The other had now fully healed and was advancing towards the lodge in huge ferocious bounds. It sent short bursts of suppressive fire at the lodge which ricocheted off the metal window plates, sending a shower of sparks into the room that temporarily dazed Charlie, who cried out.
“Shit, can’t see boss, gimme a minute.”
“Brock, come take over this gun. Ariel, see to Charlie make sure there’s nothing in that eye.”
Brock was over in a shot and had taken over position at the gun. They were not prepared for how fast the Feral could move however and by the time he had found his sights the berserker was running directly up the hill towards the lodge, firing its gun all the way.
Usher watched Brock take careful aim, neither panicking nor rushing. His aim was steady, he breathed into the cadence of the Feral then he pulled the trigger.
The first round caught it right in the crook of its elbow, severing the arm below it and sending it tumbling down the hill. The Feral roared but did not lose a pace. Its gun was empty but it drew a huge gleaming machete from its belt. Brock fired another round which caught it in the abdomen. The Feral flipped off its feet and almost somersaulted like an American footballer getting tackled. In three seconds it was up and sprinting towards the door of the cabin. Its guts were exposed but that barely slowed it down.
Usher did not think for a minute that the log propped against it would hold, so he took cover behind a heavy upturned oak table and drew a bead on the door with his carbine. He let the adrenalin take him just enough but kept his hands steady and waited for the crash on the door.
Isaac shouted to Brock by his side.
“He’s not gonna go down. I’ll slow him, go help Usher.”
Isaac took another shot that took the rest of the Feral’s arm off at the shoulder but it kept going and was now moving too fast to get another accurate shot. Isaac could scarcely believe how fast the thing could still move despite its injury.
In his peripheral vision Usher saw Brock get up from his rifle and move to get something from the corner of the room.
He took a steadying breath and waited for a few seconds.
Then with an almighty crash the heavy wooden door splintered and crashed as the berserker ploughed straight through it. For a moment it stood there breathing heavily, its crimson eyes alive with rage. Usher opened fire and emptied his entire magazine into the monster, sending blood and bone across the cabin. The creature staggered but stayed on its feet. A close quarter’s fight with one of these things was exactly what Usher had hoped to avoid. They were deadly hand to hand. Usher’s distraction bought them the few moments to regroup and plan an attack.
From nowhere Brock appeared, his huge body sprinting across the room holding something massive and gleaming in his hands. The soldier let out a cry of rage then the berserker’s head was deftly removed from its neck and careered across the floor to land in the snowy doorway. The decapitated body remained standing for an instant then fell with a thud onto the floor.
Brock stood panting above the prone headless body, holding a two headed battle-axe in his hands that most men would be unable to lift. Then he put a boot on the shoulder of the corpse and delivered a couple of swift precise chops, before reaching down and wrenching out the spine and throwing it across the room.
Usher stared at him incredulously.
“That’s what you brought?”
Brock was struggling to get his breath back, but he stood over the dismembered corpse like a proud fisherman with a prize salmon.
“Yeah.”
Isaac let out a long whistle of relief. “Very traditional mate. Very old school.”
Usher stood up as the dust and haze of cordite settled. He couldn’t conceal his grin.
“You obviously planned on getting a lot fucking closer than we ever did.”
Then he realized it was not over and moved across to the window next to Isaac.
“Any sign?”
Isaac shook his head.
“Couldn’t see where they dug in. They got good cover though. Remember how tricky a bastard Kruger is too. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
Usher looked over and saw that Charlie was back in the game. He had a cut over one eye from a ricochet but Ariel had managed to stop the bleeding.
“Ariel. How are you? Everything ok?”
Usher saw that the scientist was now looking more poorly than ever. His skin was deathly white and despite the cold there was sweat lashing from his skin. His eyes seemed to fade between the waking world and some other place. In a moment of clarity he looked up as his sharp brain made an observation.
