Really Unusual Bad Boys (10 page)

“H
ow long?” the king asked.

“Another sunround at most.”

“How many?”

“Ten score.”

“Excuse me,” Princess Lois said, and thank goodness, because Anne had about a thousand questions herself. “I'm having some trouble with the whole ‘sunround' thing. I mean, not that I should be focusing on that particular issue right this second, but honest to God, it's really been bugging me. At first I thought it was about a year, but sometimes it sounds like it's only a day. I know ‘moonround' is a month, but—”

“It is easy to be confused,” Prince Damon said, smiling at his wife. Anne privately thought that Maltese was just a tiny bit handsomer, but she was certain the crown prince could have crossed over to her world, gone to Hollywood, and made more money than Clark Gable. “A sunround is many, many sunrounds, as many sunrounds as it takes to get through Time of Sowing, Time of Growth, Time of Reaping, Time of Sleeping. But for the sun to climb into the sky and then fall down, that is just a sunround.”

Anne looked at Lois, who was looking back at her. She almost smiled at the totally confused look on the princess's face. “What?” she asked.

Lois cleared her throat. “So what you're saying, sir, is that a sunround is a year, but a sunround is a day?”

“Yes,” the king, the crown prince, and Maltese all said in unison.

“You
got
that?” Lois exclaimed.

“Please, we must keep our attention on the dark travelers,” the king said, an almost absent reprimand. “If they are coming, it cannot bode well.”

“It hasn't before?” Lois asked. “I thought you guys didn't have wars.”

“There are occasional…skirmishes? Small fights?”

“Great.”

“What do they want?” Anne asked. “Where I'm from, the fight is for more territory—”

“I read somewhere that all fights are actually land wars,” Lois commented. “That no matter what the politicians said it was about, it was actually land spats. Revolutionary, Civil, World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf…”

“Oh my God,” Anne said, revolted. “There are more wars after Pearl Harbor?”

“Well…”

“It does not matter what they want,” the king said, again guiding them back to the subject at hand. “They must be stopped, and driven off.”

“Okay, uh, that's not too open-minded,” Lois said. “Will it hurt to hear them out?”

“They don't speak. They're animals,” Damon explained. “They come and try to make war, we defeat them, they leave. A few sunrounds later, they try again.”

“I assume you mean years and not days,” she muttered.

“And that's an interesting perspective, calling the dark travelers animals,” Anne commented, a little startled at the sudden, surprising burst of prejudice in what had seemed to be a friendly and welcoming people. Certainly they had made Gladys and Lois welcome, as well as Anne herself. “You know, since you all…um…”

“I don't think you should go there,” Lois suggested.

Anne wasn't sure what that meant, but she persisted. “Since you can all turn into animals. It seems, uh, odd, that you would call strangers animals and fight them off. And then tell visitors you don't have wars.”

“You are new here,” the king said, courteously but firmly. “You do not understand our ways.”

“We have learned in the past they do not understand us. They do not speak as we do; they care only to take what is not theirs.”

“Is that not what war is like at your home?” Maltese asked her.

“No, no. See, the Nazis invaded and then the Japanese joined up and they're…you know, they're hurting people and they hurt a whole bunch of us because they don't want to lose the—well, it's a totally different thing.”

“Nazis suck,” Lois agreed. “Don't sweat it, Anne. History backs you up.”

But she was troubled. The Japanese were wrong; the Germans were wrong. And Maltese's reaction to the dark travelers was also wrong, very very wrong. But, er, how, exactly? And what could she do about it?

“So what's the plan?” Lois asked, and again, Anne gave silent thanks. The outspoken princess was, as usual, collecting information she herself was after.

“You and Gladys and Loo and the little ones will—”

“—get our guns and help you guys go kick some ass,” Lois finished.

Anne laughed aloud at the look on Damon's face, then clapped a hand over her mouth as everyone looked at her.

“Except my mom doesn't have a gun,” the princess continued thoughtfully. “Not to mention the kids, obviously. I can lend Mom one from my footlocker, but she won't use it.”

“Why not send a party out to meet them?” Anne suggested. “Perhaps we can find out what they want.”

The men shook their heads, and Lois rolled her eyes at Anne.

“At the least, they'll know you're ready for them,” she persisted. “You might be able to run them off without anybody getting hurt or bombed. I mean killed.”

“It is not the way we deal with them,” the king said.

“Well, I'm not hiding while you go out and fight, pal, so just forget about it,” Lois informed the prince.

“What does it cost to try?” Anne persisted. “Lois could stay here and supervise while you send a small party out to talk to them. If things go badly, you've got time to get back here and prepare.”

“Who says the dark travelers can't beat them back? I wouldn't want to be in a footrace with any of them. I mean, no offense, fellas, but it sounds like these guys just wander around the desert all the time. They must be incredibly tough.”

“They're only half men,” the king sniffed.

“Animals,” Damon added.

“You mean…they
can't
change into the big cats like you boys do?” Anne asked, suddenly understanding.

“That's
your problem with them? But we can't change, either,” Lois said.

“Yes, but you cannot help it. You were born on another star. You have overcome your difficulties admirably. You don't skulk and sneak and steal land.”

“Oh, is that the difference?” Lois replied, but it was clear from her expression she didn't understand at all.

“T
hat was very sneaky,” Anne told Maltese as they neared the dark travelers.

“I cannot help it if I think you are wise, Loo.”

She grinned, and since she was on his back again, he couldn't see her. To her secret amazement, she and the princes and the king were riding back out to where Maltese had seen the travelers. Lois was marshaling the troops, the women, and the children back at the palace. Anne had never considered that for a moment, but instead persuaded Maltese to let her meet with the travelers. Well…bargained.

