Chapter 1

This dream stunk. It literally stunk. I couldn’t recall ever smelling anything in a dream before, and I hoped to God this wasn’t a permanent change. Or if it was, that my future dreams would be a lot more fragrant than this one.

I was striding through an encampment of soldiers who obviously hadn’t bathed in the last two months. That alone, the act of walking -feeling my legs stretching out, one after the other, hearing the crunch of stone and earth underneath my feet- made the dream a pleasurable one, the smell notwithstanding

I was evidently among friends. Men were sitting with bows beside them checking their arrows. They nodded to me as I passed. The better-dressed men, who sat in smaller groups sharpening their swords, raised their hands in greeting. I was never that interested in history, but my guess, based simply on the movies that I had seen, was that I had put myself in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. I smiled and waved a salute.

It had evidently just stopped raining. Our camp was a field of mud, and the brown and gold leaves on the trees to the north and west of us were still heavy with water. It was evening, and it became clear as I walked that a number of us were headed to some sort of meeting. I was dressed slightly better than most of the men, in a light blue tunic underneath a gray cape of some sort. I had high leather boots that kept the mud from my feet. Ahead of me a large group had gathered, and, as I joined them, a man in a far more sumptuous tunic than mine had leapt atop a log to address us.

I could hear little of the speech at the start. The men around me were offering their own comments on it, drowning out the speaker.

“What good’s a passport home with them out there?” one man scoffed. “Sittin’ on the bloody way, ain’t they?”

Although his friends roared in cynical approval, the crowd gradually grew quiet. It had become that this speech was worth listening to. The cynicism didn’t stop, naturally. The first man suggested to his companions that he wouldn’t mind being a gentleman in England now a-bed himself, while another added that he’d like to be holding his manhood while he was at it.

But the rest of the group paid them no attention at all. The speaker had them in the palm of his hand. He was brilliant, his speech a rhythmic incantation of patriotic fervor that was taking these few, these happy few, this band of brothers, and turning them into an army that would, if nothing else, die happily in his service when battle was joined tomorrow morning.

It wasn’t until he reached the end, his voice lost in the prolonged cheering of every single man with whom I was standing, my own among them, that I realized that he was a fraud. I nearly stumbled as I recalled that I had declaimed this speech myself, to my roommates back in college, like every other English major who thought himself the first to discover the power of Shakespeare’s words.

“And gentlemen in England now a-bed
shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
that fought with us upon St. Crispin’s Day.”

This was King Henry V, goddamn it. And not the real King Henry V either. This was Kenneth Branagh, whose movie version of the play I had watched only a few years earlier.

I was dreaming about being in a movie. A movie I could smell. Huh.

The speech over, I returned to my own tent and fell asleep. I awoke in the dream the next morning, and watched the Battle of Agincourt unfold before me. Or not unfold, as the case turned out to be. Assisted by a young squire, I dressed in my armor and strode out to the field of battle, once again reveling in the act of walking. I stood to the rear, proper coward that I was, watching the king deploy his forces between the two woods that flanked the road. We waited there for four hours, doing absolutely nothing. I knew little of the battle itself. The other fellows in front of us would be French, I knew. And we were supposed to win, weren’t we?

“My Lord Handley.” A squire had come running back to me from the front. “The king requests that you attend him now. He seeks his council’s wisdom ‘fore the fray.”

“The king?” I asked, looking around to see if there were perhaps some other Lord Handley he was looking for. “Wants to see me?”

It was a stupid question. I knew even in the dream that my name was Handley. My Lord Handley was a bit much, though. I was usually happy to answer to Rick. Or Hando, which is what some of my co-workers at the metro desk of the Charleston Messenger liked to call me.

“My Lord?” the squire asked.

“Lead on, MacDuff,” I said, suppressing a grin. He stopped in his tracks and stared at me with astonishment as if I had somehow remembered his name from some previous meeting.

“Just go.”

I waved him ahead of me.

“Handley,” roared Branagh as I joined him under the pavilion at the center of the line of battle. “You see the problem that we face, my friend. The French would sit there, twid their thumbs, and laugh. We must perforce attack, yet few we are; and twenty thousand Frenchmen sit astride the road toward home.”

“Uh, yeah. I do see that. Sire.”

I looked out over the field. Compared with them, we looked like a couple of policeman trying to hold back a demonstration.

He roared again and clapped me on the back, sending me stumbling forward amid the laughter of his advisors.

“And I would have your counsel, too, my Lord,” he said. “My Gloucester here says wait, while Exeter would have us charge their line and mow them down.”

I pretended to study the field. There was something about Agincourt that was tugging at me, some half-remembered fact that made this battle stand out. I probably should have taken a few more history courses in college.

“So, to number our advantages here,” I said, “we have, uh...”

We had large groups of longbowmen on the right and left of our line, behind pointed wooden stakes driven into the ground. Two smaller groups of archers divided three groups of footmen. The French, as I looked at them sitting there five hundred feet to our east, appeared to have, in addition to far more men, distinct groups of cavalry and crossbowmen.

“We have these bigger bows, for one thing.”

“Quite so, my Lord,” said one of the king’s other advisers, “our reach exceeds theirs far.”

That was it - longbows.

“So maybe if we shoot ‘em,” I said, “and kill a couple of ‘em, maybe they’ll get pissed and attack you, right? I mean us.”

“We are too far, my Lord.” Exeter’s voice matched the sneer on his face. “Three hundred feet.”

“Yeah, well, go ahead and charge the line, then, pal,” I retorted with more swagger than I felt. “No doubt they’ll just step aside and let us through.”

“Pissed!” exulted the king, who had paid no attention to our little spat. “Pissed is what we need, my valued friend. Raleigh, Prestwich: have the archers up stakes. And move them down the hill to find their range.”

“But Sire,” my debating partner objected, “the French will not stand idly by.”

“We shall see, my Lord. At the least we move.”

Raleigh and Prestwich dashed off to give their orders, and in a few moments all of the archers in the line turned as one and gave the king a look that suggested he was absolutely insane. But he was the king. They took heavy wooden mallets and pounded the six-foot stakes out of the ground. Our entire army moved toward the French and the archers dutifully pounded their stakes back into the ground. The French in fact did sit idly by, not even bothering to stand up as they watched. Apparently they were too busy with lunch, and paused only occasionally to shout insults that apparently called into question the chastity of our wives and mothers. They watched as the archers re-sharpened the points of their stakes and returned their attention to their bows.

