PATERNUS

Sample Chapter 4

Dyrk Ashton

Copyright © Dyrk Ashton,

DBA Paternus Books Media®.

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Table of Contents

Chapter Four

Preview of Chapter Five

CHAPTER FOUR

Mendip Hills

The White Watcher watches.

It’s one of those nights with a flawless sky of the deepest black, the stars tiny pin-pricks of light, the full moon a pure white circle hole-punched in the ceiling of the world.

Circling high above what the watoto call Somerset County, in the South West of England, The White Watcher sees for miles in every direction, and his sight is good, perhaps the best in all this world for distance, in both the light of day and dark of night.

The land below is a map in relief, darkened shades of green, brown and blue, blotted with sparkling lakes, and woods of ash and maple, still garbed in their autumn leaves. Scribed with dead-straight canals, a few back roads and fewer freeways, rambling rivers and streams, intersecting dry-stone walls that divide pasture from field and dry land from bog. The White Watcher can make out the flat void of the Bristol Channel to the west. To the south he can’t quite see to the sea.

Directly beneath him the moors of the Somerset Levels shimmer through bristling black grass and a silken layer of mist. Just to the north, the dales of the Mendip Hills cup silvery fog, luminescent from the light of the moon. Beyond the hills the Avon Valley is a basin of cottony gray.

Ireland, Scotland, Shetland, Wales, England, the Isle of Man, the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, all are The White Watcher’s domain, his self-appointed ward. Every night he flies over these isles, making his rounds. He does not interfere, just watches. Alone. Unseen.

It was once the craggy peaks of Carrauntoohil, the tallest mountain in Ireland, that The White Watcher called home. Then the watoto began climbing it for sport in greater and greater numbers, so he relocated to Ben Nevis in Scotland, the highest peak in all the British Isles. More mountaineers came, and then the flying machines. He now spends the daylight hours in a cave along the northern coast of Ireland only accessible by diving past stony cliffs into the cold ocean waters, down to the hidden entrance well below the surface. The same cave he was dragged into when the Deluge drowned the world.

Something peculiar catches The White Watcher’s eye. Placing his arms against his body, he dives for a closer look, careful not to pass before the moon. He extends his wings to level out, keeping below the ridgeline and downwind, and alights on a wooded hilltop. Peering through the branches of an aged maple tree, he spies it, moving east along a path in the rolling forest half a mile away, keeping to the shadows. A dark shape of the kind he hasn’t seen in a very long time. Something not human. Something big.

* * *

Bödvar Bjarki trudges through the undergrowth, parallel to the dirt trail, picking his way over rocks and rotting tree trunks, ducking beneath branches, steering clear of the sharp light of the moon. An oversized canvas rucksack on a sturdy frame is slung on his back. From inside comes the muffled sound of sloshing water and a high gurgling voice humming a happy tune. He reaches over his hairy shoulder and raps on the top of the sack, which makes the sound of knocking on wood. “Shhhh!” he admonishes. The humming stops.

To one side of the rucksack, slipped through a loop, is what looks like a ridiculously large replica of a sword, the blade alone six feet long and twelve inches wide--but this is no replica. Forged by Arges himself, it has had many names, but the one that stuck and by which it is still known today in Russian fables, is Kladenets. Bödvar has hidden and retrieved it many times over the millennia, never lost it to Father’s Deva searchers when they were sent out to gather the great weapons. It is good to sense its weight on his back. He feels like a knight errant once again, a bogatyr of old.

In his right hand he carries a hammer, equally ridiculous in size. The handle is a smooth hickory fence post, the head a rectangular block of steel, two feet long with a short conical spike on each end. It was crafted by no master metalsmith. There’s nothing special about it. Except it weighs nearly 1,000 pounds. Bödvar hardly notices.

Bödvar Bjarki, The Bear, is over ten feet tall, built like a man who’s built like a bear, with arms longer and legs shorter than a natural man’s would be. A pink tongue the size of a hand towel extends from a thick-lipped mouth that runs the width of his big round head, laps over his sharp bear’s teeth and fangs, and licks the flaring nostrils of his broad pug nose.

Bödvar has been told these paths are seldom travelled at night, but if any parvuli do come along, donning his human cloak will do him no good in this day and age. He’s just too big.

There was a time, not long ago in the greater scheme of things, when the sight of an enormous human warrior inspired awe and respect. Especially an ugly one. Not today, Baphomet, the Master’s second in command, has warned him, so he has to sneak to circumvent campsites and commercial quarries and avoid rural roads. He growls to himself, Who ever thought The Bear would be sneaking! He could cloak as his mother’s kind, but he’s pretty sure the sight of a ten foot bear in today’s England, especially one of a species long extinct, would raise just as much of a ruckus. His only other choice is to press against a cliff and cloak as shadow, or curl up and appear as a rock or fallen hunk of tree. Hiding from parvuli is even worse than sneaking!

He isn’t built for stealth, obviously, but his hearing and sense of smell are keen and his vision well suited to darkness. He has observed no one so far, but even though Baphomet made it clear he is to avoid confrontation with the parvuli if at all possible, he kind of hopes he will. He could use a snack. He isn’t much better at following orders than he is at sneaking. Never has been.

Do what you’re told on this job, he reprimands himself. Show them you can follow instructions, for once!

He suppresses the urge to uproot a tree that stands in his way. Suddenly he’s in a foul mood. Then again, he’s always in a foul mood, and pretty much always has been. Violent, angry and mean, a tortured and terrible beast, he has driven away anyone who has ever been close to him. Unless he got them killed first, or murdered them himself. He blames his father, who is most certainly bipolar (Bödvar learned that term recently through this new science called the “internet”), prone to periods of exuberant glee but also fits of manic, violent behavior, as well as the deepest of depressions. If there’s such a thing as “tri-polar,” Father is it.

