily agreed. I was fond of her, she had grown so much through adversity and was on her way to becoming a fine woman, and she was of me, but we did not love one another. Like the kiss, our promise was just something that we needed to bring us through.
As far as the art I understood now what neither Evalac nor Cadoc ever had. Intuition was not about impulse, it was a matter of swift, but reasoned action. Understanding that, I found that I was able to bend the world that little bit more to my will. I could, had I so wanted, have made Gwen dismiss her other lover; it would have taken just five words. I could even have made her think that she loved me, but love - real love - would have been beyond me and Gwen deserved the real thing.
I like to think that I deserved it as well. I hope so.
Subterranean Homesick Blue Pills
The Matrix
Drama, Vignette
FR-T
Jinx made her way silently through the maintenance ducts which threaded their way through the infrastructure of Zion. She paused at an intersection and checked her map, then scrambled swiftly down a ladder to find herself in front of a heavy, steel hatch. There was a metal pipe hanging by a chain on one side of the door and she used this to rap three times, paused and then rapped twice.
The hatch opened and a masked figure beckoned Jinx inside. She thought that the figure might have been that of a man, but the robe made it difficult to be sure. The mask bore the number ‘12’ on a small plate on the forehead.
“Welcome, sister,” ‘he’ said in a muffled, electronically distorted voice. He handed her a long robe and a mask, similar to his but distinct in detail. The plate bore the number 31.
Jinx pulled on the concealing robes and donned the mask.
“Do you understand the rules?”
“Um… the person who told me how to get here said, ah, no names.” Her voice was distorted by her mask so that she barely knew herself.
The masked dipped in a nod. “Only the numbers; and you have to speak on your first visit.” He closed the door and showed her through into an auditorium, where a small cluster of other robed figures gathered.
12 gently pushed Jinx forward, towards a tall figure with the number 1 on its brow. “We have a new sister,” it said, although how it could tell she was a woman Jinx did not know. “Sister, speak to us.”
Jinx swallowed hard beneath the mask. “I’m J… Number 31,” she said, “and I wish I’d taken the blue pill.”
Author's Notes: Harry Potter was created and is owned by JK Rowling. The Worst Witch was written by Jill Murphy. Sapphire and Steel was created by PJ Hammond. The Visionaries are owned by Hasbro. I am Legend was written by Richard Matheson. The Lord of the Rings was written by JRR Tolkien. Torchwood belongs to the BBC. The Matrix was created by the Wachowski brothers and is owned by Warner. Fairy Tales and Arthuiana are, as ever, anyone's.
Red Hoodie is another of my favourites and worked much better than I expected, and Subterranean Homesick Blue Pills is a last-minute stand-in after the planned story didn't work out.
Red Hoodie
Fairy Tales
Drama
FR-T
Text removed for possible publication
Fight or Flight
Harry Potter/The Worst Witch
Drama, Vignette
FR-T
They came at dusk, just as the school was settling down for the night. No-one would ever work out how the Snatchers found Miss Cackle’s Academy for Young Witches (in Exile), but at the time that was less important than the fact that they had. Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom had worked hard to shield the caves where they had settled the girls after leaving the school, and their defences gave what little warning there was, dispelling the Death Eaters’ Shadow Cloak charms.
The teachers and prefects hurried to organise a defence, but the Snatchers’ attack punched through their shield charms and weathered the curses they flung in their faces. At the Academy they had heard tell of the Snatchers coming in small bands, twos and threes striking fast and hard to incapacitate lone Muggle-borns, but this was different. In the first few moments of the attack, Ædrætha Hubble counted a dozen black-robed figures touching down and almost as many more falling under the prefects’ defensive fire.
“Run, girls!” Miss Hardbroom cried as she caught a paralysing curse and turned it back on its caster. “Scatter into the woods!”
The girls ran, some screaming, some in silence. They fled through the caves to the secret tunnel on the far side of the hill. They ran headlong, driven by fear and their teacher’s commands until…
“Wait!”
The cry brought them up short.
“Eddie, we need to go,” Annie Nightshade insisted. She gripped her hand, and it was only then that Ædrætha realised that she had called out.
“I… wait,” she said again, but the crowd was growing restless. “They knew where we were,” she insisted. “What if they know about the tunnel? We’ll be picked off as we come out.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Julia Beechbark insisted.
Ideas flitted through Eddie’s mind. Run and hope for the best? Try to conjure a shield over the class? Hide in the caves?
“We fight,” she said at last.
“What?” Mercedes Moonbeam was scornful. “You’re a fifth year student, Hubble.”
Eddie drew herself up straight. “We’ve all learned a lot since we left the school,” she insisted. “I’ve learned that the Snatchers take us when we fight alone. If we scatter they will take our teachers, and our sisters, and then they will hunt us down, one by one. They will take us all if we don’t fight back now.”
“If we fight, we could be killed,” Annie reminded her. “We could all die tonight.”
“If we don’t fight, we will all die before the year is out,” Eddie replied. “There are a few dozen of them, a hundred of us. They are stronger than we are, but they’re still reeling from going up against Miss Cackle and the Hardbroom. We will never have another chance.”
“To do what?” Karla Oldwise demanded.
“To show them that they can not do this!” Eddie snapped. “To stop running and take back our country, and our parents’ country. To tell the Snatchers and the Death Eaters” - a gasp ran around the cavern - “and He Who Must Not Be Named himself, that they can hunt us, and they can kill us, but they will never, ever break us!”
