by John Conroe
The big elf struck again, swinging from overhead, but shortening the stroke at the last instance, moving from a massive woodcutters swing to a close to the body downward slice. It was like a Major League hitter switching to a bunt instead of the fence clearing smash that everyone expected.
Neeve didn’t fall for it though, even as she moved inside what would have been the arc of his false swing; a move that should have brought her into the slice he had switched to. Instead she floated to his right side and without bothering to swing her own arm, changed the Frost blade in her left hand to a needle like spear that shot out under its own power and punched a small hole in the Summer elf’s torso armor.
He twisted to protect his side but she was past him, chopping an ax shaped blade into his right calf armor on the way by.
The fighters separated, the big elf shrugging off the damage which was apparently minor, yet the crowd was quiet, perhaps disturbed by liquid ease with which Neeve had drawn first blood.
Limping ever so slightly on his wounded leg, the Summer warrior spun his heavy sword lightly in his hand, eyeing his slim opponent with a glare. Neeve watched him back, her gaze more studied, coldly analyzing her enemy. Suddenly , she slid forward, dropping to her knees for a flickering moment before bounding backward in a very inhuman manner. I couldn’t follow her arm movements, but when she stood up her left hand weapon was formed into a nasty looking brush hook with blue blood dripping from the point of the blade. I glanced at the Summer fighter, who was looking wobbly, but couldn’t figure out his wound. Then his good leg gave out and he fell to his knees, his hand clutching the back of his thigh. That sudden move combined with a billhook shaped weapon had severely cut the elf’s back leg, perhaps severing a tendon or two. The fight was over, for all intents and purposes. The big Hunter tried to spin on his wound knee to keep the mongoose fast princess in sight but he couldn’t keep up and she was suddenly behind him, her blades scissored together and his head jumped from his broad shoulders in a geyser of blue blood. Just that fast the fight was done.
The noisy Green Court elves went dead silent, while the onlookers from the White Court thumped their left hands to their right chests in applause.
For her part, Neeve simply flicked both blades clean, then let the living weapons flow back to her forearms before rejoining her mother. Morrigan nodded once in satisfaction then turned to Zinna and spoke in Elfish. Her words were meaningless to me, but the tone was crystal clear, ‘I won, give me the girl!’, or something like that. When I glanced in Ashley’s direction, I noticed Greer standing on the far side, almost exactly opposite me with Ash in the middle. He was staring in my direction and I suddenly realized that I had almost missed my cue.
The two silver spikes were poking out of the hard, red river bank in front of me, waiting their part in the play about to happen. Greer had collected them from a Green Court Hunter and one of the Hunt’s members, neither of whom had any further use for the pointy weapons.
Pulling the spikes from the dry desert-like sand, I hauled back my right hand and let fly with first one, then the other, throwing as hard as I could. They went farther than I expected, the first landing only ten feet from Greer who didn’t have to fake the shock on his face. ‘Didn’t know the human could throw that hard did you?’
The second spike, which was from a Hunt body, actually bounced once and hit a green clad Summer elf in the leg, but did no damage as it hit flat. He yelped and jumped in surprise and that’s when Greer yelled in Elfish. The plan was to make it seem that the Summers and Hunt pack were each trying to renege on the deal. Whatever he said worked because suddenly all hell broke loose.
Chapter 23
The Summer warrior whose leg had been slapped by my thrown dart, whipped his bow off his back, nocked an arrow and let fly in one continuous motion, hitting a Hunt fighter in the stomach. Before he could get another arrow, a red and black goblin had leapt at him, knocking him down but getting stabbed by another Green soldier in the process. The dart that landed near Greer was carved with Summer insignia and Greer launched himself at the nearest Summer fighter, who happened to be between him and Ashley.
