The Witch Hunter Chronicles: Hunted

I slid the clip into the Barretta nine-millimeter and racked a round into the chamber.

Locked and loaded baby.

It was quite the shock when sweet, motherly Fran calmly poked a neat clump of holes into man-shaped paper target with a pistol the size of a hair dryer. An hour’s worth of gun safety training later, it was my turn.

“Now pull the trigger gently dear but keep the rest of your hand nice and still,” Fran said in a whisper. My fancy electronic earmuffs allowed me to hear speech while decreasing the roaring sound of gunfire to firecracker level.

I placed the red center of the paper target in between the Baretta’s steel sights, as I squinted one-eyed down the barrel. As I sighted on the target paper, I found that my throat was dry, and my hands were slick with sweat. On top of that, my breathing was fast and shallow like an overheated dog panting in the sun.

Anxiety is stupid.

I placed the gun down on the shooters bench in front of me – which in this case was just a flat, skinny slab of unfinished wood on cinderblocks that rose to waist high – and wiped my hands on my pant legs.

“Are you okay, dear,” Fran asked.

Well Fran, thanks for asking. I’m having flashbacks of the day on the tarmac on top of my normal level of anxiety, plus I didn’t get much sleep last night because apparently now I wake up crying. Plus, also, I’ve never fired a gun outside of a first-person shooter.

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied.

“It’s ok to be nervous,” she said. “A gun is just a tool, though an extremely dangerous one in untrained hands. It needs to be treated with respect at all times.”

I nodded and got back into my shooter’s position – feet apart with my left slightly forward, right hand holding the gun and left hand supporting from underneath. Once again, I sighted the center dot of the target down the length of the barrel and between the steel sight brackets. I took in a deep breath and rolled my shoulders in a futile attempt to relax my tense muscles. Finally, I blew out my breath and slowly squeezed the trigger. The gun jerked upward, and even with the ear protection, the sound it made was shocking.

“Wow,” was all I could say.

“The first time’s always scary,” Fran said.

That’s what she said!

I squinted carefully at the target, which was exactly fifteen yards away from where I was standing. It was a simple black paper rectangle with a white outline of a man from the waste up. The target paper was held in place by a black wooden frame, and sandbags were stacked up behind the target to stop the slugs. If a stray bullet somehow got past the sandbags, there was no way it could get through the thick cement walls of the unfinished basement.

Tattooed in red on the target’s chest was a number of ever-shrinking circles ending in a quarter-sized bullseye in the dead center of his sternum. That center-point was where I’d been aiming, but I couldn’t see a hole in red lined target – or anywhere on the paper for that matter.

“I missed?” I asked.

“Low and to the left,” Fran answered. “You jerked the barrel down when you pulled the trigger. It’s a natural thing to do,” she said in her soothing, motherly voice. The juxtaposition with the setting was laughable. “You’re anticipating the kick. Let’s try again.”

I did, with the same result. It wasn’t till the last few rounds in the clip, that little holes started sprouting in the bottom left side of the paper. My last shot even hit the outer white line of the man’s body.

“See,” Fran said, “you’re starting to get it.” She smiled and added, “Now try to keep your eyes open when you pull the trigger.”

“I was closing my eyes?” I asked. She nodded in reply, and I sighed.

“Don’t worry dear,” Fran said. “That’s perfectly normal – just like pulling the barrel down. All you need is practice.”

I slid out the used clip and popped in a fresh one. I rocked the slide backwards, then forwards, racking a bullet into the chamber.

“Ok,” she said, “eyes open this time, dear.”

“Yes ma’am,” I replied, as I set my feet while trying with all my strength to keep my natural sarcasm from seeping into my words.

I went through that clip and four more after that. By the sixth clip, I was actually getting all of my shots to hit within the white outline of the person, and most within the first red target circles – though I never got closer than two rings from the bullseye. After my final shot, I popped out the empty clip and did a visual inspection of the chamber to make sure it was empty. Safety first, after all.

“Should I reload the clips and try again,” I asked, in a voice that I hoped got across to her that I didn’t actually want to do any of that. My hands felt numb, and I felt mentally exhausted.

“Well,” Fran said, “I think that’s probably enough for your first day of live fire. I’ll have to show you how to clean the gun tonight, but I think our session is up.” She inclined her chin towards the stairwell behind me.

I looked back to the top of the stairs and found Lucía framed in the doorway, wearing tennis shoes, blue polyester shorts and a loose-fitting white t-shirt.

“It’s probably time for your walking tour,” Fran added.