At this point, Henry ordered the archers to loose a few flights of arrows. The French, very fortunately, were idiots. They reacted not by backing up a few feet, which would have allowed them a few more hours within which to insult us. Moreover, it would have resulted, in the long term, in our having to try to force them out of the way in order to prevent ourselves from starving. No, as I had “predicted,” they just got angry. Those damn English are shooting arrows at us! Let’s go teach them a lesson, shall we?

Over the course of the afternoon it turned into a slaughter. The French cavalry charged, ran headlong into the stakes, and turned to retreat. They promptly mowed down their own men, leaving my English colleagues little to do but knock the stunned French on their heads and take them prisoner. By nightfall, the field was ours, the French army having disintegrated and dissolved into the countryside.

I was feeling pretty good myself. My lords Gloucester, Bedford and Warwick feasted me as the architect of a great military strategy. My recollection was that my advice had been limited to “so just shoot ‘em,” but they seemed to feel that it was my psychological insight into the French response that had led to our success. That was fine with me. By the time I wandered drunkenly off to bed, I was on the point of suggesting that I was in fact the greatest military strategist since Napoleon. Very fortunately, I did not, as I would have then had to explain who Napoleon was. Or was going to be.

I woke the next day still in the dream, to yet another summons from the King. He was dressed now in rich purple robes, and smiled at me and kissed me on both cheeks as I was led to his room in a nearby castle.

“Katherine is mine, of course, but what for you?” he asked me.

“Beg pardon, sire?” I asked. “What what for me?”

He laughed heartily. “Her retinue is ours, my Lord. Your choice?”

He clapped his hands and a line of shy, beautiful young women entered the room. With the emphasis on young.

“They can’t even be sixteen!” I objected. “Sire?”

“Sixteen?” Henry said with a laugh. He strolled down the line, cupping a chin, stroking a cheek as the girls all giggled at him. “Nor fifteen yet unless I’m treated false. And each as wont to flower as the next.”

They all blushed becomingly, but I was having none of it.

“Seriously? They’re all fourteen years old? Thank you anyway, er, Sire. I must decline your, um, offer.”

My rejection stunned him. It had surprised me too; I hadn’t had a sex dream in several months now. A dream in which I both walked and had sex was almost too good to be true. But dreaming about sex with a fourteen-year-old girl was a little much even for someone as desperate as me.

“God’s teeth, my Lord,” he said calmly, although he still obviously thought I was nuts. “There is that older one. But she is not like these, all pure and white.”

I nodded. I could live with that. “She’s eighteen, right?”

“Bring forth the older maid,” the King called toward the back room.

“And kill her not?” MacDuff asked, popping his head in from the other room.

The King shook his head. “Our hero has much stranger tastes than we.”

MacDuff led out an absolutely gorgeous blonde girl. Kill her? Just because she was eighteen?

“Monsieur?” she said, blushing just as shyly as the others had despite her evident lack of “purity.”

I smiled at her. The high school French I recalled consisted of “Comme ci, comme ça,” and “allez au tableau-noir.” “So-so” and “go to the blackboard,” neither of them of much use in the sort of conversation that I was hoping to have.

It turned out that we needed no words. She took me by the hand and led me back to a sumptuous bedroom. I watched her disrobe, teasing me with one garment after another as I finally began to discern the curve of her hips and the swell of her breasts. When the last garment finally fell to the floor, she pirouetted before me, enjoying my sharp intake of breath as she displayed her dove-white breasts, her puffy pubic mound, covered with hair so golden and sparse that her wet desire was already evident, and the perfectly rounded ass perched on those long, slender legs. I reached for her, and she reached for my breeches, her fingers expertly finding the belt and the buttons. Her heart-shaped face had a broad, knowing smile on it, her eyes twinkling as she brushed her fingers across my obvious erection.

And then I woke up. I was pissed. Had I woken up when I first encountered the unbelievable stench of that camp? No, I had not. Had I woken up when that one French charge had finally penetrated to the king’s guard, and I found myself in hand to hand combat with someone who clearly knew how to handle a sword, and would likely have cleft me in half if he had not tripped on the body of a dead comrade, allowing me to poke him with my own sword? Had I woken up as the blood of my comrades and their enemies filled the air around me along with the screams of hundreds of the “happy few” I had stood with? No, I had not awakened then either. I had waited until I was about to have sex with a fifteenth-century nymphomaniac. And woken up then. Oh yeah, that was scary. Thank God I didn’t have to dream about that.

“So what have you learned?”

I sat bolt upright in bed. I was able to make out a shadowy figure sitting in a chair at the end of the bed.

“Who are you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

He waved his hands and the room was bathed in pale light. I was not in my bedroom this time either, but in a laboratory of some sort. To my right was a bank of monitors, to my left a wall filled with illegible notations. The “bed” on which I was lying was a cold metal table. Apparently this was a set of nested dreams, one inside the other.

My new friend was a short man whose silver-grey robe that made him look like an extra from some science fiction movie. He inclined his head toward me and smiled with a sort of childish eagerness.

“I am Wizen,” he said. “So what did you learn?”

“About what?” I asked.

“Your trip. The battle.”

“That was your doing?” I asked. “You put me there?”

He nodded and smiled again.

“And what did you learn?”

“Asshole,” I muttered. For a guy I’d dreamed up, he was an obnoxious little son of a bitch.

“I don’t suppose you could put me back, Mr. Wizard? I haven’t had a good sex dream in about three months now. Let alone any actual sex. So how ‘bout you put me back there for a while, and then I’ll come back when I’m done and tell you what I learned. How’s that sound?”

He thought for a moment, and gave a quick nod. He waved a hand, and I was back in bed.

Her bed, to be precise. While I was gone she’d removed the rest of my clothing, but I hadn’t missed anything else really good. I was there to experience the joy of seeing those two red lips surround my cock. I was there to feel that delightfully soft tongue travel up and down my shaft. I heard her squeal of pleasure when my finger moved between her thighs and caressed her slit. I tasted the heady perspiration that rested on the tip of her erect nipple.

