Dragon's Trail Read online

  A lifetime of fighting exploded through Jarrod and he spun on his heel with a handful of Renaldo’s jacket, hurling him onto the credenza and collapsing it.

  He couldn’t breathe, his throat cramping, and he started to shake.

  Windpipe. Windpipe.

  Jarrod picked up the phone, watching Renaldo over his shoulder.

  He felt pain, but it was miles away. It felt like the point of the boot had torn his hamstring. The concern was the tightening in his throat.

  He punched buttons. 9— 1—

  His eyes traced the letters below the keypad. They became words.

  FOR AN OUTSIDE LINE: DIAL “9”

  THEN “0” + THE NUMBER.

  FOR LONG-DISTANCE, PLEASE DIAL “0”

  AND AN OPERATOR WILL ASSIST YOU.

  Jarrod slapped down the contacts on the cradle.

  Focus.

  His brain refused to comprehend anything except the flares that were now going up, screaming for air. Panic was setting in; he knew he had only moments before things started shutting down. And then, God help him.

  9 — No, wait. . .

  0?

  9?

  Renaldo was getting up.

  Jarrod met Renaldo’s skull with the phone, hurling it into the back of his head and shattering the plastic case, and fell back against the wall, wheezing. Melting.

  Renaldo grabbed the corner of the bed, heaved, and righted himself like a tall ship in a storm.

  And it was then that Jarrod saw the sword at Renaldo’s side. A longsword, with about a foot of handle, and the same ornate, branched guard as his new rapier.

  Renaldo began sliding the sword—and there was a lot of it—out of the scabbard. “Let’s go. You and me.”

  “Yeah, real fair,” rasped Jarrod.

  As he lunged for his rapier, all the way across the room, something blew through the door. Something brown, holding something red.

  The brown thing knocked Renaldo out with the red thing.

  Jarrod stared emptily through the haze that was his eyesight as Renaldo lay sprawled on the floor, on his side, arms askew.

  Crius harrumphed, and tossed a fire extinguisher on the bed. “Such foresight to keep these in every hallway.”

  “On my swordbelt,” Jarrod squeaked. “Med kit. There’s a . . .” he fought panic at the sound of his voice, “. . . trache tube. You gotta cut me.” The neon wrigglers were coming back, purple and orange, crawling through the edges of his vision as he found himself on his knees. “Oh, fuck. Cut me, man. Trache me.”

  Crius stared at him in incomprehension. “I’ll talk you through it,” Jarrod rasped. “Get my med kit. Hurry. Oh, fuck. Oh, f—”

  The room flared white and faded.

  Carter awaited Jarrod and Siri in the coffee shop of Pete’s Chowder House, just up the street from the weekend’s madness.

  He heard sirens, thought nothing of it, and sipped his coffee.

  Carter remembered long conversations and many demonstrations with a young Jarrod, even ten years ago, when Jarrod Torrealday was a smirking little slip of a boy, still in high school but an A-grade fencer with a solid grounding in Judo.

  Back when Carter had sparred with the young Jarrod, he’d felt like he was standing on ice. Everything he hated about fighting a judoka in the octagon, coming back to haunt him in thirty pounds of mail with a blade that flashed like thought. Terrifying. Not just swords, either. Spear, axe, knife. Immense talent. With something sharp and a suit of armor Jarrod could, quite literally, whip anybody in the world.

  When the rules were off.

  The strict regulations for historical armored combat had frustrated Jarrod, and he hadn’t placed well in tournaments. He’d dropped out of the medieval re-enactor scene and went on to win a junior World Cup championship in saber. Saber rules, he could do.

  A few years later, as an undergrad at Duke, Jarrod had attracted attention by insisting that medieval armored combat and Eastern martial arts shared common ground. This was now common knowledge, but at the time, it had been heresy.

  His blog posts and videos—Judo-flipping and leg-sweeping in full 15th-Century field harnesses with swords—had snared the attention of a director in Hollywood who flew Jarrod out to advise for a television series whose fight sequences, once produced, had raised the ire of pretty much every professional fight choreographer in the world simultaneously before becoming the new standard.