Most Firstborn have found some way to relax, some contented perspective with which to endure the millennia as they passed. Not Bödvar. But today is a good day, he affirms to himself, taking a deep breath. Today I have something to do.

He was relaxing in the boreal forests of Siberia when the Master and Baphomet found him just three months ago, having recently awakened from what would be considered a very long nap by human standards. They were quite enthusiastic about what the parvuli had achieved in the fields of science and technology while he slept, and proceeded to tell Bödvar all about it. He yawned the entire time.

“Who do you want me to kill, and when?”, was all he said when they were done prattling on. They told him. He accepted. Gladly.

In the days before Bödvar boarded the ship to England, Baphomet tortured him with more tedious gibberish. Apparently, the United States (who?) had “satellites” with “hyperspectral imaging” capabilities that they tasked to find underground bunkers where their enemies could be hiding. The Master and Baphomet had “pulled some strings” (these satellites have strings, apparently) utilizing their contacts in the “military-industrial complex,” and believed they had succeeded where all others had failed. They’d found the cave, here in the Mendip Hills, where Myrddin Wyllt, The Madman, had been imprisoned by his lover over 1,500 years ago. Baphomet explained in excruciating detail how they could probably arrange for a “bunker buster missile” strike, but he had convinced the Master that it would draw unwanted attention, they weren’t sure it would work on a Firstborn, and they’d have no proof The Madman was dead even if it did. An Asura Firstborn team would be much cleaner and more effective. In and out, no fuss, no muss, and they’d have confirmation of the kill.

Bödvar knows about the disappearance of The Madman, of course, and that no one had been able to find him after his imprisonment. Some of the rest of what Baphomet said makes sense now, too. Bödvar spent most of the time waiting for his mission watching “television” and “surfing the net,” absorbing what he felt was important (and wishing he could forget the rest). He can even hold his own with the modern English now. Firstborn learn fast. Much has changed in this world, he has to admit, over an astonishingly short amount of time. One thing hasn’t, he’s glad to see. There are still wars.

The rucksack hums again, lilting and reedy, oddly amplified by the vessel in which Bödvar’s “partner” on this mission is contained. He can’t place the tune, but whatever it is, it’s extremely annoying.

“Hush!” he shouts. It doesn’t stop. He raises his hand to rap the top of the pack again but decides against it. He’ll have to let it out soon. He’d rather it not be too angry with him.

He turns his attention to the bright glowing screen of a device that looks tiny in his enormous paw. Baphomet gave him this little box of “electronics,” which he called a “GPS,” and insisted that Bödvar use it to find the cave. It’s pretty simple, really. Green dot pinpoints where he’s located on the digital map, red dot marks where he wants to go. The two dots are right on top of each other.

He’s here.

He eyes two large ash trees that stand against the face of a bare limestone cliff, then checks his surroundings. Fairly secluded. More trees provide cover, and he can’t see the path a hundred yards back down the hill. That won’t help when he starts pounding on rock, though. The sound may be heard for a mile. Once he begins, he’ll need to keep his hearing and sense of smell keen to approaching parvuli.

But right now there’s another problem. The night is retreating, pursued by the faintest hint of daylight to the east. The sun will soon be revealed in all its glory by the unstoppable spin of the earth. Birds are already chirping.

Fucking birds!

Bödvar growls and chucks his hammer to the dirt. Here he stands, right where he needs to be, and he’s forced to find someplace to hide and while away the day, then return when night comes again to complete his task. That was a most adamant command of Baphomet. “Do not open the cave in the light of day, under any circumstances.” All part of the Master’s “master” plan, Bödvar figures. Or maybe it’s for the benefit of his partner in the rucksack. From what he’s heard, it’s not a fan of daylight.

Well, there’s nothing for it, he’s going to do what he’s told. He groans, picks up his hammer and stomps off to find someplace to wait out the sun. The rucksack sloshes and hums as he shoves through the brush.

“Hush!”

Preview of

CHAPTER FIVE

Order of The Bull

How does she move her tongue so fast?, ponders the little round fellow in the long fur coat. No matter how many times he hears the trilling wail of zaghruta singing, Tanuki is always amazed. The scantily clad performer of the oryantal dansi approaches the fruit stand where Tanuki clutches half a dozen small crates of dates, undulating her body in seemingly impossible ways beneath her bedleh costume of shining gold and turquoise. An ensemble of musicians huddle against the stone cliff in an empty space between vendors, fervently playing reed flute, drum, fiddle and lute. The shapely mtoto female circles Tanuki, whose ample cheeks could be seen to blush if he didn’t have a dense, close-cropped beard of the same peppered tan as his fur coat and the Russian ushanka-style hat he wears with the ear flaps up.

The dancer’s braceleted arms move serpentine above her shoulders. She lightly brushes the fur of his hat and his beard with her fingers then backs away, her pelvis gyrating so quickly the beaded rainbow belt above her scanty skirt is a blur. She smiles at him, lets loose another shrill zaghruta wail. Between her staccato hip movements, the gem in her navel and her vibrating tongue, Tanuki is captivated.

“Master Tanuki?”

Tanuki snaps out of his musing as a distinguished looking, elderly mtoto woman approaches. “May I take that for you?” she asks in modern Turkish. She is the High Abbottess of their sect, the Order of The Bull, in charge of day-to-day management of the monastery, as well as an Apis High Priestess...