There was a hush; the drip of water echoed through the silence.
“Who’s with me?” Eddie demanded, and the Snatchers at the mouth of the secret tunnel heard the roar.
Overwhelmed and subdued, the teachers and prefects of the Academy were led to the cage. It was a small cage, but it didn’t need to be more; it wasn’t built to hold them all. As each woman or girl was placed within, a combination of Binding and Apparating charms woven into the metal would transport her to one of the Snatchers’ prisons with her magical abilities dulled. It was a monstrous device, and if she had ever doubted the hand behind the Ministry’s recent activities, Miss Hardbroom doubted no longer. She allowed herself a grim smile as the Snatchers gathered up their fallen, but she knew that - with the exception of the few who had tasted their own reflected killing curses - they would all be on their feet again in a matter of hours; she did not teach her girls to kill.
They took her first, dragging her into the cage and slamming the door closed. As the magic closed around her, she thought that she saw a wall of light rushing towards the Snatchers’ camp.
The first volley from the fifth and sixth year girls hit the Snatchers like a sledgehammer. Paralysing and stunning curses pulverised their ranks. In answer they unleashed a mass of curses too swift and powerful for any of the girls to answer, but the attack faltered on a Protection charm cast by the entire fourth form.
A second blast accounted for all but a handful of Snatchers, while a clique of mischievous second years found a productive use for their Unbinding charms at last.
A trio of Snatchers joined their powers into a Feedback curse which overwhelmed the Protection shield with such violence that nine girls passed out, but by then Miss Cackle was free. The prefects went for the bag which held their wands, but Miss Cackle worked without and yet unleashed a barrage of Confounding, Binding, Blinding and Incapacitating charms which would have made an Auror proud.
“Nobody hurts my girls,” she growled.
The sixth years sprang down the rocks and began working in pairs to disarm the unconscious foe. One of the prefects hurried to free Miss Hardbroom while Eddie went straight to Miss Cackle.
“Are you alright, Ma’am?”
“I told you to run,” Miss Cackle told her.
“I know. It seemed like a bad idea.”
Miss Cackle scowled at her for a long moment, but then smiled. “Get your army together,” she instructed. “We’re leaving.”
Miss Hardbroom stepped over several of the Snatchers, visibly fighting the urge to put her pointy-toed boot in. “With your permission, Miss Cackle, I would like to leave a little something for them to think about.”
Eventually, the team waiting at the tunnel mouth realised that no-one was coming, and that the Echo charms cast by the younger girls were nothing but illusion. With howls of rage they flew back over the hill to be greeted by the ruin of their main force, bound and gagged around the cage, which held but a single woman.
In a passion of fury, the lead Snatcher forged past her fallen comrades, ignoring their muffled cries.
“You at least will cause no more trouble!” she spat at the woman in the cage. With a flick of her wand she activated the magic of the device.
The woman in the cage smiled.
The woman in the cage snapped a wand up in salute.
Miss Hardbroom cast her reversal charm as the magic closed around her.
In the blink of an eye, the Snatchers were gone, swept up and Apparated by the cage to their own prison, their magic neutered. The cage itself, overloaded, fell into burned and twisted pieces. Miss Hardbroom surveyed her work with satisfaction and then took off to follow her girls.
Consequence
Sapphire and Steel
Vignette
FR-T
It’s one of the ways that Time has the advantage of us. It’s always there first and the choice it offers is easy: ‘Do you want to live?’ ‘Do you want things as they were when you were happy?’ ‘Do you want another chance?’
It’s never that simple, Sapphire.
It is for them. Life or death; which would you choose?
Whatever was better for the universe.
I was speaking hypothetically.
You can’t divorce the choice from the consequences. One life isn’t worth all of existence, and even one life altered will put everything at risk.
But they can ignore the consequences, because they don’t know them. Time knows, but it never tells, and there’s no-one there to gainsay it.
I take your point.
Which leaves us to offer the tough choice.
Is it so hard? One life for all of existence?
But it’s the only life they’ll ever have. Is it so surprising that they want so much to hold onto it. And so few of them have any concept of their own significance.
If they did, they’d just think it was a reason for them to survive.
Steel; you’re being uncharitable.
The impending destruction of the universe wears on my temper.
Be nice.
That’s your department.
Of course. They’re calling us. We’ve been assigned. Time to go.
Oh yes; time indeed. Time to offer another hard choice to someone who thought they’d made an easy one.
The New Order
Visionaries
Drama
FR-T
First there was the Cataclysm; the day when the three suns aligned and the world changed. At the time, what Heksyl really noticed was that his games console stopped working, but soon even the children began to realise that things would never be the same.
With the school computers out and the shuttles down, the teachers scraped together what knowledge they could and taught whichever pupils made the journey on foot in their cold, dark buildings. Very few made the effort and soon the streets of Valaric were overrun by gangs of teenagers.
Heksyl joined one of these gangs in its earliest days and soon established himself as a force to be reckoned with. He could run faster, climb higher and fight harder than any of the bigger boys, and his ready wit and good looks made him a hit with the girls. He was one of the first to stop going home and move his gang into one of the many abandoned buildings in the capital. That was how he got the name he would use for the rest of his life: Feryl.
The city decayed. First came the rats, then the rot. Grass began to grow back through concrete and tree roots undercut foundations. As the buildings collapsed, the larger animals moved in. The street gangs became hunters and Feryl was the best of them once again.
