Ranger

by William Stacey

  And two redcap women.

  With her meager medical supplies, Sharon had had no choice but to sedate her patients. If they thrashed about, they'd rip out the sutures she had just put in, but they were alive, and while the next few days would be critical, if Sharon kept them still, their chances for a full recovery increased significantly—even if it meant running herself ragged. Sighing, rubbing her eyes, she dropped beside her rucksack, thinking she'd curl up for just a moment, just long enough to rest her eyes…

  She bolted upright, her heart pounding. Someone was screaming.

  "What's going on?" she asked the two redcap women—who of course did not understand.

  They stared at her, terror flashing through their eyes before they bolted out the door of the hut. More screams followed, and what sounded like gunshots. Smoke drifted through the still-open doorway, and Sharon saw redcaps run past in panic. Her blood ran cold. We're under attack!

  Her gaze darted to the rifle, and despite her hatred, she picked it up and readied it to work in the manner that First Sergeant Martinez had shown her. Then, snapping the safety thingy off, she moved to the doorway to protect her patients. Outside, flames lit up the village as four-armed creatures with aquatic heads ran past with lit torches and spears, herding the redcaps together. Boggarts, she remembered. They're called boggarts. A troll, a hideous eight-foot beast with horns and holding an ax taller than she was, lifted its head and roared in triumph. Scores of the demonic-looking kelpies with dark-elf riders thundered along the river—running on the water—and cut off the redcaps from escaping then herded them back to the village. She even saw men among the attackers—human men, likely the same ones who had ambushed them. This was no battle, Sharon realized. The villagers couldn't even run away, let alone fight back. It was a rout.

  A group of boggarts saw her and headed toward her, their spears and swords flashing in the torchlight. Sharon, her heart pounding out of control, raised her rifle to her shoulder. She'd never shoot, but they wouldn't know that. Maybe if I—

  A dark-elf woman appeared before her, blinking into existence from nothing, grinning like a fiend. She gripped the end of the rifle barrel and swept it aside before ramming something in Sharon's face—a foul-smelling living creature like a bat but with a long prehensile tail. The creature's wings wrapped around her face like a mask, blinding her. Its claws raked her face as its tail whipped around her neck and squeezed, choking her. Sharon dropped the rifle and tried to rip the creature from her face, but the elf woman held her wrists.

  The last thing she heard was the woman's mocking laughter.

  "Your kind is so ugly, so pale," Kaladania said to Valentin, staring at the unconscious woman who had been tending the Americans' wounded. "How do you get past such hideousness long enough to mate?"

  Valentin said nothing, knowing she was trying to goad him once more. In his years serving the Fae Court, she had always been that predictable, that transparent. She was a poor imitation of her mother, the queen. Her only accomplishment was surviving her sisters.

  "She was easy to capture," Terlissandia said. "No doubt the manlings left her here because of her uselessness." The mage-scout smiled at Valentin, her eyes gloating. "We should cut her face off, watch how long she takes to die."

  Valentin kept his face neutral. Damn these elves. Each is more revolting than the last. "She's not worthless. She's probably a doctor. Very valuable, in fact."

  "A what?" Kaladania asked, kneeling beside the unconscious woman. She gripped her chin and turned her head to the side, examining the bruises around her neck.

  "A healer," Valentin said.

  "No, she's mundane," Terlissandia said, shaking her head. "No magic."

  Valentin pointed at the sleeping patients and the medical supplies they had captured—supplies he wanted, especially the antibiotics. "Not a magical healer, but a healer just the same. Give her to me."

  "No," the crown princess said. "If she's as important as you say, she'll go to my mother for testimony this very night."

  Valentin said nothing, knowing Kaladania would enjoy thwarting anything he wished. The queen, not suffering from her daughter's breathtaking insecurity and childishness, would be much more reasonable. Later, after the queen had learned all she needed from the woman, Valentin would ask for her and explain that a doctor would be useful to his warriors—not to mention the others. Queen Tuatha de Talinor had many faults, but she wasn't needlessly spiteful with her servants, and she needed Valentin.

  For now.

