by Damon Alan
As they passed the gate and the door closed behind them, gunfire erupted from the ramparts of the wall.
The deaders were coming once more, trying to take the land back.
“Not today,” Wilcox whispered.
“What?” Nelson asked him.
“They didn’t get us today.”
Chapter 6 - Lost Hold
Irsu Cragstone embraced his wife, Kordina, when she met them at the gates. The engineers had opened the main gates to the Swiss countryside now that the Swiss were allies. It made coming home feel much more like a proud moment than a house burglary.
“You got wounded,” she noticed.
“Scratched,” Irsu replied, frowning at the thought of her worry.
“He got shot by the Grays,” Coragg said. “A bullet almost took the Amblu-gane’s head clean off.”
“You talk too much, Coragg, you’re relieved,” Irsu said. “Go hit a tavern. I’ll see what we’re up to next.”
“I’ll go with you to the tavern…” Numo said, looking cautiously at Kordina.
“What do I care, you oaf?” she snipped at the scout. “Get to drinking, Irsu is staying with me.”
“But there will be drinking, right?” Irsu asked.
“You and I are going to go drink my cousin’s stock,” she said as she grabbed his hands and led him away from the troops that had brought him home.
“Well, at least the liquor will be good,” Irsu sighed. “He probably wants me to deliver schokolade to Hagirr or something.”
Kordina shook her head. “No such thing. It’s worse than that.”
“I was joking,” Irsu protested.
“And I am not. Off to the royal chambers.” She dragged him faster. “The Underking awaits his Amblu-gane.”
“I’m still not comfortable with that title,” he complained.
“That makes it all the more fun to say.”
When they got to the royal fortress within the hold, they were rushed in without any formality. Irsu knew then that the matter was serious. Most dwarves loved their ritual displays. While Irsu would prefer life uncomplicated and full of simple honesty, his people were renowned for making a one-hour event into an all afternoon display.
“Good,” was the only announcement. “You’re finally here.” From King Scorriss Bloodbane himself. “Where’s Numo?”
Irsu bowed to his king, which earned him a look of annoyance. “I sent him and Coragg to the tavern hall,” Irsu said. “They’ve worked hard, the trip was long, and whatever the issue is here they’ll be more than happy to go along with anything the clan needs.”
“Good dwarves, those two are,” the Underking replied. He poured Irsu and Kordina a drink to match his own. “Good to see you, cousin,” he said to Kordina as he handed her a mug of wine.
“And you, as always.”
Irsu took a deep drink before he spoke. “Why, my king, did you call me away from command?” he kept his eye contact as the King turned to face him. “What is more important than dealing with a people who want to drive us out of our hold?”
“Where would we go if they succeeded?” the King asked. “That question is why you are here.”
“Through the gate, back to our old hold, then life would continue as before.”
“Two weeks ago, a band of dwarves, in unmarked leather armor, attacked Iron Mountain Hold. They didn’t have the equipment to break down the walls and gates, so they didn’t get in. The contingent I left to guard the gates held, with only three casualties.”
“What clan would dare attack us?”
“That’s the thing,” the King replied. “They had no markings. No banners. No honor.”
Irsu stared at the symbol of Ekesstu on the wall behind the King. No dwarf could be without honor in such a way. They would have no entry into the afterlife.
“Our banners define us,” Irsu whispered, in awe of the concept the King had just shared with him. “We are the symbols of our clan, of our gods.”
“Not these dwarves,” King Scorriss replied. “To make matters worse, they appeared sickly. Pasty skin, eyes so pale they were almost white. The pink inside their eyes reflected back to the torches of our guards.”
“Dwarves don’t get sick like that either,” Irsu said.
King Scorriss frowned, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Except that you say they do and my King speaks the truth in all things,” Irsu rapidly added.
Kordina gasped and started to tell Irsu to mind his words.
