by Dan Abnett
Florence paused. She had her back to Vata. She stood perfectly still for several moments, the sword still raised in her hands. She spoke a few more words of the incantation, and then appeared to stumble over a phrase.
“My consignment,” said Vata. “Have you secured it?”
Florence sighed. She took hold of the grip of the sword in her right hand, held her left arm out for balance, and swung. She cut hard into the waist of one of the Wolf-Heads who had accompanied her onto the site. He dropped his weapon and clutched at his side, but the wound was too deep, and he was suddenly on his knees. Blood spilled from the wound, and he fell, pale-face-first onto the stone floor of the chamber.
Florence turned to Vata.
“You interrupted me,” she said. “My work.”
“We had an agreement,” said Vata, stony-faced. “My consignment.”
“Ask them,” said Florence, waving the sword in Lara and Carter’s direction. “Those hideous orange knapsacks.”
Vata made one of his micro-gestures, and one of the men behind him stepped around his boss and crossed the floor to where Lara and Carter were sitting.
Lara pulled her gun and held it against the bag of canisters.
“What do you want, Miss Croft?” asked Vata.
Lara’s neck and chest ached, and she was tired. Wasn’t it obvious what she wanted? She turned to Carter, searching for inspiration, for the right words and the right tone in which to deliver them. She looked him in the eyes. Those deep, dark, brown eyes. Lara blinked, and when she opened her eyes, she saw something else: the eyes were a softer brown, closer together, deeper set, and they were separated by a broad bridge of soft, dark fur.
Lara blinked again and turned back to Vata.
“The sword,” she said. “I want the sword.”
“How many canisters?” asked Vata.
Lara didn’t answer.
Carter looked at her. She seemed pale and hazy, and he was worried for her. She hadn’t fully recovered from her ordeal in Egypt, and she’d taken a serious blow. She’d been unconscious for at least a couple of minutes.
“Eight in the bags,” said Carter. “More still in the payload bay.”
Lara didn’t hear Carter. She was watching Florence. She was watching the altar, the obelisk. She shook her head and blinked when the altar appeared to bulge and shimmer. When she opened her eyes, the light was too bright, and the script carved onto the faces of the obelisk seemed to be writhing and dancing.
Lara blinked again and turned her attention to Florence’s face. It seemed to be changing. The hair had gone, and a great domed headdress seemed to have replaced it. Florence’s features were refining: a long, elegant nose; a perfectly proportioned chin; high cheekbones; and wide, almond-shaped eyes. She looked more youthful, and more beautiful than any woman had a right to be.
Then Lara realised that she could hear words. At first she could not make out their meaning, but then they came into focus.
It was a warding, a summoning, an investiture. It was a prayer and a constitution. It was all things to all women. It was a declaration of nationhood, of sorority, of reign. The words filled the chamber like a great aria.
Then Lara heard another sound: a low rumble, the snarling bass notes of the beginning of a howl. She turned her head slowly, not wanting to take her eyes off Florence but knowing that she must.
No one was speaking except for Florence, lost in her incantation.
There were new figures in the chamber. They were all looking at Lara. Half-a-dozen pairs of eyes were on her, palest grey and golden yellow, framed in black and brown.
Wolves.
Wolves, spectral and eerie, had entered the room like shadows.
Lara blinked and turned to Carter for reassurance. But it was no longer Carter. Soft brown eyes looked back at her, on either side of the broad bridge of fur. The ghost bear’s snarl rumbled and rose and grew into a howl. The wolves joined in.
Lara blinked hard. Her neck hurt. She rotated it on her shoulders and looked around the room again. She closed her right hand firmly around the grip of her gun.
Then something moved fast, from left to right in front of her—sleek grey fur, back arched, flying through the air. She had aimed and fired before she knew what she was doing.
The wolf fell to the ground, but not before it had bowled over one of Vata’s men, taking the boss down with him.