  Kaladania rose, wiping her fingers on her leggings, as if touching the physician had dirtied her. She walked out of the hut, and Valentin and Terlissandia followed. Outside, Dimmi and a dozen of his men waited beside Trident Commander Za-zalgar 'Urth and his boggart bodyguards. The redcap villagers were under guard nearby, with trolls and boggarts surrounding them. Several trolls were moving something metallic and large from one of the nearby huts, but before Valentin could go look, the one-eyed boggart commander approached and bowed to the crown princess. When she brushed past him without a word, Za-zalgar shared a quick glance with Valentin, nodding his pebbled black head in greeting. Za-zalgar and Valentin shared a mutual and well-earned dislike for the princess.

  Then Valentin saw what the trolls were carrying, and his pulse quickened—it was one of the Americans' armored exo-suits. This one was equipped with a minigun, the type that fired thousands of 7.62mm bullets a minute, enough to cut apart a medieval army. With a suit like that, Valentin could defeat just about anything on Faerum.

  A growing pile of equipment joined the battle suit, including eight futuristic-looking heavy machine guns with boxes of the amazing caseless ammunition they had recovered from the bridge, several stinger anti-aircraft launchers, and seven missiles. The Americans had left behind more than he had hoped for.

  One of the dark-elf cavalry officers approached and knelt before the princess, his head lowered respectfully, his hand across his heart. "My princess, it is as the mage-scout reports. The redcaps admit their treason. Their hunters have taken the manlings north along the river."

  "Why north?" Valentin asked. "They must know we still hold the pass. To what end?"

  The cavalry officer's gaze darted from the princess to Valentin, and he licked his lips.

  "Go ahead," said Kaladania with a weary sigh. "Answer Wolf's question. Despite his impertinence, he is correct. Why north?"

  "They do not head for the pass, my princess. There is a subterranean passage, an underground river that leads to a cavern. Within this cavern, there is an opening to the surface—on the far side of the Spine."

  "It comes out in the Char?" Valentin asked. When the officer nodded, Valentin laughed, suddenly understanding. Of course it comes out in the Char. The Americans aren't fools. "They've gotten around us—despite their losses."

  The anger that flashed across Kaladania's beautiful features was almost worth being tricked. Murmured whispers, mutters of outrage, passed among those nearby.

  Kaladania glared at him for several moments. Her hands opened and closed with silent rage. Still kneeling, the young cavalry officer waited, rivulets of sweat running down his face. Valentin understood all too well the risk in bearing bad news to the fae-seelie royal family. When Kaladania spoke, he could hear the anger vibrating in her throat.

  "How long, Wolf? How long before we can catch them?"

  "By wyvern, a half hour, maybe less. The cavalry, a day, maybe two."

  She nodded, pulling her saber a hand's width from the scabbard before thrusting it back once more—a nervous gesture he had noted the last time her mother had scolded her for failure. How had she survived her sisters with such an obvious tell? "We must fly at once. Cut them off. Burn them to ash in the Char."

  "I advise against such a course of action, Princess," he said, moderating his tone so she wouldn't take it as a challenge.

  She rounded on him, her eyes tight with rage. "Why not?" she demanded, her voice cracking. "They'll get away."

  "There's
nowhere to get away to, Princess, not within the Char." He gestured to the Stinger missiles and the launchers. "But we don't know if this is all their air-defense weaponry. We need more intelligence."

  "What nonsense do you speak, Wolf? Air defense, intelligence?"

  "Information, Princess. Give me the prisoners and the captured equipment. I'll interrogate the doctor and find out why the Americans entered the Char. I can find out if they have more weapons that can destroy your wyvern-mounted mages. Your mages are far too precious to waste, and you've already lost too many by chasing after them at the bridge."

  From her posture and the shock in her eyes, he realized he had gone too far this time, but to pursue the Americans now without understanding why they'd risked so much to get into the Char was the height of stupidity.

  "Damn you to the Red Ether, Wolf, you and all manlings!" she said through clenched teeth, her purple skin becoming ever darker with fury.