The Underking held up a hand to stop her and sighed. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t believe me either.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Irsu answered. “Just the opposite in fact.” He put his closed fist over his heart. “What is your command, my king?”
“I want you to go back into the old world. Take a small contingent of soldiers, whatever you need. Gear, weapons, take it from the royal armory. Find these dwarves and get answers. If their disease is infectious, you’ll need to stay away from the clan for some time until we see if you’ve contracted the illness. But you can leave runes outside the gates to Iron Mountain Hold to let us know what you find. If you’re not sick in a year, return to us.”
“A year?” Kordina exclaimed. “Scorriss! He’s my husband, we’ve but barely married.”
“I know,” the King replied.
“It’s fine,” Irsu said to Kordina. “We’re not going to get a disease, and what’s a year to us? We have centuries. You waited four years while I trained.”
She smiled weakly. “I did. That was long enough.”
“I’ll be back,” Irsu told her. He walked to her and pulled her close. “I’ll bring you something from the old world. Something we can remember that world by.”
“One year,” she whispered to him, tears falling into her beard. “One year.”
“No more if this soul can help it. The gods might have other plans, but I don’t.”
“Take tonight to spend with your wife in your quarters,” the Underking told him. “Kordina, he’s the Amblu-gane. He has to be the one.”
She practically growled her response. “Stupid tradition anyway.”
“But it’s our tradition,” Irsu told her, stroking her hair. “Tonight. Then we celebrate in a year. And we’re wasting time. Let’s go home.”
“Go. Go!” Scorriss told them, waving toward the door. “I’ll send Coragg for you in the morning.”
Irsu held Kordina’s hand as he led her to their home.
Chapter 7 – Allies
Harry stood with Miller watching the latest group of Dek leave their summer grounds. In groups of forty or fifty, a few families banded together. Enough for security, but not so many that if a group was destroyed the tribe would be seriously harmed.
A hard pragmatic thought in a hard and brutal world. He hadn’t seen a lot of the brutality yet, but from the stories the Dek shared he needed to brace himself.
“What are we doing, Lieutenant?” Miller asked him.
“We’re leaving last, Cylethe’s orders,” Harry replied.
“She’s in charge now?”
Harry sighed. He was walking a tightrope. He couldn’t surrender his command to this dek, Cylethe. But he did need her knowledge if his men were to survive this world. A very fine tightrope indeed. “I’m in charge, Miller. She is more of a guide, and a smart leader doesn’t throw the wisdom of a good guide away.”
A dek ran out of the tree line several hundred yards from the edge of the village. The Undek apparently took clearing any new growth around the village as a serious obligation when they returned here each year. Thanks to that diligence Harry’s line of sight was considerable.
The dek waved his arms frantically.
“Miller get the unit on alert. Bring the Hotchkiss gun. You’re my loader, Tim’s already away.” Harry pointed to a spot east of their position. “We’re setting up on the edge of town. Meet me there. No delay, chap.”
“Aye,” Miller turned and ran toward the unit’s yoglik.
No more
than two minutes later and the dek runner was in town. Harry and Miller were setting up the Hotchkiss facing the point where the runner had exited the forest. He didn’t know what was going on, but the dek was frantic and now the remaining villagers, probably less than five hundred, were frantic as well.
“Damn, I need Parker’s amulet.”
“The amulet is with Timothy, Lieutenant.”
Harry smiled. “That’s right. Good of Parker to loan it to him without a mention to me.” He pointed at the spot to deploy the Hotchkiss. “Let’s get with it.”
He hurriedly explained to Miller his expectations for a loader. Several dozen warriors sprinted out of the village and into Harry’s line of fire as a shadow darted over the machine gunners.
“NO!” Harry yelled, as he frantically waved the warriors aside “Get out of my way!”
The shadow was Cylethe, flying on some creature that looked more dead than alive. She was quickly over the forest, circling, looking for something.
Suddenly, everyone in place, the scene fell silent.
“I wish I knew what was going on,” Miller whispered.
