Wizard Dawning (The Battle Wizard Saga, No. 1) (2 page)

Bjørn sniffed and pulled at Sig's down vest with his lips while Sig curried him and checked his hooves. When he finished, Sig reached into his pocket and pulled out slices of dried apple that Bjørn had been begging for. While Bjørn munched, Sig dumped a can of oats into the feed troughs of the other three warm-blood horses. Bjørn could wait until later.

Sig finished and patted Bjørn's neck. "Grampa always wants to see what you can do. I'll feed you after your workout."

Grampa Thor, the driving force behind Sig's martial arts training, would want to see Sig put Bjørn through his paces. Grampa called Dressage "schooling the Battle Horse". Sure, the sport had its roots in training warhorses, but Olympic equestrian competitors, in their top hats and tails, looked nothing like warriors. Besides, over half the riders were women. Women warriors—wasn't that an oxymoron?

Grampa Thor, actually Mom's grandfather, making him Sig's great–grandfather, was Grampa to everyone.

Even Grandfather Edward, Mom's father, called him Grampa, or used to. Thor was arriving today to attend his son Edward's funeral.

Funerals visits were becoming a habit. The last time Grampa came, it was for Sig's father's funeral, a little over a year ago.

The clatter of a diesel engine sounded through the partially open door. It must be Grampa. Sig hurried to finish with the horses.

After he closed the barn door, he stopped and looked across the road. The Watchers weren't visible, but he sensed their scrutiny.

Sig jogged around to the front of the house. When he turned the corner, a vintage Ford dually pickup truck sat in the driveway at the foot of the steps to the front porch. The engine pinged as it cooled.

A suitcase lay in the back seat. Anticipation built as Sig grabbed it and climbed the stairs to the wraparound porch. Grampa was a pillar of strength—especially after Sig's dad died.

Only in the last few of his seventeen years did Sig wonder why Grampa Thor looked younger than his son, Grandfather Edward. At 89, Edward looked old, moved old and smelled old. Grampa Thor looked and acted like a man many years younger.

Sig swept into the kitchen with a big smile and then stopped, the smile frozen on his lips. Grampa looked up at him with a smile from where he sat at the kitchen table. Mom stood behind him looking down with concern.

Strong white teeth had yellowed. Skin, always tanned and ruddy, now sagged and appeared ashen. His hair had thinned. Only his eyes, Persian blue like Meredith and Sig's, looked the same.

Instead of springing to his feet, he used the table to lever himself up and held out his hands. The fingers were crooked and lumpy. "Come here and give me a hug young man. You're not too old to hug are you?"

Sig shook off his immobility, stepped forward into Grampa's embrace, and hugged back. The formerly robust frame felt slight. Over Grampa's shoulder, uncertainty reflected in Mom's eyes. They broke off the hug, clapping each others back in the traditional man hug fashion.

Grampa sat back down and rubbed his chest. Mom handed him a steaming white mug from which a tea bag string dangled. He stopped rubbing his chest, reached out with both callused hands for the mug and smiled up at her. "Thank you Meredith. A nice hot cup of green tea is just the thing to warm my bones."

"How are you feeling Grampa?" Sig blurted.

Grampa Thor looked up at Meredith then at Sig. "Why does everybody keep asking me that? Can't a fellow grow old gracefully without being pestered?" A smile softened the cantankerous words. "I've been a little under the weather is all." He waved his hand. "It'll pass, it'll pass. If you have to know, I've got a bit of a bug in my chest. Don't worry about that and let's catch up. How is fencing going?"

"Sig won the state championship this year—surprised a lot of people," Mom interjected.

Grampa nodded. "Very good. I thought you had it in you."

"Can I fix you something? I made Huevos con Chorizo, your favorite." Mom asked.

"Thank you Meredith, but just some toast, if you would. My stomach is a little sensitive."

"You must be under the weather. You usually eat at least as much as your great-grandson, the bottomless pit, does." She patted him on the shoulder. "I'll get some English muffins for you."

"How long will you be able to stay with us this time?" Sig asked.

"A better question is how long can you put up with an old codger like me?"

Meredith set the muffins in front of him and said, "Grampa, stay as long as you'd like. We've got plenty of room. Since you mentioned it, how old are you now?"

"I feel every bit of 193 today, but what's a decade or two either way," Grampa replied.

Meredith laughed, but it sounded forced.

Grampa turned to Sig "Are you keeping up with your riding?"

"Come out and I'll show Bjørn to you. He needs exercise."

"Get him ready while I finish up this breakfast." He gestured at the muffin. "I'll be out in a few minutes."

Sig saddled Bjørn and rode him into the outdoor arena to warm him up and work off pent up energy.

Grampa limped up to the arena as Bjørn made a half-pass to the left. A standard Dressage move, the horse advanced in a sideways slant. In battle, it would have allowed the rider to wield a sword or spear, without having to reach over or around the horse's head.

As Sig spun him to return, Grampa Thor hollered out. "Well done. Does that critter have any other gears?"

Sig cued Bjørn into a passage, a showy, slow motion, suspended trot that demonstrated control. The horse seemed to float between each stride, as if trotting underwater.

After watching Bjorn and Sig make a circuit of the arena in the passage, Grampa yelled again. "Does he do a piaffe?"

Acknowledging the request with a salute, Sig brought Bjørn almost to a stop. While trotting in place, with a slight pause in the suspension of each stride, and his rear quarters bearing most of the weight, Bjørn's front hooves flared high. Steel shod hooves the size of platters sliced through air before slamming into the soil. It didn't take much imagination to picture what they would have done to an enemy infantryman.

