Matt Archer: Legend (9 page)

I watched the men as the colonel laid out the specifics,
especially when he backed up the stories with slides of dead monsters.
Lanningham swallowed a lot, like he was forcing puke down his throat. Dorland
stared at the pictures with detachment, as if he was analyzing each scene for
relevant information. Both those reactions were reasonable, in my opinion.

Tyson worried me, though. His eyes lit up at each new
monster. All he needed was a jumbo bucket of popcorn, and he could be watching
a B movie marathon rather than a military briefing. He didn’t look scared, or
cautious. Not one bit. Like usual, the knife-spirit keyed in on something I
couldn’t have. I’d have to watch Tyson close; I had a feeling he’d flip when he
saw his first monster, probably right when I needed backup the most.

Finally, the colonel put up a picture of me looking dead crazy
and covered in gold-tinged blood. Everyone turned to stare at me in unison.
Even Tyson looked unsettled, and no wonder. That picture was particularly
telling; I’d just finished off a drove of Kali demons in the Himalayas. It was
also the first time the knife had really taken me over during battle. The Matt
in the picture clearly wasn’t me and the gleam in my eyes hinted at something otherworldly.
Something dangerous.

Mike shifted in his seat. I guessed he hadn’t seen this
picture, either. But he’d seen me that night and claimed it still freaked him
out. Now I could see why; I looked psycho and I really hoped Mom would never
see me like that. She’d wonder what kind of demon spawn she’d given birth to.

“I think that’s enough for today,” the colonel said. “Be
back here at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow. Dismissed. ”

The three new guys rose and filed from the room. Once the
door closed, I asked, “So…what’s the bad news?”

Colonel Black started. “You think I didn’t tell them
everything?”

“Hardly,” I said. “You told them ‘Botswana,’ ‘Monsters,’’
‘keep Matt alive.’ Oh, and showed them that I’m a dangerous, crazy guy who
likes to stab things. That information may’ve been enough for them to handle
today, but I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, sir.”

The colonel took a seat next to me. “Brandt thinks he’s
finally found the shaman the Lions were after during the last wave of monsters.
He’s part of the San people, the Bushmen, living on a settlement in the
Kalahari desert.”

“Well, that’s
good
news, right?” My blood started
pumping. Maybe we were about to get more answers. “Could this shaman help us
pinpoint the source of the new attacks?”

The colonel shook his head. “No—because he’s dead.”

Join the army, see the world, they said. I just never
thought I’d be doing it before my seventeenth birthday. I’d kind of hoped to
visit cool places like Spain and Tokyo, not places that weren’t even on a
standard map. I looked out the window of the Humvee at the desert stretching to
the horizon. Yeah, this was not your typical garden spot.

While it was fall in Montana, it was late spring in the
Kalahari. The sky arched far and blue without a cloud to be seen, only a
merciless sun that beat down on our helmets with a white light. Spring was
short here— about six weeks long at most. The desert was on the cusp of summer
and temperatures reached ninety-five by three in the afternoon. What surprised
me, though, was that despite the heat and lack of water, plants still grew:
grasses, the occasional tree. Even so, this wasn’t the most friendly land to
call home.

Our Humvees fought the sand between giant dunes that reached
dozens of feet above our heads. I squirmed in my seat, fighting off a yawn. My
muscles were stiff from sitting for so long and the heat baking my BDUs wasn’t
too comfortable, either. We’d been driving for hours and still hadn’t reached
the outpost where Brandt’s team was stationed. It was supposedly an easy drive
from base camp to the nearest San village, the one where the dead shaman had
once lived. Apparently this village had one foot in the old ways, and one foot
in the new. They’d been “resettled” away from their ancestral lands on the game
preserve and now raised cattle on the savannah rather than hunting and
gathering like traditional clans did. Some clans had won the right to return to
the game preserve, but this group had decided to stay where they were.

Lulled by the rocking Humvee, I’d almost nodded off when
Johnson shook my arm. “We’re here.”

I sat up and stretched, feeling stupid with exhaustion, and
peered out the window. Brandt’s camp looked like a dozen others I’d seen, just
with different scenery. Unlike Afghanistan, this desert wasn’t mountainous and
the heat was an entirely different animal than the muggy rainforests of Peru.
Still, there was a sameness to it, too.

Four canvas tents huddled together inside a razor wire
fence. I found out later that the wire wasn’t to defend against humans, but
more to keep out roving wildlife. It wasn’t to fend off demons, that was for
sure; any monster worth its hide would cut through razor wire like it was made
of spider webs.

A few soldiers sat on upended crates near the entrance to
camp, eating MREs, but popped to attention the second they saw Uncle Mike coming.
An oak leaf—denoting a major’s rank—sewn onto his BDU pocket caused that kind
of behavior a lot.

“Gentlemen, we’re the reinforcements Colonel Black sent. Is
Captain Brandt around?” Uncle Mike asked.

A braying laugh came from the nearest tent. “Know what three
eights and two Jacks mean, Baker? Means I’m taking your money.”

I knew that laugh…I’d heard it mocking me before. Brandt.

