Dragonslayer's Return (Spearwielder's Tale #3) 7

It was still raining, and that pitter-patter on his face again brought Gary's conscious mind whirling back from dreamland. He stirred and tried to open his eyes, felt a dull ache throughout his entire body. From somewhere not so far away, he heard the ring of a dwarfish hammer.

Waves of agony rolled up his left arm, accompanying each note. Gary half screamed, half gasped and tried to roll away, his eyes popping open wide. A strong hand clamped hard on his chest and held him still.

"What are you doing?" the suddenly wide-awake Gary demanded. He managed to turn his head to the left in time to see Geno's hammer go up high once more, then come crashing down, out of his view, ringing against metal. The waves turned Gary's stomach and sent the world spinning dizzily before his eyes. He tried to scream out, but found no breath.for it.

Up again went the grim-faced dwarf's hammer.

"No!" Gary protested.

Then Diane was there, gently easing Geno aside (though the dwarf kept his hand firmly on Gary's chest and would not let him turn) and putting her face close to Gary's.

"He has to," she tried to explain.

"What? What ... is ..." Gary stammered between gasps.

"It's your shield," Diane went on. She eased Geno's hand away from Gary's chest so that Gary could roll over enough to take in the scene.

Gary's gasps fell away to silence, his breath gone altogether as he regarded his shield, the shield of Donigar- ten, the strongest shield in all the world. Fully a third of it was gone, the metal ripped away, and what was left had buckled around Gary's arm, bent like the aluminum foil Gary might use to wrap the remains of a Thanksgiving turkey. Gary realized then that, while his previously injured shoulder throbbed with pain, he felt nothing at all along his arm.

Nothing at all.

His gauntlet was off and he stared hard at his unmoving left hand. It didn't look real to him, not at all, resembling the lifeless limb of a mannequin, except that it was so pale that it appeared blue. "If we cannot get the shield off soon, you will lose your arm," Kelsey said grimly.

"Good shield," Geno remarked, eyeing the flattened end of his ruined chisel - the third chisel he had destroyed in the last fifteen minutes.

Gary was silent for a long moment, considering Kelsey's grim words. He rolled flat to his back again. "Get it off," he said. "Just get it off."

Diane shifted over to be close to her husband, while Geno shrugged and gladly - too gladly, Gary thought - moved back into position.

Again and again, the dwarfish hammer rang out, accompanied by Gary's increasing growls. Finally, after five more minutes that seemed like five days to poor Gary, the dwarf grunted triumphantly and tossed the destroyed shield aside.

Geno was far from done, though. Next he went to work on the arm plates of Gary's armor, twisting and turning brutally, loosening straps and every once in a while giving a solid hit with that hammer and chisel. Then it was over and Gary lay flat in the rain, closing his eyes and concentrating against the gradually receding pain. Kelsey wrapped his arm in something soggy, which Diane explained as a healing poultice, and Gary only nodded, though he hardly comprehended anything at that moment.

Only the pain.

"Never seen a hit like it," he heard Geno mumble.

"I telled ye the haggis was one to be feared," Mickey answered.

"It wasn't the haggis," Diane insisted.

On cue, all eyes turned to Geldion, who had seen the creature up close. "I know not," the Prince admitted helplessly. "If that . . . thing was my father, then it did not recognize me."

"It wasn't the haggis," Diane said again.

Gary had heard that tone before, and knew that his wife had something tangible up her sleeve. He forced himself up on his good elbow, and studied Diane's smug smile.

Gary remembered that last moment before his collision with the beast, the blinding flash . . .

"You took a picture of it," he said to Diane, his tone making the remark sound like an accusation. Diane chuckled and produced the Polaroid snapshot from her pouch, handing it to Kelsey. The elf said nothing out loud, but his expression spoke volumes. The photograph was passed from hand to hand, from Kelsey to Geno to Mickey.

"Kinnemore," the leprechaun remarked, handing it to Geldion. The Prince's knees almost buckled and he stared at the picture for a long, long while.

Gary felt tingling needles in his arm a bit later, and could move his fingers once more. Diane showed him the picture and explained to him what had happened.

Gary saw the creature clearly in the photograph, a hunched and hairy thing, its left arm and leg nearly twice as long as its right limbs. But the face was not as Gary had seen it. Rather than the hairball with a wide, stretching mouth, it was clearly the face of a man, though still with a mouth that reached from ear to ear. Gary saw himself in the photo too, peeking around the shield at the flying thing, wearing the most profound expression of terror he had ever seen. Like a missile, the haggis had slammed the shield, Diane explained. And had bitten the bottom piece right off, as Gary had gone flying up into the air.

Apparently the creature had been hurt by the impact, though. With Gary out of the fight and Geldion trampled into a muddy trench, it had almost evened the odds, yet instead of turning back after the others, it had burrowed straight down into the crahg, keening wildly all the while.

"We got back all the horses," Diane went on, and then added in a lower tone, "except yours." Gary grimaced, remembering the gruesome attack.

"Then we got out of the Crahgs," Diane finished. Gary propped himself up higher to get his bearings. He saw the rolling hillocks a short distance away, and by the position of the sun, a lighter gray area in the heavy sky, he knew that most of the day had passed.

