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The wizard and I picked through the ruins of a once-great city, fishing what we needed from the abandoned structures and rubble. He was exuberant, and it was contagious. I had been able to forget about the Jazir, about the upcoming war, and skipped from one rubble pile to another. 

"Bring me that beam over there, Ferton, and we'll see if we can get this stone moved."

He pointed at a metal bar that jutted from a pile of smooth, porous red stones. The wizard called these stones 'bricks', and said people used to build huge buildings with them. I have my doubts - they looked far too crumbly to make a decent structure. Those buildings still standing were constructed out of a far stronger and more durable material the wizard called 'plastek' or 'pollamer'.

I tossed several fist-sized chunks of red stone off of the pile, while the wizard said: "Be careful around those bricks. This time of year, they may be-"

Before he finished his sentence, I removed a stone and revealed a snake. It was far quicker than me; I yelped and withdrew, but it was too late. It struck, and I felt its teeth puncture the skin between my thumb and forefinger. 

The wizard dropped his staff and ran over to me at a speed surprising for his age. He didn’t hesitate or give me a chance to protest, and knocked me to the ground. Before I could ask what he was doing he’d pinned my left arm under his knee. His robes whispered as he withdrew a heavy machete and brought it down as hard as he could on my wrist. He dropped the tool and its metal blade clattered on the stones as I began to howl in pain. Weakness, I know, to make such a sound, but it was all so quick and I’d been unprepared. The wizard produced his little firecan, what he called a ‘zippo’, and burned the stump that remained. 

Though I vividly recall the sizzling noises and the horrible smell of roasting meat, I don't remember if I was hitting him with my good arm or not. Later he told me that I put up an impressive fight for one so skinny.

While I flailed around like a beached fish, the wizard strode to the pile of rocks to find the snake. Pushing the crumbly red stones aside with his staff, he probed around for a moment before quickly withdrawing it. The snake’s fangs had sunk into the dented and worn wooden shaft; the wizard nimbly removed its head with the machete.

Business taken care of, he came over to see if I was going to live. Somehow, I had managed to work myself into a sitting position, gently cradling my poor arm as some leftover blood and other fluids stained my tunic.

"Does your arm hurt?"

The coppery taste of blood must have come from my shredded, hoarse throat. When I answered it sounded like another’s voice. "Yes...very much." 

He nodded, and his intense eyes darted around my face. "Good. That means the venom didn't make it past your wrist. It was a banded rocksnake – you’d have been in a coma within five minutes." 

The wizard rose, sighing, and looked to the sky. "I'll have to build you a fire", -I winced at the word- "for you'll soon be getting chills, even in the sun. I'll then get more water; I want you to drink so much that you'll have to relieve yourself every fifteen minutes."

He began picking up nearby scraps of wood, gray from exposure to the sun, being sure to avoid rock piles. "Shame about the rocksnake, though. They're terrible eating, taste like burnt hay. I-"

Frowning, the wizard stooped to the ground. He picked my severed hand up by its thumb, and held it up to examine it. The two fang marks were surrounded by dark purple, and the veins on the back of it were a vivid blue-green. With a look of distaste, he threw it on the woodpile where the fire would soon be built.

I swooned, but thankfully did not faint. If I had, the wizard would have been convinced he was losing me, and might have employed another bluntly effective technique to save my life.
#
“Don’t worry about the hand. I’ll make a replacement for you. Stronger than the original.”

I had seen many of the wizard’s wonders, and had little doubt he spoke the truth. 

“It’ll take me a few days. Until then, I’ll whip up an implement so that you can continue to do the chores for your parents. I wouldn’t want them more upset than they’re already going to be.”

My hand, though now ashes, still felt like it was on the end of my arm, and it itched wildly. I kept talking, trying to distract myself. “Would it be ready before Jazir attacks?”

He shook his head. “Ferton, you know your father said you were too young to fight. And, in my opinion, there shouldn’t even be any attack by Jazir. It’s only fifty head of livestock. If your father would let me help them, they could replenish that in no time.”

