Gunpowder, Jack mused grimly as Red picked his way through the roots on the forest floor. Why gunpowder? Absently, he stroked his horse's neck. The dappled gelding, getting more and more nervous as Daine led them closer to the smell, seemed to appreciate the gesture.
It was an anachronism. Gunpowder did not belong in Tortall anymore than Jack himself did. If Jack's job was to get rid of anachronisms, then this was a big one.
It probably had to do with the ship that Mithros had shown him, Jack thought with a frown. It was a propellant. Perhaps they used it as fuel?
Who used gunpowder as fuel?
Sulfur, charcoal, potassium nitrate. Low explosive. Cheep, in some places, and not very efficient. Worse than gasoline, in its way. Better to use Uranium, or fusion or something. Still, some people probably did. Gunpowder, gunpowder… Who would use gunpowder…?
The horses crashed through the underbrush, the humans on top on them silent and wary. Jack ran through species and races his head, scrolling down a mental checklist. Who the hell used gunpowder? He glanced over anxiously to check on his companions.
Alanna, to his left, was silent and grim-faced, sitting tall and fingering her sword. Her mount had bunched up his neck, lifting his feet high in the stately, powerful walk of a trained warhorse. Numair, a little in front of them, was tense. His shoulders swayed alarmingly as Spots walked, bringing a small smile to Jack's face. The mage really was a terrible rider.
But despite his poor equitation, Numair was radiating power. He seemed to be gathering himself, preparing. Jack's small smile faded uneasily.
Daine, far ahead, was sniffing the air with some kind of canine snout slapped eerily on her face. Jack hadn't realized that her shape-changing ability stretched that far; he wondered if she could transform fully, thought she probably could, and then pondered the possible advantages of that.
Jack would be damned if he let anything happen to these people, he told himself grimly, sniffing the air himself. The trees began to thin, and beyond Daine and Cloud he could see a clearing. Something shifted in the tall grass. Jack fingered his revolver. Daine stopped her pony and glanced back at them.
Alanna looked over to Jack and hissed, "Can you hear that?"
Jack blinked at her. "Hear what?"
"That noise," Numair agreed, glancing back. "Something—high pitched."
Jack cocked his head and listened. The sound was faint and droning, unnoticeable until the others had pointed it out. It was a constant tone, a high whirring noise of working machinery. Jack recognized it: the humming of an engine, a sound so familiar that he'd learned to disregard it.
"Yes," Jack murmured to no one in particular. Spots, on Red's other side, snorted unhappily. The wind whispered, and suddenly picked up speed. It was all Jack needed. Yes, he thought derisively. It was the spaceship. He sniffed the air but still smelled nothing.
"Can you sense anything, sweets?" Numair was asking Daine, who was sitting up straight on Cloud, looking around and listening with some kind of animal's ears perched on her head. The shape shifting thing really was strange, Jack mused with faint humor.
"Yes, but it's odd," Daine replied, voice distant. "It feels like—"
Kitten suddenly poked her head out of Numair's saddlebag and cheeped, startling Jack. Daine looked back at her and then whipped her head around, facing the meadow beyond the trees. "Tkaa?"
Something gray and serpentine stuck its head out of the tall grass in the clearing ahead. An eight-foot lizard, which Jack vaguely recognized as the creature that had dropped off Kitten, approached and then stopped mid-stride, crouching to examine a rock that peaked out from under a tree root. Daine called the name again and the lizard looked up. Jack pulled his revolver from his belt uneasily.
"Something's coming," it said, voice whispery. Its eyes were a sort of rusty color, like iron left in water. Jack remembered them, from when he had very briefly laid eyes on the creature, as clear and sharp; now they were dull, as if the animal was sick. "I can smell it. Something, something—" The lizard looked left and right with a strange sort of desperation, slipping out a forked, serpentine tongue in a gesture that reminded Jack eerily of a stoner looking for a fix.
"Tkaa, are you alright?" Daine asked. "You feel off."
"Very off," the creature agreed faintly. "I can't see." It took a deep breath. "Can you smell it?"
