Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Dear Reader…

  Bones Series

  A Message to you from the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  BONES BOOK ONE

  Castle Magic

  by Jim Rudnick

  This is purely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book may not be re-sold or given away without permission in writing from the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, or distributed in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means past, present or future.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-988144-20-7

  Copyright © 2016

  Jim Rudnick

  All rights reserved.

  For my Susan…

  Dear Reader…

  Thank you for reading this ebook.

  If you have borrowed this book through the Kindle Unlimited subscription program, I kindly ask that —

  — you click through to the last page of this book when you are finished reading and exit the book!

  This will ensure that the author is properly credited for the book borrow…

  Thank you…

  Jim Rudnick

  Bones Book Two: Castle Magic…

  "Being fodder for the Spearmen was one thing, but as Javor was to learn, that meant much more than being able to dodge their spears. And his escape from the Arena meant more than saving his own life—it could mean saving his whole team and that was something he very much wanted as he dodged and ran the volley of spears.

  But more than the end of the Forest Empire, was the realization that he and his team would soon be involved with the one city state on Bones, that was magical—at least that’s what the story was. Castle Magic was led by humans who supposedly had magical gifts, who could not be injured or hurt and could disappear at will. Surely, there was a way to defeat these magicians, but as Javor was to learn the truth was not always a part of the story.

  Join him and his team as they fight their way across Bones and see what adventures lie ahead—zombies and tribes, magicians and disciples…the list of enemies grows daily on Bones as the Boathi arrive too…”

  A Message to you from the Author…

  I just wanted to say thanks so so much for reading Book 3 of the Bones Series…

  As my Amazon bio says, being a youngster in the 1950's meant that I was a voracious reader in what has been called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. That meant that for me, my heroes were not on the hockey rink or gridiron - but instead in my local Library where at 12 I had a full Adult card (thanks Dad!) and took out more than 5 books a week.

  Everyone from Heinlein, Norton, Leiber, Pohl, Anderson, Simak, Asimov, Brackett, Gunn, Van Vogt and more....I fell in love with and eventually owned Ace Doubles of my own. And while I never knew who wrote the Tom Corbett - Space Cadet series, I fell in love with them and they had a place of honor on my own bookcase too!

  With that kind of an introduction to Science Fiction, it's no wonder that when I got my writing work done, I turned my own fictional side of my brain to writing same. It's one thing I know how to write - and a totally different matter to release same to the world - something that I've just started to work on....

  Suffice it to say my own works are rooted in that Golden Age and it's that era that I'd like to one day be known as a teensy contributor to in some small way...

  So once again, thanks for beginning my Bones series and wait'll you learn about the world that our hero lands on…

  Enjoy and remember, in a series, characters develop and mature not the way we sometimes want…instead, it's like they have a life of their own!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Javor went up, higher and higher, his right leg fully extended below him. He did have a thought about whether he should take a pre-flop body position, arcing up as he spun to his left to go up and over headfirst, but he knew he couldn’t do that in this case.

  Instead, he just went up, and as the edge of the stage came toward him, he flexed his left wrist to spin the spear from behind his left arm, and he rolled to his right when he knew he’d cleared the stage.

  As he landed, he forced the spear toward the prime disciple, who horrified by the slave who now faced him, froze in his tracks. He was starting to back up, but now he just stood on the arena stage, frozen like a deer in the headlights.

  Javor landed flat on his rear end and spun quickly to kneel in front of the prime disciple in front of him, only an arm’s length away.

  He snarled at the prime disciple. “Tell the shieldsmen—all of them—to stand down or slaves will not be the only ones who die in the arena today.”

  With the spear tip only inches away from his chest, the prime disciple yelled out at the top of his voice, “Stand down! All Shieldsmen—stand down!”

  “Smart … now call over to the slave watchers, and have them release my fellow ambassadors and friends. DO IT NOW … and live!” Javor yelled as he rose up on one knee and moved over to his left to be on the prime disciple’s right side. From here, he could look down the stage and over and through the slave fencing as the prime disciple called out to the captors there to bring these slaves to the stage.

  “And call down to the dog handlers—I want Khuno delivered to the stage now,” he added.

  At the far end of the arena, a dog handler was going into one of the dog cages calling out the dog’s name. Javor waited. The prime disciple looked first one way and then the other, but he did not make a move at all with his hands or feet. He stood frozen but alive.

  Minutes later, the arena now a hushed and quiet place, Javor looked over his shoulder toward the arena and the three shieldsmen who still stood with spears in hand but at their sides. He looked at the two slaves scheduled to run next and smiled once again at the prime disciple.

  “Get those last two slaves up here too—and empty the stage of all the rest of your aides too,” he said.