It was a futile discussion. My father tolerated the wizard, even let me go on adventures like this with him, but wanted nothing to do with the ‘tech-knowledge’ that he offered. It was time to change the subject; I had no stomach for debating my father’s position when I didn’t agree with it. “Was our day here for naught? Or were you able to find some of what you were looking for?”

“Ah!” exclaimed the wizard, brightening considerably. “Yes, I was still able to locate a few things. A tungsten filament from a light bulb, a small amount of platinum from an catalytic converter, a ring with enough gold to extrude three meters of wire...” He went through his day’s inventory, knowing I had little or no idea of what he was talking about.

It worried me, this notion that the wizard wanted to to open a hole in the universe, but he assured me that he was anything but mad. In a way, I hoped he was mad. I had gotten fond of our little excursions, notwithstanding the most recent injury, and did not look forward to the day when he would leave us to return to the stars.
#
If someone were to visit the wizard’s home, he would see little more than a humble one-room cabin, three paces to a side, with a low thatch roof, a simple bedroll in one corner, a crude hearth in the other. 

We left our mounts outside while the wizard pulled up two of the broad, flat hearthstones, and brushed aside a small pile of ashes. The trapdoor underneath was a slab of pollamer that he had scavenged out of some ruins. It had a simple lock, which opened to a large black key that the wizard wore on a chain around his neck.

“For now, I’ll rig up a simple set of jaws that opens and closes when you flex your elbow. I’ll need some time to get your replacement put together. Then, you’ll be able to-”

A man walked through the door of his hovel. I first thought he was a Jazir warrior, but his skin was far too dark. He was an adult in his prime, and very large, with huge hands and a square head. Short, dark hair bristled from his scalp, over a thick brow and wide nose. He was clad in a one-piece, form fitting green garment.

The stranger smiled as he spoke, as if to an old friend. “Marty! You’ve really let yourself go, huh? The whole long-haired hippie vibe seems to fit your personality!” His voice was deep and resonant.

The wizard’s expression of surprise and disappointment was one I had never seen before. “Jamaal. I’d like to say it’s good to see you again.” His voice sounded almost twenty years older.

The stranger’s chest heaved in a laugh. “Well, you almost got away with it, Marty. The residual energy you left was barely enough to pinpoint you. Another five minutes and it would have fully dissipated.”

“Pinpointed? You missed by twelve years!” 
The stranger’s massive shoulders shrugged. “Eh. Not too bad, if you ask me. Anyway, we weren’t too concerned. We figured even with your brains, you’d need at least twenty years to single-handedly build a linear accelerator from scratch.”

“Underestimation was always one of your weaknesses, Jamaal.”

The stranger’s smile didn’t waver. “We’ve been downstairs. Looks like you’d have been done in another year or so. No big deal to us. If we caught up to you with a minute to spare, we still win.”

The wizard’s face reddened, radiating through his white beard and hair, and I realized I’d never before seen him angry.

“Marty”, said the stranger, “from what we’ve found out in the village, you’ve fallen in with a quality group of savages. We’ll let you stay here with ‘em. Of course, we probably won’t get the same amount of work out of you as we would from the younger men, but you oughta be able to hold your own for a few years.”

The wizard brought his arm out of his robes in a sharp, fluid motion. In his hand was a death-box. I’d only seen him use it once before, quite effectively, when we were threatened by a wolf.

The weapon only seemed to amuse the hulking stranger even more. “We figured you’d be armed. But surely you don’t take me for an idiot, do you?”

At that moment, the rag over the wizard’s back window waved. Through it was pointed a metal rod, with a hollow end. Even I was able to figure out it was a death-box of some sort.

“Now, you may not value your life much, Marty, but what about your young friend over there? Surely you wouldn’t want him to die with you?”

The wizard’s shoulders drooped as his death-box fell to the packed earthen floor of the hovel. 

