Jake's Justice, Book Three of Wizards (10 page)

A long time later my wife kissed me on the cheek and then shook me to make sure I was awake.

“How did these people find you?”

“My image is posted in the
Temple
of
Representatives
. It’s a good enough image to let any magic user find me provided they have enough power.”

My wife sat up.

“Wonderful. My Lord Wizard Husband should remember that he has two pregnant wives who are not supposed to be stressed in their final months of pregnancy.” The last five words were punctuated by her fist bouncing on my chest. It hurt.

“You knew who I was before you married me.”

She thumped me lower down and knocked the wind out of me.

“Don’t try using logic, your brain might explode.”

I held her arms. That only left her legs as dangerous weapons. And her head, I avoided the head butt by inches.

“We could do it again. You’d be one up on Jenny,” I whispered seductively. She relaxed against me.

Saved by an offer of sex. I held my tigress and did my duty as a husband. I hoped my bits would take the wear and tear. They’d had a hard day. As had the clothes I was wearing as she hadn’t given me time to disrobe.

Half a satisfying hour later, a meal of royal proportions arrived. Apparently a result of the rope pull Esmeralda had made some time ago. That reminded me I‘d done nothing to solve the food problem facing our people. Not so long ago the only thing I had to decide was whether to visit the woodyard to see if there was any work, ah those were happy days.

However, I was too tired to think of anything that might solve that particular problem. As I drifted to sleep in my wife’s arms I hoped that those who wanted to kill me would wait until a civilized time in the morning to attack. I’d hate to wake up with my throat cut.

Salice has nothing much in the way of noisy technology. They do have steam engines which they use to power water pumps, but they haven’t got the idea of putting wheels on the things and driving them on roads or rail. This means that you don’t get woken by traffic, but there are plenty of noises like cocks crowing and donkeys braying to wake you up. However, being a bit of a country boy at heart, I’d soon got used to such things and slept like a log despite them.

What woke me that morning was the sound of a dragon shouting in my mind.

[Jake, wake up now.]

“Wha…”

I opened my eyes to a bedroom empty of dragon, but I wasn’t fooled. Just because you can’t see one doesn’t mean there isn’t one there.

I whispered to avoid waking Esmeralda who was snoring quietly beside me. She’s cute when she does that. “Fluffy?”

[Get up and let us get away from here.]

“Why, exactly?”

[Someone is watching us. I felt it in my lair and it is stronger here. Best we not confront our enemies in your wife’s bed.]

That got me up and I started pulling clothes on. Esmeralda muttered something and threw an arm over where I’d been a moment before. She woke instantly when her arm landed on nothing but bed.

“Jake. Where are you going?”

“I forgot about something and have to take care of it.”

My wife gave me a look that showed she wasn’t in the slightest bit fooled.

“I’ll come with you.” She began to get out of bed.

“Look after our child.”

I grabbed Fluffy’s neck as his head came out of Glim and swung onto his back.

“You come right back here, Jake Morrissey,” were the last words I heard as we vanished.

10.
      
Night Knights

Fluffy brought us out in the
Bat
Cave
. I dismounted and took the time to fasten my shoe laces.

[You could have put on clean clothes.]

I sniffed my tee-shirt. He was right.

“If we hadn’t gone when we did,
you
would have had to explain to Esmeralda why we were going and why she couldn’t come.”

[Good point. Best we left quickly.]

“This cave is almost as bad as the Palace as a place for a fight. We need to go somewhere where we can see what’s going on.”

[There is a lot of room outside.]

“While a magical battle in the mountains of
Wales
is not without precedent, I’d rather not be a rolling item on the news channels.”

[Somewhere in Salice?]

I pondered that one. There were lots of places in Salice where locals were unlikely to get involved or get hurt if our watcher proved hostile. But then, I could never predict what Esmeralda might do when she was told where we were. And she would be told very quickly.

“How about that amphitheatre on the Dragon World?]

[They will not be there. It is only used for gatherings and they are rare. In any event, they would not help us.]

“Why ever would we need any help?” I grinned at my dragon and he grinned back.

[It is a long way to glim. Will you hop us there?]

Rather than answer, I put my hand on him and we appeared in the centre of the stage or whatever it was. A clear sky and bright sunlight greeted us. It was like being in the center of an ancient volcano with caves studding the walls. Apart from the sound of a breeze softly whistling among the rocks this world was eerily silent. I’d never seen any evidence of life in my visits, apart from the visiting dragons. The circular stone stage stretched well over a hundred yards in all directions. I felt exposed, but at least our watcher would be too, assuming they ever made an appearance.

Fluffy sat down and I joined him. using his flank as a back rest.

“When did you first notice you were being watched?”

[About three minutes before I came to you.]

“This could be a long wait then.”

[I do not think so. I have never felt so unnerved. My feeling is that the danger is imminent.]

I looked at my watch. It was already gone eleven.

“Let’s hope they get on with it. I have an appointment at two this afternoon.”

Fluffy laughed and flames danced across the stage. [You are the only creature in the universe who would hurry up an apocalypse because you had arranged a haircut for later that day.]