Gray bodies moved in the grass ahead and Jack nudged Red forward, past Cloud and the creature and up to edge of the forest. A breeze picked up again as he reached the edge of the trees. He looked out. The tall grass of the meadow whispered and swayed, teeming with creatures that looked like the great lizard behind him. Tkaa was not the only basilisk here.
"There must be hundreds," Alanna breathed as Darkmoon came up alongside Red. Jack glanced at her, back at the creatures in the grass and then, a thought suddenly striking him, up at the sky. He scanned the bright blueness, squinting against the sun, then saw it—a dark, elliptical shape, so high in the sky that from Jack's perspective it looked hardly larger than a bird.
He knew it would be bigger up close.
A gray cloud was trailing lazily from it, looking almost natural, but Jack knew better. He looked back at his companions, who were regarding him curiously.
"Numair, you said they eat stone?" he asked. The mage nodded.
"A great big metal spaceship," Jack murmured, looking back up, "with gunpowder in the exhaust, drifting down…"
Even as he said it, there was a screeching sound of metal on stone. Every basilisk in the clearing, and there were quite a few, looked up, serpentine heads pointed to the sky. A chill went down Jack's spine and Red danced a little, feeling his unease. Suddenly, the small speck in the sky became a large speck, dropping rapidly before coming to a shuddering halt. Now it looked about the size of a baseball bat.
It must've dropped a hundred, two hundred kilometers, Jack thought in alarm, and braced himself for the sound he knew must accompany such a dramatic change in altitude.
A great, thundering boom shook the forest and the basilisks, including Tkaa, scattered like leaves on the wind. The horses pitched and squealed in panic, and birds leaped into the air. A great wind blew the leaves on the trees, bending back the tall grass.
Jack clutched his reins tightly to pull Red in. "Easy, easy," he whispered. The horse, gasping in fright, whipped his head around to stare at Jack with one brown, rolling eye.
"Something's wrong with their engines, or their anti-grav," Jack told his gelding, reaching down and over to stroke one black-edged ear. "It just dropped; something must've broken. Relax. We've got it under control."
"Engines? Anti-grav?" Numair gasped, barely controlling Spots. Daine had leaped off Cloud to stand at the painted gelding's head, crooning to both horses, Kitten cowering at Numair's side. Even Cloud looked afraid.
Darkmoon, the war horse, seemed to have gotten over it quickly. He stood straight and tall, ears flat back, looking angry rather than frightened. Alanna had drawn her sword.
"Propellers," Jack told him and then addressed his other companions as well. " Things to keep them in the air. We have visitors."
"The Gates," Alanna said flatly. "Someone's come through?"
"It seems that way. Stay here," Jack ordered, and urged a reluctant Red forward.
"Don't even think about it," the Lady Knight snapped, following on Darkmoon. "I'm a knight of the realm, and if I have to act as ambassador too then I—"
Her voice cut off as another thundering boom split the air. Jack jerked his head up as Red squealed in fright. Alanna gasped, and Jack could hear Daine and Numair making similar sounds of awe.
The ship had dropped farther, and now hovered less than a hundred feet from the ground, fully in their view and huge. For his part, Jack was not impressed. The ship had looked menacing from afar, but close up he could tell that it was a clunker. The paneling was scratched up, and it wheezed dark pollution onto the ground. There was writing on the side in Galactic standard, and as the ship descended further, he could read it with little problem.
Krasodaner, Malinb doore.
We flee the wars of Malinb.
Panic and horror flooded down Jack's spine. It was a refugee ship.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Not invaders, which he could destroy without guilt. Not even explorers, or merchants, which he could kill and feel only vaguely guilty. He could even deal with colonizers without a problem, but refugees? Mithros, God of Sun and Shield, wanted him to kill civilians?
Jack's breath stuck in his throat. It was the job, he told himself grimly. What kind of Torchwood Operative would he be, if he couldn't do the job? He'd done worse things in his life.
… and what kind of conman would he be, something whispered from deep within him, if he didn't get something out of the deal?
