Elite: A Hunter novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  I had thought the stench before was appalling. Now…it was indescribable. I gagged and covered my nose and mouth with both hands, before I remembered my gas mask, fumbled it out of my backpack, and pulled it on over my face. I was so glad I’d kept the gas mask in my load-out! The next few breaths of blessedly filtered air were such a relief that my eyes watered. Or maybe they were watering from the remains of the Gog…there are no words for that smell.

  Dusana and I waited until the rain of nasty stopped dropping on our Shields. Then we flexed them violently outward, sending all the chunks of yuck and spills of ooze flying off us.

  When we could see past the Shields again, we were on the edge of a brand-new crater in the grain fields. The grain was on fire, but since it was green, the fires were going out by themselves. As the smoke cleared around us, I looked toward the army line and waved. I turned on the mic in my gas mask and said, “Hunter Joyeaux to artillery commander. Ready for round two?”

  There was a lot of coughing and gagging on the other end for a moment. Then some cussing. Very creative cussing; I was impressed. “I thought those things smelled bad on the outside,” came the reply finally. “Roger that, Hunter. Ready for round two.”

  “See you guys in a bit,” I told him.

  Bya? I called.

  Coming, my Hound replied, sounding amused. We will meet you halfway there; the creature has already realized what you did to its mate, and it is coming in your direction. You should have no trouble getting it in place.

  With the Gog and Magog disposed of, and me as far upwind from the gross mess as I could get, I called Hammer. After all, Kent had made him the team leader. He replied promptly. “We’re cleaning up in town. There’s not just those snake-men; there’s Redcaps and Yeth-hounds.”

  Yeth-hounds; that was another Othersider I had heard of but never seen up on the Mountain. Possibly because they didn’t like mountains; their favored place was flat or gently rolling land, like moors. They were headless hounds, but that didn’t stop them from being able to tear you to pieces.

  “Join up with us, and we’ll work our way toward the others,” Hammer continued.

  “Roger, Hammer,” I said, and we all headed in that direction. Their icons were still moving around on the map.

  My last order from Kent had been to stick with Hammer and Steel, and that was what I was going to do. They were in the center of the town, so that was the direction I sent Dusana. The rest packed up around me, with Bya sticking so close to Dusana’s side he might as well have been glued there.

  Get your mind on your job, I told myself. It didn’t matter that all of this was crazy compared to the Hunting I’d done at home, because I had the best pack ever, and we’d keep each other safe. “Myrrdhin, take Hevajra and Begtse and quarter to the right. Shinje, take Strike and Kalachakra and quarter to the left. Gwalchmai, range ahead of us with Hold and Chenresig. Stay within a hundred yards of me, take care of anything you find, and if you get into trouble, bring the trouble here to me and Bya and Dusana.” That put two fire-breathers and at least one bampher to the left and the right and one fire-breather and a bampher scouting. I had Dusana and Bya, and we could bamph our way out of reach of anything we couldn’t handle with just the three of us. “If you don’t get into trouble, I want anything that isn’t human or a domestic animal on fire and dead. We need this place cleared, the faster, the better.”

  All the Hounds nodded and arranged themselves as Dusana and Bya and I worked our way through the streets toward Hammer and Steel.

  There was no sign of anyone coming to put out the burning buildings, but that wasn’t a surprise. Extinguishing fires was a job best left until after the Othersiders were gone, even back home. Hopefully anyone that had been in those buildings was in a place of safety. I couldn’t help but contrast Bensonville with Anston’s Well; here, everyone seemed to have gone into hardened shelters to wait for the arrival of Hunters and the army—back home, no one would have been waiting around; they’d have grabbed weapons and started a line of defense as soon as the first Portal opened or the first Othersider attacked. I knew why Cits weren’t given weapons in Apex, but did that hold in these smaller towns, out here beyond the safety of the Barriers? It must, because as we made our way down the street, past abandoned pods, locked doors, and vacant storefronts, there didn’t seem to be a single soul here. And I know the Othersiders couldn’t have killed everyone in town without leaving a sign of the bloodshed.

