Of course, the Croatan would be long gone by then. They wouldn’t have entered the caves if they didn’t have another way out. They might be small and scaly, but they weren’t stupid. By the time he got another squad in here his prey would not only be long gone, but able to come back and harass the good citizens of Montpelier whenever they chose.
No, he thought, better to keep the pressure on and run at least one of the groups to ground. If he didn’t, he was certain he’d hear about it from those higher up the chain of command and he’d been on their bad side more than enough already.
So, one tunnel or both?
He stared down each passageway one at a time and then made up his mind. He turned, caught the eye of Second squad’s commander, Davis, and waved him forward.
“Looks like they split up,” he said softly, pointing out the tracks on the floor of both tunnels. “I’m guessing that’s what they want us to do as well, which is why we’re going to stick together instead. I want your men keeping a watch on our six, just in case the other group decides to double back and try to catch us from behind.”
“Roger that,” Davis said and slipped back down the line to pass the word to the rest of the men.
When they were ready, they headed out again, moving quietly but deliberately down the right passageway. Fifteen minutes passed with no further sign of the Croatan and Riley was starting to think he’d missed something, a side passage or concealed doorway that their quarry might have slipped through maybe, when something came flying out of the semi-darkness.
Years of battle-trained reflexes were all that saved him; the spear went hurtling past his shoulder as he twisted out of the way at the last second. A quick glance ahead told him what he needed to know; a war party of at least a dozen Croatan were charging down the tunnel toward them with spears pointed in their direction. Others raced along the walls and ceiling with the dexterity of cave spiders, their lizard-like hands and feet adapted across millennia for just that purpose. They would be on them in seconds; if he didn’t do something the Croatan were going to turn them all into human pin cushions.
With Davis off to his right and the rest of his men behind him, he wasn’t worried about hitting the wrong target so he yelled “Contact!” to warn the others and then Riley pulled the trigger of the Mossberg 590A1 Tactical combat shotgun he was holding.
The boom of the weapon was loud in the confined space of the tunnel; the shot tore through those Croatan unlucky enough to be in the front ranks. The sound was still echoing through the tunnel when first Davis, and then the rest of the squad, cut loose with their HK MP5 submachine guns, firing past Riley’s shoulder and into the oncoming party of Croatan.
Their scaly hides were tough, but not tough enough to offer any real protection against the firepower at the Templars’ disposal. The Croatan who survived Riley’s blast were hit repeatedly, making them appear to dance for a moment in the dim light of the tunnel before dropping to the floor.
Riley shifted his aim, fired again, this time at those scampering along the ceiling of the tunnel, blowing them free of their perches and knocking them down atop the bodies of those below them, causing further havoc in the enemy’s ranks.
But the Croatan were taking action as well. Those in the rear of the party, protected initially by those in the front ranks, managed to send a volley of spears and stone-tipped arrows in the Templars’ direction, forcing them to lose their aim as they twisted and turned in an effort to avoid being hit. An arrow skimmed off the wall next to Riley and slammed into his shoulder, knocking him back a step. Thankfully the ricochet slowed the arrow down enough that it didn’t penetrate the ballistic armor he was wearing beneath his jumpsuit. Some of the other Templars were not as lucky; Riley heard at least two screams of pain from somewhere behind him, evidence that some of his men had been hit. He didn’t have time to turn and see who it was, however, for the Croatan were still coming, charging over the bodies of their dead and injured comrades to get to the knights.
The Croatan were so close at this point that when Riley fired his weapon again, the shot didn’t have time to spread and the lead Croatan took the full force of it right in the face, blasting it to pieces and spraying the one behind it with a wave of blood, brains, and bone fragments.
Riley jacked the slide again, hoping to get off one more shot before they were completely upon him, but he never got the chance. A thunderous roar filled the tunnel as a section of the wall and ceiling suddenly gave way, cascading down between the two groups, and the ground shook, sending Riley stumbling backward. He held onto his Mossberg tightly, not wanting to lose it in the collapse, as he struggled to stay on his feet.
By the time the shaking stopped, a thick cloud of dirt and dust filled the tunnel making it impossible for him to see anything ahead. He stood there, weapon at the ready, straining his ears to pick up any sound in the space ahead of him, expecting at any moment to have half-a-dozen Croatan come charging out of the dust.
But none came.
Riley waited a few minutes for the dust to settle, just to be sure. When it did he could see that the Croatan were gone, having retreated back the way they had come and taking their dead with them. Riley ordered Davis to check on the men while he stepped forward and examined the pile of debris that now blocked the way forward. He wasn’t an engineer, by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn’t take much science to understand that one of the supporting beams lining the tunnel wall had collapsed, pulling down a good chunk of the ceiling with it.
Maybe the support beam had been slowly failing for decades. Maybe it had simply chosen that moment to give up the ghost and their presence there at the time was little more than coincidence.
Or maybe the sound of the gunfire had been loud enough to bring it down all on its own.
Could they safely use their weapons down here? Could they defend themselves if the Croatan attacked again or would doing so bring the rest of the tunnel down on top of them when they did?