Finally, in the north the city rose again. It had been almost a decade since Valarak fell when the first towers of New Valarak rose and Lord Leoric vowed to bring order back to the land. This was hardly good news for the gangs, and when Ectar’s police militia came back to the old city many of them moved south. They set up a frontier and declared that all beyond the boundary was to be the Anarchy Zone, a place with no law but that of the blade and the bow.
When word came that Ectar’s militia was moving on their den, Feryl’s gang prepared to move out, but Feryl was nowhere to be seen. His lieutenants were not slow to take charge, and only one person actually went looking for him.
She found him in his quiet place; the balcony of a fallen skyscraper, one of the few high places in the city that had not yet fallen down.
“Feryl,” she called softly. “They’re coming.”
“I know, Cyn,” he replied. “I can see them.” He held out his hand and she moved to his side, pressing herself against him. He pushed his head against her shoulder and kissed her cheek.
“We’re leaving,” she said, “heading into the Zone. You can be great there.” She stroked his hair.
“I could be dead there,” he replied. “Come with me; there’s something I want to be.”
Quick and agile he sprang from the balcony and leaped and slithered down the canted wall of the skyscraper, catching his fall on ledges and window frames until he could spring neatly to the ground. Cyn took a deep breath and followed him, stumbling at the last and falling into his arms.
Feryl grinned at Cyn, steadied her and grasped her hand. He ran through the streets, laughing wildly, until he reached the militia line moving through the sector.
Five constables reached for their truncheons. Feryl sprang with a wild laugh and knocked the first down. Cyn swept the legs from under a second and kicked a third in the chest, while Feryl dropped the other two with swift blows of feet and fists.
“Anarchist scum!” one of the fallen men hissed. Cyn drew her belt knife and lunged at him, but Feryl caught her wrist.
“Let me go!” she snarled.
“You’ve never killed anyone, Cyn; don’t start now,” Feryl cautioned. “You!” he told the man. “Tell Ectar I want to see him. If he’s the man they say, he’ll know where.”
They stopped in the shelter of fallen house.
“You’re insane!” Cyn snapped. “And when did you get soft? You’ve killed before now.”
“Gang killers, slashers and psyks,” he replied. “Never anyone fighting for their turf and that’s what they’re doing.”
“This is our turf!” Cyn argued.
Feryl shook his head. “The turf they’re fighting for is up here.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “You see, I’ve been thinking about it, and what have we been doing here?”
“Whatever we need to,” Cyn replied.
“Exactly. We’ve been surviving, and doing it well. But that time is over, Cyn; it’s time for something new.”
“Yes; the Zones. What brought this on?”
“Kara,” Feryl replied.
Cyn was silent for a long time. “Kara? You know what we need to do about Kara. She killed Spark; she has to die.”
“And then what? If we kill Kara, what will Nactos do? If we kill Nactos to make sure, what will Pyro do? And if we wipe out the whole SteelCorp Tower gang, what will the other gangs do?”
“They’ll know we’re the force to be reckoned with!”
“Or a threat to be wiped out. That’s what the Zones stand for, Cyn. No rules; only strength and fear.”
“And what else is there?” Cyn demanded.
“The militia is still well-short of SteelCorp Tower. With our help, they could go straight through abandoned territory and round up the whole lot; bring them to trial for Spark’s death.”
“And then what?”
“There’s an alternative to the Zones, Cyn. We were strong when we needed to be strong; we lived by our wits because we needed to be smart. But this is different. Now it’s time for us to choose our way forward.”
“What alternative?” Cyn demanded.
“We need to choose between order and anarchy,” he told her. “We have proved that we can live this way, but we don’t have to. I don’t want to. I don’t want to have to fight everyone who wants my spot and I don’t want you to have to fight every day to prove you don’t belong to any man.” He kissed her. “I’m going to New Valarak and I want you to come with me.”
Cyn pulled away from him. “You’re mad!” she snapped. “They’re what we’re running from.”
“Only if we choose it,” he told her.
She shook her head. “You’ll see,” she said. “You’ll join us. I’ll be waiting,” she added.
“Don’t,” he told her. “Don’t go; but if you go, don’t wait.”
“You belong with us,” she assured him. “You’ll see.”
Feryl watched her go for a moment, then tipped his head to one side. “Let her go,” he said. “You know what I can offer, but she goes free.”
“As you wish.” Ectar jumped down from the wall behind Feryl. “Anything else you want?”
Feryl shrugged. “I’ll serve any time you think right, but after that… I want in. I want to join you. That’s my choice. I choose order.”
“You choose justice over revenge, Heksyl,” Ectar told him. “That makes you okay by me.”
“Then tell me what you need from me. Oh; and my name. It’s still Feryl.”
Slayers
I Am Legend
Drama
FR-T
There were seven of them; five men and two women, although with their hard faces and dark armour they seemed almost sexless. They wore webbing harnesses, holding an array of curved swords and heavy knives, and each held a long, serrated spear in one hand. There was something about them that reminded Ruth of the others, the ferals; the unrestrained vampires.
“They’re killers,” she said.
“Yes,” Dumont agreed. “That is what we need. Fences aren’t good enough anymore. We have to take the fight to them.”
“Then we shall do so,” Ruth agreed, “but do we really need these? Are they any better than the beasts.”
“They might be worse,” Christian warned. “After all, the beasts know no better; these have chosen to devote their lives to violence.”
The leader of the seven stepped forward before the council. “The decision is yours,” he said, “but know this. There are other enclaves where our kind have gathered, and many have already been overrun. We are all survivors of groups, like yours, who thought that rising above our killer instincts meant leaving killing behind for ever.