And I smelled her arousal as she moved astride me, rubbing the tip of my cock against herself, the scent so strong and feminine that it acted on me like a drug. I thrust myself upward inside her and felt her muscles squeeze me. We rutted for what seemed like hours. I was on my back. She was on her back. I was behind her on the bed. I lay beside her and lifted her leg. She moaned her acquiescence to me. I groaned my surrender to her.

“All right, Mr. Wizard,” I finally said into her hair as we lay together, completely sated. “Take me home.”

“So what did you learn?” he asked.

“What I learned, Mr. Wizard,” I said, smiling as I put my hands behind my head in the darkness, “is don’t be an idiot.”

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“Don’t be an idiot. The French were stupid. They had poorer weapons, but there were enough of them to completely surround us if they’d had half a brain. Was that what you wanted to know?”

“Was that all you learned?” he asked. He wasn’t being sarcastic; he appeared to sincerely want to know what I had learned.

“I guess. And that it’s important to take advantage of mistakes.”

He sat back with a satisfied expression on his face.

“Excellent.”

“Why is it so important to you that I learn from this?”

“It proves my theory,” he said, his voice rising with excitement. “That we have all the tools at our disposal to train our champion.”

“Figures,” I muttered. “Even in my dreams I’m a fucking guinea pig.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing, Mr. Wizard. I had a great time. Thanks for having me. Let’s do it again some time.”

“Yes, Rick,” he said, a peaceful smile spreading over his face. “Let’s do just that.”

He waved his hands again.

This time I woke up to the sounds of the CBS Radio Network newscast. I looked over to see the clock radio beaming its always unwelcome “6:00” at me. Enough dreaming for you, Rick Handley. Time to get up and go to work.

I flipped the bedside switch that turned on the overhead light and reached for the rope that hung beside my bed. Both of them had been installed by my brother Phil when I had moved into this apartment three years ago. He knew that the accident hadn’t been his fault, just as I knew that it hadn’t been his fault. But he couldn’t help blaming himself for it, just as I couldn’t help resenting the fact that he had walked away pretty much unscathed.

With a hand on the armrest nearest the bed, I swung myself into my chair and started wheeling myself toward the shower. Another fucking day in the life of Rick Handley.

Chapter 2

The motion-activated lights in the newsroom blinked to life as I pushed through the metal door and began to thread my way through the maze that led to my cubicle. As was often the case, I was the first employee to arrive. It had nothing to do with my devotion to journalism or my work ethic. Rather, it was my desire not to be navigating the sidewalks of downtown Charleston during rush hour.

I logged onto my computer and reviewed the wire service reports of who had died over the weekend. There was a one-hit wonder from the ‘60s whom I thought had been long dead. There was a retired Congressman from California and a man who had obtained the first patent for packaging pistachios. It was going to be a slow day.

When I had dreamed about being a newspaper reporter as a kid, it hadn’t involved obituaries. Although the accident had left me unable to chase down the chief of police as he ducked through a back door in order to question him about the latest homicide, I had doggedly studied the craft in college and served two internships. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might simply be a good-looking statistic.

After I had been hired, the fire chief had made it fairly clear that he didn’t want me near a fire scene. And the courthouse was only now in the process of being made accessible to wheelchairs. So when Rachel had offered me the obit beat, I felt I had little choice.

It turned out, however, that I was pretty damn good at it. One of my first obits was about a guy who had rescued a little girl who had fallen down a well and spent the rest of his life trying to cope with the fame of that one incident: “Arthur Compton, whose moment in the sun started in total darkness before it withered in the harsh klieg lights of modern media coverage, died last week.” My prose became a little less purple after that, but people loved it nonetheless. The paper’s editors were stunned to get letters and e-mails about an obituary. I had found a place after all.

Today’s obituaries were likely to be far more pedestrian unless I could find something to jazz them up. I turned to the Internet. Maybe there was a story in this pistachio thing.

“Hey, buddy!”

I looked up from my work. Alison Cole, the usual bright smile on her face, was striding down the aisle toward the cubicle next to mine.

“Mornin’ Al. Good weekend?”

“Eh. Eric had to work all weekend. So I rented some movies and kissed the diet goodbye.”

“This was the...?”

“Cabbage diet.”

“Ick.”

“Yeah, I didn’t like it much, either. No loss. It wasn’t working that well. So how ‘bout yours. Get any?”

“No, I didn’t get any,” I answered, just as I had every Monday for the past year.

“You’re smiling, though. Date?”

“No.” I shook my head, conscious that I was still smiling.

“Tell me,” Alison urged.

“Just a really good dream,” I admitted.

“Buddy, we have got to get you a girl,” she said.

“I keep waiting for you to see the light and dump Eric.”

This banter was another usual part of our Monday mornings.

“You’re funny,” she said quickly before turning thoughtful. “You know, I’ve got a sorority sister coming into town this weekend. You wanna double with us on Saturday?”

“Hey, if she’s willing to date a cripple, who am I to say no?”

“God, Rick. You have such a bad attitude. But this will just be a practice date. She’s getting married next month and needs to escape for a bit. Give you a chance to work on that attitude. Ah well, back to the grindstone.”

Bad attitude. You spend nine years in a wheelchair -your junior prom, your graduation, and all of college- and you see what kind of attitude you have. Bitch.

I could feel my face reddening. Alison was my best friend at the paper, and I couldn’t believe I had even thought that about her. Fortunately, she had moved on to her own cubicle to tackle today’s police and courthouse beat.

The rest of the staff quickly followed.

“Hando.”

I didn’t look up. Dan Edwards, who covered city hall, was a jerk.

“Dan the man.”

The next set of footsteps approached, the high heels clacking on the linoleum floor. That would be Shawn Michaels, the statehouse.

“G’morning, Shawn,” I said.

I heard her usual exasperated sigh, the noise that said she couldn’t believe the New York Times still hadn’t called, and that she was still working here with these cretins. She mumbled something that might have been “good morning” but that could just as easily have been “go fuck yourself.”

I didn’t look up for her either, although I did lean back and inhale that glorious scent that followed in her wake. I was tempted to take a peek after she had passed me, to see that perfect little butt in whatever short little skirt she’d painted on this morning, but I knew that as soon as I did, Allie would lean back in her chair and catch me. And then she’d start laughing.

“Good morning, Richard. Hello, Alison. Shawn. Hi, Dan.”

“Rachel.”