“Priorities, my scaly friend. It’s all down to priorities.”

Fluffy stood and I tumbled as my back rest disappeared. [Make ready, Jake. Something is coming.]

Fluffy took the north and I watched the south side of the amphitheater. Nothing moved and apart from my own quickened breathing and Fluffy’s claws scratching on stone there was nothing to hear.

Then a hundred or more Knights of Justice appeared from nowhere. They formed a perfect circle around us, their swords pointing in at us, held two handed as though they expected to keep up the stance for some time.

A knight appeared facing me, well inside the circle and perhaps thirty-five feet away. As soon as he started talking I recognized the voice and style. God, these knights were pompous.

“Be it known that Wizard Jake Morrissey and his dragon Retnor are thrice condemned to death,” Sir Grendon said as he read from a scroll, “for revealing our worlds to the Valhallans, for resisting Justice delivered by a Knight of Justice, and for threatening the stability of the legal system of the Diamond Worlds by successfully resisting a Knight carrying out his duty.”

I had to rise to that. “Aren’t two of those the same thing? And on what basis do you involve my dragon in all this?”

[I am not YOUR dragon.]

“Technicalities, you know what I mean.”

[Humph.]

Sir Grendon was not amused by our witty banter. “Be quiet, criminals. You must be expunged from the multiverse before you are able to spread your method of defiance. When we finish here, we will execute your relatives and friends to limit the chances of contamination. The dragon extermination program will be accelerated.”

I raised my hand and willed him driven to his knees. It didn’t work of course. The dampening field all those swords were putting out stopped my magic dead at my skin. Still, verbal defiance could partly satisfy the cold anger his words had caused.

“When you lose this time, I will not be so forgiving.”

Fluffy sent a burst of flames in Sir Grendon’s direction. I saw the magic stripped from it after the first yard or so, but dragonfire without the magic is still fire and Sir Grendon turned his back and crouched down so it sprayed across his amour. I wondered if his pink underwear was fireproof and kind of hoped not.

Stepping forward I forged the sword of pure magic I’d used before. As a man, all the knights in the circle took a step towards me and the sword shrank a couple of inches.

“It does that when it gets cold,” I quipped, but nobody laughed. Not even Fluffy, the traitor. “Still, it’s more than long enough to strip you and your friends to your underwear. Did you know that pink is a girly color?”

Sir Grendon came out of his crouch to face me. I saw a wisp of smoke rise from inside his mail.

“Hot in there, is it?”

Sir Grendon pointed his sword at me in the manner of his fellows and in response each took a further two steps towards us. My sword shrank by another four inches.

[Jake, we need to attack before they get too close.]

That was an understatement. At the rate my sword shrank as they closed in I’d be fighting them with a nail file before they got halfway. And a nail file against a steel sword is no contest, even if it’s a magic nail file. I’d be salami before I could turn more than a couple of swords to dust.

‘Cover me,’
I thought at Fluffy and ran towards Sir Grendon.

Fluffy splattered fire around the Knight as I closed the distance between us. He had adopted a stance chosen to allow him to launch a killing blow from his sword before I could reduce his equipment to dust. My sword was down to a long dagger when I reached him. I guessed the knights were continuing to shrink their circle.

As I brought my dagger down on him and he swung his sword to cut me in two, I changed my left hand to titanium and grabbed his sword. Magic still worked within my flesh and I had coated my metal flesh with pure magic. His sword stopped though the pain was horrendous. His sword and amour crumbled. I changed my right hand to living metal as I delivered a roundhouse punch to his jar. Sir Grendon swayed in his underwear and collapsed in an untidy pink heap.

‘Now we die,’
I thought bleakly as I raised my eyes to the advancing knights. Sunlight glinted off their blades and amour. Their eyes fixed on me as though I was the devil incarnate. The nearest were still a good ten feet away from my position, but that wasn’t going to help.

The air rippled behind the knights. Dragons appeared out of glim less than two feet from their backs. Each blew fire at a knight. The flames went straight through them without doing the slightest damage. The knights paused as they looked down at their chests to see where the fire was coming from.

Then they looked up and yelled as they saw the dragons behind their colleagues on the other side of the circle. They sprang around to face their new foes, and as they turned their swords and amour turned to dust.

I felt my magic expand out and worked at repairing my hands, which were literally beginning to kill me. A human is not designed to have metal hands. The pain they caused was almost overwhelming.

I heard screams and black acrid smoke wafted towards me. Burning pork is what it smelled like. Looking up I saw charred bodies of knights around me, some still screaming as the dragonfire had not yet reached their lungs. Then there was an eerie silence punctuated only by the dull thud of bodies falling on stone and breaking apart.

I looked at the carnage with sheer disbelief. The dragons had them helpless; there was no need for this. Fluffy came up behind me and bumped my back with his head.

[You should thank my brethren for rescuing us from this trap.]

[THERE IS NO NEED. THE TRAP WAS OURS AND YOU MADE EXCELLENT BAIT.]