The tale of a bold knight, a valiant steed, an innocent maiden and a cunning dragon…

“I may have a plan.” Cicero spoke thoughtfully. “I think it covers all the bases. Firstly, we have to arrive at the stone together. You two can come down this ridge and I’ll circle around to approach from the other direction. When we get to the girl, Sir Barnabas can discover whether or not she is willing to be divested of her virginity.” He paused and passed a claw across his eyes. “Assuming the young woman is agreeable, I can cover the event with my wings. And I’m sure neither Salazar nor myself would wish to watch such an undignified procedure. Once the deed is done I will be able to touch the stone and return to my library. The rest of you will be free to do as you will.”
Salazar shook his mane but said nothing, leaving it to Barney to voice the question they were both asking in their heads.
“What if the girl is unwilling?”
“Then I will eat her.”
“And what of my companion and I?”
Salazar’s skin twitched and he stamped a forehoof. “I guess we go down fighting.”
“I suspect we might. But you could always run away. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“No. I know you wouldn’t. Which is why I can’t do it.”
Barney laid a hand on the arched neck. “If that’s how you feel we should give some thought to what we do in the aftermath if this plan goes to plan.”
“That might be tricky.”
Cicero coughed genteelly. “You could come with me.”
“Could we?”
“Yes. I have a very nice home. With room for friends.”
“What about your dragon chums? Who are generally very fond of horse meat.”
Cicero shuffled his feet and looked uncomfortable. “I don’t actually have any dragon ‘chums’. Regular dragons don’t have much time for vegetarian librarians.”
“Oh. Well. Umm. In that case.” Salazar swished his mane some more. Then he snapped his teeth together. “If we are going to do this thing, we should stop jawing and get on with it.”
Barney stretched until his joints popped and he and Cicero attempted a high five. The dragon waddled off in the opposite direction to the castle and spread his dun-coloured wings. He leapt into the air and the down draught all but brought Barney to his knees. Salazar swore, but sobered as Barney climbed awkwardly into the saddle. They set off down the spiny ridge at a careful walk, it not being safe to go any faster. When they reached the flat, green pastureland in which the Dragon Stone stood like a rotting tooth Salazar broke into a ceremonial canter while Barney sat upright in the saddle and tried to look noble.
Overhead the dragon circled and flamed, skilfully managing to make a good show for the watching castle without coming close to singeing his co-conspirators.
The trio arrived at the Stone together and Barney slid from Salazar’s back. Standing over the chained girl he brandished his broadsword so as to make it appear he was guarding her life.
Hs spoke without looking over his shoulder. “Can you hear me mistress?”
“Of course I can. I’m not deaf. And it’s Princess.”
“Oh right. Sorry. Well. Look. Umm. The thing is…”
Aurora studied the tongue-tied young giant with some approval. In another place and at another time, she thought, he might make a very presentable beau. But she did rather wish he’d spit out whatever it was he was trying to say.
Salazar took over. “Can you hear me?”
“I can. But you’re a horse so I shouldn’t be able to. Are you a hallucination?”
“No. I’m just a talking horse. And we’ve no time for idle chitchat. This is serious. We’re trying to save your life, but that requires your cooperation.”
“In these circumstances I’m all about cooperation.”
For a moment it seemed that even Salazar’s glib tongue had deserted him, but he coughed a bit and ploughed on.
“Do you know, young person, what it is about you that makes you possible dragon food?”
“Approximately. I mean. I’m young. Female. Not ugly. And…”
“And what?”
“And a virgin.”
“Precisely. You are currently a virgin.”
“Are you trying to tell me that all I have to do is discard my virginity I have a fighting chance of surviving this brouhaha?”
“I am.”
“You’re kidding me? That’s all it takes? ”
She narrowed her eyes and studied Barney’s broad back.
“That one will do,” she said firmly. “Except. What happens if he stops fighting off the dragon…?”
“You don’t need to worry about Cicero. Or you won’t if you can divest yourself of your inconvenient innocence. In fact he is prepared to shield you with his wings while the necessary happens.”

