by RW Krpoun
“Its Iraq all over again: locals shooting each other for reasons that go back generations,” Shad nodded. “All we have to do is focus on our mission, and smoke anyone who gets between us and going home.”
“You wouldn’t think we would reference Iraq so much in this sort of situation,” Jeff observed.
“Lotta similarities,” Shad sheathed his sword. “Everybody hates us, they’re primitive as hell, and coming here was not the best idea we ever had.”
“And parts of the trip are really cool,” Derek grinned.
“There it is.”
“I’m going to get some sleep,” Fred announced.
“Might as well,” Jeff conceded.
Fu Hao woke them well after dark; Fred estimated that it was near midnight. Moving by the light of a single candle the Talons prepared.
“What do we do with the gear we’re leaving behind?” Jeff asked.
“Stack it by the well,” Shad shrugged. “Not our problem anymore.”
“Glad I was working on my anti-Undead venoms during the down-time,” the shop teacher observed as he leaned his pack against the stone coping.
“How can venom affect Undead? They have no circulatory system,” Shad wondered as he sorted through his throwing knives.
“The substance interferes with the Dark Art that binds them,” Derek noted, stacking his pack next to Jeff’s. “Man, I hate to abandon gear.”
“It does not feel like victory,” Shad agreed somberly. “But win or lose we’re on a one-way trip.”
“Anyone taking a canteen?” Fred asked.
“I am,” the Jinxman patted it.
“I wonder how those folks at Wrym are doing?” Derek mused.
“Where did that come from?” Jeff asked, surprised.
“Because they’ll remember us for the rest of their lives. Years from now the story of how we rescued those girls will be told amongst ‘em. And Margit-she’ll tell her kids how we rescued her from the trappers, found her a home, and gave her a dowry.”
“That archivist at the Fist won’t forget us very soon,” Shad nodded.
“You guys putting a resume together?” Jeff shook his head.
“We accomplished stuff here-we affected lives,” Derek explained. “Its…nice.”
“Comforting,” Shad agreed. “It wasn’t just hookers and beer.”
“There’s comfort in hookers and beer, too,” Jeff grinned. “But I get your point.”
“The wights do not travel far, nor do they patrol,” Astkar advised as the small group assembled in the dim glow of their dying fire in its deep pit. “We can move fairly close, prepare, and advance to battle unmolested.”
“Do we have any idea how many of the Twelve will be present?” Jeff asked.
“No more than two, although if we dally too long more may be able to reach the site. Our tactics will be simple in the extreme: a frontal assault designed to insert our small group into the interface between the roads and the device. The enemy will be expecting us to assault the device itself so we will have some slight tactical advantage.”
“A slight tactical advantage is always what we feel comfortable with,” Shad sighed.
“In this case I believe it may well be enough.”
“Lets hope you are right.”
The sky was clear and the half moon was sufficient to show them the trail that cut across the hills. Moving at night was no novelty to the Black Talons, who had already tied down any loose gear and darkened their faces with soot. Moving through the balmy night air, the only sound the soft noise of their boots on the dirt Shad was taken back to night training exercises at Fort Hood-the air wasn’t dry enough to remind him of Iraq. Those seemed such innocent times, slipping through the dark with blanks and MILES gear, playing at war. Later, playing paintball at night, even more of a game than the training exercises.
He still couldn’t quite believe that they were moving through the night armed with swords and axes in order to do battle with spell-casters and Undead, with much in the balance.
He wasn’t sure if the Council’s dark attacker could really work; even with magic the idea of rustics who had never even seen a computer or a piece of electronics coming up with a way to infect such systems seemed pretty unlikely, but the fact was that regardless of the dark attacker’s success or failure the Council would still have the roads, and as long as they did they would attempt to harm Earth. Ending this now was the best chance any of them had.
After three hours Fu Hao signaled for them to stop. “Here we prepare.” She gestured towards a nearby hilltop. “They are there.” The hilltop was nothing but blackness, but Shad realized that wights would not need lights.
