Into the Wild

by Larry Correia

  But electricity was still electricity, regardless of its source. Whether it came from Sebastian Nemo’s inventions or a druid summoning it from the sky, it wanted just one thing: to flow. When the energy was unable to leap into his flesh, it tore into the ground around him instead.

  “Run!” he shouted at Novak, but the ranger had already bolted. “Warn the others!”

  When the skinwalkers lowered their claws from shielding their eyes from the glare, they saw Cleasby was still standing. But it was clear he wasn’t their concern—their collective gaze fixated on the pouch in his hand, which was still in one piece despite the attack. Many of the skinwalkers growled or muttered in their language—insulted that Krueger had endangered their precious tablet, Cleasby hoped.

  Krueger glared at Cleasby, his anger growing. It was apparent by choosing to target Novak instead of Cleasby that the Stormlord had known the storm armor would be immune to electricity, but by throwing himself into the lightning’s path to save Novak—and surviving what should have been a killing blow—Cleasby had made the Stormlord look weak before the skinwalkers. He watched Krueger first contain his rage, at least for the moment, and then assess the reaction of the skinwalkers around him.

  It’s just us now, Cleasby thought.

  “You think you’re immune to my power?” Krueger snarled at him. Glowing green runes appeared in the air around the druid as he floated up into the air. The dust at his feet whipped into a growing vortex around him, and his robes snapped wildly in the wind. “I’ll show you the true might of the Stormlord.”

  The skinwalkers shrank from the terrifying arcane energy being gathered, and then looked fearfully back at their sacred stone in Cleasby’s possession. As Krueger’s power continued to gather, they finally seemed to grasp what was about to happen. They threw themselves in front of the druid and pleaded in their barbaric tongue. Krueger dismissed them without so much as a glance their way.

  “You had your chance,” he snapped.

  They seemed to momentarily cow before his rejection, but Cleasby could see them feeding on one other’s fear and then their anger. They began to snarl, first in low tones, then with greater ferocity. Engulfed in his energy, Krueger seemed to see and hear none of it. And then one of the Skinwalker’s finally freed his anger to overwhelm his fear. The beast he lashed out. Sparks flew as its claws struck the floating druid’s robes. Unharmed but surprised, Krueger looked down at the tear in his clothing and his eyes filled with lightning. “How dare you?”

  For a moment, Cleasby couldn’t tell who had angered Krueger most: him, for blocking Krueger’s magic, or the skinwalker, for defying Krueger to protect the tablet. And Cleasby didn’t have any intention to stick around to find out. As he ran through the spilled coal, he heard a tremendous crash of thunder behind him. The unruly skinwalker screamed in agony.

  Only the engine and the coal car had flipped in the accident. The passenger cars were still upright, but they’d all come off the rails and were haphazardly smashed against the walls. Luckily, the trains had slowed enough before impact that the sturdier passenger cars remained in one piece. He could only pray the injuries inside weren’t too severe. Not that it would matter if the druid electrocuted all the passengers any moment now anyway.

  The lights on the train cars still functioned, so at least he could see as he picked his way among them. Thornbury looked out through a broken window of the first passenger car and he spied Cleasby. “What happened?”

  “Danger. Back that way. Get the passengers moving toward the last car.” He saw Rains and Pangborn coming toward him. They looked to be in terrible shape and neither had their glaives. And for reasons to be discerned later, he noted Pangborn clutching a wrench with blood and hair stuck to it. Headhunter lumbered from the darkness behind Pangborn. From the look of the warjack, either it had been knocked off the train when they’d crashed and slid through the gravel on its chest for a hundred yards or it had been bruised and battered by a dozen skinwalkers. Or both. There wasn’t much paint left on it, and as it got closer, Cleasby was shocked to see that wires and tubes were dangling from the ’jack’s torn open sides. His sword arm was broken. One leg wouldn’t bend, and Headhunter was dragging it along in a trail of hydraulic fluid.

  A few unarmed men and a broken ’jack were all he had left.

  Flashes and bangs rose from the other side of the engine. A sharp wind flowed down the tunnel. Punishing the Skinwalkers had simply distracted Krueger; he was still coming for the Malcontents.

