Rune Warrior

by Frank Morin

  “I love this new rune!”

  Cheered on by the little crowd, she chased the men, who had pulled a little head of her. She made up a fraction of a second by running right up a fifteen-foot wooden wall and scrambling up a long, unstable cargo net with the alacrity of a spider. But she lost ground traversing a long wall filled with inconsistently-spaced holes using movable handholds. It was like traversing a climbing wall by snapping the tiny handholds into position.

  Tomas tore through that part with practiced efficiency, with Alter fumbling a bit. Sarah almost fell, but finally completed it, laughing as she tossed the handle plugs aside.

  As Quentin called, “One minute, thirty!” she raced into the final obstacle, a fighting skills test. She moved through it faster than she ever had, using knives, pistols, and a series of long guns to take down dozens of fast-moving and fast-disappearing targets that tested accuracy, speed and reflexes. Her skill with guns had improved exponentially under Quentin’s tutelage, but she halved her best time, and hit almost twice as many targets as she usually managed.

  Sarah crossed the finish line at one minute, fifty-five seconds, covered in sweat, but barely winded. She laughed as she joined the crowd, accepting hugs from Eirene and her daughters, and high-fives from all the men.

  “That was awesome!” Tomas cried, sweeping her off her feet in a twirling hug.

  “Did you see me throw the weights?” Sarah exulted.

  “Even I could barely move that last one until my fourth enhancement,” Tomas laughed.

  “She’s powered by pieces of a master rune,” Gregorios said. “What do you expect?”

  Quentin took her hand in his. “My dear, with a little practice, you could easily break the one minute, thirty mark. And your accuracy in the shooting tests rivaled even Tomas.” He kissed the back of her hand. “I am deeply impressed.”

  She hugged him, filled to bursting with joy. With the new enhancement, she felt a trickle of hope. She wasn’t as strong as a Cui Dashi, but she was far stronger than she’d ever been. She still feared Paul, but at least now maybe she had a chance to defend herself.

  As they discussed the improvements to her time and analyzed the effects of her new rune, Tomas stayed close beside her, his arm around her waist. She leaned against him, loving the feel of his proximity. Some men might have felt threatened by a strong woman, but Tomas appeared more attracted to her than ever.

  “I will schedule a time to run you through the full series of physical tests we use to quantify new enhancements for enforcers,” Quentin said. “There may be other aspects of your rune as yet not manifested. We must ferret them out.”

  “Maybe someone else should test it too,” Francesca said. “A rune that powerful could be a great asset.” She glanced at Alter. “What do you say you and I head back to my room and make some rune magic?”

  Alter looked terrified that she might be serious, and his cheeks burned.

  “Keep your pants on,” Gregorios said to his daughter. “I’m not sure we want to bond this rune to anyone else yet. Not until we know the full effects.”

  “I concur,” Eirene said. “This rune is layered enough that I expect we haven’t grasped its full potential yet.”

  She turned to Sarah. “Excellent timing, my dear. This new enhancement offers a significant advantage as we hunt for Paul.”

  Sarah’s smile faded, but she faced Eirene with resolute determination. “What’s the plan? Do you think we can kill him in the memoryscape?”

  “Perhaps,” Gregorios said. “We’ll give it our best shot. But that’s not point of the trap we mean to spring.”

  “What else would we want to do in there?” Sarah asked, surprised.

  “We’re going to kill John.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  When Allah decides a matter, it is done.

  I have dedicated my life to the way of Allah, Most High.

  He has poured upon my soul, ciphers without measure.

  Man intends one thing, but Allah intends another.

  The earth destroys its fools, but the intelligent destroy the earth.

  If you are truthful you will survive. If you lie you shall perish.

  I am the noble warrior, I am the Sword of Allah,

  I am the rune warrior, I am Khalid ibn Al Waleed.

  ~Khalid ibn Al Waleed, letter to Persian governor of Mesopotamia, 633 A.D.

