“The man you’re worried about?” he said. “I know where he is, and I’m going to give you the chance to rescue him.” I shot a look at Loor. This had just gotten interesting. “Rescue?” I asked.
“About a mile south of town is a dam. It’s an immense structure. Holds back an extremely large lake. Without that dam, this town would be underwater. On top of the dam is a small, stone hut. That’s where you’ll find him.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “Simple as that?”
Saint Dane laughed. “Pendragon, please, is it ever as simple as that?”
He pulled out a golden pocket watch and checked the time.
“Dynamite has been placed all over that dam, thanks to my associates here. In just about, oh, ten minutes, it’s all going to explode and things around here are going to get very wet.”
My adrenaline spiked.
“So you’re giving us ten minutes to get to the hut and get him out? Is that what you’re saying?”
“With one small complication. I’ll give you a two minute head start. After that I’m sending my associates here, to stop you. Won’t that be exciting?”
Saint Dane leaned down and looked me square in the eye, saying, “You didn’t have the strength to succeed on First Earth. How will you handle this little challenge?”
Without thinking, I reached forward and quickly grabbed one of Saint Dane’s guns from its holster.
“Nicely done. Quick Draw,” he said, barely showing surprise. “Now what?”
I grabbed Loor’s hand and started to run.
“Yahoo!” Saint Dane called after us.
If we had any chance of getting to that dam in ten minutes, we needed the horses.
“What is dynamite?” Loor asked as we ran.
“It’s like tak,” I answered. “It’ll destroy the dam.”
We made it to the blacksmith barn in a few seconds. I jammed the six-shooter into my belt and we started to untie the horses.
“Does it matter if this town is destroyed?” Loor asked. “It is not real.”
“It’s not the town,” I answered quickly. “It’s Zetlin. If something happens to him we’ll never get the origin code and Lifelight will-“
Crack! Ping!
A bullet zinged off a metal bucket that was hanging near the barn door. It barely missed us.
“That wasn’t two minutes!” I shouted.
Either the desperados didn’t care, or they couldn’t tell time, because I was answered with a series of gunshots.
“Inside!” Loor commanded.
We grabbed the bridles of the horses and ran them inside the barn. Loor quickly closed the big doors. We were safe, but trapped, and the clock was ticking.
“What do those noisemakers do?” Loor said while pointing to the gun I had jammed in my belt.
“It shoots out small pieces of metal. They’re deadly. But it only fires six times and they have a lot more guns than we do. And to be honest, I’ve never even shot one before.”
More shots were fired from outside, shattering a window, making the horses whinny in fear.
“We gotta get outta here,” I said and ran to a door in the back of the splintered wood just over my head. To use a cliche Western phrase, they had us surrounded. I ran back to Loor and shouted, “You’re the soldier-in- training! What are we supposed to do?”
Loor wasn’t panicking, I’m not surprised to say. She coolly looked around the barn, seeing what we had to use.
She then said calmly, “The animals. What did you call it before? Stampede?”
I could have kissed her. It was brilliant and insane. There were about a dozen horses in stalls, plus ours. If we could get them moving together out of the barn, we might be able to use them as shields. I was more than ready to give it a try.
“Get them together!” Loor commanded.
We ran to opposite sides of the barn, throwing open the stalls and yelling at the horses to get out. It was kind of scary. The horses were already nervous because of the gunshots. Having two crazy people running around waving their arms made them even more excited. This was dangerous. One quick horse kick to the head and it would all be over.
After a few frantic seconds, we had all the horses gathered together in the center of the barn. They were bumping into each other, kicking at the ground, and whinnying. They weren’t happy about this at all.
“Go to the doors!” Loor yelled.
I ran to the big barn doors and grabbed the handles. Loor took our two horses with saddles and led them to the back of the pack.
“Are you ready?” she called out.
I was. So were the horses. They were starting to rear up and I was nearly stomped a couple of times. “Let’s go!” I shouted. “Open the doors!”
I threw open both doors. Loor gave off a sharp whistle, and the herd of horses charged out of the barn.
I barely had enough time to jump to the side before getting trampled. Loor ran forward with our two horses. Without a second to think about how crazy this was, I jumped on mine and we charged out after the fleeing herd.
Outside, it was a chaos of wild horses and dust. The horses blasted into the open and ran together toward the main street. Loor and I pushed our horses forward to stay as close to the wild herd as possible. We both crouched low in the saddle, trying to offer smaller targets. I kept expecting to hear gunshots, but they didn’t come. I guess there was enough confusion going on that the desperados didn’t want to waste their ammunition. Good for the horses, good for us.
We were out, and we had our horses. Now it was a race. We had to get to that dam and find Zetlin before the whole thing blew up, or the desperados stopped us.
“Which way?” Loor yelled.
I figured we came into town from one direction, so the dam must be in the other. I gave my horse a quick kick in the butt, and we were off. We charged down the main street of Old Glenville, flew past the church, and blasted along the dirt road leading south. Side by side we galloped along the road like a couple of bandits on the run.
I soon realized there was something else to worry about. As much as I’d like to pretend otherwise, I’m not a very good rider. This was freaking scary! The horses were fast, which was good, but I barely knew what I was doing. If I fell off at the speed we were going, something would get broken. Probably my head. I grabbed the reins with one hand, and had a death grip on the saddle horn with the other. I didn’t even look at Loor. She knew way more about riding than I did. I had no idea how much time had gone by, but every second counted. Slowing down was not an option. “There it is!” Loor called to me.
Sure enough, looming up in the distance, tucked into a ravine, was a huge stone dam. Saint Dane said it was a mile out of town, but it was so big it looked much closer. I could even see the small, stone building on top, right in the middle.
Bang!
We weren’t alone. I didn’t turn around to look because I was afraid I’d lose my balance. But Loor did. “They are coming,” she announced. “How many?” I asked. “All of them. Saint Dane, too.” Swell.
More shots were fired. I kept expecting to feel the sting of a bullet, but they must have been too far back to be accurate. We had to keep it that way.
The road forked. It was clear that the right fork would take us to a trail that led up the side of the ravine, and to the top of the dam. Without a word we both steered our flying horses onto the right path. The trail quickly grew narrow as it rose up along the side of the steep ravine. But we still pushed the horses on. We couldn’t risk being caught. Soon, we had risen up so high that there was a steep drop off to the left. I was in the lead. If my horse took one wrong step, adios.
The trail then entered a forest. Branches slapped at us from both sides, trying to knock us off. It was getting painful.
