Fight and Flight (Magic 2.0 Book 4) Page 23

Roy flew up to join Jeff as he hovered above the market and tried to use his virtual apples to get the dragons’ attention. Nothing he did, including hitting the horned dragon on the side of the head with them, did any good. He had managed to attract and hold the interest of the citizens who still lined the top of the city wall, watching events unfold. They were joined by countless people silently peeking from around various huts and buildings, and from behind the other produce stands. Only one person made any noise—a very angry man hiding behind a well, shouting curses either at the dragons, or at the wizards about the dragons.

  “It’s no good, kid,” Roy said. “Those dragons aren’t budging until the real fruit’s all gone.”

  “You’re right.” Jeff looked down at the chaos they’d helped create and sighed. He made the useless fake fruit vanish, then shouted to the merchants, “Our apologies. Look, you should all get out of here. Go somewhere safe while we deal with this.”

  Some of the merchants looked up and nodded. Most didn’t. But all of those whose wares were already loaded started slowly pushing their carts away from the dragons. The others carefully loaded their arms with as much of their merchandise as possible before making a very cautious break for it.

  Roy looked down at one remaining fruit seller, the man hiding behind a stone well, peering around its side at the dragons eating his apples out of the wreckage of his destroyed stand. Roy said, “We’re sorry about this. We’re going to try to get these dragons out of here as soon as we can.”

  The man shouted back, “Great! Thank you! When I go home to my wife and children, and tell them that all of the apples are gone and we have no money to show for it, we’ll all feel much better knowing that at least the wizards who brought the dragons raining down on us tried to get them to leave as soon as they could.”

  Roy said, “All right, calm down. They haven’t eaten all of your apples yet. You may get some of them back.”

  “Well, that is fortunate, isn’t it? What luck!!! Oh, how I look forward to telling my wife and children the great news, that only most of our apples got eaten by a bloody damned dragon! I’m sure my babies won’t mind going to bed hungry because I have no money for food, they’ll be so entertained by the story. Tell me again about how you feared for your life, Daddy! What did the customers say when you tried to sell them bruised apples that the dragons didn’t want? I like the part when you tell us how much of your hard work went wasted, Daddy!”

  Jeff and Roy looked at each other, then at the dragons. The dragons weren’t going anywhere. That was the problem. The two of them, however, would have to go down there and talk to the angry apple salesman, which was also a problem.

  They didn’t land so much as they sunk, touching down directly in front of the merchant, who remained cowering behind the well.

  Jeff said, “First of all, please know that we’ll keep you safe from the dragons.”

  “That’s kind of you,” the man said. “Offering to protect me from the dragons you brought while we discuss the damage the dragons have already done.”

  Roy said, “Look, we want to make this right. Once the dragons are gone, we’ll use our magic to replace your apples. How’s that?”

  “Wonderful. Then, instead of having to tell my wife and children that we have no money because the apples were all eaten by dragons, I can tell them we have no money because my apples didn’t sell, what with everyone knowing that they were a wizard’s unnatural guilt apples. Do you really think anyone will want to buy apples that are literally the uncanny fruit of dark magic?”

  Jeff said, “Not if you describe them that way.”

  “Well, what do you want us to do then?” Roy asked.

  The vendor leaned out from behind the well and pointed at the apples rolling on the ground as the dragons chomped on them, oblivious to the drama they were causing.

  “I sell fruit. That’s my fruit. I can’t sell it now, and that’s your fault. If you want to make this right, buy my fruit!”

  Oh,” Jeff said, disgusted. “You want money.”

  “Yes! I want money! I sell my fruit, to get money, which is what I want!”

  “Okay,” Roy said, pulling off his hat. “Fine. How many apples did you have?”

  “Three hundred.”

  “You did not,” Roy growled.

  “Did.”

  Roy pointed at the apples rolling around on the ground beneath the dragons’ feet and mouths. “There’s no way that’s three hundred apples.”

  “The dragons ate most of them already.”

  “That’s such a load of—”

  “Just pay him,” Jeff said.

  “He’s ripping us off,” Roy snarled.

  “What do we care? We just need to make him go away so we can concentrate on the dragons.”

  Roy shook his head, turned back to the merchant, and asked, “Okay then, how much do three hundred of your apples cost?”

  “How much do you have?”

  Roy muttered expletives under his breath as he reached into his hat. He pulled out a sack of gold coins and handed it to the merchant, who said, “That’s a start. How much more have you got?”

  Roy shook his head at the merchant, the turned to Jeff. Jeff shrugged, and motioned for Roy to continue. Roy shook his head at Jeff and turned back to the merchant. He reached back into his hat and pulled out a second sack of gold, but held it back for a moment, squinting into the merchant’s eyes. “This is it, understand? It’s all you get.”

  The merchant nodded, and once Roy had handed the sack over, the merchant opened the tops of both bags, examining the contents and doing math as quickly as he could without moving his lips.

  Roy said, “I trust that will be sufficient.”

  “Yes, thank you! It’s a pleasure doing business with you. The next time your dragons are hungry, I hope you’ll think of me.”