“One day, I hope that there will be no need for us. Tonight, you have to choose: Take us in, or face them alone.”
Despite Ruth’s doubts the council was not long in choosing, but it was not their fear of the beasts that decided them in the end. It was Dumont who said what they were all thinking.
“After all; we’ll need them if the human comes for us.”
Reparations
The Lord of the Rings
Drama
FR-T
It was the fourteenth day of talks and Prince Faramir of Ithilien was on the brink of suicide.
“Once I yearned for days of peace, when men might settle their difference by talk instead of war,” he complained. “Now I have those days and I would close my doors and arm my borders against all the world to have but half an hour’s silence.”
The Lady Eowyn laughed brightly. “Do you wonder now that I yearned to ride out? Who is it taxes my lord so this day? Has Lord Korta al-Badan wearied your ears once more?”
Now it was Lord Faramir who was moved to mirth. “Lord Korta speaks with the eloquence of a poet and the honest sincerity of a Halfling. It is the Lord of the West who tire me with their calls for blood and vengeance. Think they that Ithilien suffered not in war with the Haradrim? Do they believe that I sat abed and never fought, that I must be reminded of the horrors of those days?”
He sank wearily into his chair. “I understand their anger, but do they not see the destruction they will invite if they insist on exacting harsh reparations from Harad? I was charged by King Elessar to seek an accord and a treaty with the Haradrim and they want me to bleed the Southlands dry and parcel up Near Harad for settlement.”
Eowyn poured wine for her husband and herself. “They see the wealth of the Haradrim and they are envious,” she noted, “and they anger the Lords with their pride. I have seen those we hold captive and even as prisoners they hold themselves as kings.”
“Why would they not?” Faramir asked. “Do you know how few of them were free, even as soldiers? The Lords of Harad raise their warriors from among their slaves and slaves they remain. Lord Korta was a slave until the orcs killed his master over the lives of Ithilien prisoners.” He shook his head. “You have spoken with those who were taken. What did they make of their captors?”
“They speak highly of them. Their ferocity in battle can not be questioned, but I have heard only of honour and gentility in their dealings with those they take as slaves.” Eowyn shook her head. “Few would wish to meet with their captors again, but as few truly wish for blood vengeance.”
“And what do you make of them, my Lady?” Faramir asked.
“I think that they have honour enough to treat with, and pride enough that it would be folly to abuse them in our strength. With the Shadow gone, the men of Harad have no stomach for war, but whet their appetite and we shall learn that their taste for vengeance is as keen as that of any Lord of the West.”
“The White Lady is as wise as she is brave,” Faramir sighed. “I think I am of your mind. I think it best to require that the men of Harad help with the remaking of the West and the clearing of Mordor; to ask that their soldiers and their workers help to undo the damage which they caused.”
“No reparations? No settlement?”
“Perhaps the Lords of the West should look to healing their own lands before fomenting fresh war,” Faramir sighed.
“I think that my Lord is also wise,” Eowyn said with a smile.
“Wise is as wise does,” Faramir laughed. “What is needed now is diplomacy, if I am to bring the Lords of the West into agreement.”
Eowyn lifted her glass. “To days of peace,” she proposed with a laugh.
The Skullbearers
Harry Potter
Drama
FR-T
Zaccheus Myrth entered the shrine with his heart fluttering in excitement. Since he had joined the Skullbearers he had committed various acts of terror; destroyed homes and precious artefacts, inflicted curses of pain and binding on Muggle and Muggle-born alike and discovered besides all a real talent for arson. He had worked with the other young recruits to the movement, and particularly with his former schoolmate Sorrel Hollyhock. Sorrel, a Slytherin in their Hogwarts days, was a witch whose sadism was a tribute to her former house, but he had also found in her a ready wit and a loyal comrade. After a year, their services and dedication had at last been rewarded and they were to be brought before the altar of skulls to become a full member of the order.
Zaccheus was surprised to be brought in alone, but he said nothing. The Magisters of the Chapter stood at the altar, their skull-masks blank and unreadable. He had never seen their face, knew them only as the Black Magister and the White, and knew only that the Black was a witch and the White a wizard. Their Skullbound servitors hovered at their shoulders, their eyeless socket sucking in light and magic alike. The altar loomed high behind them, two columns of skulls flanking a basalt table adorned with strings of finger bones.
He stepped forward, trying to hold himself steady, but his eyes kept straying to the ragged bundle which lay on the altar steps between the Magisters. The final test, the last initiation; to commit the one act that he had not yet committed in his service to the Skullbearers: Murder.
“Why does he come?” the Black Magister demanded in her high, reedy voice.
“He thinks himself worthy,” the White Magister sneered.
Zaccheus took a deep breath. “I come before the altar to dedicate myself to the cause,” he said.
“What will he do?” the White Magister asked.
“Let him speak it himself,” the Black Magister responded. With a sudden rush, one of her Skullbound flew from her shoulder to hover in front of Zaccheus, staring sightlessly into his eyes.
“I… I devote myself to the order,” he stammered. “I shall do all that is asked of me, flinching not from terror, nor cruelty, nor mayhem, nor chaos, nor destruction, nor murder. I shall be the hand of the darkness, the destroyer of impurity.”
“He says that he will kill,” the Black Magister mocked.
“Test him,” the White Magister agreed.
The Skullbound swept back to form a semi-circle and the two Magisters pounced on the ragged form and ragged it to its feet. The White Magister held the sacrifice by the shoulders while the Black ripped the hood from its head.
