by James Axler
Two could play that game.
“Gaia…Earth Mother, give me aid,” Krysty intoned, her breathing deepening as she began her trance of power. With each breath, power began to flow from her deepest core. “Give me all the power…let me strive for life…” The power centers within Krysty’s body gave bloom. It started in her loins but the sensuality gave way to something bigger, moving into her belly, rising through her solar plexus, her throat, to between her eyes and the top of her head. Power flowed up her legs from the earth. Power flowed into her from the sky with her every breath. Time seemed to dilate and everyone slowed down as her senses became hyperacute.
“Kreesty!” Ago shouted. Krysty drew her sword and picked up a fallen blade from one of the rocket-arrowed islanders. With a sword in either hand, she felt unbearably light as her feet skimmed across the sand. “Sons of the Sun!” Ago shouted, and charged with the battle flag in Krysty’s wake. The last hundred or so islanders followed the warrior woman and the war flag. Krysty arrowed straight for the nightwalkers. It was suicide. She knew she could take one or two, and felt the killing lust to make it happen, but even with her help the islanders couldn’t beat half a hundred. Krysty saw it with terrible clarity. Each nightwalker would be an individual siege that would take a half-dozen islanders or more to finish. The islander losses would be horrific, and they would break and run. Sylvano’s sec men would regroup, retreat to their boats and wait out the night of rape, cannibalism and horror that the nightwalkers would inflict. Come the dawn the nightwalkers would seek refuge from the sun in the church. The shattered Sister Islanders would seek refuge from the nightwalkers by surrendering to the sec men. Nothing short of a miracle would stop it.
The miracle was a sizzling, rippling salvo of rocket arrows from the rail of the sec men flagship.
The hunting screams of the nightwalkers turned to roars and agonized shrieks as the rocket-driven shafts drilled deep into their gigantic bodies. Half their number fell beneath the point-blank barrage. Krysty beelined for their leader. He raised his harpoon in rage and flung it with horrific force. Krysty twisted with the grace of a dancer and the huge, barbed head skimmed inches from her collarbones. The nightwalker bellowed and took his huge wooden shield in both hands to swat Krysty down like a bug. Krysty’s body moved almost of its own accord. She threw herself into a slide beneath the blow and slid between the nightwalker’s legs. Krysty rolled up to one knee, and her swords crossed as she whipped their points across the back of the nightwalker’s knees. He screamed and fell hamstrung to his knees. Krysty rose and slashed her swords like scissors across the nightwalker’s neck.
The nightwalker’s head fell from his shoulders.
“Sons of the Sun!” Krysty’s remaining one-hundred-man reserve chorused as they followed the flag into battle.
Krysty limboed beneath a sapling studded with nails. Jagged iron drew a pair of bloody furrows across her chest instead of smashing her skull. She snapped erect as the club passed, and slashed with her swords. The nightwalker howled as its hand came off at the wrist. It screamed as her second sword flashed and removed the lower section of its arm at the elbow. All it could do was gasp as she took the rest of the limb off at the shoulder. Krysty’s killing blow was interrupted as two islanders screamed in and shoved their spears into the mortally wounded nightwalker’s chest and stomach. The islanders crashed into the mob of nightwalkers like a wave upon the rocks. Their bones broke like kindling and their spears snapped like sticks, but the nightwalkers were beset on all sides. Every death they dealt out was rewarded by fire-hardened spear thrusts from all directions. Many had rocket arrows piercing their flesh already, and Krysty stalked among them.
The beach churned into a morass of red and purple blood.
Krysty killed and killed.
She left a sword in one body and broke the other deflecting the swing of another gigantic studded club. Krysty ducked in, leaving ten inches of broken sword blade under a nightwalker’s sternum. Another nightwalker woman howled forward. Krysty skittered backward and snatched up the harpoon of the fallen nightwalker leader and rammed it between the nightwalker’s breasts. Purple blood burst from its mouth and nose. Krysty ripped the cruel barb out of the she-creature’s chest and shreds of its hooked heart came with it. She whirled and threw the harpoon like a thunderbolt at a nightwalker menacing Ago and the flag. The whaling weapon punched through its chest and burst out its back.
