Hazelhearth Hires Heroes Read online

  He finally located a set of creosote-soaked wooden pilings offering a better handhold. He hauled himself out, flopped on his back and spat up half a mouthful of the vile canal water onto the muddy ground.

  He then did the only sensible thing: he retched, vomiting up the other half mouthful of canal water along with some moderately expensive brandy across the weedy tow path.

  “My bag. Where’s my bag?”

  He stumbled to his feet, quickly locating a mud and rain soaked overcoat and cane. He dropped to his knees, fumbling around the moonlit embankment—grasping at shadows, at clumps of weeds. Anything that might have been a satchel, in the gloomy moonlight. But it wasn’t there.

  Had it been kicked into the canal? Would it float? He crawled to the canal, squinting at the surface for any hint of it. A feeble thrashing caught his attention. His attackers?

  “You there, what did you do with my satchel,” he growled to the source of the thrashing.

  A sputtering cough was the only reply.

  Brandishing his cane, he approached the bank, where the thrashing, now visible as the shorter of the two thugs struggled to hold on to the steep, slick, embankment.

  “Where’s my satchel,” he repeated.

  “Help me outta here,” sputtered the man.

  “Where’s your partner?”

  “Drown, I think. I dunno. Get me outta here!”

  The conversation was clearly not going anywhere. Lee inhaled slowly. The ribs on his left side burned. Bruised? Broken? And his left shoulder wasn’t much better. With the adrenaline wearing off, pain surged into his body. “Find my satchel, and I’ll help you out.”

  The man coughed and gagged. “Got it here. It floats. A little.”

  The scum used my game as a damn life ring? Lee growled, aggravating his ribs again. “I’m going to extend my cane. Hook the satchel on it. When I have it, I’ll help you out. If you try to grab on to my cane, I’ll let it go, and leave you here. It’ll be a good six hours before anyone comes around, and you’ll either drown or be dead of exposure by then. Got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lee lay prone on the embankment and extended the cane. He figured it was 50/50 whether the thug tried to grab his prized dragon-handled cane or not, and he hated to lose something else, but a chance was better than none.

  To his surprise, the thug complied, and when he pulled back the rosewood cane, a soggy, torn satchel came with it onto the embankment. How bad it was, he couldn’t tell in the moonlight.

  Anger welled up again.

  Years of work. Damaged? Destroyed?

  “Now pull me out. Gimme your cane.”

  Lee glared down at the man. “I said I’d help, I didn’t say I’d pull you out.”

  “Four-flushing ratbag bastard!”

  “Fifty paces that way—” Lee motioned in the direction of the place he was able to climb out. “There are some pilings reinforcing a section of embankment. You can get out there.” He cradled the satchel in his arms, turned and strode off, ignoring an unimaginative string of sputtered curses. Mostly questioning his lineage.

  The way home passed in a haze. Soaked in canal water, he hardly noticed the rain, and any other would-be attackers wrote him off as a half-crazed bum with little of value and the mental state to fight back unpredictably. He trudged up three flights of stairs to his apartment, hung his overcoat on a peg, and lit a pair of lamps.

  Lee stared bleary eyed at the sorry contents of the torn satchel in the kerosene light of his parlor many long minutes. Half the pieces missing, papers and playing board soaked in contaminated canal water, ink bleeding across the sheets.

  “Ruined,” he muttered. “Over a year of work.” He lifted a torn shirt to inspect a nicely developing bruise. “Yeah. Also, I may have killed a guy.”

  Lee squeezed his eyes shut, trying to feel something.

  Wanting to feel something.

  Anger? Pain? Guilt?

  Anything.

  “Looks like I’m not gonna just wake up from this one.” He sighed heavily. “Better get cleaned up.”

  Chapter 2

  Lee elected not to report the incident to the police the next morning, suspecting that neither of the two thugs, if they survived, would do likewise. The dat-dat-dat of incoming telegraphs played havoc with his head, aggravating him into slamming a fist against his desk every few minutes. Which in turn aggravated his injured ribs and shoulder.

