Month: November 2008 (Page 2 of 4)

“You’re not anything special, you fool!”

The boy cowered at his father’s feet, flinching from the raised fist.

“Just because you can play the damn guitar does not mean that you should play it. DO you understand me?”

The boy nodded.

“Did you say something?”

For a moment the boy cowered lower, expecting a blow from the fist that was suspended above him, like a weight ready to fall. Then realising he was being givern a chance stammered;

“Y-y-y Yes Sir, I understand.”

The fist came a little lower, but more slowly than a blow and the boy stared intently, watching to see the fingers relax and the fist once more becoming a hand.

“Good. All right then. Now get yourself off to bed. Brush your teeth, young man, and I don’t want to hear any music coming from your room, that radio is for the news and nothing else.”

The boy scrambled to his feet and was gone before he could change his mind.

The man turned to look at the guitar that had caught his son attempting to play, and muttered under his breath;

“Where did you come from, eh?”

Tossing brass; that’s what they had called it on the range, with a smile and a chuckle. To be honest you don’t think about how utterly frivolous that is when you are learning to empty an MP5 on a nice, sunny, outdoor range, with your anti-flash glasses on and the smell of sunscreen mixing with the fresh waves of cordite as you and eleven other raw recruits pull the trigger on another cardboard gang-banger.

Not so funny now, crouched behind a stack of wooden packing crates, filled with steel refrigerators. Lucky because I was hoping for something that could stop bullets. It was supposed to be a simple buy-bust! I’m in here with nothing more than a Sig; I’m playing the part of a drug dealer. It’s the bad guys who are ‘tossing brass’ like it’s this year’s summer craze. I’m pretty sure that the guys with automatics were toting Steyrs, so that’s sixty rounds apiece; I lost count at around thirty. Weirdly my ears have already shut out the bangs, all I can hear are casings hitting the concrete, like metal raindrops.

The snow was falling faster by the time I got back to bed with the tea. Lucy was sitting up, wrapped in the covers with just her head poking out, her eyes wide with excitement as she watched the huge flakes floating down past the window.

“Oh thanks. Did you remember the sugar?”

She said as she extended just one arm out of the cocoon of duvet and blanket, in order to take the mug of tea. I looked at her quizzically, trying to work out how on earth I would get back into bed, but also trying to communicate to her that I might be a bit chilly if she stayed like that.

The snow was too exciting for her to notice my concerns about the present dearth of covers.

“Look at the size of those flakes, Paul! If it carries on like this we are going to have the best powder coming off Saulire tomorrow.”

It was easy to work out that this was her first season, but I had no desire to spoil that. The wonder was gone for me; powder was all well and good, but actually I craved something rarer. For me, the dream was empty, groomed pistes.

Mikhail focused his thoughts, checked his pulse, his heart rate; he stared at the boy trying to decide if the balled fists were frustration, or the beginning of a foolish attack. The uncertainty was a temptation to let go of his self-control, to let his heart race and the adrenaline flow, but he knew that better results could be guaranteed by cleaving to his training. Nonetheless, he freed a dagger into his left hand as he watched the boy’s face and shoulders as the moments stretched out before his heightened senses like minutes.

There is was, a twitch in the shoulders, the arms rising. Mikhail looked at the floor and cursed in the back of his mind. Matrocite! The fool was casting; what a waste. The boy’s arms came higher, hands unfurling like blooms and then twisting into arcane gestures. Mikhail’s ears heard the shout of the casting, but he no longer cared, he had already activated his blink talisman.

He could smell the boy’s sweat as he laid his right hand on his young shoulder while the left pushed in deep.

“What do you think you are doing?”

Gregor had sprung to his feet as the door was cloven in two. Two hooded men stepped into the workshop. The one in front laughed gently under his breath;

“Quiet boy! We are here for the golem, we know that he has it here, watched over by you and the new apprentice. Stand aside.”

Gregor was not about to surrender, he was about to officially become a Magus. He had been ready for The Assay for almost two years, he could take them. He stared at the intruders and balled his fists, drawing power silently, hoping to use the advantage. He felt it surging into him from below; only he and Pyrellius knew how to draw on the Mana stored in the slabs of Matrocite that made the workshop’s bland looking floor. When he was ready he quickly extended his arms, hands describing the appropriate signs and screamed;

“Körper Toten Tantzen!”

The Intruder laughed and suddenly he was behind Gregor, sliding a stilletto between his ribs; Gregor could not even cry out, and dying all he could think was ‘how?’.

The workshop was in complete disarray when Gethin rushed back to find the door broken in two. He had realised that there was a plan afoot to draw him away from his Master’s work and steal or sabotage it when the girl that he had snuck out to meet never showed up. He cursed under his breath and started to prepare for the roasting that he was going to receive from Gregor, let alone from their Master. Gregor was about to subject himself to the Assay, and when their Master, Pyrellius, was not in residence he was Gethin’s superior, despite not yet being dubbed as Magus.

Pushing the wreckage of the door aside, Gethin peered into the half-light of the workshop, straining to see if the thieves had breached the cabinet at the far end that would, no doubt, have been their target. He could not make it out and so started to pick his way across the floor without breaking any more glassware. He looked up for a moment as a bird flew past his head, escaped from one of the cages, and then he nearly tripped over Gregor’s body.