We acknowledged her in unison as if we were greeting our teacher instead of our editor, a blend of my ennui, Alison’s cheeriness, and Shawn’s resentment. Only Dan’s usual effusiveness was missing, replaced by the aural equivalent of a leer.

An IM sprang up on my monitor almost before I could form the thought.

“DE + RL????”

I stared at it for a while. Rachel Langhorn and Dan Edwards? That couldn’t be right, could it? Rachel was the paper’s glamour girl: assistant editor at the age of thirty; management darling; and the arm candy of what passed for glitterati in Charleston. Dan was only two years out of college and not exactly the most literate book in the library. The best dust jacket maybe and the most checked-out, yes, but Dan Edwards and Rachel Langhorn? That was depressing.

“Well?” Alison’s hiss was accompanied by a breathy giggle.

“Ew,” I answered, knowing it was what she wanted to hear. She laughed.

The morning passed in lonely work. Alison was meeting Eric for lunch, so lunchtime passed in eating alone at the deli on the corner. The afternoon was broken only by a staff meeting, at which I tried hard not to stare at Rachel’s legs as she perched on a credenza in the conference room. And then it was home, dinner, the nightly news, and a novel.

---

“Hello, I am Inigo Montoya; you killed my father; prepare to die.”

“Excuse me?”

“Draw your sword, dog.”

I stared at the man only a little longer, at his mop of black hair, his dark complexion, his mustache, the long sword he was pointing at my face. I was dreaming again.

“I will kill you whether you draw or not,” he said in a confident and surprisingly friendly tone of voice.

“I know you,” I said. “Give me a minute. You’re -”

“Inigo Montoya,” he interrupted me. “The son of Domingo Montoya. Now draw your weapon!”

I looked down and found a sword at my waist. I slowly pulled it out and held it in what I took to be the appropriate stance.

“You know, I really don’t think -”

He knocked my blade aside and I stared in horror as the point of his own returned to my chest. As if time had slowed down, I could see every detail of his lunge toward me, the flex of his thigh, the tightening of the muscles in his upper arms, the murderous intent in his eyes. And then the blade itself, tearing easily through the vest and thin shirt that I was wearing, slicing into my skin, and sliding between my ribs. The pain was unbelievable, far worse even than the pain when I had awoken in the hospital after the accident. This was the pain of death, a prolonged agony of life-ending shock. I stared at him, my eyes wide and my mouth open in mute horror as I felt the blood gushing out of my chest and running down my stomach.

“So what did you learn?”

The lights came up gradually this time. Wizen was there again at the foot of the bed, poised to hear my answer. It took me a while to catch my breath, to let my heart stop pounding from the nightmarish pain. When I finally answered him, I laced my voice with as much sarcasm as I possessed.

“Don’t get killed.”

He waited for more, in vain.

“That’s it?” he finally asked.

“That’s it.” I smiled at him. “It was a short dream, Mr. Wizard.”

He rolled his eyes and waved his hand.

I had the same dream the next three nights. On the third night, I left my sword in place and turned to run. Inigo caught me in three strides and knocked me to the ground. I died again.

“What did you learn?”

“Don’t get killed.”

“You don’t seem to be taking the lesson to heart,” Wizen said with a sigh.

“It’s much easier to say than do,” I said. I pulled myself to a seated position on his cold little table. “Do you mind telling me what your interest is in this, anyway?”

He was taken aback. He studied me for a while longer, just as I studied him. He was a man of indeterminate age, his dark hair flecked with streaks of gray. His mustache and goatee were even grayer. It was his eyes that drew me in, though. They were blue, an almost electric blue, and they appeared to shine with intelligence and humor.

“I didn’t make that clear on your first visit?” he asked.

“You mentioned something about training a champion,” I answered. “But frankly, unless your champion is going to write obituaries, I really don’t see that I’m going to be much of a help to you. I can’t even keep Inigo Montoya from killing me. Although in all fairness, he is a wizard.”

I had finally figured out where my opponent came from. The Princess Bride, a good movie and an even better book.

Wizen looked a little disappointed, as if I was supposed to be a little smarter than that. I found myself embarrassed that I hadn’t lived up to his expectations. He sat down on a stool at the foot of the bed.

“Very well. First off, I should tell you that we are four centuries into your future.”

“Time travel. Very cool,” I said. These dreams were just getting better and better. “So what do you want with me?”

“I need to tell you a little of the intervening four hundred years. The Earth of your time was a very warlike place, was it not?”

“Sure. Somebody was always fighting somebody else.”

“Humankind finally conquered that impulse. By the beginning of the twenty-third century, we had eliminated war. The peoples of Earth were at peace.”

“That’s great,” I said, nodding my head. “Well done.”

“Yes, but it came at a price. We were wholly unprepared for invasion.”

“But you just said that the peoples of Earth were peaceful,” I protested.

“The invasion did not come from Earth.”

My eyes widened.

“Aliens?”

He nodded his head.

“From the Epsilon Eridani solar system, ten light years away. They call themselves Morlings, and they possess technology, or at least military technology, that is far superior to ours.”

“O-kay,” I said.

“You are wondering why they haven’t conquered us yet?” Wizen asked.

“Well, I was actually wondering why, if you can travel through time, you wouldn’t just take off?”

“Ah, it is a valid point. Unfortunately, the time travel device only allows me to bring someone forward in time. And even that requires an enormous expenditure of energy. Once the flow of energy stops, you simply return home.”

“Got it,” I said with a nod. I was going to have to write this down when I woke up. This would be a bitchin’ science fiction story.

“So why haven’t they conquered you?” I asked.

“You are familiar with a battle by champions, are you not, as a means of deciding a war?”

I stared blankly. I was familiar with wars decided by countries pounding the shit out of each other’s armies and bombing their cities.

“The Philistines, for example, in the Bible of your time,” Wizen said. “Goliath was their champion, and offered to decide the outcome of the contest in a single one-on-one battle. David was the champion of the Israelites. There are similar examples in the Iliad of Homer.”

“So you mean if you beat their champion, they’ll just go home?” I asked. “Because to be honest, that sounds a little stupid.”

Wizen gave a shrug.

“We surmise that it is a part of their code of honor. Or chivalry, if you will. But you are quite correct. They could annihilate us quite easily.”

“So you’re looking for a champion?” I asked.