  The years that followed brought magazine interviews and movie consults, capped with a History Channel special and a move up to 16th in the world in saber.

  To say Jarrod had a gift was an understatement. Hailed as the Bruce Lee of medieval combat, he was, more than any other man, responsible for the recent revival in historical European martial arts. The cover of Sports Illustrated had called him The Deadliest Man Alive.

  Then, the kid’s fall from grace: Jarrod’s dismissal from the International Fencing Federation on his way to the U.S. Olympic team amidst world-rocking scandal. A rivalry in Paris—a stupid thing, an argument over a girl—had escalated into a duel and left a world-class sabreur dead in the cold rain of the Latin Quarter.

  The trial, the acquittal; nonstop coverage. The Jarrod Torrealday Story ran twenty-four seven. Young, handsome, promising, lethal. The media loved hating him. Rumor had it he’d even been offered his own reality show as the underground dueling clubs cropped up across the world.

  Jarrod had resurfaced in Greece a year later, consulting for a sword and sorcery film with a laughable budget. A TV tabloid found him at a nearby bar, raving drunk. The resulting interview still spawned memes for a man at rock bottom.

  Fifteen years older, Carter could imagine what Jarrod had gone through. Jarrod had hit his peak at age twenty-six, and then tripped over it and fell off the far side. Long goddamned way down, too.

  But good on him for the Isabella Barnes thing.

  Carter knew Jarrod would rise again, and it would be entertaining to see how.

  He himself had had several peaks. College ball at Penn, then three years with the Patriots, and a blown knee in the playoffs at about Jarrod’s age. A Master’s in medieval history and a private school teaching job, coaching varsity through his years of rehab, and then a pretty good tour in MMA until the knee went out again. He’d walked—well, limped—away from teaching to chase a TV career that never quite materialized—a few neo-gladiatorial TV shows, even a short professional wrestling stint—before cashing in and starting his gym.

  And selling it. What a pain in the ass that whole thing had become. So much hard sell, so little training.

  And now he had a small nest egg, a trusty diesel pickup, and renters in the house. Time to figure out the Next Thing.

  Maybe Iceland with Jarrod Torrealday. Why the hell not?

  He checked his watch. One-ten. C’mon. Punctuality.

  More sirens. Something big was happening up the coast. He checked out the window, saw no smoke, and finished his coffee.

  At one-twelve there was a tap on his shoulder.

  “Parking trouble? Oh, uh,” he stammered, realizing that it wasn’t the person he thought it would be. “Hi.”

  It was one of the Renaissance guys, leaning on a staff. He needed a shower.

  Carter eyed Crius up and down clinically, then guessed. “Dave Grohl stars as the moody young Gascon?”

  Crius stared in incomprehension.

  Carter made the metal horns with one hand. “Dude.”

  Crius returned the sign feebly, staring at his own hand for a moment, first. “Doo-ood,” he answered.

  “Exactly,” Carter said. “What’s up?”

  “Jarrod,” said Crius.

  “He’ll be here in a minute,” said Carter.

  Crius grunted once, politely begging to differ. “No, he won’t.”

  His tone had unaccountably melted into something Carter couldn’t quite nail down as malice, but a stern, out-of-place, grave-sort-of-something Carter ins
tinctively knew he shouldn’t like. He shifted his weight uneasily around the booth.

  “Why—uh—hmm. What makes you say that?” he leaned back a bit in feigned curiosity.

  “Jarrod needs your help,” said Crius, telepathically driving it home with such emphasis that Carter stood and pulled on his battered Patriots jacket before he even knew why he was getting upset.

  Carter unfolded a fiver and left it on the table. “What is it? Renaldo?”

  “Yes. Hurry.”

  Carter cracked his knuckles and his neck, shook life into his head. His voice was alive, his hands itching. “Let’s go.” He was already heading for the door.

  Crius followed, having to move quickly to keep up with Carter’s broad stride, and grabbed Carter’s hand.

  “Hey, none of that,” Carter pulled his hand away and pushed the door open.

