“Gladwin!” Tamsyn cried, as the ancient spirit of the Blacksmith faded from sight.
Lee was staring at her, looking alarmed and worried at the same time.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Tamsyn found herself crying and wasn’t sure why. Lee simply embraced her and gave her a hug.
“What the fuck was that about?” he asked.
“We have to light the fires at his old smithy. It’s in some woods behind a place called Corrletts Cave,” she said.
“On what planet is that?”
“A fair walking distance from here, apparently.”
“What just happened?”
“Why?”
“You acted as if I wasn’t here. You were talking to someone I couldn’t see in a language I couldn’t understand. What happened?”
“I met the blacksmith that forged the sword. I now know what we have to do and roughly, where we have to do it.”
“Brilliant, so, it’s nearly over?”
“No, not really. The hard part will be to rebuild the forge, light it and then, return the sword to the flames.”
“Oh. So, what do we do now?”
“We look at a map and find out where this cave is.”
“Can we do this over lunch?” Lee asked, getting his priorities sorted.
Mitchell eased his Kawasaki off the ferry and rode carefully out of the port. He enjoyed feeling free of the people on the ferry, even though he had very little to do with any of them. Mitch did not fit most people’s image of a Special Forces specialist, but in reality, few of them ever did. He was twenty-eight, five foot eight and slim. Apart from slightly prominent ears, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about him – he was instantly forgettable, which was why he was so good at what he did.
He’d been invalided out of the Regiment due to injuries sustained in the Middle East.
Oh, don’t mistake the situation, they’d looked after him very well once he’d returned to their lines, but the psychological damage done by those three weeks in captivity by ISIS rendered him too unreliable to go back to do what he used to do. If anything, he’d become too efficient at killing – too determined to payback, with interest.
Fluent in Arabic, he had escaped from ISIS in Mosul, as they believed him to be just another local peasant who would come around to their way of thinking. He’d been deep undercover keeping too close a watch on the ISIS insurgents when he’d been caught.
ISIS was trying to recruit fighters, as so many of their men were being killed by the coalition. They grabbed all able-bodied men in the region and hoped to persuade them to become either fighters or human bombs.
If persuasion didn’t work, then they would torture and beat the individuals and then, drug them to comply.
They’d tried persuasion and then, torture with Mitchell, and after that failed, were about to administer heroin to turn him into a mobile bomb and send him off towards the advancing Iraqi army.
Although badly beaten, Mitchell had feigned being more severely injured than he really was. They sent two men in to deal with him, and they had not expected him to be ready for them. One carried a syringe and the other an AK47 slung over his shoulder.
It took Mitch just moments to disarm the man with the syringe, plunging the needle into the man’s neck, and then, he knocked the gunman unconscious as he tried to unsling his weapon.
He’d taken their black, quasi-military combats and left the stronghold taking the weapon. He discovered their explosives cache and managed to bluff his way in. He removed several pounds of plastic explosive (which he noted was American made) and rigged it all over their main building. However, he was seen and a fire-fight ensued. Seven ISIS fighters died and Mitch escaped, as the entire building erupted as the explosives ignited.
Five days later, suffering from dehydration and exhaustion, he was picked up by a Kurdish patrol and eventually, was airlifted by a British helicopter to hospital.
As he had not been officially there, they were unable to admit to what he had been doing. A medical evaluation certified him physically fit after a period of recuperation but psychologically scarred to be too volatile and therefore, not recommended to continue with his selected duties. Unwilling to return to normal soldiering, Mitchell elected to leave, on the promise of good employment by similarly ‘retired’ members of the regiment.
Many of his erstwhile colleagues were now protecting important installations in a variety of places where there were those determined to remove said installations. There were no rules as to how one prevented those who opposed you, and that suited Mitchell down to the ground.
So far, that employment had not come to fruition, until a phone call from a certain Matthew Brand.
Matthew, as many others who had met the ex-soldier, was unimpressed by Mitch’s presence. However, he knew enough of what he was capable so tried to forget how unassuming he appeared.
He explained his problem.
“Why not go to the police?” Mitch had sensibly asked.
Matthew had to admit to holding the sword illegally. Mitchell was not desperate enough to feel this was something for him, but when Matthew explained about the mysterious Russian who might just turn out to be an American who faked his own death, Mitch was intrigued enough to agree to undertake the recovery of the sword.
“All I know is a girl and a young man with a motorcycle are somewhere near Peel Castle on the Isle of Man,” he said, passing over the single photograph of the bike and the two helmeted figures.
Mitch thought the girl had a nice figure.
“Who is she?”
Matthew had to admit to not being certain.
“I think she’s a Cornish girl who came to the house with her aunt to help me with some Celtic inscriptions.”
“Did she see the sword?”
“No.”
“Did she know it was here?”
“No. I told her it was in London waiting a valuation by experts.”
“What about her boyfriend; who’s he?”
“No idea.”
“He looks a big bloke; is he ex-mob?”
“Mob?”
“Army. Is he an ex-squaddie?”
“I have no idea. If he was the motorcycle courier, then he never took his helmet off.”
“Why?”
“If the legends are right, then they could be trying to return the sword to the forge that birthed it.”
“Why did they want the sword so badly?”
“I have no idea. I think that perhaps they believe the ludicrous legends and think that the sword has magical qualities. To be honest, I don’t care why; I just want my sword back!”
“What about those responsible?”
Matthew stared at Mitchell for a moment.
“What?”
“What do you want done with the people who took the sword; like the American?”
“Nothing. I just want the sword back.”
“And if they don’t want to hand it over?”
“Then, I don’t give a shit what happens to them. I’m paying you a lot of money to get the sword back, not to kill anyone. If they happen to die in the process, then that is nothing to do with me.”
“How much is it worth?”
“The sword?”
Mitch gave the man a disparaging look.
“Of course, the sword.”
“It’s priceless. It could be King Arthur’s sword. If it went to auction, it might fetch perhaps a couple of million, who knows. I’d never sell it, in any case.”
They came to an understanding. Matthew paid four thousand pounds to Mitch, with the promise of another twenty thousand on receipt of the sword – no questions asked.
He rode fast and hard to Peel, hoping that this would be an easy twenty-four grand. The road was dry and relatively empty, so it didn’t take him long. There were many motorcyclists around, so he had to check to see if they were the target couple.
He wanted to keep his expenses low, so he stayed at a caravan park in a small mobile home on a special site for visitors to the TT races. It was cheap and cheerful, and he hoped to find the target pair staying there as well. That would have made life so much easier.