O'Neill The Aebeling

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62287-601-3
Verlag: First Edition Design Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Wasserzeichen (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 100 Seiten

Major Conn MacLeod is no ordinary man. Decorated army officer, sportsman, academic and notorious millionaire playboy, he has more notches in his belt than ten men. He now plans to go to a place where the risks are unforeseeable and the outcomes inconceivable. Conn MacLeod has finally devised a key that will open a portal into a parallel world. Has he finally bitten off more than even he can chew?

Autoren/Hrsg.

O'Neill, Michael

Leseproben

CHAPTER 01
The leaves, in their bright autumn colors, fluttered downwards as the wind successfully unseated them from their home of the past months. It was very cool, and then suddenly very quiet, in the ancient forest; as if everything had stopped for something, and when something did happen, the animals in the vicinity fled – except for a Green Jay that twittered in the branches of a large tree. Instead of flying away from the humanly unperceivable sound of the tearing of the supposedly indestructible fabric that separates one dimension from another, it stayed, until the event had concluded, and then left for parts unknown. It saw, with definite interest, the glimmering light that suddenly appeared in mid-air, and then divided, each half glittering as it made its way to the ground. The result was an archway; from which it saw a man appear – tall, athletic, and blonde with a short, reddish beard; he looked about twenty, though in truth he was nearly forty. It could have noted, if it had been so inclined, that the man was well dressed, black woolen trousers, high leather boots bound with crisscross leather strapping, a studded purple stained brigandine over a chainmail hauberk and a linen gambeson, and was also extremely well-armed – he carried two swords while the warhorse that followed was laden with a circular shield, two bows, a multitude of arrows and another sword; a two handed Claymore in a scabbard hanging on the side of the saddle. The horse, a buckskin Lusitano stallion was tall, over seventeen hands, with a deep golden hide, and black legs, mane, and tail. The stallion stopped and sniffed the air as soon as he had all four feet on the forest floor, and sensing that he was in no immediate danger, he followed the man. Directly behind, four other animals quickly appeared, most burdened with packs, and one towing a travois. The last to arrive were two large white Maremmas. With everything safely through the arch, the blond warrior mounted the stallion and rode around towards the faint shimmering light. He raised his hand to the source of the light, grasping as if it were an apple from a tree; and as he did so, the light flickered and suddenly went out.  The rider cursed as he watched what appeared to be sand running through his fingers. Conn MacLeod, late of England in the year 2060, had hoped that the object that had provided him with his way “in” would also provide the way “out” – but it appeared not to be the case. The eleven gemstones that once sat in the hand carved yew pendant were now scattered all over the ground, and the structure that had held them into place was now dust. He dismounted and collected the sapphires from the forest floor. Where he was – he had no real idea. All he really understood was that he was now in a ‘world’ that he was able to access via a ‘doorway’ that he opened with a special ‘key’ – the very one that had just dissolved into dust. Of course, having a key to such a door is not a normal thing, and he had learnt how to access the doorway from instructions in a scroll that had been found in his mother’s belongings after her death and given to him when he was just ten.  For many years he considered that it was just something his mother had collected – and as the only thing of hers that he had, he treasured it. He also had studied it in great detail. It was of an unusual construct – a metre long, a continuous and complex illustration of historical objects so interwoven that it was as if a “Where’s Waldo?” picture was based on the Bayeux tapestry, the Codex Borgianus, and the Tale of Genji; only this time written in black ink on Japanese washi paper. The more time he had spent on it, however, the more confused he became. He increasingly got the impression that his mother had drawn it but that didn’t seem realistic because of what he knew of her – after all, she was ‘just’ an entertainer who worked in nightclubs; a girl who had spent her youth in dancing, acting and singing classes, and had never even been to university. It was true that she was a gifted artist – but she drew pictures of flowers and animals – not the kind of items found on the scroll. Illustrations in the scroll demonstrated such complexity and an understanding of history and science that it took Conn five university degrees and fifteen years to fully unravel. One of those degrees gave him the skills to prove that it had indeed been written by his mother. The