The giant bellowed like some war elephant from an elder age.
The staff was still attached to my ruck. The HVT sorcerer’s staff with the carved head of a malevolent dragon. The one we’d taken off the high-value target.
The giant prepared to crush us all.
I nodded dumbly at Kennedy, who already had a flick knife out. he cut the paracord and took hold of the sorcerer’s staff in one motion. Some flare must’ve gone off out over the battle, or another explosion, because down there in the dark of the trench I could see PFC Kennedy staring at the staff through his coke-bottle RPGs. That’s what we call Army-issue eyewear. Rape protection glasses—RPGs. Or birth control glasses. BCGs. Because no girl’s ever gonna find those things attractive enough to attack you when you’re running your game at the off-post EM club.
In the light coming off the battle, I watched him study the gnarled staff. Maybe my fear of imminent death by crushing made everything startlingly clear, but it wasn’t until that moment that I noticed that PFC Kennedy was half-Asian. Later I’d find out his mom was Korean. His dad some American guy who’d become a judge. He was the very image of geek. Bony and tallish. Angular face. Dreamy eyes made freakishly large by the RPGs. Pale Asian skin and light freckles the gringo half of his parentage had contributed to the union. And he played games about imaginary worlds with strange-shaped little dice, assuming characters that were every bit as real to the players as real people were real, in real life.
Role-playing games.
Another kind of RPG.
He stood suddenly with the twisted dragon-headed staff in both hands. On the floor of the pit, shooting from a crouch, Brumm blazed away with the M18 and a mouthful of dip, determined to, if nothing else, annoy the giant as much as possible before it killed him. He was the opposite of the overwhelming fear I was currently experiencing. I’ll admit that. My network was down. I was “in the black.” But Brumm and Kurtz were pure hate, hating the giant right into its big ugly face even if we were all about to get smashed.
Kennedy’s voice rang out, cracking because he wasn’t the type to use it much at that volume. You could tell he was quiet and nerdy. Probably opinionated enough to have learned it was best to keep his mouth shut. One had to wonder how he’d ended up in the Rangers. But now, like some Shakespearean actor playing a role in a bad B-movie about a wizard and a bunch of kids trying to kill a dragon menacing the local town, he shouted right up into the face of the giant towering above us all.
“I am Malendron! Emerald Mage of Xathia!”
That was where his voice cracked, and some dark part of me found that funny enough to take note of, despite the fact that the giant’s lone eye was glaring down at us with every intention of crushing us to death in the next instant. I could see the monster had been wounded in a dozen places, yet it didn’t seem to mind. It was bleeding out rivers of blood from all those wounds, and its insanely malevolent mind couldn’t have cared less.
If I had to guess what it was thinking at that moment, I’d translate it as something along the lines of, “Hulk Smash!”
Then I saw the living fire, just like little fireflies at first, crawling up from the bottom of the sorcerer’s staff that Kennedy the Magnificent, or whatever he’d just called himself, was holding up in the face of our immense destructor. In the blink of an eye the fireflies coalesced into a rope of living flame, and then all at once the rope became a huge whip that lashed out at the giant.
It wasn’t fire now. It was white-hot plasma. And as it hit the giant it exploded, blowing him clear off the side of the hill and out into the darkness of the night like he was a gnat that had just been swatted. Not just knocking him back, but literally flinging him away like in those action movies when the villain gets blown off the skyscraper and flies outward, hands flailing in slow motion as death becomes both imperative and imminent in descent. All so we can get to the hero’s tagline.
Talk about a big fall.
But something wittier than that. Something that a team of overpaid Hollywood screenwriters might come up with between martini lunches and doe-eyed starlets.
I knew the giant fell, because after about three long seconds of hang time something huge struck the earth below the hill and went off like a MOAB. A big one. A Mother of All Bombs.
At the same moment a wave of orcs—these were carrying small skirmisher bows—raced forward to exploit the breach, firing their arrows and drawing their next one as they moved surefootedly through the darkness all around us. Even while the ground was still shaking.
