Valkeryn 2: The Dark Lands

by Beck, Greig

‘You ugly mother.’ He put his boot on the chest. ‘Now that is one dirty dog.’ He pointed his rifle at its face, but reached down and grabbed one of its ears and pulled. ‘Jezuz, it’s real.’

  Rodriguez straightened and once again used his boot to press down on the body. ‘Listen up you ugly freak; where’s the Colonel? I’m going to count to three… there will not be a four. One… two…thr…’

  There was a thud as a fist hit Rodriguez in the back of the head. The man staggered forward, turning with his gun up. ‘What the fu…’

  Teacher glared at him. ‘You trying to piss me off, Rodriguez? Stand down.’

  Samson pushed Teacher out of the way. ‘Yeah, if anyone’s gonna ace one of these sons of bitches, it’s me.’ He pulled up short. ‘What? This ain’t one of those big things.’

  Rodriguez turned his volcanic glare onto the creature at his feet. ‘It’s one of those dog-people that were crucified.’

  ‘Ugly.’ Samson kicked it.

  Teacher knelt down beside the creature and helped it sit up. ‘Well, if those cat midgets put these guys up on the cross, then I’m thinking there’s no love lost between the two. The enemy of my enemy and all that.’

  The creature’s eyes flickered open. Teacher held out a hand. ‘Give me some water.’ He turned to Rodriguez and clicked his fingers impatiently. ‘Yours.’

  Teacher took the bottle and held it, not knowing how this would work. He pushed the bottle forward, and the animal reached up to take his hand, holding the bottle and guiding it to his lips. He watched it as it drank. The hand holding his was almost human – long fingers, but covered in an almost imperceptible fur. The nails weren’t flat like a human, but instead grew from the ends of the digits, and were thick and sharp – dangerous looking.

  It was the face that intrigued him the most. He had seen the reconnaissance film of this type of creature attacking the drone, and was amazed at the features – wolf-like, but the facial muscles were more dexterous, expressive. The lips closed easily over the bottle tip, and no tongue lolled out to lap at the water. After a second, it handed the bottle back and turned its eyes to him – so clear and intense. There was deep intelligence there, and also wisdom.

  It coughed and rubbed its chest. The creature’s mouth worked and it coughed again. Words came, but the language was impossible. Teacher shook his head, but touched his own chest. ‘I am Teacher. Can you understand me, then?’

  The creature nodded and reached into its robe. Immediately a dozen rifles lifted and pointed at its face. Teacher half turned. ‘Stand down.’

  Samson knelt down beside them and gripped Teacher’s bicep. ‘One false move and we send it back to hell.’

  Instead, it carefully pulled from its robe three small, shiny rocks and held them out. It nodded. Teacher took one and held it up. The centre glowed. It was like a milky crystal, but with some sort of light inside it. Teacher wondered whether it was natural at all.

  ‘What is it?’

  The creature nodded, and took one and lifted it to his lips, and motioned to swallow it. He smiled and nudged the back of Teacher’s hand, urging him to do the same.

  ‘Don’t do it.’ It was Alison Sharp, one of their second lieutenants.

  Samson reached out to take it. ‘I agree, probably…’

  Teacher tossed it in his mouth and swallowed hard. He shrugged. ‘Not a lot of options, or time. Besides… I trust him.’ He waited.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Sharp again.

  Teacher tilted his head, trying to gauge anything different about himself. ‘Nothing. I don’t feel anything at all. Not sure what it was supposed to do.’

  The thing on the ground before him cleared its throat. ‘It’s supposed to allow us to understand each other – and it did just that. My name is Balthazaar of the Valkeryn Wolfen, and I bring you bad tidings, Man-Kind. Urgent bad tidings, I’m afraid.’

  *

  After he recovered from his stunned amazement, Teacher managed to stifle his hundreds of questions and the Delta squad listened as Teacher translated what the Wolfen said.