  There was a moment of distress when his hand didn’t find the door, punctuated by a heavy blow to the crown of his skull.

  “Ow! Ffff—!” He doubled over, holding his head with both hands and swearing. “What the hell?”

  From between his forearms, he could see that he had stepped out of Pete’s Chowder house into a tiny, stone room, with a large desk. Thick timbers crisscrossed the ceiling, vanishing into darkness above him. He’d hit his head on one. “What the hell?” he re-iterated.

  A fire glowed in a fireplace, though it was daytime outside a nearby window. With a flick of Crius’s hand, it grew into a blaze of white flames.

  Carter’s mind scrabbled for an explanation as his heart sledgehammered against his chest. The throbbing in his head was Thor’s hammer, hurled at him from way down his family tree. He slammed air into his lungs, looking about for something to hit.

  The door behind them opened, and a soldier in a long shirt of black mail with a short spear entered the room. He babbled in a language Carter didn’t understand, looking back and forth between them as he spoke. He aimed the spear at Carter.

  Carter stepped up to him, hands in the air, fingers spread, and then he grabbed the spear, twisted it free, and wrapped the guy up as it flipped away and clattered. They grappled, Carter noting that the man must have been built out of bricks under the mail, quick and solid, until Carter tripped him backwards and ran him back six steps, full-speed into the wall.

  Carter stepped back and left the soldier on the floor, groaning.

  Yeah, I bet that hurt.

  Carter drove a deep breath out through the thumping in his skull. He did this again, and his hands stopped shaking, at which point he picked up the spear and took a step back.

  The wood in his hands was dense, smooth, and dark. The head was triangular instead of flat, ensuring a slow-healing wound. Gorgeous work. “All right,” he growled to Crius, “Explain.”

  “You’re going to feel disoriented,” said Crius. “You’ve just made quite a journey.”

  Carter glanced around again. “Oh, ya think? What is this?”

  “There’s no need to harm anyone.”

  “I’ll decide that. Start talking.” The guard stirred, and Carter threatened him with the spear. “Don’t fucking move.” He’d ripped a fingernail on the mail and it throbbed.

  Crius continued, “You feel threatened, and I understand. I brought you here the way I did because you wouldn’t have believed any of this otherwise.”

  Carter looked around the room, at the stone walls and timber beams, the raging fire, this grunge-rock wizard’s insane sincerity, and the groaning guy on the floor. Who, to be fair, had given him a better fight than he’d expect from any LARP-er.

  And this spear, he thought, looking at it again. Sweet Jesus.

  Across the room, a glassless window showed an expanse of sky, cloudless, with a gentle magenta tint that he unconsciously tried to blink away. The sun beyond was far brighter, the breeze through the window far colder, than Maine had been.

  Carter stared out the window, squinting at the odd light. A black-armored warrior on a black pegasus glided into view maybe a hundred yards out, wheeled, and leaped away again. He moved closer for another look.

  It was—blinking again—definitely a pegasus.

  The rider was out there doing steeplechase in the air, just playing around, in what appeared to be the winged-horse equivalent of burning donuts in the parking lot. Past the rider he saw a long, low castle wall with fat, squat towers, and an ocean of wide plains beyond.

  A horn sounded in the distance.

  Carter leaned the spear against the wall, then walked over and gave the soldier a hand up to his feet. “Apologize to him for me,” he told Crius.

  The soldier grumbled something as Carter brushed him off and clapped him on the upper arm in the universal sign for good game.

  Behind the helmet, the soldier—or knight, or whatever he was—smiled and shook his head, saying something that Carter accepted as a compliment. Carter put out a hand, and the man shook it, his gloved hand around Carter’s forearm.

  “He says his name is Sir Dar, he’s a knight, and he hopes that I brought you here to teach his men,” said Crius.

  Carter turned to Crius. “Well, funny you should mention it. I’m a pretty good coach and I’m looking for work.”

  “Yes. I saw you with your big sword, yesterday, teaching. We would like to extend an offer of employment to you.”

