“I kept the one magician the governor had that could open gateways. The governor and his troops are well and truly stuck until we rescue them.”
Moses looked slightly disappointed. “So, you are going to rescue them?”
“Eventually. I’ll let their numbers whittle down a bit first, and then I’ll disarm them and put them someplace safe.”
Xia bit her lip. “And where would that be?”
“I was thinking of the Supreme Governor’s former residence in the Ehah Archipelago. The dragon landed on the ferry, and it’s a thirty-two-kilometer swim through shark-infested waters back to the mainland. As we need to hire soldiers, we will remove a few at a time, the cream of the remaining crop, and have them swear binding oaths of fealty to the new government.” He cast a wan smile over the group. “This was fun and all, but I really don’t want to have to do it again.” He looked down at his monk’s robe. “Now, can someone please tell me where I can find my clothes?”
Xia smiled and crooked one finger. “Right over here.” As soon as they were out of sight of the others, she brought him up short, holding him at arm’s length and giving him a long look. “Thank you for saving my life,” she murmured seriously.
Max returned a flat look. “Are you serious? You stopped a spear that would have killed me.”
“Nonsense.” She scoffed. “You are a vampire, and now so am I. The spear might have killed you, but you would have healed in time. There are only so many ways a vampire can be killed, or so your mage friend taught me. There is something about silver that is inimical to the vampiric virus, so a silver sword through the heart will kill you. A shot to the head, decapitation, or a crushed neck will work, as will incineration. Don’t fall into a volcano.” Her sapphire eyes were hard. “Oewaelle and I had the opportunity to have many long and varied talks, and I’ve learned much. I can open gateways, and I can perform the same runespells as you, and perhaps more.” She stepped closer. “Moses told me about your runespell for a coherent light laser. I want.”
Max couldn’t pull his eyes from her face. “What’s it worth to you?”
“What do you want?”
“I’ll let you know.” Max touched her cheek with a finger. “Right now, I want clothes.” He squirmed. “This local underwear is made of boiled wool.”
Xia winced.
Cloying smoke hung thick in the air, and the castle wall shuddered as another in a ceaseless series of four-hundred-kilogram flaming boulders slammed into the stone wall. From below came the screams of elves as chunks of stone and burning rock fell into the packed courtyard below.
“We can’t hold out much longer, your majesty,” a tired-looking general in dented armor said to Shyilia as they looked from the top of the castle wall out over the field of battle. The general had a bloody gash down one cheek, probably from a flying chip of rock, and his right arm was in a white sling. “Those trebuchets are standing back out of arrow range and are going to tear the castle down. We can’t do a thing.”
Stepping forward, Max touched Shyilia on the shoulder. “Perhaps we can do something.” He motioned Mérilla to a narrow crenellation. Crown Princess Shyilia Iangwyn spun, her pale face registering shock.
“Max? What are you doing here with your team? You’re supposed to be off down south somewhere, fighting the supreme governor.”
“That’s done. We’re here.” As another boulder slammed the castle, Max asked, “Why don’t you just charge the lines and destroy the catapults?”
The elfin general ran his dirty fingers through short gray hair. “We tried that.” He nodded to the enemy lines. “The battle mages, the ones in black robes, tear our infantry apart before they are halfway to the fortified lines.”
Max rubbed his increasingly untidy Vandyke. He had been more than a little surprised to find the supreme governor knew nothing of straight razors. “First things first. Mérilla, would you be so good as to take out the nearest trebuchet? Weaken a section, and the catapult will destroy itself when it is fired the next time.” He turned to the rest of the team. “Choose your targets carefully, ladies and gentlemen. Get the mages in black robes first, officers next. Bonus points for bagging the head motherfucker.”
“Bonus points?” Casey looked up from his weapon that he had been checking.
