The Hickory Staff

OUTSIDE SOUTHPORT, PRAGA

Hannah’s joints ached with the dull, throbbing pain of dehydration. The day was hot and the road beneath her feet dusty: tiny clouds of dirt billowed about her ankles with every step and her trainers were coated with a thin brown film. She had only been walking for half an hour, but having nothing to eat or drink for two days was taking its toll. She felt it first in her knees – it was always her knees; they invariably let her know when she had pushed her body too far – but determined to practise equal opportunity abuse this afternoon, Hannah kept walking.

Soon her ankles, shoulders and neck were crying for mercy as well.

The road flanking the copse where she had slept appeared to wind its way casually into the village along the water. The trip was taking longer than she had anticipated. ‘No crows flying along this route unless they have a learning disability,’ she groaned. Twisting back into a narrow draw between two hillocks sitting like twin camel humps above the harbour, Hannah could no longer see the city. She assumed the road would follow the valley’s curve before dropping down into town. Hoping a stream might flow through the draw at the far end of the gorge, she made her way doggedly into the defile, imagining cool spring water tumbling over smooth rocks and into gentle pools.

‘I’ll drink a gallon,’ she promised herself, ignoring the fact that any number of pernicious bacteria might be lurking, just waiting for her to come along. ‘Screw it. I’ll take whatever they’re serving – Montezuma’s worst nightmare, chicken pox, malaria, nitrogen narcosis – I’m beyond caring. As long as it’s on the daily special, I’ll have an order… with fries.’ She wiped a sleeve across her forehead and pulled off her jacket.

‘Too hot. How did that happen? Not only was I transported through the floor of Steven’s house, but I was transported to the desert, too.’ She tried not to think about it. There had to be a rational explanation. Unwilling to accept the fact that she had been the victim of something supernatural, Hannah clung to her no-nonsense, everything-can-and-will-make-sense views with all the determination she could muster. But it was a tiring charge, and only the steady, repetitive pace of her forced march into town provided her with any comfort.

‘I’ll figure this out when I get to town. I have some money. I have my credit cards. I will call a cab, take a bus, charter a frigging plane; I don’t care.’ She was chanting to herself, almost a mantra. ‘I will get out of this and things will be fine.’ Her muscles ached and she was forced to stop for a moment, but as she almost fell to the ground, insecurity began to creep over her.

‘I should keep moving… keep going, before I start thinking too much about this again. There were two moons, no mistake about that. And buses? I don’t suppose they’ll have buses going quite that far.’ A strange feeling snaked along her spine and teased her with the notion that perhaps this was real, she had fallen into someplace new, someplace different – possibly even someplace unfriendly.

‘Steven might be here, too. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t called.’ She shook her head. Why hadn’t that occurred to her earlier? Just the thought of finding Steven energised her and after taking a minute to estimate the distance around the valley’s bowl, Hannah got to her feet and started out again.

She rounded a lazy bend and came face to face with three men walking along the dirt road away from town. Hannah was struck by their dress: all three were clad entirely in black and despite the heat, they wore boots, form-fitting leggings, hip-length pullover tunics belted at the waist and thick leather vests adorned with an ornate gold crest. At their belts each wore a short knife and what appeared to be a rapier or a sword; Hannah didn’t know the difference. She couldn’t imagine how warm they must be in such heavy costumes; she assumed, as she had earlier, that some sort of mock-Renaissance celebration was under way in the town.

‘Am I glad to see you guys,’ she started – as far as Hannah was concerned, finding anyone at all on the bone-dry roadway was a blessing, even if they were dressed like something out of a TV adaptation of Ivanhoe.

‘Do you know where I can find a 7-11, or maybe a supermarket? I need a payphone and I want to get some water.’ Suddenly afraid of how they might respond, she added hesitantly, ‘And can you tell me where we are? I mean… I know that sounds silly, but what town is that over there?’ She gestured towards the harbour.

The three men stared at her, apparently speechless. Hannah, remembering she was alone, endeavoured to keep her distance while remaining polite. She smiled and waited, the smoke-like tendrils of insecurity chilling her bones once again.

The tallest of the three, who towered over his companions by six or seven inches, spoke first. At first, Hannah thought she had misheard him, that his words had been lost on the breeze brushing through the gorge, but then she realised he was speaking a different language, a strange language, one she had never heard before. It was guttural and full of left-footed consonants, a little like Welsh after a few drinks. More curious, though, was the fact that she understood him. She comprehended every word.