White teeth gleamed from the dark stranger’s mouth. “Very good, Marty. Now, let’s go say ‘hi’ to the Captain, shall we? We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
#
What I saw when we arrived back at the village was appalling. The warriors had been preparing for an attack from Jazir, yet these strangers had taken them completely by surprise. The men sat in a huddle on the ground, ringed by a half-dozen green-clad strangers holding large death-boxes. The women and children had been locked into the cattle-stockade, with the livestock. As Jamaal led us through the village, I saw the strangers dragging four of my father’s warriors toward the trees and gasped in horror.

Jamaal said: “Yeah, shame about those guys, Marty. If they’d have had any idea what a gun does, they’d probably still be alive. It was a little strange; like they were expecting us. But they had spears. We had real weapons.”

In the middle of the men, I saw my father; I was worried that, as chief, he would have been a primary target. He smiled when he saw me, but then his eyes darted down to my abbreviated arm. I flashed him an ‘okay’ sign with my good hand. I knew he still worried about me, but I was too old for him to show it around the other men.

They led us into our village’s Great Hall. It was surreal, these strange men in the dim confines of the building where only the warriors were allowed. The smell of sweat and spilled drinks was as familiar as ever, but a new aroma, sharp and sterile, insinuated itself in the mixture of scents. At the far end of the meeting room was a narrow-faced man with a clean-shaven head and a small, pointed chin-beard. He rose as we walked in, and his greeting reverberated in the high rafters of the meeting room.

"Welcome back to the crew, Marty! It's good to see you again after lo, these many hours!"

The wizard said: "Captain, I'm afraid twelve years wasn't quite enough of a break for me. How about you go away and try back later?"

The bald man laughed at the ground, shaking his head as he paced around the council table. He wasn't very tall, but still looked strong. There was a long, jagged scar from his left eyebrow through most of his left cheek; a man of my village would wear such a scar with immense pride. "Marty, Marty, Marty. I had a bet going with Jamaal about the chances of reconciliation, and if you keep this up, you're going to cost me a beer."

"I can't believe that you fail to see what's wrong with this, Captain. Wasn't it part of your oath..."

"I spit on my oath! Just a bunch of words made hollow by politicians who haven't ventured farther than Mars! We win the war, and they want to discard us like rotten fruit! "

"We've had this discussion before,” said the wizard. "I’ve had twelve more years than you have to grow more entrenched in my beliefs.”

The Captain, looking like he had energy that needed to be used, began pacing. "I never expected you to come fully on board, Marty. After all, you were just along for the ride, and in many ways, I'm sorry you had to be dragged into this. But of course, without you, we wouldn't even be here, now would we?" He stopped at a trestle table, and tested his weight on it.

Jamaal, behind us, added: "The politicians are right, Marty. A veteran who returns from combat is three times more likely to be arrested for a violent crime, and one third as likely to find a good job and become a decent member of society. Nine out of ten untreatable cases of psychotic behavior are found in people who’ve had to stare death in the face on a regular basis. Why would they want us?" He paused, more for lending weight to the question than to have it answered. 

The wizard’s temper flared again. "Being treated like animals doesn't excuse your acting like them! You could live in this time without disturbing these people. It’s still not too late. They stay away from the abandoned cities; you could move into one of them and reconstruct it."

The Captain hopped up to a sitting position on the table. He glanced over our shoulders at Jamaal, his expression saying: Okay, Jamaal, you've got a free beer coming. 

"I think we’ve wasted enough of each other’s time. Your plan sounds great to you, Marty, but I don't think we're the kind of leopards who can change our spots. We'd have to learn how to be farmers, construction workers, mechanics ... it’s impossible for men who have only learned how to kill, torture, destroy, intimidate, patch ourselves up, and fix our weapons. What Jamaal said was true. We've got a number of men in our crew who would be criminals in any normal, structured society, even one made entirely of soldiers. By establishing an empire among these savages, we continue to channel them in a productive direction. We will be constantly warring with those outside our borders or quelling insurrection inside of them.”

The Captain hopped off the table and resumed pacing. His heavy boots thumped on the wood planking of the floor. “You shouldn't feel so bad about these villagers that you've befriended. There's only twenty of us, and a hell of a lot of territory to conquer. They may one day be quite highly placed in our New World Order. And you might be, too. I know hundreds of ways that you could help … you could be our Archimedes."