Max’s grin was feral. “I will pay one hundred thousand dollars US out of my pocket to the person who kills the provincial governor who is leading this fiasco and brings me his head.” He turned to the elfin general, who was staring at Max in something like horror. “If we kill the mages, the governor, and disable a few of the catapults, can your ground troops mop up the rest?”
The elf gaped at Max.
“Maximilian asked you a serious question, General.” Shy growled, snapping the soldier from his daze.
“What? Oh, yes… my troops could mop up very nicely, thank you very much.”
Max didn’t blame the general’s hesitation one bit, having been in the position of stunned incredulity several times since his arrival on Aeyaqar. He waited a long moment before he spoke. “Don’t you think that you should tell your officers and sergeants to get ready to attack?”
The general shook his head, looking at Max ruefully. “Sorry. It’s taking me a moment to adjust to the change in situation, Mister…”
Shy answered in a soft voice, “This is the Earl of Wraniel, General Throngbottom.”
A second later, the general’s mouth dropped open.
“You always seem to have that effect on people, boss.” Mérilla snickered as she sighted the big Barrett.
Max raised an eyebrow. “The troops, General?”
The man blinked and bolted from the wall in a clatter of armor.
Max watched for a moment then turned to Shyilia. “It’s nice to see you again, Shy. I’m glad we’re not too late.”
She shook her head. “You nearly were.” She sighed. “My father…”
Max held up his index finger. “A moment, please.” He turned to Mérilla and slid his helmet into place. “Ready?”
“Ready, boss,” the Canadian sniper answered, her helmet also up. The Barrett, Max knew, had digital sights that fed directly into the operator’s HUD. Although it didn’t look like Mérilla was aiming the big gun, in actuality, it was dead on target.
“The rest of you get ready and fire with Mérilla.” He drew his own HK 897a mag-lev gun. Although he preferred his trusty Colt 1911, he knew enough to choose the right tool for the job. A battle mage dressed in black robes was standing on a small rise, shading his eyes as he watched the castle in anticipation. “Any time, Mérilla.”
An earsplitting boom from the Barrett was followed instantly by four cracks from the only slightly less powerful hand weapons. The heads of four out of six battle mages evaporated in clouds of red gore just as the startled gunner fired the catapult. The weakened swing arm cracked under the strain, twisting sideways to smash the Volkswagen-sized boulder, blazing brightly, into the frame of the catapult, setting it afire before bouncing down the line of assembled troops, crushing the two remaining battle mages before setting the reinforced positions ablaze.
Mérilla was deathly quiet as she sighted, then there was another boom as the Barrett spoke again. Zooming in with his helmet optics, Max saw a man of medium height sitting on a black charger stare for an instant at the melon-sized hole where his chest used to be. For sixty seconds, the guns on the castle barked their deadly fire, blowing armored soldiers into bloody pieces. The fire slowed, and there were a few more cracks, felling several more sergeants and officers. The assaulting army, still fifty or sixty strong, had been reduced from one hundred in a matter of minutes. They dropped their weapons and advanced, hands on their heads. A single unarmed sergeant, brighter than most, appeared to be leading the ragged dispirited group. The battle was over.
The orderly surrender was i
nterrupted when the castle gates boomed open, disgorging several dozen elves howling with bloodlust and waving their glittering swords. This was something Max had never expected to see in the normally stoic elves.
“Put a few rounds into the dirt separating those two groups.” He growled. “I will not have my prisoners slaughtered by angry elves.” He swung to Shyilia, who was staring over the parapet in horror. “Get down there, dammit, and get a handle on your troops. My people can kill elves as easily as they can kill others.”
Her face was the color of chalk as the team’s guns began to snap out single precise shots between the opposing forces. The elves came to a ragged halt, staring with hate at the parapet where the shots had come from. It was another two minutes before the small figures of Shyilia and General Throngbottom slowly moved to the front of the mass of milling fuming elves. Even with the audio enhancement of his suit, Max couldn’t understand the angry conversation. The general’s face turned red, while Shyilia’s stayed a pasty white. When the leader of the elven soldiers drew his sword, Max was ready, taking the blade off cleanly just above the sword’s hilt.