Working carefully in the thin light the Jinxman marked runes on each of the Black Talons, using up all his ink, and distributed all his armor charms. “No point in holding back,” he observed as he finally finished. Fu Hao and Astkar had declined runes or charms, and were making preparations of their own. The Talons observed that the warlord’s powers were bound in the expendable plates of etched tortoise shell she wore, much as were Shad’s charms, while the mage appeared to be casting wards upon himself and his mistress.
“So,” Fu Hao stepping up to Fred and held a plate to his face, breathed a word, and then moved to the next Talon. When Shad’s turn came he discovered that the effect was to let him see much more clearly, albeit with a blue tint to the shadows. Other than the color it reminded him of wearing night vison gear.
When the little warlord was finished adjusting the Talons’ vision she moved back down the line, grabbing each’s left wrist for a moment. Derek eased back his bracer and saw a black circle the size of a penny on the inside of his wrist. “What does this do?”
“When you are home, it will form into a symbol, telling you if the roads were closed or not,” Fu Hao whispered. She moved back down the line, applying a second plate to each “This will bolster your skills against the wights. Now I will summon our allies, so stay your blades when I call them forth. This will alert the foe, so be prepared. The device is at the top of the hill, built within an old ruined fort; our attack is aimed at the mid-point of the north slope, and so we will charge up the west slope as if attacking the ruins. When the time is right I will lead you to our goal while the main body continues the attack on the device to hold the Council’s attention.”
“Shit. I wish we had gone with Sam,” Derek muttered as the warlord made her final preparations.
“Really?” Shad was surprised.
“No. But I hate this sort of waiting.”
“Reminds me of waiting to load on the birds for an air insert.”
“Yeah. The last bit before the show starts is the worst.”
Satisfied with whatever she had been drawing on the ground, Fu Hao drew her swords and began to dance, leaping lithely from spot to spot in the pattern she had drawn in the dirt, her swords spinning and flipping through the air as she twirled and tossed them. It might have been the effect of his dark vision enchantment, but it seemed to Shad that the little warlord was dancing with the swords, that she and they were partners rather than dancer and accouterments. She moved faster and jumped higher, and then Shad jumped himself as a line of figures passed in front of him, moving into formation to his left.
They were a little hard to see precisely, even with his dark vision, but Shad could make out that they were hard-faced Asian men armed with spears and big two-handed thick-bladed battle axes who moved like soldiers. They came by in twos and threes and then a steady stream, trudging past with the tread of men who are well used to walking long distances. As the flow of warriors continued the Jinxman saw burly men in skirt-like garments carrying kopesh, the strange hooked swords of the ancient Egyptians; in time they were replaced by taller men wearing what looked like sweat pants or nothing at all, armed with simple unrimmed wooden shields and spears or short-hafted single-bladed axes, the backs of their heads and their chins shaved.
“Franks,” Fred breathed. “The ancient French.”
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“Great, they’ll just surrender,” Jeff grinned with a visible effort.
The Franks were replaced with bigger men with wild hair or hair bound up in what looked like baked clay, with somewhat bigger axes and a few heavy single-edged swords. “Germans,” Derek murmured. “From about the time they met the Romans.”
“And about the time the magic met its end,” Shad whispered. “The straight lines of the Romans really dropped the hammer on the old ways.”
“Good for the Romans,” Derek muttered. “On our side or not, that’s the roughest crew I’ve ever seen. I never missed my M-4 so much as I do right now.”
“No joke.”
The Germans gave way to lines of Celts boldly tattooed in swirls of blue, scarred and seasoned men who had seen their share of fighting. A few glanced at the Black Talons, their faces hard and their gaze inscrutable. There were men who had already faced, and met, death once and were now volunteering to face it, and perhaps meet it, again.
“Boys, those are a hard crew and no mistake,” Fred whispered.
“The real deal,” Shad agreed hoarsely. “These are the ones who saw the thing through to the bitter end.”