Lara stood. She looked down at the beast she had killed. There was no blood on its pelt where she had shot through its spine. There was no blood anywhere. She watched the wolf roll left and right. It was two beasts now, back on their feet, low to the ground, a stalking pair.
The ghosts were multiplying.
She felt something brush past her legs and turned to see another wolf, tawny, its yellow eyes flashing up at her as she looked down on it. It did not attack her. It yawned slightly and smacked its chops before walking around her. It tensed, snarled, and charged another of Vata’s men.
Lara fired again, and the guard was saved.
She hated herself.
The second wolf, like the first, lay still for a few moments, then rolled onto two new bellies and walked away as twins, leaving no trace of its former self.
Dritan Vata tried to back out of the chamber, allowing the three Wolf-Heads behind him to enter and protect him.
Carter had worked his back up the wall he was sitting against until he was standing. He dared not draw his gun, and he pressed his back against the wall in the hope of feeling more secure.
The light in the room turned grey, as if overcast, and Carter felt movement behind him. Something was moving, pressing against his back.
Lara cast her eyes around the room as the light changed, growing darker and greyer, like a stormy sky.
The hieroglyphics on the obelisk had stopped dancing, and the marks had become deeper and bolder—but more random, and less like pictograms. The stone was changing form and colour. Lara watched as cracks and splits began to appear in it and then wave and curl away in organic shapes. Then nodes and tumours began to appear on its surface, as if growing out of it. The surface looked moist to the touch, brown, organic.
Lara felt the stone floor begin to crease and crack under her feet, as the texture broke down and began to flake.
Carter had to take a step away from the wall as something nudged him in the back. Another tumour appeared under his arm, growing out and curling around as if to clutch at him, trap him.
Then he heard snuffling at his feet.
Lara pulled her knife and was on the beast. The wolves were stalking Vata’s men, and she didn’t care—not while Carter was under threat.
Something was moving at him. Not a wolf. Something heavy and hunched. A wild boar.
Lara dropped onto the beast’s humped back, put an arm around its throat, and thrust her blade deep into the thick wad of flesh between its front legs.
The wild boar squealed once, a hard, grunting shriek, and then died, slumping into the mulchy undergrowth.
Carter looked at Lara with a nod of gratitude, but she had to blink hard. Carter’s face kept becoming the head of a bear: pathos in its eyes, its broad snout tapering, its cheeks furred.
She turned her attention back to Florence.
It was not Florence; neither was it the beautiful woman who seemed to be emerging in her place.
Where Florence had been now stood a hideous wraith creature. The skull was naked, Florence’s hair burnt and frazzled away from her shrinking skin. Her lips were pulled back tight, her cheeks sunken, her eyelids pulled down tight over shrunken, desiccated eyeballs.
Florence’s incantation, once a song, was now the rasping whisper of an ancient crone. Lara could hardly make out the words that had resonated through the space only minutes before. They were overwhelmed now by the sounds of ancient forest.
A great tree
creaked and moaned, its branches moving with the wind that had caught the rhythm of the incantation and was lifting and swaying the canopy, moving the light in speckles and spatters on the forest floor. There was a strong smell of fresh rot, of sap and damp and of the creatures, of warm wolf pelts, and the musk of bear.
Lara looked at the altar. The great stone was now shaded by the tree. She stood mesmerised. She watched.
Florence moved her right hand to the grip of the sword and took its weight, freeing her left hand to wrap around her right. She held the sword upright in front of her ruined face.
The tone of the incantation had changed. The cadence and the rhythm were new.
Lara drew her guns, one in each hand, aimed at arm’s length, and fired them into what had once been Florence’s body, but the shots had no effect.
Florence plunged the tip of the sword into the stone. It was, as it had always been, the perfect fit.
The sword had found its home.
For a moment, the sword sat in the stone, the blade buried almost to its hilt, Florence’s hands still holding tightly to the grip.
