by RW Krpoun
“It’s a reverse ha-ha. That’s the Death Lord fail-safe.”
“Are you insane?” Shad asked, snapping off a shot.
“Look to the flanks of the palace: a ha-ha is a landscaping technique, a trench with the inner side higher than the outer. They used them at great estates to keep wild life and peasants out while not obscuring the gentry’s view.” He fired a grenade at the flanking dusters and worked the shotgun’s action. “Only this one is reversed so we can’t see it. That’s why there aren’t any dusters in front of us: they know it is there.”
“Plus I shot them all,” Fred pointed out.
“Are you sure?” Shad was dubious.
“Just watch your feet.”
A minute later Fred recoiled from the edge of a deep trench so cunningly integrated with the curve of the slope that he hadn’t see it until he was less than ten feet from its lip.
The trench hugged the crest of the rise, twenty feet deep on their side and about seventeen on the far side, stone-lined and a dozen feet across.
Shad glanced at the oncoming dusters and then surveyed the trench. “Well, shit.”
Chapter Twenty
“Now what?” Derek demanded.
Shad swore bitterly. “We need to cross that trench, but it’s too wide to jump and too smooth to climb.” He checked the enemy’s dispositions. “OK, Fred reloads drums, Derek, you help him, then refill your pouches. Use your pack and then leave it open on the ground so Jeff and I can restock our pouches. Then we move…counterclockwise. There has to be a way across this damn thing.”
“There isn’t,” Fred pointed with his chin, his hands busy thumbing shells into a drum. “Look over there: a pair of one-foot stone posts on the far side, two steel rings on our side. They had a bridge there, but took it down.”
“Reload.” Shad shot, worked the action, and shot again. “We’re not getting beaten by a ditch.”
“I think the purpose is to slow us down,” Derek advised, thrusting a refilled drum into one of Fred’s empty pouches. “So they can send one or more Death Lords back here.” He grabbed up another empty drum and slotted shells into it.
“We were planning on stopping here,” Shad grunted, reloading his shotgun. “Fred, make sure your next drum is all grenades. I want you to put the entire drum into the far wall in a vertical line centered as close as you can manage between those two posts.”
“You have a plan?” Jeff yelled, blazing away.
“Yeah.”
The dusters pressed closer, but it was quickly apparent that at close range the buckshot rounds were efficient at tearing apart their forms. The problem was that while the dust-men were slow and vulnerable to the Talon’s fire, they were also fearless and arriving in ever-growing numbers.
Fred emptied the drum in five aimed bursts, the small grenades sending stone splinters spraying in all directions.
“Cover, Fred.” Shad knelt and started refilling his pouches from the boxes left in Derek’s pack; Fred’s pack was empty of ammunition and serving as a dump pouch for empty drums. “Here,” he tossed his dagger to Derek. “Fred will belay you to the bottom of the trench. It is up to you to climb the far side and tie off the rope for the rest of us.” Done, Shad returned to firing.
“Better make it fast, goat-boy,” Jeff handed over his dagger and dug the last shells out of the pack. “There’s dusters dissolving into the trench. I bet they have a way of getting back up, too.” He stood and turned back to the enemy. “Covering.”
Fred handed over his dagger, wrapped one end of the rope around his waist, and braced himself. Derek reloaded his shotgun, settled his tactical gloves on his hands, and then free-roped to the bottom of the trench. Fred unwound the rope and tossed it after him.
Derek simply tied one end of the rope to his belt and hustled over to the damaged wall. After a quick study of its surface he pulled a ballistic plate out of his vest and used it to hammer a dagger into a likely crack about three feet high. It took him three tries before he was able to balance on its hilt long enough to pound another dagger in and move up another two feet. The third dagger put him seven feet off the floor of the trench and his fingertips just over two feet from the lip of the trench.
Sweating freely as he crouched on the dagger hilt, the Radio Shack manager pounded three sections of cleaning rod into a handy crack, his lower back protesting fiercely. Straightening up, he took a couple deep breaths before carefully stepping up onto the bundle of aluminum rods. Leaning into the rock he carefully extended his weapon sling to its widest setting and then slowly slid the sling off his shoulders. Gripping the shotgun in both hands he flipped the sling over the lip of the trench and then drew it back. On the third try he felt solid resistance: the sling was around one of the posts.