“Fuck!” Max swore. “Let’s get down there before we have to take them all out.”
Xia keyed the private channel. “What are you going to do, Max? Not something stupid, I hope.”
“Yeah, something stupid. You wanted to know about my coherent light runespell—well, you’re about to find out.”
The five armored figures walked through the center of the group of elves with slow, inexorable resolve, neither slowing nor turning away if an elf happened to be in their way. The elf moved or was trampled. One particularly stubborn elf held his ground and was trampled by Xia without comment. When he drew his sword, Xia calmly took the weapon from his grip as if he were a child and, using her newly found vampiric strength, snapped it in two. Dropping the halves in the dirt at her feet, she continued to walk. Max, with the others spreading out to his right and left, turned to face the angry elves.
“What’s the problem?” he asked bluntly, retracting his helmet. An angry buzz spread through the elves, and an irritated spokesman, nearly as big as Sir Filvendor, growled, “We don’t deal with whoreson humans.” He spat on the ground.
Max looked at the spot of spittle sinking into the dry ground then looked up at the elf, giving him a chilling smile. “You just made the same mistake Sir Filvendor did, before I burned a hole in his chest. You assumed I was human.” Max stepped forward, letting his anger redden his eyes and distend his fangs. “I’m not.” He raised his right hand as he drew the runespell with the left. He growled out the words, and a beam of light shot from the palm of his hand. With a casual wave, he swept the fluorescent beam, which he had purposely made red, through the air. It made a diagonal slice a quarter of the way down the nearest tall tower.
The beam flickered out, and with an agonizing slowness, the top of the elfin tower slid over the wall to crash in a pile of rubble on the ground. Even from the ground, Max could see the stones on the stump of the tower glowing red. For some reason, all the elves had taken three large steps away from him and the other armored figures. He keyed the channel to Xia. “I need you to do me a favor. Lower your helmet and concentrate on those damned elves slaughtering our prisoners. I know you, Xia, and that should make you pissed enough for your eyes to glow and fangs distend.” There was silence for a long moment. “Can you help me?”
“Watch me.” When Xia’s helmet retracted, Max had to restrain himself from stepping back also. Her red gaze projected malevolence and the threat of sudden death, and her fangs glistened.
“Drop your weapons,” Max barked in his best parade-ground-command voice, and there was an immediate clatter of weapons hitting the ground. He picked up a sword by the blade, murmuring a word, and made a subtle gesture with his other hand. The sword reddened, sagging into a U shape before Max casually dropped it on the ground. He sincerely hoped that nobody noticed the faint blue etheric sheen that had enveloped his hand, preventing it from getting burned to the bone by the heat. “You are dismissed,” he said softly.
The elves stood, staring and frozen in fright.
“Now!” Max bellowed.
The elves turned and ran.
Winking at Xia, he turned to the sergeant of the enemy forces and crooked a finger.
The man came forward slowly, his face nervous.
“Your name, Sergeant?”
The man swallowed, coming to attention. “Sergeant Jagjit Purohit, of the second Wraniel Irregulars.”
Max chuckled softly. “Do you know who this is?” he asked, nodding to Shyilia.
“Crown Princess Shyilia Iangwyn, sir,” the sergeant said. “We were given a briefing, and a mage created pictures of certain—” He cleared his throat nervously. “Personages who were to be priority targets.”
Shy’s face reddened as she stared at the man.
Max turned slightly. “Shy, would you please be so good as to tell this sergeant who I am?”
“This is Maximilian Arkady Kiritescu, the Earl of Wraniel.” Her voice held the bleak edge of winter.
The man hadn’t become a sergeant by being dumb. His face went white, and Max saw his lips form the words, oh fuck, although nothing audible came out. Max waited for the import of what Shy had called him to sink in before he continued.