  The memoryscape formed around Sarah with a tumult of sound that assaulted her ears before she even registered her surroundings. The sharp clashing of steel on steel rolled like constant thunder, echoes building upon echoes until the din shook her. It was punctuated by distant screaming of dying men.

  Sarah crouched in a defensive stance and squinted through the midnight darkness, broken by torches and bonfires, but obscured by clouds of hazy smoke that cast everything in a nightmarish feel.

  “Finally, something’s going right.”

  Sarah hadn’t seen Gregorios until he spoke close beside her, a pace to her left. He was dressed in leather breeches and a mail shirt under a black leather jacket. With his fierce expression, he looked particularly deadly.

  She gestured at their surroundings. “This looks right?”

  He nodded. “It’s the memory we were shooting for. We needed to get in first, and it looks like we have.”

  Tomas appeared on Sarah’s right side, wearing Roman armor on his torso, but leather breeches similar to Gregorios’ instead of the period costume. “The assault’s begun.” He didn’t seem bothered by the chaotic scene.

  Bastien appeared beside Tomas, kitted out in full Roman legion armor, including the leather kilt. He wore it with the ease of someone familiar with the costume. He made it look pretty good too. Sarah needed to get one of those kilts for Tomas when they got home.

  They’d arrived during the end of the Third Mithridatic War between Rome and King Mithridates the Sixth of Pontus, in the year 65 B.C. The king had really been Baladeva in one of his many lives. Spartacus had been his general for the war, which had started well for Mithridates, but turned sour as it dragged on.

  The particular memory Gregorios had selected seemed ideal. Baladeva as king had been fleeing with his army from Pompey’s Roman legions, but Pompey had slipped around them and set an ambush in the hills around a small valley on the southern bank of the River Lycus. Baladeva’s army had camped in that very valley the next night, unaware of the Roman army holding the high ground all around.

  The night-time surprise assault had started with a deadly missile barrage. With Baladeva’s army unprepared, the arrows, steel slinger shot, and pilum shafts had wreaked terrible damage. If she squinted, Sarah could see a forest of shafts sprouting all across the narrow valley floor. The legions had already begun their charge, surrounding Baladeva’s army and advancing before they could get properly set. Some legionnaires fell, but for the most part, the battle was becoming a slaughter.

  “You have far too many unpleasant memories,” Sarah said, looking away from the fighting and scanning the area nearby. The legion camp spread behind them, with camp followers scurrying to prepare to treat returning wounded.

  “This one was better than some,” Gregorios said. “John and I worked well as a team.”

  She’d been surprised to learn Gregorios and John had accompanied Pompey, embedded in his legion to deal with Spartacus, Baladeva, and their heka threat. She reminded herself that he’d known John for over two thousand years, mostly as a friend, before John’s mental dissipation had broken his mind.

  The ideal memory drew not only Gregorios and John into a strong joint memory, but also included Spartacus. Gregorios hoped the familiarity of the memory would lull John into a false sense of security before they launched their assault.

  “How did Baladeva and Spartacus escape that night?” Sarah asked. From what Gregorios had said, they’d defeated the other heka fighters and gotten one of their best chances against the Thracian and his facetaker master.

  “By sacrificing a lot of good men to keep us
busy,” he growled. “Spartacus didn’t like to retreat, but this night, I wounded him. Would’ve killed him if his enhanced bodyguards hadn’t arrived to die instead. Baladeva was always willing to sacrifice any other soul for himself.”

  Tomas jogged to the right and gestured at a flat, open area near the crest of the hill. “This is a good spot for the onager.”

  “Looks good to me,” Gregorios said, snapping his fingers.

  A huge catapult made of massive wooden beams reinforced with steel appeared on the spot, already cranked back, with a huge boulder in the cup.

  “Since when do you snap your fingers when you summon things?” Sarah asked as she approached the gigantic weapon.

  Gregorios grinned. “When the moment calls for it.”

