The morning was mild and clear; there was still a trace of pink in the eastern sky when Royce and Braegar rode out from the Water Gardens. Their sand steeds were in high spirits and needed a good run; Royce's dun tossed his head and danced his hindquarters around as he was being saddled.

Royce took his bow and quiver; Braegar took his short spears. If they scared up a dune antelope or sand hare, the cooks would save them the choice cuts.

The tide was low, leaving a broad expanse of damp sand along the sea. Their horses fidgeted and champed at their bits, and at last Royce and Braegar let the horses have their heads. Both steeds broke into a canter, tails high and nostrils flared.

Sand steeds loved nothing more than to run. They were bred for it, and a good sand steed could run for two days without rest. These two had been cooped up in the stables, and now with good firm damp sand under their hooves and miles upon miles of open coast in front of them, they stretched out their long slim legs and the miles melted away behind them. Royce grinned happily; there were few things better in life than a good horse underneath him and the wind in his face.

Several miles down the coast, however, the horses slowed suddenly to a walk, ears pricked forward and nostrils flared. The dun tossed his head and shied sideways.

Braegar had keener eyes than Royce. He shaded them with one hand and stared intently at the horizon as Royce quieted his horse. "There are people out there." His forehead wrinkled as he frowned. "A lot of people."

"Here?" The lands around the Water Gardens were deserted.

Braegar's frown deepened. "We'd best turn back. The prince will want to know about this. We can come back with more men. And Hotah."

"Not just yet."

The words came from right behind them. The accent was strange. Both riders wheeled their horses; there was a man standing behind him, clad like no other men they'd ever seen. He must have been hiding in the dunes; footprints lead that way. How he'd secreted himself in nothing but sand and scrub grass, Royce had no idea.

The man wore heavy boots with queer soles, a strange bulky vest that looked like no armor they'd ever seen before, and queerest of all a green mask of what looked like wool, which hid all but the man's eyes.

The man was holding...something. Royce had never seen anything like it before; a strange thing of metal and some substance he had no name for. Looking down the hollow tube at the front of the thing, though, a little chill went down his spine.

"You just keep your hands where I can see them, and don't think of running for it." The strange man said calmly. "Ah can promise you, a bullet'll outrun a horse. Now, we're gonna go back and you're going to meet General Hawk, and hopefully you can tell us whut the fuck is going on."

"Where in the name of the seven did you come from?" Braegar demanded. "We didn't see you!"

"Ah'm a Ranger. People don't see me unless I want to be seen. Now move."

Braegar set his jaw stubbornly. "Why should we? We are riders of Dorne, and you haven't even a sword."

The strange man narrowed his eyes and pointed that strange metal thing at the sand between their horses.

There was a terrible thundering crack. The metal thing spat fire and acrid smoke, and sand flew up as something moving too fast to see buried itself in the ground.

Horses are not, by nature, particularly brave animals. Much like other hoofed herbivores, they are perfectly aware that there are plenty of carnivores around who are both willing and able to kill and eat them. The standard preferred method horses use to avoid this is 'run away, as fast as possible.'

Now, a good warhorse can, through a great deal of training, learn to override base instincts and listen to the human on its back during the loud, confusing chaos of battle. Both sand steeds were good warhorses.

Neither, however, had either heard a gunshot before. And when a horse's basic self-preservation instincts kick in and it decides to take a course of action more or less opposite the one the human riding it wants, the human can very quickly realize that they are somewhat precariously perched on about fifteen hundred pounds of suddenly panicked bone and muscle

It was a credit to both the excellent training of the sand steeds and the horsemanship of the Dornishmen that Royce and Braegar managed to keep their seats and bring both horses back under control after a few tense seconds. Both horses were still trembling and rolling their eyes, ears laid flat back along their skulls, but the two Dornishmen got them calmed. The stranger conceded to look mildly impressed.

"Awright. We're gonna make things real simple here." The strange man raised his weapon again. "No, I don't have a sword. I have a gun. A gun kills people real quick, particularly people tryin' to attack me with spears. It won't kill people who come with me nice and quiet. That clear?"

Royce and Braegar looked at each other, and back at the stranger. "Sorcerer." Royce said, as calmly as he could manage. "Spare us, and we will accompany you."

"Sorcerer? Ah ain't no…" The stranger paused. "You know what, fuck it, if y'all ain't never seen a gun you're not gonna understand anyway. Now, drop the weapons and get off the horses, and follow me back to meet General Hawk, and maybe we can get this whole mess figured out."

Twenty minutes later, and Royce and Braegar found themselves surrounded by the most outlandish group of people they'd ever met. None of their clothing made sense. None of the things they spoke of made sense. From what the two Dornishmen could gather, the group...and they were big enough to count as a whole tribe, at least a couple of hundred strong…claimed to have just appeared, right in the middle of the Dornish Wastes.

It wasn't a tribe, though. However strange, the Dornishmen recognized a military camp when they saw one. An endlessly strange military camp, filled with people and things that made Royce's head hurt, but one that was recognizable nonetheless.

There was a man near one of the tents. He was poring over papers and speaking with several men as they drew near, but when they approached he looked up, unsurprised, clearly forewarned of their arrival.

