Fight and Flight (Magic 2.0 Book 4) Read online

  Brit the Elder said, “Hello, Bishop Galbraith. Welcome.”

  Louiza asked, “How are you feeling?”

  Galbraith asked, “Am I in heaven?”

  Brit the Elder said, “No, Father, I’m sorry, but this isn’t heaven.”

  Bishop Galbraith let out a long breath, then laughed. The two women looked at each other, confused.

  Brit the Elder smiled at the incongruity of it. “You seem relieved.”

  Galbraith said, “Young lady, if heaven let someone like me in without asking some serious questions, then frankly I’d have to worry that it wasn’t as hard to get in as I’ve been telling people.”

  “But how could you not be allowed into heaven? You’re a bishop.”

  Galbraith laughed. “I wasn’t born a bishop. A man can get into a lot of mischief before he joins the clergy. Sometimes, the night before he joins.”

  Brit said, “I see.”

  “Also, I didn’t want to spend eternity in heaven with a burnt leg that has an arrow sticking out of it.”

  “Yes, about that. Does it hurt?” Louiza asked.

  “It’s burnt, and it has an arrow sticking out of it.”

  “Do you have pain anywhere else?”

  “Not nearly as bad, but yes, my hands hurt.”

  Louiza took his hand in hers and asked, “Do you have any idea why?”

  “Yes,” Galbraith said. “It’s probably from slapping Sonny, one of the boys from my flock.”

  “With both hands?”

  “Yes.”

  Brit asked, “Why were you slapping him?”

  “He was on fire, and I wanted him to stop being on fire. I take a dim view of burning to death, as per the scriptures. Look, you’re Brit, that wizard woman who is good friends with Phillip, aren’t you?”

  Brit the Elder winced, and said, “We prefer to be called sorceresses, or just wizards.”

  “And I prefer to be called either Bishop Galbraith or Your Excellency, but I didn’t bother you about it when you called me Father, did I.”

  Brit blushed. “Of course, Your Excellency. Please forgive me.”

  “I might, after you tell me what this is all about.”

  “Dragons attacked Leadchurch. You got hurt. My friend’s name is Louiza. She’s a healer. She’s going to tend to your wounds while you and I have a little talk.”

  Louiza shifted her gaze from the bishop’s hands to his face, and said, “Good to meet you, Your Excellency. You have second-degree burns and some pretty bad bruises on your hands. You must have really been trying to put that fire out.”

  “He’s a fine young man. There are others I might not have gone to that much effort for. Do you know how he is?”

  Brit the Elder said, “If he was injured in the dragon attack, he should be all right. Nobody was killed. We’ve brought all of the injured here for healing. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “But first,” Louiza said, “I’ll need to cut your pants leg to get access to your wound. I hope that’s not a problem, Your Excellency. We’ll supply you with a new pair of pants before we send you back to your ti—” Louiza and Brit exchanged a look. Louiza said, “Town.”

  The bishop nodded. “That’s fine, of course. Just don’t make the new pants too nice. A clergyman shouldn’t be dressed better than his flock.”

  Louiza nodded and got to work. Brit said, “About your flock, Your Excellency. We’ve been misleading some of them. The ones who got injured. We don’t want them learning things that will needlessly confuse them. When we found you among the wounded, I decided it would be best to tell you the truth.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a good man, and I didn’t want to lie to you. Also, we thought you’d see through our lie anyway.”

  “How would you know? We’ve only met a few times, and Phillip did more talking than both of us put together.”

  Brit the Elder said, “I don’t know you well yet, but in time I’ll get to know you quite well, and we will be friends.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Brit had a hard enough time discussing time travel with other wizards who had used it themselves. She didn’t even want to try to explain it to a medieval clergyman. “I really can’t say.”

  Louiza said, “Your Excellency, I’m going to numb your leg, then pull the arrow out now.” She swiped her finger in the air, stabbed it forward a few times, then grasped the arrow and pulled it out of his leg wound with little resistance.

  Galbraith said, “That didn’t hurt at all. My burn doesn’t hurt either, now that I think about it. How did you do that?”

  Brit the Elder knew that simply saying magic wouldn’t satisfy him, so she said, “I’m sorry, but we really can’t tell you.”

  Galbraith looked at Louiza. “Well, no matter how you did it, I’m grateful. I don’t recognize your accent. Where are you from?”

  Brit the Elder knew that the answer was Brazil, which wouldn’t exist as a nation-state until hundreds of years after Galbraith’s death, and was on a continent Galbraith didn’t know existed, so she said, “I’m sorry, Your Excellency, but we can’t tell you that either.”

  “I thought you said you were going to tell me the truth,” Galbraith snapped.

  “Yes,” Brit said, “But I didn’t promise the whole truth.”

  Galbraith said, “You might think you’re clever, but being tricky with your words just irritates people.”

  Louiza said, “I know, right? I’ve tried to tell her that. So has Brit.”

  “Wait,” Galbraith said. “She’s Brit, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “So there’s another wizard named Brit.”

  Brit the Elder said, “No. There isn’t.”