Thor motioned Sig over. "Let me look at him." He felt the horse's legs, shoulders, and hips. "Yep, I can see Bjørn the bear in him—big, solidly muscled, a heavy haunch but light on his feet. Quite an athlete, made to carry a warrior into battle. A horse this size could carry a large warrior."

Bjørn stretched out his neck and Grampa rubbed his nose. "Well Sigurd, it looks like you've been practicing and keeping him in shape."

Sig led him back to his stall, and Grampa dumped a coffee tin of oats into Bjørn's feed trough.

"Thanks Grampa."

"He earned it."

Sig snorted. "What about me?" He asked.

"Why, do you want some oats too?" Grampa looked at Bjørn, snuffling up oats, "You can reach your hand in there, but watch out for your fingers."

Sig rolled his eyes almost enough to loose balance. Grampa humor.

Grampa glanced up from under his thick eyebrows. "You start college next year. What are you planning to study?"

"Originally Computer Engineering, but I'm interested in magic. Most of the discoveries in magic are coming from Physics. I applied and was accepted at Northwestern to study the Physics of Magic."

"Have you noticed any magical phenomena, feelings, thoughts…" Grampa asked.

"I wish. I always hoped that I would have magic. I took the MAT, Magical Aptitude Test. I didn't even score in the tenth percentile. I bought magical tricks. I bought the top that spins for 48 hours, the disappearing glass, and the flaming toad. They weren't fake; they worked, but not for me. I gave them away to other kids who could make them work."

He shook his head in frustration. "No, I have as much magic as Bjørn."

Bjørn, finished snuffling up the oats in the trough, turned his head to Sig and, lips forming around a deep voice suited to a 1500-pound stallion drawled, "Do you have any more oats?"

Sig would swear that the horse raised an eyebrow at him.

Sig's eyes grew large. He turned to his great–grandfather "Did you hear that?" He looked back at the horse, surprised and confused, wondering if it would talk again.

Grampa narrowed his eyes. "I couldn't have. You said he doesn't have any magic."

"You did it! You used ventriloquism."

Grampa shrugged and shook his head. "Nope, not ventriloquism."

Sig stared at him intently, and then an unpleasant feeling washed over him again. A feeling best compared with smelling a sauna filled with rotting garbage. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled and his nose wrinkled.

Noticing the reaction, Grampa asked, "What's wrong?"

Sig turned his head towards the front of the barn next to the doors. "The Watchers."

Grampa Thor's looked in the direction of Sig's stare, an empty corner to the left of the barn door. He swung back with a puzzled look. "Watchers? What are Watchers?"

"The weird handymen across the road; they're out there."

"What do you mean, out there?"

"They're outside the door."

"Did you hear something?"

"No. I feel when they're around, but I never see them clearly."

Grampa Thor cocked his head sideways. "Never see them?"

"They always look blurry, like 3-D without the glasses. It's like two images are shifting back and forth. It hurts my head."

Grampa frowned. "You say they're weird. What do you mean?"

"Grandfather Edward said they look underfed." Sig glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes. "Mom says she doesn't like them because they starred in dreams she had before Dad died."

Grampa Thor looked at him for a beat, before he asked, "OK, that's their opinion. What about you?"

"I get a bad feeling, like a putrid, greasy smell that no one else smells, when they look at me, even when I don't see them around." He shook his head. "That sounds weird. I mean that, whenever I get the feeling, and look around, some of them are always watching."

"Let's go look at them." Grampa limped toward the barn door.

Sig scrambled and grabbed Grampa's arm. "No, they never come on our property. Now, they're right outside."

Grampa Thor looked at him speculatively. Then he pointed in the direction Sig was looking, "At the corner there?"

Sig nodded.

"C'mon." Grampa entered an empty stall on that side of the barn and opened the upper half of the outside door. He peered out to the right.

Sig stood behind him and craned his head to see.

Six of them stood at the corner of the barn. Features rippled in his vision. His head began to ache.

Grampa raised an arm, made an unusual gesture with his fingers, and mumbled something. Like a spotlight, the handymen were covered in a glow and at last, Sig saw them clearly. He wished he couldn't.

Grampa grunted, rubbed his chest, and muttered, "Zombies … covered in simulacra spells. Get back."

Decomposing corpses carrying pitchforks, shovels, and axes turned and shambled towards them. Grampa shoved him back and slammed the top of the door. It cut off the vision of rotted and peeling skin that hung and flopped as they approached.

Grampa Thor walked out of the stall, looking around. "Can't kill them, they're already dead. But, the laws of physics still work. Hack off a leg and they can't walk. Lop off an arm and they can't grab; a head and they can't see. Is there anything in here we can use—axe, pitchfork, machete, sledge hammer?"

Sig ran down the central aisle and into a storeroom. He emerged with two pitchforks, two small sledgehammers and a machete. Grampa took a sledge, stuck it in his belt, and then grabbed the machete and a pitchfork. "Take those," he said, leaving Sig with a sledge and a pitchfork.

"Use the pitchfork. Keep them away. Jab, don't stab. If it sticks, they can pull it out of your hands. Break bones with the sledge. Disable arms and legs.

"Smash their eyes so they can't see. Let's go. Out the back. Lead the way."

Banging erupted from the stall where they had been. Horses screamed in fear. Sig heard Bjørn's squeal.

"Come on, let's get out of here. They won't hurt the horses. They'll follow us," Grampa Thor motioned him forward.