Easing the weapon around so it was horizontal, ignoring the slow bending of the rods under his feet, he braced his left foot against the wall and stepped ‘up’ the wall with his right, praying that the sling would hold.
One step with his left foot braced against the wall and then he heaved himself bodily over the lip of the trench, sprawling on the bare dirt of the inner side. Wearily rolling to his knees, Derek checked the area and then reeled in the rope. He lashed the free end to one post and then belayed it several times around the other. Unslinging his empty pack, he shrugged out of his MOLLE vest and stuffed it into the pack for weight, then untied the end of the rope from his belt and tied it to the pack.
Checking the area again, he stood and swung the weighted pack twice before hurling it across the trench. It fell short; reeling it in, he tried again, and on the third throw it landed on the bare dirt across the trench.
Shad and Jeff switched to buckshot as the dusters pressed closer, and the three Talons managed to keep up a sufficient volume of fire to keep the dusters at bay, although the enemy’s numbers did not decline as fast as the Texans liked.
“Look at their hands!” Jeff yelled over Fred’s thumping bursts. As the dusters grew close to the Talons their arms sprouted crystal blades, some straight, others curving like a scythe’s.
“This just keeps getting better and better,” Shad observed, taking a moment to squirt oil into the hot action of his shotgun. “Derek better get his act together.”
“He’s working it.”
“This isn’t too bad,” Fred pointed out as he changed drums. “Even with swords and clubs we could have held our own. The Death Lords really left this wide open. I guess they bet on no one being able to get here.”
“Yet they spent decades searching for the Lance,” Shad racked his action and fired. “If they had any idea of its power…” he left the thought unfinished.
“The rope is across,” Jeff said with satisfaction. “Follow me.”
Shooting as they went, the three Talons moved to where the rope-trailing pack lay. While Shad and Fred pounded away into the declining mob of slow-moving dusters Jeff freed the rope from the pack and, lying on his belly at the lip of the trench, ran it through the steel rings until it was pulled tight before tying it off. He stuffed Derek’s MOLLE vest into the top of his own pack and went hand over hand across the rope to the far side, where Derek gave him a hand up.
“I got it,” Fred advised Shad, loading a drum of buckshot.
Shad crossed the rope quickly. The three Talons then opened fire with grenade rounds while Fred followed them, moving slower due to the awkward size of his weapon.
“That went altogether too easily,” Shad observed, dumping his pack onto the dirt. “Restock and reload.”
“It didn’t seem easy to me,” Derek shook his head, helping Fred reload drums. “And our ammo reserve is down to Jeff’s pack.”
“We’re about to make the final push,” Jeff finished refilling his pouches and started on a drum. “Whatever the Death Lords have in terms of a final defense line is next.”
“I bet they saved the best for last,” Fred agreed.
“We’re the best,” Shad discarded an empty box and stood, checking his pouches. “And H
eaven help whatever is between us and going home.”
“That looks like a doorway,” Jeff pointed to an opening set into the near corner of the buildings.
“Well, hell,” Fred grunted as they reached the portal. It was just a simple doorway and through it they saw that the inside of the palace was a maze of crystal walls of various hues ranging from peach to neon orange.
“It looks like that thing you see at carnivals…funhouses or something,” Jeff shook his head.
“House of mirrors,” Shad shook his head. “Fred, how many drums of grenades do you have left?”
“Two.”
“See what they do to that place. We’re not playing the Death Lords’ games.”
The big Texan grinned and hefted his weapon. “Fred happy.”
The grenades blew crystal shards in every direction as the interior walls buckled and collapsed and strangely-formed crystal structures shattered. As the inner barriers dissolved a sculpture-like mass of thick crystal tubes that swirled around and into each other like a nest of foot-thick earthworms was exposed, rising two-thirds of the interior height. The sculpture was at an odd angle through the center of the building, not quite centered on the building’s corners, with only a six-foot gap at either end between it and the outer walls. Very noteworthy was that unlike the rest of the crystal in the structure, the grenades had not even chipped it.
