Skorzeny stood with his six volunteers. Four were storm troopers. One was an engineer. One was the traitor. He had an obsidian steel mace. Deitel had an obsidian steel short sword.
“From here on in, it’s a bloody street fight,” Skorzeny said. “No quarter. Your best weapon when you run out of ammunition is your entrenching tool. Use it like an ax. Try to decapitate them. If you use it in an overhead blow, it will get stuck in the skull, and in the time it takes to pull it out they’ll swarm you. They’re going to be mean. You have to be meaner. Strike hard and move fast.”
Terah had everyone who could move up on the wall, including the wounded. They had pistols and clubs, plus three grenades. Lang waved at her from his sniper’s nest.
Below in the courtyard, Rucker and Brant were securing the wagon leads to the saddle. On the wagon sat Tesla’s teleforce projector. Brant climbed onto the wagon and gripped the machine tightly.
Rucker had to get the Tesla cannon to Übel’s machine, and then use the spear in the Tesla gun instead of the mercury tungsten. They’d already set the cannon to feedback its energy, which would then be delivered to the orb. If fortune and physics was on their side, it would project this new energy out just as Übel’s machine had earlier.
Rucker swung himself into the saddle. He looked at Skorzeny, then Terah, and then Lang. Lysander said a little prayer.
“We’ll need at least two minutes when we get to the orb,” Rucker said. “Keep them off us.”
“We’ll try our best,” Lang said.
“Let’s do this,” Rucker said. “Allons-y!”
Skorzeny’s men, divided into two teams on opposite ends of the wall, rappelled over the wall into the outer courtyard. They banged on pots and pans, starting to draw the creatures away from the barricade along the inner courtyard wall. It was like flushing game in the bush, only in reverse—they were baiting them away from the center where the gate was.
As he banged on a metal pot with the butt of his sword, it briefly occurred to Deitel that this was not what he thought he’d find himself doing back in his medical school days.
When the barricade was mostly clear, Terah, Amria, and Lysander pulled the cords on the potato smasher grenades. They’d been saving the grenades on Skorzeny’s orders. Until he could figure out the most effective use for them, he wanted them in reserve. Now was the time of most effectiveness. The quick series of blasts cleared most of the crates and material from the top of barricade in the center gateway. Four engineers, using a block and tackle pulley system, pulled one of the field cars out of the gateway, clearing the way for Rucker. The engineers then scrambled up a ladder, pulling it up after them.
“H’yah!” Rucker shouted, digging his heels into the horse. He had an obsidian steel sword and his Colt. One ranger, one riot, he thought. We can do this.
A surreal sight unfolded in the outer courtyard. Groups of the undead attacked Skorzeny’s fighters. They’d used up their ammunition. The gory work of hand-to-hand combat was like nothing seen since the Roman Coliseum. Then came the chariot to complete the macabre scene. Soldiers fought with the precious few obsidian steel weapons they had, with entrenching tools and with clubs. A few had pistols and machine pistols. They used them to their best effect, saving their shots for when the undead were closest. Congealing, thick body fluids sprayed as they split open skulls and decapitated the undead. It splattered from exit wounds in skulls when they shot the creatures point-blank in the face. A trooper’s entrenching tool got stuck in the skull of one of the creatures. As he struggled to free it, two of the undead overtook him. He went down screaming as they tore flesh from his body with their teeth. A shot from Skorzeny’s pistol mercifully ended the man’s cries.
As Rucker galloped past Skorzeny’s position he shouted to the German commando, “Follow the Rucker-shaped blur!”
Skorzeny nodded and kept at the bloody work.
Rucker steered the horse and cart through the hordes of undead at a fast clip. On the run, the cart was too fast for the creatures to be much of a risk. But he knew as soon as they reached the orb they’d be like ducks on the water. It all came down to how fast he and Brant could hook Tesla’s gun into Dr. Übel’s device.
