Fic, An East Wind, Lester/Lyle, Liz, 12
Oct. 1st, 2015 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : An East Wind
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval/The Lord of the Rings
Rating : 12
Characters : Lester/Lyle, Liz, (Tolkien character, name disclosed in the fic)
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Lyle), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Crossover : with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien
Summary : A post-Christmas hike up Pen y Fan brings a strange encounter.
A/N : Liz Lester belongs to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rain_sleet_snow. This was written for a fandom stocking, and I seem to have lost my list of who I wrote what for. Posting now for completeness, and in the hope that I’ll have posted them all before the next round starts!
“Remind me again why I agreed to this, oh light of my increasingly damp existence?”
“Because you were in danger of turning into an exceedingly fat slug after spending most of Christmas in a food coma,” Lyle pointed out.
“Need I remind you, possum, that you were the one who insisted on a roast dinner every night for nearly a week?”
“He’s right, Jon,” Lester’s daughter commented, trying not to grin too much.
“Of course he’s right, brat, he’s paid to be right. But that doesn’t mean he’s right”
“And you’re paid to be able to yomp all day over this sort of goddamned hillside, whereas I am paid to be right in a more cerebral sort of environment, my little brush-tailed rock-wallaby.”
“Dad!”
“She’s right, numbat, it’s high time we went back to south Asian reptiles…”
“Jon!” Liz growled as Lyle watched the end of her tether approach at speed.
At the same time, Lester said disbelievingly, “Numbat? You’ve made that up.”
“Oh ye of little faith!” Lyle exclaimed in ill-disguised triumph, but then he’d never laid claim to subtlety. “Myrmecobius fasciatus. It’s a red-brown marsupial with six or seven vertical white bars on the back. It has a black stripe along the head. The snout is pointed, and they have a small mouth and a long, sticky tongue. The long bushy tail resembles a bottlebrush,” Lyle recited from memory, quoting from Oz.Animals.com. “I thought about getting you one for Christmas, but you’re not responsible enough for pets. They sound like handy little buggers for cleaning out jam jars.”
“I have utterly no idea why I agreed to come walking with the pair of you,” Liz said, treating them both to a very hard stare. “If you don’t behave yourselves I’m going off by myself and taking your turkey sandwiches with me.”
“Leaving us both alone to starve to death in the mist?” Lester said. “How very inconsiderate. And speaking of which, Jon, would you mind telling me how long your thumbs have been itching for?”
Knowing Lester’s use of his first name signalled an end to their games, Lyle took his hands out of his pockets and admitted, “Five minutes, since the mist started to get thicker. How did you know?”
“You’d put your hands in your pockets. You never do that when you’ve got gloves on.”
“I’ll remember that in future. Before either of you ask, I’ve no idea what it means. There’s nothing inherently dangerous on this stretch of hillside. It’s been run up and down by enough squaddies in the past, me included.”
Lyle had been in a state of increased awareness ever since the first tingle in his thumbs had started, but with no obvious danger threatening, he’d simply kept his eyes and ears open and had hoped for nothing more troublesome than a bout of bad weather. He knew every square inch of Pen y Fan and could, if necessary, find shelter to ride out any storm that might come their way.
He was just contemplating changing course by a few degrees west to bring them to the ruins of an old shepherd’s hut when something the size and shape of a glider came hurtling soundlessly out of the grey, swirling mist, swooped overhead, making all three of them curse and drop to the wet grass just in time to stop themselves being beheaded.
Liz swore like a docker and Lester let rip with a string of obscenities that would have done Joel Stringer proud.
Lyle jumped to his feet and took off in the direction of the thing that had nearly decapitated him. Unless he’d been very much mistaken, what had flown overhead had been more like an extremely large bird rather than any sort of inanimate object. And you’d have to have a death wish to take a glider up in the air in weather like this.
He didn’t bother pulling his mobile out of his pocket. He knew perfectly well they were in a very large dead area. He’d have to go uphill for at least ten minutes to pick up a signal. If an anomaly had decided to open here, the ARC was going to be in blissful ignorance.
A third curse was ripped from someone else’s lips and sent a shiver down Lyle’s spine, making him feel like he’d stuck his thumbs into a wasps’ nest.
“Whatever it was, that wasn’t Welsh,” he heard Liz say.