  "I misspoke, Princess. Your battle was a near-perfect victory. I only meant—"

  "The prisoner, the healer, goes to my mother, as does all this plunder." She gestured to the equipment and in particular the battle-suit with the minigun. "Do you know why, Wolf?"

  "Princess—"

  "Because you want it."

  He exhaled, nodding. To say any more would drive her to violence, and while she might not risk her mother's wrath by killing him, she'd make his people pay. The fae were notoriously touchy about their honor. He bowed his head, his hand upon his heart. "As you wish, Princess."

  She faced Terlissandia. "You have the fastest wyvern, Silent-Death. Strip the manling healer. Tie her to your saddle and bring her with haste to my mother's fortress on Wildspike Island."

  Terlissandia inclined her head. "At once, my princess."

  "And have one of the alpha wyverns bring this war armor. Tie it between two mounts if you must."

  "Yes, Princess."

  Kaladania stared at Wolf, her eyes filled with a look that sent a chill down his spine. "Wolf, you will burn the village. Burn everything. Any redcap that swears fealty to my mother will keep their lives, but destroy their homes."

  He nodded. "Yes, Your Highness. What of the wounded manlings?"

  "Did you not hear my words?" She grinned. "Burn everything."

  And now, his disgust surging, he understood her smile. The others watched him—his men, the boggarts, the mages, the cavalry officer, even Za-zalgar 'Urth, who shook his head, warning him. No doubt Kaladania would present her actions to her mother as a test of Wolf's loyalty, but he understood what was happening: she was trying to goad him into open defiance. Maybe she is too angry to care what her mother thinks.

  Several tense moments passed between them, but Wolf forced himself to bow. "Your will, my highness. They're just Americans. My enemies." He saw his aide's face in the crowd. "Dimmi, fire the hut," he said in Empire Common so that all understood him.

  "Y-Yes, boss," Dimmi stuttered, replying in the same language rather than the Russian they usually used.

  "And Dimmi, tell Dominika to use her special magic so that no one escapes."

  "Yes, boss."

  "Come with me, Wolf—and you others," Kaladania ordered. "We must make plans to follow the manlings, and the Spider Mother only knows how much the kelpies hate the desert." She turned away, a look of satisfied gloating on her face as two of Valentin's men thrust burning torches into the hut containing the wounded.

  As he turned away to follow her, the fire warmed Valentin's neck.

  While the fire consumed the hut, Dimmi stood behind it, waiting with four other men and five boggarts as Dominika cast her magic, suppressing the flames eating the rear half of the hut. The heat remained intense, but Dominika's gift with fire was such that she could decide where flames did—and didn't—thrive. With the fires suppressed, she cast telekinesis, brushing aside the bamboo wall, creating an opening. Inside, her magic kept a sphere of cool air around the four wounded soldiers, even as the fires grew hot everywhere else.

  "Hurry," Dimmi said, squeezing the shoulder of the closest boggart, one of Za-zalgar 'Urth's trusted bodyguards.

  The boggart and Dimmi rushed inside the hut. The others followed, and they rescued the Americans, carrying them out with as much gentleness as they could manage. They might still die, Dimmi knew, but at least they wouldn't burn to death. And luckily for them, besides her mastery of flames, Dominika was a skilled magical healer. They'd hide these four among the other prisoners. The elf-bitch didn't know how many there were. Such details were beneath her.

  If the dark elves saw them now, then everyone would die, anyway, including Dimmi. But damn the elves—there were things you just didn't do, even to Americans.

  37

  Alex stood out of the way as Leela used the Brace to heal Huck, or at least tried to: despite the healing magic Leela was pumping into her, Huck remained comatose. Assisting Leela was the last of the medics, Specialist Kim Flannors, a petite young woman with a short bob of dark hair, a pixie-like nose, and the filthiest mouth Alex had ever heard on a soldier—and he had spent a lot of years with some amazingly foul-mouthed soldiers. Flannors held a remote monitoring device attached with wires to Huck's head while Liv stood behind Leela, watching. Neither mag-sens was gifted at healing, but armed with the Brace, Leela stood the best chance at helping Huck. First Sergeant Martinez was also nearby, standing next to Veraxia. The rest of the soldiers carried supplies from the nets up the rough-hewn steps that circled the rock formation in the middle of the underground lake to its summit near the cavern ceiling.