“The Morlings have offered three such battles,” he explained. “We have failed in two. Our people simply have no skills for such combat. We must look elsewhere for a champion.”

“So you want me to find one?” I asked. “In a movie? Why don’t you get somebody real? Somebody like, I don’t know, that David guy?”

“I considered him. He lacks the technical skill to understand the weapons.”

“Okay. So I don’t get it. You want somebody like Kenneth Branagh? Or Inigo Montoya? Because I mean, it’s just a movie. They’re just actors.”

“No, my friend. I believe I have found the person we want. The person we need.”

He looked at me with an air of expectancy. I matched him with an air of ignorance.

“All I need do now is train him,” he said.

That didn’t help me much.

“You are Richard Handley,” he said.

“Well, yes.”

“The video gaming champion of the Charleston Video Gaming Club?”

I felt myself blushing, from embarrassment rather than pride. I hadn’t even let my colleagues on the newspaper know about that. I could just see the mock obituaries that would be circulating on the paper’s intranet.

“So?” I asked, perhaps a little defensively. “It’s just a bunch of video gamers who rent from the club. Then we have these tournaments. So what if I’ve won a couple?”

“It has never occurred to you that the games at the Charleston club are far more advanced than those you could obtain anywhere else?”

“No,” I said. “Charleston? Seriously?”

“Mr. Handley, I have been working on this project for nineteen years. Ever since our second champion was defeated and the Morlings announced that they would give us two more decades to find a third. I am the inventor of every single video game that you have ever played.”

“Oh, get out.”

“Obviously, I have allowed others of your century to think the games their own ideas. But believe me, they were all mine. I bring the inventor forward, instill the idea, and release him. Just as the tracking system in each game is mine, and has relayed to my computers the result of every single game played in your time.”

I was sitting up by now and staring at him, absolutely unable to speak.

“As the games became progressively more and more sophisticated, I winnowed down the group of potential champions. I made sure that they all gathered in one city, so that they could try out the games that would finally let us decide which one of them would stand the best chance of success once he -or she- was finally given sufficient knowledge and training.”

“So this champion you’re looking for-” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper, “-is me?”

He nodded.

“At the very least you will be my recommendation to the council. There are many others working on this program. They will likely have recommendations of their own.”

“So you want me to fight one of these Morlings?”

“I would like to ask you to do so, yes. Obviously, the choice is yours.”

“All right!” I pumped my fist. This was a kick-ass dream -or series of dreams, to be precise- after all.

“I beg your pardon?” Wizen asked. “So you will continue?”

Fuckin-A I would.

“For mankind?” I asked. “Oh, sure. Look at all the great things it’s done for me. First, though, I guess I have to figure out a way around this Inigo Montoya wanting to kill me every time I show up.”

“Yes,” Wizen said. “I had hoped that you would learn something of the sword from him.”

“I have to fight this Morling with a sword?”

“No,” he answered. “I believe the training would be helpful, though. Why does he want to kill you?”

“He keeps saying I killed his father.”

“Why does he think that?”

That was an excellent question. I sat there on the table, my mouth open in mid-answer. Why did he think I killed his father? I needed to read that book again.

Wizen waved his hand and it was Friday morning.

Chapter 3

The Charleston Video Gaming Center never failed to disappoint casual visitors. It was located in a small store in the Charleston Mall, with a storefront barely large enough to display its somewhat grandiose name. Shoppers who found their way down that particular corridor might peer in for a second and then leave, convinced that the place would be out of business by the time they reached their cars. Gamers who had made the pilgrimage at the recommendation of friends usually spent the first two minutes looking for the hidden camera, afraid they’d been punk’d.

The store’s owner, Andy Stowe, couldn’t have cared less. He was an aging hippie whose drug of choice had always been games. He kept the shelves stocked with a selection of games that could have been found in any store in the country. It wasn’t until the newcomer approached, unwilling to admit that he had been tricked into driving all the way to Charleston, that Andy would reveal the store’s secrets. Once he learned that his customer was a serious gamer he would look around as if he were afraid of spies, crook his finger and beckon the newcomer into the back room where he kept his “stash.”

Those of us who were regulars had received nicknames, delivered by Andy as if he were a ring announcer at a professional wrestling match.

“The Hammer of Death!” he intoned as I entered the store on Saturday morning.

“The Wizard of War!” I tried to match him as best I could.

“What’s happenin,’ bud?” he asked me as he leaned across the counter to exchange a high five.

“Not much, Andy,” I said. “Anything new?”

“Just got a new VR in, but...”

“I haven’t got the legs for it, huh?”

“Sorry, dude.”

“No problem, Andy. Say, have you ever read The Princess Bride?”

“Awesome book, man.”

“Yeah. I thought I had a copy, but I couldn’t find it last night.”

And as a result, my dream last night had once again ended with my quick death. This time I had managed to scream out, “What makes you think I killed your father?”

In lieu of answering, Inigo had simply run me through.

“Do you remember the guy who killed Inigo Montoya’s father?” I asked.

“The six-fingered man? Count Rugen?”

“Six fingers?” That didn’t make sense; I only had five.

“Yeah. Domingo Montoya was a swordsmith. He made a sword for this Count Rugen and ended up dead. ‘My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’”

I flinched.

“You okay, Rick?” Andy asked.

“I’m fine,” I answered quickly. “You got any games about sword fighting?”

“Oh, yeah. You never played Duellum?”

“I don’t think I’ve even heard of it,” I answered.

“Nobody heard of it,” Andy said with a laugh. “Came out the same day as Grand Theft Auto II. Sank like a stone.”

“It’s not exactly a catchy title,” I said.

“No,” Andy agreed. “Although I think it’s great. From the Latin. Duo for two, bellum for war. Literally a war for two people. Awesome, isn’t it?”

“Fascinating,” I agreed.

“Come on back.”

Andy swept aside the beads that led to the back room and gestured for me to precede him.

I spent the rest of the morning and the first part of the afternoon in the back room on one of Rick’s consoles. After that, it was time to go home and get ready for my “date.” In a rush of enthusiasm that I still had trouble accounting for, I had offered to cook dinner for Alison, Eric, and Alison’s friend, Parker. That meant stopping off at the grocery store for the ingredients for my special Pasta Handley and then cleaning my apartment. By six-thirty, however, when they were expected, the sauce was simmering gently on the cooktop that acted as a substitute for a stove. Another pot of water awaited the pasta. The vegetables were in the steamer, and the wine was breathing on the counter.

