Seventh

by Ray Chilensky

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  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording, or by any information

  storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental.

  Copyright 2017 Ray Chilensky

  Seventh

  The Blessed Warriors Book 1

  Ray Chilensky

  To my brothers: Ern, Robert and Steve. We stand together; always.

  “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

  Ephesians 6:12

  Swordsman’s Prayer

  by Nathan Vigil

  Measure not my courage by the danger before me, not by victory, conflict or defeat. Though others may falter and shrink from the task I shall lift myself up, and into action.

  Let this be the voice of our courage, for though my soul may be frightened, my sword remains undaunted. I need no paths set clear before me, nor trail blazed wide to lend me ease. My purpose burns within my mind, and I know my duty well. If any will walk the way with me, let them know first my determination.

  For my sword, by then, will have cut the pathway clear, for them to follow or for another. Though my sword may lie in silence, amid the dust of shallow graves, I will have served a greater good, and to it given all; in this I find my peace.

  Heavy is the quiet of men too timid; its weight is as a millstone. Noble is the sound that shatters the silence and cries defiant.

  For those who cannot stand, I stand, in the name of those now silent, I shout.

  Coin and coffer cannot alter the right and wrong of things.I who stand, do so in faith, one for another.

  When you call, I am ready; my sword to your service.

  I am your hero, your brave, your strong.

  When you call, I will hear you and be it known, I will answer.

  Prologue

  Spin Ghar Mountains, Afghanistan April 9, 2010

  Bullets churned the dirt at the feet of the fleeing marines and blasted off bits of the canyon walls as they ran. Two members of the reconnaissance team had already been killed. Outnumbered and vulnerable while confined to the narrow footpath that ran up one side of the small canyon, the marines could not even turn to fire their weapons at their pursuers. The narrowness of the path limited them to running in single file while taking fire not only from behind but also from Taliban fighters on the other side of the canyon’s rim. Their only recourse was to run, hoping to reach the canyon floor where they could turn and fight back.

  Sergeant Cadell Selkirk stepped on the body of his team leader as he continued his flight. More fragments from the canyon wall bounced off the Kevlar of his helmet as a burst of enemy gunfire missed his head by inches. Still, all that Cadell and his comrades could do was continue their headlong flight. With the team leader dead, Cadell was now in command of the unit but, unable to look behind him, he was unsure how many members of the unit were still alive for him to command. The seventy-or-so meters to the canyon floor seemed to have been extended into miles. He finally reached the end of the trail and the flat, boulder-strewn floor near the canyon’s mouth. Sheltering behind one of the boulders, he could finally use his rifle.

  He fired in the general direction of the enemy that had pursued his team down the pathway. This time it was the Taliban that were trapped on the last few yards of the narrow trail and the burst from his rifle killed the first two Taliban fighters in the column. Fire was still pouring from the top of the canyon walls, though, and this forced Cadell to withdraw to a more protected position. As he retreated, he heard the sound of other M-4 rifles firing. His teammates had also begun to return fire. He took a mental accounting of which of those teammates were still alive and with him as he changed his rifle’s magazine.

  He rallied the five remaining marines and they began to coordinate their counter-fire. Two of the six surviving marines directed their shots toward the Taliban on the canyon’s rim while the others mowed down the fighters now streaming down the deadly, funneling pathway. Contemptuous of their own deaths, the Taliban fighters charged down the pathway. Just minutes later, Cadell and his squad were dangerously low on ammunition. The Taliban seemed to have an endless supply of men willing to sacrifice themselves.

  He looked to Coleman, the team’s communication specialist. “Radio!” he yelled. Coleman tried to crawl to Cadell but was hit in his right knee and rolled onto his back, screaming as he used both of his hands to stem the torrent of blood gushing from the destroyed limb. Corporal Joshua McLaren crawled to Coleman, unstrapped the field radio and managed to throw it nearly halfway to Cadell’s position. Cadell ran toward the radio and was surrounded by a cloud of dust as dozens of automatic rifle shots impacted on the dirt and boulders around him. His teammates expended more of their dwindling ammunition as they tried to protect him. Snatching up the radio, he found relative safety behind another boulder. Keying the microphone, he yelled his team’s call sign into the radio.

  After a few seconds, he received a response from a nearby marine firebase.

  “Fire mission!” he shouted, adding the team’s map coordinates and the location of the enemy troops. “Fire mission confirmed, White Rook,” a voice on the radio replied. “Cobras are inbound, E.T.A. two minutes.”

  “Expedite,” Cadell replied, “We’re in deep shit here! We have Cobras inbound!” He shouted to his squad. “Two minutes out!”

  McLaren had managed to crawl to Cadell’s position and was lying prone beside him, firing carefully aimed single shots from his rifle. “Coleman’s dead.” He announced, “I only have ten rounds left. The Cobras may not get here in time,” he said.

  The bolt on Cadell’s rifle locked open as he fired the final round in his last magazine. He dropped the rifle and began firing with his 9mm sidearm. “We’ve got to hang on,” he said.

  “RPG!” someone shouted. The rocket propelled grenade struck the boulder two of Cadell’s marines had taken cover behind. It shattered and fragments of rock tore the marines apart.