Grabbing Charm with both hands, I heaved her up the dry riverbank and clambered after her. By the time I made it to both feet, the three armies were embroiled in combat, every side fighting for itself. The Queens were pulled back by their bodyguards, but Morrigan’s protectors only managed to get her a couple of dozen feet back before the angry queen stopped and turned back to the fight with a scream of outrage. She yelled a command to Neeve who stepped forward and began to carve a path toward Ashley, cutting down Summer and Hunt elves without much effort.
Gywd had started to pull back toward me, the woman holding Ashley dragging my daughter by her arm, while several Hunt members surrounded them.
I noticed most of this peripherally, as my mind slowed down and focused on Ashley. Charm took off and my HK came up, the red dot of the Aimpoint sight centering on the chest of the nearest Hunt member. A two round burst thudded my shoulder, both fat .45’s hitting the red and black clad elf. Moving in short controlled steps, the HK glued to my shoulder, I kept both eyes open and began to service targets like I had been taught. Elf, elf, goblin, elf, all down and dying in four or five seconds time, the goblin getting a double burst of slugs to end its life. Charm blurred forward, ignoring everything in her path as she cut a straight line to Ashley.
The chaos of the melee worked to cover my approach for a few seconds but then one of my targets shouted as he fell, and both Gywd and the woman holding Ash became aware of my attack on their rear. Gywd leapt to the back of the steed nearest him, then reached down for the female elf to hand Ashley to him.
Charm arrived at that point and sank her teeth into the female’s thigh, yanking her off her feet.
Without active thought, I flipped the selector from burst to full auto and emptied the rest of the mag into Gywd and his horse-thing. Flipping the double clipped magazine over I was reloaded and bearing down on my daughter when the arrow hit my left leg. The pain and shock of the impact stopped my progress, but the venom did nothing to me as Greer had given me a second dose of antidote before leaving to get in position. I was good for several hits before my protective anti-venom would be overwhelmed.
The archer was a Summer elf who was closing in on the teenaged girl that was everybody’s prize in this battle, and he died from lead induced iron poisoning as soon as I spotted him. Ashley shook free from the elf bitch and started to run my way. Charm had switched bite points from the thigh to the woman’s throat, ending her participation in the contest.
I became aware that both queens were pointing my way and yelling at their troops to stop me, but now I was too close to Ashley for them to fire arrows or spikes. Greer was suddenly there, cutting down a Summer elf and a red/black stripped goblin.
His deadly sister was almost there as well, sliding through both Hunt and Summer fighters like an NFL running back through a defensive line, but infinitely more graceful. And pro-football players don’t generally leave a trail of dead bodies behind them either. Her twin black blades were morphing too fast for the eye to follow as she killed two and three people at a time.
Dropping the sub-machine gun on its sling, I grabbed both flashbangs and pulled their pins, throwing them into the crowds of Summer and Winter elves that were now headed my way. I tossed them far over the front runners to provide protection to Ash from the iron brads. Both went off and dropped large numbers of elves, but did nothing to slow Neeve’s approach or keep back the closest oncoming fighters.
Ashley reached me and I grabbed her with my left arm and one handed the HK, burst firing from the hip till that mag was finished. Then I again dropped the HK and grabbed one of my Father’s dying gifts.
The little green baseball sized sphere was immediately recognizable to anyone who had ever seen a war movie. It was a M67 fragmentation high explosive grenade, and its secondary safety, called a jungle clip, had already been pulled off, so when I pulle
d the pin and threw it into the crowd of rushing elves it proved to be far, far more effective than the flashbangs.
I’d never handled a frag grenade before, but I could recall reading a book my dad had about military weapons. If I remembered right, the M67 killed people within about five meters and severely wounded out to fifteen meters. Apparently those numbers would need to be amended for elves, because when the dust settled on my back where I crouched over Ashley, the steel fragments had killed dozens out to at least twenty meters and left a thirty meter circle of writhing, wounded elves that had to number at least twenty.
