The Wasteland Soldier, Book 3, Drums Of War (TWS)

by Moore, Laurence

  “The men follow my orders. Not yours. We’re holding this position. Now you’re welcome to come inside before we close the gates and lock them.”

  “That’s my property,” said Earl Hardigan. “Perhaps you should consider this young woman’s advice.”

  “Sir,” said Clayton, addressing the Earl. “During a time of …”

  But he was unable to finish the words. He heard thunder and saw the surging dark cloud in the distance.

  “Inside,” he yelled.

  The air filled with the noise of horses, eighty to a hundred of them, galloping hard across open scrubland, kicking up grass and mud. Hundreds more Shaylighters covered the stretch of land on foot, a raging sea of long haired, bare-chested warriors, painted with the inverted cross, running fast toward the village. Loud shouts filled the air. Spears and axes were rattled. Slingshots were fired.

  Boyd turned to Quinn.

  “We’re leaving. Right now. Get inside the truck.”

  “What?”

  “These people are lost, Quinn. It’s going to be a massacre.”

  “But we can’t just run.”

  He strode toward the vehicle. The horses stamped and snorted.

  “We have to go now.”

  Nuria went at him. “Are you planning on leaving us behind?”

  “Stone should have stayed out of Mosscar. He caused this. There’s a place on the truck if you want it.”

  The truck, thought Nuria. That’s where Kaya is. Of course, she should have checked there first.

  She scrambled across to it, dropped to the ground. There was nothing but grass and dirt.

  “Earl Hardigan?” called Sergeant Clayton, the gate half-closed. “Sir?”

  Nuria got to her feet. “I won’t stop looking for her. It’s better you protect your family. I’ll bring her back to you.”

  The heavy gate slammed shut behind him. Boyd snatched the reins and nodded toward Quinn.

  “We’re leaving now.”

  “Give me one minute.” She turned to Nuria. “He’s wrong. I went into Mosscar. Stone followed. Get him and come with us. Look how many of them there are. I don’t want you left behind.”

  “Stone won’t leave. Not whilst we can still fight. And I won’t leave without him.”

  Hog said, “Fuck.”

  He handed Stone his binoculars. “This isn’t shaping up to be much of a nice day, is it?”

  They came in three thick columns, pushing hard, bearing down on the village. The men stood in awe, rooted to the ground, unable to comprehend what was happening, what they were witnessing. Some of them had fought in the war. They knew what it was to face men on a field of battle. Never knowing how long each breath would last. Never knowing how many seconds your life held. But this seemed worse. It was as if the soil had been peeled back and the Demons from the Below had clambered out.

  Stone glanced back at the Hardigan estate. He saw the soldiers huddled behind walls.

  “Useless bastards.”

  Nuria was sprinting toward him, face red.

  “What the fuck went on down there?”

  “Sergeant Clayton,” said Nuria, panting. “He’s a prick. They’re only willing to defend the estate.”

  “They’re getting closer,” said Hog.

  Essamon rode in the centre; the woman Stone had witnessed fighting in the arena was on the right; there was a tall man with a long face on the left.

  “They’re going to break,” said Nuria. “And flank the village. We’ll be cut off. His warriors on foot will do the killing.”

  Hog swallowed.

  “Boyd and Quinn have gone,” she said.

  “What?”

  Stone glimpsed the truck surging along the dusty road back to Brix, bathed in sunlight.

  “You saved her and she ran,” said Nuria. “Bitch.”

  There was a terrible hissing sound. It churned Stone’s stomach. He knew it only too well. He grabbed Nuria and bundled her into a doorway, yelling at the villagers to take cover. Two men were sent sprawling into the dirt, faces torn open as a barrage of spears and steel balls flew through the air. There was the blast of a horn and the Shaylighter’s cavalry broke. The outer columns swept around Great Onglee and tightened the noose of death. Essamon pulled up his horse as his howling warriors streamed into the village. He rose in his saddle and aimed the black box. He flicked the switch and smiled gleefully as the solid white beam shot from it.