  “Novak told us,” Rains shouted. “She said it was now or never, so we’re ready for ‘now.’ What do we do?”

  Cleasby turned in a tight circle, taking in what little they had at their disposal. There were passenger cars filled with innocent people he’d put in harm’s way and piles of useless cargo spilled everywhere. He kicked aside broken boxes and shoved aside crates; no weapons, no revelatory packs of grenades. He grabbed a burlap sack from his feet, glancing inside. There wasn’t a lot he could accomplish armed with corn. And then he paused.

  He hadn’t known what was inside those sacks without looking…and neither would Krueger.

  He could bluff. They could still win this. But they’d have to hurry.

  Cleasby broke out in a desperate sweat as he began to gather sacks. He called to the others. “Grab these sacks and throw them in a pile, right against those structural supports. All of you. Hurry it up.”

  “We building a fort?” Pangborn did as he was told, but he seemed confused. “Grain don’t even make good sandbags.”

  “It’s blasting powder,” Cleasby corrected him. “Or at least we’re going to act like it’s blasting powder.”

  Everyone—hopefully even druids and skinwalkers—knew blasting powder had two components, red and black. On their own they were safe, but as soon as the two mixed they would have an extremely violent alchemical reaction. Cleasby only hoped they could get around the skinwalkers’ sense of smell. “Rains, take my glaive. Stick it next to the sacks and look determined to blow us up.”

  Cleasby could see the others grasped the gravity of the situation when even Headhunter picked up sacks with its good hand and dumped them on the pile. Given that the warjack had never been inclined to do anything that might get it mistaken for a laborjack, Cleasby appreciated Headhunter’s willingness to compromise its stance in light of their likely obliteration.

  One last figure limped around the back of the cars: Acosta looked more battered than Cleasby had ever expected to see him The last he’d had seen of the Ordsman, he’d thought it was over; even Acosta had to have a match somewhere out there, waiting to bring him down. Yet somehow, he had survived, if barely. He looked as if he had just slithered out of death’s grasp. His armor was covered in hundreds of dents, and he stumbled as if he’d been badly staggered in the crash. He favored one leg, and as they close, Cleasby could see that one foot and ankle had been battered into a bloody mess. Still, Acosta grinned broadly, then winced as he stepped, then returned to his grin. At length, the Ordsman had to lean against the train car just to remain standing’ he didn’t seem troubled by the need at all. “I killed your friend, Caradoc, and learned a valuable lesson on balance and footing in the process.”

  Thornbury climbed through the broken window and dropped into the dirt. He glanced at Acosta. “I see only the good die young. Sir, civilians are moving back to the last car. Allsop and the others will hold there.” He ran over to help, saw what the others were doing, and muttered something about how they were all going to die.

  Cleasby pulled out the tablet and leaned it rather obviously directly against the glaive Rains had stuck into the sacks. There was movement by the engine. “All of you, get behind Headhunter. Let me do the talking.” He hoped there would be discussion and not just death. Cleasby stepped forward. “Here comes Krueger.”

  “I can take him,” the badly wounded Acosta declared.

  The druid appeared in a crackling ball of electrical fire. With the sweep of his hand, a violent burs
t of wind shoved the locomotive out of his path.

  “Disregard that,” Acosta said. “Proceed, Cleasby.”

  The halo of deadly energy around the druid slowly dissipated. Skinwalkers rushed up behind him once more. Krueger’s approach slowed as he took in the scene: he saw Cleasby standing defiant on the tracks and Rains waiting behind him with a charged glaive stuck in the ground. While it was clear he didn’t understand how the components connected, he certainly understood something was afoot.

  “Hold,” Krueger warned his skinwalkers. Then to Cleasby, he snarled, “What’s this supposed to be?”

  “An ultimatum,” Cleasby said. “Let us depart in peace, and my sergeant won’t blow us all to Urcaen. That’s a few hundred pounds of blasting powder. If the explosion doesn’t get all of you, I can assure you the resulting cave-in will.” He paused to look up at the ceiling. “I’m sure the wreck has already destabilized this tunnel. We’ll all be crushed flat.”