Skorzeny’s worst problem was his own training. Instinctively, he would swing his mace at the creatures wherever there was an opening, including all the places that didn’t kill the undead but would kill a person. He corrected himself quickly enough, smashing the skulls of any creature that got within four feet.
“Adapt,” he told his men. “Adapt or die.”
Deitel kept telling himself they were only cadavers, no different than the ones he’d worked on in medical school. He swung the black-bladed short sword with all his might. The blade bit deep into the back of a creature’s neck. The greater force applied to the back of the neck cut right through the bone, while the momentum of the strike sliced through the softer tissue, severing the head entirely. He stabbed another under the chin, cutting behind the jaw to let the blade dig deep, biting right through the brain stem until it hit the inner top of the skull. A quick twist and the brain was destroyed, killing the creature.
Just cadavers, Deitel said to himself again. His arms and chest were wet with the thick, black blood of the creatures he was killing.
Rucker reached the orb, and he and the engineer got to work carrying the Tesla device up the steps to the dais over the sphere. Halfway up the stairs, Brant looked over Rucker’s shoulder and his eyes widened. Rucker cursed—he couldn’t drop the thing and reach his weapon, and one of the creatures was about to attack. He turned his head and saw it approaching. Then he heard the report of a rifle, and the thing’s head exploded. From his position atop the bailey in the inner courtyard, Lang chambered another round. Rucker gave him a quick nod.
At the wall, the creatures climbed relentlessly. There were more coming. A few made it to the top. The living set upon them with axes, entrenching tools, and clubs. A trooper was pulled from the wall and fell to the cobblestones of the outer courtyard. The undead swarmed his body, devouring the flesh while he was still screaming. A trooper was holding one of the creatures at bay, having stabbed it in the chest with a makeshift spear. The thing pulled itself toward him, its jaws snapping and clawed hands grasping. Just as its teeth were about to sink into the trooper’s face, its skull exploded as Filotoma smashed it with a heavy blow. Foul blood and brain matter splashed in the trooper’s face.
“The head, boy,” Filotoma said. “Use yours and bash theirs. It’s the only way the dead die.”
The frightened trooper nodded.
Amria, still weakened from her spell hours before, stood over the huddled civilians who were unable to fight. Her hands traced runes in the air before her and she chanted the ancient words that would cloak them from the creatures’ senses. It was all the magic she could summon.
Down in the courtyard, Skorzeny’s team were barely holding their own, trying to make their way to the orb to provide Rucker and Brant additional protection. It was a hard fight. Every moment more and more undead crowded them. They had to fight and keep their flanks open so they wouldn’t be surrounded. One of the troopers stumbled. Before he could regain his footing, a creature bit into his skull, cracking it open with a snap of its jaws. It spat out the thick bone and dug its mouth into the soft brain issue even as fresh red blood oozed out from the wound. The trooper’s legs shook as his body convulsed. Two or three of the creatures started fighting over the succulent organ they craved even more than living flesh. Skorzeny’s men tightened their formation.
On the orb, the Tesla gun was charging its feedback loop. It was taking forever, Rucker thought. He wasn’t a formal engineer, but he’d had enough hands-on experience to keep up with Brant. He also had to watch his back. Lang could only take out so many. Twice, Rucker had to drop cables and pull his Colt. It was hard going.
He heard one of the draugrs taunting him in its raspy, undead voice.
“You can’t change destiny,” it shouted. It was thirty feet away and running at him.
“Gonna try,” he said. He pulled his Colt and lined up his shot. Don’t think, he told himself, and squeezed the trigger. The .45 caliber projectile struck the draugr right between the eyes. It was dead before it hit the ground.
Skorzeny was out of bullets. It was all hand-to-hand now. The man to his left, one of the younger troopers who’d been so eager to prove himself to Skorzeny and was the first to volunteer for this team, swung at one of the creatures and missed. The momentum carried him off balance. Two of the undead grabbed his arms pulled him down. Skorzeny tried to reach out to the trooper but the creatures were already tearing flesh from the man’s arms and shoulder.