  A man screamed as his flesh ignited. His pain was swiftly ended as a warrior buried an axe in his forehead.

  “Ca bhfuil do tiarna,” roared Essamon, unleashing the white light against the turf and thatch roofs. “He will not save you. I am your death.”

  Rolls of orange flame rushed across the tops of the buildings.

  “Now we reclaim our lands.”

  SIXTEEN

  Essamon watched his warriors swarm into the burning village. It was only the beginning.

  He had commanded his tribe since the end of the civil war. He had heard of the great battles between the Ennpithians and the Kiven and had grown frustrated by the indecision of his leaders. They had idled and exploited little of the weakness. It had been their moment but they had done nothing. Yet when power was passed to him, and he bore the ceremonial trappings of the hat of feathers, he had struggled with the change. He was still the mighty warrior and his people knew the power of his spear and the strength of his axe. But now his cries for war and invasion and land were tempered by responsibility and balance and acceptance that the Churchmen, though scattered and few in number, were hardened fighters with superior weaponry to that of his people.

  Consumed by the weight of his ancestors, burdened by the Old Ways of patience, Essamon had skulked within the crumbling ruins of Mosscar, as they had, watching the foliage take further hold. Their birth lands had been ripped away during the Age of Purification when the Metal Spears fractured the sky and billions had perished screaming beneath death clouds. The Ancients had fought the final war of the Before but survivors had emerged from the ashes, diseased and mutated, the will to survive unbroken.

  And during the centuries that followed, in the aftermath, in the desperate second world, when it appeared, finally, that the last light of Mankind was about to blink out, when the power no longer fizzed and crackled, his people had shaped the future on a blackened landscape. But then the Holy House had been discovered and the cross had emerged from the mists and the men who followed were unlike them and the power they wielded was not measured with spear or axe; the violated world fought back, with thunder and flame, with root and plant, and wastelands became pastures, broken hills became forests, valleys became rivers and the men of the cross claimed a divine victory in the name of their Lord - and Ennpithia was birthed upon lies and division and his people were shunned, exiled to reside within the last city, the city of plagues, the city of certain death, they city they called Mosscar.

  And for a decade Essamon had continued to pump life into the vein of weakness. Until the arrival of the Engineer.

  A man of words. A man of action. A man with a plan.

  “I am your death,” said Essamon.

  He nudged his horse into the village, followed by a dozen riders. Smoke swirled around him and he could feel the intense heat from the fires. The lanes were littered with bloodied bodies. Small houses and shops crashed down all around him. There were sporadic shouts in the distance as the last of the villagers were hunted.

  It was Soirese who spotted the truck, fleeing along the bumpy coastal road.

  “Quinn.”

  Essamon bunched his fists.

  She signalled for riders to follow. As she wheeled her horse around, a steel ball whipped past her and struck it. The horse cried out and she swerved in the saddle. She saw the bearded man break from cover, leading a motley group, filthy and blood spattered.

  Essamon switched on the box but they had already disappeared.

  They kept moving, firing and reloading; but there were too many of them, even with th
is strategy; they needed the Churchmen soldiers, they needed extra men, it was becoming desperate.

  The four of them – Stone, Nuria, Kevane and Hog - scrambled behind a wheelwright. The building was shuttered. The fire hadn’t reached here but the air was thick with smoke. Their faces were half concealed by scarves. They were panting heavily as they leaned against the rough wall. The tradesmen who worked here had been some of the first to die. Their bodies lay in the mud, speared by the Shaylighters. Their hands had been broken. Stone had witnessed this more than once since the attack. The killing of a man or woman was followed by the breaking of the hands. It was as if the non-believers had a strange belief of their own.

  A wrenching sound filled the air.

  “That’s Hardigan’s gate,” said Kevane. “They must have gotten inside.”

  There had been several flurries in the beginning; the loud twang of bowstrings, the deadly hiss of arrows, a sky streaked with black lines, Shaylighters cut down by the dozen, but it had tapered off over the last ten minutes and if the gate had been breached then the estate would become a killing ground in no time.