  A low humming began to vibrate through the floor planks. “Oh not this again. Damn you, Sam,” he groused under his breath.

  He stomped angrily out of the office, slamming the door behind him, immediately regretting it as pain shot through his injured shoulder like a thousand needles.

  The humming intensified, punctuated by the staccato crack of electricity.

  He stormed down the alley, slid open the side door of the two-story brick workshop, and barked, “I have a splitting headache. I’m behind on my work, and I do not need your—”

  “Stay back, this isn’t supposed to be happening,” yelled Sam, voice cracking conspicuously.

  Lee was used to electricity in its many forms, arcing between electrodes in the various devices in Sam’s lab. But this wasn’t arcing, crackling, sparking, or any of the other things that electricity was supposed to do.

  This was swirling, like water down a drain.

  “What the—”

  Sam frantically flipped a set of oversized knife switches on the back wall. The hum fell silent, yet the whirlpool of light remained. “It should be off. I don’t know where it’s still getting power from.”

  “What is this thing?” Lee said, taking a cautious step toward the swirling light.

  “Stay back you big oaf, the electricity could arc and kill you.”

  “It doesn’t look like any kind of electricity I’ve ever seen. Maybe you’ve finally invented something worthwhile. A new form of electric power.”

  “I don’t know what it is.” Sam’s voice seethed. “And plenty of my inventions are useful. My patented self-adjusting transformer winding jig saved our company dozens of man-hours.”

  Lee grabbed a wooden-handled screwdriver from the nearest workbench and tossed it into the pool. The screwdriver disappeared without a trace. “Didn’t look like it arced to me.”

  “Oh, that’s a real smart way to play with thousands of volts of electricity.”

  “I thought you didn’t know what it was?”

  “And you just vaporized my favorite screwdriver, thank you very much, Leander!”

  “You have a favorite? You gotta get out more. And for heaven’s sake, don’t call me Leander. My mother called me that. When I was in trouble.”

  “This qualifies as trouble!” Sam paused, cocking his head. He stepped around the pool, picked up a large broom, and extended it into the pool. He pulled it back and examined it. “Not vaporized. Not damaged.” He touched the broom end hesitantly. “It’s not even warm.”

  “So it’s safe? Great.”

  As if to rebuke Lee’s assessment, the electrical panel popped and arced, sending showers of sparks across the shop floor.

  “You. Lunkhead. Stand there. At the edge of the pool.”

  “Yes, sir,” came the sarcastic reply.

  Holding the head of the broom, Sam extended the entire handle into the pool.

  “I can’t see the handle. It’s disappeared. You’ve created one of those optical illusions! Like a… what are those things called? Zoetrope?”

  Sam pulled the broom back out of the pool. “No. It’s nothing like that. I wonder…” he poked at the pool with an index finger. “Doesn’t hurt.” He slid his forearm into the pool and quickly withdrew it.

  “Wow. That’s an impressive illusion,” said Lee. “Better than the lady in the sword box.”

  “I don’t think it’s an illusion. I think it’s a gateway.”

  “A gateway? To another place? Another time? Like that story, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court?”

  The swirling li
ght wavered, the entire building shuddering in response.

  “Maybe. No idea what’s on the other side. We could send a canary through.”

  The swirling light wavered dramatically, this time the electric lights of the workshop flickering in unison. The massive framing timbers of the shop groaned in protest of the unknown strain, showering the room in dust.

  “Maybe you should figure out how to turn it on and off first,” said Lee. “Before you bring the entire building down on top of us.”

  “I’m telling you, I’m not doing this! I’ve shut off the power—look at the switches! Off position! Plain as… oh dear.”

  “Oh dear?” Lee had known Sam long enough to properly translate this statement. It depended to some extent on context, but the usual meaning was ‘something has gone far enough wrong that our lives are in danger,’ or simply ‘oh fuck.’

  “Saaaam?”