This adventure of Barney and Salazar will continue next week…

I didn’t ask to be born, and yet here am I
Gifted with life, but knowing I’ll die.
The thrice tainted gift that none can refuse
Brings suffering: fear, pain and abuse.
And so we must strive to keep those at bay
There can be no rest, just fight every day.
For how can you sleep at peace in your bed
Knowing another still needs to be fed?
How can you lie to yourself with each breath,
And feel any joy when another fears death?
Oh why do we live each in silent enclave
And not have a care for those we enslave?
For our lives are lived on the backs of the weak,
The poor, the downtrodden, those forced to be meek.
We claim to be proud and clever and strong,
But still do not see what we do is so wrong.
I didn’t ask to be born, and yet here am I
Gifted with life, but knowing I’ll die.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Suddenly she was free, thrown aside as her attacker released her abruptly. Lorelea gasped, still choking, and threw out her good arm to save herself as the ground came up hard. She skidded and tried to roll, hurting her hip in the process, gasping for breath desperately. Then a hand scooped under her elbow, lifting her back to her feet.
“We need to move. He’s down, but I think he might have called in back-up.”
The voice was male and familiar, though in the moment she couldn’t place it, but she didn’t fight as the man helped her rise and locked an arm under her shoulder so she was half lifted and half running away from the bay, but further into the more dilapidated area of the spaceport. 
Her breath had come back now and, willing to fight again if needed, Lorelea resisted being pulled along. The moment she did, the man released her, spinning them both behind a high-sided industrial storage bin as he did so. He was tall and had to crouch down to keep his head below the level of the rim where Lorelea could stand beside it.
Now she knew him. 
This was the man she had last seen on Hell’s Breath. The same ruffled dark red-brown hair, the same direct gaze. It was the CSF man who had interrogated her daughter and told Lorelea his name was Grim. He had been looking for Jaz too. The last time she had seen him it had been along the length of an old-style energy weapon she was holding, but presumably he wasn’t carrying a grudge about that. She could think of no reason why he would be here, but in that moment it didn’t matter. He might not be her first choice of ally, but he was one she could at least trust to get her out of the present mess she had walked into.
“Your place or mine?” he asked. “Mine is right round the corner.”
Lorelea saw the figure even as Grim reacted and started to turn, but too slow. She had been gripping the snub in her pocket and now, with no conscious thought, fired without pulling it free. The shot took her target in the gut and the woman who had come into view around the industrial bin, fired high before folding forward sharply and clutching at her abdomen. Then a second burst from the Grim made the woman’s body jerk once then go still.  Lorelea felt nothing. She knew she should be appalled. She had never killed anyone before, never fired a shot in anger, never…
“I’ll run,” Grim was saying. “Cover me as much as you can.”
She blinked and felt his hand grip her arm. She wanted to say she was not that good of a shot, that this was not any kind of situation she had been in before. But something in his expression told her he had figured that already. It was just either she or he had to go out there and he was the one volunteering. She pulled the snub out of her ruined pocket and nodded.
 A thump on the industrial bin was all the warning they had. A dull thump and the rapid mist rising. They had been lucky. Whoever had thrown it, the grenade had fallen short and it landed in the industrial bin, leaving them protected for a few moments from whatever gas or irritant the grenade had contained.
But Lorelea knew that whatever it was it could rise, disperse and affect them if they remained in place. And if they left the cover of the industrial bin together, without the other to provide some kind of cover, they would be easy targets. There was no other way to go, beside them was a solid wall.
Solid wall. 
Except for the slight depression in the panel at hand height.
Lorelea did not waste – or risk – a breath to explain. Instead she tagged Grim hard on one arm and pushed her hand onto the panel, feeling the mechanism give. The panel shifted slightly but not enough. Like everything else here, it was old and poorly maintained. Then Grim was behind her adding his strength to hers and the panel opened up. They were inside the dark service space and Grim heaved the panel back to seal them in and ran his snub’s energy field over the mechanism to fuse it shut. Unless whoever was after them knew the local service tunnel network well, they should have a chance.