“Mr Usher. I think this place is built on a quarry. How well did you recce this site?”
Usher felt his skin prickle.
“As well as we could in very limited time. You think there’s another way in.”
“Tunnels.”
Usher felt the adrenaline rise.
Christ. Tunnels.
No sooner had Ariel said the word than something exploded up through the fireplace, scattering flaming logs and embers across the floor and igniting the fur rugs. Stones and masonry flew across the room causing everyone to duck for cover. Usher was caught on the temple with a small piece of stone and went down.
By the time the others had recovered their senses it was in the room with them.
The Feral moved through the smoke like a panther, raising its rifle to spray the room with death. Brock reacted fast and moved in, swinging his huge battle axe and managing to cleave the gun in half before the Feral could pull the trigger.
In his desperation he had swung wide allowing the berserker to deliver a savage kick that sent the bulky soldier off his feet and into a wall. Even as Brock collapsed unconscious, Isaac had lunged across and picked up the axe. He swung it with great difficulty but managed to cleave a huge crescent into the Feral’s thigh that released a fountain of blood and a furious roar. The berserker knocked Isaac backwards onto the floor but the axe remained firmly embedded in its leg. With cries of fury Stromberg and Charlie had drawn their foot long combat knives and attacked the giant from different angles.
Despite its injured leg the Feral ducked and weaved away from both of their attacks and drew its own long machete. Isaac was back on his feet and drawing his own knife and then the battle began.
The berserker was inhumanly fast and agile for such a large creature and it took every bit of effort from all three of them to press the attack. Razor sharp metal clashed against metal in showers of sparks as they slashed with their long knives.
They knew that the combat knives, which were almost short swords, were the right weapon to severe head and spine and silence this creature forever but their weakness was that the Feral could endure any number of cuts and lacerations whereas they could only suffer one serious wound and still be able to stay in the fight. So they were forced to always be on the defensive, ducking and moving to avoid its savage thrusts and cuts. The berserker had no such fear and fought with furious abandon and terrifying strength.
Isaac, Stromberg and Charlie were moving and fighting like men possessed, using every ounce of their skill and training. They inflicted so many wounds that any normal creature would have been dead long ago but the Feral was healing almost as quick as it was hurt and they were acutely aware that it only had to get lucky once.
It was only a matter of time and they knew it.
Usher shook his head clear and groggily got to his feet. He took a moment to realize what was going on then drew his knife and moved in to help.
In the smoke and chaos he didn’t see Kruger slip deftly up behind him and put a knife to his throat.
“Drop that blade to the ground bru. Right now.”
Usher cursed his slow reactions then let his blade fall, where it stuck reverberating in the floorboards. In strained whisper he hissed at his old comrade.
“Kruger what the fuck are you doing? Are you that stupid to really think that Isaiah Argent is going to buy you a retirement home? You�
�re worm food when he’s done and you know it.”
Kruger’s bushy moustache was rough against Usher’s cheek.
“Yes my old friend I do. But I don’t owe you or anyone else on this planet a damn thing. I’m looking out for number one and I will find a way to survive. I always do. I endure bru. Now stay very still and watch the show. I want to see how long our old pals last. Care to have a flutter on the outcome?”
Usher tried to get a bit of leverage but there was no surprising the old hunter. His blade was already drawing blood on Usher’s collar.
He watched in silent rage as his friends were pressed back and began to tire. He knew that soon one of them would get careless with fatigue and the Feral’s blade would find them. They could barely deflect the strength of its blows now.
Usher had no intention of watching them die or allowing Kruger the least bit of satisfaction from it. He figured he would have a few seconds before he bled out if Kruger cut his throat. Enough time perhaps to reach for his knife or try to push the old bastard’s eyes into his skull. Usher could kill fast when he had to.
He braced himself, knowing that the move would also mean his own certain death. He took a breath.
Then he heard the shout.
“Enough!”