  The air was thick with smoke, but the fires were not nearly as bad as I would have thought; in fact, it almost looked as if they were starting to go out on their own. Maybe the buildings were built with fire-resistant stuff. That would make sense, if everyone was forced to go into shelter. Still, I was glad I’d kept my gas mask on. The Hounds didn’t have any problem with smoke that I could tell, but I’d have been choking without it, and by now my eyes would have been watering and swollen.

  Contact, Myrrdhin said briefly. I tensed. Redcaps. I relaxed at that. It would have to be a big swarm of ’Caps to give Myrrdhin and my Alebrijes more than a moment of trouble. A moment later, Shinje reported the same; he seemed amused. But then, Shinje didn’t have any respect at all for Redcaps.

  Minotaurs! exclaimed Chenresig, and all amusement vanished from the minds of all the Hounds.

  Chenresig, bring them here! The rest of you, mop up and form up on me, I ordered the other two subpacks. On the double!

  We stopped right where we were, just past a pod that had been abandoned right in the middle of the street. I glanced around, but there was no better place to make a temporary stand. Plan. I need a plan….

  But first, I needed to know how many Minotaurs there were. Two or three…not a problem with my pack of eleven. But if they matched us one for one, well, we’d be outmatched on paper. They outweighed and outmuscled us, and I needed to be smart.

  I put up full Shields, and so did Dusana; Bya saved his in case we needed them later. I could hear the baying of the Hounds and the bellowing of the Minotaurs around a corner ahead as the scouts made their way back to me. A moment later, they came racing back to my side, as Myrrdhin and his two streaked in from the right.

  Then the Minotaurs lumbered around the corner and stopped dead at the sight of us.

  It looked as though they hadn’t been expecting anything like my pack. They peered at us, tossing their horned heads uneasily, and pawing the pavement with their hooved feet.

  Not good. We were almost evenly matched. There were nine or ten of them, which was more than we could take on head-to-head. This was the biggest herd I’d ever seen; I’d never seen more than three together before.

  Minotaurs don’t look exactly like the Grecian ones. They have bull heads and vaguely human, heavily furred bodies, but they have the hind legs and tails of bulls instead of human legs. The ones I’d seen in the forests back home had been naked, which was kind of embarrassing. These weren’t; they had heavy leather belts and loincloths. Most of them were dark brown in color; a couple were ebony-black. They stood about eight feet tall and carried enormous double-headed bronze axes, primitive weapons but very effective. But, of course, those axes, and Minotaurs’ enormous strength, were not their only weapons. Their horns were deadly, and so were their hooves. And they weren’t stupid, not even close, as long as they didn’t lose their tempers or get manipulated into herd behavior.

  So obviously I was going to have to trigger both.

  The last three of my Hounds returned from the left on the run. The Minotaurs snorted angrily at the sight of them and shifted their weight from hoof to hoof. They were bullies by nature and didn’t like even odds. If there had only been me and my original pack, there was no doubt they’d be advancing on us, laughing. Right now, I suspected they were psyching themselves up to charge. If they did it while their brains were still engaged, they’d come at us in a V-formation, with heads down, in something like a charging shield-wall. They’d hook us with their horns and trample anything that didn’t get out of the way, then rever
se, and come at us from behind with the axes.

  I didn’t give them a chance; a plan had finally come to me. The one thing that would tilt the odds in our favor was to make them so angry they stopped thinking and just reacted without a plan and without coordination.

  I sprayed them with my assault rifle, emptying the clip. Normally, I would never use bullets so wastefully, but this was a case where it was justified. Like so many Othersider monsters, Minotaurs have thick hides, with a lot of resistance to weapons grown right into their skin, which was nearly as tough as Kevlar. So I wasn’t going to do more than inflict superficial wounds, but that wasn’t the point. The point of this otherwise futile exercise was to hurt them enough to anger them, get their bull side dominant over their human side, and get them to chase us without thinking.

  It worked. They bellowed as the bullets stung them, and charged chaotically, with no attempt to work together. We turned and fled. That’s where we had another advantage. Minotaurs are slower than us, at least initially. They carry a lot of weight, and it takes them a while to get up to speed. We would be able to outdistance them pretty quickly, and unlike Drakken, once you had their attention, you couldn’t lose it easily, and they wouldn’t lose interest in us just because we were getting away. If anything, that was likely to make them more angry.