The last service tunnel Lorelea had been in was well signposted by augmented labelling from the starport’s AI. This place had none. She had no idea which way would take them further into the dilapidated area and which would lead them out of it. Maybe Grim had a better sense of direction, or just had figured before she did that keeping still was the worst of the three options available. He had produced a narrow beamed flashlight and, putting a hand on Lorelea’s shoulder briefly, led the way along the narrow tunnel.
The air in the tunnel was dry and had an acrid tang to it. Their footsteps stirred a slight miasma of dust and Lorelea wondered where it had come from if these tunnels were so closed off and unused, hoping it didn’t betray their passage. The next exit along, Grim paused long enough to fuse the opening mechanism. Then shone the beam of his flashlight up so the darkness around them was banished.
“You alright?” He looked and sounded genuinely concerned.
“Yeah. But can’t you just call in some back up or something? You’re CSF, right?”
His expression blanked abruptly.
“Was. Long story and it’ll have to wait, we need to keep moving.” He turned away taking the light with him.
“Wait!”
There was one thing Lorelea needed to know, but Grim was already moving.
“We can talk later – when we’re safe.”
“I just want to know why you were there? How did you know, I was -?”
He turned back towards her and his face was wearing the impersonal mask again.
“I didn’t,” he told her. “I was just passing by. Now we need to move. Please.”
Grim fused the next exit panel shut too and soon after they reached a point where they could either continue on or take a ramp down. He shone the flashlight down the ramp into the dark.
“That goes to the automated freight level,” Lorelea said. “It’s fully automated. No place for humans.”
Grim looked across at her, his face distorted by shadows.
“You seem to know a lot about this.”
She shrugged. “Long story. But believe me, we don’t want to go that way.”
He nodded and shone the light along the tunnel ahead.
“Alright. I guess we keep on this way. At least with this all being AI dead they can’t track us in here. But depending who your friends were, they might have the exits covered.”
There was a slight interrogation in his tone.
“I don’t know who they are,” she said aware she was sounding defensive. “I was slipped the address for that Bay in Voltz. I’d just said I wanted to speak with someone who could help me find someone.”
“Who were you-?” Grim broke off and the light vanished. They could both hear the footsteps in the dark ahead. Lorelea felt an arm loop her waist and she was hurried down the ramp. The arm released her with a firm pressure indicating she should continue her descent and she obliged for a couple more paces then pressed herself against the wall and snub in one hand. 
The light played over the top of the ramp and finding nothing in its beam a figure appeared,silhouetted briefly, one arm extended with a snub ready. A moment later it fell away with a grunt. But the light remained hovering. Lorelea was almost bowled over when Grim spun and started running. He swept her with him and they were running down the ramp, the flashlight casting odd shadows as the ramp doubled back. 
If she had been in any doubt as to why, the muffled splut of a gas grenade exploding was all the explanation needed. Grim hit the door at the bottom and opened it in almost the same movement and then they were in the brilliant light. Blinded, Lorelea blinked and was still trying to adjust when her arm was grasped and she was steered at speed to one side.
The freight area was as she remembered it.
“The vehicles here -” she started to explain, but then broke off as right in front of them two trains of trailers appeared from either side, danced tightly round each other and shot off at right angles to where they had emerged. Lorelea was forced back, Grim beside her, pressed hard against the walls to avoid the one that spun towards them. Following its path, two figures had just emerged from the service door. One fired a quick snap of energy which burned the side of a container right beside her, then they had to retreat to avoid the freight themselves.
Her whole body shaking at the near miss, Lorelea barely felt a brief tug on her hand and Grim was already vanishing at speed around the sharp corner as she pushed herself away from the wall to follow. He waited for her to catch up and Lorelea felt a wash of fury at herself, banishing all other emotion. She wasn’t going to let herself be any kind of a problem here. She had this.