The wizard did not respond to that, but only stood, stoop-shouldered. After an uncomfortable beat, he met the gaze of the old, scarred warrior and asked, "So what's to be done with us for the moment?"

The Captain, unfazed by not getting an answer to his question, returned the wizard’s look with a predatory smile. "Jamaal and I had been discussing that. For now, I suppose you'll be the first political prisoner of our new Empire. We could just kill you, you know. But someday, maybe you'll see the light. You'd be a hell of a lot more help to us if you chose to cooperate than if you decided to make us put you out of your misery." He shifted his gaze back over our shoulders. "Jamaal, what's with this kid, anyway?"

"I think he’s Marty's mascot. Seems he's been hanging around Marty enough to know our language.”

“Well”, the Captain said, shifting his gaze to me. “I guess he could give us a hand – pardon the pun – in here. He can be ‘boy’ for us, translate stuff, get us coffee.” Shifting his gaze to me, he smiled, splitting his chin-beard diabolically. “You’re hired, kid. You start first thing in the morning. I’ve been meaning to address the people of the village, let them know they’re on the front end of something great, but I need a translator for that. For now...that storage room over there seems to have a nice, thick door. Jamaal, go ahead and put ‘em up in there for tonight. I’ll keep an eye on the door ‘til twenty-three hundred.
#
"I'm sorry, Ferton. I brought this upon you and your village."

"I don't blame you,” I said. “My father and the villagers will not blame you. You are not evil, and cannot be blamed for the actions of evil men."

He shook his head. "I was sure I rigged the unit to blow after I made the transfer. I knew I shouldn't have set a time delay. If anyone could disarm a homemade time bomb, it’d be one of them. I should’ve had the thing set to blow right as I opened the gate...Aw, who am I kidding? I should've blown myself up with all of that equipment. "

"Don't talk like that! You are too hard on yourself. It is the actions of those other men that are deplorable. To them, you are just a tool, and morally, you should bear none of the guilt."

He sat on the cold wood planking and sulked, staring bitterly at the dry, tough bread that they'd left us.

I tried another tack. "How were you associated with those men? I could detect right away that you are not like them."

He gave me a sad half-smile. "Basically, I had some great ideas, but couldn't test them at home. I had to get far enough from Earth - or any other human habitation, for that matter - so that if my experiment went wrong and I caused a chain reaction...that is, made a new sun, or a black hole... I had to be a long way from anybody else if I made a mistake."

"Like the time you taught me to make gun-powder and burned half your beard off?"

He almost smiled, but his eyes were still very sad. "Exactly. I was trying to generate extremely large amounts of energy inside a fairly small container, this whole opening-a-hole-in-the-universe thing I was telling you about. If my experiment was a failure, I might have created a sun. These men –“ he gestured toward the door – “were sent by their government on a ‘bug hunt’ on a faraway planet, mainly so they’d go away for a long time because there was nobody left for them to fight. The people I worked for talked the government into letting me and my equipment come along. They are not truly evil men, Ferton. They are extremely smart, especially the Captain and Jamaal. They've spent most of their lives not knowing if they would see the next day or not, and using their powers of reason to get them out of unfavorable situations. That's really all they're doing here; getting themselves out of what they view to be an extremely unfavorable situation."

"So you understand why they do it?"

He became more animated. "Yes! But I hardly approve of it! Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions in your culture will die, simply because score of men need psychological therapy!"

I paused, feeling his newfound anger build. My father once told me that anger and hate should be avoided, but if that was not possible, it should be immediately harnessed as motivation. 

I jumped to my feet. "Then enough complaining about the problem, which does nothing to get us out of this mess. Now that you are able to think clearly, I can show you the secret trapdoors."

His eyes widened. "What?"

"There’s a hidden cellar under the floor, in case invaders looted our main supplies, and a second door that we could use to exit the back of the building."