  McLaren and Cadell bolted away from the boulder they were behind just as a second RPG smashed into it. A fragment sliced through McLaren’s left thigh, almost forcing him to his knees. The ground was again churned into a cloud of dust as bullets struck about the fleeing marines. The running men heard the tell-tale sound of falling mortar shells. The dust raised by exploding shells made it almost impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction. Cadell led McLaren toward where he thought the mouth of canyon would be.

  Then he felt it: a hot tingling behind his forehead. There was magic here and it was old magic, perhaps even ancient. He led McLaren toward it, the tingling becoming more pronounced as he drew closer to the magic’s source. He heard the thumping of rotor blades. The Cobra helicopter gunships he had called for were nearby. But, in the thick, vision-obstructing dust, the pilots might not be able to discern friend from foe. With no other options, he continued to follow the magic, the hot tingle spreading from his head into the rest of his body.

  Finally he saw the outline of red and lavender light through the dust, his Truesight allowing him to see the magical illumination when his physical vision could not. In the canyon wall, very near the mouth, was a tunnel entrance hidden from normal vision by magic. Cadell ran toward the opening and all but dragged McLaren with him. Both men felt an itching sensation as they crossed the threshold and immediat
ely found that the air had an almost smothering, musty odor. It seemed so thick, so ancient that they could barely breathe it. Outside they could hear the cannons of the Cobras firing and the continued clatter of the Taliban’s rifles. Four Taliban fighters ran past the tunnel’s entrance. None seemed to be aware of its existence.

  “What the hell was that weird circle of light?” McLaren asked, inserting a fresh magazine into his sidearm.

  “You saw the lights?” Cadell asked, surprised.

  “Yeah. They were weird,” he replied. “They weren’t really bright enough for us to see them through all of that dust, but we did. Why didn’t the Taliban follow us in here?” He added.

  “They can’t see the opening,” Cadell said. “They probably wouldn’t be able to get in here if they could see it.”

  McLaren lowered himself to the tunnel floor, leaned his back against a wall and began to tend to his wounded leg. “What do you mean?”

  Cadell took a flashlight from his battle harness and shined it at the floor. It was tiled with alternating red and white squares in a checkerboard pattern, marred by many recently-caused cracks. Interrupting that pattern was a great stone seal with the six-pointed Star of David at its center and a multitude of carefully-carved glyphs and warding sigils surrounding it. Turning his light upward, he saw an identical seal carved into the tunnel’s ceiling. Both seals had cracks running across them. Cadell surmised that they had been caused by the recent shelling of the area. The seals’ magic would have been seriously weakened by those cracks.

  “Did we just find some Indiana Jones shit?”

  McLaren asked, shining his own light at the seal on the ceiling,

  “It’s more like Exorcist shit,” Cadell said, extending a hand to McLaren. “Get on your feet. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Why?” McLaren asked. “If the Taliban can’t get in here, then why not wait for the Cobras to finish them off and let the search and rescue boys come get us?”

  “There may be worse things in here than the Taliban,” Cadell said. Before McLaren could reply, five dark figures appeared at the fringe of his flashlight beam. They were roughly human in shape and seemed to be composed of solidified darkness. A light that shifted from red to a sickly purple glowed in their eye sockets. Hands with three claw-tipped fingers were attached to ape-like arms. They moved slowly toward the two marines, as if pushing against a wind gale, and seemed not to even notice Cadell and McLaren. One of the creatures knelt and began scratching at the circle that encompassed the seal. As its hand touched the seal, it screamed an agonized wail that seemed to linger in the tunnel even after the echo had faded. It was answered by a roar from deeper in the tunnel. The sound of it seemed to drive a wave of coldness before it. The other creatures joined the first in the destruction of the deeply-etched seal, clearly in pain but forcing themselves to scratch at the seal.

  “Fuck Me!” McLaren shouted. Gunfire echoed in the tunnel next. McLaren shot one of the kneeling creatures five times and knocked it away briefly from the seal before continued its work, unconcerned about McLaren or his gun.

  “What are those things?” he asked, aiming his pistol but deciding to save the last of his ammunition in case the creatures actually attacked them.

  Cadell lifted his field jacket and took a bone-handled knife from a hidden sheath at the small of his back. It was seax fighting knife and appeared to be very old. “Take this. It’ll do you more good against those things than a gun.” The creatures continued to paw at the circle seal. Holstering the pistol, McLaren accepted the dagger and saw that it had an eight-inch Damascus steel blade etched with hundreds of symbols he could not read.

  “What’s going on, Selkirk?” he asked, still pondering the symbols on the blade. “Why haven’t I seen this pig sticker before?” “It only becomes visible when it’s out of the sheath. It’s made for fighting demons,” Cadell said.

  “Are you telling me those things are demons?” McLaren gestured with the blade toward the creatures.

  Cadell nodded. “Demons of the goblin variety, I think,” Cadell said, taking a deliberate step forward into the middle of the seal and moving closer to the demons as they scratched away at the circle. “If they break that circle, they’ll be able to get out of the tunnel, and so will anything else it’s holding back. Use the knife. If anything gets past me, don’t let it out of the tunnel.”