“No, it wasn’t,” Lyle agreed, slowing to a walk and wondering what he was about to find. He’d heard the sound of large wings flapping, as though something was struggling to get upright
A voice as cold as the Welsh mist spoke words in a language that Lyle had never heard before.
He held his arm out to keep Liz and Lester behind him. There was no point in all of them running headlong into trouble.
“Liz, if I tell you to, run like hell up hill, bearing directly north. You’ll get a phone signal up there after about ten minutes. You’ll get there faster than your dad. Do you understand?”
Despite her sometimes headstrong nature, Lyle knew he could rely on his lover’s daughter to follow orders in a crisis.
A few metres ahead, Lyle could see a large shape struggling to right itself on the damp grass. The wings were featherless and leathery, resembling those of an enormous pteranodon, but the small head mounted on a long neck reminded him more of a plesiosaur. The creature stared at him out of dark eyes and let out a harsh cry that made Lyle’s hands reach automatically for weapons he wasn’t carrying. The Swiss army knife in his pocket wasn’t going to do them much good. The bloody creature was enormous. No wonder they’d mistaken it for a glider. The beast looked to have landed heavily and might have damaged itself, but Lyle wasn’t going to risk getting within striking distance of a pair of strong jaws set with sharp teeth that looked capable of taking a chunk out of anything ill-advised enough to get near it.
He was just about to tell Liz to get up the hill and call this one in when a tall, dark, man-sized shape stepped away from the beast’s side. Whoever it was wore a long, black cloak that shrouded their face and body, leaving only a pair of worn leather boots with high, rolled tops on view.
“Are you injured?” Lyle demanded. “I’d get away from that thing if I were you. Take it slowly…”
“The beast is no danger to me.”
The words touched Lyle’s skin in an icy caress and he stepped back a pace, unaccountably afraid.
The man put a hand on creature’s neck and spoke to it again in the strange language that Lyle didn’t recognise. It sounded a little like Portuguese of all things, with far too many consonants and an over-abundance of the letter x.
“Liz, run!” Lyle didn’t know who the fuck the man was, but there was something about him that was setting off every danger-sense that Lyle possessed. “Get back-up.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
The man brushed the black cloak back him from his face with a leather-gloved hand to reveal short dark hair neatly cut around an aquiline but handsome face partially covered with a close-cropped beard, still dark, but shot through in places with lines of silver. He was wearing a long leather tunic trimmed with fur and armed with a knife that could easily have doubled as a sword if needed, hanging from one side of his belt.
Lyle turned his head to see Liz rooted to the spot, an expression of deepest confusion on her face, behind her stood Lester, equally immobile.
“Whatever the fuck you’re doing to them, stop it!” Lyle ordered.
He could feel some sort of compulsion flickering over his skin, raising goosebumps everywhere, making him want to yell for his mum to do something about the monster under the bed. His mother’s means of dealing with such things would bear a very close resemblance to those employed by Susan Sto-Helit, and just then Lyle would have given practically anything for a cast-iron poker – or preferably a very large gun – as well as his redoubtable parent.
“They’ll take no harm, and nor will you.” The man’s dark eyes rested thoughtfully on Lyle, leaving him feeling like the flesh had just been flayed from his bones.
Even his first CO – one of the hardest bastards Lyle had ever known – hadn’t managed a look quite that sharp. He was in the presence of another soldier, Lyle knew that, but what he didn’t know was where the fuck the bloke had come from, or what he was doing with his hand on the neck something out of one of Professor Cutter’s worst nightmares.
“Dâgalûr was winded when we landed,” the man said, stroking the creature’s neck in a way that seemed to calm it. “I need to see if she has broken any bones. Then provided she has taken no great hurt, we will then be on our way.”
“She’s hurt one of her legs,” Liz said. “I can see blood.”
The man turned to the creature and went down on one knee for a closer look. Abruptly, the feeling of being flayed alive left him, and Lyle saw both Liz and Lester start to move. Lester stepped quickly to his daughter’s side, one arm thrown protectively around her.
“I’m fine, dad,” she said quietly. “But if he does that again, I’m kicking him in the nuts.”
The man looked up, a slightly puzzled expression on his face as though he understood the sentiment but hadn’t quite managed to rearrange the words into something that made sense.