  “There’s some kind of channel between the contacts of the switches, like a gas or a fluid. I don’t know. But this thing’s drawing full power, bypassing the switches.”

  “You said it’s a gateway. Maybe we need to shut it off from the other side.”

  “What?”

  “Like a telegraph. There are two stations. One here, one somewhere else.”

  Sam bit his lip. “I’ve heard rumors of people experimenting with wireless transmissions. But—”

  Another tremor rocked the building, like an angry child shaking a dollhouse. The incandescent lights dimmed, finally going dark. The hazy light from the industrial milk-glass windows and eerie glow of the whirlpool cast the workshop in twisted shadows.

  Lee touched the swirling light. “We have to do something. The light doesn’t seem to hurt us, but if we don’t shut it down, it’ll destroy the building. Maybe the entire block. We can use a rope to find our way back. Let’s take a look!”

  “But we don’t know what’s on the other side. It could lead to the bottom of the ocean. Or the middle of the Sahara.”

  “That’s what the rope is for,” Lee said, tying a length of rope around his waist and handing the other end to Sam. “Come on, don’t be a sissy-boy. If we don’t figure this out, people could get killed.”

  “If you’re going to use a rope, tie the end to something solid.”

  “Fine. The leg of that workbench.”

  Lee handed the other end of the rope to Sam. “Quick, tie this off, I’m going.” He poked his head through. “Looks like a tunnel. Hey! Maybe we’ll even get your screwdriver back.” He extended a leg through the portal and disappeared inside.

  “Idiot!” Sam dropped to his knees in front of the maple workbench, and had just looped the rope around a leg when a massive yank nearly ripped it out of his hands.

  “I wasn’t ready yet. Get back here!” he yelled.

  A waver in the swirling light and another yank on the rope was the only reply. Sam twisted in place to wrap the rope around his waist. Nothing solid was within reach. The rope slipped, burning his hands.

  “I should let go, you oaf,” he yelled.

  The building groaned and shook, a half-dozen thick panes of milky industrial glass fractured as window frames warped and twisted. Flying glass splinters joined showers of dust, sparks, and fragments of mortar.

  Sam coughed, his eyes burned as he leaned against the pull, but a further yank on the rope dragged him several paces toward the swirling light, his feet sliding across the dust and debris strewn shop floor.

  “Oh dear,” he yelled, and was dragged into the mysterious lights and swallowed up.

  Chapter 3

  A series of bright flashes blinded Sam, he careened into a solid object and collapsed onto a stony surface.

  The solid object turned out to be Lee.

  The stony surface was a good news/bad news situation. It was neither the Sahara, nor the ocean floor: clearly good. But a group of ferocious warriors in an enormous cavern: potentially less good.

  Sam stood, glanced at Lee, who was in a defensive stance, fists raised.

  The dozen and a half warriors were clad in armor, some made of metal plates, chain mail, and leather; others in a more barbaric style: exotic hides, spikes of tusk and bone, shields of wood. They chattered unintelligible languages, some speaking in grunts and growls, others in syllables that might pass for a foreign language from Earth.

  “An ambush,” growled Lee.

  “Hold on.” Sam put a hand on Lee’s shoulder. “They seem to be ignoring us.”

  “I… Yeah.” Lee glanced back at Sam. “Glad to see you made it through.”

  “Likewise.”

  Despite differences in attire, language, body shape, and facial features, the group seemed to be simply conversing with each other. Lee’s eyes darted from warrior to warrior, lingering here on an oversized battle axe, there on a stout halberd… crossbow, longsword.

  Sam, sensing no immediate danger, shifted to the next priority: an ‘off’ switch with which one might stop whatever was happening back at the workshop. He glanced about the cavern. “So… where’s the gateway on this side?”

  “Disappeared when you came through.”

  Which sounded like another good news/bad news situation to Sam. The shop and/or city block might still be standing. They just had to find a way to get back to it.

  “The gateway looked like the one in the shop. A swirling light.”

  “Hmm,” said Sam.