  The prime disciple yelled out the directions, and a shieldsman without a spear, Javor noted, pushed the two slaves back out of the arena to come to the side entrance to the stage behind them. All of the prime disciple’s aides disappeared off the stage, and now there were only the two of them. In less than a minute, Sue and the rest of his group showed up from the other side of the stage with Toby at the end of the group. Bounding past them, Bixby scampered up to lick his ankles. The two slaves from the other side of the stage came up and all were assembled.

  Sue made sure to never get too close to the prime disciple—but she got as close to being in his face as she could, the spear tip just to her left as she leaned close to the man.

  She stuck a hand down into her slave tunic, and from between her breasts, she gently pulled out a small cylinder-shaped object and held it up for the prime disciple to see up close. He peered at it and then jerked back.

  “I see that you know your devices like the Regime does. It’s a nuke—tactical, so the crater if I set it off right here would take out everything you see within a half to three-quarters of a mile. You. Every single Empire citizen and all the buildings—including the half-built pyramid you see behind you. All I need to do is to arm the nuke, and in fifteen minutes, this is all gone,” she said quietly.

  The prime disciple’s body began to shake as he took in Sue’s words.

  “We are leaving the Empire. Toby, get you and your boys up to number one,” she said as she pointed right over their heads.

  At the back of the stage sat a set of steps up to a platform and then a ladder up to the floater that was moored there. Toby nodded, and he and two of his ex-crewmen trotted across the stage and around the corner of the big backdrop to the steps.

  “Take Bixby too,” Javor yelled, and the dog followed them as he’d been ordered.

  They waited, and above their heads, the floater suddenly roared into life and spun to its left to face downwind.

  Sue nodded and said to the prime disciple, “You’re next, follow along.”

  Wayne led the way and the rest of the group followed him. In one minute, the stage went from crowded to empty except for Sue and Javor.

  Javor stood and looked down at the crowds who still sat silently, frozen as their leader was in jeopardy. He wanted to spear those two surviving shieldsmen who’d killed so many slaves already, but that couldn’t happen. He wanted to free all the slaves, but he couldn’t do that either. He put a hand on Sue’s arm, nodded, and said, “Give the slaves some extra time, Sue?” and she nodded.

  She held up the nuke and moved to the front of the stage. As she did, she yelled, “Slave masters—release the slaves en masse and do it now.”

  They began to comply, but then an argument broke out among them. The prime disciple was not in their view, and Javor wondered if they thought that meant maybe they no longer had to submit.

  Sue must have had the same idea, and she spoke to the thousands there. “This is a nuke—it will kill everyone here and blow up everythin g you see. You will all die—or you will comply and live,” she said, “and the prime disciple will be released back to you when we leave the city.”

  The crowds muttered and there were some dissenting arguments too, but they sat waiting.

  Sue grabbed Javor and yanked him toward the backdrop to get up the stairs and ladder and onto the floater. As he turned, he stopped and pivoted, and with only two steps, he threw the spear back into the arena.

  It hurtled so quickly that no one could even move—and it hit the sand directly in front of one of the shieldsmen, between his legs, and buried into the sand.

  Javor could have killed the man, but he did not. He wondered why he’d spared the man.

  Sue noted that and then went back to stand at the front of the stage once more. “Run … you have thirty minutes to get at least a few miles away …” she said.

  The die is cast, Javor thought as he grabbed Sue’s shoulder, and they both hustled behind the backdrop to mount the stairs.

  Around them, they could see a large number of the previously seated guests fighting their way down the bleacher steps to get free of the arena. The slaves were now gone and had a good lead. As they got to the final ladder, Sue went up first after tucking the nuke back into her slave tunic, and Javor brought up the rear.

  Where the ladder entered the lowest compartment of the floater, Wayne and Bruce quickly grabbed them, and then the ladder was kicked out.

  Bruce yelled up to Toby, who was up a level and at the front of the floater. “We got ‘em, Toby … go for it!”

  The mooring cable was set free, and the floater instantly began to nose up in the wind. As she rose, Bruce led the way down the narrow corridor on the bottom level to a major set of stairs that seemed to go up forever. As the front stairway, it linked all the various levels and interior floors within the floater. Everything inside was the same shade of dull gray.

  They went to their left at the first level. The aisles were all narrow. If you wanted to get by someone, you’d end up friends for sure, Javor thought. At the end of this aisle, there was a large anteroom with seats and windows for passengers to use and a solid-looking door to the cockpit area. With a gun trained on him, the prime disciple, who looked more than upset, sat in the seating area. Glaring at him, Bixby wagged a tail as Javor came over and scratched his ears. He’d missed his dog.

  “You watch him, Bix ol’ buddy,” Javor said, and he grinned at the cult leader.

  “You killed, what, a dozen or so slaves today. If I had my way, I’d just take this floater up a mile and kick you out,” he said, his voice flat and nasty.