“Sorrel!” Zaccheus cried.
“Kill the witch,” the Black Magister crowed.
“Take her head,” the White Magister goaded.
“Bind her soul.”
“Yours forever.”
“But… she’s my friend. A member of the order. She’s pure.”
The White Magister cackled with laughter. “Did you think our servants would be anything but?”
“Your bond is strong,” the Black Magister insisted. “You care for her and she for you, her skull will serve you truly.”
“Take her. Bind her.”
“Join us.”
Zaccheus drew out his wand and prepared to unleash the killing curse. He had always known what would be asked of him and had thought himself prepared, but now that the moment came and his victim was someone he knew; someone he cared about; someone who, for all her cruelty, he had come to depend upon, even to love.
He lowered his wand. “I can’t,” he whispered.
“He does not take his oaths seriously,” the Black Magister hissed.
“He has failed,” the White Magister agreed. “Take him.”
Once more, the Skullbound rushed towards him. Its eye sockets seem to fill his vision and he fell.
He woke to darkness, his eyes bound with cloth and his head covered by a hood. Muffled voices came to him through the cloth.
“What will she do?” The White Magister asked.
“Let her speak it herself,” the Black Magister responded.
In a nervous, cracking voice, Sorrel Hollyhock began: “I devote myself to the order…”
Saving Private R’zann
Torchwood
Drama
FR-T
The Netherlands,
September 17th 1944
The muffled stutter of silenced gunfire faded away, leaving only the low hum of gravitic stabilisers to break the silence. Bodies littered the floor, surrounding the low, metallic dome which hovered just above the ground. After a moment, four figures broke cover and moved towards the centre of the chamber.
Dr Jena Hansen gingerly stepped over a white-coated corpse. “Did you have to?” she asked. Like her comrades she carried a De Lisle silenced carbine, but the barrel of her weapon was cold.
“Told you not to bring her,” Sister Lucy Jones noted. She bent down beside one of the wounded and finished him off with a quick, precise dagger-thrust.
Jena scowled at Lucy.
“Jena is not an option on this, Lucy,” Captain Jack Harkness replied. “I only wish you had been,” he added, addressing Jena. “And yes, we had to. This part of history is in constant flux; the temporal rubberneckers but enough strain on the fabric of time, even without the various group who choose to try and intervene in this particular episode. Any knowledge of this technology could result in a catastrophic shift in the course of the war, even at this late stage.”
“I understand that,” Jena agreed sadly. “I just wish…”
“I know,” Jack agreed. “Take a look at the ship; see if we can make it fly. Lucy, find our pilot. Archie; get out there and organise the lads. I want a secure perimeter and lots of warning in case of company.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Hector ‘Archie’ Andrews agreed. He shifted the weight of his heavy pack and left the main chamber.
“Sister Lucy, where do we stand?” Jack asked.
“About a hundred miles northwest of nowhere,” Lucy replied, calling back from one of the smaller labs. “Files; lots of files,” she explained.
“Firebomb,” Jack ordered. He checked another of the side rooms himself; it had been set up as a staff canteen. Jack checked under the tables and behind the chairs, but there was no-one there. The toilets, similarly, were empty.
“I don’t think I’m going to get this thing airborne,” Jena told him as he emerged. “The propulsion system seems alright, but the power plant is badly damaged; it’s leaking radiation as is and trying to increase the yield will only make things worse. We’ll have to load it up and drive it back to Arnhem, but there’s a hoist all set up and…”
“No,” Jack interrupted. “Go grab Archie; tell him we need to set charges.”
“But, Jack…”
“I don’t have time to argue, Jena!”
Jena put her hands on her hips. “Well, you’d better make time!” she declared.
Lucy paused in a doorway. “Are you two going to fight?” she asked hopefully.
“Pilot,” Jack ordered. “I’m sorry, Jena, but we don’t have time to drive this thing anywhere. The British lose the bridge at Arnhem in four days time and the fighting is fierce. We’re doing this on foot or not at all.”
“Lose the bridge?” Jena was horrified. “But Market Garden…”
“Total bust,” Jack sighed. “I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t change the way the war is run, but this” - he gestured around them - “is something I can take part in. I’m sorry, really, but if it won’t fly we have to destroy it.”
Jena nodded sadly.
“Last door!” Lucy called. She pushed it open and ducked back as a bullet whined against the frame. “Looks good.”
Jack nodded. “Get Archie,” he told Jena.
“Alright.”
Jack touched her hand briefly and then hurried over to Lucy. “What’ve we got?”
Lucy unslung her De Lisle and cocked it. “At least one enemy, taking cover behind a table; Luger or a Walther. If you put a couple of shots over her head…”
“Slow down, Tiger!” Jack chided. “We don’t want to catch the pilot in a crossfire. Let me try something, and try not to kill this one. If they were working with the pilot, we might need to talk to them first.”
“But…”
“Ready?”
“Well…”
Jack stepped out into the doorway. He caught sight of blonde hair and blue eyes behind the muzzle flare as he advanced. He felt the bullets slam against his torso, hard as fists even through the flak jacket. One bullet creased his cheek and another found a weakness and punched through his shoulder. He slumped against the wall, bleeding freely, and was barely aware of Lucy leaping past him.
He came to in a rush, his recovery sudden and total enough that he knew he must have died. He pushed himself up and looked around. Lucy was standing over a terrified young woman, while a thin, blue creature lay on a gurney nearby.