Suddenly there were almost no nightwalkers left.
One of the remaining charged her. It was pushing nine feet tall, and half a dozen spear shafts and rocket arrows protruded from its freakishly muscled body. It had no weapon and came at Krysty with its huge hands open to tear her limb from limb. Krysty ran forward and leaped into the giant’s embrace. Its hands closed around Krysty’s arms and raised her high, but she didn’t care. She lashed one foot into the nightwalker’s throat and it choked on broken chunks of its esophagus. Her legs scissored and her second kick drove the giant’s septum into his brain.
Krysty dropped lightly to the sand as the titan fell, her body swathed in purple blood. The last living nightwalkers were on their backs being stabbed again and again. What remained of the sec men square was ankle deep in the surf and surrounded on three sides. They could retreat no farther because Jak had adjusted one of the cannons to maximum declination and had his hand on the lanyard.
They had won.
Krysty tottered as the power abruptly left her. The strength, speed and crystal clarity fell from her like water from a bucket that had burst its bottom, returning to the earth she had borrowed it from. All that remained of her was a bruised, empty and nearly broken vessel.
Ago caught her as she fell.
“WILL YOU YIELD?” Doc bellowed. He pointed his sword at the forlorn and collapsed sec men square standing in the cold surf as twilight fell. The surviving islanders gripped their spears with grim determination. Nearly half of the 750 who had marched out to the dunes beneath the banner lay dead in the sand. The toll on the invading sec men had been even more terrible. The wounded moaned among the mounds of the dead. The annihilation of the nightwalkers was total. Not one had been left alive. The islanders and the sec men stared at one another over their weapons. The sec men dared not raise their bayonets to reload for fear of another all-out charge. They awaited the cannon above to send its high-explosive shell into their huddled ranks. Nearly every man of each side bore a wound or mark. All were exhausted. No one wanted to start the final engagement.
J.B. leaned heavily on a spear. His blasters were empty, and he had been bayoneted through the leg when it had gone hand-to-hand. Doc looked over at him. J.B. shrugged.
“Will you yield?” Doc repeated.
He was surprised to see Sylvano Barat rise from among his men, though it took a pair of them to prop him up. His face was a mask of purple blood in the gloaming. “We yield.”
Doc sheathed his blade and stepped into the no-man’s-land between the lines. “Then come forth and let us parley.”
Sylvano limped forward with his great sword once more across his shoulder and his hat upon his head. His men had washed his face with seawater, but purple blood still leaked down between his brows.
Doc bowed. “I am pleased you live, Senhor Barat, but I do wonder how.”
Sylvano doffed his hat and tossed it to the sand. It thudded with far more weight than mere felt. “We feared there might be something of a hand-to-hand battle before the Sister Islanders broke. I wore a steel cap beneath my hat.” He winced as he shook his head. “I will admit we did not expect massed slingers. What are your terms?”
“Simple.” Doc leaned heavily on his cane. Exhaustion often exacerbated his mental illness and he struggled to focus. “You and your men will lay down all arms, powder and shot.”
“I will not have my men tortured or humiliated.”
“As you planned to do to the islanders?” Doc asked archly. He regretted it immediately as Sylvano stiffened.
“Be that as it may.”
Sylvano’s voice was ragged with exhaustion, as well, but he spoke through clenched teeth. “My men are willing to die. You must also realize that though it will take time, my father will launch a second invasion, and beneath his banner there will be no mercy. Only I can stay his hand.”
“Be that as it may, we will have your ships, your cannons and your rifled muskets. We will train the islanders in their use and with the steamer in our hands you will face the threat of counterinvasion.”
Sylvano glanced at Doc’s sword. “We could resume our duel.”
“A battle between champions would save lives, and you and your men might honor it, but we both know your father never would. He would avenge your death no matter how honorable the circumstances, and these people will never willingly go back to being slaves.”