"Best news I’ve had in a long time! If they're not going to kill me, and I have absolutely no reason to believe they won’t get around to it, then I'd better get busy being a thorn in their side." He dragged himself erect in a quick yet clumsy manner, and began to rub his hands together. "Hmmm. Only one problem with escaping out back. The stock pen is right behind the meeting hall, right? Guards are posted around it-they've got the women and children in there."

"I think I have an idea. But here, help me move these rugs... I’m not used to having only one hand."

#
The morning was clear and chilly, but the high pines and spruces around the village dampened most of the breeze. The men of the village were assembled in preparation for a speech by the Captain, who had sent for me to serve as a translator. The captives stood rigidly for about five minutes, then began to slouch, fidget, and eye each other nervously as the delay dragged on.

“Where the hell are they?” shouted the Captain.

A green-suited man ran up and saluted. “There were some loose boards in the floor, sir. They must have slipped out last night.”

“Sh…” The senior officer caught himself and began to rub his temples. “Okay, go get Jamaal.”

“Already here, sir”, responded the first officer from behind. “I was just about to ask what the holdup was.”

“They busted out. There was a hidden escape hatch in there.”

Jamaal just said: “Orders?”

“Wake up Stevens and Ngede. Have one search with thermal from the skyhopper, and have the other get a squad together to search on foot. They have at most a six hour lead on us. Move!”

From inside the hidden storeroom, the wizard and I could hear the Captain’s bellowing. After Jamal left, he gave an order to lock the men back up.

We both breathed a sigh of relief in the musty cellar air. It didn’t look like they thought we’d want to stay in the village.

“Do you store anything we can use down here?” whispered the wizard in the darkness.

“Just some furs and feathers for trade. We tried keeping food down here, but it did not work out very well.”

He grunted, deep in thought. “Well, I suppose at nightfall, we- what was that?”

“What was what?”

“I just felt something on my foot.”

“Oh”, I responded, fighting hard to keep my voice to a whisper, “Just the rats. That would be why we could not store food down here.”

“Urgh.” I could not see very well in the darkness, but I felt the disgusted expression on the Wizard’s face. “This may be a very unpleasant wait indeed, unless I figured out some way to...” he trailed off. He began thinking, so hard that I almost felt it. 

“Yes, we’ll drive the rats out. If that’s not a diversion, I don’t know what is.”

“How are we going to do that?”

The wizard’s robes ruffled and whispered with his animation. “I have another little device on me. I can set this thing to a frequency of about 40,000 hertz – that’s way beyond the range of human hearing. But not rodents. The rats will do anything to get away from it. You and I, or any other people for that matter, won’t hear a thing.”

“Then what do we do? Run for it?”
“Hmm. No, I guess all it would do is bother them for a few minutes. None of these guys would be driven out of town by rats.”

“If only they’d bothered Jazir, instead of us – wait! That’s it!”

The wizard fumbled around in the dark for a second before putting a hand on my shoulder. “Of course! If Jazir attacks the village, they’ll be fighting the men from my time.”

“Right, and if we time the rat swarm correctly, that would add to the chaos. If we slip out and let my father and his warriors free while the Jazir are fighting the green-suited men, they have a chance.”

“So we wait. These, uh, rats don’t bite, do they?”

“I hope not”, I said. “If they do, more often than not their victim suffers the foaming-mouth disease.”

The wizard swallowed hard. I could have told him I had just made that up, but I guess my sense of humor is an odd one.
#
It was a very long wait. With each breath, my mouth and throat were flooded with a muddy, rotten feeling. We walked around mostly, so the rats could feel our motion and avoid us. When we sat down, they would forget we were there and skitter over, around, and past us as they continued on with their lives. Eventually, we got used to their tiny claws, coarse fur, and melodic squeaking.

Our eyes were as acclimated to the dark as they could be, so we could tell when late afternoon began robbing the world of sunlight. We stood again and began pacing in nervous anticipation. Jazir had threatened to attack tonight, but what if that was just a ruse? Or an idle threat? 

Suddenly, I grabbed the wizard's sleeve. "That's it!" I whispered.

"What? That bird?"

"That was no bird! That was a Jazir warrior."