Riley didn’t know and that worried him more than he wanted to admit. For a second time that day he wondered if he’d made the right choice by continuing.
He felt Davis approach him from behind where he’d gone to check on the other men. Riley waited until the other man was close enough and then asked, “Status?”
“Two injured – Hargraves and Stover – but they can move under their own power and should be fine until we can get back to the surface. The bigger issue is Whitmore.”
“Whitmore?” The corporal was one of those newly promoted from the regular combat teams to serve with Echo. He was a solid, though uninspiring knight. Good enough when they needed him but little ambition beyond that. “What’s he done now?”
“Gone missing.”
“What do you mean ‘missing’?” Riley didn’t wait for an answer. Thinking the corporal might have simply been missed in the dust and the dark, Riley called out, “Sound off!”
The men counted off, one after another, first the command squad, the First and Second squads. Twelve men in all.
But only eleven responses reached his ears.
No Whitmore. Where the hell was he?
He turned to Davis. “Nobody saw anything?”
A quick shake of Davis’ head. “He was tail-end Charlie. Grant said he was there when the firing started, but when he turned to check on him following the cave-in, Whitmore was gone.”
Not good, Riley knew. The men who served on the Templar fast-action response teams were, for the most part, veterans of the regular combat units. Not the type to go running off into the dark at the first sign of trouble. Whitmore’s duty was to guard their six; he wouldn’t have abandoned that job voluntarily.
Which meant someone, or something, had forced him to.
It didn’t take much to imagine what.
Riley could picture it in his mind’s eye. While the squad was distracted by the Croatan attacking from the front, the group that had split off back at the tunnel fork had likely doubled back and attacked from the rear. The cave-in had prob
ably scared the Croatan off.
And it seemed that they’d taken Whitmore with them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
With a man missing and two men injured, the idea of following the Croatan was immediately discarded. Riley decided instead that they would backtrack along their original course as quickly as possible in the hopes of catching up with the Croatan that he assumed had taken Whitmore.
If he is alive, we’ll rescue him, Riley thought. If he isn’t…well, the Croatan will pay for that particular mistake.
Once apprised of the situation, the men wasted no time moving out. A hundred yards back up the tunnel they found their first bit of evidence that they were on the right track; an empty magazine from Whitmore’s MP5. Riley scooped it up and pocketed it for reuse once they got back to the commandery, then continued onward.
Back at the fork, they found evidence of a struggle and a small splash of blood on the nearby wall. On the one hand Riley was pleased to see it – for it meant that Whitmore was still alive – but on the other it was a sign that his captors were not afraid to use force to keep him under their control.
Hang on, Whitmore. We’re coming, Riley thought as he waved the team down the tunnel’s fork.
# # #
They followed the Croatan tracks and the occasional spots of Whitmore’s blood for what felt like hours, but in truth was little more than thirty minutes. The tunnel twisted and turned about itself half-a-dozen times before opening into a large underground chamber.
Riley estimated the space to be about fifty feet in diameter. Rock formations grew up from the floor and down from the ceiling, sometimes meeting in the middle to form thick columns that obstructed the Templar’s view and created places for the enemy to hide. A large pile of rocky debris spilled out of an alcove to his right, looking like the remains of an earlier cave-in similar to the one they’d just experienced. On the far side of the room, directly opposite where he now stood, was the entrance to a tunnel leading out of the chamber.
Lying face-down in front of that opening was their missing man, Whitmore.
Resisting the urge to rush over to his fallen comrade, Riley stepped cautiously into the room, moving left as he came out of the passageway, hugging the wall to keep the entire room in view. He signaled to the others, sending half of the group along the opposite wall while the rest moved in behind him.
Riley began working his way forward, carefully checking behind any column that obstructed his view as he headed toward his fallen comrade. He fully expected to find their scaly opponents waiting to jump out and was surprised when they didn’t. The rock columns - Stalagmites? Stalactites? He could never remember which one was which – seemed like the perfect place for them to hide.
Tracks led from the where the body rested forward, toward the mouth of a tunnel a few yards away. It was too dark for Riley to see very far down the passage; an army of Croatan might be waiting there, ready to charge out at any minute, for all he knew.
Riley signaled for Davis to keep his eye on the tunnel opening, then crossed to his fallen man and then crouched down beside him, feeling with one hand for a pulse.
No joy.
Whitmore was dead.
Riley took a quick glance at the tunnel mouth and then, when he didn’t see anything more than he had the first time, laid his shotgun on the ground next to the body. Reaching down with both hands, Riley gently turned the body over.
Whitmore died with an expression of surprise on his face, as if Death sneaked up on him when he wasn’t looking. The four-inch slash across the front of his throat explained why. Already weak from his previous injury, Whitmore had probably bled out before he’d even understood what was happening.
Godspeed, Riley thought, as he gently closed the man’s eyes.
He lifted Whitmore’s right arm, intending to remove the signet ring that every knight wore – the Templar version of dog tags - when a drop of blood dripped onto the floor next to him from somewhere above.
Dark-green Croatan blood.