  With those words, Carter realized that he wasn’t hearing in his ears what he was hearing in his head, but rather, it was as if the scruffy kid was playing a subtitled movie in his mind as he talked. He only noticed now that this had been going on since Pete’s Chowder House.

  It seemed there was going to be a lot to take in.

  Carter pulled out the chair in front of Crius’s desk, antique, soft leather, immensely comfortable, and settled in before the fire. Sir Dar took his spear, put his fist over his heart and bowed to Carter, and showed himself out.

  “Let’s talk,” Carter said to Crius, “but slowly.”

  II

  MINUET

  “Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.”

  — Confucius

  Jarrod awoke to a chill.

  He smelled candle smoke, with an underpinning of wet concrete and cedar. A basement smell. A woodshop smell. And distant incense.

  It was cold.

  Swearing silently through a yawn, he opened his eyes. A turn of his head yielded surprisingly less discomfort than he’d expected. He found some mobility in the left shoulder, bringing pain but not as much as he’d expected.

  Jarrod looked up into the candlelit crags of a face, stubbly, the lines engraved with concern.

  It took him a moment. It was a face he recognized, but certainly not one he’d expected. Carter’s face.

  “You awake?” the voice seemed to seep from all corners of the room.

  Jarrod closed his eyes again, tried to speak. Someone had stolen his tongue and replaced it with a hunk of steel wool.

  Carter handed him a ceramic chalice of cold water. Jarrod sat up a bit and nursed it.

  The room was generous, lit by wide candles in stone sconces and done in early—very early, he noted—medieval decor. Rough stone walls, bare timbers overhead, and a stack of split fat logs and a pile of dried cow flop beside a glowing fireplace. A wooden floor that looked splintery. A wolfskin spread-eagled on the wall, replete with dried, eyeless head. Rustic and simple, yet somehow rich: beams and boards were well cared-for, the bedsheets were soft and the furs covering him were real and thick, and the lone tapestry—green with a gold skeleton key superimposed along a white square tower in its center—was fine silk, heavy and bright, that seemed to glow of its own accord.

  It was quiet. Wind rustled the skin on the wall. The fire snapped occasionally. If he concentrated, he could hear the burbling of a brook over stones.

  “You all right?” asked Carter.

  Jarrod tried to sit up further. Carter helped him.

  “Good Lord,” Jarrod groaned, stretching w
ith great effort and ow-ing repeatedly under his breath. “How long was I out?” Days? Weeks? No bedsores.

  “Beats me,” said Carter. “You were out when I got here.”

  He yawned again. “How long have you been here?”

  Carter sipped at a ceramic stein of something foamy he’d had near his feet. “Three days.”

  Jarrod stretched his neck and leaned forward to grab his toes beneath the furs. His flexibility wasn’t greatly compromised. He’d been well taken care of. “Bastard Renaldo,” he griped. “Beat the shit out of me. Could’ve sworn he collapsed my windpipe. Did they cut me?” He reached his hand to his throat, expecting bandages, and finding none.

  Carter’s tone was resigned. “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s Siri?”

  “I don’t know. Not here.”

  “We’ve got to find her—Renaldo—”

  Carter cut him off. “Forget Renaldo. This is you and me.”

  “O-o-okay,” Jarrod blew out a long breath. “Where are we?”

  Carter stood, went to the far wall, untied one leg of the wolfskin, and pulled it back to reveal a deep arrowslit set in a stone wall two feet thick.

  Jarrod moved to the edge of the bed for a better look.

  It was raining lightly against the outermost lip of the arrowslit, smudging any details of the curtain wall a hundred yards further and a hundred feet below.

  They were very high in the tower.

  Past the curtain wall, the skies were dark with rain above a hundred wooden roofs that sprawled down the hillside, oozing smoke from their chimneys. The outer wall of the town stood at the base of the hill, its towers, vaguely round, reduced to blurs in the mist.

  The quiet was infectious, the rain a blanket on the world.

  “Wow.”

  “The Castle of Regoth Ur,” said Carter, “in Northern Gateskeep.”

  “Do we have cell service out here?”