Skorzeny brought his mace down on the trooper’s head, smashing his skull. The instant kill was a kindness compared to being eaten alive and then joining the living dead, but that didn’t console Skorzeny.
His rage grew.
It was down to Deitel, Skorzeny, and one trooper. Skorzeny saw an opening between them and Rucker.
“Now! Run!” he yelled, pointing in the direction of the machine.
None of them had ever run so fast. They covered the thirty yards to the orb in less than four seconds. They formed a perimeter around Rucker and Brant.
Now, with no other distractions, half the creatures were trying to take the wall, and the other half were shambling toward the orb. Rucker and Brant weren’t quite ready.
On the wall, they lost two more to the creatures. One of them breeched the barricade, slithering through on its belly. A trooper brought an entrenching tool down, aiming at its head, but it was faster than he expected. His blow cleaved the creature in two at the waist. Before he could raise it again to strike the head, however, it latched onto his leg and bit into his calf. The trooper fell to the ground. The creature pulled itself up the man’s body and bit into his skull with a sickening crunch.
Terah’s sword split the creature’s skull and went right through to the trooper’s, ending his suffering and ensuring he wouldn’t rise as one of the undead.
They were going to be overrun.
Terah and Lysander stood back-to-back. So far, Amria’s spell was keeping the undead away from those who couldn’t fight—the elderly civilians, the children, and those too wounded in the earlier melee or by gunfire.
The barricade fell. The creatures swarmed over it.
“There’s nothing to stop them,” Amria said.
On the orb, Brant and Rucker completed the final connection.
“So this thing, if it works, this will kill them all?” Skorzeny asked.
Rucker shook his head.
“They’re dead already. We’re making sure they know it,” he said resolutely. “There’s been enough death today. Too many good people. Too many people who didn’t know any better. Even too many of your people. It ends now.”
His hands in thick gloves—he didn’t want to get this far only to infect himself—Rucker placed the Spear of Destiny into the Tesla cannon where the mercury-tungsten matrix had been. The peculiar iron of the spear would act to excite the energy and accelerate it through the Tesla gun’s reverse wave transformer.
It was a long shot, but it was all they had.
Over his shoulder he saw the sun beginning to rise.
Rucker pulled the trigger. Energy surged through the Tesla gun and fed back into Übel’s machine. The narrow stream of atomic clusters formed in the matrix of iron that was the spear and fed into Übel’s machine.
The orb began to glow. It grew brighter and brighter until it was blinding. The hum grew in intensity until it was a piercing whine.
A wave of purple energy washed out from the orb.
The creatures throughout the courtyard and overrunning the wall froze.
At once they spasmed and shook. Their dead muscles clenched and they convulsed.
Finally, they fell to the ground.
This time they did not rise.
The survivors on the wall let out a cheer.
Lang stood up from his sniper’s nest on the tower and danced a Bavarian jig.
Terah climbed down from the wall and sprinted across the courtyard, throwing herself into Rucker’s arms. She kissed him deeply.
“Oh,” Rucker said. “I thought you had something going with Mr. Übercommando here,” he said, grinning.
Deitel found Skorzeny and offered him his hand. He stopped Skorzeny, confusing the commando, then grabbed Skorzeny’s forearm to shake his hand the way he’d seen Chuy and Rucker shake, gripping each other’s forearm. A Freehold handshake. It was Deitel’s way now, too.
Soldiers threw down their entrenching tools, clubs, and hatchets.
Life, once again, belonged to the living.
Lysander saw Amria sitting atop the parapet, hatred still smoldering in her eyes. These storm troopers may or may not have been the ones with the blood of her people on their hands. She didn’t care. She still wanted her revenge.
Amria wouldn’t let go of that hate. It would burn her up. She reaffirmed her vow to exact vengeance on the killers of her family. Not now. But soon. Lysander felt pity for her.