Then the stone began to change colour around the hilt of the sword, white-hot at the epicentre, growing black as the blade’s energy travelled through the stone. The stone seemed to creak and moan, and then there was an explosive cracking sound, like nothing Lara had ever heard.
Florence’s body flew backwards across the chamber, crashed hard against the thick trunk of a well-grown tree where once the wall had been, and crumpled to a heap among its roots.
The sword flew out of the stone after her and landed point first in the tree a metre above her head. It glowed red-hot.
The atmosphere darkened instantly to a rich grey-blue, and the wind thrashed through the trees. The wood groaned and screamed; the bark swirled and the branches wove.
The wolves that had stalked and surrounded the Wolf-Heads craned their necks and lifted their heads, raising their voices over the thunderous storm that was brewing. As their howls filled the air, their shoulders rose, their manes thickened, their teeth extended, and their eyes flashed. They were bigger, fiercer than they had been moments before.
There was more snuffling, and several wild boar staggered out from between the densely packed trees, their heads broad and strong, their tusks pointing fiercely skywards, their humps dense with muscle.
Lara did not hesitate. She strode across the forest floor and pulled the blade free from the tree trunk that was quickly growing around it.
She did not feel the extreme heat of the grip, still glowing dark red.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:
THE SWORD IN THE STONE
Candle Lane
Lara sheathed the sword.
The battle was won. She knew that Florence Race was dead. It was over.
She was exhausted. More than that, she was overwhelmed with a sense of enormous relief, but also with huge responsibility. She felt momentarily feverish, light-headed, faint. The forest world around her turned black; the sounds of the ghost beasts faded. She did not feel anything after that. Lara did not crumple to the ground in a dainty faint. She crashed headlong, like a felled tree.
Lara awoke, facedown on a cold stone floor. She rolled over and opened her eyes, shielding them from the harsh light of the halogen lamps that seared the atmosphere.
The walls of the chamber, like the floor she was lying on, were solid stone, and the obelisk and altar with their hieroglyphics were exactly as they had been for more than three thousand years. Wild boar no longer snuffled and roamed, and the only sounds were of the Wolf-Heads, pulling blades, ready to attack.
The canisters! thought Lara.
She had secured the sword, but in good conscience she could not allow a man like Dritan Vata to escape the site with the Dornier’s payload. Besides, they were ready to kill her and anyone else who got in their way.
Lara got to her feet, drawing her own blades. The Wolf-Heads came at her from all angles, but could only fight her one at a time, and she was faster and smaller than they were. She could also deploy two blades at once, as effective with a knife in either hand.
She got in under her first assailant’s guard, flicking a blade across his left wrist before cutting down across his cheek and then plunging in hard under his collarbone. All the time Lara was fending off his knife hand with the blade in her left hand.
The Wolf-Head bled profusely from his left wrist, but the strike to his chest made him retreat. Clutching his left wrist with his right hand, the Wolf-Head took a step back and dropped to the floor, allowing one of his colleagues to take his place.
Lara had no choice but to thrust at her new opponent’s groin, while ducking under his attempts to jab at her neck. He managed to slice a chunk off her ponytail and cut into the sheath on her back. Metal sang against obsidian.
The Wolf-Head fell backwards into one of his comrades, opening up an angle for Lara to slice into his thigh. He was out of the fight.
Before his colleagues could clear him out of the way, Lara dropkicked the Wolf-Head who was charging in on her right. She’d seen him in her peripheral vision. He was too big to take down with a single blade. Her stance was off-kilter, so the kick was the best she could do.
The Wolf-Head landed hard, and Lara recovered faster. She straddled his chest, trapping his knife hand with her left knee. He freed his left hand and brought it up to throttle her, but Lara was quick to respond. His reach was longer than hers, so she struck at the soft inside of his elbow, carving through the veins and connective tissue. His arm collapsed, and she was free to deal with the next assault.