From Iconoclast: Not To Be a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook

Rejected
Need not equal dejected
Sometimes we are not selected
Misdirected
Our fables once perfected
Our lives and times reflected
May still be deselected
Injected
With anger and infected
With lust to be respected
Directed
To tell the unexpected
Undirected
Uninflected
Still rejected!

Jane Jago

This might be better titled ‘how to get away with being an old bat’ or ‘things you can say in your ninth decade without being arrested’.

There are absolutely no circumstances under which I am prepared to divulge my precise age but I’ll give you a clue. When I was a girl a ‘glory hole’ was a cupboard into which one crammed everything that didn’t belong anywhere else, and there were twenty shillings in a pound, and people with orange skin would be either ridiculed or hospitalised.

But I digress. Today is not for reminiscence. No. This week’s lesson concerns the things you can get away with under the umbrella of being old and a bit odd.

You can:

• Make constant reference to your age as if it were an achievement. As in…
  “I’m eighty-five, you know.” (Those of us who are only too aware that your state of decrepitude is actually down to seventy-one years and a lot of spliffs will, of course, adhere to the crumbly code and not contradict you.)
• Go to the supermarket in your slippers and a large red hat.
• Spend your pension on fags, alcohol and Belgian chocolate.
• Eat the whole of a big bar of milk chocolate/bag of doughnuts/family pack of cheese and onion crisps/whatever. When asked why you are so gluttonous you merely have to say you are old and there may not be a tomorrow.
• Flirt with twenty-year-old builders.
• Ignore all ‘authority figures’. Never be unpleasant though. Vague, slightly tearful and full of reminiscences of the war works for me. 
• Call your doctor ‘kiddo’ and refuse all forms of advice.

If a person with a clipboard approaches you in a public place it is perfectly in order to do one of the following:

• Develop strategic deafness 
• Shout for help and claim to have been sexually propositioned 
• Answer all their questions as randomly as possible
• Grasp them firmly by the wrist and drag them to a cafe with outdoor tables where you can keep them talking for at least an hour and wrangle them into buying coffee and cake.

And finally. It’s at last okay to air your opinions. You can say the prime minister/president/crown prince/chairman of the board/whoever is a nasty, ignorant, grabby little bar steward. That the latest fashionable television ‘presenter’ is incomprehensible and about as funny as herpes. That quinoa is just middle class rice. And so on. Be the person who says what everyone else is too polite to mention… 

Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!

The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…

When you write do not fear to offend
Do not look for a comfortable blend
You should find people’s fears
Grab their hate by the ears
And stamp on their prejudiced friends.