“Then we are at an impasse.”
“We are at nothing of the sort, Sylvano. You have fought with every honor in the name of your father the baron, but now, I pray you listen to the entreaty of humanity. Yield, and fear no reprisal. Simply lay down your arms, see to your wounded, and take three of the motorized boats to bring you and your brave soldiers home.”
Sylvano gazed upon Doc warily. “And then?”
“And then a new relationship between these two islands will have to be negotiated in good faith.” Doc shrugged. “Failing that, the slaughter of total war will still be available to you and yours, and ours.”
Sylvano nodded. “I believe you are an honorable man, Dr. Tanner.”
“By your lights I find honor in you, as well. I implore you to accept our terms.”
Sylvano looked at J.B. “You agree?”
“Yeah,” J.B. said. “Take your wounded. Leave your weapons. Go. Come back when you’re willing to talk.”
Sylvano saluted Doc with his sword and thrust it into the sand in surrender. “Very well, Dr. Tanner, I accept your terms and—”
“J.B.!” Jak shouted from the deck of the steamer. “Doc!” He pointed furiously out over the water. Night was falling. The sky had turned purple and across the strait the main island was little more than a dark mass. Except for the ville. It was lit by a yellow and orange glow. Black smoke lifted up into the night.
The ville was burning.
Doc looked to J.B. again. “Ryan?”
“No.” Sylvano Barat pulled his sword from the sand. His eyes were terrible in the fading light. “Raul.”
RYAN HAD AWOKEN to thunder, screaming and blasterfire in the distance. He and Moni watched the ville burn. Ryan received word from refugees who had escaped the slaughter and up into the hills. Most were headed for the fortified farms. The mill foreman, Honore, and one of his men were among them. By all accounts the situation in the ville was grim. Honore said that at dusk explosions had rocked the ville proper. Long ago the men of the ville had walled off the preskydark sewer entrances, but the nightwalkers had been filching sulfur from the ville mine in the hills. Combined with potassium nitrate deposits scraped from their caves and the charcoal from their cook fires, they had been manufacturing their own very crude black powder for some time. They had blown the sewers open and emerged from the smoking holes like devils emerging from hell right in the middle of the ville. Baron Barat had left only a token force of sec men behind and they had been swiftly overwhelmed.
“The baron?” Ryan asked.
Honore sat on a stump. His ghostly, bald head was nearly black with bruising. His leather apron was caked with blood and a sledgehammer lay across his knees. “Raul crucified him, or so I am told. I know not whether he is alive or dead.”
Ryan eased his arm out of its sling. He felt a sick ache in his elbow where the needle had been ripped free, but at the moment he wasn’t bleeding through the bandage. “How many?”
“A hundred? Two hundred. It was hard to tell. They were everywhere at once. They took the sec station first. I heard the families of the shore battery crews were taken hostage. The artillerymen have run out the weapons and are manning them under duress in the eventuality of Sylvano or your friends returning. Though I hear many people are holed up in the church. Raul was a pious young man before he turned, and it seems so far he has been unwilling to blow it up.”
“You’re heading for the farms?”
“It is the only safe place left.”
“Not safe at all. The nightwalkers have black powder. They’ll isolate each farm, and then dig you out like ticks.”
“You destroyed the powder mill!” Honore glared. “The remaining stocks in the ville are in the nightwalkers’ hands! What would you have us do?”
“Retake the ville,” Ryan answered.
“Retake it?” The foreman shook his head. “You’re mad.”
“We take the med wag. Drive from farm to farm. Have the owners gear up for battle. Free the slaves.”
“Free the slaves!” the foreman spluttered. “You would—”
“Give any man who isn’t too old to swing it an ax, a pick, a shovel, anything heavy that comes to hand.”