  Samson, seeing Teacher was suffering no ill-effects, or perhaps not wanting his second in command to be leading the debrief, snatched another of the stones and swallowed it. Then, he, Teacher and Balthazaar talked for many minutes, before the old Wolfen pulled a roll of parchment from his robe and laid it out flat on the ground. It was a map of the lands and he pointed to where they were in relation to the castle, and finally where the Dark Lands were, and the place he believed the first Man-Kind to ever reappear, Arnoddr Sigarr, to be.

  Samson smiled. ‘Mr. Arnold Singer… at last.’ He grabbed the old Wolfen’s tunic and pulled him forward. ‘He stole something very valuable from us. I need to find him and bring him back – urgently.’

  Teacher grabbed Samson’s wrist. ‘He’s no threat.’ He turned to Balthazaar. ‘Our world, our time, is being torn apart, simply because Singer came through with something from our time, and somehow disrupted some great cosmic balance. According to our scientists, we’ve only got about a week to bring him back. After that… who knows.’

  Balthazaar shook his head. ‘You have far less time than that, Teacher of Ohio. Tell me, how many more warriors do you bring? Are you in advance of a larger force?’ Balthazaar’s pale eyes stared into him, hanging on his answer.

  Samson shook his head. ‘Tell him nothing.’

  Teacher looked into the old creature’s eyes for a second or two before responding. ‘No sir, this is as good as it gets for now. But don’t worry, we have plenty of firepower.’ Teacher noticed the old creature seemed disheartened by the information.

  Balthazaar sighed. ‘In a matter of hours, less maybe, a significant force of Lygon will be here. They will be accompanied by the Panterran, and never were two more cruel races combined in Hellheim or on the lands of Valkeryn.

  Balthazaar groaned and got unsteadily to his feet. He held Teacher’s arm. ‘They tricked us. Found their way in through our fortifications, and brought our mighty kingdom down. Now we are no more than a few Wolfen scattered to the ends of the land. They live to destroy other races.’ He grabbed Teacher and pulled him close.

  ‘They will tear you to pieces, regardless of your powerful weapons, or your hubris.’ He let the soldier go, speaking softly. ‘They may also try and find your home.’

  ‘They can goddamn try.’ Samson pulled back his sleeve and looked at a large wristwatch. He shook his head. ‘Can’t afford to get bogged down in a prolonged firefight.’ Samson folded his arms. ‘These big guys are probably as powerful as a Mack truck on legs, but they’re dumb and slow. They won’t get within fifty feet of us. The little guys, Panterran you called them, caught us off guard. We won’t underestimate them again.’ Samson thought for a moment. ‘We do not have time to engage our enemy, find the boss, and then go trekking off to search for the kid. We need to do both at once.’

  Samson turned to his team, who stood watching and waiting. ‘Okay, listen up people. We have a considerable force, inbound. We cannot outrun them, nor do we want to. We need to either put them down or punch a hole through them and retrieve Colonel Briggs.’ He looked along their faces, his own grim. ‘There’s another problem. Arnold Singer is still free and can be retrieved within the time frame allocated to us. But we must act now. We will need to split our objectives.’

  Samson stepped forward, his hands on his hips. ‘Teacher you will take five – Simms, Sharp, Brown, Weng and Doonie, and you will locate Singer. The rest of us will find a defendable position, with a clear corridor for extraction if need be. Use extreme force. No prisoners; eradication of enemy is the only priority. Live or die, our minimum objective is we must hold them.’ Samson walked along in front of them. ‘We will not, I repeat, will not, allow them to get anywhere near the vortex, and our home.’ Samson grinned at them. ‘They don’t yet know who they’re m
essing with.’

  ‘HUA!’

  Balthazaar had been listening to Samson speak and was still rubbing his chest where the rubberized round took him. He turned to look along the faces of the soldiers. ‘Please, warriors of Man-Kind, they have your leader…’ He must have remembered only Teacher and Samson could understand him, and turned quickly back to the giant Delta Force captain, ‘… and the two young ones who appeared earlier. My friend will try and release the two called Edward and Rebecca, but your leader has already been integrated.’

  Samson frowned. ‘I don’t care if they try and interrogate Colonel Briggs. She’ll never break, and anything she does give up will be useless misinformation.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand.’