  “Speak for yourself. I’ll survive,” Krueger said. Cleasby could only pray the druid was bluffing. “Stay your hand, soldier. For the moment, I still need these warriors.”

  The Skinwalkers were spreading out, climbing on top of the twisted wreckage. He could see some of them were sniffing the air. Would the smells of the wreck—blood, smoke, burning coal—mask the smell of the sacks’ actual contents? More important, would it matter? Cleasby waited. There was not one other action he could imagine that would change the skills of the sniffing skinwalkers.

  They halted, heads still lifted, nostrils flared, and glared around at one another. They knew, he was certain; they knew it was a bluff. Yet not a one of them said anything to Krueger.

  Krueger regarded Cleasby with cold intensity as he surveyed the passenger cars. “It is unlike a Cygnaran to be so willing to sacrifice so many innocent lives.”

  “Better they go my way quickly than to be torn apart slowly by these animals.”

  There was a scrape of claws on metal from within the wreckage. Cleasby turned to see a skinwalker rise behind them and climb up a flatcar. From its battered and torn state, it had been in the train wreck as well.

  “Greetings, next chief of the first tribe,” Krueger said to it. He nodded toward the sacks of grain. “What do your senses tell you, Ivor Haul?”

  The skinwalker’s nose wrinkled, and then it said something in their guttural, unintelligible language.

  Krueger gave Cleasby a look that suggested at least a shred of respect. “So you are willing to destroy us all. Well done, Cygnaran. Normally that kind of conviction is rare among your soft people.”

  Cleasby wasn’t certain what the skinwalker hoped to gain by lying to the druid, but the others went along with it, and Cleasby wasn’t about to question it aloud. The only person who didn’t know the blasting powder didn’t exist was the one who was capable of crushing them like insects.

  “Give us your word you’ll let us go, and you can have your tablet back.” He gestured at it, leaned against the glaive among the sacks. Those skinwalkers who’d not observed it previously made whining noises but caught themselves quickly enough.

  “It has no value to me,” Krueger said. A few of the skinwalkers growled, but Krueger gave them an annoyed look, and they lowered their heads again. “I acknowledge this tribe prizes it above all else. At this moment, I’d like to see this tribe punished for their disobedience, but in my mercy, I will allow their new chief to take the tablet with them.”

  Cleasby understood now why the skinwalker called Ivor Haul had lied. If Rains had pushed that firing stud, the contact blast would have destroyed the tablet. While Krueger didn’t care about the thing, he didn’t want to be blown to pieces or crushed beneath tons of falling rocks. That gave Cleasby a tiny flicker of hope that he might be able to pull off this desperate hoax.

  “I don’t know what your new chief wants,” he said, “but Caradoc was afraid I’d come back with an army. Nothing would make that more certain than hurting the innocents aboard this train.”

  “There are no innocents here.” Krueger snorted. “There are already far more humans teeming Caen, especially in your sprawling cities, than is ideal. The loss of so few doesn’t matter. Your threat is meaningless, soldier. By the time your army gets here to investigate, this tribe will be gone. I have already made it so.”

  “Then why fight us? It’s not worth the risk to whatever it is you want just to clash with us. And who knows? We might get lucky.”

  The druid mulled that over. “You are quite the schemer, aren’t you? It’s fortunate that I appreciate such things.” Krueger tilted his head to the side as he peered into the darkness of the tunnel. “Not everyone sees things in such a logical manner, though.”

  A lone figure was slowly coming down the train tracks. It was a man, but as he got closer, Cleasby saw that all he was wearing was a shredded skinwalker loincloth. His body appeared to have been ripped and torn by shrapnel, and he was bleeding from hundreds of cuts and abrasions. His face was so bloody and battered that it took Cleasby a moment to realize who it was.

  “My apologies, Cleasby,” Acosta said. “I thought I killed him.”

