Desperate Acts
Page 7
dumps, and fuel depots, though the Order found it worked well against monsters that could shrug off less powerful guns. He selected a clip of Raufoss Mk 211 rounds and inserted it into the breech before slinging it over his shoulder. He also packed four more magazines into his coat pockets. The Raufoss .50 caliber ammunition was as powerful as a 20mm cannon shell. They were themselves a form of miniature shell, containing high explosives, an incendiary mix, and an armour-piercing tungsten penetrator. Short of an anti-tank rocket, the rifle with those bullets was probably the only hand-held weapon that could destroy a Cat From Mars.
"Mr. Cummings," Holt called as he removed a transponder and slipped it into his pants pocket. A corporal carrying a British Army L85A2 assault rifle came out of the backroom.
Holt handed him a GPS-equipped tracking device. "Round up the other snipers and proceed to Sir Differel's location. From there you should be able to track us."
"Yes, Sergeant." He hurried out of the pub as Mrs. Widget and Miss King put on their parkas.
All three of them looked at Aelfraed. "We're ready to go when you are," Holt said.
He smiled and nodded. Regular soldiers might disparage them as mere household staff, but he would test their metal against seasoned, battle-hardened troops any day.
"Go on ahead, I'll just get my coat."
Differel awoke slowly. She groaned; she had a splitting headache from hitting her skull, but it faded as she became more lucid. She tried to move but couldn't. She realized she was standing upright, but not under her own power. It felt more like she hung suspended, being as she seemed to be leaning forward.
She opened her eyes. At first she couldn't see anything and thought the blow had blinded her. Then she perceived a faint glow from webbing hanging off the walls. As her sight adjusted to the low light she looked around. The walls were stone and rough-hewn, like the inside of a cave. The she realized the passage was too straight, it had a roughly square cross section, and a flattened and smoothed floor.
A tunnel perhaps, or a mine shaft.
Seeing the series of wooden cross-braces retreating into the distance seemed to confirm the latter hypothesis. She remembered from her research that Exmoor had been a center for copper and iron mining going all the back to the Neolithic.
It felt like her arms were raised over her head and spread apart. Looking up and to either side she saw she was hanging from a cross-brace. Thin ropes were tied to her wrists and looped around her arms and the top of the brace through gaps between the wooden beam and the ceiling. The rope looked like it was made from the same material as the webbing, except it was a single braided cord. She pulled on it, but while her body swayed in the harness, the line didn't stretch. She fingered it with one hand; it felt like steel wire. Looking down, she saw her feet were tied to the bases of the two upright support beams.
Have I become part of its larder?
Then she saw it. "Oh, bollocks."
On the ground three feet in front of her stood a mass eighteen inches high that resembled an insect egg case. Except it held only one individual, a miniature version of the Martian cat the size of a house feline.
I'm to be its first meal when it hatches.
From "Inseparable"
The chariot delivered Donall Ruad Mac Roibeaird to the dolman just as the evening sun touched the horizon. He stepped carefully off the back, and accepted his shield and spear from the charioteer. They spoke no words, merely looked into each other's faces, then Donall Ruad turned towards the dolman as the chariot drove away.
He would not need it again; he knew he would not be returning. Whether anyone would come looking for him in the morning was of little importance, because he would be dead and, he hoped, past caring. His only concerns were the location and the task; his only worry, whether he could accomplish what he came to do. As an honorable warrior, he feared failure more than death, but he also feared that he may not truly die.
A freezing wind gusted, biting his exposed skin and chilling his elderly bones. It was late autumn in Erin, ten days past Samhain, and already the mountains were covered with snow, heralding an especially cold, wet winter. He tried to wrap his cloak closer around him, but his fingers were too cold from lack of blood while their joints ached maddeningly. He absently stroked his thick, bushy, gray moustache, then reached up to scratch an itch on his balding, wrinkled scalp under his helmet. As he lowered his hands, he looked at them, and grimaced at the sight of their gnarled fingers, and the loose, parchment-white skin covered in dull brown spots, with blue veins running like ridges along their backs. Not for the first time he reflected on the tribulations of growing old and decrepit, when he should have died on a field of battle in honorable combat. But he had not fought for over thirty years.