We want them dead, dearie, an old woman's voice suddenly growled in his head. We already made our bargain, unless you would like another one? I can find you something you've lost, for another favor…
I don't care, Jack thought back fiercely, get out of my brain! He slammed all his defenses down at once, hopefully blocking out whatever meddlesome god that decided to play with him today. Cold fury suddenly filled him. No. His brain was off limits, and if these damn, primitive gods demanded some sort of blood sacrifice then he wasn't going to help them get it!
As the vessel descended into the meadow, the exhaust carpeted the ground. The basilisks crept around the edges of the trees, seeming entranced at the black smoke hissing from the sides of the ship. Jack gritted his teeth. Could there be a way to send that ship back up in the air?
Daine coughed. "That smells horrible," she whispered, stooping to lift her sputtering dragon. Jack glanced at her, and a feeling of fierce protectiveness swept through him so swiftly that he was almost winded.
Refugees could be dangerous, he thought uneasily.
"What is it, Jack?" Numair asked softly.
"They're refugees," Jack told him reluctantly, voice dark but truthful. "The writing on the side, that's Galactic standard. I can read it. It's the war they're running from, and their status." He swallowed. Red stood stiff and nervous beneath him, and he hoped that the horse would not try to bolt again.
"Refugees?" Alanna muttered. "They don't look like refugees to me. Daine, what are the basilisks doing?"
"It's the smoke," Daine replied, just as quiet. Her voice had a hypnotic, dreamy quality to it that made Jack feel vaguely uneasy. "It's got little bits of stone in it. It brought them here, from miles and miles away—it came from the ship, but they've known it was coming for so long…" Kitten whistled softly.
"It must be like a drug," Jack murmured, watching the ship tremble in the air. Slowly, ponderously, it started to descend again, grating like metal on stone. Three metal struts extended from the base of the ship as it lowered itself gracelessly, the pollution swirling around them as they touched the ground. Someone within turned off the anti-gravity, or whatever their equivalent was, because there was a shuddering, groaning noise as the ship's weight came to rest on the struts. Jack turned back to the others.
"Stay here," he ordered, and held up a hand when Alanna made to protest. "You don't speak Galactic standard," he told her firmly, "And I don't want to look threatening. If they hurt me, go back to your king and tell him they're here. No, listen to me. You will not be able to fight them; you have to negotiate. If more than one person goes down to meet them, they'll think we're hostile. I want to help repair their ship and send them on their way."
That might have been a lie, and it might have been a truth. Jack didn't know himself. Was he going to do the job, however unsavory it was?
It might be better if he could patch up their ship, he thought grimly. Do it fast, get them out of here, and then maybe get a few spare parts out of the deal. They might have the technology to fix his wrist strap, although he doubted it.
There was a sudden crash of thunder from nowhere and they all started. Jack scowled, knowing exactly what the sound meant. "Your gods want me to kill them," he told his friends flatly. "But I don't like to hurt civilians. I'll be right back. Stay here!"
"Come back quickly," Numair urged, and Alanna and Daine looked at him incredulously.
"You're just going to let him go?" Alanna demanded heatedly.
"Alanna," Numair's voice was soft, "It doesn't look alive to my magical vision. I can't even see their life-forces, or the forces that make the ship work. Look at it!"
"I can't feel it either," Daine said uneasily. "They have animals with them, but I can't—" She bit her lip. "They feel wrong, and I can't hear them. I just—I just know they're there. They feel like—like worms or beetles. I can't talk to them."
Kitten chattered in agreement, turning slightly pink with fear.
"You're out of your depth," Jack told them gently, and he felt a reluctant affection for them, all of them, these primitive people. "I'm going to go talk to them. Daine, I don't know if this smoke will harm the basilisks."
"I couldn't stop them if I wanted to," Daine admitted.
"Go," Alanna ordered after a moment. "But hurry back!"
Jack nodded and slipped off Red, who nickered gratefully. The horse very obviously did not want to go. Jack squared his shoulders and walked out to the meadow. The rusty eyes of the drugged basilisks followed him dully as the pollution swirled around his feet.
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