The huge creature let out a rather annoyed squawk and wobbled slightly on the slope, keeping itself upright by using what looked like a knuckle on one bat-like wing.
“I’ve got a crepe bandage in my rucksack,” Liz said. “You might be as annoying as all fuck, but she’s hurt.”
“I have spoken to you only four times, child. As I recall, my words were courteous enough, therefore on what basis do you accuse me of being annoying?” An amused smile flickered at the corners of the man’s thin lips, partly hidden by his short beard.
“She’s prone to snap judgments,” Lyle said, still trying to determine whether the man posed a threat or not. He still made Lyle’s skin crawl, but he had done nothing overtly challenging, not unless you counted the ability to strip you naked with his eyes and leave you quivering in the dark. “Did you come through an anomaly?”
The man raised one eyebrow in a way that made even Lester’s best efforts look like amateur night out in the facial expressions stakes. “You mean the silver portal?”
“Yeah, that description works. I mean the silver portal.”
“Then the answer is yes. Dâgalûr and I were caught in an ice storm just east of Mount Gram. The portal appeared to offer some respite. But I will admit I was not expecting quite this, not on this occasion. It felt strong as we came through, but I know we cannot linger over long, not and still be sure of our return.”
“Then it makes sense if we work together,” Lyle said, his words gaining an almost imperceptible nod from Lester. Pulling his glove off and offering his hand to the stranger, Lyle added, “Jon Lyle.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the man pulled off one heavy leather gauntlet and held out a pale, long-fingered hand to Lyle. Lyle shook it, noting that the man’s skin was cold to the touch and raised goosebumps on his skin again. On the third finger of his right hand, the stranger wore a heavy gold ring. The ring burned Lyle’s hand with cold fire and it took all his composure not to pull away.
The man smiled wolfishly. “Khamûl.”
“Is the pissing contest over?” Liz asked, shrugging off her rucksack and rummaging inside it.
“Quite probably,” Lester said, sounding as amused as the dark-cloaked stranger. “James Lester,” he said, extending his own hand and betraying not even a flicker of emotion at contact with the man’s cold flesh and even colder ring.
The creature called Dâgalûr drew her head back and hissed, but allowed the man and Liz to examine her scaly leg.
“It’s broken,” Liz announced. “We can pad it with a pair of socks and bind it up as tightly as we can as we haven’t got anything to splint it with.”
“I have two knife sheaths,” Khamûl said. He undid the heavy silver buckle on his belt and slipped it off, drawing out one long, pale knife and slipping the sheath off the leather belt, then doing the same with a slightly smaller knife that had hung unnoticed at his back. “Do not touch either blade,” he ordered. “Not if you value your lives.”
Liz and Lyle looked curiously at both weapons while Lester’s eyes narrowed and Lyle could see him wishing for some form of personal protection, preferably a Kevlar vest and a sub-machine gun.
With Liz’s help, Khamûl cleaned the blood from the enormous creature’s right leg where it had hit a rock on its rather precipitous descent. As they worked, Lyle became aware of the leather straps around Dâgalûr’s grey-green underbelly, holding in place a dark leather saddle, padded underneath with what looked like sheepskin. The beast was obviously cared for and seemed to respond with some affection to the man’s touches.
Working quickly together, they manoeuvred the leg-bones back into place and started to strap on the makeshift splint. Khamûl spoke quietly under his breath the whole time and Lyle could see the beast’s eyelids start to close, as if the words themselves were hypnotic.
Liz stepped back and wiped her blood-stained hands on a patch of moss. “Will you look after her properly when you get back wherever you’re going, or will that be the end of the road for her?”
“She has borne me well for many years,” Khamûl said. “She is a beast of the air, so even if the break does not heal cleanly, it is unlikely to cause her any problem. Your kindness will not be wasted, I can assure you.” He held his hand out to Liz, towering over her in height, but there was something about the girl’s steady stare that made it perfectly plain she wasn’t in the slightest bit intimidated. “Thank you, Liz Lester.”
Liz took the proffered hand and shook it. “You’re welcome.”
Khamûl reached down and drew out a small sheathed knife from inside his left boot. “This is not a Morgul blade. It was forged in the East many years ago. May it serve you well.”
Liz took the knife, a small smile playing around the edges of her mouth. She liked sharp things and it showed. The sheath was dark leather set with an intricate tracery of what looked like silver; the hilt was smooth, carved wood and appeared to have seen long use. Liz pulled it slightly from the sheath and the wicked-looking blade gleamed brightly, despite the mist that still swirled around them.