  The cavern appeared natural at first glance, oval in form and perhaps sixty paces wide by a hundred long with a domed, cathedral-like ceiling. Sprouting from the walls and ceiling were hundreds of lights: artificial, yet unlike any lamp they had ever seen.

  Sam stepped closer to inspect the lights, which were revealed to be crystals: some fist-sized, some a bit larger. Suspended within brass frames embedded into the stone of the cavern, they glowed brighter than any candle or oil lamp, yet without the harsh white of electrical arc lamps. Some glowed in cool blues and greens, others in orange or rose tones. Combined, they bathed the chamber in a soft, pleasant light: warm and natural like twilight sunshine.

  “There are little blue lines carved into the stone,” said Sam. “Almost as if power lines were carved into the rock itself.”

  “Yes. That’s great,” said Lee. “And I like a mystic grotto as much as the next guy, but maybe you could figure out where the fuck we are?”

  Nova Scotia, perhaps? Sam recalled hearing of natural caverns there. And Canadians were supposed to have an odd sense of humor, but this seemed a bit extreme. He glanced at the half-dozen tunnels fanning out from the cavern, one of which glowed considerably brighter than the others. “That looks like the way outside. Most of the others are headed that way anyway.”

  Sam and Lee had taken but a few steps when they were approached by a pair of creatures who looked distinctly out of place in the crowd of rough warriors. ‘Distinctly out of place,’ in this case, included no visible weapons or armor. In fact, their attire resembled tight-fitting underwear. They also had blueish-green skin.

  And antennae.

  One of the two addressed Sam with a string of sounds remarkably foreign. Clicks and whistles like an insect, or perhaps a bird? He couldn’t identify the language, or even an alphabet one might use to transcribe it. Yet they were trying to communicate.

  Sam and Lee glanced at each other, exchanging a subtle shrug.

  “Where-is-this-place,” said Lee, tone as stiff as his posture.

  “Oh, that’s real smart,” said Sam. “Someone speaks a foreign language, and you speak slower and louder.” He turned to the two men. “Parlez-vous francais? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

  One of the men produced a glowing block and began tapping at its surface, while the second jabbered angrily at the first.

  “I-am-Lee-from Ohio. Oh-hi-o.”

  “Ohio?” said the first man, adding, “Ohayōgozaimasu?”

  “Huh?” said Lee.

  “Vy govorite na russkom?” said Sam.

  “Stop it, you’re just confusing them,” sai
d Lee.

  “You’re not doing any better,” Sam snapped, crossing his arms defiantly. A gesture whose impact was diminished by Sam’s rather less than strapping arms.

  “You think some green-skinned hobgoblin is going to speak French? We don’t know what plans these hornswogglers have with us.”

  “At least they seem to have plans, unlike some of us, who—”

  “It was your machine that did this, I just tried to make the best of—”

  “You were the one that strong-armed me into coming here,” said Sam. “I would have been happy sending through a canary.”

  “Except you didn’t have a canary, now did you, Mr. Brilliant Scientist. The entire city block would have collapsed and we would have never known what was on the other side. And possibly been killed.”

  “Greetings, esteemed adventurers,” said one of the two beings, in a voice more polite than one would have expected from a green-skinned hobgoblin.

  “You speak English? Why didn’t you say so?” said Lee.

  “It took a while for the translator to lock on to your language. My name is Frongd’k. There was some glitch with the portal.”

  Lee cocked his head. “Your name is Frog Dick?”

  Sam jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow, managing to hit his injured side, prompting a yelp of pain. “Someone mentions translators and portals, and that’s what you pick up on?”

  The second man, with slightly bluer skin, spoke to the first. At least Sam assumed he was a man. The odd garment he was wearing was tight, but not quite tight enough to reveal such anatomical details. “These are the two anomalies we picked up? What do we do with them?”

  “So we got a couple more. Lord Raloren needs manpower. Call it serendipity.”

  “But we don’t know where they came from.”

  “So what? There’s a minor incident, EM interference with the portal beam, and we happen to get a couple more. So be it.”