The Mission Begins Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Kevin John Fitzgerald

  The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  I have borrowed the term “Lapine” from author Richard Adams. “Lapine” is a fictional language created by Adams for his 1972 novel Watership Down, where it is spoken by fictional rabbit characters. The language was again used in Adams’ 1996 sequel, Tales from Watership Down, and has appeared in both the film and television adaptations. The term “Lapine” originally comes from the French word for rabbit, lapin, and can also be used to describe rabbit society.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without prior written permission.

  Author Contact:

  Kevin J. Fitzgerald

  PHONE: (678) 863-6224

  EMAIL: [email protected]

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  TWITTER: @KJFWriter

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  Kimberly Huther, proofreader/line editor

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  Cover Design by:

  Robert G. Wilson, Jr.

  WEB: www.deathisgain.com

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  PALADIN

  Book Two:

  The Mission Begins

  Kevin J. Fitzgerald

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER 1 – “Sanctuary”

  CHAPTER 2 – “The Utergei”

  CHAPTER 3 – “Rolo”

  CHAPTER 4 – “A Startling Revelation”

  CHAPTER 5 – “Later That Night”

  CHAPTER 6 – “Having it Out”

  CHAPTER 7 – “An Unlikely Band”

  CHAPTER 8 – “Sent Out”

  CHAPTER 9 – “An Evil Report”

  CHAPTER 10 – “The First Night’s Rest”

  CHAPTER 11 – “The Tale of the Lamb”

  CHAPTER 12 – “A Rude Awakening”

  CHAPTER 13 – “Communications at Midway”

  CHAPTER 14 – “Into the Forest”

  CHAPTER 15 – “Across the Bridge”

  CHAPTER 16 – “Down the River”

  CHAPTER 17 – “A Chance Meeting”

  CHAPTER 18 – “The Badgers”

  CHAPTER 19 – “Sweet Parting”

  CHAPTER 20 – “Across the Poisoned Glen”

  CHAPTER 21 – “Ambushed!”

  CHAPTER 22 – “The Mouth of Death”

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PREFACE

  Here we are.

  Two years later than I anticipated Paladin Book 2 would be released.

  If you have read Paladin Book 1: The Evil Within the Woods (which, I hope you have [but – what can I say? – I’m biased]), then you know it concluded with the announcement that Book 2 would appear in 2016.

  My High School Chorus teacher always taught me to never apologize before I sang a song for competition… so, I’ll stop just short of apologizing for the delay in the release of this book (I’ll also be careful not to commit myself to any specific time-release of Book 3!).

  But, somewhere along the way – as it often does – life simply got in the way. Our third child was born, we moved across country from Georgia to California, I suffered a life-threatening car accident, was diagnosed with cancer and – subsequently – underwent treatment & recovery.

  Which brings us to now: late 2018.

  I’m a big believer in the idea of serendipity — “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.” Of course, I don’t necessarily see things merely as serendipitous, or fate, or chance. Perhaps a more accurate way to describe the way I see things is destiny—that all things happen according to a plan, and for a reason. We may not know exactly what those reasons might be this side of eternity, but that does not make them any less real. Who knows? Perhaps someone will read this book who is supposed to, and who might otherwise not have had the book been released when originally intended.

  The idea of destiny is one of the larger underlying themes of the Paladin books. Destiny and faith. I recall a portion of one of the opening paragraphs of Paladin

  Book 1:

  “Stories are happening all around us… We simply must look for them. Even we ourselves are involved in some kind of story, one that is still being written. And each new day is the authoring of a new page, with new chapters and adventures waiting to unfold.”

  That’s how I see life: It’s an adventure. It’s still unfolding.

  And somewhere, somehow, in some way, there is some thing waiting for us to do, to be, to accomplish. Something which may change the world.

  Just be open to it.

  I hope that message comes through in these books.

  So, here it is: Read, enjoy. And be inspired.

  —Kevin J. Fitzgerald

  Yuba City, CA. 2018

  For Késon:

  My bud-bud. You are strong and courageous, my “man-of-the-house.” Fear not. Be willing to fight, if need be—and always be willing to let God lead you on many adventures. This world is YOURS.

  INTRODUCTION

  Taken from Paladin Book 1: The Evil Within the Woods

  Something was wrong.

  The room filled with water.

  The truck had crashed—smashed the guardrail of the bridge overhead and plunged into the icy depths of Dakota Lake below.

  Paladin fought to understand what was happening. Black water flowed into the back of the truck through a small grated window; it crawled like a living thing—slow, methodical, like vengeful molasses.

  Terror broke upon him like a cloudburst in summer.

  The truck is sinking!

  Water threw Paladin toward the back of the truck, slamming him into the rear doors. Stars exploded. The force of the water blew one of the doors open, and water began gushing out. The other door remained closed. The sinking vehicle groaned and tilted, lopsided in the water. Paladin paddled furiously within a rapidly shrinking enclosure of air—a triangular roof that formed between the door that had not opened and one side of the truck’s interior.

