Rune Warrior

by Frank Morin

  “How do you like being at someone else’s mercy?”

  He mouthed something, but she couldn’t hear the words. She felt no pity for his broken condition but wanted to hear him admit he feared her. She leaned close as he tried speaking again.

  “Mercy is for fools.”

  A sword appeared in his hand and he tried to stab her.

  Enraged, Sarah ripped the sword out of his hands and plunged it into his stomach, driving it to the hilt.

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Not even the mighty Sutekh of old stood on the cusp of such majesty. His failure broke Egypt and facilitated the flight of Moses and the slaves, but even had he succeeded, he would have accomplished no more than preserving a decaying kingdom. I will stand astride the width of the world and enforce peace. Even mother will respect me then.

  ~Paul

  Gregorios crouched atop the Pasetto di Borgo, the high passageway connecting the Castel with the Vatican that lay almost a half mile to the west. His strike force huddled halfway along the wall, crouching below the top of the Pasetto’s concealing parapet, facing the Castel.

  They had climbed atop the Pasetto on the far side of the Auditorium Conciliazione, and Gregorios felt confident they had remained undetected. They had waited to begin their climb until the carabinieri began a sniper barrage to cover Harriett’s assault on the main gate.

  Distant explosions boomed, the unmistakable sound of high explosive mortar rounds.

  “The commander will not like that,” Bastien said.

  “Harriett’s committed,” Gregorios said. “Yurak forces are beginning their assault.”

  He jogged east along the top of the wall, staying low, even though he was counting on the heka being focused on Harriett’s assault. The team followed close behind and he could feel their nervous excitement. He hadn’t assaulted a castle in centuries, and despite his eagerness to take down Spartacus, he was glad the Pasetto afforded such direct access. He hated scaling heavily defended walls. He’d lost three lives that way.

  “What’s your status?” he asked over the encrypted comm-link.

  “Assault is underway,” Harriett reported. Gunfire and explosions boomed through the connection, punctuating her words. “We’re teasing them with the ladder truck.”

  “Good. Keep them busy until we reach the wall. Thirty seconds. Then begin the real assault.”

  “Very well. Out.”

  She was all business when it came to killing heka. She commanded over a hundred of the family’s elite fighting force, the best of the First Division. More would be arriving soon, with reinforcements available as needed. Every member was a blood descendant of Gregorios and Eirene, enhanced, and extensively trained.

  Harriett hadn’t mentioned to Sarah that other children were positioned strategically throughout most of the world’s elite armies. Those who made up Yurak’s strike force were the best, and claimed they could beat even Alter’s family in a direct competition.

  Today they’d get the chance to prove it.

  Gregorios reached the Castel without encountering resistance. Spartacus was losing his touch. He never would’ve left his flank open in the centuries Gregorios faced him. Either he was confident enough in soon acquiring the forbidden runes that he didn’t care to take regular precautions, or he was trusting unseasoned sub-commanders. Either way, he was about to regret the lapse.

  A light breeze blew from the south side of the Castel and the air smelled of gunpowder and scorched stone. The constant chatter of machine gun fire echoed from the Castel walls along with the regular booming of mortar explosions.

  “We’ve reached the bastion,” Gregorios said into the microphone. “Commencing our assault.”

  “Initiating phase two,” Harriett replied. “Good hunting.”

  She had brought a ladder truck with her convoy and used it to distract the heka defenders. No doubt the heka had concentrated all their efforts in disabling the truck.

  Harriett’s troops had arrived in a convoy of hard-topped troop transports. Phase two included hoisting soldiers up the wall on ten-foot wooden platforms suspended by grapple cables. Motors on either end of the platforms pulled them up the wall at speed.

  With the machine gunners and mortars keeping the heka pinned, Harriett could reach the top of the wall in seconds. Any heka trying to stop her would be neutralized by specialized, high-pressure cannons mounted on modified fire trucks. Instead of spraying water, they shot tar-like glue that would foul weapons, blind heka and, given enough volume, immobilize them.