Filotoma and Lysander were shaking hands. Rucker kissed Terah deeply, as she’d just kissed him, ignoring the gore all over her arms.
Then the orb started to rumble.
Rucker and Brant looked at each other, understanding immediately. The feedback hadn’t been fully dispersed. It had continued to build in Übel’s machine.
“I don’t want to alarm anyone, but now it’s time to run!” Rucker shouted.
They were about thirty feet away from the orb when it exploded. The concussion wave knocked them off their feet and into unconsciousness.
The last thing Rucker saw before he blacked out was Terah’s hand in his.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Poenari Citadel
Wallachia Region
When Amria came to, a German soldier in a helmet like she’d never seen before and a camouflaged smock was wiping her forehead with a cool cloth. Lysander lay beside her, talking to another German dressed likewise.
Amria looked around. She was still in the castle courtyard. Tents were set up and soldiers were providing first aid and field medical treatment to those who needed it.
She pushed the cloth away from her head and spat, “Don’t touch me, German pig.”
If the soldier was insulted, he didn’t let it show.
“Quiet girl,” he said. “I’ve been ordered to tend to your wounds and that’s what I’m going to do.”
She looked up and saw Rucker and Skorzeny standing over her.
“It’s okay,” Rucker said. “They’re fallschirmjäger. German paratroopers.”
“That’s Wehrmacht. Regular army. Not SS like me,” Skorzeny said.
“German swine,” she said through gritted teeth.
She pushed him away, got to her feet unsteadily and walked away, disappearing into the keep.
Dr. Kurt von Deitel was assisting the wounded as well, lending the field medics the help of a true medical doctor. Deitel wasn’t helping because he’d been ordered to or assigned to it, nor from any sense of obligation. No, he helped because it made him feel good to do it, after the orgy of killing that he’d been a part of. He knew it had been necessary—kill or die. And the things were already dead. But it still felt like his soul was stained. He moved to the next patient. Easy enough—a dislocated shoulder.
“Here,” he said to the veteran trooper. “I can help.”
A few hours later, Rucker and Skorzeny had found a bottle of schnapps. They didn’t talk much. They just drank.
Hoffstetter had been knocked unconscious a good while for the second time that day. When the major finally recovered and found the two sitting on a couple of crates sharing schnapps, his jaw clenched.
/> “Why are you drinking with him?” Hoffstetter asked angrily. “That man should be under arrest. He is an enemy of the state.”
Skorzeny looked down his nose at the major.
“Where is he going? If they run, we’ll catch them. Let the man enjoy a drink before the airships arrive and you hand him over to the Gestapo,” Skorzeny said. “Fat little bureaucrat.”
Hoffstetter had no more cards to play. He’d make his report to Germania and have Skorzeny dealt with.
Skorzeny and Rucker picked up the bottle and wandered through the courtyard. The paratroopers were still tending to the wounded—civilian and SS. The dead—the permanently dead—were placed in bags, to be extracted on a separate airship. They were going to erase every bit of evidence of what had happened.
Rucker was pleased to see Bonhoeffer—Robin—among the survivors, working side by side with the medics. One of the highest-ranking moles in the German High Command, his cover had been kept.
“At least three of the draugrkommandos got away before the worst of it started,” Skorzeny said. “And Dr. Übel is missing. As is Colonel Uhrwerk. They found his mask and a clockwork arm, but nothing else.”
“Great,” Rucker said. “Look, it’s good of you to patch up our hurt. Figure you owed us, at least until you turn us over to the Gestapo goons?”
“This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t interfered, of course,” Skorzeny countered.
Rucker snorted.
“What if we hadn’t?” he said. “We can’t have you people marching out an army of thinking, undead soldiers. You people—you’re either at our throats our at our feet. We didn’t have any choice, really. You didn’t leave us any.”
“I thought you Freeholders always thought people have a choice,” Skorzeny said.
Rucker conceded with a nod.
“He is right, you know, the little fat turd who was just here,” Skorzeny said. “We will have to turn you in.”
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