“By the way, Sergeant Purohit, the supreme governor has recently been removed from office, and it just so happens that I’m in the market for a new sergeant in charge of my irregular forces. Would you know anyone who might be interested in the job?”
Max watched with interest as the sergeant’s face went from despair to the slow realization that he might survive the day after all.
“Ahhh, yes, my lord. I would be happy to take the job if you would have me. The lads that are left are generally a good lot, but the officers were pieces of shit, pardon my sayin’ so.”
Max thought quickly. “Did the governor bring a strongbox with him, to pay the troops?”
Sergeant Purohit frowned. “Yes, sir, he did.”
“Good. You take a half dozen men and find and secure that strongbox. Next, you discharge the malcontents and pay them off. Tell them to go home. Once they are gone, pay the loyal troops half again what they were getting. Call it a bonus, and that goes for you too. Secure what is left and return it to me. After that… do what sergeants do best: make the Wraniel Irregulars the best unit in the country. There will be other troops arriving soon, and if things work out, you will have overall command of them as well. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Good. After we have a functioning military, we will start cleaning up the country. The hoodlums will be rounded up and jailed, and then we will deal with the goblin problem.” He clapped the man on the shoulder. “After that, it gets really exciting.”
The man snapped to attention with the clang of his armor, saluted, and spun toward the milling troops, already bellowing orders in rapid-fire succession.
Max watched him with satisfaction for a moment then turned back to the others, sagging with weariness. “Well, folks, only a couple of stops left, and we can wrap this thing up.”
Xia raised an eyebrow, and he gave an evil chuckle. “I was thinking of a quiet night at the Sleeping Cat in Peapend then moving on in the morning to Sloobork. We’ll give the forces bivouacking in Canada ten days to two weeks to enjoy the weather before we pull them out. By then, they will have probably burned up all the wagons and eaten the horses.”
Xia and Shy had nearly matching looks of revulsion of their faces.
“What will you do next, Maximilian?” Shy interrupted his train of thought. “You are the ranking aristocracy on the planet now. Your place is on the throne.”
Xia let out a small laugh. “Max? As king?”
Shy’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the
laughing woman. “He will also need a queen.”
Xia’s mouth closed with a snap, and she stared at Max with something akin to horror.
Max let her stew for a few more seconds before he threw her a line. “I already have plan C to fall back on. I’m no administrator, and the routine task of running a world would drive me to distraction. Besides…” He slowly grinned at the women. “My pay for this job will probably take me quite far from home.”
“You’re still going ahead with that idea?” Xia asked, studying his face. “You are going hunting for the starship?”
“Yup. There’s something wrong with this whole world—this whole situation. We solved the immediate problem, and for the moment, everyone is safe, but eventually, the birth problem and the question of why technology has never developed will have to be resolved. The most die-hard, hidebound, arch conservative would set the minimum population for this world in the high millions.” He glanced up at the evening sky, where stars were just starting to become visible through the thinning smoke of burned-out buildings. “The answers lie up there, I think.” Although he already guessed the answer, Max shot Shyilia a small smile as he asked, “Still thinking of coming with us?”
Her face fell, and he knew that his instinct was right. “My father was seriously wounded in the early fighting. Although he is still alive, his recovery will be a long time coming. As much as I dislike the prospect, I must assume control of the country, or things will fly apart.” She raised an eyebrow, and Max sighed, knowing that they were both in the same situation, although he’d chosen a different solution.
“Some time ago,” he began, “I dropped a pair of children we rescued off at the Sleeping Cat Inn. I had the innkeeper begin whispering the word that they were the children of the last surviving duke on Aeyaqar, and had been raised in hiding until a troll killed their parents and family. Since they both have the gene for magic users, I am going to suggest that they be crowned king and queen of Aeyaqar, with Oewaelle installed as regent of the land and the guardian of the children until they reach the age of majority.
Destiny of the Vampire (Adventures of the Vampire Book 1) Page 22