  The intensity of the battle sounds on the south side of the Castel rose to a fever pitch. Gregorios sprinted up the staircase of the little turret above the Pasetto, connecting it to the seven-sided Bastion of St. Mark on the northwest corner of the Castel. He entered a stout room of thick stone arches that supported the bastion above. The area was closed to tourists by a locked glass door, but Gregorios snapped the lock and led the way up a wide, spiraling staircase.

  The steps were short, and he ran up them three at a time, finally bursting onto the top of the wall. The open expanse of the bastion on his right had been blocked by a low iron rail, but the heka had knocked that down.

  Only two of Spartacus’ men manned that wide-open area, paved with zig-zagging bricks. An ancient catapult, a couple of old cannons, and piles of cannonballs took up much of the expanse, with the heka standing near the outer wall, peering toward the fighting along the front wall.

  Neither of them noticed his arrival for three fatal seconds. They were dressed like legionnaires, but had dropped their ancient weapons in favor of assault rifles.

  Gregorios closed on the nearest, a beefy Italian fellow, who swung his rifle around a fraction of a second too late. Gregorios grabbed his face, embraced his nevra core, and threw every ounce of nevron into severing the man’s link to his nervous system.

  The heka thrashed in Gregorios’s hands, but he held on and dug his fingers into the soul points along the man’s jaw. Purple sparks exploded from his fingers as his nevron fought to overpower the protective strength of the rune web. An automatic weapon began to fire behind him, but he felt no bullets and couldn’t afford to look.

  The web was extremely powerful, but designed to protect the heka from physical harm. The distinction was minor, but in rune spells, specifics mattered. Gregorios was able to slip around the periphery of the web’s insurmountable blockade and drive his nevron into the heka’s soul.

  The man’s cries fell silent and his thrashing ceased as Gregorios severed the link to his muscles. The effort was far more strenuous than taking normal souls, but it completely neutralized the heka, better than tying him up.

  He knelt over the fallen heka, whose hate-filled eyes remained locked on him. He consolidated his hold over the enemy soul and began to pull. The soulmask came free with that awful sucking sound that Gregorios usually hated. In this case, it felt appropriate.

  Gregorios tossed the soulmask to a soldier, who bagged it. Soulmasks were too important to leave lying around for mortals to discover or enchanters to use as fuel cells.

  He then surveyed the battlement. Alter and two of the Tenth had subdued the other heka, who lay bound in chains and steel-mesh zip ties. Bastien sat nearby, dabbing at a bloody gash on his skull.

  “That one, she was very close, yes?” Bastien said with a wry smile.

  “Let’s hope it’s the closest call we have today.”

  Gregorios led the assault team along the rampart toward the Bastion of St. Matthew on the southwest corner of the wall, overlooking the street and the river. Seven heka crouched behind riot shields, firing east along the wall above the main gate, in the direction where Harriett and the family were making their breach. The men didn’t even notice Gregorios’ team charging from the side.

  The heka might be protected, but getting riddled with hundreds of rounds still knocked them sprawling. Gregorios fired a couple of specialty rounds from a shotgun. The high-intensity flare blinded the enemy and left them disoriented
for critical seconds.

  While he worked to remove their soulmasks, his men swarmed over the heka, kicking away their weapons and binding their hands. The rune web protected them from harm, but didn’t grant them greater strength than their personal enhancements already did. It was still brutal hand-to-hand fighting, but they didn’t stand a chance against the veteran Tenth commandos. Alter waded into the fight enthusiastically, and he beat down three of the heka himself.

  Harriett and a squad of Yurak fighters joined them on the bastion. She saluted. “Good timing.”

  “Casualties?” Gregorios asked as he removed another soulmask. Now that he knew the trick to circumventing the rune web, he only needed a fraction of his nevron to accomplish it.

  “Three dead, several more wounded,” Harriett said, looking angry.

  Not bad, considering the situation, but Gregorios shared Harriett’s anger. The wounded would recover from all but the most severe injuries, but they couldn’t help the dead. This was family, so every soul lost added to the tally Spartacus was about to pay.