Kurtz was just getting the two-forty up and ready to go. Brumm was putting a mag into his empty M18. Tanner was holding the trench because they were still pushing from there, and me… well, I just sat there with my mouth open because that giant being blown off the hill by PFC Kennedy’s trick was pretty amazing. Way better than anything I’d seen in every year’s must-see CGI abomination.
I mean… c’mon. A giant just got roasted and then blown off the side of a hill in the middle of a firefight.
That was pretty cool.
Then the orc skirmishers were at the lip of the ruined trench and shooting, moving forward, and just as the arrows started to fall into the exposed section of the trench, PFC Kennedy pulled his next trick.
Exactly how did he know how to do any of this? I had no idea. But he pointed the dragon’s head right into the swarm of oncoming savage orcs, and it literally became a flamethrower worthy of any military technology. Black and white footage of Marines clearing caves on some island in the Pacific during World War II flashed in my brain as a burning jet of flame splashed out over the cruel orc faces. They were hunched over their bows and moving forward as a cohesive unit, and in the next second they were all on fire and done for. Roasted right down to their bones. Their flesh just… melted.
It was one of the most horrible things I’d ever seen.
Some orcs at the back tried to run. A couple fired their arrows but the crawling flames cooked those too. Anyone closer than that never stood a chance.
Even Sergeant Kurtz stood there in amazement watching PFC Kennedy—the Ranger batt’s dogsbody and perpetually-under-threat-of-Article-15 or RFS, Released For Standards, low man on the totem pole—wipe out no less than thirty orcs and a giant in mere seconds.
PFC Kennedy. He was cackling with delight as he unleashed the power of the ancient staff. You know, just like power-mad villains do in movies when they finally get the MacGuffin and decided to use it for evil, not good.
Totally consumed with their own awesomeness.
In the next instant he shot about five massive fireballs down into the attacking forces along the hill. Bigger than anything that had been used on us. We couldn’t see what happened, but the explosions were terrific. Then, all of a sudden, he just turned around with a strange look on his face like he was gonna say something interesting and collapsed. Fell over without even trying to protect himself from hitting the packed dirt floor of the trench. The way guys fainted in formation during change-of-command ceremonies that seemed like they’d never end. The dragon staff went one way, and Kennedy the other.
I caught the staff.
There were more orcs and goblins coming for the ruined section of the trench now. Rocks and arrows rained down on us and Brumm was up with his M18, covering at the side and firing.
It was clear we could no longer hold this part of the defense. Kennedy had only bought us some time.
“Fall back!” shouted Sergeant Kurtz.
We were about to be overrun.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The enemy’s last push wasn’t so much a push as a final go-for-broke surge. There was only one direction we could go now. Only one direction we could be pushed toward. And that was down the back of the very steep hill and into the deep end of the river.
With wounded and civilians, that wasn’t going to happen.
Things were not looking
good. For all the forces of evil we’d waxed, it fell like the only thing that had come of it was giving up ground. That felt like losing. Honestly, at that point I was convinced we’d lost. Past tense. But not the Rangers. To them, it was like they had the enemy right where they wanted them. Everything had been done to lure the enemy into this final, perfect trap where the Rangers could shoot targets in every direction.
It was some time after 0300. I knew that because 0255 was the last read I saw on my watch before it stopped working. That was a while ago. Our smartphones were dying, too. We’d been charging them at the Forge, which contained a small internal powerplant, but they were starting to run dry. Same story with the ammo. We’d been ordered to use semi-auto fire only, due to low ammunition reserves, and we were down to the last redistribution. Some guys had started picking up enemy weapons. Gnarly axes. Jagged spears. Rusty, blood-covered swords. All weapons with some kind of reach. And of course, the tomahawks the Rangers carried were ready as well, as our defense constricted and constricted around the hilltop everyone called Sniper Hill, and I thought of as Ranger Alamo.
I’m an optimist. Really.