By six-fifty, I had turned the sauce off. By seven I had poured myself a glass of the wine. By seven-thirty, when I heard the knock on my door, I was in an ugly mood.

It was not a side of me that I would have willingly showed Alison, although her boyfriend was another matter altogether. The mood dissolved, however, as soon as I caught sight of Alison’s friend. She was a tall brunette who had probably never read a diet book. Long, slender legs that emerged from a leopard-print mini-dress perched atop three-inch heels. Beautiful long eyelashes framed equally beautiful brown eyes. But it was the way that they lit up when she saw me that I found particularly attractive. I couldn’t remember a girl looking at me like that before.

“I am so sorry,” Alison said. “We stopped off at McMurphy’s for a drink.”

“Or two,” her friend added with a giggle.

“Or two,” Alison agreed with a roll of her eyes. “You remember Eric, of course.”

“Hey, Hando.” Eric had discovered my nickname a few months back, and thought it extremely clever.

“Eric.”

“And this is Parker Kline. Parker, I’d like you to meet Rick Handley.”

“Hi,” she said with a hiccup.

“Nice to meet you. Can I get anyone a glass of wine before dinner?”

“Sure,” Eric said.

“Maybe just one,” Alison said with a look intended to suggest to Eric that he might be better off limiting himself to one as well.

“I’d love some,” Parker said.

She loved even more wine during dinner, and Eric matched her glass for glass. We discussed the newspaper business, her career as a mortgage broker, and Eric’s intention to attend business school next year. I did my best to be charming, although it was completely unnecessary. She would have been no less attracted to me if I had been my usual tongue-tied self.

“Do you know what my nickname was in college?” During a lull in the conversation she leaned toward me, nearly tottering off her seat.

“Parker,” Alison said in dismay.

“No, silly,” Parker said. “That was my real name. Now you guess.”

Her eyes flashed as she returned her gaze to me.

“Park?” I asked.

“No.” She drew out the vowel to suggest that I guess again.

“Parky?” Eric suggested.

“You’re getting closer.”

“Well, I give up,” I said.

“Me, too,” Eric agreed.

“Parkay,” Parker said with another, even drunker laugh.

“Because you were always toasted?” Eric was a little ripped himself.

“Because your father wanted to name you Margarine?” I asked. That was enough to send Alison into convulsions of laughter, but it went right over Parker’s head.

“No and no,” she said, leaning forward even more until her nose was within an inch of mine. “Because I was so easy to spread.”

I stared back at her. Wasn’t this the woman who was supposed to be getting married in a month?

“Do you have any coffee?” Alison’s tone said that I had better find some. It put Eric back on the road to sobriety, but was not nearly enough to sober up Parker. Particularly since she insisted on drinking it with the whiskey she spotted in the cabinet in my dining room.

Shortly after ten o’clock, Allie suggested that perhaps it was time to leave. Eric put up a half-hearted protest that quickly turned to eagerness when Parker announced that she wouldn’t be coming with them. He was obviously looking forward to a Parkerless night with Alison.

“Yes, you will,” Allie said firmly.

“No, I won’t.” Parker met Alison’s stare with one of her own.

“Parker, Rick is my best friend at the paper,” Allie said. “He’s not your wild oats.”

“Let’s let him decide.” Parker turned to me with a smile. “Do you want me to leave, Rick?”

She passed her tongue across her upper lip, and slid her hand down across a firm, round breast that needed no bra. In their wake, her fingers left an erect nipple evident through the thin fabric of her dress.

I swallowed and turned back to Alison.

“Go on,” I said. I found myself not minding at all that I was nothing more than wild oats.

“Rick,” Alison started to protest.

“Allie,” I answered her. She could read the tone of my voice as well as I could read hers. I was telling her that it was my life. The paralysis of my legs had not affected my mind or my emotions. I was capable of making my own decisions, and I resented her efforts to protect me from her friend.

“Fine,” Allie said with a sigh. “You’re right. As usual.”

She put a hand on my arm and left with her boyfriend in tow. I returned to the living room to find Parker pouring herself yet another glass of wine.

“You sure you can handle all that?” I asked with a nervous laugh.

“You sure you can handle me?” she retorted.

“No,” I admitted.

She took a last gulp of wine and put the glass down on the table, hard enough to spill some of the wine. She walked toward me, her hips swaying from side to side, her eyes holding mine.

“I like an honest man.”

Her voice was soft and sultry as she seated herself on my lap and pressed her lips against mine. My legs may have been useless, but not everything below my waist was devoid of feeling. She felt my erection beneath her and playfully ground her ass into me as we kissed.

“Wheel me into the bedroom, charioteer,” she ordered.

Her eyes lit up even more when she saw the rope. Jumping off my lap, she grabbed it and swung herself onto the bed. Once again fixing my eyes, she slowly lowered herself into a split on my bed. She slid her hands down over her body once again and grabbed hold of the hem of her dress. I could only stare as she pulled it upward, revealing a black thong, a creamy white abdomen, and two gloriously beautiful breasts.

“Are you coming?” she whispered.

“I’ll be right there,” I answered her. I hadn’t made any pit stops myself that evening, and I wasn’t able to hop out of bed when the mood hit me. It took a little while to relax myself enough to finish, and when I returned, Parker had started without me. Her thighs lay open on the bed, my view of her obscured only by the hands between her legs, hands whose fingers winked in and out of her wet, swollen cleft as she emitted little gasps of pleasure.

I was mesmerized. Her breasts were between her upper arms, quivering madly as she increased her pace. She lifted one hand to her lips, licking her juices off her fingers before she returned it to her clit. She lifted the other, licked it clean as well, and then brought it down to her breast, cupping the globe in her palm, pinching the nipple, squeezing the flesh between her fingers. Insensible to my presence, she threw her head back, screaming her lust. It was all I could do to keep myself from cuming, but when I pulled myself out of the chair and into the bed, I was more than ready to help her out. She settled herself under my arm, her hand snaking down across my stomach to wrap around my cock.

“Give me just a minute, darling. And then I’m yours.”

“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya; you killed my father; prepare to die.”