"How's your arm?" Diane asked.

Gary flexed the limb, clenched and opened his hand a few times, and nodded. His shoulder was still quite sore - all his body ached as though he had been in a car wreck - but he felt as though he could go on, knew that he had to go on in light of the photographic confirmation of the haggis's true identity.

He motioned to Diane to help him to his feet.

"What's next?" he asked hopefully of the others.

Kelsey, Mickey, none of them had any answer, and Geldion's responding stare was cold indeed.

"We know now that the haggis is truly the King," Gary reasoned, using that simple logic to try to force them from their helpless resignation.

"Unless your wife is a witch," Geldion retorted suspiciously, "and her magic a deception."

Gary turned a smug smile on Diane. "Sometimes," he answered. "But the pictures show the truth." "A lot o' good that'll do us," Mickey put in.

"We can't give up," Gary said.

"Maybe we could use the pictures to convince the Connacht soldiers," Diane reasoned. "Prince Geldion could take them back to the army."

Both Kelsey and the Prince were shaking their heads even as she spoke.

"I have come to trust Gary Leger as I would a brother," Kelsey explained. "And thus, to trust in you. Yet, my own doubts about your magic remain. I have watched you with your flashing charm . . ." "Flashing charm?" Diane asked.

"The thing ye called a camra," Mickey explained.

"And yet I still am not certain of its paintings," Kelsey finished.

"You are asking that I tell loyal and professional soldiers to desert the King they have known all their careers," Geldion agreed. "I could never convince them with such meager evidence."

Diane look to Gary and shrugged, her hands, each holding one of the revealing photographs, held wide in disbelief. "Meager evidence?" she whispered.

"You're looking at things from the point of view of our world," Gary explained knowingly. "We know what a picture is, and we know how to test it for authenticity. But here, the 'camra' is just another form of magic, and from what I've seen, most of the magic in Faerie is illusion, a leprechaun's tricks. Mickey could produce two pictures that look exactly like the ones from the Polaroid in the blink of an eye."

Diane looked to the leprechaun, and at that moment, Mickey's pipe was floating in the air before his face, lighting of its own accord, despite the continuing rain. The woman gave a loud sigh and looked back to Gary, seeing things in the proper perspective.

"Then we just have to go back and catch the haggis," Gary announced, as though it was all a simple task. Words of protest came at him from every corner, strongest from Geno (no surprise there) and from Kelsey. Gary eyed the elf skeptically, not expecting such a vehement argument, until Kelsey, in his angry raving, mentioned the dead horse. The Tylwyth Teg were protective of their magnificent steeds, and Kelsey had lost one already to the wild beast.

But Gary remained determined against the tide. "We have to go back," he said firmly. "We'll never stop the war now if we don't catch the real King Kinnemore and reveal Ceridwen's deception."

"And the war will go on without us when we are lying dead in the Crahgs," Geno answered.

Gary started to respond, but fell silent. The dwarf was right - all of them were right. They had met the haggis and had been run out. If not for Cedric's shield, Gary would have shared a fate similar to the one his horse found.

Despite his determination, a shudder coursed along his spine as he pictured himself lying in half atop the wet hillock.

But they had to go back - that fact seemed inescapable. They had to catch the haggis and prove the truth of Ceridwen's deception, or all the land was doomed.

Gary pondered the dilemma for a moment, then snapped his fingers, drawing everyone's attention.

"I saw a movie once," he began, "or maybe it was a cartoon."

"A what?" Mickey asked.

"Or a what?" Kelsey added.

Gary shook his head and waved his hands. "Never mind that," he explained. "It doesn't matter. I saw this show . . . er, play, where a monster was too strong to be held by anything, even steel or titanium."

"What's that?" Mickey asked.

Gary was shaking head and hands again before the leprechaun even got out the predictable question. "Never mind that," Gary went on. "The monster was too strong, that's the point. But in this movi ... in this play, they caught the monster, and held it, with an elastic bubble."

"A what kind of bubble?" Mickey asked against Gary's shaking head and limbs.

"Never mind that," Gary huffed.

"It might work," Diane agreed, following the reasoning perfectly. "But how are we going to get something like that?"

Gary was already thinking along those lines. "Where's Gerbil?" he asked.

"In Braemar," Mickey replied.

Gary abruptly turned to Geno, his voice filled with excitement and hope. "If I give Gerbil something to design, you think you could build it?"

Geno snorted. "I can build anything."

"On to Braemar!" Gary announced and took a long stride towards the horses.

None of the others took a step to follow, all looking skeptically at Gary.

'Trust me," Gary answered those looks.

Mickey, Kelsey, and Geno glanced around at each other, silently sharing memories of the last few weeks. Gary's ingenuity had gotten them off of Ceridwen's island; Gary's quick thinking had allowed them to escape Geldion's troops in the haunted swamp; Gary's ingenuity had brought about the fall of Robert.

They broke camp and headed out for Braemar, Gary and Diane sharing Kelsey's mount, the elf riding behind Geldion on the gray, and Mickey propped against the neck of Geno's pony.