The last push came, and it was nothing but a brawl. I went to the top of the hill twice, first dragging the lifeless Kennedy who wasn’t dead but seemed to be for all intents and purposes, then assisting the dazed Specialist Rico. So I was already there at the peak when Kurtz’s section, or what remained of them, came back up for the final defense. The two-forty was tossed aside. It was bone dry and there was no ammo to be had for it. Off to my left I could see the sniper teams, shooter and spotter, continuing to fire down into the surging masses of orcs, trolls, goblins, and other unknowable things making their way up the face of the hill to come and get us. The monsters were getting crafty about staying low, using cover, and even slithering through the piles of their own dead to get close enough to attack. They had figured out that our “boom sticks,” as they most likely called them, needed to be avoided. And all the while their drums and horns were calling out to one another, indicating they were timing and coordinating their last big assault.
The air was loaded with tension. You could feel it.
And why shouldn’t they come for us now? They’d taken the worst we had to offer and their numbers seemed no less motivated for it.
These were things, monsters, a kind of people in their own way, that had probably lived and breathed desperate survival from moment one of their horrible existences. They weren’t like us. There was no civilization, no hospitals, no police and emergency services to protect them when they were young and not warriors. They were probably more like Spartans who’d been neglected and maltreated from birth in order to select for better warriors.
They knew nothing but survival and conflict.
Which is to say, they were more used to walking the razor’s edge between life and death than we were.
But that didn’t matter to the Rangers. Not in the least. To the Rangers, it didn’t even matter that we were down to our last mags with no support and no wire to fall back behind. No place to hunker down or even retreat to. No air cav to make gun runs. This was it. This was last stand at Ranger Alamo time, and yet the men around me had no doubt that they were going to make ’em pay for it.
Kurtz kept saying that as he organized his defense on our wing of the hill. “Make ‘em pay, dammit! Make ‘em pay.”
The snipers were the only ones not low on rounds. They kept up fire with methodical intensity. Working the enemy for the targets they’d prioritized for death. The big ones. The “tanks” of the enemy. The trolls and ogres. The war leaders. I saw Sergeant Thor, and his face never came away from the stock of the magnificent Mjölnir. Every time I heard the massive boom of the anti-material rifle, debris suddenly pushed away by the explosive power, he was shifting for his next target. Listening to the spotter working the range finder. Acquire and fire. Barely a few breaths as they killed another. And another. And another…
And for all that killing, it didn’t seem to make a damn bit of difference in the size of the dark horde coming up the slopes for us.
The sergeant major appeared, checked me over, and moved on without saying a word for a long moment. I figured he had nothing to say and then, “Find a weapon, Talker. One of theirs. Gonna need it, son.”
Then he was moving on down the line, checking his troops. The mortar teams were out of rounds and moving forward to the line, sharing out their mags to guys who were dry.
I knew things were bad when Chief Rapp showed up, jocked up and ready to go with all his high-speed SF gear and weapons. He’d definitely switched over from Life-Saver to Death-Dealer.
We were on the left flank, or eastern edge of the hill. The heavy weapons section was taking the access trench that gave out onto the forward slope. And Chief Rapp just walked up to us, casual like he’s just stopping in to say hello, big white teeth smiling in contrast to his Mississippi-mud dark skin. Like everything was gonna be great soon as we got this done.
“Guess I’ll fight with you boys,” the special operator said to Sergeant Kurtz.
Kurtz nodded and asked the chief what his team could do to improve the defense.
The chief lowered his rifle, letting it hang by the sling with the butt resting on his chest, and suggested positions we should take up to mutually support each other in what looked like a last-stand situation. He had us roughly in a circle at that side of the hill. We dragged containers and clamshells into heaps for some cover.
“This our circle, boys. Circle of trust,” said the chief, his basso profundo voice rich and sonorous in the middle of the night cold. “Rule number one… no one violates the circle of trust.”
I could see what he was doing. As long as we held this circle along our flank, the enemy couldn’t flank the snipers or reach the wounded at the center of the defenses. If the circle broke, then the enemy could sweep the hilltop, rolling up each section one by one.