“Thank you,” she said, equally solemnly. “It’s beautiful.” She lifted her hand and patted the enormous creature’s chest. “And so’s she. Did you get her from through an anomaly?”
Khamûl picked up his other knives and stowed them in a pack on the back of the saddle. “I know not whence her kind came. They have lived in the mountains near the Sea of Rhûn for many years. They are hard to tame and even harder to train, but if you can win their loyalty they will well repay the effort.”
“I know just what you mean,” Lyle said, shooting Liz and her father an amused glance.”
Khamûl gave a bark of surprised laughter. “It has been interesting to make your acquaintance, Jon Lyle, James Lester and Liz Lester. I believe there are other portals about to open from my world to yours. One is near Mount Gundabad. You will not like the creatures that might come through. I would advise vigilance.”
Lyle pulled his gloves back on, aware of the fact that his thumbs had now stopped itching. “Thanks for the warning. I hope the weather’s improved on your side.”
With a last nod to them, Khamûl put his foot into a stirrup hanging down from Dâgalûr’s saddle and swung himself easily onto the creature’s back as the powerful wings flapped once, twice and then on the third stroke, beast and rider were airborne. Dâgalûr circled them once, wings flapping almost lazily in the cold air, before disappearing into the mist.
The last sound they heard was a harsh, triumphant cry and then they were both gone.
Lyle watched as Liz fingered the knife thoughtfully and then stowed it carefully in her backpack.
He had a feeling this was yet another encounter that wasn’t going to make it into an official report.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval/The Lord of the Rings
Rating : 12
Characters : Lester/Lyle, Liz, (Tolkien character, name disclosed in the fic)
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Lyle), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Crossover : with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien
Summary : A post-Christmas hike up Pen y Fan brings a strange encounter.
A/N : Liz Lester belongs to
rain_sleet_snow. This was written for a fandom stocking, and I seem to have lost my list of who I wrote what for. Posting now for completeness, and in the hope that I’ll have posted them all before the next round starts!“Remind me again why I agreed to this, oh light of my increasingly damp existence?”
“Because you were in danger of turning into an exceedingly fat slug after spending most of Christmas in a food coma,” Lyle pointed out.
“Need I remind you, possum, that you were the one who insisted on a roast dinner every night for nearly a week?”
“He’s right, Jon,” Lester’s daughter commented, trying not to grin too much.
“Of course he’s right, brat, he’s paid to be right. But that doesn’t mean he’s right”
“And you’re paid to be able to yomp all day over this sort of goddamned hillside, whereas I am paid to be right in a more cerebral sort of environment, my little brush-tailed rock-wallaby.”
“Dad!”
“She’s right, numbat, it’s high time we went back to south Asian reptiles…”
“Jon!” Liz growled as Lyle watched the end of her tether approach at speed.
At the same time, Lester said disbelievingly, “Numbat? You’ve made that up.”
“Oh ye of little faith!” Lyle exclaimed in ill-disguised triumph, but then he’d never laid claim to subtlety. “Myrmecobius fasciatus. It’s a red-brown marsupial with six or seven vertical white bars on the back. It has a black stripe along the head. The snout is pointed, and they have a small mouth and a long, sticky tongue. The long bushy tail resembles a bottlebrush,” Lyle recited from memory, quoting from Oz.Animals.com. “I thought about getting you one for Christmas, but you’re not responsible enough for pets. They sound like handy little buggers for cleaning out jam jars.”
“I have utterly no idea why I agreed to come walking with the pair of you,” Liz said, treating them both to a very hard stare. “If you don’t behave yourselves I’m going off by myself and taking your turkey sandwiches with me.”
“Leaving us both alone to starve to death in the mist?” Lester said. “How very inconsiderate. And speaking of which, Jon, would you mind telling me how long your thumbs have been itching for?”
Knowing Lester’s use of his first name signalled an end to their games, Lyle took his hands out of his pockets and admitted, “Five minutes, since the mist started to get thicker. How did you know?”
“You’d put your hands in your pockets. You never do that when you’ve got gloves on.”