  The man just sat there and said nothing.

  Sue walked up to him, and fishing the nuke out of her tunic, she pushed it in his face as he reared back. “We gave them some minutes to run. I’m going to arm this and set it for twenty minutes, and then we’re hightailing it outta here. The Forest Empire dies today, Mr. Prime Nothing,” she spat.

  Javor banged on the cockpit door, and one of Toby’s men—Andy he thought his name was—answered and let Javor inside. He walked the few steps toward Toby who was flying the floater in the pilot’s seat.

  Sue looked at the rows of gauges, dials, levers, and toggle switches that seemed to be everywhere in the cockpit. With only three seats in total, the space was small, and she stood to one side behind Andy who’d slid into the co-pilot’s seat on the right side of the cockpit.

  “Toby, if I were to set the nuke with, say, a twenty-minute delay, could we get clear before the nuke goes off?” she asked.

  He tilted his head to one side and then said, “Maybe—but a full thirty minutes would be a certainty. Can you do that?” he asked.

  She nodded and said, ”Take us right over the pyramid, say, about fifty feet above the top.

  Toby nodded. “Roger, can do.”

  Minutes later, the floater wheeled to its starboard side to face the wind. It sank slowly to now sit at approximately fifty feet above the topmost level area of the pyramid. Sue and Andy had already worked their way down to the lowest boarding level. Sue twisted the dial on the nuke, set the timer, and placed it in two towels. She tied a third towel and around the whole mass.

  As she waited, Toby voiced their position as being optimum over the loudspeaker that had a spot just above the sliding window where Sue sat. She grinned at Andy, and the towel and its payload went out the window.

  Toby had a camera pointed below the floater, and they all saw the beige towel falling, one end fluttering as it fell down. The towel-wrapped nuke lodged against a small group of free casing stones near the middle of the top level of the pyramid under construction.

  Sue grinned and she and Andy went back up the stairs to sit with the prime disciple as the floater suddenly accelerated going downwind at great speed. Javor wondered what the speed of the floater might be, and as their craft went faster and faster, it climbed higher and higher too.

  Sue elbowed him and said, “The blast is minimized, but we gotta be as high as possible to escape the blast as much as possible. But our pyramid is toast. Just hope the slaves got a good head start, but I’d think that as they’re all running, no one’s paying any attention to who’s who …”

  It took almost the full thirty minutes, and in the distance far behind them, a searing blast of ultra-white light appeared. The light always came first, Javor knew.

  The huge sound of the detonation of the nuke followed the light. The sound was deafening—any talk of the blast being made less in this kind of a tactical nuke was horse-hockey, Javor thought.

  Lastly, and as the floater bucked and rocked and was twisted to port by almost thirty degrees, came the blast radius itself. Somewhere on the floater, there was the sound of falling equipment and dishes clattering to the floor, breaking into shards and pieces. Clean up will be later … Javor thought.

  Javor smiled at the prime disciple. “End of the Empire, and of your slave society too, I’d be willing to bet,” he said.

  The only response from the prime disciple was pursed lips and a white face.

  Sue sneered. “These tactical nukes have zero rads—no radiation. They just wipe out what is within the blast radius, so you’re going back to the city, Mr. Prime Nothing …

  “You will have to try to remember that an ambassador is a person who commands respect—at least so that they do not get made into slaves. Ever. Remember that, it might help you in the future. I doubt it, but then who knows? Maybe your citizens will think you’ve done a poor job as the pyramid is gone. I wonder what your future might be like …” she said as she grinned at him broadly.

  The prime disciple sat and his face paled even more. He didn’t utter a single word.

  In another hour, Toby had returned the distance back to the city, and what lay below was stunningly destroyed.

  The pyramid—all the way down to the footings—was gone. In the pyramid’s place was a crater a few hundred feet wide. The crater had a few small fires still burning. The logs, rollers, and tracks the stones had been dragged on were all gone, but the logs burned in piles among the jumbled rock shards and chunks.

  Outward from where the pyramid used to tower over the city and the arena, the crater stretched out another few hundred yards. The arena itself was gone; the sand floor once covered with blood and dead slaves was now a part of the deep crater.

  The bleacher areas formed part of the rubble hiding the bloody sand from sight. Draped on part of the crater that was now the arena were black skins of what had once been floaters, all destroyed by the nuke.

  Javor noted that the holding pens where he had been held were also gone as were the dog pens too, and for that he felt a twinge of guilt. He’d forgotten about them and hoped that somehow and in some way they too had gotten free.

  Back toward the town itself, the nuke had taken out the first few dozen buildings in their entirety. From what they could see, there were no bodies lying on the streets or in the crater itself, but that was to be expected as they’d all had notice about the upcoming blast.

 

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