Captain Knife Hand and the XO came along shortly. The enemy was busy firing flaming bolts from the ballistae they couldn’t get up the hill. The massive flaming spears streaked through the air but overshot the hill. It was impressive, but of no tactical value.
The captain saw Chief Rapp’s layout, nodded, and moved off quickly to check the rest of the sections. He trusted the SF advisor with a Ranger captain’s most valuable asset: his troops. Nothing else needed to be said. Nothing else could be improved on in the highly trained SF tactical advisor’s plan to hold the line here along the eastern edge of the defenses.
Twenty minutes later, and the night was only promising to get darker. The moon was gone, and it was nothing but pitch black when the horde of monsters came screaming up the last of the hill and made their final push. This was a charge. Pure and simple. No flaming arrows. No war drums or Uroo Uroo horns. They came up silent and determined, holding in the roars until the last as they scrambled over the dead, going for broke one last time. They’d pushed us this far; just a little bit more and there’d be nothing left to push. You could see that was their plan.
Plan, meet Rangers.
I was covering behind a stack of clamshells that seemed flimsy at best. To the inner rear of the circle of trust. Meaning I was close to the wounded. I had no idea what to expect, which was probably for the best. I just kept watching my sector.
Others along the line were already shooting when I saw the humanoid frog creatures coming up the slope from behind us. I called out targets and started to engage at the one-hundred-meter mark, semi-auto and putting rounds into the bullfrog shamans with spears. I’d decided they were shamans, dark holy priests, because there was something in them that evoked the German word for shaman. Schmane. They wore ragged loincloths and necklaces made of teeth—a popular fashion statement out here—and they wobbled as they flopped up through the weeds down there at the base of the hill.
I spent a mag killing them until they weren’t coming up anymore. As I sc
anned the darkness down below, I heard overwhelming fire start up behind me. The orcs were coming out of the trenches below the base of the hill, boiling out like a chemical reaction from some bizarre science experiment. Don’t try this at home, kids. You’ll never get rid of the stains and you won’t like what the orcs do to the carpets.
Brumm had someone else’s MK18, probably off one of the more badly wounded. He was busy engaging the orcs, squeezing hard and fast to keep them from getting out of the trench. Pointing the weapon and selecting new targets like he was going for expert on a range full of pop-ups. Never mind these pop-ups were going to flay you alive if they got close enough.
It was incredible: as fast as you put one down, two more crawled forward, and if you targeted those two, seven more were squeezing out to lob hand axes and spears. I felt one barely miss my bucket and cleared an angle to fire and shoot at an orc getting ready to throw another. A fast-moving goblin that managed to do what six of its comrades hadn’t been able to do—get close—leapt out of the line of fire Kurtz was pouring into his sector, curved dagger out, and flung itself at the Ranger sergeant. It jabbed him with the dagger, but it was hard to tell if it stuck deep.
Bad mistake for the goblin.
Kurtz dropped his rifle—it was single-point slung so it just dangled—and throttled the thing with one hand. Then he jammed the tanto knife he kept on his plate carrier right into its brain. It went limp like a puppet, and Kurtz tossed it aside like it was nothing and he had no more time for it as he brought his rifle back into play and shot three more in rapid succession. The rounds left smoke trails that ended in goblin and orc chests.
Chief Rapp had a whole front to himself. Basically, the section of the hill that linked up with Kurtz’s sector and then attached to the snipers who now looked to be shooting at targets close at hand. Just beneath the lip of the hill where it was steepest, and the horde couldn’t assault directly.
The chief worked his rifle easily for such a big man. His marksmanship was incredible. Things he shot stayed dead. The orcs had pushed over the lip of the hill, coming up an almost vertical section of the slope, and thrust heavy iron shields out in front of them to protect their foothold against our line. The first few to do this died as the chief nailed them in the head at ten meters. But, as was the enemy’s way, they had numbers, so if they lost a few dozen just to take a few more meters, no problem for them. Or so it seemed. Foothold was everything to them. They had bodies to burn.
Forgotten Ruin: An Epic Military Fantasy Thriller Page 20