Dragon's Trail

II: MINUET-4

The shear steel process made good steel hideously expensive and the realm of only the most elite smiths, who kept their processes of quenching and annealing as secret recipes to retain a competitive edge.

Because of this, the quality of any steel he’d find in Gateskeep would be hit-and-miss, and some of what they called steel would probably be iron of one type or another. There was really no way for anyone less than a materials scientist to tell how good a smith’s sword was until it either shattered, bent, or successfully took off a hand.

No, thank you.

He’d asked the smith a couple of quick questions describing a Bessemer-type blast furnace and might as well have been asking the guy to align the front end on his Audi.

Never mind. I thought you were somebody else.

A fifty-gallon military-grade rolling footlocker, waterproof with oversized wheels and a locking lid, would be his arming trunk. It had accompanied him around the world; it would accompany him to another. He spent an hour scraping and clipping baggage claim tags and stickers.

He intended to stack the deck as egregiously as he could in his favor, and as a professional Medieval weapons expert he was one of maybe a thousand men in the world with the hardware hanging in his living room to do it.

The swords and daggers on his wall array and in his arms locker were not props, nor stainless steel wall-hangers bought in some tobacco shop at a mall. Jarrod’s weapons were immaculately-balanced artisanal killing tools and works of 21st-Century metallurgical genius.

From his wall, his centerpiece: a four-foot greatsword, technically a gran espée de guerre, a broad-shouldered, gleaming, deadly son of a b***h with a spatulate tip and a robust edge designed to shatter bones under any mail it might not cleave. At just over three pounds, a two-handed blow with it would split an unarmored human being in half, and a blow to an iron helmet would leave a man playing with blocks and making goo-goo noises for the rest of his life. The sword was so large overall that its burnished leather scabbard had an integrated baldric designed to either hang off his shoulder or buckle around his waist.

His second choice was the closest thing in his arsenal to what they’d be packing in Gateskeep: a reproduction of an 11th-Century single-handed arming sword with a long blade, a stippled and filigreed handle and crossbar, and an ornate ring pommel. Light and agile, its subtle taper and forward balance made it a smash-and-cutter like the gran espée de guerre. Unlike his big war sword, the edge was razor-honed for use against a man in light armor or none at all. The stippling and filigree ensured a good grip in a leather glove, or in a sweaty—or bloody—hand. An edge sharpened to such a degree would part a silk scarf with a s***h, but would roll over if struck against plates of iron. It would be his sidearm.

He threw an assortment of plastic training weapons, plus a couple of daggers and a set of brass knuckles, into the big trunk, then put two more swords into a locking rifle case.

Two roundshields; one big, one small. A third—a full-body teardrop—for the hell of it.

Armor was tough.

A house decorated with suits of armor on half-mannequins and nothing exactly right; everything from a muscled Greek cuirass to black-and-red fantasy leather with fluted dragon scales, even a custom 15th-Century man-at-arms harness, fully-articulated in engraved case-hardened steel, breathtaking in its detail and painstakingly fitted to him at no small expense.

Half a morning staring at armor, cup after cup of coffee growing cold in his hand.

He packed several layers of armor.

He stuffed a leather and canvas pack with clothing that looked more or less nondescript, ripping the tags.

An entire overnight bag crammed with medical gear. What little camping gear he owned. An oilskin Stetson. A big, leather-bound, steel flask of bourbon. Two thick blank books and several pencils. Translations of manuals of arms with lots of pictures; something to talk about with the other jocks.

He’d had a pair of bespoke cigar-colored leather trousers made in Italy. He showered, scrubbing till his skin was red, and dressed in the leather pants, a long-sleeved polypro undershirt, and a black cashmere turtleneck.

He ordered two grinders from a place up the street and ate both over the rest of the afternoon, swearing, unpacking, looking at things again, and repacking.

And last, in a locked waterproof plastic case, a four-inch Springfield XD in 9mm with tritium night sights, a paddle holster, and two nineteen-round magazines of 147-grain Federal HST hollowpoints. An ugly, blocky little gun and even uglier bullets, designed to expand under hydrostatic pressure into six-pointed claws the diameter of dimes. They would leave immense wound channels and blow skulls wide open. When all else fails.

He threw in two boxes of 124-grain FMJ hardball because he had it.

He hoped to hell he wouldn’t have to shoot a hundred and thirty-eight people.

He secured the trunk and the rifle case with heavy-duty Master padlocks and secured the keys to everything around his neck with a length of paracord. He fed a second set of keys onto a split ring in a pouch on the arming sword’s belt.

Jarrod was sitting on the footlocker, the gran espée de guerre over one shoulder, chasing the second grinder with a big glass of bourbon and ice—last meal, after all—when his doorbell rang. He answered it to find Crius Lotavaugus standing in the rain.

“Please come in,” Jarrod said.

Crius entered and took a look around. His eye fell on the man-at-arms harness, still on its mannequin, and he strode over to it. “This is spectacular. Is it steel? It’s steel.”

“It’s steel,” said Jarrod, omitting any mention of case hardening and high-strength alloy as much as he wanted to gush about the suit’s metallurgy. “Will I need that?”

“Let’s hope not.”

Jarrod dropped ice cubes into two glasses and poured three fingers of rye into each. “Do you want to go through my gear?” he asked as he handed one glass to Crius, “I want to make sure I’m not, uh, cheating. Somehow.” The words sounded stupid out loud.

“You’re facing the greatest sorcerer our world has ever known,” said Crius. “There is no cheating.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” said Jarrod.

Crius sipped at the rye. His eyebrows rose and he saluted Jarrod with the glass, swallowing hard.

He was looking at a wall of framed pictures of Jarrod: accepting a fencing trophy before a huge crowd; delivering a spectacular kick in a savate ring; young and beardless, holding a Golden Gloves belt with his face beaten all to hell; smiling with his friends in armor; and a few framed magazine covers including a collage of teen tabloids featuring Jarrod with a starlet he’d been dating at the time. Crius spent a long time staring at a framed Sports Illustrated cover with Jarrod’s face beside the handle of a sword.

Crius swished the rye around his mouth slowly, smiling. He motioned to the Sports Illustrated cover. “What does it say?”

Jarrod clenched his teeth. He’d been toying with taking that f*****g thing down for two years, now. “It calls me ‘The Deadliest Man Alive.’”

“Are you?”

“Arguably.”

Crius nodded and took another sip. “Good,” he decided.

“Bring what you think you’ll need,” said Crius, finishing his drink. “And if something remains here that you require, we can always send you back for it.”

Jarrod downed his drink. “I’ll hold you to that as well.”

“As you should.”

Jarrod took his glass.

“Are you ready, Son-Lord Knightsbridge, King’s Rider of the Order of the Stallion of Gateskeep?”

Jarrod slipped the bottle of rye into his pack and lashed down the top, and wondered with ice in his gut what Carter was bringing.

“I’ll never know.”