  Samson pushed the old Wolfen back a step. ‘It’s you that doesn’t understand us humans. The boss would die before giving up on her own.’

  Balthazaar reached out to the big Delta Force soldier. ‘She will not be allowed to die, she…’

  Samson shrugged him off and turned to the squad.

  ‘Hanson, with me. We gotta hold for forty-eight hours. Then, with or without the boss, we head home. Understood?’

  The powerful looking young soldier nodded. ‘You got it. We’ll be home for a beer and burger long before then.’ They bumped fists.

  Teacher was checking his weapons as a panicked looking Balthazaar stepped in front of him. ‘I cannot stop you. All I can hope is that the Panterran think that the warriors left here are all of your war party. It may give you the time you need to get the Arnoddr back home.’

  Teacher put his hand on the Wolfen’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about us. But what about you? Will you come with us?’

  The old Wolfen shook his head. ‘No, I’ll head back to the castle. I will be more value to the Wolfen resistance, if there ever is one.’ He grabbed Teacher’s hands in his and looked into his eyes. Teacher felt his very soul was being laid bare by the intense pale gaze.

  ‘You are a fighter, and I can see by the scars that your life has been brutal when it had needed to be. This will test you, and all your warriors.’ He smiled. ‘May Odin watch over you.’ He went to step back, but stopped and reached into his robe once more and produced more of the polished stones.

  ‘Take these – the Panterran will not expect you to understand their language. Every advantage you possess will now be critical’.

  Teacher took the five stones. He handed one each to his own small team. Alison Sharp held it up, looking into its colored depths suspiciously.

  Teacher nudged her. ‘Down the hatch, Sharp, then we leave.’

  She tossed it in her mouth.

  *

  Hanson looked up. ‘Going to be dark soon.’

  Samson grunted and continued to watch as the point runners came back in. They had planted sticky mines along anything that even looked like a trail. Thermal monitors were deployed, this time bolstered by motion sensors – nothing was walking in on them, or creeping in under blankets unannounced, without a loud bang.

  The Deltas had taken up defensive positions in a stand of trees. They had chosen the site because there was excellent cover, and an open clearing around them. They had spent several minutes removing more of the brush to give them an uninterrupted field of fire. In addition, they had left a

  scoot-chute – a corridor twenty feet wide behind them. Mined, but they knew where to land their feet, even at speed, if need be.

  Samson had deployed his remaining thirty-two Delta Force members in three operative units at the tree line. He, Hanson and six bodies at the centre, with a string line of soldiers branching forward on both the left and right – three fields of fire, none overlapping – just one big mother of a killing zone.

  Samson stayed low and pulled a scope down over one eye, and looked first along the trails – nothing moving. Then along his own squad line. Like him, they were down low, muzzles ready. He felt confident; each man or woman had enough firepower to level a building.

  Hit’m hard and fast, take the starch right outta them, and make them rethink their tactics. Once he gave them a bloody nose, and thrown a bit of doubt and confusion into them, they’d move in. The horns of his steer would extend, and eventually close. Then the head would move forward to drive a spike right down their throat. They’d engaged them before – they were big, but they were still just flesh. Samson felt good, looking forward to the killing. He looked at his watch. It’d be a walk in the park.

  ‘Sensor two just got tripped.’ Hanson’s voice was hushed, but calm in his ear.

  ‘Roger that. Okay people, hold until we have contact.’ Samson got down lower, just his muzzle and eyes showing around the tree trunk. He knew his team would be doing the same.

  ‘Sensor three tripped, sensor four, five… here they come.’

  Samson heard the motion sensor numbers counting down and waited, breathing easily.

  ‘Contact.’

  Samson’s finger reflexively tightened on the trigger of his skeletal black gun when from the tree line ahead, an array of animals burst free. Things, ankle and knee high, hopping, or scurrying along the ground towards them. In amongst them, larger creatures – a type of deer with strange green antlers, pig things with six legs and armor plating, snakes with centipede legs; all of them came at the Deltas like a rushing battalion of squawking, squeaking fear-maddened children.