  It wasn’t more than a few hundred yards to the edge of town, away from potential victims. We were running on paved roads, and the footing was excellent—all things in our favor. They were coughing in the smoke from the fires. We weren’t. Once we were in the clear and we had enough distance on them so I could get a spell ready, we turned and faced the charging herd.

  This was a trick I’d pulled so many times I could have cast the spell in my sleep. It was a useful way to stop things, anything from a runaway cart to a herd of angry elk or bison. With an outpouring of manna and an internal yank, I created a knee-high barrier, a drastically shortened Wall, right in front of them. I got it up when there was less than a pace between the leaders and it. They couldn’t stop in time to avoid hitting it; in fact, I think they didn’t even realize it was there until it was too late. The front rank slammed into it and toppled over; there was the cracking sound of breaking leg bones, followed by meaty thuds as the rest fell over them, followed by the frantic cries of cattle in agony. The ones in the front rank had probably broken both their legs. Then they’d probably broken other things as the rank behind ran into and fell on them—ribs most likely, maybe arms. And of course they were carrying those axes, and if they didn’t get nasty gashes from the blades, they’d get thwacked by the shafts.

  But I wasn’t going to waste any pity on them. They’d fully intended to kill and eat us; like Gogs and Magogs, Minotaurs ate people. Not just the manna, the meat. One Minotaur could easily down an entire human at a sitting, and if they’d gotten hold of any of the Cits, they probably had already made themselves a meal.

  So as soon as they were down, I gave the pack the signal to attack.

  And that was when my original Hounds unleashed fire, and I lobbed a half a dozen flash-bang grenades into the pile. Flash-bangs at range disorient; flash-bangs in your face will tear you up, even if you have hide like Kevlar. The bellows coming from the pile were deafening, and I had to keep reminding myself that they had been quite ready to tear me apart alive and eat me on the spot. The Hounds without fire dove in, two at a time, and hauled a pair of wounded Minotaurs from the pile and set about dispatching them. The rest continued to belch flames on the pile of struggling bodies, replacing their spent manna as the Minotaurs died, while I lobbed flash-bangs. I regretted now I hadn’t grabbed real grenades instead; this would have been a lot cleaner.

  I was glad I still had my gas mask on.

  Like Goblins, the Minotaurs went to goo when they were dead; eventually there was just a mound of slime oozing into the dirt where they had fallen. Like the Nagas, all that was left were their weapons, big bronze axes too heavy for me to lift.

  As soon as the Hounds had finished drinking in the manna, we trotted back into the town as fast as we could. I hadn’t heard anything from Hammer, and that didn’t bode well. “Range out,” I told them, and they scattered.

  According to my Perscom, the brothers were just past where we’d encountered the herd of Minotaurs, in what was supposed to be the center of town.

  And just as I thought that, I felt something like a cold wind whipping through me—the signature of a lot of magic being spent right nearby!

  I whirled—

  And there was a Folk Mage. “My” Mage. The one from the train. He looked as he had then, floating there in midair, his long, long silvery-lavender hair trailing about a foot or so past the soles of his shoes. That hair was ornamented with strings of sparkly beads behind his right ear. He had the same silver headband stretched across his forehead, with a lavender stone in it that matched his lavender eyes. He wore a similar costume to the last time, layers of robes, with an elaborate, embroidered belt, all of soft, shiny silvery-lavender stuff, with floaty sleeves, and every visible bit of it was covered in silver embroidery and more sparkly beads.

  My heart practically exploded with fear, and I jumped backward. All my Hounds were ranged out, and it would take them time to get to me, even bamphing. I could hear Bya in my head, shouting that he was coming, but that there were Nagas between him and me. For at least the next minute, I was on my own.

  I snapped up my Shield, but I’d depleted a lot of energy and it wasn’t nearly as strong as I needed. Not if I was going to take on a Folk Mage alone.

  “Of a courtesy,” I squeaked out, “let me pass.”

  But he was not behind his Shield. Behind him was an open Portal.