Still, there was no sense in dwelling on what should have been. He had to concentrate on the present situation. The revenant would rise from its grave under the dolman as soon as the sun had fully set. It would emerge from the rock monument and summon its army of walking dead from their own tombs and graves. Each night its reach lengthened, allowing it to raise more dead from farther afield. Each night its army ravaged the countryside, as its soldiers killed many dozens, swelling its bloated ranks even more. Warbands sent to crush its forces were themselves massacred, and became its minions the following night. Nothing seemed able to stop its relentless march, and once the whole of Erin had been conquered, Donall Ruad held out no hope that the ocean would contain it.
Only he could stop it, because only he knew where its tomb lay, and only he knew its weakness. Yet he doubted he would be able to accomplish his mission. He was past sixty. His joints ached all over his body, not just his hands; his spine felt as if it had fused solid and his legs were so weak they could not bear his weight for long. Nor could his shoulders any longer carry the shirt of chain mail he wore, or his left arm his shield. And his right could no longer heft his long, slashing sword above his waist. On top of all that he felt sick, with a pain in his gut that burned like fire and oft times raged so fiercely he could only double over in agony until it passed.
Yet greater than any of that was his sorrowful heart, for he had come to destroy the person he loved most in all the world, the companion of his bosom, Somhairle Duhb O Nollaig. And he did not believe he could bring himself to do it.
Donall Ruad first met Somhairle Duhb when they were both young men. He had just come of age and had journeyed north from his family's holdings in the province of Mamu to Rath Cruachain, the capital of the province of Connachta, in hopes of joining a warband so that he might earn glory and booty. Connachta warred against its neighbor, the province of Ulaid, and that seemed to him a better opportunity than trying closer to home. Nor was he disappointed: after only a couple of days he had been inducted into the band of the king's youngest son, the same day as Samhairle Duhb.
The other warriors called Donall 'the Red' for his copper hair and fiery temper, whereas they named Somhairle 'the Black' for his raven hair, morbid mirth, and equally morbid melancholia. Despite these differences, they found they had much in common. Thus, it wasn't long before the other members of the band started calling them "na Cuplai", or 'the Twins', because they never separated. They fought together as if they were a single man, riding the same chariot into battle and fighting the same opponents. They ate as one man, sported and caroused as one man, and lived as one man, even sharing the same bed. Nor did the others fail to notice that they shared the same mutual affection. While all the other members shared relations with each other, that shared by the Twins seemed stronger and more passionate, being based on a true devotion. As their love for each other grew, they became closer than brothers, closer even than husband and wife. It was as if they possessed separate halves of the same soul, now made one by their companionship.
They remained with the warband for two years, gaining glory and booty, which they shared as they did everything else. Then Connachta and Ulaid made peace and the warbands disbanded. Many of the warriors elected to stay in Connachta to make lives for the
mselves there, but Donall Ruad went home to his family holdings, and Somhairle Duhb accompanied him. They had by that time grown so close they confided their deepest secrets to each other. What Donall confided to Somhairle no one knows, but Somhairle revealed that he had been fathered by a Fomorian who had captured and raped his mother. That was why he had been named after his maternal grandfather, to hide the secret of his parentage. Donall could sympathize. The Fomorians were demons from the elder days long before the Gaels took Erin for themselves. Though mostly gone, a few still haunted the wild places where no man would live, or slept in the deepest recesses of the ancient passage tombs that dotted the island.
The Twins soon settled into the life of members of Erin's aristocratic warrior elite. Though they no longer lived as closely as they had done before, they still raided and fought together, and most times slept together. Eventually they both took wives and started families to continue their lines, so their trysts grew less frequent, but if anything their relationship grew stronger. To cement it with what they thought would be an unbreakable bond, they each placed a geis on the other, that