scroll contained few words – and those that did appear were written, he discovered, in Latin using the Ogham script. Not only was it an incredibly unusual choice of script, but one sentence was a dedication, and it translated as: “For my beloved Connor. Search and you will find”. Although he had no real idea what he was supposed to look for, he dutifully proceeded to decode the scroll, and as his knowledge increased the manuscript begrudgingly revealed its secrets. Everything learnt added to the mystery and the most startling discovery was that the main message contained in the scroll was that there was a doorway – some people would call it a Portal – into another “world”, and that he, and he alone, “should” pass through. What was on the other side was not clear, but again, it didn’t seem like a suggestion, and from that moment, he prepared for his “trip”. The question of why or how his mother knew anything about “portals” remained unanswered – or why she used such an elaborate method of informing him about it. Just in case, one of Conn’s last acts before entering the portal was to destroy the scroll; he stood and watch it burn until it had all blown away in a fine dust, and then turned and entered the glimmering doorway. He was almost twenty five when he learnt of the Portal, and the following fifteen years had been used to get ready; and whilst he was meticulous in his planning there did not appear to be a need for urgency; which was lucky as Conn had a lot of interruptions to his preparations – like four wars in which he inadvertently became a major player. Like his father, and his fore fathers before him, Conn had joined the British Army as soon as he was able – seventeen. Unlike his ancestors who had spent almost their entire working lives serving in the British Army, he had only spent ten years – albeit a very busy ten years. His father, Colonel Ewan MacLeod, VC, was a highly decorated member of the Army who had served with distinction in Iraq, Afghanistan and then more recently in the Middle East War, but not without emotional consequences. After the peace settlement of 2018, it was in Japan where he sought anonymity and solace – and had inadvertently found a lot more. After recuing a young Swedish nightclub singer from a brutal attack, and certain death, in the back streets of the red light districts of Tokyo, he had even found a semblance of happiness. The act of rescuing her had subsequently put both their lives in peril, and they escaped Tokyo to a small mountain village in faraway Kyushu, where they lived in the home of an army buddy of Ewan’s. The JDF had played a significant part in the Middle East War, and Major Yamanaka was more than happy to provide a sanctuary for the pair. Here they stayed hidden and safe for ten years – and raised their only son – until the past caught up with them – with the murder of his mother at the hands of the Yakuza, and then his father’s death when he went looking for revenge; a debt of honour that Conn would “repay” years later. After their unforseen deaths, the ten year old Conn not only found himself alone, without a passport, and an orphan in a foreign land, but one being hunted as a witness to the murder of his mother. It was Major Yamanaka who helped him disappear until he was ready to face the world, and his hunters. Today he was all alone again, a very long way from home and now with no way of getting back. The “key” to the portal had taken five years of computing power and with a hundred hand carved and whittled attempts before the alignment of the gems in the pentacle was just right – and it had just dissolved in front of him. Placing the stones in a leather pouch on his waist, he patted the stallion and spoke aloud, for the first time, in this ‘new world’. ‘We can’t just stand here, can we? Let’s find a spot for the night.’ He walked the stallion back to the four pack animals that waited patiently. Around him were peaks of snow-capped mountains in all directions, indicating that he was in a valley of some kind. To the north and west the land sloped down, and as he had no inclination to head for the snow, he elected to follow the path downhill until the light failed. It was already afternoon, so he doubted that would be far, especially with the travois. Interestingly, it was early summer, at dawn, when he had walked into the portal, but it was clearly late autumn here, and late in the afternoon. The sky was a deep blue, cloudless, and the sun’s waning light flickered through the tall trees to the forest floor. Everything was still remarkably silent – the loudest sounds being the steady stamp of his animals’ hooves through the leaves. An hour later, Conn had found a defendable position beside an extremely dense clump of trees on a small knoll. The trees would form excellent protection against the bitter wind that had arrived as the sun disappeared behind the mountain. Bamboo, amongst many other plants that he recognized, grew plentifully in the forest, and Conn used his machete to cut and shape poles to build a pen for the animals. As he worked, he would inadvertently stop and...