  In the rear door of the truck was a grated window. Paladin pressed his nose and face to it, gasping for air. Frigid temperatures bit his body, causing his temperature to plummet. It was hard to stay afloat. His limbs went numb. An odd warmth and a crazy desire to go to sleep came over him. He could not have known, but Paladin was slowly beginning to freeze to death. He took in a huge mouthful of water.

  The enclosure shrank. Within moments, the truck would be completely submerged. Only one corner of one of the back doors of the truck remained above water now, bubbling and seething as it sank.

  Paladin tried to call for help—his voice feeble and waterlogged. His teeth chattered so badly that no sound came out, only a pitiful grunting. Paladin stole one last gulp of air, and then it was the blurred vision of going underwater. His sharp hearing transformed into the dull, nether-hearing of underwater sounds. Darkness engulfed him.

  The closed rear door of the rig popped open. Paladin spewed from the vehicle like a cork and kicked his way toward the icy surface above. The slow current of Dakota Lake took him. He drifted from where the truck entered the water as the vehicle disappeared into the depths below. He eventually stopped struggling and waited to float to the surface. His mouth hung agape; his eyes stared blankly through cold, dark water as he passed in
and out of consciousness.

  The lake swept Paladin into the dark shadow of the bridge overhead. From the gloom beneath the bridge, a huge white Dove dived straight for the rabbit. The Dove had watched the scene, hidden like a phantom within the shadows beneath the bridge. The large white Dove seized the sinking rabbit by the loose skin behind his neck, and slowly—triumphantly—he drew the rabbit from the waters.

  This is it! Paladin thought. I’m crossing into the next world!

  Slowly, Paladin rose above the surface of the lake, his soaking body buffeted by frigid air. He desperately tried to see who had him. But the struggle proved too much. Darkness took the rabbit, and Paladin knew no more.

  Without a sound the mysterious Dove swiftly flew away, bearing the inert form of the rabbit toward the safety of the nearby line of the shore.

  And further beyond.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Sanctuary”

  Paladin was back in the house of the Son.

  He didn’t know how, but he was thankful. The house was dark—a deep, rich color that made everything cold and UN-real. In this dream, he hopped from room to room looking for the Son. Something different awaited in each room, like a treasure. One room contained Joshua’s old Speak-and-Spell toy droning monotonously: “hello… hello… hello…” Another room held Bear; the old she-dog snored lazily, her body twitching and running from unseen phantoms in the night. Paladin made his way from room to room, anxiously expecting to find the Son waiting for him in each.

  But he never did.

  He was in the upstairs hallway now, looking down between the banister rails. At first, it seemed he stared from behind the bars of a cage. But slowly, things changed (as they often do in dreams). Paladin was outside the cage now, looking back in. All kinds of animals stared out at him—a bizarre, living menagerie. Some of them he recognized: Bull was here. And Jemimah the old tabby-cat. Geronimo was there. Even the nameless chihuahua was jumping up and down excitedly. Behind them all, Paladin saw his Da staring out at him with cold, grey eyes. Paladin tried to look away, but could not; something held his gaze. Something else was there—something further behind his Da, in the shadows.

  Paladin saw there was no end to the cage—it just went deeper and deeper into darkness. Crouching in the shadows—scrambling and scratching and trying to fight and crawl to get to him—were more animals than Paladin could ever count!

  He tried to scream.

  The bars of the cage rushed at him. The sound of cold steel slammed. Paladin’s breath was forced from his lungs. Faces pressed against the cage, inches from his own. Paladin smelled the fear and death on them, thick and cloying. Panic haunted their eyes. Paladin tried to look away but he was inside the cage again, surrounded by them. Moist fur pressed upon him; paws and nails scratched and scraped and clawed and pulled at his flesh. He stood on them, and they were above him.

  The walls of the cage closed in.

  Leering faces drew near. Yellow eyes glared and teeth gnashed.

  They called his name:

  “paladin… Paladin… PALADIN!”

  §

  Paladin snapped awake.

  Disorientation greeted him. A black world went in and out of focus, slowly brightening to dim. Shapes danced in the shadows, but completely foreign.

  Paladin did not sit up at first. Exhaustion rooted him where he was, smothering him like a physical weight. His eyes moved slowly around the alien environment. Where am I? he wondered. One thing stood out before him in the darkness—a single word. Paladin stared at it a long time. He croaked:

  “Sank . . .”

  “…choo…”

  “…air… ee…”

  The word came with great effort. Paladin hovered along the edge of a deep sleep.

  He became aware of voices. Warm, snuffly voices (chendrith voices, for sure—not the elahs). They were whispering in the dark.

  “W-who’s there?” he asked.

  No answer. Whispering again. Paladin lay there, allowing the dull, murmuring sound to once again lull him into a doze. How long he lingered in that half-waking/half-sleep state he did not know. Sometime later, he was surprised to discover his eyes were open.

  The one word still hung in the dark, greeting him, staring down at him from a small, tarnished plaque above the remains of an elahs door nearby. The door looked as if it had once been painted white, but long since faded to the dull shades of an old photograph. Paladin remembered hearing this one word before, but fought to recall what it meant:

  “Sanctuary,” he said to himself, and smiled reluctantly. The word meant something good, he knew that.