The explosion and subsequent pile of bodies slowed up the tide of attackers somewhat, but didn’t stop it all together. A Hunt elf in red and black got close enough while I was ducking the explosion to swing his sword. I blocked the stroke with the HK, then dropped the gun when its sling got tangled up in the blade, instead grabbing the bowie knife from my vest and stabbing the elf in his stomach. I left it stuck all the way to its hilt in his abdomen and pulled Dad’s Glock .45, making the best use of its fourteen rounds that I could.
Greer had fought his way to my side, concentrating his efforts on Summer and Hunt pack elves leaving me to deal with Winter’s soldiers. A black clad Guardian morphed his black weapon into a spear, but I triple tapped him, two to the chest and a final round to the head. I popped off several more rounds, each finding a target in the mass of attackers, still shielding Ashley with my left arm.
Lining up my sights I suddenly felt a tug on my arm just as a shell white arrow punched through it. Dropping the Glock I pulled the last M67 with my left hand and struggled to get the pin out.
Neeve was almost to us, Eirwen was lowering the bow that had pin cushioned my arm, and the two queens were closing fast. Charm streaked to our sides, huddling with Ashley.
The arrow must have been lying on a nerve because one half of my right hand was numb, the fingers useless and the other was on fire with pain that flared to my shoulder. I ignored it, blocking it out, just as I blocked out the whirl of combat around us and concentrated on getting my right index finger through the safety pin on the grenade. Fumble, fumble, slip, then I got it, yanking the steel ring clear and holding the armed grenade up in my left hand for the elves to see. They saw…and stopped. Some recognized it as the twin to the one that had just taken out close to fifty elves, but the rest froze because the queens both yelled commands when they laid eyes on it.
The battle came to a sudden screeching halt, all eyes on the round pound of steel death in my clenched left fist. I twisted to shield as much of Ashley as I could, putting my armored body between her and the hordes around us.
“You can’t win with that, Mr. Moore,” Queen Morrigan pointed out in an Irish accented tone.
“ It depends on your definition of winning. If I take most of you with me, I’ll count that a victory,” I replied. My left hand was feeling the strain of holding the grenade upright, trembling just a little.
“Maybe I can’t rescue my daughter, but I’ve sure raised the cost of getting her haven’t I?” I continued, gesturing at the battlefield strewn with bodies. There were well over a hundred dead elves lying about, some killed by each other, but I think I had accounted for the most. “By now my world will be piecing together reports of what has happened. Security cameras will have captured enough footage to give our governments enough information to form defenses. I don’t know how many people you have, Queen Morrigan, but if you spend this many each time you Gather our children, you’ll be extinct before long.”
Her eyes flashed red…really, I swear, they actually flashed red, and her perfect features twisted in a rictus of anger.
“Don’t speak to us of extinction, human! Look to your own uncertain future!” she snarled. Behind her Zinna’s face matched her sister’s for anger.
Morrigan raised her arms and a great cloud of black rose into the sky behind her. Thousands of pucks, tiny wings humming, filled my sight, all of their predatory eyes locked on me.
Zinna made a similar motion and a matching cloud of smaller green and brown Tinks lifted into the air, glittering compound eyes aimed our way.
Note to self: taunting the Queens of Fairie equals bad idea.
I looked a Greer whose dark skin had gone pale, his eyes bleak, then I glanced back at Ashley.
“I love you!” I said.
“I love you too Daddy!” she said sobbing, her eyes filled with tears.
Then I tucked her behind me, forced my wounded right hand to the butt of my still holstered Sig and tossed the grenade straight up over the heads of the Queens.
All eyes followed the little sphere as it left my hand and lofted into the sky. Time slowed as it tumbled over, the arming lever snapping out to ignite the primer. Game over.
An M67 has a four second fuse. Not very long, but long enough for some.