A dream, that’s what this is, just a dream… maybe you hit your head. Just ride it out and you’ll wake up eventually. Relaxing somewhat, Hannah searched across the hillside, looking for a purple giraffe, a whale reading a comic book, or the collective faculty of the law school clad entirely in Victoria’s Secret underwear.

Her throat closed slightly when the young man spoke again. His words formed phrases in her mind after a two- or three-second delay. ‘-too far from town, my sweet little morsel,’ he said lasciviously. ‘No one will hear you out here.’

The men closed on her swiftly. Hannah, stunned by their attack, remained frozen in place. Her limbs filled with concrete and she went down without a struggle. They were tugging at her, fumbling with her clothing and arguing with one another about who would go first when she finally realised what was about to happen.

An alarm clamoured in her head: Get up! Fight back! But she was trapped now, their collective weight too heavy for her to move. She overheard snatches of what they were saying – given her panic at what was happening, Hannah was amazed that she could understand the thick, hacking syllables at all…

‘-strange rutting clothes on her-’

‘-look at these hose-’

‘-just pull them off her feet, rutting whores’ sake, can’t you do anything?’

It’s happening. Oh Christ, it’s happening to me- Hannah had read about rape victims, women who wished they had been trained in self-defence, that they had been carrying mace or pepper spray or a Tomahawk missile, but she had never joined the ranks of those who claimed, ‘If that ever happens to me, I’ll-’

Instead, she had just prayed it never would happen to her. Now she realised that was not enough. Keys. Someone once told her they were an excellent weapon against a sexual predator. She could scratch a face, open a jagged wound across a cheek, or claw an eye out. She could even use them to rip a hole in his scrotum, gouge out his balls. Where were her keys? Her jacket was tied around her waist, but she knew the keys were not in the pockets. She knew that because she remembered putting them down beside a half-eaten pizza on the counter at 147 Tenth Street.

Finally she screamed, scratching wildly at her assailants – maybe she could jab an eye with her fingernails… but Hannah Sorenson didn’t have long or especially sharp fingernails; she had never been one for high fashion and her fingernails had been filed down so they didn’t get in the way. She was useless.

She tried kicking, and wailing for help, mercy or forgiveness, until one of the men rammed his knee up violently between her legs, sending a sharp pain across her abdomen that paralysed her from the waist down. Another gripped her breasts, squeezing and twisting them violently.

She leaned forward, catching a finger between her teeth. Biting down, trying to gnaw the digit off and spit it back at him, she tasted blood. Heartened by her progress, she continued to grind her teeth through flesh and on into bone.

She heard the rapist scream in agony and her breasts were momentarily forgotten in the interests of retrieving his hand before she did any more damage.

‘Rutting whore!’ he screamed. The first punch glanced off her temple; compared with the agony in her groin, she barely felt it. Hannah wished it had broken her jaw or crushed her nose, because then the worst would be behind her, but as a harbinger of brutality yet to come, the blow to her temple was about the cruellest thing her attackers could have done.

The breast grabber leaned back, free fist aloft, ready to pummel her into unconsciousness, but she maintained her death-grip on his ruined finger. As his warm blood trickled into her mouth she promised herself she would not let go, no matter how hard or how often they beat her, that finger was never going back.

The punch never landed.

Churn Prellis took the first Malakasian in a full sprinting tackle. The would-be rapist was rearing back to slug Hannah across the face; an easy target. Churn’s body blocked the sun for an instant before he carried the soldier – and most of his finger – across the road in a tangled pile of limbs. Horrified, Hannah spat an irregular chunk of flesh into the dirt before lifting her head hesitantly.

The remaining two attackers rolled from her body, stumbled to their feet and hurried to assist their companion. While Hannah self-consciously adjusted her clothing, fastening her jeans and pulling down her shirt, she caught sight of the tangle of flailing arms and legs; although there were three of them, it looked like her assailants were not having an easy time of it.

She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and came away with a thin smear of blood that ran from her wrist to her fingertips. Suddenly she started shaking. Convulsions began in her bloodstained fingers, moving up her arms to her chest. Wave after wave of rattling shudders wracked her thin form and she started panting breathlessly. Her throat felt raw from screaming.

Ignoring the melee going on beside her, Hannah, still hunched in a foetal position, tried to focus her tear-filled eyes on the smooth leather tops of her Nikes. They were dusted in pale beige; she thought she might reach out and scribble a message across each one: ‘This is only a dream,’ or ‘No more spicy Kung Pao, silly.’

