The Call (The Magnificent 12 1)

Mack’s eyes went wide.

Stefan’s eyes narrowed.

Mack leaped for the door, but Stefan wasn’t one of those great big guys who’s kind of slow and awkward. He was one of those great big guys who was as fast as a snake.

One massive paw shot out and grabbed Mack’s T-shirt, and suddenly Mack’s feet were no longer in contact with the floor.

He did a sort of Wile E. Coyote beat-feet air-run thing, but the effect was more comical than effective.

Camaro and a paint-dripping Matthew were there in a flash.

“Bully emergency?” Stefan asked. “You two can’t handle this runt?”

“Look what he did to me!” Matthew cried, outraged.

“You know the rules,” Camaro said to Stefan. “We dominate through fear. A threat to one of us is a threat to us all.”

Stefan nodded. “Huh,” he said. The word huh was roughly one-third of Stefan’s vocabulary. It could mean many things. But in this case it meant, “Yes, I agree that you have properly invoked a bully emergency, in which all bullies must unite to confront a common threat.”

“Better round everyone up,” Stefan said. “The usual.”

Everyone meant all the other bullies. The usual meant the usual place: the Dumpster behind the gym and up against the fence.

“I am going to mess up your face!” Matthew raged at Mack. He pointed for emphasis with a hand dripping pale yellow paint.

“Not the face,” Camaro said. “I like his face.”

Matthew and Camaro went off in pursuit of the others, while Stefan, seeming more weary than highly motivated, stuffed his sweaty shorts into Mack’s mouth and dragged him outside.

This was the point where Mack should have started begging, pleading, whining, and bribing. But the weird thing about Mack was that even though he was afraid of puppets, sharks, the ocean, shots, spiders, dentists, fire, Shetland ponies, hair dryers, asteroids, hot-air balloons, blue cheese, tornadoes, mosquitoes, electrical outlets, bats (the kind that fly and suck your blood), beards, babies, fear itself, and especially being buried alive, he was not afraid of real, actual trouble.

Which, when you think about it, is what tends to get heroes and those around them killed.

Two

A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…

Grimluk was twelve years old. Like most twelve-year-olds he had a job, a child, two wives, and a cow.

No. No, wait, that’s not true. He had one wife and two cows.

Grimluk’s wife was called Gelidberry. Their baby son’s name was as yet undetermined. Picking names was a very big deal in Grimluk’s village. There wasn’t a lot of entertainment, so when the villagers had something other than eking out a miserable existence to occupy their minds, they didn’t rush it.

The cows didn’t have names either, at least not that they had shared with Grimluk.

&nbs

p; The five of them—Grimluk, Gelidberry, baby, cow, and cow—lived in a small but comfortable home in a village in a clearing surrounded by a forest of very tall trees.

In the clearing the villagers planted chickpeas. Chickpeas are the main ingredient in hummus, but the discovery of hummus would take another thousand years. For now the chickpea farmers planted, watered, and harvested chickpeas. The village diet was 90 percent chickpeas, 8 percent milk—supplied by cow and cow—and 2 percent rat.

Although, truth be told, not a single one of the villagers could have calculated those percentages. Math was not a strong suit of the villagers, who, as well as not being math prodigies, were illiterate.

Grimluk was one of the few men in the village not involved in the chickpea business. Because he was quick and tireless, he had been chosen as the baron’s horse leader. This was a very big honor, and the job paid well (one large basket of chickpeas per week, a plump rat, and one pair of sandals each year). Grimluk wasn’t rich, but he earned a living; he was doing all right. He couldn’t complain.

Until…

One day Grimluk was leading his master’s horse when he spotted a hurried, harried-looking knave who, judging by the fact that his clothing was colored by light brown mud rather than good, honest dark brown mud, was not from around these parts.