I went upstairs to change into shorts and running shoes, but I sighed and grumbled enough to let everyone know this wasn’t my idea of a good time. When I came back down the stairs, I caught Jordan peeking out the front window through the blinds. He was wearing a pair of blue board shorts and a white tank top that barely reached past his belly button and held a white China coffee cup by its little handle. His pinky stuck out in a straight line away from the cup.

“Who are you gawking at, creeper?” I asked.

He took a sip of coffee before answering. “Oh, just the most adorable gardener that I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“Why don’t you just get a real coffee mug?” I asked as I crossed the room towards him.

“Everything tastes better with a fancy wrapper,” he replied.

“If you say so,” I said.

I stood next to Jordan and peeked from a lower blind. Outside, two gardeners were hard at work trimming bushes and sweeping up leaves. I knew instantly which one had caught my bestie’s eye.

One was probably in his forty’s and wore baggy tan overalls and a wide brimmed hat. The other was in his teens, lean and muscular, and wore skinny jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that was tighter than it needed to be.

“Well, he’s a tall drink of water,” I admitted. “You sure he plays for your team?”

“Please, kid,” Jordan said. “Don’t question the master. He’s practically advertising it.”

I nodded. For all I knew, Jordan marked his quarry by scent.

“You guys ready?” Lucía asked. She’d entered the room silently and was slipping on her backpack.

“Unfortunately, you’re going to have to go without me this morning,” Jordan said. “I have a pressing engagement.”

He took off his shirt with a flourish and walked out the front door with it slung over his shoulder.

“What was that all about?” Lucía asked.

“You’re seeing the wild Jordan in its natural habitat,” I replied.

Lucia must have noticed something in my expression because she narrowed her eyes and asked, “Is everything okay Kenzie?”

“Yeah, it’s just that painting,” I said squinting across the room at a man in medieval armor. I took a step towards the it my nose was assaulted by the most horrible smell imaginable. Suddenly my vision swam, and I felt myself falling…

***

When my vision cleared, I found myself standing in a thickly wooded forest, gazing down at a large man in a suit of polished steel armor. The knight from the painting was propped up against a boulder, and his legs were splayed out in front of him at a not-quite anatomical angle. His armor looked like it had been in a car accident, and he was bleeding from about a million different places. His dented helmet was on the ground next to him, and his deathly pale face was dirty and bloody and contorted in a mask of silent pain.

Countless bodies lay in the immediate area – some dressed in similar plate armor but the majority in colorful, baggy garments and white head wraps. The bodies of the colorfully dressed men were hacked and sliced to pieces. Among the littered carnage, I saw a disembodied limb whose brown hand was still holding a sword with a long, curved blade. Beneath the dead men, the dirt and pine needles had been churned by the feet of fighting men into bloody mud. Flies swarmed over the dead bodies in waves and the air smelled worse than a State Faire portable toilet in the September heat.

“Roland!” I heard myself yell, but in a voice that was deep and masculine. “We’re here my friend.” I looked around at my assembled men and yelled at no one in particular, “Where’s the damn medic?”

A dozen or more men in suits of gleaming armor stood with me, and behind them a handful more of older boys in colorful tights and tunics that looked straight out of a renaissance faire. All looked grim and none seemed to want to meet my eye. A small man in blue garb that honestly looked like an Amish prom dress pushed through the throng of men and knelt in the mud next to Roland. Without a word, he checked his pulse at the man’s throat before assessing Roland’s wounds.

As I approached the fallen knight, I felt like I was walking in deep sand. It took me a glance down to realize what the problem was. I was covered head-to-toe in heavy armor and my stride was similar to the way you have to walk through ankle-deep water. It also dawned on me very quickly that there was a lot more going on down there than I was used to, and the simple act of walking generated novel sensations that were… distracting to say the least.

How do boys run with all this going on?

Luckily, the primary inhabitant of the body that I was tagging along with wasn’t aware of my inner dialogue – although, strangely, I was aware of his. He was on the verge of collapsing into tears at the sight of his injured friend but was holding it together for the sake of his troops.

While the medic spoke quietly with Roland, a knight with a three-headed dog on his shield mentioned that the Saracens could return at any moment. I gave terse orders in French about stationing a perimeter guard, and then knelt down as close as I could to the fallen man without getting in the way of the medic. I looked into Roland’s eyes, but they were distant and unfocused.

“Roland?” I asked in a soft voice.