  Paladin blinked himself awake with eyes that felt too old and too tired for a young‘un such as he.

  Or was he young?

  A dreadful thought suddenly occurred to him: What if Paladin had slept for years and years, and he didn’t know it? He remembered hearing about things like that before (though he couldn’t remember what it was called).

  ‘What if,’ a morbid internal voice whispered. ‘What if I’m dead?!’

  As if to convince himself otherwise, Paladin raised his head and sat up. The first thing he noticed was that he was warm. The second thing he noticed was the pain. Not a dull, throbbing kind of pain, but a stinging abrasive pain, as if each muscle had been enveloped in sandpaper. He let out a groan.

  “Careful,” a voice spoke quietly. It was a pleasant voice. Someone (something!) moved closer in the dark. “Don’t overdo it.”

  Paladin saw a nutook, a she-rabbit, emerge from the shadows. She looked at him and smiled.

  “Who . . . who are you?” he struggled.

  “My name is Eiyra. I’m from the Firhouse warrenne.” She smiled and asked, “And you are?”

  “F-Firhouse warrenne?” Paladin repeated slowly. He recognized that name and ignored her question completely. He struggled to reconstruct his memory. He couldn’t remember everything that had happened to him (this was because he had come quite close to freezing to death, and his mind was slowed). Finally, he whispered: “Watershine . . . Teinche . . . is he . . .?” As the words came out, Paladin tried to get up and stumbled. His strange surroundings, the unfamiliar nutook, everything spun away from him.

  Eiyra placed a paw on Paladin’s shoulder and steadied him. “He is here,” she said.

  Paladin noticed her touch was both strong and tender.

  “He is meeting with Agabus and the others in the estaclah of the Utergei.”

  The what?! he thought.

  Eiyra helped Paladin back onto his makeshift bed. “What is your name?” she asked. “Can you remember?”

  Paladin sighed heavily and lay back down. He stared at the ceiling and took note of it for the first time. It was high above them, made from exposed timbers and covered with decaying vines. Wind rustled the dead, brown leaves, and Paladin heard the timbers groan and whisper to each other. Beyond them he saw, like diamonds against the blackest velvet, winter stars shining in the sky. His eyes once again went to the single word emblazoned on the plaque above the doorway nearby.

  “Where am I?” he asked. A crease worked across his brow.

  Eiyra shook her head and persisted, “What is your name?”

  Paladin looked at her a moment, then looked away. “My name is . . . my name is Paladin,” he answered slowly.

  “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  Paladin looked at the stars again and squinted, thinking. He looked at her and found himself noticing, quite randomly, the pleasant shape of her face.

  “An accident,” he said after some time. “I think . . . Some kind of accident. Lots of water.” He paused. “And a white hand?” It was more of a question than a statement. He looked at Eiyra again. “Was that part of my dream?”

  Eiyra shook her head. “No. It wasn’t a dream. But, it wasn’t a hand, either. It was Spirit. He was the one who drew you from the water and brought you here.”

  “Spirit—?” Paladin said. There was something about the name. “Where am I?” h
e asked again.

  Eiyra gently stroked Paladin’s forehead and looked as if she were about to answer his question when, all at once, a strange and foreign face leaned into Paladin’s view. Paladin jumped. Ripples of pain coursed through his body. He recognized the face belonged to a squirrel, but he had never seen one so up close. The eyes were wide—almost too wide—and stared at Paladin in amazement.

  “H-h-how is he?” the squirrel stammered.

  Eiyra gently pushed the squirrel aside and said, “He’s fine, Frenjoo. Give him some room.” The squirrel stepped back and padded back and forth nervously on his front feet, all while watching Paladin with his wide eyes. The squirrel’s tail twitched involuntarily behind him.

  Paladin sat up again despite protesting muscles—they ached from the deep chill they had withstood.

  “This is Frenjoo,” Eiyra nodded toward the squirrel. “He saw your accident from the forest’s edge.” Paladin looked at the squirrel with a furrowed brow. Frenjoo wrung his tail nervously, and nodded in eager agreement with Eiyra’s account. Paladin felt an immediate affinity for the squirrel, sensing his almost unspoiled innocence. The rabbit managed a weak smile, despite his pain.

  “Frenjoo was the one who told us about it even before Spirit brought you to the shores of the Emunah. Where we found you.” Eiyra smiled and looked at the squirrel. “He ran the whole way.” Paladin stared at Frenjoo. The squirrel looked back and forth between Paladin and Eiyra as if he did not understand, or was only hearing this information for the first time. Paladin got the distinct impression the squirrel wanted to say something, but perhaps didn’t know what to say or how to say it. He felt a surge of sympathy for the squirrel. The squirrel wasn’t stupid, that wasn’t it. But there was something…

  “Frenjoo’s had a bit of an accident himself, I’m afraid.” Eiyra smiled and propped some pine-straw behind Paladin’s head. “Isn’t that right, Frenjoo?”