by A. G. Wyatt
“Noah’s right,” she said, and he couldn’t quite read the look she gave him. “We need to do this full on or not at all. They outnumber us five to one, and Apollo’s survival depends upon us.
“Lily, we won’t be able to hold back and protect you. Get to a rooftop now. When we attack, look for anyone who the others are following and take them out. It may not be so blatant as them giving orders – just watch for who takes the lead. Failing that, try to stop the rest of us from getting surrounded or attacked from behind.”
“Yes sir.” Lily saluted and ran off between the buildings.
“Mason, you still up for this?” Burns gestured towards the blond guy’s injured arm.
Mason looked around from watching Lily run off, nodded to Burns.
“Uhuh,” was all he said.
“OK then, you stick with Vostok and Ferguson,” Burns said “Try to find a flank you can fight if they’ve even got such a thing. Back up if you’re getting surrounded, but press in again first chance you get. Understood?”
They all nodded. Mason took a swig from his hip flask, and this time Burns refrained from comment.
“What about me?” Noah asked.
“We’ve got the best job of all,” Burns said, drawing her battered sword. “We’re going straight for the center.”
“Uh, I know I ain’t no sergeant, but that sure doesn’t sound like much of a plan,” Noah said, imagining himself charging head-on into thirty tattooed lunatics with clubs and axes. “Won’t we just get ourselves surrounded and, you know, killed?”
“Not if we do it right. We’re going straight for the leader, or anyone who looks even vaguely like a leader. No hesitation, no defenses, just straight in. They’ve acted like wild animals so far, let’s hope they stick with that. Enough scatter before us we can get straight through, chop off the head.”
“I thought that’s what Lily was for.”
“Hopefully, yes. But are you willing to bet your life on her getting the right savage before she runs out of arrows?”
“Rather that than charge straight to my death!”
“Well tough. It’s kill or be killed now – we save those stores or we settle down for a long, slow death. So, if you’re with us like you say you are then you need to help me take these bastards down. And if not…”
She turned her back on him.
“If not then I’ll do this alone,” she said.
Noah looked down at Bourne. A gun was all very well for company and it was all he’d had for a mighty long time, but a gun didn’t talk back to you, it didn’t save you when you were cornered, it didn’t bless you out when you were being a chicken shit coward instead of a real man. Sure, that last one might have suited some folks fine, but those folks hadn’t been raised as one of the Brennan boys, or seen their brothers die just for doing what looked right.
“Here.” He held the Katana out to her, took the other blade from her hand. “You know what you’re doing with one of these. Me, I’ll just be scaring them off long enough for you to do some real damage.”
“Thanks.” She smiled and took his sword.
“Just no more beatings, OK?” he said.
“Deal.”
She looked around the group, catching each of their gazes in turn.
“We might not all live through this,” she said. “But Apollo will. Civilization will. And that’s bigger than any of us.”
Once they had the Dionites in sight, Burns and Noah waited two minutes for Vostok’s group to find their flank. Noah wouldn’t have called it the longest two minutes of his life, not even with all the howling and banging and screaming as the Dionites tried to batter down the doors to the store with the knowledge that, if they caught sight of him, they’d come running over and maybe tear him to shreds. But he’d had more comfortable times since he came to Apollo, and that was really saying something.
“Ready?” Burns whispered at last.
“Ready,” he replied.
They ran.
Not away from the Dionites this time, though that might have made a hell of a lot more sense, but straight towards them, weapons raised, Burns taking the lead. The nearest Dionite turned to them as they came, but she was too late. The Katana slashed clean through her belly and she fell to the ground in a tangle of guts and twitching limbs.
Shouts and clashing weapons announced that the other Apollonian group had found a flank to attack. Vostok’s Russian battle cry was all the more fearsome for meaning nothing to Noah.
Two more Dionites ran towards them, spears held out in front of them. The thought flashed through Noah’s mind that he had no idea how to reach them without getting skewered. But something else flashed past his head and one fell with an arrow through his eye. The other had just enough time to glance over in alarm before Burns had knocked his spear aside, grabbed the shaft with her spare hand and cut him down with her sword.
“That one,” she said, pointing towards a Dionite woman with red tattoos and a club with old saw blades sticking out of its head.
They ran towards the Dionite, knocking others aside rather than stopping to fight them, Noah hacking and flailing at whoever came in front of him, all the time dreading the blow that might come from behind. All they had now was momentum, and there was no point waiting for that blow. He had to trust Burns, trust Lily, trust the plan, and trust that now he didn’t have other options.
The Dionite swung her club at Burns, who flung herself aside, rolling across the road and to her feet with sword raised. Noah charged in behind, screaming for all he was worth and swinging his sword. The Dionite easily dodged and swung around with her own attack.
The blow knocked his sword aside, jarring his shoulder and numbing his fingers, but he managed to keep his grip. A second blow skimmed his chest, one of the saw blades digging into his shoulder and wrenched out in a spurt of blood and ragged red pain. Noah heard more than felt himself scream.
Other Dionites were closing in. The alpha raised her club to finish off Noah.