  “We need to make sure they all got away,” said Hog. “Even if we don’t, right?”

  “They got away,” said Kevane. “Maurice would have made sure of it.”

  Stone looked at Nuria. He could only see her blue eyes. Her hair and clothes were matted with blood and grime.

  “Nuria?”

  “We were beaten before they got here,” she said. “We have to run.”

  He nodded. She was right. They had hit. They had hit hard. But there was only one thing left to do.

  Run.

  “What about Kaya?” he said.

  Before she could answer a trio of warriors rounded the corner. Stone whipped around and fired, a steel ball tearing up through the shoulder of the nearest one. The carbine was empty and Stone clubbed him to the ground with it, stamping on his head repeatedly until it cracked. A second warrior hacked at him with an axe but Hog blocked the lunge with his club, charged into the Shaylighter and hurled him against the wall of the building, driving his knee into a stomach daubed with the inverted cross. The man rolled, turning and swinging his axe, but Hog hit him with his club, jagged pieces of metal slashing open the warrior’s arm. Then he buried the club in the man’s skull.

  The third warrior was already down, a single bolt lodged in his head. Nuria cranked the crossbow.

  Shaylighters bore down on them. It was chaos in the smoke. It was getting harder to remain hidden. The fire forced them out onto the street. Nuria peppered the oncoming warriors with bolts, mercilessly cutting them down, exhausting her ammunition. She could no longer see Stone or Kevane but Hog was still with her. She slung the empty crossbow over her shoulder and pulled out her pistol. Her sword clanged against her legs. It would be her final weapon.

  The two of them fled into another alleyway but saw more Shaylighters. Nuria fired twice, single headshots. The warriors went down. They sprang over a low fence. The ground was covered in straw. The building was intact. Hog raced for the back door. There was a war-cry as warriors leapt from the roof. Nuria fired, sending one of them sprawling, the bullet angling up through his nose. Two more cornered Hog, swinging axes. He blinded one with his club but grunted as the second one struck him, chopping into his arm and shoulder.

  Nuria blew the back of his head open.

  Hog staggered toward her, an axe in his shoulder. Near delirious, he wrenched it from his flesh.

  Stone and Kevane fought like wild beasts, lunging and cutting with their swords. The bodies piled around them. Shaylighters were filling all the alleyways and they were slowly becoming boxed in. There was nowhere left to run. As the fires continued to spread, a gut wrenching scream ran out; someone had been left behind, too sick to move, too heavy to carry.

  Kevane tilted his head. Tears fell from his eyes. Stone yelled at the young man but the warning came too late.

  The spear shot through the smoke, angling down, tip glinting, punching into Kevane’s back. He cried out, staggered forward, fell against Stone, choking, his sword slipping, blood gushing from his mouth. The Shaylighters roared and surged forward. Stone let the young man’s body drop and flashed his sword in a wide arc, pushing them back. He jerked free the spear and hurled it at the line of bare-chested men, taking one of them down.

  But all at once they did not fight back. The men parted and a tall warrior stepped forward.

  “Fhagail do,” he said.

  He wore a grilled helmet, obscuring his long face. He wore a belt hung with locks of hair knotted with coloured ribbon. He wore pieces of metal armour strapped to his arms and legs.

  He barked at the warriors gathered in the alleyways and they cheered him on.

  “I am Callart.”

  He unsheathed a long and curved blade.

  “You killed our brothers and sisters in Mosscar.”

  Stone lowered his scarf, spat on the ground and raised his sword.

  “Retreat,” shouted Clayton. “Into the house. Move. Come on. Move.”

  He took thirteen men and Earl Hardigan with him. All of his surviving men were wounded. Even the Earl was bleeding, nicked by a steel ball. The rest of his soldiers lay dead on the ground.

  With the gate down, cavalry surged onto the estate and galloped toward the numerous outbuildings.

  “Block this door.”