  Jeff said, “They aren’t our dragons.” Jeff didn’t know if the merchant heard, because he was already gone. There’s no word for how the merchant ran. It was a cross between a dead sprint and a happy dance.

  “He knew he had two suckers,” Roy said.

  Jeff said, “Doesn’t matter. The point is that now we can concentrate on the dragons.”

  Jeff and Roy heard a sound, a soft, chaotic sound, like many irregularly shaped objects all falling a short distance then bouncing off the ground and each other, almost like a table covered with pears being knocked over. They turned, and saw the man who had been selling pears nearby, but who now stood behind an empty table, pointing in horror at the ground, where a great many pears were now mixing with the apples that were already there.

  “Oh no,” the man cried, “my pears! My three hundred . . . and . . . fifty pears! The dragons have them! How will I feed my family now?”

  They heard another muffled crash, and another voice calling out, “My carrots! My entire crop of carrots for the year, taken by dragons.”

  Another impact followed, and a voice saying, “I needed the income from that rhubarb to get my sick daughter leeched!”

  “Bring her here,” Roy mumbled. “We have plenty of leeches.”

  31.

  The interior of the cave remained utter bedlam until Martin and Phillip removed the false wolf. Dragons swirled, billowing plumes of fire erupted almost constantly, and solid-gold lag bolts and sheet metal screws were thrown around the room like waves on a rocky shore.

  But when they made the wolf go away, the chaos didn’t fully stop. The dragons had a head of steam up, and they couldn’t just turn it off like a light switch; so while the fire stopped, the speed of the swirling and the frequency of the golden hardware showers only lessened.

  Martin and Phillip huddled behind a large gold I beam for refuge and had to shout to converse.

  “Well,” Martin said, “That worked less well than we hoped. W
e took away the things that were scaring them. What can we do to calm them down?”

  They heard a particularly loud crash, then a large wave of solid-gold hex nuts broke over them. When the onslaught had subsided, Martin grabbed a handful off the ground, looked at them in his palm, and said “Nuts!”

  “Yes,” Phillip said. “I know. Anyway, if we put something down the dragons like—”

  “No,” Martin said. “I meant nuts like an exclamation, like damn, or drat.”

  Phillip said, “Yes, I know.”

  “It was a kind of joke.”

  “The kind I don’t laugh at. Now If I may continue, if we create something the dragons like, maybe they’ll calm down.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll be right back.” Martin pulled out the wooden box he used to conceal his smartphone. He swiped a few times, tapped a few times, then disappeared.

  Less than a second later, he reappeared, apparently unchanged.

  “Where did you go?” Phillip asked.

  “Home Depot. It’s a store from my time. I needed to get something.” He pointed his staff at the floor. A large roll of pre-grown sod appeared, lying over on its side like a Swiss roll made of grass and dirt.

  Martin flew sneakily (since flying made no sound, flying sneakily mainly meant flying slowly, with his shoulders hunched, as if tiptoeing) over to the passageway, levitating the turf roll along in front of him. He placed it on the floor in front of the passage that led outside, then reached down with the end of his staff and nudged the cylinder. It unrolled like a carpet, into a strip of lush, green grass. He darted back behind the I beam with Phillip to await the results.

  The four dragons still looped and banked around the interior of the cave, but they had slowed considerably over time. Now, one of them slowed even more.

  It banked a little tighter, then hovered, flapping mightily in the center of the chamber, the other three dragons still whizzing around it like protons. The dragon looked at the green rectangle on the floor, then advanced, landing next to it. It looked closer, sniffed, and then started eating.

  The other three dragons hadn’t noticed the grass on their own, but the sight of a dragon eating grass got their attention. Soon, all three of them hovered, flapping like swimmers treading water, watching the fourth dragon enjoying its snack.

  “The patch is too small for more than one dragon,” Phillip said.

  “Agreed. I’m on it.” Martin pointed his staff and created three more rolls on the ground in front of the opening. “Now that I’ve got the sod rolls in the system I can make as many as we need. When this is all done, I think I might redo the floor in Gary’s cave.”

  Phillip said, “A nice, green lawn. He’d hate that. I’ll help.”

  Martin flew toward the opening and unrolled the bundles of sod, then circled around the back of the chamber. He noted that what had been an immense but orderly storeroom full of itemized golden building materials was now a random field of mixed objects, all blending together to form an indeterminably deep pool full of items made of solid gold.

  By the time he had circumnavigated the room and rejoined Phillip, the three dragons had landed, and were enjoying the grass as much as the first dragon had.

  Martin said, “That seemed to work.”

  “Yes,” Phillip agreed, “but what will happen when they run out of grass, like that one’s about to do?” The first dragon had reduced his patch of lawn to little more than crumbling dirt, and now looked to the other dragons’ grass with jealous eyes.

  The placement of the three other dragons gave Martin little room to work with, so he carefully aimed his staff, rifle-style, at a spot behind the dragons, further down the passage to the outside world, said the secret phrase, and created another roll.

  The dragon went for it immediately. It muscled its way past the other dragons, nudged the roll of turf open with its nose, and started chowing down.