The Celts gave way to small groups as the stream of men died away to a trickle and ended completely: a few groups of African warriors with large shields and short thrusting spears, swarthy men with javelins, slings, and small bucklers, and a handful of individuals whose period was beyond the knowledge of any of the Talons.
“No Greek hoplites,” Derek observed. “We could have used some.”
“I don’t know if they really had a legend of magic, just a soap opera of gods,” Jeff said thoughtfully.
“Seriously, their pantheon was the first reality TV show,” Shad grinned. “Besides, this is a volunteer operation. The Greeks are candy-asses.”
“One word: Alexander,” Derek said.
“Who said he fought anybody who had their act together? It was the freakin’ Bronze Age.”
“Hard to see how an army of pansies could really have accomplished much against real opposition,” Jeff agreed.
“Well that’s all of what we have to fight alongside,” Fred observed. “I make it between four and six hundred.”
“Not even a battalion,” Shad sighed.
“What is a battalion?” Fu Hao, breathing hard and sheened with sweat, asked as she joined them.
“A unit of our world, around eight hundred men,” The Jinxman passed her his canteen.
“Do not count numbers,” The little warlord took a long drink. “Thank you. Those are the best of the best, men who have tasted death and still return to stand and be counted. They are worth fifty of any army that ever stood beneath the sun.”
“How many wights are there?” Fred asked.
“Far more than we number,” Fu Hao admitted, drawing her swords “And now we go to meet them.”
“See you guys on the other side,” Shad took a long drink and offered the canteen, discarding it when there were no takers.
“Yeah, good luck,” Jeff drew his sword and dirk.
“Been good knowing you guys,” Fred adjusted his bearskin.
“This sucks,” Derek nocked an arrow. “But it has been real.”
The Black Talons fell in with the short warlord and her mage behind the center of the mass of warriors, who had ranged themselves into a rough line around three men deep. At some unspoken command the force began to move down the hill they were on and then began the ascent of the slope to the ruins.
“Here they come,” Fred pointed, and the Talons could see what looked like shadows at the crest reveal themselves as skeletal figures clad in silky wisps of dark cloth.
The formation picked up the pace to a trot, weapons and equipment rattling as their feet crunched into the gravelly hillside, even as the numbers of wights flowing down the hill towards them steadily increased.
The two forces met just above the half-way point on the slope, Fu Hao’s force erupting into a chorus of battle cries and challenges issued in a score of languages just before the lines closed with a crash of weapons and bodies meeting. The Talons were behind the line and isolated from the fighting, although Fu Hao was employing her tortoise-shell charms and Astkar was doing something of an enchanted nature with his staff that Shad interpreted was adversely affecting the foe.
Foot by foot the attackers forced their way up the slope, and soon the Talons were stepping on bone fragments and rusted weapons, the remains of scores of slain wights. The fight was far from one-sided: the ranks ahead of them were rapidly becoming only two men deep without the line changing its length. The warriors and their equipment vanished when slain, although the Talons passed many who were thrashing out their final seconds of semi-life in terrible agony from mortal wounds.
“Now!” Fu Hao shouted, her voice carrying clearly over the battle’s clamor, and the six turned to trot along the rear of the battle line and beyond.
“There!” Fred pointed: fifty yards ahead on a flattened section of the north slope the size of a basketball court was three rows of stone structures, each looking like a six-foot-tall cross between a mushroom and a water tower. The six broke into a run, following a well-travelled stone-lined path.
“Oh shit,” Jeff pointed upslope and the other Talons saw dark figures spilling down to meet them; few as compared to the hordes pouring down towards the attacking battle line, but that was a relative term.
“How close before the effect inhibits them?” Shad yelled to Fu Hao.
“Twenty feet from the…flattened point, and all though it.” The little warlord was grinning, her eyes a-sparkle. “There you must hold them and let Astkar and I do our task. We shall kill the roads, and never the same track may be walked twice. They have met Fu Hao, and already they rue the day!” She sent a shell-charm spinning towards the dark figures; the bit of engraved shell vanished in mid-air and a half-dozen wights were torn apart from soundless winds.
