Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #18 September 2015 | Page 39

Arthur nodded, “Call them what you will, we
have work to do, do we not?”

“So much for the days when men were real
men,” Grace muttered. “Come, our plane leaves soon.”

She turned back to him and smiled. “Indeed
we do.”

***
There were no gods, Arthur decided, his face
buried in his third parchment bag. ‘Barf bags’, Grace
called them. Torture bags, Arthur thought as sourly as
the smell coming back up to him from the bottom of
the soggy parchment. Flying on a plane was nothing
like driving in the car. He could not comprehend how
birds could willingly take to the skies.

***
The car thrummed beneath Arthur as it tore
down the highway in the direction of Sydney Airport.
The idea of a machine flying in the air like a bird unnerved him, but he quite enjoyed the feel of the old—
Grace said classic—Holden Monaro. If he ignored
the traffic whizzing past, overtaking them, he could
almost imagine the car was an elaborate carriage. One
which made his head spin and his stomach turn.

The heights, the motion, the clouds nestled beside him like demon sheep- this was no way for a king
to travel. Not even a tiny, glass bottle of sweet-tasting
ale helped to settle his nerves or his stomach. He’d
only emptied that into the second ‘barf bag’,

“Fit for a king,” Grace had declared as she’d
leaned over to fasten a strap across his chest.

Upon Grace’s suggestion, he tried to sleep,
only to become more nauseated.

They turned a corner which led under a
building and Arthur felt the car slow. They went on
gliding toward a gate that rose and fell under, Arthur
didn’t know what, power, as Grace pulled a piece of
parchment out of a box beside the car. The two things
seemed related, but he couldn’t see how.

“Why couldn’t the gods have sent me where
they needed me,” he moaned, folding the top of the
bag down gingerly to hand it to the patient looking
woman in a green uniform, her skirt scandalously
short.

Rather than dwell on the mystery, he looked
out the window as people moved past wearing a
strange assortment of clothes and pushing their bags
on small steel wagons. He wriggled uncomfortably
in his own new clothes. Scrounged from a friend of
Grace’s, they fit well, but were made of cloth softer
than his own. They were comfortable enough physically, but he felt somewhere between feminine and
naked.
soft?

“How much longer?”
lightly.

“Only another twenty-four hours,” Grace said
“You are enjoying this?” he accused.

“Not for a moment, I’m just savouring the
thought that we’re going to save the world.”

Surely even Gweneviere didn’t wear cloth this

Somehow, that didn’t seem so exciting just
now. Arthur lowered his eyes and began to murmur,
beseeching every god he could think of for their mercy.

“You look fine,” Grace assured him, swinging
the car into a parking space and turning the engine off.
“If my men could see me, they would not follow me into battle again, but spend their days referring
to me as ‘milady.’”

39
00

***
The plane bumped onto the tarmac, but Arthur