  “How do you know the difference?”

  “It’s all a matter of style.”

  The two men turned toward the fighting and headed for the path down the hill, but Sarah called, “Wait, don’t we need to aim it or something?”

  “It’s already pointing in the right direction,” Gregorios said. “And I can adjust its trajectory on the way in.”

  Sarah gave the hulking siege weapon a doubtful look. “Why don’t we just use a high-explosive mortar round?”

  “Tempting,” Tomas said. “But we don’t want to spook John when he arrives.” He tilted up his palm to show a tiny trigger device. “I did include a remote, but besides that, it’s authentic.”

  “If Paul and his gang do show up today,” Gregorios added. “Anything modern will pull at John’s mind and betray our intentions. An onager doesn’t exactly fit this type of military engagement, but it’s not too far off either.” He pointed toward a pair of smaller ballistae that looked like giant crossbow bolts. Sarah shuddered to think what kind of damage those heavy bolts could do.

  “Such a little break in the integrity of the memoryscape, set so far from the center of things, and with so much going on, shouldn’t draw any attention,” Gregorios added.

  Sarah followed Gregorios, Tomas and Bastien down the hill with growing reluctance. She’d seen enough memory battles to never need to see another one. She didn’t like the idea of wading through those clashing men, watching them die around her. Plus, every step she took committed her that much more to their three-pronged plan. It had sounded great in the safety of Suntara’s vault, but now that she was approaching screaming, hacking hordes of ancient soldiers, with high likelihood of Paul showing up soon, she started thinking of all kinds of things they hadn’t planned out well enough.

  The core of the plan was simple enough. Gregorios would engage Spartacus to test his mental state and see what information he could pull from his ancient enemy. Sarah would draw Paul away and keep him busy, and Tomas would try to kill John.

  Bastien would support Sarah and, if the trap turned against them, he could pull her out of the memoryscape. The two of them were on one machine, with Gregorios and Tomas on the other. Eirene and her daughters, assisted by Alter, were running the machines. To power both of them together, they’d had to do some creative rune linking through Alter, but it appeared to be stable.

  When they reached the fighting, Gregorios simply leaped fifty feet, vaulting most of the soldiers. As the others followed suit, he waved away any fighters with a wave of his hand. He probably didn’t need to gesture at all, since he controlled the memoryscape, but Sarah suspected he was tapping his sense of style again.

  As they slipped through the camp, weaving past burning debris, discarded bedrolls, and too many dead and wounded soldiers, the stench of smoke was overwhelmed by the stink of blood and vomit and opened bodies.

  “Can’t you do something about the smell?” Sarah complained, holding one hand over her nose. She summoned a cloth mask dipped in vinegar to help. She’d been tempted to wear mail or even steel plate armor, but none of that would do much good against Paul, so she’d dressed herself in black leather, with several knives sheathed at her belt and thighs.

  “I don’t want to tamper too much.” Gregorios gave an apologetic shrug. “You get used to it.”

  “But I don’t want to get used to it,” Sarah said. It would be too easy to become numb to death and blood and killing, and that worried her. She was willing to fight to defend herself and those she loved, but she hated having to do it. The men dying all around them might only be shadows of memory, but their deaths still bothered her.

  Tomas shifted closer and lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. “The smell makes it real, reminds us this isn’t a video game, and that what we do matters.”

  She managed a weak smile, but the comforting words didn’t help her nose.

  “This battle won’t last all that long anyway,” Tomas added, nodding to where one cohort of Baladeva’s soldiers threw down their arms and dropped to their knees with arms held overhead, crying for mercy. The legionnaires set to binding them with practiced efficiency.

  “What will happen to them?” Sarah asked.

  “They won’t die today,” Tomas said, his expression grim. “But they may wish they had. They’ll be enslaved, and some will end up in the arenas as gladiators.”

  “Stop dawdling,” Gregorios called back to them. “We don’t have a lot of time to prepare. If John’s going to join us in this memory, it’ll have to be soon.”