“I’ll remember that in future. Before either of you ask, I’ve no idea what it means. There’s nothing inherently dangerous on this stretch of hillside. It’s been run up and down by enough squaddies in the past, me included.”
Lyle had been in a state of increased awareness ever since the first tingle in his thumbs had started, but with no obvious danger threatening, he’d simply kept his eyes and ears open and had hoped for nothing more troublesome than a bout of bad weather. He knew every square inch of Pen y Fan and could, if necessary, find shelter to ride out any storm that might come their way.
He was just contemplating changing course by a few degrees west to bring them to the ruins of an old shepherd’s hut when something the size and shape of a glider came hurtling soundlessly out of the grey, swirling mist, swooped overhead, making all three of them curse and drop to the wet grass just in time to stop themselves being beheaded.
Liz swore like a docker and Lester let rip with a string of obscenities that would have done Joel Stringer proud.
Lyle jumped to his feet and took off in the direction of the thing that had nearly decapitated him. Unless he’d been very much mistaken, what had flown overhead had been more like an extremely large bird rather than any sort of inanimate object. And you’d have to have a death wish to take a glider up in the air in weather like this.
He didn’t bother pulling his mobile out of his pocket. He knew perfectly well they were in a very large dead area. He’d have to go uphill for at least ten minutes to pick up a signal. If an anomaly had decided to open here, the ARC was going to be in blissful ignorance.
A third curse was ripped from someone else’s lips and sent a shiver down Lyle’s spine, making him feel like he’d stuck his thumbs into a wasps’ nest.
“Whatever it was, that wasn’t Welsh,” he heard Liz say.
“No, it wasn’t,” Lyle agreed, slowing to a walk and wondering what he was about to find. He’d heard the sound of large wings flapping, as though something was struggling to get upright
A voice as cold as the Welsh mist spoke words in a language that Lyle had never heard before.
He held his arm out to keep Liz and Lester behind him. There was no point in all of them running headlong into trouble.
“Liz, if I tell you to, run like hell up hill, bearing directly north. You’ll get a phone signal up there after about ten minutes. You’ll get there faster than your dad. Do you understand?”
Despite her sometimes headstrong nature, Lyle knew he could rely on his lover’s daughter to follow orders in a crisis.
A few metres ahead, Lyle could see a large shape struggling to right itself on the damp grass. The wings were featherless and leathery, resembling those of an enormous pteranodon, but the small head mounted on a long neck reminded him more of a plesiosaur. The creature stared at him out of dark eyes and let out a harsh cry that made Lyle’s hands reach automatically for weapons he wasn’t carrying. The Swiss army knife in his pocket wasn’t going to do them much good. The bloody creature was enormous. No wonder they’d mistaken it for a glider. The beast looked to have landed heavily and might have damaged itself, but Lyle wasn’t going to risk getting within striking distance of a pair of strong jaws set with sharp teeth that looked capable of taking a chunk out of anything ill-advised enough to get near it.
He was just about to tell Liz to get up the hill and call this one in when a tall, dark, man-sized shape stepped away from the beast’s side. Whoever it was wore a long, black cloak that shrouded their face and body, leaving only a pair of worn leather boots with high, rolled tops on view.
“Are you injured?” Lyle demanded. “I’d get away from that thing if I were you. Take it slowly…”
“The beast is no danger to me.”
The words touched Lyle’s skin in an icy caress and he stepped back a pace, unaccountably afraid.
The man put a hand on creature’s neck and spoke to it again in the strange language that Lyle didn’t recognise. It sounded a little like Portuguese of all things, with far too many consonants and an over-abundance of the letter x.
“Liz, run!” Lyle didn’t know who the fuck the man was, but there was something about him that was setting off every danger-sense that Lyle possessed. “Get back-up.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
The man brushed the black cloak back him from his face with a leather-gloved hand to reveal short dark hair neatly cut around an aquiline but handsome face partially covered with a close-cropped beard, still dark, but shot through in places with lines of silver. He was wearing a long leather tunic trimmed with fur and armed with a knife that could easily have doubled as a sword if needed, hanging from one side of his belt.
Lyle turned his head to see Liz rooted to the spot, an expression of deepest confusion on her face, behind her stood Lester, equally immobile.
“Whatever the fuck you’re doing to them, stop it!” Lyle ordered.