“We need to move,” Harry told Miller, then barked orders to all of his men. “Squad! Crossfire formation, end of the Undek lines. As practiced!”
Five men ran left, five, including Miller and Harry, ran right. “Set up just like we did before.”
Miller nodded, doubling his speed as he prepared the Hotchkiss squad gun for action. They kept their center pivot point on the spot the runner had exited the forest. Harry sat down on the ground, raised the rear stock support as Miller splayed the bipod legs and attached the swivel.
The creature Cylethe flew, which he would later learn was a drakon, screamed then reared its neck back. Billowing green clouds of thick fumes spewed from the drakon’s mouth, far heavier than the air it dropped through.
Inhuman screaming erupted from within the trees, letting Harry know there was dying going on.
He found out what a moment later. Beings — very disturbingly different from the horses they marginally resembled — erupted from the tree line and charged across the clearing. Four pumping legs and a human shaped torso, they had two arms and a head. The head was far more like that of a wolf than a person. The centaurs, for lack of a better word, carried spears, shields, and swords as they raced toward the outnumbered dek warriors. Painted symbols decorated torsos and flanks.
Harry charged the Hotchkiss, driving the first round into the chamber. He took a general look down the sites toward the targets, then fired. The gun raised a cloud of dust as gas ejected from the end of the barrel and disturbed the ground ahead, which rapidly blew away to the right of their position.
He shot three round bursts, his years of practice and skill helping him to save ammunition. As the 11mm bullets slammed into the horse-like bodies, they lost footing and tumbled. The stricken beings would entangle the legs of their comrades, taking down more of them. Much like horses, legs often broke during the cartwheeling that followed a centaur going down.
“Sek-nook!” the dek nearest him said, smiling and drawing a finger across his throat. Harry knew the meaning of nook. Horse. Sek-nook must be the name of the creatures.
Later he’d learn the meaning of sek. Together they meant half-horse.
The dek set long spears into the ground, pointed toward the charging beasts, a defense Harry judged to be wholly inadequate for the task that needed to be done.
Cylethe’s drakon took her over the battle, where streaks of energy often jetted down from her hands toward the ground. Occasionally an arrow would rocket up toward her from the rear of the half-horse cavalry. The usual result was the missile stopping in mid-flight as if it hit a wall.
“Red flare,” Harry ordered Miller.
Miller, having just reloaded another magazine into the top of the Hotchkiss, pulled out a flare gun and loaded it. The private shot into the air and almost immediately the other riflemen in Harry’s squad opened up. He turned back to the task at hand and began the slaughter once more.
Not quickly enough. A dozen or more of the half-horses managed to get past the crossfire and slammed into the lines of the Undek warriors. Some impaled themselves on the long spears, but several slid past, slashing with swords or stabbing with spears. Several dek went down, but others dropped their spears to jump at the half-horses with a seemingly insane commitment to the goal of slaughtering a dangerous enemy.
When a half-horse proved vulnerable the Undek climbed all over the stricken beasts, who seemed to think they were invincible until they realized they weren’t. As knives plunged into the creatures, Harry noticed the native warriors never attacked the torso. The guttural growls of the half-horses didn’t send a message of fear when the dek took one down. It sounded like hate.
He looked over at Garrett. The loud, staccato pops of the MAS rifle came in rapid succession. The soldier was firing fast enough that ammunition concerns popped into Harry’s head. “Garrett, tell the other riflemen on both ends of the line to aim only for the horse part and to preserve cartridges where they can!”
Garrett stopped firing, nodded, and began sharing the order with the man next to him.
Harry opened fire again as a second wave blasted from the forest. This time he put one or two round bursts into the beasts, with the same effect. He had to save ammunition, there weren’t any 11mm depots that were going to resupply him.
“Seventh belt,” Miller told him. “We have six more.”
Damn. There was nothing for it. The creatures had already proved their ability to butcher the dek if Harry did nothing.