The fallen man immediately snapped to attention. “My Emperor,” he said. He tried to sit up and immediately cried out in pain. I put a hand on his shoulder and gently held him down.

“Relax, my old friend,” I said. “Let the medic tend your wounds.” I looked over at the medic with imploring eyes. The man averted his eyes and shook his head slowly. I sent him away with an impatient wave and called out, “Maugris? Where in the seven hells are you?” I turned and looked through the anxious faces behind me until my eyes focused on the familiar face of Merlin, who was doing his level-best not to meet my eye. “I need you old man.” The wizard sighed and nodded. He stepped carefully through the mud and bodies before squatting next to me. His knees popped loudly, and his blue robes pooled around his feet in the bloody mud.

“I held the pass m’ lord,” Roland said in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

“You were a true hero as always, my Paladin,” I replied. I went to touch his face but realized I still had my gauntlets on. After stripping off my right gauntlet, I gently gripped the back of the man’s head and brought my forehead down to his. “I escaped the trap because of you, Sir Roland.” I could feel hot tears rolling down my cheeks. Merlin whispered in my ear, “He’s lost too much blood, Charles.”

I wheeled on the old man and growled, “Use your magic, damn you.”

“His wounds are mortal, Charles,” Merlin answered quietly. “And you know full well that healing isn’t my specialty. I can barely mend a paper cut.”

I grunted and turned back to my friend. Roland stared up at me, and his eyelids fluttered as he fought to remain conscious.

“I hid Durendal, m’ lord,” Roland said with lips that barely parted, “so she wouldn’t fall to the hands of the enemy. Look…” His lips moved silently for a few beats before going completely still.

I stood and scanned the area for Roland’s sword Durendal. After a few heart pounding moments, I noticed the pommel and handle of a sword behind my friend’s back – mostly obscured by the shoulder pauldron of his plate armor. I reached out to touch the handle, but I stopped when I felt a hand shaking my shoulder.

My vertigo returned and my vision swam once again. I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them, I was flat on my back with Lucía crouched down next to me. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were wide. Lucía’s lips were moving, but I wasn’t hearing any sound at first. Then the noise of the world came crashing back and I held up a hand, stopping Lucía in mid-sentence. I propped myself up on my elbows and blinked the last of the blurriness from my eyes.

“I’m okay,” I said, then waited as a brief wave of nausea came and went. I wasn’t going to throw up ever again if I had anything to say about it. I swallowed a few times before asking, “What happened?”

“You fell, and at first I thought you fainted, but your eyes were open, and you were muttering something like you were in some sort of a trance,” Lucía said. “When yelling didn’t snap you out of it, I started shaking you and you finally came too.”

“Who’s Roland?” I asked.

Lucía looked back at the painting on the wall before answering, “My ancestor. Your knight when you were… why, did you remember something?”

“I was there when he died,” I answered. “So was Merlin, but I called him Maugris, and I think he called me Charles.”

“Charles the Great,” she whispered.

Something from grade school history came back to me suddenly. “Charlemagne? I was Emperor Charlemagne?” I asked.

Lucía nodded.

“Roland’s last words were about hiding Durendal from whoever he had been fighting. That was the name of his sword, I think.”

Lucía’s eyes went manga-wide, and she leaned in so close that I could smell the lilac from her shampoo. “Did he say where?”

“He died before he could, but there was a sword wedged in behind his back,” I replied. Lucía smiled and clapped her hands together excitedly. “Why’s an old sword so important.”

“Mom is fairly certain that Roland’s sword Durendal was actually Excalibur,” Lucía replied. “The night we met, Marc may have found where it’s hidden.”

“Arthur’s magic sword?” Lucia nodded and I continued, “Why does Fran think Durendal is Excalibur?”

“Well, Durendal could reportedly cut through stone or steel, just like Excalibur,” Lucía explained. “And Charlemagne could have loaned it to Roland, just like Arthur used to let Lancelot use Excalibur in battle in the King’s later years.”

Briefly, I was standing on the edge of a lake, watching a gleaming sword come slowly out of the water, held aloft by the pale, elegant fingers of a woman’s hand.

“Whoa,” I said, blinking my eyes and shaking my head. I’d felt the world spinning feeling again, but this time I didn’t fall down and start drooling.

“Are you okay?” Lucía asked. “It looked like you zoned out again.”

“Yeah, I had another memory or whatever, but it wasn’t so intense this time,” I replied. “I just saw a woman’s hand lifting a sword out of the water. That’s weird, right?

“You saw the Lady of the Lake?” she asked. I shrugged. “She’s the one who gave you Excalibur.”