Struggling to sit up, she wrapped her shivering arms around her knees. She feared the pain in her groin would force her to lie back down or, worse, to pass out, but she was terrified of what might happen if she retreated into unconsciousness. Her would-be rescuer was one man against three, after all. She bit her tongue until she tasted her own blood, then pushed her palms against the gritty dirt road and wrestled herself to her knees. Pale yellow flashes of light burst and faded before her eyes and she felt tears begin to carve thin streams through the dirt on her cheeks.

Hannah drew several stabilising breaths, then turned to watch her saviour battling her three assailants. She felt sorry she could not help him, but she was both surprised and delighted by what she saw: the big man, the one who had so deftly dragged the breast-grabber from his perch on her stomach, was winning handily. Two of the three would-be rapists were already motionless, their bodies sprawled in awkward, unnatural positions on the far side of the road. The third was hanging on the larger man’s back, looking comically like a child getting a piggy-back ride; he held both arms firmly about her saviour’s neck, trying with all his might to strangle his muscle-bound opponent.

While Hannah watched, the burly rescuer reached up with one hand and grasped the rapist’s forearms, but he made no effort to pull them away; rather, it looked as if he was trying to keep them held firmly about his throat. Perhaps he was ensuring the impromptu acrobat would not decide to let go suddenly and beat a hasty retreat.

Then the bigger man reached around and placed the flat of his free palm against the small of the rider’s back, a sort of clumsy, inside-out hug.

Transfixed by the curious struggle, like some ancient ritualistic dance, Hannah nearly forgot the pain in her gut and the swelling in her breasts. At first she couldn’t work out what her grim-faced rescuer was planning to do, and she wondered how long he could remain standing with the man in black strangling him so ardently. Then his strategy became clear. Gripping his attacker’s arms and back, the giant bent at the knees before leaping as far as he could into the air then, twisting, he brought the full force of his weight down on the smaller man’s body. Whump! Their impact with the dirt road sounded like gas escaping through a pressure release valve. Hannah felt certain the third rapist was dead; surely no one could have survived a landing like that. She hoped it had really hurt.

Hannah was still seated in the middle of the road when her saviour rolled over, checked to be sure none of his opponents were conscious – or maybe alive – and pushed himself to his feet. He strode silently to where she was now kneeling and squatted down on his haunches. Hannah had a flashback to natural history programmes about the lives and habits of the great silverback mountain gorilla. The man, now motionless, stared at her as if waiting for her to try to escape. From the look of his clothes he was from the same Renaissance troupe.

‘Oh my God,’ she cried aloud, suddenly realising the powerful young man might have beaten the others away so he could have her for himself, ‘please, don’t hurt me, please.’ The tears came again as she begged, ‘Please, I didn’t do anything to them, I didn’t say anything, I just needed to get to a phone.’

Gingerly, she tried to slide backwards, beyond the silent giant’s reach, but her legs failed. Shivering, she grasped at the loose sleeves of her coat and made a vain effort to cover the button and fly of her jeans with an improvised Gore-tex chastity belt.

‘Not again,’ she pleaded, ‘not again. I can’t take it-’

Churn didn’t move. The girl wore no armour and he couldn’t see any weapons, so she couldn’t be a soldier. And those colours – was she trying to attract attention to herself? She was so small, so helpless; she looked like something he had seen once in a picture, an illegal painting of sea nymphs hidden in a partisan’s basement. He had heard stories of sea nymphs too, and their magical powers. They would attract sailors with their beauty and their bright colours, like this woman’s bright colours, then they would lure the men out to sea, or into the waiting maw of some ravenous flesh-eating creature.

He reached out with one massive paw to feel the smooth texture of her odd white, blue and yellow shoes. They were the most strange and beautiful shoes he had ever seen; he thought they might shine even brighter if he dusted off some of the dirt that had built up on them. Brushing his fingers gently across their surface, Churn drew back suddenly when the young woman bellowed a terrified scream and kicked him hard across the chin.

Unfazed by the blow, the big Pragan backed away a few paces, hoping that would put the sea nymph more at ease. She continued to cry and carry on in her strange language, so Churn decided it was time to hand any further investigation over to Hoyt. He had beaten the soldiers; Hoyt could worry about communicating with the sea nymph. Churn searched the hillside for his friend; spotting Hoyt sitting complacently on a fallen log near the opposite side of the roadway, he gesticulated in a series of rapid signs.