  As they neared the large command tent at the center of the valley, Sarah caught sight of Spartacus. He stood with Baladeva, the two of them surrounded by half a dozen enhanced fighters, whose tattoos she easily picked out, despite the distance. Baladeva, in his persona as King Mithridates, was shouting commands and trying to rally his troops.

  “That’s exactly how he looked and acted that night,” Gregorios said. “I can’t feel any other will fighting for control, but that confirms they’re not here yet.”

  One group of Roman soldiers broke through the left flank and charged the center of camp, attacking Baladeva’s small group. Spartacus and the enhanced heka swarmed over the simple mortals, and Gregorios shook his head in disgust. “I warned them not to close on Spartacus, but too many of the fools wouldn’t listen.”

  Under cover of the fighting, Gregorios shifted left to get into position on the other side of the command tent. Tomas hesitated long enough to share a fierce kiss with Sarah before trotting after.

  “Good luck,” she called after him.

  He turned and waved, his expression serious. “Be careful, Sarah.”

  She and Bastien moved to the right, pausing about fifty yards from the command tent. The area was cluttered with discarded gear and cook fires. She caught regular glimpses of Spartacus and Baladeva through the shifting smoke and flickering light of moving torches. They were close enough to watch, but far enough away that she wouldn’t easily be noticed.

  Bastien paused in an open space about thirty feet across. After a moment of silent concentration, he grinned. “The trap is set.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Sarah admitted. The ground looked undisturbed.

  “That is the plan, no?” Bastien asked. “Take heart, cheri. There is enough high explosives now under the ground there to blow up a large building. It is a shaped charge, very deadly.”

  “Good,” Sarah said, allowing a thread of hope to take root in her heart.

  Then something wrapped around her legs and yanked her off her feet.

  Sarah struck the ground hard, her breath blasting out from the impact as she scraped along the ground at a surprising rate. She managed to roll over, then shrieked at the monstrous sight that had appeared amid the chaos of the battle.

  Under a massive, snail-like shell that had to be at least ten feet in diameter, a gigantic maw gaped open, filled with sharp teeth dripping saliva. Several long, hairy, slimy tentacles extended from that maw, slithering across the ground like fast-moving snakes. One of those tentacles had wrapped around Sarah’s legs.

  A screaming soldier, snared by another of those disgusting tentacles, was yanked into the huge maw. It snapped shut with a horrific squishing crunch, sp
raying blood and gore, and severing the man’s torso in half. A second snapping bite sucked in the other half.

  As Sarah skittered across the ground, drawn toward the monster with terrifying speed, she suppressed a scream and summoned her M4A1 rifle and grenade launcher. Before she could take aim, a grenade bounced into its wide open mouth. It snapped its jaws shut reflexively. Two seconds later, when Sarah was barely a dozen feet away, the monster’s head exploded, splattering her with slime and goo, and nearly skewering her with one of the beast’s long fangs.

  Sarah shuddered with horror as the rest of the monster disintegrated to dust. Bastien helped her rise. “Are you all right, cheri?”

  “What was that thing?” Sarah cried, her voice squeaking with fear. When they tampered with things, she expected some kind of monster to appear, but usually she handled them pretty well. How could she not have been rattled by that thing though?

  “It is known as the Carcolh,” Bastien said. “A legend in France.”

  After a final shiver, Sarah marched back toward where they’d set their trap. “I wish there were more cute and cuddly monsters of legend,” she muttered.

  “Indeed, cheri,” Bastien said. “But then how could I have saved a lovely damsel in distress?”

  She grinned and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.” She decided not to point out that she’d been about to blast it with her carbine. Hopefully they’d defeat Paul just as easily.

  When they reached the concealed explosives, Sarah glanced back at the dust that was all that remained of the creature. It was already blowing across the battlefield. “That thing was disgusting and freaky, but I would’ve thought setting so much explosives would have made a bigger monster.”