  “Take care, shepherd,” he said as my Hounds gathered in tightly around me, vibrating with suppressed aggression. “Take great care, and be wary. Do not let down your guard. Your enemy has friends, still, and they are here. Things are not as they seem.”

  And then he backed in through the Portal, which closed instantly, leaving me alone with far, far more questions than answers, and a terror that shook me to my bones.

  What the hell? What was that supposed to mean?

  Then it occurred to me. What if Ace was using this fight as a chance to get his hands on me and throw me to the Folk? Frantic now, I told my Perscom to hunt for combat cams, and after a few seconds, it found me one.

  In fact, it found me one that was recording a pitched battle of Hunters and army Mages against two of the three reported Folk Mages. These were the “civilized” kind, although they weren’t dressed as elaborately as the one from the train had been; it looked to me as if they’d come dressed for a fight, rather than dressed to intimidate. The Folk Mages were both wearing archaic, elaborate armor, like something out of a vid, complete with crested helmets, and both clutched staffs surmounted by glowing objects.

  The Folk Mage on the right wore red-and-gold armor with a fancy cloth thing, like a long vest, belted over it. His helmet had big bird wings on either side of the top, and his staff had a Ketzel embracing a glowing, flame-shaped orange gem. The Folk Mage to the left wore a similar outfit in green and gold, but his helmet was plumed with gold feathers, and atop his staff was a green globe with what looked like a serpent coiled around it.

  It was pretty clear that these staves were weapons and not the sort you just hit people with; as I watched, the one in red and gold pointed his staff at one of the army Mages, and the flame-shaped object belched bale-fire at him. The army Mage stumbled back under the onslaught, and his Shield failed spectacularly, fracturing into shards of manna, like broken stained glass. He screamed as the bale-fire set him ablaze; then the Folk Mage turned a little and the bale-fire plumed outward to engulf another army Mage who was coming to the rescue. This one’s Shields held, and he ripped off his jacket and beat out the flames on his fellow with it, while a third interposed himself and began firing levin bolts with both hands at the enemy. The levin bolts splattered harmlessly on the Folk Mage’s shield. The army Mag
e kept firing anyway.

  I wanted to throw up. I wanted to run. This confrontation was everything I had been taught to fear—facing not just one, but two full Folk Mages of the civilized sort, and it was clear the army Mages were no match for them. I was paralyzed with terror.

  Then the Folk Mage’s Shields were hit by something explosive, they flared and cracked, and I recognized Archer’s handiwork.

  “Get up here,” someone snarled into the radio. “We’ve got to get Prender out!” The camera panned in, showing the one who’d come to the rescue of the burning Mage now trying to haul the injured man away by his shoulders, while the third Mage, and Archer, pounded at the Folk Mage with levin bolts and conjured arrows. Now I could see what my Masters had told me about: how the Folk Mage kept replacing his Shields from within, so that as the outer layer was destroyed, it was replaced by an inner layer.

  “Get him out yourself, I’m busy,” replied a voice I recognized. It was Ace.

  “Consider yourself reported for insubordination, Sturgis!” the other snapped. I could tell now that the speaker was the Mage who was shooting off levin bolt after levin bolt, his face a mask of rage, as the two Folk Mages backed up, one slow step after another. It appeared that the second one, the one in green and gold, was the one holding Shields over them both.

  Ace laughed. It wasn’t a normal laugh. It sounded maniacal. “What are you going to do? Take away my birthday? Do your own dirty work, Kingsley!”

  Ace had something up his sleeve. I knew it, right then. I knew he knew I would be here, and he had some way of getting to me and he was going to throw me to the Folk….All I could think of was how to get away, far away, from whatever it was he was going to do to me.

  Then all other thoughts were driven right out of my mind as the battlefield frequency erupted with voices, shouting, even screaming. Then the cam just went dead—and a gale-force blast of wind hit the town so hard that the buildings shook as the smoke was driven right out of the streets. My attention was diverted to the sky above the area where the battle was going on—to eyes able to see magic, it was like an artillery barrage or fireworks going off. Lots and lots of magic energy careening off into the air. My heart stopped dead. I had never seen that much magical energy all in one place before in my entire life—and this was just the residual leakage from whatever was happening on the battlefield!