He could feel some sort of compulsion flickering over his skin, raising goosebumps everywhere, making him want to yell for his mum to do something about the monster under the bed. His mother’s means of dealing with such things would bear a very close resemblance to those employed by Susan Sto-Helit, and just then Lyle would have given practically anything for a cast-iron poker – or preferably a very large gun – as well as his redoubtable parent.
“They’ll take no harm, and nor will you.” The man’s dark eyes rested thoughtfully on Lyle, leaving him feeling like the flesh had just been flayed from his bones.
Even his first CO – one of the hardest bastards Lyle had ever known – hadn’t managed a look quite that sharp. He was in the presence of another soldier, Lyle knew that, but what he didn’t know was where the fuck the bloke had come from, or what he was doing with his hand on the neck something out of one of Professor Cutter’s worst nightmares.
“Dâgalûr was winded when we landed,” the man said, stroking the creature’s neck in a way that seemed to calm it. “I need to see if she has broken any bones. Then provided she has taken no great hurt, we will then be on our way.”
“She’s hurt one of her legs,” Liz said. “I can see blood.”
The man turned to the creature and went down on one knee for a closer look. Abruptly, the feeling of being flayed alive left him, and Lyle saw both Liz and Lester start to move. Lester stepped quickly to his daughter’s side, one arm thrown protectively around her.
“I’m fine, dad,” she said quietly. “But if he does that again, I’m kicking him in the nuts.”
The man looked up, a slightly puzzled expression on his face as though he understood the sentiment but hadn’t quite managed to rearrange the words into something that made sense.
The huge creature let out a rather annoyed squawk and wobbled slightly on the slope, keeping itself upright by using what looked like a knuckle on one bat-like wing.
“I’ve got a crepe bandage in my rucksack,” Liz said. “You might be as annoying as all fuck, but she’s hurt.”
“I have spoken to you only four times, child. As I recall, my words were courteous enough, therefore on what basis do you accuse me of being annoying?” An amused smile flickered at the corners of the man’s thin lips, partly hidden by his short beard.
“She’s prone to snap judgments,” Lyle said, still trying to determine whether the man posed a threat or not. He still made Lyle’s skin crawl, but he had done nothing overtly challenging, not unless you counted the ability to strip you naked with his eyes and leave you quivering in the dark. “Did you come through an anomaly?”
The man raised one eyebrow in a way that made even Lester’s best efforts look like amateur night out in the facial expressions stakes. “You mean the silver portal?”
“Yeah, that description works. I mean the silver portal.”
“Then the answer is yes. Dâgalûr and I were caught in an ice storm just east of Mount Gram. The portal appeared to offer some respite. But I will admit I was not expecting quite this, not on this occasion. It felt strong as we came through, but I know we cannot linger over long, not and still be sure of our return.”
“Then it makes sense if we work together,” Lyle said, his words gaining an almost imperceptible nod from Lester. Pulling his glove off and offering his hand to the stranger, Lyle added, “Jon Lyle.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the man pulled off one heavy leather gauntlet and held out a pale, long-fingered hand to Lyle. Lyle shook it, noting that the man’s skin was cold to the touch and raised goosebumps on his skin again. On the third finger of his right hand, the stranger wore a heavy gold ring. The ring burned Lyle’s hand with cold fire and it took all his composure not to pull away.
The man smiled wolfishly. “Khamûl.”
“Is the pissing contest over?” Liz asked, shrugging off her rucksack and rummaging inside it.
“Quite probably,” Lester said, sounding as amused as the dark-cloaked stranger. “James Lester,” he said, extending his own hand and betraying not even a flicker of emotion at contact with the man’s cold flesh and even colder ring.
The creature called Dâgalûr drew her head back and hissed, but allowed the man and Liz to examine her scaly leg.
“It’s broken,” Liz announced. “We can pad it with a pair of socks and bind it up as tightly as we can as we haven’t got anything to splint it with.”
“I have two knife sheaths,” Khamûl said. He undid the heavy silver buckle on his belt and slipped it off, drawing out one long, pale knife and slipping the sheath off the leather belt, then doing the same with a slightly smaller knife that had hung unnoticed at his back. “Do not touch either blade,” he ordered. “Not if you value your lives.”
Liz and Lyle looked curiously at both weapons while Lester’s eyes narrowed and Lyle could see him wishing for some form of personal protection, preferably a Kevlar vest and a sub-machine gun.