“There’s the heart of it,” Fred noted, reloading after the second drum.
“Yup.” Jeff shouldered his shotgun and used his last grenade rounds to blow out a half-dozen crystal roof panels; the unfiltered sunlight immediately changed the interior into warm glows of pink, green, yellow, and red.
“All right,” Shad hefted his shotgun. “Derek, is the fuse in there for sure?”
The Radio Shack manager produced the tile. “Yep. Very, very close. Too close to pin-point, but it has to be in that conglomerate over there.”
“It looks like abstract art,” Jeff observed.
“OK, I’ve got point. Keep your eyes peeled: I can’t see the Death Lords failing to post guards.”
“If there had been guards the glass shrapnel should have filleted them,” Derek pointed out. “Plus we can see most of the interior.”
“I hope you are right.”
Shad checked that both magazine tubes were full and then stepped carefully into the palace, crystal shards grinding against the stone floor beneath his boots. He took another step, sweeping the area with the muzzle of his shotgun.
“Look, I appreciate caution, but the dirt-folk are working their way through the ditch and Lord knows what the Death Lords are up to,” Jeff noted.
“This isn’t right,” Shad shook his head as he stepped deeper into the building.
“What isn’t?”
“I don’t know. But it isn’t right.” Shad took another careful step.
He fired at the movement without even bothering to try to identify it, worked the action and fired again.
To Derek it appeared that Shad have moved about four steps in and then suddenly blasted a pile of shards. As the point man racked his shotgun’s action the Radio Shack manager realized that the pile of shards was moving, suddenly shifting with a purpose. Even as Shad’s second shot blasted part of it to crystal debris the piled flowed upward into a crude humanoid shape. Derek fired as Shad got off his third shot and the two loads of buckshot blew away the thing’s left arm and much of its upper chest.
Jeff moved up and added his weapon to the fray, the Talons tearing the thing apart through brute force.
Behind them Fred’s weapon hammered out a short burst. “Aim for the head,” Fred drawled as he moved up, the butt of his heavy weapon braced against his hip, the muzzle pointing up. “This is the final defense: the dirt-folk are occupying the shards. If you try the maze the dirt bodies catch up with you, if you smash the maze they get bodies of busted glass.”
“The Death Lords play for keeps, don’t they?” Derek muttered, thumbing shells into his shotgun.
“We never fight stupid people,” Jeff agreed. “Shad, we need to move fast: time is on their side.”
“Ok,” Shad shoved a grenade round into his shotgun. “I’ve got one tube loaded with grenades. I’m going to clear the floor of shards ahead of us and then we’ll rush.”
“Duck and cover,” Jeff swung his pack around in front of his face and arms, squatting so most of his legs were protected as Shad opened up.
The Talons started forward even as the debris was still in mid-air because piles of crystal were shifting and reforming on all sides; they fired as they went, triple-ought buckshot smashing crystal even as the dusters formed up, but once again the dusters were indifferent to losses. The shards formed significantly faster than dirt, and the crystal creatures pressed closer with each passing second.
“Shit!” Shad stuffed shells into his shotgun. “We need to get around to the other side of the sculpture.”
“Figures they would put the fuses on the opposite side from the door,” Jeff blew the ‘head’ off a duster. “Pick up the pace.”
“I’m trying,” Shad opened fire after loading only five shells as he shuffled forward. “They’re popping out everywhere.”
A duster snapped its arm out straight, launching a spear of crystal that sliced through Fred’s tactical vest and shattered against a ballistic plate.
“We need to pick up the pace!” The big Texan blew apart his attacker. “They’re learning. Let me take point.”
“All right,” Shad stepped to the side, reloading frantically.
Despite Fred’s added firepower the Talons’ advance was still painfully slow. The four Texans advanced with a thumping thunder of shotgun blasts, leaving a trail of expended shells and pulverized crystal. Step by step they fought their way across the chamber, gradually drawing closer to the far end of the sculpture that was the Rift-making device.
