The picnic, it turned out, would have to wait.

James rounded a corner carefully with Q's voice in his ear. 'Cerberus to your right, fifty paces. You'd better take it out.'

'Seems a shame,' James grunted into the commlink medallion around his neck, bringing down the beast with a well-aimed crossbow bolt to its middle head. 'Would've made a nice pet for you.' He reloaded and kept on running down the stone corridor.

'All right, now use the phial I gave you to neutralise the firewall. The weapons cache is behind it, shouldn't be hard to locate. I've got eyes on you, but I should warn you that I can't scry through the firewall, so I'm afraid I can't tell whether there's anything else in there right now. You'll have exactly two minutes from when it goes down to acquire the cache and get back out, so do try to keep your arse in gear, won't you, 007?'

The corridor ended abruptly in a dancing wall of orange flame. Even standing well back from it James was sweating in the brunt of its radiant heat. He drew the phial from his belt pouch and looked at it dubiously. 'This had better work, Q.'

'Of course it will work, what do you take me for?' The Quartermaster sounded thoroughly offended. James grinned briefly to himself. Well, that was one mission accomplished, anyway. He edged closer, eyes slitted against the force of the firewall; the sweat evaporated from his skin almost as soon as it formed. When he was as close as he could possibly bear, he uncorked the tiny bottle and hurled its contents into the flames.

They shot from orange to white and back again, and though they still hung there like a shimmering curtain the heat was gone; so great was the difference that James staggered as if caught by a gust of cold wind. He gathered himself swiftly and ran through into the chamber behind.

'One minute forty seconds,' Q said.

'Christ, Q, there's ten of them.' James began placing the dragon eggs into the sheepskin-lined satchel he wore over his shoulder.

'More than we thought, then. M will be pleased. Or not. One minute six seconds.'

'On my way out.' Bond passed back through the illusion of the firewall and set off at a steady run, clutching the satchel with one hand to keep it from bumping against him too much. Past the limp form of the Cerberus, black paws still; around the corner and back towards the stairwell. Miraculously, no one appeared to challenge him from the halls that branched off the main corridor. Maybe he would get out of here without having to kill anyone else.

'Good thing those eggs aren't especially breakable,' Q observed drily when the satchel collided with the metal bannister as James hurled himself up the stairs two at a time. James gritted his teeth but saved his breath. His hand was on the cold metal of the door, about to push it open, when Q said, suddenly sharp, 'Bond, wait.' James paused, feeling his heart hammer in his chest.

'Vexing,' said Q. 'We've missed the window between the guard rounds and this fellow is about to see the corpse of the one you dispatched before, in—well, about now, actually.'

James dropped the crossbow and pulled his knife just as the door was yanked open. He made quick but quiet work of the incoming guard and tossed his body down the stairs, grabbed his crossbow and slammed the door behind him just as the first sound of pursuit came from below.

'Calling my extraction team now,' he panted, scrabbling in his belt pouch for the tinderbox. Flint struck steel and amidst the shower of sparks appeared the dog with eyes the size of supper plates. James grabbed onto the rough short fur at its neck and swung up onto its back, flattening himself down as much as possible. An arrow whistled past his ear, but the dog took off at an extraordinary pace, quickly outdistancing their pursuers. It made its way up and onto the rooftops of the city, nothing but a darker shadow moving against the night sky.

'It seems you're in the clear, 007.'

'Good.' James sat up a little straighter and felt the wind strike his face; the night was not cold, but the dog's speed lent the air a keen bite. 'Thanks, Q.'

'Based on your current velocity, estimated time of arrival at Headquarters is twenty-three-hundred-forty hours. I'll let M know—' James could hear the undercurrent of amusement in Q's voice '—that the mission went considerably more smoothly than expected.'

'Of course it did, what do you take me for?' James retorted, and was rewarded by a soft chuckle from the Quartermaster.


Thanks to fromthewildwood for the idea of the tinderbox. All other mishmash of fantasy elements, technology and terrible puns is my own.