  It was damaged, from where Nuria had broken it open, but Clayton’s men dragged furniture across it, reinforcing it. A wounded man had been left behind. The sergeant witnessed a Shaylighter behead him and then break his hands.

  “Take him down,” he growled, pointing.

  Arrows whipped from the house. The painted Shaylighter twisted and dropped.

  “Keep killing them.”

  The village was wreathed in smoke. His men sweated and fired until their fingers bled and their quivers emptied. More horses rode into the estate. Clayton saw a man very different to the rest. He realised this must be Essamon, the leader of the Shaylighters. He was an oddity; his hat of feathers, his goggles, his war paint. He had never seen the man before, only the veteran Captain Duggan had tangled with him. Essamon could not die. It was no myth. It was the truth. Duggan had put two arrows in the man’s chest more than a year ago yet here he rode without a mark on him. Clayton cursed Quinn and Stone. None of this would be happening right now if they’d stayed out of Mosscar.

  Heart racing, Clayton kissed his cross and rallied his men. “Draw your swords. The Lord believes in us. We fight for Him. We fight for the Light.”

  His men rattled their blades.

  “The one with the hat. He’s the one we go for.”

  Then a powerful light blinded Clayton and he screamed, his face on fire.

  Waist deep in seawater, Maurice pushed the boat out. He watched the last of the women and children sail away. It was heart breaking to see the little ones crying and frightened. The women began to stroke with the oars. He had given each boat the same instructions; hug the coastline. By nightfall, or at least at dawn, they should reach the shoreline of Brix.

  He jogged along the beach, heavy boots sinking in the damp sand, sword banging against his hip. He faced the last of the villagers with disgust; it was the men who had chosen to run.

  “You get the last boat.”

  He had remembered the caves but forgotten all about the boats. They had been stored away during the war as part of an evacuation plan that would have taken the remaining Ennpithians across the Metal Sea and into Gallen, if the Kiven had taken control of the land. Only the Kiven had never passed Touron and the plans had never been implemented and the boats and oars and makeshift weapons had remained covered and unused.

  The men dragged the boat to the water’s edge.

  “You should stand and fight,” he said, as they pushed off. “You can hear the screams. You can see the smoke.”

  Maurice turned his back on them. “Cowards.”

  It was time to find Kevane. He drew his sword and
ran for the path that wound up the steep side of the cliff.

  Quinn yelled from the roof of the truck. “Shaylighters.”

  Boyd saw a score of riders pushing hard from the village, a shifting veil of smoke framing them. He looked on, grimly, for a few more seconds, and then whipped his six horses, urging them for more speed. The horizon rushed toward him as the truck thundered along the road, jolting from side to side as it gathered pace. Quinn spotted the leader of the war-band; it was the warrior woman who had pursued them in Mosscar.

  The twenty riders spread across the grassland, galloping hard.

  “Stone saved my life, Benny.”

  “I have to get to Touron.”

  She saw they carried slingshot carbines and spears. She jerked down as a steel ball flew over her head

  “What about Stone and Nuria? Is going to Touron more important than their lives?”

  “Yes.”

  The truck bounced along the road, hooves snatching against the sun parched track. A horse swerved alongside them and Boyd glimpsed the razor sharp steel tip of a spear. Quinn fired and the Shaylighter flipped from his horse, body smacking into the ground.

  She cranked the crossbow.

  “You can’t mean that.”

  “I do.”

  “A messenger could’ve ridden to Touron.”

  “It’s not as simple as that, Quinn.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He didn’t answer as Shaylighters flanked the rusted vehicle and opened fire with carbines. Quinn threw herself flat, yelling. Boyd steered the truck left and nudged against them, tyres spraying dirt. They scattered and fell back. Hunkered down behind the metal panels that ringed the roof of the truck, Quinn aimed her crossbow and took down a single rider, his body barrelling into the dirt. She cranked the lever and fired again, bruised face shiny with sweat.

  “I can’t leave them, Benny.”

  “I’m not stopping.”

  “We have to go back for them.”