“Fuck!” I screamed. I couldn’t believe I had fallen asleep. A beautiful girl lying naked on my bed, and I had dozed off? Inconceivable!

“Draw,” growled Montoya.

“I’m not the man you want!” I screamed. I held my hands out in front of me so that he could see them. His eyes flicked to my right hand, and then narrowed in rage. I followed his gaze, and stared in horror at my glove, at the thumb and at the five fingers beside it.

Once again time slowed to a crawl. Montoya ripped his sword from its sheath and thrust the point toward me. It ripped a long slit in my tunic. It drew a bloody line in my torso. And then it finally found an opening in my ribs and plunged inside. I could feel it enter, the pain indescribable. I gasped, aware that once again I had lost.

“What did you -”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I beg your pardon?” Wizen asked.

“You’re supposed to come in my dreams, not when I’m having sex, you bastard.”

“I summon you at night,” Wizen explained. “But you may rest assured, Richard, that you will return at precisely the same time you departed. If you were having sex when you left, you will be having it when you return.”

I rolled my eyes.

“We’ll see. Oh, and I learned I have six fingers. That’s why that son of a bitch wants to kill me.”

“Really?” Wizen was surprised. “I only count five on each hand. Are you quite sure?”

I looked down at my hand and counted. He was right. There were only five on each hand. What the fuck?

“Just give me one more time,” I said, half to myself and half to him. “Tomorrow night I’ll make it. Now if it wouldn’t be too inconvenient, Mr. Wizard, how about sending me back to my date?”

He waved his hand. I blinked my eyes open, and found Parker snoring on my chest. Maybe she had had enough time to recover. Maybe it was, um, my turn. I shook her gently, and then a little harder. It was no good. She was already deep into the sleep of wine. No matter; we would be able to make love in the morning. I found that I was already looking forward to lying with her in the clear light of day.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Parker asked the next morning when I reached for her. “You had your chance last night, buddy. What the hell do you think I got drunk for? Don’t tell me we never fucked. Jesus Christ. I assume you’ve got a real shower in this place.”

“A real shower?” I asked.

She pushed herself off the bed and climbed across me.

“Yeah. For full-size people.”

I felt a chill run through me as she awaited the answer to her question. I pointed to the bathroom. She turned and walked into it. We didn’t speak again. While I was in the kitchen, she dressed and left.

I spent the rest of Sunday sitting in my living room, the Sunday New York Times lying unread on my coffee table. In my dreams that evening, I tore off the glove on my right hand. God alone knew why I was wearing a six-fingered glove, but there it was. Montoya was quite surprised to learn that I was not in fact the man responsible for killing his father.

“What have you learned?” Wizen asked me when I awoke in his room.

“I would have learned to fence if you had left me there a little longer.”

“What instead?” he asked.

“I learned that everything is not always as it appears,” I answered, filling my voice with rue. “I learned that twice today.”

He waved his hand again.

---

“So, get any?”

Alison smiled at me on Monday morning as if I couldn’t possible have had a better weekend.

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“You and Parker,” she said. “How was it?”

“What did she tell you?”

“Oh, the usual,” Allie said with a laugh. “She bewitched you with her beauty and stunned you with her sexual technique.”

“We never did it.” I gave her a cold, hard stare.

“What? What do you mean?”

“She evidently wanted a gimp to add to her collection. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it without getting drunk. She got herself off and then fell asleep. The next morning she would barely look at me.”

“Oh my God, Rick. Are you serious? Why would she tell me you guys did it?”

“You tell me.”

She stood there staring at me until we were interrupted by another voice.

“Dude.”

I could count the number of times that Dan Edwards had gotten to work before me in the last year on the fingers of one hand. But there he was, leaning back in his chair, having just heard the entire conversation I had had with Alison.

Fuck.

“You’re talking about that hot friend of Allie’s that I met at McMurphy’s? You had her naked in your bed and couldn’t close the deal? Well, you still have Mrs. Hando, don’t you?”

He went back to work with a cackle of laughter. Alison’s eyes were filled with sorrow and shame. I gave her a brief grin and started my own workday.

Chapter 4

“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya; you killed my father; prepare to die.”

I rolled my eyes. Again? Were we going to have to go through this every single time? I dutifully pulled off my glove and once again satisfied my adversary that I was not the man for whom he was searching. We chatted a little longer this time, although he seemed to smile at my wish to become a swordsman. I was happy with the progress, although the whole thing was starting to feel a little like Groundhog Day.

“Don’t you have a “save” setting?” I asked Wizen after that night’s lesson had ended and I had filled him in on my progress.

“I don’t understand.”

“Like, you’re playing a game, right? And you realize that you have to go to work, okay?”

He nodded.

“So you hit ‘save,’ and then when you come home -assuming that you have nothing else in the world to do, which is probably a pretty safe assumption with most of us- you dive right back in where you left off.”

“Of course.”

“So if I had something like that with my new friend Inigo, I wouldn’t have to convince him every night that I’m not the guy who killed his father.”

Wizen didn’t answer me directly. But the last thing I saw before he waved his hand again was his smile and nod.

---

“I’m not saying you’re weird,” Allison said. “I said it is weird. It.”

“Like your dreams are perfectly normal,” I said. We were finishing our lunch at a table in Tarber’s Cafeteria. The food was good, cheap, and served promptly. Largely because we served it ourselves. For those reasons, and because it was right around the corner from the newspaper’s office, it usually attracted a large crowd of reporters and editors. Rachel and some of her fellow editors, in fact, were sitting at a table about thirty feet away.

I never went there on Mondays. Allison and Eric had a standing lunch date on Monday. That would have meant me having lunch with Dan, since Shawn had never deigned to grace Tarber’s with her presence. And I had no inclination to spend an hour of my day trying to find something in common with Dan.

Tuesdays, though -“Tuesdays with Allie,” I called them- were different. The mayor had a peculiar habit of scheduling press conferences for noon on Tuesdays, probably just so he could jerk around the reporters that covered city hall. Dan’s absence meant that Allie and I could spend the entire lunch hour trashing the latest American Idol winner, solving the world’s problems, and chatting about life in general.

“Of course they’re normal,” Allison said with a laugh. “Everything I do is normal.”

“As opposed to everything I do,” I said.

“Will you stop getting so defensive? Jesus, Rick.”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

“Your dreams aren’t any more or less normal than anyone else’s,” she said. “But if you didn’t think they were a little weird, you wouldn’t have brought them up.”