They could have run it in seconds, but the dusters stopping rising gradually as they assumed form, instead lying inert until they were fully capable of action, forcing the Talons to shoot every pile of crystal in their path before advancing lest a duster get close enough to use its weapons. Given that their firepower was built upon pump-action weapons that had to be reloaded one shell at a time this tactic slowed their progress while consuming their ammunition at a fast pace.
Derek’s head was throbbing from the pounding of the gunfire and his fingertips were blistering from forcing shells into the increasingly hot action of his shotgun, but his hands were steady and his breathing was controlled. He was past fear, past stress and on into the fighting mindset of working his weapon, covering his quadrant, and protecting his buddies. He was bleeding from several cuts from ‘thrown’ spikes of crystal and his ballistic plates had stopped a couple more. He wasn’t thinking about home, or the Rift, or anything but his next shot, his next target, his next step.
As the Talons finally reached a point near the end of the sculpture a pile of crystal suddenly formed itself into a rough ball that advanced in a clumsy lurching roll towards the four Texans as they paused to grab boxes of shells from Jeff’s pack and dump the contents into their pouches.
“What is that thing doing?” Fred asked, thumbing shells into a drum.
“Dunno.” Shad shot it, sending fragments flying. “No head; hit it…” His instructions were interrupted by the sphere dissolving into a soundless explosion that sprayed the four with crystal shrapnel.
Derek staggered back, instinctively reaching to touch his burning left cheek, only to have his fingers touch ripped flesh and exposed teeth as blood ran off his chin and dripped down onto his tactical vest, which was studded with shards of crystal.
Letting go of his shotgun he ripped a medical injector and stabbed it into his neck, following it with a second; immediately the burning pain in his face began to diminish. Spitting clotting blood, he shot an advancing duster in the head region, reducing the creature to inert fragments.
Realizing he was only one of two shotguns firing, h
e glanced behind him and saw Fred sprawled on the floor, both hands clutching his throat as blood flowed steadily from between his fingers, nose, and mouth. Jeff was kneeling by the big man thrusting a injector into Fred’s leg; three expended injectors were discarded on the floor nearby. Shad, blood soaking from around a large chunk of glass in his right thigh, was sitting on the floor covering Jeff and Fred.
Cursing (and thereby realizing that his cheek was once again intact), the Radio Shack manager shoved an injector into Fred’s shoulder before turning back to cover half the Talon’s frontage.
Shad thumbed shells into his shotgun and then pulled the crystal from his leg, cursing and fighting the urge to vomit as the razor edges sliced their way out. Gasping and blinking away tears of agony he took out another duster with four shots, loaded a couple shells, and then jammed an injector into his thigh just above the wound.
“How is Fred?” he yelled over the sound of Derek’s shotgun, reloading as he spoke.
“Not great,” Jeff hit the big man with another injector and then pulled out his Leatherman tool and slotted it into pliers. “This is gonna hurt, buddy.” Gripping the bloody end of the shard in Fred’s throat he worked it free as carefully as he could while Fred screamed through clenched teeth. Shad paused in reloading to hit the big Texan with an injector.
Discarding the pliers, Jeff applied Fred’s cap as a direct-pressure compress to the wound and hit the Talon with two more injectors before he realized that his friend was limp and unresponsive. Checking for a pulse he realized that Fred had passed out, most likely from blood loss or shock. Breathing a sigh of relief that the big man was still alive he applied another injector, which finally stopped the bleeding. Taking a second to hit himself with an injector, he returned working on Fred.
Shad had dropped two dusters, reloaded three shells, hit himself with an injector, and shot another enemy before resuming reloading. “Jeff, step it up. There’s somethings happing at the far end of this thing; I think we’ve got Death Lords inbound.”
“Fred’s out,” Jeff hit his friend with another injector, and then applied one to Shad. Looking up he saw a bloody red smear forming in the air at the far end of the sculpture. “He’s lost a huge amount of blood and won’t be back on his feet today.”