One of the privates guarding the gate winced and gave Uncle
Mike an apologetic glance. “Yes, Major. I’ll…just take you to him, sir.”

“Seems Brandt hasn’t changed much since the last time I saw
him,” I said to Johnson. “He’s still a jackass, huh?”

Johnson rumbled a laugh. “More than you know, kid. I can’t
wait to see how you two get along.”

The last time I saw Brandt, it was right after I’d gone
blind and collapsed in a conference room at the Pentagon. Being in close
proximity to all five knives had short circuited my wiring somehow. While the
whole thing was freaking terrifying, I’d gotten better once Jorge spread everyone
out. Brandt had laughed about it later, like it had been funny to see me
splayed on the floor, unable to see.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure how well we’d get along, either.

The other private led us to a tent on the far side of camp.
“We set this up for you today, sir. You should have everything you need, but if
I can assist in any way, my name’s Cordry, sir.”

“Thank you, Cordry,” Johnson said. He turned to Lanningham.
“Get us settled in. I need to see a man about a horse.”

He walked off whistling and Lanningham , his eyebrow
quirked, asked, “Horse?”

I grinned. “He’s visiting the latrine.”

I left the new guys to unpack and went to find our other
wielder. Three soldiers came out of the tent I’d now call the “casino” for the
duration of the mission and disappeared like scalded cats. Uncle Mike followed,
clenching a muscle in his jaw, a sure sign someone had gotten chewed out. I was
glad that it wasn’t me for once.

“Thought I’d say hi to Brandt,” I said, trying for casual,
like I wasn’t dying to know what had just happened.

Uncle Mike closed his eyes for a ten count. “Be my guest.”
He started toward our new tent. “And Matt? Show him how a real wielder behaves,
would you?”

I nodded at Mike’s back as he left. “It’d be my pleasure.”

After waiting a respectful sixty seconds, I poked my head
inside the casino. “Captain, what’s up?”

Brandt cocked his head. He was sitting on the edge of his
bunk, and he didn’t look too happy to see me. “Aren’t you supposed to call me
‘sir,’ kid?”

“Not anymore,” I said. “Guess the colonel didn’t tell you
that the rest of the team is supposed to treat me like an officer. Which also
means you shouldn’t call me ‘kid.’”

Now, Colonel Black hadn’t
exactly
said anything of
the sort, but what Brandt didn’t know wouldn’t kill him, right?

Brandt stood slowly. He hadn’t changed much in the last
year; he was still lean as a post, with close-cropped dark hair and perpetual
smirk. He probably thought to be intimidating as he crossed the tent to stand
toe-to-toe with me, but when he closed in, he had to look up to meet my eyes
and shock wiped that cocky smile right off his face. It was always a rude
awakening for these guys when they realized I’d become taller, bigger and
likely stronger than they were.

I liked it that way.

“Have you grown?” he asked, staring at me like I was some
kind of science experiment gone wrong. “No, really, were you this tall last
year in D.C?”

“Nearly,” I said, “but what you’re probably seeing is the
extra twenty pounds of muscle I put on since the wielders’ summit. I run close
to two-ten these days.”

“Huh.” Brandt took a step back. “Okay, so here’s how this is
going to be. My guys are mine. Major Tannen may be ranking officer, but he’s on
your
team, not mine. I don’t know what kind of agenda the colonel has
here, but I’ve got my own thing working with the locals, so try not to screw it
up.”

His own thing? What was Brandt doing out here? “I don’t take
orders from anyone but the major or the knife-spirit.”

“You still going on about that voodoo?” Brandt barked a
laugh. “I got serious doubts about your sanity, Archer, because my knife ain’t
never done more than buzz, and it sure doesn’t control my actions. It’s a tool.
A damned good tool, let’s be clear, but it’s not calling the shots.” He flopped
back on his cot, crossing his ankles. “I’ve heard about your little freak shows
out in the field, when you get all possessed and stuff, and I’m not buying into
your crazy.”

Tink growled in my head and I heard a faint, contrite murmur
off to the side. Great, that had to be Brandt’s knife-spirit, apologizing for
its giant assclown of a wielder. “That ‘crazy’ might save your life someday,
but if you want to believe it’s all voodoo, be my guest. Maybe we’ll luck out
and your knife will transfer over to someone else.”

“Like yours left the major for you?” Brant asked. “Yeah,
because that’s worked so well.”

It has worked out well!
Tink sounded scandalized,
which was enough to tell me to get out of this tent before I lost my temper…or
control of my own fists when she called on me to beat Brandt to a pulp.

I paused at the flap on my way out. “No wonder you haven’t
made progress here. If you don’t believe in your knife, how can you be
effective in the field? Given the lack of progress, I guess we have our
answer—you can’t.”

With that, I left him spluttering curses at my back.

* * *

“Wait, say that again,” Johnson said, laughing. “What’d you
just call Brandt?”