I squinted at her, confused. “Didn’t Wart pull Excalibur from a stone?”

And why did Arthur’s family call him Wart as a boy? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a term of endearment.

Lucía shook her head. “No that was Caliburn, your father Uther Pendragon’s sword,” she amended. “You broke that sword when you fought King Pellinore. A third or fourth cousin of mine has the pieces hanging on his wall. The Lady of the Lake replaced it with Excalibur.”

“How did I break it?” I asked.

This is all news to me. Disney had lied. The bastards.

“You and Pellinore had a duel and you beat him… but you cheated, and the sword shattered.”

“What?” I asked. “How do knights cheat? Did I throw sand in his eyes or kick him between the legs?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, gesturing madly with her hands and firing off each word rapid-fire like an auctioneer. “What matters is your memory is coming back – and, that it matches what Mamá and Marc recently discovered.”

I waited patiently for Lucía to explain, while she stared off in the distance, lost in thought. I gave her three breaths before asking, “Are you going to tell me, or what?”

“Yes, sorry,” she replied. “We think that Durendal was buried in Roland’s tomb.”

“It took your family a thousand years to figure that out?” I snarked. “What am I paying you guys for anyway?”

Lucía grinned and said, “Well, first of all, you don’t actually pay us…”

“Sucks to be you,” I deadpanned.

“We live to serve, my liege.” She did a little head-bow, and I rolled my eyes at her. “Second of all,” she continued, “there were always two stories. In both, Roland was fighting the Saracens and was ridiculously outnumbered.”

The bodies hacked to pieces…

“First, he tried to break the sword on some rocks so it wouldn’t fall into their hands,” Lucia explained, “and he only ended up carving a hole in the side of a mountain.”

“With a sword?” I asked in a way that was more a disbelieving statement.

“Well, a magic sword, but yeah,” she replied. “There’s an actual place called Roland’s Pass in France, and it looks like someone carved a walkway through the top of a butte with digging equipment.”

“Well, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard,” I admitted.

Honestly, it’s not even in the top ten at this point.

Lucía continued, “When that didn’t work, the best-known story says he threw it away. There’s actually a sword sticking out of the stone face of a rock wall in Rocamadour, and the French monks have always claimed that it’s the actual Durendal. There’s a whole monastery built into the cliff right next to it. According to the mythology, the monks built the community around the sword, but it’s common knowledge that the sword was just added later as a ploy for tourist dollars.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever tried to take it?” I asked.

“I’m sure people have tried, but the sword is in there practically to its hilt. Plus, there’s an iron chain clamped around the handle,” Lucía answered. “Still, I’ve always wondered why the monks would take the extra step of chaining up a fake sword that’s already stuck in solid rock.”

“It sounds sort of like the sword in the stone, right?” I said.

“It totally does, but it’s a rusty mess, and even the tourism office in the town says it’s just a clever fake,” Lucía answered. “And like I said, Excalibur was never actually stuck in stone.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I agreed.

“Which leads to the second version of the story.”

“Oh, I’m all ears,” I replied.

“Well, it was simple enough. Roland just hid the sword beneath him and played dead until backup arrived,” she said.

“That’s not much of a story,” I quipped.

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” she replied.

I shrugged. “He was certainly beat-up enough to pass for dead. He was propped up against a rock, and there was a sword hidden behind him.”

“Close enough. After Roland’s death, he was buried in a cathedral on the western coast of France. An early pope supposedly opened the tomb and raided its contents a few centuries ago. However, there’s no mention in the records of what they found or where the body and relics were taken.”

“So, the Catholic Church has my sword?” I asked. “I could totally see some nun smacking knuckles with it.”

“Well, we thought so for a while,” Lucía said, “but we weren’t sure if it was in a Vatican vault or if it has been changing hands between private collectors all this time. Trust me – we tracked down every lead. My family has been looking for Excalibur since a few decades after Camelot fell, and have pursued countless avenues. We even thought Galahad had it for a while, but we eventually determined that he has Clarent, Arthur’s knighting sword.”

The sword that glowed a dull red in the monster’s giant hands. The sword that killed my father. I wonder if Galahad would glow red if I shoved that sword-

“Kenzie, why are you smiling?” Lucia asked.

“No reason,” I lied.

“Anyway, what Mom found out years ago was that Roland’s public tomb was a fake. The contact Marc met with apparently told him where the actual tomb is located. I think we should skip the walk and tell mama the good news.

I smiled again.