With Liz’s help, Khamûl cleaned the blood from the enormous creature’s right leg where it had hit a rock on its rather precipitous descent. As they worked, Lyle became aware of the leather straps around Dâgalûr’s grey-green underbelly, holding in place a dark leather saddle, padded underneath with what looked like sheepskin. The beast was obviously cared for and seemed to respond with some affection to the man’s touches.
Working quickly together, they manoeuvred the leg-bones back into place and started to strap on the makeshift splint. Khamûl spoke quietly under his breath the whole time and Lyle could see the beast’s eyelids start to close, as if the words themselves were hypnotic.
Liz stepped back and wiped her blood-stained hands on a patch of moss. “Will you look after her properly when you get back wherever you’re going, or will that be the end of the road for her?”
“She has borne me well for many years,” Khamûl said. “She is a beast of the air, so even if the break does not heal cleanly, it is unlikely to cause her any problem. Your kindness will not be wasted, I can assure you.” He held his hand out to Liz, towering over her in height, but there was something about the girl’s steady stare that made it perfectly plain she wasn’t in the slightest bit intimidated. “Thank you, Liz Lester.”
Liz took the proffered hand and shook it. “You’re welcome.”
Khamûl reached down and drew out a small sheathed knife from inside his left boot. “This is not a Morgul blade. It was forged in the East many years ago. May it serve you well.”
Liz took the knife, a small smile playing around the edges of her mouth. She liked sharp things and it showed. The sheath was dark leather set with an intricate tracery of what looked like silver; the hilt was smooth, carved wood and appeared to have seen long use. Liz pulled it slightly from the sheath and the wicked-looking blade gleamed brightly, despite the mist that still swirled around them.
“Thank you,” she said, equally solemnly. “It’s beautiful.” She lifted her hand and patted the enormous creature’s chest. “And so’s she. Did you get her from through an anomaly?”
Khamûl picked up his other knives and stowed them in a pack on the back of the saddle. “I know not whence her kind came. They have lived in the mountains near the Sea of Rhûn for many years. They are hard to tame and even harder to train, but if you can win their loyalty they will well repay the effort.”
“I know just what you mean,” Lyle said, shooting Liz and her father an amused glance.”
Khamûl gave a bark of surprised laughter. “It has been interesting to make your acquaintance, Jon Lyle, James Lester and Liz Lester. I believe there are other portals about to open from my world to yours. One is near Mount Gundabad. You will not like the creatures that might come through. I would advise vigilance.”
Lyle pulled his gloves back on, aware of the fact that his thumbs had now stopped itching. “Thanks for the warning. I hope the weather’s improved on your side.”
With a last nod to them, Khamûl put his foot into a stirrup hanging down from Dâgalûr’s saddle and swung himself easily onto the creature’s back as the powerful wings flapped once, twice and then on the third stroke, beast and rider were airborne. Dâgalûr circled them once, wings flapping almost lazily in the cold air, before disappearing into the mist.
The last sound they heard was a harsh, triumphant cry and then they were both gone.
Lyle watched as Liz fingered the knife thoughtfully and then stowed it carefully in her backpack.
He had a feeling this was yet another encounter that wasn’t going to make it into an official report.
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Date: 2015-10-01 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-01 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-01 07:10 pm (UTC)I had to look them up, but when I did they fit beautifully into the story.
Yipes - an anomaly that disgorges Orcs would not be a good thing!
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Date: 2015-10-01 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-01 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-01 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-01 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-05 09:56 pm (UTC)Also, and this is a random little thing that struck me while I was rereading for the hundredth time, 'She liked sharp things and it showed' is a perfect single sentence explanation for Liz and Juliet's relationship. From both sides. I know you didn't mean it that way, but it fits!
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Date: 2015-10-06 07:22 am (UTC)Funnily enough, I think I did have Liz/Juliet in the back of my mind when I wrote that. As you know, I'm hopelessly over-invested in those two!
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Date: 2015-10-11 06:19 pm (UTC)I do indeed know that. *bg* It is a perfect line for them.
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Date: 2015-10-06 08:41 pm (UTC)Great read!
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Date: 2015-10-07 10:49 am (UTC)Great story
Date: 2020-01-19 05:54 pm (UTC)Re: Great story
Date: 2020-01-21 10:10 am (UTC)