Like most of Allie’s arguments, it was indisputable.

“On the other hand,” she continued, eyeing the unfinished brownie on my plate as she spoke, “I’ve never heard of anyone who dreamed like TV before.”

“It’s not like TV,” I protested.

“It’s just like it. You have two characters, you and this Wizen guy, and you get into all sorts of adventures. He’s Peabody and you’re his boy Sherman.”

“Har har har.”

“Except now you have Inigo Montoya as a guest star. I wouldn’t mind having him in one of my dreams.”

We heard the scrape of chairs and turned to see Rachel’s group standing up to leave. We looked at each other and silently decided that it was time for us to go as well. As we were preparing to leave, though, Rachel and Bill McIntyre, the paper’s assistant managing editor, wound their way through the dining room to our table.

“Handley,” Bill said. “Nice job on that Jalegos piece.”

He butchered the name so badly -pronouncing it Jallagose- that it took me a second to realize that he was talking about an obit that had appeared in Monday’s paper. It was one I had particularly enjoyed writing. The Second World War had produced these marvelous stories about people from small towns who had metamorphosed into scientists and soldiers and strategists. Heroes every one of them. Jalegos had been a day laborer in a suburb of Charleston when he was called up. He had been awarded a Silver Star on Iwo Jima, and returned to the United States to found his own trucking company.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

Rachel had been pleased with the story as well, and was just as pleased with the compliment.

“I need to see you when you get back, Richard. My office?”

“We’re right behind you, Rachel,” I said.

It took us a little longer, of course. When we had Dan with us, I made an effort to keep his pace. On Tuesdays, Allie was happy to walk along at mine.

“Oooh,” she said. “Must be a promotion, huh?”

“I’m sure that’s it,” I agreed. “Chief Obituary Writer, probably.”

I wheeled myself up to the door to Rachel’s office when we returned, and stopped short when I saw Shawn in there. I debated for a moment whether I should knock and announce myself or wait until Shawn was finished. Of course, I did use that moment to admire the view. Shawn was perched on Rachel’s desk, kicking her long legs slightly back and forth. She was wearing a tight, short skirt once again, along with a white blouse and a silver necklace. As usual, Rachel’s dress was more conservative. The skirt of her pale blue suit almost reached her knees, and her heels were a good inch shorter than Shawn’s. Still, she could play in my dreams anytime she wanted.

“Rick.” Rachel caught sight of me waiting and waved me in to join them.

“The Governor has decided to take a spur-of-the-moment vacation,” Rachel explained. “So he’ll be away starting this weekend for the next - what, two weeks?”

Shawn nodded.

“While school’s in session?” I asked. “I thought his kids were in junior high or something.”

“One’s thirteen, the other’s nine,” Shawn explained. “This is a men-only trip. Dove-hunting.”

“So anyway,” Rachel said, “Shawn’s asked for some time off, too. Which means we need someone to substitute at the statehouse.”

“It’s not like anything’s going to happen,” Shawn assured me.

“I’m sure that Richard could handle it if it did,” Rachel said.

Shawn shrugged.

“You want me to cover the statehouse?” I asked.

“I do,” Rachel said. “How ‘bout it?”

I fought to keep the grin off my face, to keep them from knowing how eager I was.

“Who’s gonna do the obits?”

Shawn laughed.

“It’s not like it’s going to take you the whole day, Hando.”

Rachel shot her a glare.

“It’s true, Rach,” Shawn said with another laugh. “His press secretary’s going with him, which means that Krissy Mackley is going to be doing the availabilities. They wouldn’t let her announce her own resignation for fear she’d fuck it up and announce she’d been appointed governor.”

Rachel turned back to me.

“She’s right, Rick. Miss Mackley will hand out announcements at 10, and you can give the press office your cell phone number in case they need to get in touch with you. You don’t need to be there full time.”

“So you want me to do the obits and the state house?” I tried to keep my voice from seeming whiny, apparently without success.

“It’s an opportunity, Rick,” Rachel said. “The state’s not going to shut down just because the governor’s on vacation. You can keep any story that comes up while Shawn is gone. But she’s right. You don’t need to be there all day. The statehouse is about a mile from your apartment, in the other direction. So I’m thinking that you spend the morning there, and the afternoon working out of your apartment writing obituaries. I know you won’t be able to get as many done and that’s fine. You tell me which ones you want to write, and Alison, Dan, and I will do the others. Some can just wait.”

I paused a moment. It was a lot of work. It could turn out to be shit. But it was an opportunity. And there had been precious few during my newspaper career.

“I’ll do it.”

“Good man.” Rachel nodded. “You start Monday. Call in every day. You have the code for our intranet?”

I finally let them see the grin. I would be damned if I didn’t file at least a story every other day. If Rachel didn’t want to run it, that was her decision.

---

“Hello, my name is-”

“Oh, for Chrissake. Look here, Charlie. Five fingers.”

Inigo gave me a quizzical look, but his sword never wavered.

“Then tell me why you wear the glove.”

That was a damn good question. I found myself wondering why it hadn’t occurred to him in last night’s dream. Of course, if we’d used the fucking “save” button, I wouldn’t be having to try to answer it.

“It was cheap,” I said. I threw the glove on the ground.

“Fair enough. Who are you?”

“Handley. Ri - just Handley will be fine.”

“What brings you to Spain, Handley?”

“I heard there was a master here.”

“We have plenty of masters. Roberto over there is a master of bakery. Carlos is a master wheelwright.”

“I’m looking for a master swordsman.”

“Ah, a master swordsman. I’m afraid I have been here two weeks, my friend, and I have yet to find a master swordsman.”

“I see. Well, how about I buy you a drink and we talk it over?”

I nodded at the tavern across the street. Inigo smiled and sheathed his sword.

“It is a thirsty town,” he agreed.

I ordered us whiskeys, and paid with a coin I found in my pocket. Afterwards, I had my first fencing lesson.

“What did you learn?”

“That I’m going to have to go through this ‘prepare to die’ shit every goddamn night,” I muttered.

“I beg your - oh, your ‘save’ setting.”

“Yes,” I said, mimicking his voice. “My ‘save’ setting.”

That was a preview of What Feats He Did That Day. To read the rest purchase the book.

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