Riley didn’t hesitate. He snatched up his shotgun and rolled onto his back, pointing the weapon upward and firing even before he consciously recognized the shape dropping from the ceiling toward him as one of the largest Croatan he’d ever seen. The blast from the shotgun caught the creature full in the chest, tearing a hole right through its torso and knocking it far enough to one side that it fell in a heap on the stone floor rather than landing directly atop Riley.
No sooner had it hit the ground than the rest of the Croatan suddenly made their appearance, dropping from the ceiling where they’d been hiding high above, like their now-dead leader. They closed with the Templars lining the sides of the room so quickly that they were among the humans’ ranks before any of them had a chance to even get off a single shot.
With the enemy so close, the Templars had no choice but to forgo their firepower in exchange for their swords and within seconds the room was filled with the clash of steel on stone as the men fought back against their assailants.
Having already killed the Croatan that had targeted him as its personal foe, Riley had time to scramble to his feet undeterred, shoving his arm through the shotgun’s sling as he did so. He brought the weapon up and tried to find another target, but the enemy was much too close to his own men to allow him to use the scattergun. Frustrated, he let the weapon fall to his side and drew his handgun instead. He was able to get off two shots, killing another Croatan and dropping a third to the ground, before he ran out of targets, the others being too close to his own men for him to risk taking a shot.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the tunnel mouth behind them was empty. If we can assemble there, we can face off against three times their number and restrict the fight to a single front, Riley thought.
Raising his voice above the din as best he was able, he shouted, “On me, Templars! On me!” and began moving toward the tunnel.
He hadn’t taken more than a few steps in that direction, however, when the opening shimmered and then disappeared altogether, the glamour that had created it in the first place dissipating and leaving him staring at a stretch of blank stone wall instead.
For a moment he froze, his mind trying to catch up with the reality of what he was experiencing, and then he whirled about, his gaze going automatically to the entrance on the other side of the room, now their only way out.
As if on cue, a low grinding sound reached his ears and the pile of debris to the right of the entrance began to shift and move of its own accord. Riley stared in fascination as the “rocks” and “dirt” rose off the ground, revealing themselves to be the exoskeleton and flesh of a creature he’d only heard about but never actually seen.
It’s a rock troll! An actual, freakin’ rock troll!
For a moment, Riley’s wonder of the ancient creature overcame his fear.
The troll was humanoid in shape, standing a good eight feet tall if an inch and twice as wide at the shoulders as Riley. Its skin was a grayish-brown color, jagged and rough and reminding the Templar of a piece of unpolished granite. Its eyes were pools of black the size of Riley’s fist and when the creature opened its mouth, he could see rows of jagged teeth the size of boar’s tusks.
Templar history held only a few records of encounters with such creatures. They were rare and reclusive to begin with, preferring to live deep beneath the surface in the vast underground passages that honeycombed the earth, and only occasionally came into contact with human beings as a result. When they did, though, things didn’t usually go well for those who found themselves in the troll’s way, for trolls were highly territorial and would fight to protect what they considered theirs.
That thought brought the reality of the situation back to him full bore. Seeing one here, this close to the surface, between him and the only exit made Riley’s hair stand on end.
What on earth is it doing here? he wondered. And how the hell are we going to get past it?
The troll locked its gaze on Riley, let out an ear-splitting
roar that seemed to shake the room around them, and took a lumbering step forward.
Riley brought up his pistol and fired off several shots in rapid succession as he moved forward, but he might as well have been throwing BBs at the massive creature. Its thick hide acted like armor, sending the bullets ricocheting away from it without doing any apparent harm. Riley kept firing, targeting the same general area, hoping the accumulation of damage might allow some of the shots to get through. When the gun clicked empty, he hit the magazine release, letting it fall to the ground as he grabbed another off his belt and shoved that into place in one smooth motion, firing again as soon as it was seated.
The troll responded by tearing off some of the rock formations hanging down from the ceiling and hurling them, one after another, in Riley’s direction.
The Templar avoided the first two, dodging out of their path at the last second, but the third hit the ground a few feet in front of him, shattering on impact and sending multiple projectiles in his direction. One caught the side of his head, dazing him for a moment, while another smashed into the hand holding his pistol, knocking it out of his grasp.
Riley staggered back a few steps and shook his head to try and clear it. He glanced around, searching for his handgun, but didn’t see it anywhere. With the troll only a few yards away he reluctantly drew his sword.
Gonna have to do this one the old-fashioned way, he thought, and then charged forward.
The troll’s bulk would prohibit it from moving quickly, Riley knew, giving him a slight advantage. On the other hand, a single blow from one of the creature’s massive fists would probably render him unconscious, if it didn’t squish him like a bug outright. He was going to have to get in close enough to deliver a killing blow while at the same time avoiding the creature’s greater reach. To that end he ran straight forward rather than hugging the edge of the room as he’d done during his advance, intending to use the rock formations to his advantage as an obstruction to the larger creature.
Unfortunately, the troll had other ideas.
Fall of Night: A Templar Chronicles Novel Page 4