  Great time for a freakin’ stampede, he thought as he pulled back to allow one of the beasts to charge by him. His jaws clenched as he continued to watch the far tree line. Fact was, something must have frightened all that game into its collective movement, and that something was coming up behind the animals.

  ‘Stay frosty, people.’

  The forest fell silent as all the animals disappeared behind them, and then the last rays of sunlight overhead darkened as if a thick cloud was passing across the face of the sun. Samson looked up and swore.

  ‘Get down, we got arrow shot.’

  The mass of arrows dropped from the sky like a flock of angry needle-sharp birds. The shredding, whipping sound they made as they passed through leaves above was like a heavy hailstorm. This was immediately followed by the sound of steel tips on wood, stone, earth, and also flesh.

  Swearing filled the air, and Samson came back upright from his cover position, and noticed a short black arrow sticking up out of his shoulder. He ripped it free, and glanced at the tip – fire hardened iron, and razor sharp. It hadn’t sunk far into his flesh, becoming wedged in a join of the ceramic plates of his combat armor.

  He put his back to the tree, and yelled over his shoulder. ‘Sound off.’ Every squad member had a number, and they knew to give the call sign in the proper order – a code letter after the number indicated their operational capacity after an attack: one-a, meant fully operational, one-b, they’d taken dents, and one-c, meaning significant injury. A no reply usually meant you were out cold or dead.

  Two replies were missing. Bottom line, arrows didn’t knock you out, they made you dead. Samson swore, and turned back to the front just as there was a thundering crash and a projectile flew out of the forest and exploded into the tree trunk above him. Branches rained down, and he chanced a brief look. He felt a chill run up his spine – it was an axe, as big as he was.

  ‘Jesus.’ The first axe was soon followed by many more. The missiles were heavy, and by the sound of the pained screams, some struck home. The forward tree-line shook and Samson sucked in a huge breath and roared his warning. ‘Here they come!’

  Giant orange and black bodies broke cover, and charged. Samson estimated around fifty of the giant Lygon, as Balthazaar had called them. He sighted along the short black barrel, breathing easily, cool as an ice cube; this was what he trained for. He and his fellow Delta acted as one. He gently squeezed the trigger, and at the same time other automatics around him did the same
.

  The massive creatures head’s punched backwards as pieces of their thick furred skulls blew away from their heads. Few if any made it more than two thirds across the clearing, and their giant bodies began to stack up like a natural barricade. Beside him, Hanson loaded a grenade into the launcher under his barrel and fired, the projectile leaving a trail of vapor as it flew into the thick brush and exploded in a ball of shredded plants and dirty smoke.

  The big trees rained leaves and small branches down over his targeted site for a few moments.

  ‘Cease fire.’ They waited and watched. Nothing came out of the forest but silence.

  ‘Hold your position. Eyes out ladies and gentlemen.’ He waited, feeling a spot of perspiration on his temple, even though the temperature was quite cool. He wished the old Wolfen guy was still with them. He desperately wanted to ask what would happen next – this was definitely not something from any Earthly military textbook.

  A voice came out of the far forest line. “Delta squad, lower your weapons, I’m coming in.’

  A figure stepped out. ‘What the f…’ Samson slowly lifted his head from the rifle sight and stared with his mouth hanging open.

  ‘Hold your fire.’ He lowered his gun, but confusion creased his brow.

  *

  ‘Colonel? Colonel Briggs is that you?’

  ‘Stay your weapons, all of you. I’m coming in. You put a boot up their ass, and they’ve run for the hills – well done. We need to talk tactics, then arrange to enter the castle to save the others.’

  Samson whispered into his comm. unit. ‘Miller, Franklin, bring the colonel in. Leave your mic open. The rest of you stay down and stay focused.’

  Miller turned to Franklin, and pointed out to his left-side flank. The two men stepped up and out of concealment. Both had their guns at their waist. The walked forward slowly, pausing every few steps to scan the foliage from the sides and ahead. Briggs had her head down and half tilted as if she were listening to something or someone.