Burns leaped. Her Katana swept down through the Dionite’s arms, hacking one off and leaving the other a dangling, ragged mess. As the woman stared wide-eyed at the ruin, Burns swept the blade back up and through her neck.
The Dionite fell in a bloody heap on the ground.
Noah felt something against his back – the killing blow he had feared. Strange how it seemed softer after the saw-blade in the chest. He twisted around to at least see who had killed him, instead found a Dionite sliding to the ground, an arrow in his back, his club brushing rather than crushing Noah as he slid down dead.
He looked up at the other Dionites. They were running, the pack scattering in ones and twos down side streets.
They’d got the alpha.
He clutched at his shoulder, sank in pain to the ground. How many times today had he done this now? When did today even begin and last night end?
Burns was crouched at his side, bandages in her hand.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said. “Probably not as bad as it feels. Messy but shallow.”
She pulled out a knife, cut the sleeve from his jacket and started binding the wound with the expertise of long experience. It hurt like hell as she pulled the ragged skin into place and strapped it down, but at least the bleeding stopped.
“There.” She tied off the bandage. “Get it looked at when you can – don’t want it getting infected.”
Noah stretched out his arm, gently at first and then with growing confidence.
“Don’t even hurt so much,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Come on,” she said. “They’re not all dead. We need to chase them off for good before they find a new leader.”
She held out a hand and helped him to his feet.
“Vostok?” she called out. “Ferguson?”
“Here.” It was Vostok’s voice, deep and eastern, but with all the solemnity a single word could carry. And when they rounded the corner to find him Noah saw why.
Vostok stood over a pair of dead
Dionites, blood spattered all over him. Mason was behind him, leaning against a wall as he took the weight of an injured leg, and Lily stood in the doorway beside him, a length of pipe in her hand, her quiver empty at her side.
Ferguson lay in the street, tangled in with the Dionite bodies, her eyes staring blankly up at them.
“She got cut off,” Vostok said. With one hand he was clutching a medallion that hung around his throat, a small icon of a hammer on a chain. The blood on his fingers sank into the runes engraved on it, making them stand out darkly. “I try to get through, but…”
Burns knelt down and closed Ferguson’s eyes, moved her hand in a circle over the dead soldier’s face. The others made the same gesture over their own chests.
“Gods guide her,” Burns said.
Noah had never believed in multiple gods, wasn’t sure he’d ever really believed in the single one. But as he looked down in sorrow at Ferguson’s body he found himself hoping that there was something more, and that whatever it was acted kindly towards the woman who’d so briefly been his comrade in arms.
They’d been together an hour, and already he felt closer to these people than he had to anyone since Jeb and Pete. Was that another baboon-crazy-world moment, or was it just how being human worked when you had to face the worst of what life had to offer?
“We need to move.” Burns rose. “Keep running them down so they can’t regroup. Any of you who can run, you’re with me. Anyone else head back to the town square. This isn’t over yet.”
Even Mason tried to come, though they soon left him behind, his injured leg slowing his run to most folks’ walking speed. Noah struggled to keep up, burdened as he was by injury and exhaustion. But even with Burns and Lily racing hell for leather after the sound of the retreating Dionites, and with Vostok’s long strides keeping the Russian not far behind, Noah still managed to keep them in sight.
The Dionites were running towards the edge of town, where tendrils of gray smoke were creeping up into the blue sky only to be snatched away by a rising wind. It didn’t take much local knowledge to work out where they were headed – toward the gap in the wall through which they’d originally broken in, where Poulson and his soldiers had been sent to fight off any further assaults.
They reached a road running straight out towards the walls, half of the gap visible at its far end, the remnants of the pack they’d beaten milling around uncertainly in the stretch of street between them and the fighting.
Burns and the rest paused, catching their breath before they re-entered the fray. As Noah caught up, he could see two figures fighting across a heap of rubble just inside the wall. At this distance he could just make out that the Apollonian soldier might be Poulson, and he was fighting a massive Dionite with his head painted white who carried a pair of machetes.
The Dionite swung one of his blades around towards Poulson’s left, then brought the other in from the other side as he parried. Noah’s breath caught in his throat, certain as he was that the guardsman was a dead man.
But Poulson was better than that – better than the Dionite, better than other swordsmen, maybe better even than death. His blade whipped lightning fast, not blocking the second blow but striking the Dionite’s arm, severing the muscles of his forearm so that the machete fell from his grip. Even as he took a step back, Poulson took two forwards and ran him through.
The Dionites around him turned and fled, heading down the road toward Noah and his comrades. He didn’t like the idea of being over-run, even if it was by a retreat, and so he did the only thing he could think of. He threw back his head and yelled for all he was worth.
The rest of the squad joined in, shouting and screaming, Vostok banging his club against his shield. The Dionites came to a halt in the face of this aggression, mingled with the ones they’d been pursuing, looking around uncertainly as Poulson and his men started closing from the other direction.
Then something changed. Near the middle of this new, enlarged pack a voice rose up, shouting ideas, directing the Dionites into two groups. They didn’t exactly form ranks, but Noah had seen nothing that looked like ranks from them through the whole night’s fighting. What they did form was two large, distinct packs, each one advancing on one of the bands of soldiers, each with weapons raised and heads with them, bearing down with renewed aggression and focus.