  Brit cut in before Galbraith could react. “The point is, Your Excellency, the dragons that attacked Leadchurch were our fault. We wizards that is. We didn’t want them to attack, but it was our fault that they could. Thankfully, nobody died. We brought the wounded here so Louiza can tend to them. Right now, every wizard you know is out rounding up and dealing with the remaining dragons.”

  “Every wizard except you two,” Galbraith said.

  “Except Louiza,” Brit the Elder said.

  “Seriously. Don’t ask,” Louiza said, not looking up from her task of cleaning the bishop’s burn.

  Brit said, “Your Excellency, we needed to wake your people up to heal them, but we didn’t want them to ask a lot of questions about where they are, or go back to Leadchurch with a lot of confusing stories they wouldn’t understand. So, we’ve been pretending that this place is somewhere else. Somewhere they’ve heard of.”

  “Where?” Galbraith asked.

  “Hell. We’ve been dressing up as demons and pretending that this place is hell. It gives us an excuse to ask them questions, explains why they’re still in pain, and telling them how they can avoid returning gives us a chance to send them back to Leadchurch a little better than they left. We wanted you to know because when they all wake up, a lot of them will be claiming to have gone to hell, and you’ll have to deal with the theological fallout.”

  Galbraith lay quietly on his back, thinking about what Brit had just told him. After several seconds’ thought, he said, “So you’ve been using people’s fears and beliefs to fool them into being honest with you, and to motivate them into resisting all of their baser instincts and lazy, selfish habits so that they’ll do what they know in their hearts is the right thing to begin with.”

  Brit nodded solemnly. “That’s a fair description, yes. I’m not proud to be telling you this. I know as a man of the cloth you won’t approve.”

  “As a man of the cloth, I’m not proud to tell you that you might be surprised just how much I do approve.”

  26
.

  Me, helping Kludge and the Bastards, Honor thought. Nobody would have guessed it. I wouldn’t have, but then Kludge said the magic words: Make the wizards sorry. And please. Saying please didn’t hurt.

  Once she decided to help, things moved pretty quickly. The boys hauling on the dragon with ropes all watched, amazed, as Honor slowly walked up to it with a scone in her outstretched hand, Runt following behind her.

  The dragon kept struggling with the Bastards at first, but when it saw Honor and Runt, it calmed down a bit. Whether it smelled the scone, was somehow soothed by Honor’s demeanor, or was simply confused that these two tiny creatures weren’t terrified, she’d never know. The Bastards knew that they’d spent the better part of the day avoiding getting in front of the dragon out of pure fear of being burned alive, and now this little girl just walked up to the dragon as if there was nothing to fear at all. They didn’t know about the magical doll Hubert gave her, and she didn’t plan to tell them.

  She broke off a hunk of the scone and tossed it at the dragon’s feet. The dragon sniffed it a few times, then ate it.

  She broke off and threw another piece, which met the same end as the first. The dragon looked at Honor expectantly, and slowly lay down on the ground.

  The Bastards relaxed and allowed the ropes to go slack.

  “How long have you been fighting it?” Honor asked.

  Kludge said, “Since dawn.”

  “It’s exhausted. You all must be.”

  Honor broke off another hunk of scone, and said, in a quiet, soothing tone, “If one of you were to tie the longest of those ropes to a big tree, we might have him.”

  Kludge himself took a rope cinched around the dragon’s right rear leg and tied it quickly around a large tree trunk, using a hastily improvised knot that would either fall apart at the first tug, or be absolutely impossible to ever untie.

  She broke the scone into many pieces and tossed them onto the ground in front of the dragon. For a moment, Runt looked as if she might run forward to claim her share of the scone, but Honor looked down at Runt and the dog stopped cold. Kludge and the Bastards were smart enough to keep quiet and back away. Within a few minutes the dragon had fallen asleep, not even realizing it was tied to a tree.

  Honor took the last scone in her bag and used it to lead the other dragon out of the woods. While Honor kept it captivated with food and gentle talk, Kludge snuck up behind it and looped a rope around its back left leg, so gently that the dragon barely noticed. Of course barely noticed means noticed, and the dragon did turn, snap at Kludge, and panic for a moment, but Honor got the dragon’s attention back and managed to calm it down. Soon it was lying in the grass with the horned dragon and seemed well on the way to unconsciousness itself.

  The dragons looked peaceful, but Honor knew better. Besides, her father had lectured her many times about the difference between a friend and a resource. People could be friends. Dogs could be friends. Sheep were food and clothing waiting to be made. They were raw material. Looking at them that way made lambing and herding them less enjoyable, but it made shearing and slaughtering them without feeling like a monster possible.

  Honor looked at the dragons and thought, They’re weapons. Weapons made by the wizards to be used against us normal folk, obviously, because who else is there to use them against? That’s all right. We have two of them now, and we will use them against the wizards.

  Honor looked at Kludge. I helped him get the dragons, but now he’s got them. He still needs my help to train them, but I don’t know that he knows that, and I don’t think he’d like being told by a girl.

  Kludge sat down on the ground. He seemed as tired as the dragon. He looked at her and tried to smile, but he was badly out of practice. In the end, he gave the impression of a frightened man trying to ingratiate himself to the person frightening him. Kludge had seen this expression many times. It was easy for him to imitate.

