Radley Staff is a very important character in The Drache Girl.  I think I had originally pictured him only as a minor character (it’s been so long ago that I forget), be he became a major character in that book.  While he is less so in The Young Sorceress, he still gets plenty to do.  Here he rousts Lizzietown searching for saboteurs.

It was early in the morning, and those residents of Lizzietown who were awake, were moving slowly as their bodies warmed up.  From the north, a line of uniformed humans made their way down the street, stopping and snapping to in crisp formation.  Six uniformed constables, still wearing their blue jackets, but having replaced their blue trousers with khaki pants and shin high boots, were in front of the formation.  The other forty men wore khaki uniforms and pith helmets.  All except the two at the front of the column carried B1898 magazine-fed bolt-action .30 caliber service rifles.  Radley Staff carried a naval service sword, though a revolver rested in the holster at his belt.  Fifteen year old sorceress Senta Bly carried nothing that could be construed as a weapon. 

“All right, where are they?” Staff asked the girl.

“Uuthanum,” she said, raising her hand.

A small blue ball of light rose from her hand and started toward the ramshackle houses.

“Two by two,” called Staff.  “Double time, march!”

His orders were repeated by the sergeant halfway back in the column.  The soldiers started off in a jog, two by two, into Lizzietown.  Staff held his sword close to his chest and the soldiers behind him carried their rifles the same way.  The little blue light flew above and in front of them at exactly the same speed they moved.

The smell of panic rose from the lizzies.  Some came out of their doorways to see what was happening, only to be shoved back by the soldiers.  Anything in the way of the march, whether it was a cart or wagon or a lizzie was knocked aside by a booted kick or a rifle butt.  Senta jogged along beside Staff.  He slammed a large lizzie out of the way with his shoulder, rather like a rugby player.

Lizzietown held several hundred houses, but it didn’t take long for the soldiers to reach their destination.  The little blue ball of light rose high up into the air and burst, raining down fine blue dust which then glowed brightly as it coated six nearby shacks.

“Squads one and two, encircle positions!” shouted Staff.  “Squads three and four, turn out those huts!”

Eight soldiers stormed through the doorways of the lizzie houses and began shoving lizzies and their possessions out onto the ground.  Four policemen waited outside the doorways, examining items and pushing the reptilians down onto their faces.  The other eighteen soldiers that made up squads one and two had formed a blockade around the six huts, keeping any on the inside from getting out, and any on the outside from getting in.  There seemed to be few lizzies outside the circle who wanted to do anything other than get as far away from the area as possible.

Several lizzies appeared in the doorways of the other four houses.

“Kaetarrnaya  eesousztekh!” shouted Staff.

Most of the lizzies popped back inside.  One who didn’t had rifle butts smashed into his face by two soldiers who rushed forward from the line.  One lizzie made the mistake of stepping outside while holding an obsidian encrusted wooden sword.  He was cut down by at least five rifle bullets, even though he had made no move to raise the weapon.  The rifle shots were the signal to all the lizzies outside the perimeter of human soldiers to get away and get away as fast as they could.  Senta suddenly realized it was a signal for something else as well.

“Uh oh,” she said, stepping over to the doorway where the dead lizzie was making a large bloody puddle in the dirt.

“Get back here,” hissed Staff, but his attention was pulled away from her.

“We have contraband!” called one of the constables.