A strong arm was around Lara’s throat, a Wolf-Head attacking from behind before she was able to rise from her seated position on the corpse’s chest. She was dragged up, choking, still holding her blade. But once her feet were off the ground, she struggled to defend herself.
Lara felt the hot breath of the attacker on her neck. Then she heard his scream. His hold loosened, and she braced her legs, knowing that he would drop her. She landed soft in her knees and turned, staying low.
Her assailant was on fire. His jacket was ablaze, and he was trying to rip it off.
How had it happened? Her back had been pressed against his chest. Where had the extreme heat come from? Why had she felt nothing?
Instinctively, Lara reached over her shoulder. Her hand closed around the grip of Gwynnever’s sword, and she drew it in one swift, effortless movement. But there was no need to attack; the Wolf-Head was engulfed in fire and would not survive.
The chamber did not grow back into a forest. It simply became one in the blink of an eye...except that Lara wasn’t even sure that she’d had time to blink.
The ground beneath her feet was springy and yielding, giving her the perfect base. Light shone through the canopy. The trees gave her perfect cover, and the sounds of the animals were like a symphony—no, like the perfect soundtrack to the movie of her battle.
Lara glanced over her shoulder at a roar to her left, and the next instant the bear was beside her. High on its hind legs, it reared, shook its head, and bellowed another great roar.
Lara smiled, satisfied.
The bear was huge, standing head and shoulders above her, but not over her. It would be her ally, not her nemesis.
Several of the Wolf-Heads at the rear of the group turned at the sight of the beast and ran from the fight. One fired a shot, but it only angered the beautiful creature. The bear’s jaws opened wider, and it tossed its head as it lunged towards the nearest foe on its great paws. It felled its first victim, clawing out his throat, and moved on to a second.
Lara cut and thrust and swung her blade. It was weightless in her grip, responding to her every move, her every thought.
She could hear throaty rumbles that she knew would turn to howls and the snuffle of the wild boar that frequented the old English woodlands, but she did not f
ear these primordial beasts.
This was her time, her place, and the bear was her companion, her champion, and the king of the woodland.
They would cause her no harm while he stood beside her.
Dritan Vata had remained calm, cool, detached in all his dealings with Denny Sampson, with Florence Race, and with Lara Croft. His only concern was securing the payload of the Dornier, his only fear that the canisters would be destroyed.
Vata dreaded gunfire. His first, last, and most crucial order was that there must be no gunfire. He wanted the canisters intact so that he could deploy them for his own ends, in his own war.
Since he knew that the contents of the canisters could be lethal, Carter Bell wanted to avoid gunfire, too. He knew the canisters must be kept intact, but he was far more concerned about not being shot by Vata’s men. He did not particularly want to die. He kept possession of the canisters, knowing they wouldn’t dare shoot at him while he carried them. Everything else was an insane blur.
When there was nothing else to be done, Dritan Vata retreated to the rear of his phalanx with a bodyguard. The Wolf-Heads were well trained and well paid, and they were schooled in his cause. They were his countrymen; they all shared an ideology. They looked up to their leader and would do anything for him. They had lived through wars.
None of them had seen or lived through anything like this.
Faced with a bear attack...faced with a madwoman and a bear, one of them had drawn his sidearm and fired. Faced with the impossible, the Wolf-Heads had wanted to run.
Dritan Vata slipped his right hand under his jacket and pulled the Glock 42 from the holster under his arm.
He gave no warning. He shot the Wolf-Head squarely in the chest at a range of about a metre. Nobody walked away from Vata. Nobody walked away from the fight, not one of his men. Not a Wolf-Head. His bodyguard looked at him.
“Fear is of no use to me,” said Vata, slipping the gun back inside his jacket. “Men who are afraid are of no use to me.”
Carter could not let Lara fight alone. Doing battle with Florence Race for the sword was one thing, but now she was waging a war against a regiment of soldiers. He would not stand by and watch her die. Besides, he had an advantage. He had the one thing that Vata wanted.