Neeve responded even as the other elves watched the grenade with uncertain expressions. She slid forward half a step, thrusting her right arm skyward, the black coil around her arm flowing out into an impossibly long, needle sharp shaft. The grenade was only ten feet overhead, so I had a clear view of what happened. The needle tip of her frost blade speared the grenade almost dead center, and I could see the midnight black material begin to burn and melt even as it made contact with the steel body of the bomblet. For a split second the deadly elf was left with a ten foot long lance of black, tipped with a green grenade. Then the tip of her weapon melted from the steel and the little orb of death fell to our feet where it sat without blowing up. Certainly she had overabundant amounts of skill and ability, yet her luck had to be its equal for her weapon to hit and sever the fuse running down the inside of the grenade, before the it could burn to the detonator charge. The odds of anyone hitting the fuse channel in a grenade are too large to be worth calculating, yet she did it.
We all looked at the dead bomb, even Ashley who had refused to remain behind the dubious shelter of my body. I looked from the bomb to Neeve in time to meet her eyes. My damaged hand fumbled to draw the Sig, but she simply extended her left hand and the glittering tip of her other Frost blade was a centimeter from my eye.
Ashley screamed “NO!” in a voice loud enough to deafen everyone in a five foot radius, even as Neeve looked to her mother for the command to kill me.
Morrigan had just started her nod when the sky went pitch dark and an enormous wind blasted over us.
The pucks and Tinks tumbled from the sky, washed away by the hurricane gust of wind that came just before the sun disappeared. All eyes shot skyward as an immense form floated over us, so large that it took seconds for me to understand what I was seeing. The body was black and as long as tractor-trailer with batlike wings that stretched out a hundred feet or more to each side.
Then it roared and the sound was a hammer pounding everyone and everything on that field flat to the dirt. The huge wings back flapped once, twice, pushing another great wind that sent the pucks and Tinks tumbling across the field.
Gargantuan feet, like bridge supports with claws, slammed into the ground with enough force to bounce all our bodies several inches into the air.
Dragon.
All previous concepts of the word fled before the reality of what I was seeing. Immense, black, bat-winged, with a long tooth-filled head that would make a tyrannosaur cower. Teeth like sharpened zucchinis and eyes as big as trashcan lids. Eyes that glowed yellow.
The dragon turned its gaze down upon the little group huddled between its feet and brought its head down till it was only fifteen feet over us. The mouth was so big that it could have eaten Morrigan’s bodyguard Sasquatch in one bite.
No one moved, all eyes locked on the angry monster whose body blocked the sun.
“He says to stop!” Ashley said, looking at the Queens.
The sisters gaped at the tear streaked girl who was suddenly standing and facing them, unconcerned with the monster overhead. They stared in disbelief for a second then glanced back to the dragon.
“He says he
’s been waiting for me for centuries and he will kill everything that threatens me,” Ash said with a note of wonder in her voice.
“Ash, what are you talking about?” I asked, not taking my eyes from the monster overhead.
“I can…hear him..sorta…in my head. His name is Gargax and he could hear me from miles away. He calls me Speaker?” she directed the last bit to the two queens whose faces looked to be in danger of freezing in permanent disbelief.
“There has not been a Speaker for close to a thousand years!” Greer said incredulously.
“What is a Speaker?” I asked him.
“They speak to dragons,” he answered with a shrug. “No one else can. Dragons are not native to our world, their biology is very different, yet we have lived with them for all of our recorded history. Occasionally, there comes among us one who can communicate with them, mind to mind. Those individuals allowed us to work out the treaties that kept dragons and elves from fighting. But we have lacked a Speaker for most of Mother’s and Aunt Zinna’s reigns. Relations have degraded to the point where we avoid each other to prevent any unfortunate incidents.”
“And Ashley is a Speaker?”
“Apparently,” he said, nodding at the immense carnivorous bulk above us.
“Gargax heard me when the red and black elves had me and started this way. He called others of his kind and they will be here shortly,” Ashley said, her expression equal parts wonder, exhaustion, and defiance. “He is very angry with all of you for hurting me and my ..sire,” she said to the queens before looking back at me puzzled. “Sire?”
“That’s me. Another, older term for father,” I explained. “So, I’m gonna assume that this changes things.”