“Okay, Jones; what’ve we got?” Jack demanded.
“She says she’s a local doctor,” Lucy replied, “drafted in to treat a prisoner of war. This was the prisoner.”
“R’zann of Tharis,” the woman added quickly and in broken German. “He is good man, sir.”
Jack looked the woman over. “Dutch?” he asked in Dutch.
She nodded eagerly. “Yes.”
“Okay; well, we’re not here to hurt you, Miss…”
“Uttë van Loewen,” she replied at once.
“Captain Jack Harkness. Good to meet you, Uttë van Loewen.”
“Oh!” Lucy exclaimed. She switched back to English. “Oh, no you did not!”
“What?”
“Even you have to draw a line somewhere before flirting with someone you’re about to kill,” Lucy insisted.
“I do,” Jack assured her. “No German survivors; Dutch is okay. After all, who’s she going to tell?”
Lucy shook her head. “You’re as soft as Jena,” she accused, but for once she sounded relieved.
“Oh, I wish. Anyway, the pilot looks in a bad way. You may need her help. See what you can do while I check on the others.”
“Right.”
Out of the infirmary, Jack hurried back to the perimeter, which was being held by ten soldiers of the 1st Airborne Division. He quickly located their leader, Sergeant Tom Evans, a dour Welshman.
“Keep the perimeter secure, but be ready to move out at short notice,” Jack ordered. “We’ll fall back and cross the Rhine at Driel.”
“Our orders were to retreat via Arnhem, sir,” Evans noted.
“I know, but the forces there will be surrounded before we can reach them.”
“Sir?”
“And no, we can’t move up in support. We’re too few and our mission is too important.”
“With respect, sir, my commanding officer…”
“Sergeant, you’ve seen my clearance?”
“Well… no, sir.”
“Right. Scary isn’t it.”
Evans barely blinked. “Driel it is, sir.”
“Good man.”
Jack hurried back to the labs and found a scene of chaos.
“Hey!” he snapped. The room fell silent. “Archie; how’s it going?”
“Charges set, sir, but Dr Hansen won’t let me attach the detonator.”
“R’zann is dying, sir,” Lucy jumped in. “Hansen wants to use the ship’s distress beacon to signal for rescue, but if we do that…”
“We’ve lost everything anyway,” Jena insisted. “We’re blowing up the ship and the pilot is dying; why not just let this one go.”
Jack sighed. “Lucy; is there anything…?”
Lucy shook her head. “Uttë is with him still, but she really doesn’t know enough about his biology and I’m completely new to it. There’s nothing we can do except make him more - or less - comfortable in his final hours.”
Jack hung his head and closed his eyes in thought.
“Jack,” Jena whispered. “You know what’s right.”
“Alright,” he said at last. “Put the pilot inside and trigger the beacon. Clear the charges, Archie, and let’s collect up all the notes we can before Lucy’s firebombs go off. I want everyone clear in five.”
The team and their escort moved away across the Dutch countryside. Behind them a spear of light stabbed out of the sky and began to peel open the laboratory building.
“What the hell is that, Sarge?” one of the soldiers asked.
“If you take my advice, lad, you didn’t see anything,” Evans replied.
“Not our finest hour,” Lucy noted sourly.
“Oh, I don’t know. We got to do a good thing for once.” Jack shrugged. “And if we don’t have the ship, neither do the Nazis.”
“I wish I had your optimism,” Lucy sighed.
Jack clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Just keep an eye on van Loewen for me.”
“A pleasure,” Lucy assured him. She moved away and Jena eased up alongside Jack.
“She’s incorrigible,” she noted.
“A lot of that about,” Jack replied. “Thanks.”
“For nagging?”
“For being our conscience. It’s something we could use more of in Torchwood.”
The Second Principle
Arthurian Myth
Drama
FR-T
In the years immediately following the fall of Uther Pendragon I struggled with my various studies. The insight I had learned from Gorthyn Tinsmith and his daughter Anwyl stood me in good stead in most areas - I could read any opponent like a book, in combat or diplomacy; I never failed to find game in the forest; I always knew which of the beasts would go lame before even the herdsmen did; I could even use my understanding of the ebb and flow of the world to achieve small acts which others might have called miraculous, or magical - but in my practice of the art itself I was frustrated. Gorthyn’s own art had been, by his admission, incomplete and I soon found that I could not take my gifts past a certain point without a teacher.
Specifically, insight allowed me to see what others missed, but could not guide me in action. Sometimes I could feel my way through, but mostly I was only more aware than others of how badly I was going wrong. All too often I would squander an advantage by pressing too fast, startle the quarry in a hunt, and I still got more slaps than kisses from the kitchen maids and village girls.
Word would reach us from time to time of another warlord who had emerged to proclaim himself High King of Britain and, soon after, been defeated in battle. Some did well, overthrowing two or even three of their rivals, but success only hastened their demise, drawing others to ally briefly against them. None ever succeeded in seizing and holding Uther’s abandoned stronghold at Camelot and none had yet been able to produce his sword. Many seers foretold that Uther’s blade would reappear only with the coming of a new High King, and it remained lost in the Forest of Arden.
One of the seers who predicted the return of the sword was Blind Cadoc, known to us as the Augur of the Alehouse. It was in my thirteenth year, when Arthur was just two, that he installed himself in the Sign of the Goshawk and began to offer his services as ‘oracle, soothsayer, guide and counsellor’ to anyone willing to pay some part of the shilling a day he needed to keep himself in bed, board and drink at the tavern.