Between them, standing on the back of an abandoned cart, was the newly emerged pack leader, a short, bald guy with a shaved head and piercings all across his face. Noah turned to Lily to point him out, then remembered that she was all out of arrows. And if Poulson’s group had any ammo left, then they weren’t using it, instead raising swords and spears to face the renewed onslaught.
“So much for getting them before they regrouped, huh?” Noah said.
“Different fight, same plan,” Burns said. “Let's do this.”
Weapons raised, the four of them advanced.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LAST GASP
ONLY MOMENTS BEFORE the Dionites had been nothing more than a milling herd, dozens of men and women standing almost aimless in the street, without drive or direction. The effect of the new leader was electric, turning them with purpose and ferocity upon the Apollonians.
For all Burns’ talk of the plan, there were no tactics this time, no maneuvers, no tricks. Just aggression and the blood pumping in their veins.
When Noah had been a kid he’d fought with quiet determination. A lot of what he’d faced had been older kids, sometimes his brothers, sometimes bullies Jeb and Pete would chase off if they turned up. That kind of fight, you did well to keep quiet, so the other guy didn’t know he could make you care. If he knew that you cared, then that was halfway to winning for most bullies, and for older brothers as far as Noah could tell.
This was different.
Noah had to care. Had to care enough to keep fighting through pain and exhaustion and lost blood, through desperate odds and the fear that any moment might be his last. Had to care enough to kill folks he’d never met in his life, folks Iver might have called friends.
And so, he screamed as he attacked. Not a high-pitched, painful, fearful scream. A deep, bellowing battle cry that touched some ancient animal part buried within his soul, that brought out his reserves of strength, turned them into raw aggression.
He screamed and he charged.
Of course the plan, if it could still be called a plan, fell apart the minute they hit the Dionites. If anyone was surprised, then it wasn’t Noah. Last time they’d had the jump on them, they’d had Lily providing covering fire instead of swinging a pipe, and though they’d been outnumbered they hadn’t been this outnumbered.
A pair of Dionites ran in front of him. He swung his sword, made one of them jump back and tried to charge on through the gap.
But the other Dionite dived straight at him, leaving no gap at all. They both missed with their weapons but had too much momentum to stop. They collided, bodies crashing into each other, and went sprawling onto the ground.
Noah found himself on his back, pinned down beneath a growling Dionite, kicked by a dozen different feet as the combat shifted around them. The Dionite had one hand around Noah’s throat and was punching him with the other, raining blows down against his face and shoulders. Noah gave a much less warlike scream as one of the punches hit his injured shoulder, sent pain shivering down his nerves and blood oozing from the bandage. His whole left arm felt numb and heavy, leaving him barely able to lift it.
He reached up with his right hand, trying to gouge the Dionite’s eyes. But the man jerked his head back and Noah just managed to scratch him along the cheek. The punching stopped as the guy grabbed Noah’s wrist, but the pressure on his throat only worsened, squeezing tighter and tighter until he was gasping for air and spots danced across his vision. He felt himself sliding toward unconsciousness, and a small, treacherous part of his mind welcomed any kind of rest.
Without a free hand, he used what he had left. He jerked his leg up, smashing it i
nto the Dionite’s back. The grip loosened for a moment and Noah twisted his hand free, managed to swing a punch. As the Dionite wavered, Noah brought his knee up again and jerked his whole body, throwing the guy off of him.
Noah grabbed his sword and swept it around across the ground, cutting the Dionite’s hand as he was pushing himself up. He went sprawling face first and Noah slammed an elbow into the back of his head. There was a crunch as the Dionite’s nose and teeth hit the pavement. Noah hit him again, then swung the sword down to finish him off.
The fighting had passed over them while they grappled on the ground, the Dionites pushing Noah’s new Apollonian friends back up the street. His instinct was to rush back and help them, but how much good could that do? They’d all still be outnumbered.
He was so used to turning his back on fights out of self-preservation, this was the first time he had felt anything like heroic.
There were a couple of Dionites between him and the new alpha. He picked up Deadweight – any weapon needed a name, and he didn’t have time to give it proper thought – and ran towards them.
The first one had her back to Noah, watching something down a side street. In the hands of a proper swordsman, Deadweight might have sliced off her head or run her clean through. Wielded by Noah, the sword smacked her in the arm at an awkward angle. There was a crunch of breaking bone and a spray of blood, but the Dionite didn’t go down like he’d hoped.
No time to check if she’d given up the fight. Noah charged on up the street, once again letting out a war cry. The next Dionite looked at him with alarm, then resolve, then a bow raised and pointing straight at Noah’s chest.
Noah couldn’t dodge an arrow, so he did the next best thing. He flung Deadweight at the Dionite before he had time to draw back the string. Deadweight wasn’t made to be thrown, and it was a lousy throw anyway, Noah losing his grip on a handle slippery with blood. But it was enough to make the Dionite dodge, pointing the bow away from Noah, and that allowed two vital seconds to close in. He shoulder barged the guy, sending him flying, and his head hit the ground with a sickening thwack.