Derek released shaft after shaft as they double-timed along the flagstone path, and Jeff plied his slower-reloading hand crossbow. Shad tried a couple throwing knives as the Undead drew close, but even with the attached charms his accuracy while running was poor. Both Fu Hao and Astkar hit the enemy with various magical attacks, slaying quite a few, but there were plenty to begin with.
A feeling like a goose had walked across his grave sent a shudder through Shad’s bones, and he realized that they had entered the area affected by the interface between the roads and this world, the area Fu Hao’s warriors could not enter and within which any native of this world would be at a disadvantage. Moments later the wights came to a halt on line at what must be the boundary on their side, staying there as arrows, bolts, throwing knives, and throwing axes flashed into their ranks.
Then they eased forward, their actions visibly reluctant at first, and moved to close with the line of Black Talons who stood between them and Fu Hao and Astkar.
“Here we go,” Shad muttered, getting a skull hit with a throwing knife; the wight soundlessly exploded into bone shards and twisted of rotting cloth. He drew his sword and shrugged his shield into place as Derek sent eye-searing silver-blue bolts of energy into the Undead ranks until his powers were exhausted. The Shadowmancer’s attacks bought the Jinxman enough time for a hasty Act of Contrition, and then the wights closed.
Catching a bronze blade gone sea-green with corrosion on his shield Shad split the creature’s skull, unsure how much of the disparity of skill was due to Fu Hau’s charm and how much was the byproduct of the area’s effect, but it was not a question he was inclined to dwell upon. He hacked a skeletal arm from one wight and severed another’s leg, he and Jeff flanking Fred, who was a towering engine of destruction while Derek stayed back, sending arrow after arrow into the enemy.
The wights pressed forward with a will once they had gotten past the initial shock of the area’s effect, and whatever they had lost in individual skills they made up in sheer numbers. The rows of close-set stone structures prevented them fr
om flanking the embattled Talons, although the four men were forced to give ground steadily. After they had backed half the length of the flattened area, leaving a litter of downed wights, Astkar joined the fighting line, his staff glowing orange and its touch slaying wights with each swing, but still they were hard-pressed to hold.
The slats of his shield were rattling loose from the damage done from the many blows it had deflected, and his sword arm felt like it was a piece of wood, his wrist and hand numb from the back-shock with each stroke that cleaved through bone. Shad was bruised from hits that had not penetrated but had yet to lose blood, although his armor charms were nearly all dust and most of his runes were spent. And still the wights came on through the area’s effect, over the drifts of bone fragments and weapons that marked the demise of dozens of their fellows.
The Talons weren’t the only ones hard-pressed: in the course of the fight the Jinxman had caught glimpses of the main battle, and their allies’ charge had been brought to a standstill just short of the crest. Now the diminishing line was breaking as bands of warriors grouped with their native comrades and were encircled by the wights.
“They’re going fast,” Shad thought to himself as he punched the point of his enchanted sword through a wight’s skull. “Our turn is next.”
It seemed as if he had fought this way forever in the blue-tinted night under a topaz half-moon, his lungs burning, his arms as heavy as stone, his head aching from the effort of the melee and the crashing of weapons. A rusty point punched through his battered armor and drew a hot line of savage pain and fast-flowing blood across his left side, proof that his charms and runes were gone for good. He chopped off the arm that wielded the blade and caved the wight’s breastbone in as it recovered from the amputation, but more took its place. Parrying with his blade, he plucked a charm from his belt with his left hand and spoke the word, the charm crumbling to dust as he blocked a swing with his damaged shield and the bleeding stopped.
To his far right only a few knots of warriors held out, the Germans for certain and maybe some Chinese, still holding the main enemy force’s attention and tallying no small toll from the Undead ranks; the outcome there was not in any doubt, only how long before the Talons received the full attention of the enemy.