I grinned and stretched out on my cot. We’d finished a terse
dinner outside with the combined group and beat a quick retreat to our own tent
soon after. Tyson was the only one who stayed to mingle with Brandt’s team. “A
squib. You know, from
Harry Potter
. The wizards who can’t do magic. He
says his knife-spirit never talks to him, when everyone else can hear them.
Only thing I can figure is that he’s a knife-squib.”

Uncle Mike heaved a sigh. “Matt, things are uneasy enough
without you resorting to name calling. The captain’s a jerk, we all know that,
but his knife chose him over a dozen other men. There must be a reason he can
wield it, even if he can’t hear the spirit talking to him.”

“Maybe so, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep an eye on
him,” I muttered. “He’s trouble.”

“Yes, well, I know someone else who’s going to be in
trouble, and that’s you if you don’t get to work on your lessons,” Uncle Mike
said, giving me a pointed glare. “Why don’t you spend the next few hours
conjugating some sentences rather than worrying about Brandt?”

Johnson grinned. “He said ‘conjugate.’”

“Here’s a news flash—juniors don’t do that kind of thing.” I
grabbed my laptop and stalked to the other side of the tent, leaving them to
decide exactly what I meant by that.

Two hours later, after I’d completed two Algebra II lessons
(boring) and a section of chemistry (worse), I pulled my headphones out of my
ears and realized everyone else had gone to sleep around me. Johnson’s snores
were raising the roof of the tent, so I put the headphones back in and let a
history lesson on Millard Fillmore lull me to sleep.

The night passed without incident; I didn’t even have
nightmares for once. Maybe boring myself to sleep was the trick. Plus, for some
weird reason, I woke up mulling over the fact that Daniel Webster—not the
dictionary guy—was Fillmore’s Secretary of State. I didn’t remember hearing
that part of the lesson, but learning by osmosis was a definite bonus.

When I showed up for breakfast, Brandt called out, “Nice of
you to join us, Mr. Archer.”

I looked around. Only about half the team was assembled, and
no one seemed ready to roll. Just Brandt being a jerkweed.

Ignoring the barb, I picked up my first MRE of the
day—breakfast sausages and hash browns, along with canned peaches—and choked
down my food. Eating MREs always made me think of Lieutenant Patterson. He told
me the food sucked but that I couldn’t run around on empty, so I had to eat.
I’d taken his advice to heart, eating everything I was given even if I had to
hold my nose to do it.

The thought of the men we lost made my hash browns stick in
my throat a little. Mike said everyone knew the risks, and I thought I’d
accepted the fact that the men in my unit were basically on point to die for me
if necessary, but it still disturbed me. If I died, would the knife transfer to
someone else?

“I can’t let anybody else die for me, Tink.” I stared hard
at the red sand under my boots. “Not if someone else can do my job.”

This is not your burden to carry.
The knife-spirit’s
voice was calm this morning. Tink was in soothe mode.
You are the one I
searched for. I’ve told you before that we are bound together; there is no one
else. The sacrifices are terrible, but necessary, and this morning, you’ll find
out why.

“What?” I gasped.

Soon. It’s not time, yet.

Then the spirit clammed up, like usual.

My thoughts churned for a good half-hour while everyone else
prepared to go. We were headed to the village Brandt had heard about, and
traveling light, so it didn’t take long to load up our equipment. Johnson,
Lanningham and Uncle Mike came as my backup. Brandt brought two of his people
as well; the rest would stay behind and guard camp.

“We’re going to pick up a guide; a local I’ve been in
contact with,” Brandt said as we pulled out in the Humvee. “He knows the way
out to the village. It’s only about thirty miles from here, but the road is
rough, so it’ll take a good hour or more.”

Twenty minutes later we caught up with Brandt’s guide, a man
named Twi who spoke decent English and seemed grateful for a ride. He met us at
a crossroads between the main dirt track we’d been taking, and a much rougher
trail that ran southwest away from camp. Twi told us he had walked six miles to
the rendezvous point. Another reason to hate Brandt—why didn’t he think to pick
the guy up instead of making him walk?

The morning grew toasty as our Humvee bounced over holes and
small stones and tough roots left by scrubby plants. The hour-long trip Brandt
had promised stretched out to ninety minutes—an agonizing, bone-jarring,
teeth-rattling ninety minutes. From the consternated look on Brandt’s face, he
hadn’t expected the trip to take this long, either, no matter what he told us
before we left.

Based on what I’d seen so far, I started to think Brandt was
cutting corners, not doing the recon the colonel expected. Had he actually met
the people in the village where the medicine man lived, or was he dragging us
to BFE based on a rumor ? Maybe I was right; maybe Africa’s problems weren’t
only an unnaturally high concentration of monsters, but also because their
assigned wielder didn’t care. I vowed to find out the truth. The people here
deserved better from us.

We finally pulled into the dusty village at ten-thirty, two
hours after we picked up Twi. A dozen or so ramshackle huts ringed a small
gathering area with a well and a fire pit. On the far side of camp, crops
struggled to grow in the arid heat and a few thin cows tore up savannah grasses
to eat. My heart sank; the villages I’d visited in Afghanistan looked
cosmopolitan compared to this and I started to feel guilty for complaining
about the quality of the food in my MREs.