‘No, I don’t think she is a sea nymph, Churn,’ Hoyt Navarra replied calmly, ‘but she’s certainly not from around here.’ He stood and came forward slowly so as not to alarm the already terrified young woman any further. ‘And back away from her will you?’ he chided; ‘I’d kick at you too if you were hovering over me like the rutting Twinmoon.’

As Churn complied, they could see the strangely clad woman calm noticeably. Stepping near his burly companion, the young healer smiled and asked, ‘How badly are you hurt?’

The three-second translation delay was down to about one second now, but Hannah still answered in wavering English, ‘I don’t think so

… I don’t think so… my stomach hurts and my eye is sore, but otherwise, I guess I’m all right.’

Hoyt rubbed his palm thoughtfully across his chin, knelt beside her and offered a wineskin filled with water. ‘Here. Have something to drink. We’ll try to talk when you’re ready.’

‘Thank you.’ Hannah uncorked the skin and drank every drop. She passed the empty skin back and asked, ‘Can you tell me where I am… where this is? I haven’t been able to figure out-’

‘Can you understand me?’ Hoyt interrupted loudly, then cursed himself when the strange woman cringed and sidled away another two or three paces. He indicated his chest and said, ‘My name is Hoyt Navarra. This-’ he clapped a hand on the back of one of Churn’s tree-trunk calves, ‘this is Churn Prellis.’

‘I’m Hannah Sorenson,’ she said. She did understand them, but was dumbfounded as to how. She was making out the words almost as quickly as they were spoken now.

‘Hannah…’

‘Sorenson.’

‘Soren-son.’ Hoyt tried it out. ‘Hannah Soren-son. Hannah Soren-son, do you understand me? What I’m saying?’

‘I do,’ Hannah replied, but from the look in the strange man’s face, Hoyt’s face, she wasn’t certain he could understand her. She nodded instead. Maybe, since she could understand this weird guttural language, she could speak it if she tried? God knows how, though, she thought, but let’s give it a go. She closed her eyes and took a calming breath, then let the awkward words come on their own.

‘Is this better?’ she offered in broken Pragan.

Hoyt beamed. ‘Excellent! So you speak Pragan. We were worried… well, I was worried. Churn here manages to do just fine without any language at all – any language you might read or see scribbled on a piece of parchment, anyway.’

‘Where are we?’ Hannah climbed painfully to her feet, swaying slightly, but determined to have this conversation standing up so she could break and run if things began to deteriorate.

‘Well, we’re in a valley near the Pragan city of Southport,’ Hoyt said as he reached into a satchel at his belt and withdrew something which turned out to be several pieces of dried fruit. Handing them to her, he went on, ‘It’s not much of a town, but the harbour remains busy and that keeps interesting goods and people moving through on a regular basis.’

‘Pragan?’

‘Right. Praga. This is Praga.’ Hoyt was confused by her question, but gestured in a semi-circle as if the entire nation was at his fingertips. ‘Have you been unconscious for some time? Sick or something? I ask only because Praga is a big place and most people know when they arrive in it.’

One of the Malakasians began to stir, groaning and rolling onto his side. Churn moved quickly across the road and summarily kicked the soldier back into unconsciousness.

Hannah winced, and looked at Churn with a mixture of gratitude and terror. ‘Do you know them?’

‘What? This crew? No!’ Hoyt laughed. ‘‘But they’re all the same when you get right down to it. So knowing one is knowing them all, rutting dry humpers.’ Embarrassed at his off-colour language, he added with a sniff, ‘Sorry.’

‘But I thought-’

‘Thought what?’ The young healer looked interested.

‘I thought from the way you were dressed that you and they might be part of the same… I don’t know, troupe?’

‘Troupe?’ Hoyt cast Hannah a sidelong glance. ‘Those are members of the Malakasian Army, the occupation force that patrols the entire nation of Praga – in fact, every land in Eldarn, for that matter – making sure there is no resistance to the royal rule of the great Prince Malagon… the horsecock.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘How can you not know this?’

Hannah’s breathing was shallow. It was something supernatural. It had been going on too long to be a dream. She had gone somewhere, been dropped somewhere. Steven and Mark were here. That had to be it. Her heart pounded a high-stepping tarantella.

How was she going to get home? Two moons. How was she going to find Steven? The strange mediaeval costumes… would there be phones, buses, planes, any of those things she needed?