  Although he looked as if he should have been claimed by death multiple times already, Caradoc staggered past the alleged new skinwalker chief Ivor Haul, past Headhunter and the others, past Rains’ fake bomb, and finally stopped just a few feet from Cleasby. Up close, Cleasby could see the fall from the train had decimated Caradoc’s body with more violence than any man should ever endure. His scalp was torn open clear to the skull. Blood ran down his trembling arms. He seemed kept upright by sheer force of will, not because the organs in his body had held on after all the devastation they had been through. It was a marvel he could stand at all.

  Caradoc ignored everyone else in the tunnel and spoke directly to Krueger.

  “After all this, you’re just going to let them go, Stormlord?” His voice was as ragged as his appearance.

  Krueger did not look at the walking corpse Caradoc had nearly become. “That is my decision to make. I’m still unsure what to do about your tribe’s insolence.”

  “You are wise, Stormlord. Whatever you decide will be for the best.” Caradoc’s voice made Cleasby think of a condemned man speaking his last words. The skinwalker then painfully shifted his weight to turn and address his tribe. “I have failed you all. Our mountain is lost because of my weakness. Take the tablet and learn. Learn what I did not. Learn what no one gathered here has yet discovered.”

  “Once I am certain my people are safe, you have my word I will leave your tablet here, unharmed,” Cleasby vowed.

  Caradoc turned toward him. “I accept your words, and I believe them. If it is to be the way, then we now must seal this oath with blood.”

  Krueger gave them both a cold smile; he seemed pleased with this development. “So, that’s how you plan for your death to be an example, Caradoc?”

  Caradoc glanced back and looked Cleasby in the eye. Where there had been so much simmering anger before, Cleasby could only see resignation and sadness now. “A truce has been reached, so a sacrifice must be made,” the skinwalker said.

  “I understand the importance of traditions to your tribe,” Krueger said. “Thus, I will allow it.”

  “Allow what?” Cleasby asked. He felt a bristling at the back of his neck. Something was changing here.

  “A trial by combat,” Caradoc stated. “I have declared trespass and sounded the horn of war. It cannot end until a leader dies. There must be a duel between our two chiefs. In death, our words are final and sealed.” Caradoc leaned his mangled head in and whispered so Cleasby alone could hear him. “I will be dead soon, regardless of what happens. Let me die a warrior, not a prisoner. Take my life. I swear by the Beast of All Shapes that this is the only way to keep both of our tribes safe.”

  Cleasby considered the skinwalker for a moment, glancing between him, his tribe, and the powerful Stormlord. Caradoc had assumed again the stance of a enemy combatant, but Cleasby could now see h
im as a bold leader—one about to sacrifice himself for his people. “Leadership is a heavy thing.”

  “Cleasby, no! You are no match for him.” Acosta shouted. The Ordsman could barely walk at this point, but it didn’t stop him from turning on Krueger. “Let me serve as his champion!”

  “No,” Krueger said emphatically. “It must be chief against chief.”

  “But I am chief now!” the skinwalker Ivor Haul roared. He leaped down from the wreckage and landed in the gravel. His muscles twisted and his jaws receded as he regained the visage of a man. “This is my challenge. My vengeance!”

  Caradoc glared at the skinwalker, his own jaws clenched. Cleasby was certain Caradoc had intended to die to satisfy some law or tradition, but the new chief was clearly out for blood. Caradoc looked to Krueger, who motioned for him to step aside. “Your chief has spoken, Andras Caradoc. He has claimed this honor for himself.”

  “Ivor will surely kill you, but you can die knowing that your blood will seal this truce.” Caradoc hissed to Cleasby before stepping back.

  “Do you still accept this ritual challenge, soldier?”

  The druid let the question hang. Cleasby looked around.

  Just a few days before, he had been planning for his future. His dreams and aspirations had been weighed against his commitment to the kingdom, and the kingdom had lost the debate. But now, here in the dark and surrounded by enemies, being a soldier wasn’t about the kingdom. It was about his brothers. He was a Storm Knight officer, and that meant he was willing to die so that his men might live.

  “I do.”

  Ivor immediately took Caradoc’s place, pushing past his elder. The hairy skin over the young chief’s face was slowly revealing the man beneath. The speed with which the beasts could transform was simultaneously astounding, hideous, and fascinating to Cleasby. He wondered if he’d have time to consider it again later.