In response, the wizard pulled something out of his robes and readied it.

After a minute of silence, I thought I might not have heard correctly. I strained to hear what was going on outside. As a result, I jumped when I heard the cry of pain.

Suddenly, the village was filled with the war-cries of Jaziri fighters.

“Get ready,” muttered the wizard, and I covered my ears. 

“Now!” I heard nothing and thought the box had been broken, when a cacophonous tide of squeaks and motion began to fill the storeroom. The rats burst through some the floorboards in the great hall above, and flooded through burrows in our subterranean hiding place. Rivers of creatures oozed through every available crack, hole, and breach, writhing over each other, flowing over and squeezing through obstacles.

From the hall above, we heard the Captain: "What the...YUGGH!"

"Come, Ferton!" The wizard pulled me along by the sleeve and ran to the trapdoor in the council chamber floor.

I pulled loose from him, and began running in the opposite direction. "Go! Go!" I whisper-shouted, hoping that he would understand. He stood and hesitated for a half second, then, figuring I knew what I was doing, ran for the trapdoor.

I ran to the opposite corner of the cellar chamber, which led to another trapdoor, the one under the room that my father, as chief, kept for himself. I began to hear the popping and chattering from the invader's death-boxes, so many of them that it sounded like giant woodpeckers had landed on a dead tree nearby. I had no time to dwell on the fight outside, or on the fact that I was rooting for the hated Jazir for the first time in my life. I was to the trapdoor, and grabbed the leather strap that hung from it, yanking downward with all my might.

The leather snapped! It must have been weakened over the years, or chewed through by rats. 

Overhead, I heard the clogging of boots on the floorboards, and the Captain shouting.

" Where did you come from?"

I had to get up there somehow, but the strap was broken, and...

I tried to hit myself in the head for my stupidity, but my hand was no longer there. Why would a floor trapdoor pull downward? I pushed up on it, and it opened. Pulling myself up and through was very difficult with one hand, but I managed to get a foothold and heaved myself up on the floor. I heard the Captain shout, "Don't move!"

I scanned the room, then realized that he was shouting at the wizard.

"Are you really going to shoot me? I think deep down, you don't want to or you would’ve killed me by now."

I got to my feet, and saw what I was looking for balanced against the back wall.

“Yeah, Marty. I will shoot you. But I don’t want to kill you, so I won’t aim for the head. I just think I’ll blast you in the kneecap. I might still find use for your brains, but I hardly need your legs.”

I burst through the office door, right as a loud shot rang out from the Captain’s death-box and the wizard hit the floor like a sack of meat.

I was probably shouting, because I remember the bald warrior jerking his eyes toward me, startled. By then, I had thrown the object from my father’s office: his ceremonial spear. It was light yet solid, and well balanced, lancing through the air between him and me as if on a rope.

He managed to swing his death-box around when the spear, guided by my father’s father and all of his fathers before him, found its mark. It embedded itself on the left side of his chest, causing him to jerk sideways. He somehow kept his feet, and I heard a loud boom from his death-box. He took fresh aim with the weapon, and I can’t forget the look on his face. He wasn’t hate-filled, or angry, but instead his was a look of pure concentration, tempered with… zeal? Enthusiasm? There was something positive for this in him; he seemed to relish being in a life-threatening situation.

Schwap! He was hit in the head with something solid, maybe a Jazir sling-stone. His second shot went wild, as my belly burned with the fire of horrible pain from his first shot. I looked down and saw a finger-sized hole, as a gray blotch filled the center of my vision and rapidly spread outward. As I slumped to the floor, I managed to see that the wizard had started to crawl toward the bald man, to retrieve the noisemaker that he had just thrown to save my life.
#
I was semi-conscious, feeling my father standing over me.

"Are they..."

He put his hand over my mouth. "Do not talk, not yet. Most of the invaders were killed by the Jazir, or by us. Four or five of them, led by the large dark one, got away into the forest. We drove the Jazir out, but some of them were able to carry away goats and chickens. We will get them back, son; they lost a lot of men."