The voice pierced the room so loudly that almost everyone in it stopped for a second as their own thoughts were interrupted.
No one, including Ariel, had expected the voice to come from him.
Usher stared as the puny scientist stood up and shed the fur blanket that had kept him warm. He seemed taller somehow and a fine shimmering sheen surrounded him, as if the northern lights had occurred within the lodge. The soldiers watched in amazement as the little man raised his arms like he was about to deliver a religious sermon. His eyes had clouded over white and tiny black pupils emerged in their centre.
In a voice quite unlike his own he spoke again. He pointed at the berserker.
“You. Thief. That anger is not yours to vent. It belongs to me. It takes centuries to build that much fury. Time you have not had. Borrowed time. Return it.”
Ariel reached out a hand and it was as if the life were suddenly snatched from the berserker. It diminished and withered before their eyes and a bright gust of light issued from its mouth. Ariel breathed the light deep into him and it illuminated his eyes like moons in his skull.
The giant Feral began to crumble in on itself, muscles atrophied with accelerated time, teeth falling out to clatter like dice upon the floorboards, hair blowing away as wispy grey strands of gossamer in an unseen wind. Then it fell to the ground as little more than an emaciated corpse and breathed out a final rattling breath. Isaac was taking no chances and despite his shock and exhaustion he picked the axe up from the floor where it had fallen from the Feral’s leg and delivered a decisive coup de grace to its neck.
Ariel seemed overwhelmed by this new intake of energy. He looked around him, seemingly unaware of what he had just done, then swayed a little and collapsed back onto the sofa and passed out as suddenly as he had risen. The cloud of magic settled around his prone body and began to fade.
Despite being as surprised as the rest of them, Usher had survival to think about, and used this supreme moment of distraction to grab Kruger’s wrist and twist it until it snapped and the bone began to push through the skin.
The old man cried out and fell to his knees as Usher deftly removed the knife from his hand and thrust it deep into the bony shoulder of the old hunter with a sinewy crunch. He twisted it an inch to make sure it stayed. Kruger’s eyes rolled up and he took in a long shocked intake of breath.
Usher stepped back and watched the man he had once trusted, as he tried to stand then fell back to his knees in pain as the knife moved inside his shoulder joint. He wondered if Kruger had caused Christi to feel as much pain when he butchered her like an animal. Or had he been too scared that she might still have some fight in her and finished her quick?
Usher stood quite still as the rest of Empire One regained their senses and their breath, then with an effort moved over to surround Kruger in a loose circle. They stood there panting and bloody, holding their knives by their sides. They were all amazed by what the little scientist Ariel Speedman had just done, and it was clear that Ariel was just as surprised. They would have time for questions and explanations soon.
Now they had a blood debt to collect.
The grizzled hunter stared at the floor and could not meet their gaze.
Usher glared at him for a long moment and then finally spoke.
“You waited until Christi was at her weakest before you moved in. Didn’t you? Your old hunting tactic? The great white hunter. The lying king. And now, you can’t even say sorry here at the end for what you’ve done. You took Ghostcoin Kruger. You broke every oath you ever took. You have no ethos. So you know how this ends.”
Kruger looked up, his bloodshot eyes bitter and defiant.
“Shame I never had time to take her dyke head. She’d be up there on the wall at my farm next to my other trophies.”
Then Kruger just sighed and looked down again. He knelt there sweating and grimacing in pain. Finally he spat pinkish sputum onto the floor. There was no remorse in the man at all. He was as hard and barren as the infertile land he grew up on. They could all see that. The old hunter growled at them.
“Get on with it then you bastards.”
Kruger seemed a little startled at the deep voice he then heard behind him.
“No no no fella. You don’t get to choose. You’re on our clock now.”
Brock stood behind Kruger, blood running from a bad cut to his head, but he was on his feet and holding his big battle axe.
Brock looked up at Usher and flicked a little gobbet of blood from the axe.