The bam-bam of the bursts going off combined with the slow rate of fire for the Hotchkiss made it easy to count the rounds left. Thirty in a belt disappeared all too fast.
“Ninth belt,” Miller said.
Still some of the half-horses got through. They mindlessly threw themselves on the spears. A few charged toward the Hotchkiss and Harry’s riflemen, but the men would concentrate on those and none made it through. At least at first. One particularly tenacious example lunged toward Harry and Miller, and only after what had to be a dozen shots or more did his legs fold below him. The creature slid to a stop just in front of the machine gun, spraying dirt all over the Hotchkiss as well as Harry and Miller. The scent of blood, sweat, and intestines was strong.
Sand filled the mechanism of the gun. It had to be cleaned to be fired again or it would be destroyed. “Miller, to your rifle,” he said as he pulled his pistol.
Miller joined the other men to Harry’s right, firing from the kneeling position. Harry dove on top of the half-horse’s prone body to give himself a steady firing platform. He had six shots in his revolver, which he’d been saving for himself and his men to be honest. Somehow the thought of being captured by these creatures frightened him more than the Nazis.
The loud pop of his service revolver had an entirely different sound than the Hotchkiss. And a lot less range. He was unable to shoot the distant creatures, and the ones closer still took two or three shots to bring down. After three reloads he finally clicked on an empty chamber as a half-horse wobbled — then fell in front of him.
The sword the creature dropped was of a size Harry could use. Harry picked it up, then jumped onto the body of the creature that had disabled the Hotchkiss. Two of the men to his right were fixing bayonets to their MASs. Miller and Garrett still had rounds, but probably not many.
Once the last bullets were gone, they’d join the Undek in a last stand with hand to hand weapons. He looked over at the dek. They had close to a hundred warriors when the fight started. Now there seemed less than half that.
He heard Miller’s rifle click empty.
Harry raised his sword and the men around him grabbed spears and swords as well.
“For England!” he yelled, although that made no sense at all. England wasn’t even part of this world.
The men charged over the half-horse corpses, which were so numerous the living half-horses were unable to char
ge in return. They gingerly picked their way through the corpses of their fallen comrades but seemed no less determined to wipe out the Undek villagers.
Miller was next to him when suddenly the private dropped his weapon and jerked fully upright. He arched his back and looked at Harry in desperation.
Then began to change shape.
The private clenched his fist in agony, his jaw moved unnaturally beneath his skull. His lips stretched tight over enlarged teeth and he seemed to be getting taller. Clothing ripped as muscles bent and bones thickened and curved. Harry heard snapping sounds from within Miller’s body as changes wracked him.
Cylethe’s drakon circled overhead. The dek magister leaned over and looked down on Harry and Miller’s position. Whatever was happening Harry assumed it had something to do with her.
He had no choice but to hope so, because the battle wasn’t stopping for him to tend to Miller.
A half-horse engaged Harry but dramatically underestimated Harry’s will to live. It thrust a spear at him, planning to run him through. Harry dodged the point, the wooden shaft slid along his arm tearing his tunic and skin with the scrape of rough wood. Harry swung the sword in his hand at the front knee of the beast, and to his surprise the weapon sheared through the sinewy leg.
The half-horse screamed his rage as he fell.
Harry plunged the sword into the body of the creature repeatedly until its hate-filled eyes ceased to focus. A few moments after that it breathed its last in a spray of foamy blood.
Miller!
Harry turned to look where Miller had been, but the private was gone. A ruckus toward the trees caught his attention. A line of ripped discarded clothing pointed toward the scuffle, Miller’s clothing ripped and fallen from his body.
He immediately knew why.
Miller was gargantuan. His features were distorted, but the face of the monster Harry was staring at was still enough Miller that he was recognizable. Except Miller’s head was the size of the Matador lorry. He stood nearly fifty feet high. The wicked smile on monster Miller’s face increased with each half-horse he smashed.