  “Spartacus!” Alter shouted.

  Gregorios looked up and found his ancient enemy standing atop the wall of the inner castle tower. He no longer felt regret for the need to destroy Spartacus again.

  “Well met, Gregorios!” Spartacus shouted. “I honor your valor. When you’re finished, join me. We have much to discuss.”

  He jumped off the wall into the tower, and out of view.

  “Did that make any sense to you?” Harriett asked.

  “Yes,” Gregorios said, disgusted. “He wants to talk.”

  “Then why fight like this?” Alter asked.

  “To honor our strength,” Gregorios said, kicking a dispossessed body aside. “He thinks he’s showing respect.”

  “That is crazy,” Bastien said.

  “Not to him. He might feel enlightened, but he’s still a gladiator at heart.”

  It made more sense that the wall had been so lightly defended. Spartacus had used only enough men to keep out those too weak to deserve the honor of a face-to-face discussion.

  The fighting on this part of the wall was over. Heka still held out in a low tower that rose above the Bastion of St. John at the opposite end of the front-facing wall, but Yurak teams would overwhelm that position in moments.

  “Finish off that rabble,” Gregorios pointed toward the final knot of fighting. “And stay on alert for the rest of the heka. I’m heading into the tower to see what Spartacus has to say.”

  “You think that’s wise?” Harriett asked.

  “If it keeps him from those forbidden runes, yes. Bastien, on me.”

  “Parachutes,” Alter said, pointing.

  Gregorios looked up and caught sight of the black parachutes descending on the Castel, barely one hundred feet above the roof.

  “They opened late.”

  “We’re trained to do so,” Alter said. “It’s dangerous, but reduces the risk of getting shot out of the sky.”

  “Your brother has terrible timing.”

  “He’s here though, isn’t he?” Alter retorted. Reuben might have branded Alter a demon, but he was still family.

  Reuben’s force of ten para-hunters landed atop the central castle turret, on the Angel Terrace with its bronze statue of the archangel, Michael, sheathing his sword. It had been commissioned after the plague of 590 A.D., which had really been caused by a heka cell.

  Eirene had stopped the plague by killing them and disrupting their rune web. Harald had taken great pleasure in twisting the event into the legend of the archangel sheathing his sword to stop the plague. He’d called her Michael for years.

  “Hurry,” Gregorios said. “Looks like Reuben plans to crash the party.”

  “He’ll want to kill all of us,” Alter said. “Reuben doesn’t party.”

  “I’ll make him dance,” Gregorios promised. “Alter, you come with me.”

  The problem was that the angel terrace gave Reuben direct access to the sixth level of the Castel. The hunters had the advantage.

  Gregorios ran east along the southern rampart and crossed a narrow bridge that connected the wall to the second level of the inner tower. The area was clear. Shotgun at the ready, Gregorios moved up a long, sloping hallway with a high, arched ceiling that led into the tower.

  The high, ramped walkway crossed the Hall of Urns in the very heart of the castle. The floor far below was where the original urn of Hadrian would have rested, but nothing remained. The large, square chamber, lit by two narrow windows set high in the wall, was empty, looking more like a ruin than a burial chamber.

  Gregorios wasn’t surprised. The popes never would have left the runes in such an accessible place. He suspected they’d find them in the Papal apartments at the very top of the tower.

  That’s where he would find both Spartacus and Reuben.

  Either those two had a lot of explaining to do, or a couple of scores were about to be settled.

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  There is nothing quite as satisfying as defeating a powerful foe. It matters not that I slew him in his sleep instead of on the field of battle, it is his soulmask that lies shattered while I will toast his memory for lives without end. Even Gregorios must salute me now.

  ~John, facetaker council member, after assassinating Baladeva

  The tunnel that continued up from the Hall of Urns turned a couple of times, and eventually emptied into the Angel Courtyard where the original statue of Michael had been moved after being damaged in 1747.