  “Huh,” Martin said. “That is interesting.”

  “Indeed,” Phillip agreed.

  They both flew sneakily past the eating dragons, landed in the passageway, and looked at the light coming from the outside world, off in the far distance.

  “I bet if we could get them out in the open,” Phillip said, “we could get them going fast enough to fly through the goal. Or, we could get them all into the passage, then put a goal at each end. Eventually they’d have to go through one or the other.”

  Martin said, “Yeah, I’m not sure I want to wait for eventually. They’ve shown us that they’re perfectly willing to sit around waiting for something to happen. What if once they’re out in the open we just somehow drop the goal down over the top of them, kind of like a net?”

  “I doubt that would work.”

  “Whatever. Either way, we agree that it would be good to get the dragons outside.”

  Phillip nodded, then pointed to the empty floor between them and the cave entrance and said, “Sod it.”

  Martin stared at him.

  Phillip said, “It’s a joke, because that kind of grass is called sod, and in England—”

  Martin said, “I get it. It’s a joke. Not the kind of joke I laugh at. One side, please.” Martin pointed his staff rifle-style again, and in a few seconds had created a line of sod rolls, as neat as Pac-Man pellets, down the center of the passage all the way to the cave entrance.

  The dragons at the rear crowded past the lead dragon to get to the fresh rolls of turf. After a few minutes, an organized system emerged where the last dragon in line would finish its tiny bit of lawn, then squeeze around the other three dragons to get to fresh grass, and take up the lead position. Progress came slowly, but the trend seemed to be leading inexorably outside.

  Martin and Phillip walked ahead of the dragons, keeping their distance and watching the giant creatures at all times. Aside from glancing at the light coming from the end of the tunnel at the very beginning of their trip to the surface, neither of them had really bothered to look outside, or even behind them as they carefully backed out of the cave, leading the dragon parade. The farther down the tunnel they progressed, the brighter the distant light behind them got. Eventually, tiny pinpricks of light started to dance on the dark walls around them as faint traces of daylight reflected off Martin’s sequined robe and hat. As such, they were surprised when Kneath came sprinting into the tunnel behind them.

  “Oh, good, I thought I saw your robe,” he said to Martin. “I need your help.”

  “With what now?” Phillip asked.

  Kneath squinted in Phillip’s general direction. His eyes had not yet fully adjusted to the dark, a problem that Martin’s shiny robe did not help. He finally got a lock on Phillip’s general position and said, “Dragons!”

  “You need our help with dragons?” Martin asked.

  “Yes.”

  “We know that. We’re helping you with dragons. Look.” Martin muttered the spell that turned the head of his staff into a lantern. White light streamed out of the eyes of the bust of Santo that topped his staff, illuminating the dragons. One ate while a second crowded past. They both looked up at the light. The two dragons behind them peeked through wherever they could find a gap to see the source of the sudden bright light. The sight of them gave the impression of a massive army of dragons, but Martin knew there were only four.

  Kneath didn’t know that, or at least had forgotten, and let out a yelp.

  “Yeah,” Martin said. “Dragons. We’re helping you with your dragons.”

  “Martin,” Phillip said, “I don’t think those are the dragons he’s referring to. Look outside.”

  Martin turned. They were near the cave opening now, and through it they could see the pile of hay they’d created earlier in a misguided attempt to lure the dragons out. While that had not worked, the hay had somehow caught the attention of the other two dragons in the are
a, and drawn them in. They had eaten nearly all of the hay; one of the two dragons nosed through what remained. The other peered down the tunnel at them.

  “They flew over a while ago and saw the straw,” Kneath said. “They were between me and the cave. I didn’t dare risk running in to get you until I saw that you were close, and could protect me.”

  Martin said, “This could be good.”

  Phillip said, “Move back!”

  The three of them had been distracted and were standing between one of the dragons and the next roll of grass. They skedaddled with great efficiency past several rolls before skidding to a stop. They were now close enough to the opening to feel a faint breeze, smell the scent of the hay, and see the light filtering around the two new dragons. One grazed on the last roll of sod, just inside the tunnel entrance. The other crowded its way in to see what was so interesting.

  Phillip said, “I’m sorry Martin, I believe you were saying something about how this situation was a good thing?”

  Martin looked at the four dragons advancing slowly from one direction, blocking access to the deeper cave. Then he looked at the two dragons opposite them, blocking their only means of escape. Martin counted the meager five rolls of turf now between them and mentally estimated the rate at which the dragons were closing in. “I was saying that, yes,” Martin admitted. “But the situation is fluid.”

  Kneath whined, “We’re gonna die.”

  Phillip put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and said, “No, Kneath, the dragons are scary, but they can’t kill a wizard.”

  Kneath whined, “I’m gonna die!”

  “No,” Phillip said. “We’re not going to let you die. We are going to get out of this.”

  “Yeah, good,” Martin said. “What’s the plan?”

  Phillip said, “I suppose step one would be to ask you if you have any ideas.”

  The four dragons continued to advance.

  “Maybe we should stop actively luring them towards us?” Martin said.

  Phillip said, “Sensible.”