Jane Jago

When she was twelve years old, Atet was married to her half brother, Seti. Being painted and powdered and oiled and perfumed and dressed in fine white linen with a headdress so heavy she was sure her neck would break were merely the precursors to a wedding ceremony that lasted most of a day.
By the time the last priest had waved the last ceremonial artefact in front of her nose she was dangerously tired and on the verge of tears. It was only pride that kept her spine straight while they removed her ceremonial robe and dressed her in a gown so fine that every contour of her body could be seen through its delicate folds. She did rebel at the prospect of walking through the palace corridors so wantonly displayed, insisting on an azure feathered wrap to protect her modesty. When the acolytes sent to escort her to her husband’s bedchamber would have argued, she turned on them with all the hauteur of her great father and they fell into order beneath her icy glance.
At the great beaten brass doors she dismissed her entourage with a flick of her fingers and entered alone, finding her bridegroom cowering in the corner like the child he still was under his seventeen-year-old body. As she was about to go over and speak to him, a small doorway opened to admit a shaven-headed gentleman carrying a businesslike leather scourge and smiling sourly.
Atet raised her brows and he leered at her.
“I am the royal tutor. His majesty is to be scourged,” he spoke in a voice of contempt, “and after him it will be your turn to learn the feel of the lash.”
The young bride reached her own personal breaking point. She turned with deliberately regal dignity and opened one wing of the door, beckoning two of the royal guard to enter. She pointed a finger at the whip bearer.
“Remove this offal from my sight. Take it and strike off its hands before you cut its throat.”
“You can’t do that to me,” the tutor screamed.
Atet saw no need to reply as the grinning guards dragged him off to meet his fate.
Seti came to her side with fear in his eyes.
“He will only beat me harder next time.”
“My brother, be tranquil. He will beat nobody ever again.”
“How not?”
“Did you not hear me order his death?”
“Yes. But he is my tutor. My great father protects him.”
Atet felt a rush of sympathy for this simple infant, hidden inside the body of a man.
“Our great father is dead. You rule now. And with me by your side nobody will hurt you again.”
And so began the reign of the great king Seti, and his sister-wife Atet. They ruled wisely and well, with only a trusted few privy to the knowledge that Seti was what he was and that the intellect and the will belonged to his young wife.
They had only one real problem. Heirs. It was a marriage in name only and unlikely to ever be anything else. Seti had a slave girl who saw to his simple and infrequent needs, while Atet remained as pure as she had been on the day of their marriage. She was aware of the danger of appearing barren, and equally sure that she had no wish to give birth to a child with her husband’s limitations, even if it had been possible to persuade him into fulfilling his marital duties.
So matters stood when Atet’s most trusted adviser was called to his place at the feet of the gods and she found herself looking for a replacement. She found one such in the person of the Hyksos in charge of her personal guard. He was a man in his forties, with a fat jolly wife and a quiverful of unruly children. He was also handsome, intelligent, and completely loyal. Atet began asking his opinions and relying on his advice, and in time it came to her that this man of all others was the one she would choose to sire her own babies.
She sent for him and he came to her rooms where she sat in a gilded chair and regarded him through sombre eyes. “How far, my Hyksos, are you prepared to go in order to protect me?”
He didn’t answer, merely going down on one knee and pressing his forehead against her feet.
“Will you,” she asked in a very small voice, “protect me from the charge that I am barren woman, unfit to be queen?”
He looked up into her solemn little face before lifting her in his arms and beginning to do things of which she had no knowledge, but which gave her pleasure beyond her dreams.
It is a matter of record that Queen Atet bore her husband eleven healthy, intelligent, happy children, and that the land waxed fertile as the queen’s fecundity was proven time and time again.