I can’t say I took Cadoc very seriously at first, but the tavernkeep at the Goshawk was a good friend of my father and his daughter was my age, pretty and enjoyed flirting with rich boys.
Not that I flirted with her much. Flirting with pretty yet superficial girls is one of the simple pleasures that insight denies one. This is not to say that I never tried, only that the experience was inevitably soured as the awareness of Gwenlyan’s grasping mind crept over me. It was usually as I felt her sizing up how far she would need to go to level a claim of promise and how much my father might pay to secure her silence that my attention slid from her to the patrons of the tavern.
It took some time to realise that of all those present, the one my insight never took hold of was the blind seer, and that it was something he was doing that prevented me reading him.
The next day, I went back to the tavern and set five silver shillings before Blind Cadoc. “Teach me,” I told him.
He turned his blind eyes towards my face. “Not here,” he declared.
The next stage of my education in the art of enchantment began in a clearing in a forest. “You know something of insight,” he noted. “Now you must master the second principle; that of intuition. Insight gives you warning; it alerts you to hidden pitfalls and dangers, like the wickedness in young Gwenlyan’s heart. Intuition tells you how to deal with those dangers; how to avert and avoid them. It is the warning voice inside your head which cautions you to hold back when fools rush in.”
He had me describe the clearing to him, dwelling on what my insight told me: the trees which might have hidden an ambush; the shadows where wolves might lie in wait; the branches which lacked strength; the mushrooms which held poisons in their soft flesh. Then he guided me to find ways of avoiding each danger.
“But what of these bandits?” I asked. “Aside from the fact that I sense no actual bandits, if they were in hiding I could circle around behind them instead of turning back.”
“And then what?” he demanded. “The art does not make you indestructible, no more does a sword or a shirt of mail.”
“Of course not…”
“So; caution. And you say you sense no bandits, but insight is not infallible. If your enemy possesses some understanding of the art, they might cloak themselves; or you may simply be wrong.”
“Or I might not be.”
“Enough!” he snapped. “We continue tomorrow.”
That was all the thrust of Cadoc’s teaching: “Never press, never question, never risk. He taught me for five days and for ten days more, and by the end of that time I was barely willing to meet him in the woods so wary had I grown. I used to leave all but the day’s shilling in my chambers so I had nothing to rob; wore a sturdy leather jack against the chance of a sneak attack; carried a dagger on my hip and covered all with a ragged cloak. I even took Anwyl’s spoon from my belt pouch, for fear that it might betray the affection I still felt for her. As for Gwenlian, I barely looked at the girl, let alone spoke to her.
Such was the boy that Cadoc made of me, and it perturbed my father. “Prudence is one thing,” he told me, “but skittishness is unbecoming in a youth of almost fourteen. What man would follow a coward, and what wench betroth herself to such a worry-wort? Why, Arthur shows more pluck than you these days!”
And that was true as well, and frighted me terribly, for I saw in every least thing a threat to his life and limb which could not be tolerated. I made his young life a hell and all-but confined him to his bed, and left only the lightest blanket on that for fear he might smother.
And then, Evalac the Seer came to Dinas Cynyr and installed himself in the Goshawk. He named himself a seer and wore a cloth across his eyes to prove it, with the symbol of an eye upon the cloth so that none could doubt him. His left leg was crippled, from a wound suffered in the service of Lord Damas of Dolorous Gard, he explained. Cadoc’s market share plummeted in the face of such illustrious competition and he left the village during the night, following a rather heated discussion with Evalac in the stable yard.
I could see at once that Evalac possessed some measure of power. He was clearly more skilled than I, and while I deemed he might lack a true gift, the caution instilled in me by Cadoc meant that I was unwilling to approach him. I sensed a risk there and I backed away from it. He, however, guided by senses beyond mere sight, made straight for me.
“A fellow seer,” he greeted me in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Tell me, lad; are you trained.”
I explained that I had some teaching and outlined my understanding of insight and intuition.
“Cadoc?” he scoffed when I was done. “That womanish fool? He would not know intuition if it bit him on the arse. Come; lead me to where you practised and I shall show you some real technique.”
Unwilling to cross him, for he was wiry and strong besides possessing some power of enchantment, I led him to the clearing. There he had me describe our surroundings, just as Cadoc had done, but where Cadoc had focused on the dangers to be sensed, he made me dwell on possibilities.
“If you were laying an ambush, where would you choose?” he asked. “Those mushrooms; how could their poison serve you?”
“And what of the dangers?” I asked.
“Run towards them,” he replied. “Embrace them. Let your insight guide you safely past them, but do not shrink from them! Be a man, Cai ap Cynyr!”
I admit, I liked his teaching far more than Cadoc’s. For another two weeks I studied with him, growing ever more reckless and fearless. I diced in the tavern, losing often but winning more as my insight guided me. I took many blows in my sparring matches, but emerged ever victorious as I pummelled my opponents with furious strength. I kissed Gwenlyan, earning a slap and another kiss by my boldness, and almost revelled in my understanding of her games.
I thought that my father must surely approve of this new direction, but once more he seemed displeased. “Excess of prudence may become a vice, but profligacy in any degree can never be a virtue,” he told me. “I have had complaint of you for gaming and brawling, and report of drinking to excess, and at such a tender age. The nurse tells me that you twice allowed Arthur to wander unprotected in the garden and my old friend Hugh Tavernkeep tells me you have given rash promises to his daughter!”