  “Your name’s Honor, right?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Everybody knows that. You and your brother raise sheep down the road, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  Kludge looked at the dragons, then looked at her and said, “You asked if any of us were able to bake. Is that so you can show us how to make those things you were feeding the dragons?”

  “They’re scones,” Honor said.

  “Call ’em what you want. The dragons had to work to chew them, but seemed to like them enough.”

  Honor said, “Yes, I’ll show you how to make them, and I’ll give you the ones I already have, tomorrow.”

  “Why not now?” That question coming from that man in that tone of voice might well have made most people start to sweat and gibber, but Honor had seen much worse things than Kludge that day.

  “Because it’s very late, and the scones are at my cabin. I have to go there to get them, and I might as well sleep and bring them in the morning. That’s where my kitchen is, too, and my ingredients. If I’m going to teach you to makes scones, it’ll have to be there.”

  While the villagers saw Kludge as a dumb brute, he was the chief dumb brute. One rarely manages to rise to leadership, even among Neanderthals, without some intelligence. He recognized that Honor was telling him the facts, and he was impressed that someone so small was looking him in the eye while doing so.

  Kludge said, “I’ll send someone home with you to get the scones. Then, first thing in the morning, I’ll have someone there to learn to make more.”

  Honor said, “Not first thing. I have to tend to the sheep.”

  “Why can’t your brother?”

  Honor looked down at Runt, took a moment to stifle the urge to cry, looked back to Kludge, and said, “The wizards bewitched him, and a lot of other people. They’re asleep in the church. Nobody can wake them up.”

  Kludge stared at her for several seconds.

  He’s waiting, hoping I’ll cry, Honor thought. He’s going to be disappointed.

  Honor didn’t cry.

  Kludge smiled, turned slightly to shout over his shoulder without taking his eyes off Honor, and hollered, “Stretch! Come here!”

  Stretch was Kludge’s second in command, which seemed like a good job to the other members of the gang, none of whom understood that being second in command just meant being first to do whatever Kludge wanted done.

  Despite looking utterly exhausted, Stretch ran to Kludge and asked, “What do you need?”

  “Seems the wizards put spells on a bunch of people in town. Put ’em to sleep.”

  “Is that right? Spineless snobs. If you’re gonna knock someone out you should have the decency to punch ’em in the face like a man.”

  “I agree. Our new friend’s brother was one of the victims.”

  “Oh. I see. That’s not good.”

  “No, it is not. Since she helped us, and has promised to help us further, you are going to take Long Lobes and accompany her home.”

  “Why do I have to take Long Lobes?” Stretch asked. “I can’t stand that guy.”

  “That’s why,” Kludge said. “He knows not to step out of line because you’d love an excuse to make his lobes even longer, maybe even tie them in a bow for him. You’re going to have Long Lobes stick around and make sure she’s safe while she sleeps, and you will bring every scone she has back here so we can use them to keep those monsters from eating us.”

  He looked at Honor, expectantly. She realized he was waiting for her to either agree or disagree. She nodded.

  “Then,” Kludge continued, “in the morning, you’re going to return to her house, and the two of you are going to help her get her flock squared away, and learn how to bake.”

  27.

  When Gwen and Brit the Younger agreed to allow the Highlanders to join them on their quest to rid Scotland of its six remaining dr
agons, they did so on the condition that the Highlanders wouldn’t slow them down. The Highlanders assured them that it would not be a problem, and proposed several means by which they could travel along the rugged landscape just as fast as two flying sorceresses. In the end, everyone agreed that one of the proposals was far more practical than the others.

  The sorceresses would carry them.

  Brit crafted a transparent half sphere of pure diamond with a flat floor inserted for the Highlanders to stand or sit on. The men greeted it with enthusiasm, got in with enthusiasm, and enthusiastically shouted their lungs out the entire time they were in flight.

  Brit the Younger flew behind, carrying the bowl of Scotsmen with her magic. Gwen flew in the lead, consulting Jeff’s interactive map to find the dragons.

  It did not take long.

  The dragons were resting around the shores of a lake. Gwen, Brit, and their passengers landed in some hills about a half mile away to discuss their options.

  “The way I see it, there are two possible ways to do this,” Jock said. “One is that I charge with my bow. I stop well shy of the dragons, and soften them up with arrows while Kyle, Leslie, and Mungo run in and finish them off with our swords and axes. You two will fly in behind to back us up and take care of any dragons that try to escape.”

  The other Highlanders all nodded in agreement, obviously approving of this plan. Brit and Gwen considered this plan for several seconds before Brit asked, “What’s the other way?”

  Jock said, “I lead the charge with my bow, stop shy of the dragons, soften them up with arrows, and Kyle, Leslie, and Mungo finish them off with our swords and axes while you two watch from a safe distance.”

  Again, the other men all seemed to agree with Jock’s plan.

  Brit said, “The whole point of bringing you here was for us to all kill the dragons together.”

  Jock said, “That’s right. And you two have already more than done your parts by finding the dragons so quickly, and bringing us to them.”