“I—”
“You come with me to convince the farm holders. Moni will talk to the slaves. Have your man here start rounding up refugees coming up the road and get them organized. You’ll be safer in numbers.” Ryan needed the foreman and decided to take a chance. He held out one of the auto-blasters he had taken from the clinic. “Here. Take this. We don’t have much time.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The steamer chugged across the strait. J.B. examined their fighting force and thought about the battle to come. It wasn’t good. Sylvano had thirty men left. His men were brave and well trained, but the mutated form of porphyria that afflicted them made most of them bleeders, and they didn’t respond well to open wounds. Thirty was all the baron’s son could muster that would not bleed out if they went back into action. The casualties had been horrific on both sides. The survivors had turned the church into a hospital ward, and the remaining pews were full of the wounded and dying. Mildred was swamped. Krysty could barely stand, but she was assisting as she could. J.B. ran a grim eye over Sylvano’s thirty chosen men and their rifled muskets. The ville men were desperately low on gunpowder. Sylvano had told them of Ryan’s escapades and the destruction of the powder mill and the clinic. J.B. looked at the Sister Isle contingent.
After the battle on the beach Doc had explained to the islanders that the ville was under attack and that he was going to save it from the nightwalkers. Most of the surviving Sons of the Sun had said let it burn, but Doc was walking with some pretty big medicine at the moment. He’d said he was going to ask for volunteers. Ago had raised the sun banner behind him. Fifty had agreed to follow Doc, Ago and the flag across the strait. They had appropriated powder and shot bags from fallen sec men and filled them with sling stones, and resharpened their spears.
Most of them were currently seasick and vomiting over the rail.
“How many nightwalkers?” J.B. asked.
Sylvano looked up from running a stone over the edge of his great blade. “An interesting question.” He looked to his sister.
Zorime’s eyes never left the approaching glow of the burning ville. They gleamed with unshed tears. “We keep a census of those who are driven out of the ville and into the caves. However, we have evidence that they often keep growing until even their mutant strength is not enough to let them walk or function. On the other hand, they breed among themselves down in the dark, as well as steal occasional slave women from the farms. How many turn into true nightwalkers? How many are stillborn or unsustainable freaks? It is hard to determine. I will tell you that five years ago my uncle made a demand for more food to be left by the cave entrances. That implies population growth.”
“Yes.” Sylvano sheathed his sword. “And while my uncle Raul is insane, he would not have made his move to take the ville if he did not believe he had the strength.”
Jak shrugged. “Fifty less.”
“Yes, and I cannot believe my uncle was willing to simply sacrifice them. He will expect that we routed your forces. I
believe his plan was to have his brethren turn on us in the night.”
“Then we might have surprise,” J.B. said.
“Possibly,” Sylvano mused. “But how to employ it? If Raul holds the ville, then he has the harbor guns. He can run them out and blow us out of the water when we sail in.”
“Caves,” Jak said.
“The caves?” Sylvano dismissed the idea. “They are extensive. The island is riddled with them. We could wander them for days.”
“Nightwalkers? Down there generations,” Jak countered. “Plenty sign.”
“He’s right,” Doc said. “Your people never go down in the caverns because that is where evil dwells, but that is the point. It dwells there, and has lived there for an age. The inhabited sections and paths will show evidence of long use.”
“That may be the case,” Sylvano said. “But I have proposed going down in the caves before, always with at least a hundred men, with all the modern blasters of the ville, powder charges and smoke of the Lotus. I fear what we might meet down there, and it is the brethren’s territory. They will have every advantage.”
“Sylvano.” Zorime spoke quietly. “This is our uncle Raul’s night of terror, his night of triumph. He won’t have held back a reserve. For that matter, once the slaughter started in the ville, I doubt he could hold any of them back. They will be fully committed to their—” Zorime’s tears spilled as she contemplated what had to be happening to her friends and kinsmen “—revelry.”
“You are right. Very well, let us do as Senhor Jak says. We shall go through the caves and come out among them.”
Doc cleared his throat. “I do not doubt our brave islanders’ courage, but seeing as the nightwalkers are their very image of the devil, I am not sure they will follow us down into their subterranean lair. It is their hell. It may be too much to ask of them.”