 Jane Jago

“The moon is in the seventh house…” Natasha lowered her voice to a thrilling whisper. “You need people around you, sensitive, loving people.”
She made three syllables of ‘loving’.
Her client shifted impatiently.
“Yes but will I get married this year?”
Natasha hated direct questions like that.
“The tides of fate do not ebb and flow in human time,” she said quickly and moved on.
“Jupiter is aligning with Mars in your sign of Capricorn. That will give you great energy. Abundant energy.”
Her client left soon after and decided to enter the marathon rather than propose to his girlfriend.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The door opened with such force that it bounced back off the wall, and Hywel stomped in. His face was puce and he was waving a sheet of paper. Seemingly unable to speak he threw the paper on the table in front of Julia.
She read it and could feel the blood draining from her own face. It was an official complaint that the family of one Hywel Llewellyn, non-citizen, had been observed to be visiting a sub aquila residence without due authorisation.
The Villa Papaverus was not their own house, it was the residence that went with Dai’s job as Submagistratus and was owned by Rome. As such it was designated sub aquila which meant only Roman citizens and those non-citizens employed to work there were legally permitted inside.
“Oh merda,” she said softly. “I never even thought of that. Dai hates having that wretched eagle above our door.”
She passed the paper to Caudinus who read it swiftly then sighed.
“I am so sorry, I should have seen that coming. As I didn’t, I shall have to investigate.”
Hywel made a noise like a cat that has just had its fur stroked backwards,
“Sorry? Sorry that me and my entire family are being criminalised by your filthy Roman rules?”
Caudinus looked at him severely. “Hush man. Be glad I didn’t officially hear you say that. As I said, I do have to investigate. So will you just be quiet and let me think. Or is shouting and blustering at a pregnant woman something you think a good idea?”
Hywel subsided slightly.
“If this goes through the fine will take most of my livelihood for the last quarter.”
“Oh it’s worse than that,” Caudinus said his expression grim. “The fine would be the lightest of penalties. If it were deemed to have been done in deliberate defiance of Roman authority it could be counted as treason. And this complaint names you, your wife Enya and your step-mother, Olwen.”
Julia felt sick. Dai’s mother, sister-in-law and brother were being placed in real peril through someone’s spite.
“Treason?” Hywel echoed, his tone hollow and slumped into a chair, the fire and fury suddenly deserting him. Treason always carried the death sentence –  a humiliating and agonising death in the arena.
Caudinus swept the printed emails into a pile and got to his feet.
“Yes, treason. But if I have anything to do with it, it won’t come to that and I will make sure you are issued with passes under my authority so there is not a problem ongoing.”
“Isn’t there something you can do to dismiss this?” Julia asked, “It is your legal jurisdiction after all.”
Caudinus pulled a face. “It will depend on the nature of the complaint and who the complainant is. It could go over my head to provincial level and those damnable bureaucrats in Augusta Treverorum.”  He touched Julia lightly on the shoulder. “You mustn’t worry about this, you hear me?” His tone was stern. She mustered a smile more for his benefit than because she felt reassured. “And you come with me Llewellyn, I need to get some details from you, if you can guard your tongue enough to manage a trip to Viriconium with me?”
Hywel struggled to his feet looking shamefaced and anxious.
“Uh – yes. I’m sorry, dominus. I know it’s not your fault.  I’m sorry, Julia too – it’s just that…”
Julia held out her arms and Hywel walked into them to receive a quick hug.
“It’s alright,” she said, letting him go, “but for Enya and Olwen’s sake and the children, you have to keep a lid on your anger over this.”
Hywel nodded and Julia felt a little more hopeful when Caudinus dropped her a wink over his head. A short time later she saw Caudinus’ hovercar gliding along the driveway.

Pushing her own fears to one side, Julia took the time to walk her two wolfhounds, Canis and Lupo, in the orchard, finding their cheerful company helped lift her mood. Then she returned to the house and with the two dogs sleeping by hearth, she opened her laptop and started composing an email to Hook-Beak explaining why she couldn’t leave Britannia at this time and probing for more information about his new married status. She was just thinking about how she could best raise the issue of Hywel’s case to see if, as Praetor, Hook-Beak could short-circuit the legal process in someway, when the sound of heavy footsteps made her look up in time to see the door burst open for the second time that morning.
Dai stood filling the doorway, his expression like a thundercloud fronting a storm. A cold and feral fire burned in his blue eyes that made Julia shiver despite herself.
“You are leaving. Today. Now.” His voice was almost a snarl. “I’ve sent for Elfrida to pack for you. Two of Gallus’ men and Edbert will be your escort. I have made arrangements. You can stay with Didero in Londinium, he has an entire legion of praetorians there to keep you safe.”
Julia opened her mouth and then closed it sharply to prevent the unforgivable, vile, words she so wanted to say from escaping. Instead she got demurely to her feet and walked over to her husband, drawing herself up to her full height of almost five feet.
“Oh you are so right, husband, I am leaving,” she said, keeping her tone sweet. “But not for Londinium. I am going where I choose to go not where you think to send me. And right now I am not at all sure that I will be coming back.”

From Dying for a Vacation one of the Dai and Julia Mysteries by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Writing made easy – if you don’t mind the bumps!

The wit, wisdom, joy and frustration of a writer’s life summed up in limericks…

When your hero he hangs by a thread
And your heroine thinks he is dead
It’s really quite fun
To say ‘end of part one’
And to f**k with your poor reader’s head.

Jane Jago