She shuddered, then squared her aching shoulders and muttered, ‘No. I suppose I haven’t.’

‘Where are you from, then?’ asked Hoyt curiously, before realising that he and Churn might have stumbled into a dangerous situation. His dreams of the fat Malakasian galleon and her rich cargo began to fade.

‘Denver, Colorado,’ said Hannah quietly. ‘I’m from the United States of America.’

Hoyt was not surprised the names were unfamiliar to him; Churn obviously had no idea where Denvercolorado was either. Shaking his head ruefully, Hoyt realised he would have been more surprised if Hannah had named a city he did know.

‘Well, then…’ He tried to sound reassuring. ‘We need to go somewhere safe and talk.’

‘Can you help me?’

‘For a time, yes, but I think eventually we will need to get you to someone with a bit more clout in situations such as these.’ He thought of Alen Jasper, and the curious man’s knowledge of many strange and wonderful things.

‘Is he far from here?’

‘Not really, no, but we have to make a few stops first.’ Hoyt looked sadly up the hillside. He would have to find a new hiding place for his library.

‘Why?’

‘We’ll need to change your clothes for a start, and we must have travel supplies.’ He turned to Churn. ‘Are they dead?’

Churn signed, ‘I think one of them is.’

‘Demonshit.’ Hoyt spat angrily in the dirt near the Malakasian bodies. ‘Well, we can’t just kill the other two… all right, all right, we’ll have to hurry, that’s all.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Hannah did not like the look on the lanky young man’s face: as if he’d just discovered all his carefully laid plans had gone awry. She thought for a moment of bolting, sprinting back the way she had come, to the grove of trees atop the hill. She felt her face flush with fight-or-flight adrenalin.

‘Flight, for Christ’s sake, go with flight,’ Hannah whispered to herself, but she hesitated. There was nothing in that grove, no wardrobe or magic doorway, no curiously stitched tapestry or magic carpet waiting to take her back to Idaho Springs. She had to trust these strangers; they had already saved her life.

Hoyt regained control of his features. ‘Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that one of those fellows might be dead.’ Seeing Hannah cringe, he softened. ‘Oh, don’t worry. It’s all right. They were going to kill you eventually. Our problem is that the other two will be awake before too long and that might make for some difficult travel conditions, especially if they give a description of you to the officer in charge. Granted, they probably weren’t supposed to be out here, and they most certainly were not supposed to be raping young women, but even so, killing them tends to upset the officer corps. The other two may keep their mouths shut for a while, but they won’t be able to cover up their friend’s murder – sorry, untimely death – for very long.’ He tried diligently not to alarm her further. ‘So we need to get into town in a hurry. There are a few places we can hide for a few days while we change the way you look, but eventually we’ll need to make our way north.’

Hannah had no idea what Hoyt meant by difficult travel conditions , but the notion that the Malawhomevers were an occupation army, and that the dead and wounded soldiers – because that’s what they were, soldiers – on the road were Malawhomevers, was not lost on her. ‘So, what will the Mala-’ She paused, trying out the unfamiliar word.

‘-kasians, Malakasians,’ Hoyt filled in the gap.

‘So what will the Malakasians do when they discover one of their soldiers has been killed?’ She avoided eye contact with Churn.

‘Close the roads, shut down the ports, round up anyone accused of separatist activities, tighten their stranglehold on the farmers and merchants who deal in critical goods and services and-’ Hoyt chose his words carefully, ‘-uh, maybe make a public example of a few of us.’

Hannah did not need help understanding the Pragan’s sugarcoated explanation. ‘So, there will be public hangings, beatings, grim retaliatory measures?’

‘Something like that, yes.’

Hannah sighed nervously. ‘All right then, let’s go.’

‘Um, first, I need you to put this on,’ he said and handed her what looked like an over-tunic. It was much too large, but it did cover her shirt and jacket. ‘And here, tie your hair up with this.’ Hoyt drew a section of brown homespun cloth from his belt. ‘I promise it’s clean… well, it was clean recently.’

Despite the tension threatening to close her throat, Hannah had to stifle a laugh as she gathered up her hair and tucked it beneath the makeshift scarf. ‘How’s that?’

Churn grunted his approval and Hoyt nodded. ‘Better… certainly a good deal uglier.’

Hannah pouted in mock dismay.

‘Oh, no, that’s what we want,’ he said, reaching out to offer his arm. ‘Shall we?’

Together, the unlikely trio began making their way quickly towards Southport.