I confessed to some confusion, but agreed that he should speak to Gwenlyan and her father on my behalf in the morning. Of course, as soon as I left his chambers I ran to the Goshawk myself; my insight and intuition would guide me, I was sure, far better than my father could.
Gwen was not in the taproom and her father angrily told me I would find her in the yard, fetching water. “Although I thought you must already have found her, the time she’s taking.”
Insight; I knew his words boded ill. Intuition; I sprang into the fray, racing through to the yard. The bucket lay abandoned on the cobbles and the horses shied nervously in their stables. I ran to an empty stall and saw Gwenlyan wrestling with Evalac. He held her head and whispered in her ear.
This much I saw. Insight told me that the seer was pouring words of power out upon the girl; words which caused her limbs to tremble as though palsied and robbed her of the will to fight him. Intuition told me to act, but what to do? Cadoc would counsel me to leave well alone, but there was Gwen to consider; Evalac himself would have bade me attack at once, but her held her too close for comfort.
I chose a third way.
“Let her go!” I roared, putting my power into my voice, just as he was but to an opposite purpose. Evalac stumbled and Gwen, her mind freed of his grasp, pulled away and clawed at his face. She caught his face with her nails and tore away the cloth upon his eyes, revealing the ragged, empty sockets beneath.
Evalac howled like a wounded beast. He thrust Gwen away from him and seized a lantern from the wall, brandishing it like a mace. “Damn you both!” he shrieked, groping blindly towards us. “You’ll pay for this, girl! And you, boy, I’ll teach no more!”
“I’ve learned enough from you!” I replied. “Cadoc went blind because he drew back from what he saw, but you lost your sight for going too far. You led your lord to ruin and he had you blinded and lamed for your sins.”
Insight; I knew that Evalac would attack. Intuition; run or fight? I stooped and pulled Gwen to her feet, drawing her out of range as he swung the lantern. Had I run, he would have hit her; had I lunged at him, he would have hit me. As it was, he struck the wooden wall. The lantern shattered and fire spilled across the straw.
“Go!” I told Gwen, and I moved towards Evalac, shielding my face from the heat. “Come with me,” I called, but he swung the shattered lantern at me and I had to back away. It was his instinct, his intuition, to attack; he could not help himself, even now that it was killing him.
I turned and fled the flames; there was nothing else I could do.
The yard was full of plunging, panicking horses and I helped Gwen to lead them to safety. Behind us the stable roof collapsed and we heard one last, defiant shriek as the flames took Evalac.
“Thank you,” Gwen said. I held her close and kissed her, because that was what she needed me to do and because it was what I needed after witnessing the horror of Evalac’s madness.
I promised Gwen’s father that I would marry her and we agreed that we should be betrothed on my fifteenth birthday. Four months before the day she begged to be released to marry another and I readily agreed. I was fond of her, she had grown so much through adversity and was on her way to becoming a fine woman, and she was of me, but we did not love one another. Like the kiss, our promise was just something that we needed to bring us through.
As far as the art I understood now what neither Evalac nor Cadoc ever had. Intuition was not about impulse, it was a matter of swift, but reasoned action. Understanding that, I found that I was able to bend the world that little bit more to my will. I could, had I so wanted, have made Gwen dismiss her other lover; it would have taken just five words. I could even have made her think that she loved me, but love - real love - would have been beyond me and Gwen deserved the real thing.
I like to think that I deserved it as well. I hope so.
Subterranean Homesick Blue Pills
The Matrix
Drama, Vignette
FR-T
Jinx made her way silently through the maintenance ducts which threaded their way through the infrastructure of Zion. She paused at an intersection and checked her map, then scrambled swiftly down a ladder to find herself in front of a heavy, steel hatch. There was a metal pipe hanging by a chain on one side of the door and she used this to rap three times, paused and then rapped twice.
The hatch opened and a masked figure beckoned Jinx inside. She thought that the figure might have been that of a man, but the robe made it difficult to be sure. The mask bore the number ‘12’ on a small plate on the forehead.
“Welcome, sister,” ‘he’ said in a muffled, electronically distorted voice. He handed her a long robe and a mask, similar to his but distinct in detail. The plate bore the number 31.
Jinx pulled on the concealing robes and donned the mask.
“Do you understand the rules?”
“Um… the person who told me how to get here said, ah, no names.” Her voice was distorted by her mask so that she barely knew herself.
The masked dipped in a nod. “Only the numbers; and you have to speak on your first visit.” He closed the door and showed her through into an auditorium, where a small cluster of other robed figures gathered.
12 gently pushed Jinx forward, towards a tall figure with the number 1 on its brow. “We have a new sister,” it said, although how it could tell she was a woman Jinx did not know. “Sister, speak to us.”
Jinx swallowed hard beneath the mask. “I’m J… Number 31,” she said, “and I wish I’d taken the blue pill.”
Author's Notes: Harry Potter was created and is owned by JK Rowling. The Worst Witch was written by Jill Murphy. Sapphire and Steel was created by PJ Hammond. The Visionaries are owned by Hasbro. I am Legend was written by Richard Matheson. The Lord of the Rings was written by JRR Tolkien. Torchwood belongs to the BBC. The Matrix was created by the Wachowski brothers and is owned by Warner. Fairy Tales and Arthuiana are, as ever, anyone's.
Red Hoodie is another of my favourites and worked much better than I expected, and Subterranean Homesick Blue Pills is a last-minute stand-in after the planned story didn't work out.