“Just so we understand, I'm only staying until Time of Reaping,” she reminded him. “Less than half a sunround.”

“Yes, I understand.”

And in return, the king allowed the unthinkable—for a stranger, a protected female, to meet the scum. Er, dark travelers.

It wasn't that they didn't think women could fight, Anne realized, wishing once again she had a drink. It was beyond foolish; she was running around in the desert (well,
she
wasn't, exactly) without a canteen. And no one had suggested one, which told her they simply weren't as susceptible to the heat and the sand as she was.

No, they thought women could fight just fine…in itself a novel experience. In fact, these people
valued
women who could fight—women like Lois. But the princes had to weigh that value against protecting future queens and princesses. And, she thought with a secret smile, Damon was so ridiculously protective of Lois, it was adorable and sort of funny at the same time, because Lois just would not stand for it, not for a moment.

Maltese, however, was a much more practical fellow. And they had quickly struck a bargain. She couldn't let such an opportunity go by, and if it meant lingering in the SandLands a bit longer than planned, well, she'd face the consequences of that later.

“I do not like this, my good son,” the king said in her head. Yech! Both for talking in her brain, and the sentiment.

“My good king, are you not tired of it always being the same with the dark travelers?” Maltese replied. “It costs nothing to give Loo her chance.”

“I dislike change,” the king replied, “but perhaps the perspective of a newcomer will be helpful. And I would wish to put an end to the difficulties between you and your visitor.”

In other words,
Anne thought,
the old guy wants his son to settle down. And I guess I'm in line for the job. Because I fell into the pool when Maltese wished for me! Ridiculous.

Still, it was nice to be included. She was riding Maltese, as usual, while Damon and the king ran along either side of them,
sans
riders. The other prince, whose name she'd unfortunately forgotten, had gone hunting a few days ago and would not return in time.

If it was me, I'd be mad,
she thought, momentarily sorry for the absent prince.

But it's not me,
she thought, and was for a moment joyously, deliriously happy. She felt like she was starting an adventure, like the first day of Basic, like the day she'd left home. As for the possible danger, she knew to her bones Maltese wouldn't let anything happen to her. That feeling was very strange, but also comforting.

 

She slid off Maltese's back and watched the dark travelers approach. They didn't look terribly frightening. In fact, they looked dusty and hot and tired, like regular people at the end of a particularly long day in the fields, not the lowlife boogeymen the royal family had made them out to be.

Their robes were long and black (in the desert? she thought incredulously) and flapped in the wind. Their large hoods were off and hung down almost to their waists. And they were all brunettes, their hair varying lengths and shades of brown.

The royal family, Anne realized with a burst of excitement, were all blond. In fact, except for Lois and Gladys and Anne herself, everyone was blond. It was a country of Betty Grables and Errol Flynns! (Er, wait, wasn't Flynn a brunette? Oh, never mind.) Yes, a country of blonds…except for the dark travelers, of course. But this wasn't really their land, was it? No brunettes allowed.

They looked human, too, she realized as the man in front opened his mouth to speak.
If I was riding the bus on the base and these fellas got on, I wouldn't give any of them a second look.

She supposed that was part of the problem. In a land of godlike creatures, the dark travelers had committed the sin of being ordinary.

“Glzpllk sltsl dkst,”
the man in front said, and he interspersed the small pause between consonant clusters with a glottal click.

“I'm sorry, we don't understand you,” Anne said, hoping he would reply.

“Sltsl gdpsll wjjkswwkkt?”

“It's gibberish,” the king sniffed. “In a moment they will begin to quarrel and fight us.”

“It's not gibberish,” she corrected him, almost sharply. “It sounds harsh to our ears because they don't use vowels.”

“Sltsl gdpsll wjjkswwkkt?”

“Do…not…fight…else…shalt…be…defeated,” the king said slowly and loudly.

“Sltsl…gdpsll…wjjkswwkkt?”

“DO…NOT…FIGHT! ELSE…SHALT…BE…DEFEATED!”

“SLTSL…GDSPLL…WJJKSWWKKT!”

“Okay, that's enough of that right now,” Anne said. “For heaven's sake. It doesn't matter how loud you are, or how slow, if neither of you understands a word.”

“We did warn you,” Damon said mildly.

She ignored that. “It's obviously a standard greeting; note how they're repeating the same consonant set. It's not gibberish, it's definitely a language.” She clicked her tongue at the man in the lead, and though he did not smile, the frown wrinkles in his forehead smoothed out. “It'll be hard to learn…God, it'll be hard! Worse than Mandarin. But I think it can be done.”

“How…how do you know these things?” Maltese asked in amazement.

“I'm studying dialects at the base,” she replied. “I was supposed to be sent overseas to—well, we were still working on that while I was in training.” At their looks of confusion (the ones who
didn't
speak her language seemed to be following it better), she elaborated. “I'm…when you sign up to fight, you have to take a lot of tests, and all my tests showed that I have a knack for languages…do you know ‘knack'? Yes? One time we had a guy from Paris—I mean he was originally from Paris, but he'd been living in America for years and years—he was on the farm for a couple of months helping my dad with the spring planting, and he taught me French. I was pretty fluent in time for the Fourth of July picnic.”

“Are you telling us you can speak their tongue?”

“Give me a couple of months first.”

Maltese smiled at her, and she couldn't help smiling back. When he looked at her like that, his whole face lit up and it was nearly impossible to resist.

“You are wonderful,” he said.