“I told you I brought this for the close quarters.”
That was the first moment Usher saw real fear in the old hunter’s eyes.
Usher knelt down and pulled his own knife from the floorboards.
“Trophies you say eh? Old friend. Heads and the like? What else? Pelts? You must be an expert at skinning animals after all those years Kruger.”
Usher held up the razor sharp blade in his hand and watched a bead of sweat trickle all the way from Kruger’s forehead to his chin. Usher gave a bitter little smile.
“Me? I’m a long way from expert. More like an enthusiastic amateur. But I will be damned if I don’t get that skin off eventually.”
Isaac, who was standing a few feet from Usher, looked at his watch. He gave the team an almost sad grin.
“We’re on a clock boss. Need to get to that ship. I would say we couldn’t linger here any more than, oooh, one and a half, maybe two hours.”
Usher nodded slowly, never taking his eyes from Kruger.
“I would say if we can’t get the job done in that time, we’ve no damn right to call ourselves skinners at all. Brock? I don’t know how to do feet.”
Kruger knelt there panting and gave Usher a look of contempt. Then his expression changed.
For a moment Kruger seemed not to realize what had happened. He just listed forward as his balance shifted. Only when his hands went out to break his fall did he look behind him and see his severed feet lying like a pair of discarded slippers on the floor. Brock just stood there grinning and pulled his bloody axe from the floorboards.
Kruger thought it was not possible to scream any louder than he did at that moment.
The next half hour was to prove him dead wrong.
39
The helicopter flew through the storm towards the distant flashing beacon of the Proteus.
In the dead of night and the bleakness of the glacier it appeared more like a crashed space ship than a seagoing vessel.
Usher looked upon its pale ghost hull as he charged a magazine with rounds.
He was grim faced and determined as ever. They were here to eliminate Isaiah Argent, destroy the gateway that was the World Tree, and then return the power of the Feral to Arrik the bear-
god. Something strange tugged at Usher’s mind at the notion of that World Tree and its gateway to the Unseelie Realm.
If my wife and child are alive, could they escape through this doorway? Or could I go in and find them?
Usher checked himself, focussed his mind on the task and resumed slipping charged magazines into the Velcro ammo pouches on his tactical vest. This was no time for ludicrous thoughts or unwarranted hope.
Finally they had come to the source of all the trouble and death of the past few weeks. The magician’s hand that moved in the background guiding the destruction was a five hundred year old ghoul. The puppets his hands operated were very human, scientists and soldiers who motivated by profit and indifferent to the suffering their products caused had sold their considerable talents to the Chromium Project.
The Unseelie had always operated best like this. Spreading rumour caused more damage than public defamation. In their ideal world, they would not need to lift a finger. They would spread enough fear and paranoia that humanity would turn upon itself. There were beings in the Unseelie court that figuratively and literally fed upon fear and humanity was at its easiest to corrupt and twist when in that state. Fear the foreigner, fear the bomb, fear the new strain of flu, fear science and technology. The magically evolved Unseelie spread fear of the latter the most. It had realized early on that knowledge and invention was the most potent enemy against it.
That is why it ingratiated itself into the Chromium Project.
A laboratory that existed solely to make chemical and biological weapons, to propagate the idea that scientific advancement was dangerous and that knowledge leads to suffering.
The Dark fey of the Unseelie Court had used this technique for centuries with the world’s established monotheisms, through rumour, manipulation and lies, ensuring that ignorance was venerated over knowledge and that humanity looked back to Bronze Age worldviews rather than embrace the intelligence it had evolved. It was an excellent technique, corrupting the ruling theocracies to keep the masses enslaved and ignorant. A technique they still employed to great effect today. Each of the world’s major religions had been infected with the taint of dark magic long ago. The move into technology companies themselves was the next logical step. To destroy what they feared from the inside and create a culture of terror around advancement and progress.
The Last Line Series One Page 31