"The...wiz..." I had trouble forming my words.

"He'll live.”
#
When I woke again, I was thick-headed, groggy, and in a moderate amount of pain. The wizard was there.

"Good afternoon, Ferton. I trust you're feeling much better."

"You're still alive!" I tried sitting, and failed.

"The Captain wasn't trying to kill me, just maim. And maim he did. I'll have to teach you how to install an artificial knee so we can continue our searches for artifacts."

It was then that I realized my father was not there.

The wizard held out his hand. "Come on, I'll help you up."

I pulled myself to a sitting position, using both hands. Sudden realization startled me.

My mentor laughed. "Yeah, well, I figured you were out of commission anyway, and it turned out I had a few more parts together than I had thought. Actually, I can't take all the credit. Meyers is with Jamaal's group back at my place, and he’s quite a competent medic."

He picked up on my shocked reaction.

"I'll have plenty of time to explain, Ferton."

"You have plenty of time now!"

He looked around the room with reddened eyes, perhaps hoping to fabricate a decent story for me. But he couldn't, and had to resort to the truth.

"The Jazir, for the most part, wiped out the men that had taken over your village. There must have been hundreds of them; Jamaal said they couldn’t reload fast enough, there were so many. Your father, and the men of your village, saw the fight from their hiding places in the stables, and jumped the men guarding them. Jamaal, realizing they didn’t have a chance, took four other survivors into the woods, shooting behind them as they went. There weren’t enough Jazir left to fight your father’s men, so they grabbed what they could and ran.”

“My father said he’d get the animals back.”

The wizard nodded. “Your father is an intelligent man, Ferton. He saw what your captors’ weapons could do. With those weapons, and Jazir's depleted strength, he decided a quick counterattack would be best. If I had to guess, they’re currently herding Jazir’s livestock back here."

"What?" I can't explain what I was feeling. Shock, respect, disappointment, pride, anger...

The wizard held his hands out. "What would you have done, Ferton? These super-weapons have been dropped into your father’s lap, and Jazir’s threat to your village could be eliminated. Would you expect him to destroy the weapons?"

I had no answer. It was easy for me to say yes, not being in my father's position.

"As for Jamaal, I had used their sky-hopper to take myself back to my place, since I have much better facilities for treating my gunshot wound. And there they were, in my basement. At first, they wanted to kill me, but I was able to talk some sense into them."

"Sense? I am not sure what makes sense and what doesn't anymore."

"I'm not sure, either. But I didn't want them to kill me; I knew that much.” He considered his next words for a moment. “As it is now, your village has eaten the ‘forbidden fruit’. Maybe your father will have to start empire-building now, or the other villages will see the threat and band together to destroy him."

"What will Jamaal's group try to do?"

"I think I convinced Jamaal that an advisory role, or one where he and his men are Generals of whatever army your father builds, would be best use of his talents. It gives the headache of governing people to your father, who is already used to it on a small scale. "

I was shocked. "But why are you going along with this? Suddenly, you’ve accepted that wars must be fought and people must die? Have you truly shifted your morals out of convenience?"

The wizard rose, leaning on a makeshift crutch, and looked for a moment out the door of my room. Then he closed it, and sat back down, leaning close to me.

"Never", he answered quietly. "But Jamaal and his friends will be occupied. All the while I can continue the work that I had been doing before they arrived. I'll open a hole in the universe, go back to before any of this was more than a concept, and stop the whole thing from happening."

"Now", he continued in his normal voice. "I would appreciate your help in all this. Can I count on you?"

I nodded, but responded in a whisper. "Will I have ever met you, if you go back and stop yourself?"

He shook his head, whispering back. "You wouldn’t have ever known me, so you won't miss a thing. In a way, that's sad, because you're extremely smart, and with a little education, you could do great things."

"So let me go back with you!"

He had a painful look. "You know I can't do that."

I nodded, showing him I accepted that. While he worked on his equipment, I would convince him to take me. 

On the other hand, maybe the idea of ruling over an empire started by my father wasn't such a bad idea.

Either way, I had plenty of time to think about it.