  Leela sat back, pulling the Brace from her hand. "That's all I can do. God, I wish Cassie were here."

  "Will she be all right?" Liv asked.

  "I'm thinking severe closed intracranial injury," Specialist Flannors said. "That's some serious shit and hard to treat with the complete fucking lack of equipment I have. I need an MRI. There's pressure in her skull, probably cerebral blood flow issues. Not fucking good, not fucking good at all."

  "Check the readout again," Leela said to Flannors.

  The medic consulted her monitor, her eyes narrowing in surprise. "Well, fuck me two days to Sunday. The pressure's normal." She grinned at Leela. "You rock!"

  "Not me. The Brace. Trust me. All I can manage on my own is treating bruises and light bleeding. But I think I dealt with the worst of the blunt-force trauma."

  "How long will she be out?" First Sergeant Martinez asked, making it sound more like an accusation.

  "Don't know," Leela answered. "I did what I could."

  Flannors sighed. "Tough call, First Sergeant. Cranial injuries are always tricky. Maybe days, maybe weeks… maybe a minute. But her readings are way fucking better now. I thought for sure she'd die on us."

  Martinez grunted or growled—it was hard to tell—and then glared at Alex. "A word in private, Major."

  Alex motioned for the other man to lead the way, and Martinez led him up the carved stone steps to the summit of the rock formation. The steps circled the rock several times before reaching the flat summit, and Alex was breathing harder, his pulse pounding when they came out on top. Up here, the ceiling of the cavern rested only ten to twenty feet above them, so that a very tall man could jump up and touch the rock ceiling in some places. At the center of the summit, the redcaps had erected a wooden framework that reached up to a large crevice in the ceiling, a natural crack a dozen feet wide, a chimney to the surface. Alex and Martinez moved beside the wooden frame and stared up through the chimney. Two hundred or so feet up, they saw stars and the night sky above them.

  "So that's it, then," Martinez said. "This chimney leads to the surface and the Char Desert. Hell of a cost to get here."

  "We're not done paying it yet." Alex pointed to the nearest end of the broken, rotting, twisted fiber ropes that hung from the wooden frame and a series of anchors in the rock wall of the chimney. Those old ropes wouldn't hold a woman's weight, let alone any of the men, and some of the men were huge. The redcaps had said they hadn't
come here since the hydra claimed the cavern, so the ropes hadn't been maintained, but even if they had, Alex knew they couldn't have used them. "Those ropes are gonna be a problem. Someone's gonna have to climb up with our own ropes."

  "One crisis at a time," said Martinez. He turned and pointed a meaty finger at several soldiers, who were stacking small water barrels nearby. "How 'bout you guys give me and the major a few minutes to talk. Keep everyone else back."

  The men said, "Yes, First Sergeant," and sped away.

  Alex waited, his arms crossed.

  Martinez pulled out a nearly empty pack of cigarettes, shook one out, lit it, and exhaled smoke from his nostrils. "Here's the thing, sir," he said, making “sir” sound like an insult. "Major Armstrong is as fine a commanding officer as any I've ever worked with, better by half than most."

  Alex nodded, his gut warning him of what was coming.

  "She and I put together a good team of fine young people, American and Canadian. I love those kids. Think of each one as a son or daughter. Nothing I won't do to keep 'em safe."

  Alex waited.

  "I never thought much of you Canucks. Don't get me wrong—I don't dislike you, just never gave you much thought… until the Culling, when there were suddenly more of you than there were of us. But Major Armstrong, her, I like. Her, I respect."

  And here we come to it.

  Martinez's glare was ice-cold and hard. "You, on the other hand, are an ex-Tier-One Special Forces cowboy who doesn't understand the concepts of leadership and responsibility." He snorted, puffing smoke. "Don't get your panties in a knot. I know you've got the skills. I know you've been in the shit, and I heard all about how you and Gunz saved the world. But guess what. Nobody fucking cares. Lots of us have been in the shit, and we've gotten the job done without putting everybody else at risk while we played hero."