  McLaren looked up from his examination of the seax. “Gets past you? A minute ago you were ready to beat feet out of here.”

  “That was before I knew they were trying to break the seal.” Cadell passed his right hand in front of his body and as McLaren watched, he was astounded as a sword appeared in Cadell’s hand as though it had been drawn out of the air itself. “Don’t let anything out of here while I’m gone.”

  Cadell’s blade moved sharply downward and severed the head of one of the demons as it scratched at the seal. In the next instant, one of the demons finally drove its claws deeply enough into the etched groove to create a gap in the circle. An instant after that, all four of the beasts leapt at Cadell. With his conjured basket-hilted broadsword, he deflected a claw-swipe meant for his throat and spun the blade into the right side of the demon’s head, slicing through the skull and leaving the top of the half of the head to bounce off the tunnel’s floor.

  Two more of the monsters came at him at the same time, one diving for his legs as the other reached for his throat with taloned hands. Cadell sidestepped and wheeled to the left. His sword arced in front of his face and cut both arms from the demon reaching for his throat. Cadell spun the sword tightly to the right and its blade bit deeply into the demon’s neck, leaving it to gurgle a last dying gasp. His other assailant stumbled past him as he dodged the beast’s attempt to tackle him. It snarled and rushed at him again, seeming to become a blur of flailing claws. Cadell’s sword flashed as he intercepted the beast’s claws, not flailing but moving in a graceful, precisely-controlled manner. The demon’s left arm was severed just above the elbow as Cadell finally counter-attacked through the ferocious offense. Before the limb had hit the ground, Cadell’s broadsword flashed downward, cleaving through the monster’s collarbone and opening a fissure of a wound down to the center of its chest.

  Cadell turned to find McLaren on his back, straddled by the last of the demons. The dagger Cadell had given him was protruding from the creature’s right forearm. The beast had his claws at the marine’s throat but McLaren’s fear-strengthened grip had thus far kept the talons from piercing flesh. Cadell brought his sword down to bisect the demon’s spine and nearly cleaved it in two. It fell atop McLaren, covering him with a blackish-purple gore that had the consistency of hot tar.

  Frantically McLaren kicked the slain monster off him and rolled to his feet. “Fuck, fuck fuck...” he repeated.

  “What the FUCK were those things?”

  “Demons,” Cadell said with matter-of-fact disgust.

  The answer calmed McLaren somewhat. “Demons,” he repeated. “Demons…they were demons.” Saying the word over and over again helped him to at least partly believe what he had just experienced. “Demons... demons…okay, demons. What the fuck are you?” he asked, gazing at the ornate, finely-crafted sword that was now dripping with the same type of gore that he was covered in.

  “You pulled that sword right out of the air. Fuck! I saw it! Right out of the fucking air!”

  “I’ll explain it all later,” Cadell said. “We still have work to do.”

  “What fucking work?” McLaren demanded, unconsciously backing away.

  “You heard that roar, right?” Cadell asked. McLaren took another step backward. “Yeah,” he said.

  Cadell gestured at the dead demons with his sword.

  “There’s something in here a lot worse that these things,” he said. “I have to kill it.”

  “Fuck that!” McLaren said. “Search and rescue is probably outside by now. There’s probably a whole platoon out there. They’ll have heavy weapons we can…”
/>   “Even heavy weapons would only slow down what’s in here,” Cadell said. “It would kill the whole platoon.”

  “But you’re going to take it on all by yourself?” McLaren asked, even as Cadell began to stalk into the tunnel. “Who the fuck do you think you are, Gandalf?” he added, bringing a hand to his head. “Why does my head hurt so bad?

  “Because you’re psychic,” Cadell shouted, as he was swallowed by the tunnel’s blackness.

  “Psychic? That’s bullshi…” he stopped himself from completing his denial.

  “Use the knife,” Cadell voice echoed from the darkness. “Nothing gets out of here.”

  Cadell moved into the tunnel with as much haste as possible while still maintaining a prudent level of caution. Racing headlong into a demon-infested tunnel was foolishness of the type that had gotten many warriors killed. Whatever demonic monstrosity had been responsible for the roar that Cadell and McLaren had heard was ancient and powerful. The five lesser demons he’d already slain might not be the only ones in the tunnel. If there were more, then they could spring from the shadows at any second. The source of that demonic roar could also come charging out of the black. Cadell forced himself to move slowly. If he were to be killed because of his own impatience, whatever had been imprisoned by the now broken seal would be released upon the world. If it was as old and powerful as Cadell suspected it was, innocent lives could be lost by the thousands.

  The seal at the tunnel mouth had been weakened by the Taliban’s shelling, and when the demons that Cadell had just killed had finally managed to claw a break in the circle that completed the seal, it had been fully opened. Cadell knew that he was the only thing standing between the outside world and a likely hungry and enraged greater demon. McLaren would try to stop anything from leaving the tunnel, but he would likely die in the attempt. The rune-engraved knife Cadell had given him would give him a chance against a single lesser demon but not against a higher demon like a Nephilim or a Grigori.