"Beach." The man said calmly. "You didn't frighten them too badly, did you?"

"Naw." The strange man dropped Royce and Braegar's weapons in the sand. "I mean, judging from these, we ain't dealing with much in the way of technology here. They didn't even know what a gun was. I just got their attention is all."

"Fair enough. Thank you, Beach."

"You are the commander here?" Braegar ventured.

"I am." The words were said with a kind of quiet self-assurance, but there was a glint harder than diamond in the man's eyes. "General Hawk. I apologize if my sergeant major frightened you; he has that effect on a lot of people." He clasped his hands at the small of his back. "This is going to sound like a very strange question, I'm sure, but bear with me. Where, exactly, are we?"

Royce blinked. Braegar's eyebrows drew together. "You jest."

"I do not, I'm afraid."

The two Dornishmen looked at each other. Braegar shrugged helplessly. This wasn't the sort of day they knew how to deal with; what do you do, when accosted by a sorcerer who then took you to a camp that shouldn't be, full of things that were impossible and people who couldn't be, and then taken before the man who apparently commanded the whole madhouse?

"Dorne." Royce said at last.

"Ah." General Hawk didn't blink. "Which is where?"

Mad. All of them. Definitely mad. "Ah…Westeros, my lord."

That earned them an eyebrow raise. "General will work just fine. I'm no lord. Westeros. Where's that?"

He didn't look simple. "The…I…it's not anywhere. It's just…Westeros."

"Right. Let me phrase it differently." General Hawk pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't believe I'm saying this. What planet are we on?"

"I…my lord?" Royce was lost.

"I'm many things, but lord isn't one of them. This world. What's it called?"

"The world?" Royce blinked a few times. Maybe he was hallucinating? That was it. He was in bed with sunstroke, hallucinating. "It's just the world."

"I see. So the word 'Earth' means nothing to you?"

"No, my…General."

General Hawk nodded, slowly. "And Westeros; is there more to it than Dorne?"

Hallucinating strange commanders with strange armies who understood less than a child. Perhaps he'd caught a fever? "The seven kingdoms, the Wall, and the lands beyond the wall."

General Hawk took a deep breath, and let out half of it. "Ah."

"Sir." The man called Beach spoke up. "Permission to speak freely?"

"Granted."

"This is fucked, sir."

One of the men General Hawk had been speaking with spoke for the first time. "For once, sir, I am going to agree with Beach."

"I wish I could think of a better way to put it myself, Flint." General Hawk sighed. "You aren't carrying supplies for a long trip, gentlemen. I assume, then, that you came from a settlement not far away?"

"I…yes, General." Since this was a hallucination, he supposed there was no harm in it. "The Water Gardens." He paused, considering, and then elaborated. If they didn't know what Westeros was, they probably didn't know what the Water Gardens were. "Personal retreat of the Prince of Dorne. Five leagues along the coast."

General Hawk's eyes flickered at the word 'prince'. "Excellent. Beach. Flint. Have the team break camp. If we press, we can cover fifteen miles before sundown."

"Sir." Both men hurried off.

The general turned back to the two Dornishmen. Royce met his eyes, but only for a second. That man, he thought to himself, could stare down a dragon.

"I am sure that this all seems very strange to you two." General Hawk kept his voice level and calm. "Well, it is just as strange for me and my men. I am going to be brutally honest with you, as I've no wish for hostilities between us and your prince; we don't belong here. I don't know how we got here; one minute I was sitting in my office, and the next I was sitting in a desert. We are from a world called Earth, and a country called America. We want to get back there. And we would be very grateful if you and your prince could help us. So, I am going to ask you a favor. First, though, as a gesture of trust, I am going to give you your weapons back." He nodded at the spears and bow and quiver in the sand.

Royce hesitated, and then bent to pick up his bow. He felt better with the smooth wood in his hands. Braegar seemed equally relieved to have his spears back. Braegar arched his eyebrows at the general. "The favor?"

"The favor is this; ride back and report to your prince. Tell him exactly what happened here. Be utterly truthful. And tell him that General Clayton Abernathy respectfully requests to quarter his men outside the city to orient ourselves and resupply and to speak with him in person. If he extends us this courtesy, we will extend every possible courtesy in return."

Braegar glanced at Royce. Royce shrugged.

"We can do this thing." Braegar nodded.

Royce had never been so glad to get away from a place in his life.

General Hawk watched the two men beat a hasty retreat on their horses as the controlled chaos of breaking camp started to rise around him. He nodded as Beach jogged up.

"We'll be mobile in twenty minutes, sir." Beach squinted after the two retreating riders. "We gonna go meet a prince?"

"Yes." Hawk tapped a rolled-up inventory sheet against his thigh thoughtfully. "We'll see if he decides to play nice."

"An' if he doesn't, sir?"

"Ever read a 'Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?"

"Yessir. Didn't they try to burn the poor bastard at the stake in that book?"

Hawk allowed himself a very small smile. "We've got two hundred and fourteen Yankees…and southerners… and enough weaponry and ammunition with us to wage a respectable modern war. This Prince of Dorne is going to help us, whether I have to ask politely or impolitely."

Beach grinned.