  The narrow courtyard was flanked by museums that had once been used by the castle’s garrison. Gregorios motioned two squads to secure that level and to watch a secondary stair that rose toward the main promenade that circled the tower. He decided to take the main stairs on the far side of the courtyard up to that same promenade, but facing the river.

  The promenade was built along the inside of the central turret wall, with regular, arched openings overlooking the castle and surrounding area. To his right stretched a section that had been converted into a cafe for tourists, so he turned left and followed it around to the main entrance to the upper rooms.

  He sent additional squads along the rest of the promenade to search the other galleys, and to secure the back exits from the upper rooms. They moved with careful precision, wary of heka ambushes. Followed by Bastian, Alter, and thirty members of the Tenth, he mounted the stairs to the Sala Paolina, the long hall where Pope Paul the Third had received delegations during his thirteen year residence in the Castel.

  The room was empty, but Gregorios paused to stare at the fresco-covered ceiling. There was so much detail to dazzle the eye that he wondered if the runes had been concealed as part of one of the paintings. He doubted they would have taken the risk, even though chances were slim anyone would find them. He hoped they found the runes elsewhere before they committed to studying all that artwork.

  Alter stayed close behind him as he crossed the long hall, although his eagerness to find Spartacus was overshadowed by nervousness. He was probably not looking forward to seeing the hunters. Having his closest loved ones swear to purge his abomination must have weighed heavily on the kid. Gregorios wasn’t sure how they were going to help smooth that one over.

  Gunfire erupted from the tower above. The hunters had found someone who wasn’t happy to see them.

  They were running out of time. Gregorios checked the papal apartments off the main hall and found antiques smashed and artifacts strewn about. Spartacus’ men had already searched the rooms.

  He had hoped to find clues in there, but decided not to spend the time second-guessing the heka’s work. If they’d found the runes, Spartacus wouldn’t still be hiding. He wouldn’t need to fear Gregorios any longer, and it wasn’t his way to use trickery when he could march out of the Castel with super enhancements for glorious combat.

  Gregorios sent Bastien and half the team back out to the main promenade to sweep the sections of the Castel barred from tourist access. Spartacus
’ voice echoed into the hall from the long Pompeian Corridor nearby, just before he stepped into it.

  “Gregorios, my once and great enemy, don’t dawdle. We have much to discuss.”

  “Stay on my six,” he ordered Alter and the rest of the men, then spoke into the tactical microphone. “Bastien, preparing to make contact. Keep a close watch on the western stairs.”

  “Oui,” Bastien replied. “I have a visual on the hunters. They may try to derail your negotiations.”

  “See if you can slow them down,” Gregorios ordered. “But try not to kill any of them yet.” Restoring damaged relations with Melek was going to be hard enough without more blood debt between them.

  Gregorios followed Spartacus’ voice down the Pompeian corridor toward the library. The narrow, arched passage, with its frescoed walls protected by plexiglass against careless tourists would have made an excellent location for an ambush, but Gregorios held to his belief that the Thracian indeed wanted to talk.

  No rain of bullets greeted him, and he breathed a little easier when he reached the northern end of the hall and glimpsed the large library room up a short flight of steps. It was devoid of books, just a huge open room with an ornate, vaulted ceiling and tiled floor. A large fireplace consumed the center of the opposite wall, and several other exits led to other rooms, but Gregorios’ gaze was drawn to Spartacus.

  Spartacus sat in an antique wooden chair behind an ornate, polished desk upon which sat several artifacts from the middle ages, including a fine pair of flintlock dueling pistols. It still bothered Gregorios to see his ancient enemy’s face smiling out of Tomas’ suit.

  When Spartacus caught sight of Gregorios, he waved. “Come, there is nothing to fear.”

  The room appeared empty, so Gregorios approached. Alter and the team spread out, flanking him and covering the other exits.

  “If you wanted to talk so bad, we could’ve just met for lunch,” Gregorios said.

  “I would never insult you with such a weak offer,” Spartacus said, throwing his arms wide, as if to encompass the Castel. “In this moment, we meet amid the honor of honest contest. Only in such can we face each other with respect and deny those too weak to reach this table.”