The morning of Jenna’s arrival came, and I awoke to find Aine slumped on top of me, snoring lightly. When I started to move, she made quiet, unhappy noises and clung to me harder.
Something blocked the rising sun’s glare, and I looked up to find Cailleach looking down on us with this odd wistful cast to her eye. “Need some help, Sam?”
“I think so. She’s never done this before.”
Cailleach took a knee next to us and gently rubbed Aine’s back. “Wake up, sleepyhead. Samuel’s not a teddy bear.”
Sleeping Aine made a sour face and tightened her grip hard and fast enough I was suddenly doubtful I’d be able to wrestle her off me if I had to. “No. Best samuelbear. Mine.”
“Aine, wake up,” her sister said, shaking gently. Irritation flickered across Aine’s face as she shifted atop me ever so slightly. I heard steel slide against leather right next to me. That’s definitely a knife. Where the hell did Aine have a knife?
With sad eyes, Cailleach quietly ran her fingers through her sister’s hair, brushing it back from her face. Aine reacted with a faint smile and relaxed against me completely.
“I’m sorry,” Cailleach said, nearly a whisper, as she leaned forward to put her lips next to her sister’s ear. “The bell of Duty peals, sister. All that remains is—”
Aine’s body tensed as her eyes snapped open. “—Silence.”
When she turned her eyes to me, what gazed down held absolutely zero humanity behind those dilated pupils. It wasn’t until Aine blinked and her eyes refocused with the clarity I’d come to expect that I realized I’d completely frozen, not even breathing, like a deer in the headlights.
Aine tilted her head. “Are you okay, Sam? Did I hurt you in my sleep?”
I slowly shook my head. “No, nothing happened. I’m okay.”
She sank down against me and pressed her cheek against mine. “Good. I shouldn’t be this awake at this hour, yet I am. I guess I’ll go hunt up something for breakfast.”
“Hunt?” I asked as she sat up. “I thought we weren’t supposed to use fire?”
She flashed a sly grin as she stood. “We’re not. It’s technically a waste, but with what’s coming, some fresh meat will do us good. Morale is important, you know.”
Still somewhat bewildered by her sudden change, I muttered, “An army marches on its stomach.”
“Exactly! Oh, hey Cailleach, did you sleep well?”
***
With the last sparkling rays of sunlight disappearing behind the horizon, a chill wind blew through the trees. I shivered and tried to pull into my hoodie like a turtle into its shell. A little bit darker and it’s time to go. I pressed a thumb against the safety on my rifle, making sure it was still on safe, and glanced back at the others. Tomas was quietly reloading the shotgun. Millwall was checking the edge on the sword he’d chosen that looked comically small in his hands. Cailleach stood unmoving at the edge of the skyway a few feet from me, facing the Green. Aine lounged against a bough, her eyes focused on the dagger she’d balanced on its point atop a single finger.
I reached up and scratched under the rig I wore on my head, a piece of kit for when you didn’t have a helmet and still needed to use night vision, lovingly referred to as a skull crusher.
“Just so everyone’s clear,” I quietly said. “I’m going first. Tomas and Millwall follow thirty seconds later. Tomas will be Millwall’s eyes when it’s too dark. The twins will stay near the rim to secure our egress point. If things go south, they’ll come save our bacon.” Everyone nodded. “We’re not here to make friends, but we’re also not here to make bodies if we don’t need to. Avoid contact. Stick to the shadows. Keep an eye out for a young woman, brown hair, pale skin, a little shorter than the twins who clearly doesn’t belong. Answers to Jenna or Genevieve.”
When everyone nodded again, I returned the gesture and went to stand over by the rope ladder. I stood there, fidgeting quietly, and tried to not think of all the ways this could go horribly, horribly wrong. I’m not sure how long that lasted, but I suddenly felt soft fingers thread into mine and squeeze lightly.
“Relax, Samuel,” Cailleach whispered. “Things will go as they’re supposed to. We have but to accept fate’s choice.”
I smirked. “I don’t usually get this nervous.”
“The stakes are likely different this time. Do you want me to offer a prayer for our success?”
“If you would.”
She pulled me to face her, grasped my other hand, and we both turned our gaze downward.
“Aoibheann, sweet Mother of All, hear our prayer. We are far from hearth and home and need your warmth. The safety of one of ours lies in question. Be it within your heart, lend us your Grace as we step forth from the bosom of Shadow to ring the bell of Duty. By your grace, all that will remain after our passing will be—”
“—Silence,” I whispered with her. Something electric rose up my spine and I felt suddenly calm.
Cailleach’s eyes seemed to glow in the moonlight as she smiled. “Grace be with you, Samuel.”
The Catholic in me answered, “And also with you.”
Suddenly energized, I cast my eyes toward the sky to find the cloud cover overhead spotty with a particularly large wall of clouds approaching that would soon drown out the moonlight. After some precision guesstimation, I glanced over my shoulder. “Time to get to work, fellas. Good luck and good hunting.”
I had to resist the urge to kick the secondary rope over the side and fast rope down. Without proper gloves, that would not end well. Instead, I squeezed Cailleach’s hand one last time before I sat, slipped my legs over the side, and made best possible speed without earning a surprise gravity assist.
Once on the forest floor, I jogged the short distance of relatively flat ground and started up the scree. Just as I hit the crater rim darkness swallowed the moon. I pulled down my monocle and cast my gaze toward the flickering lights of Fiddler’s Green, giving my natural vision time to adjust.
I felt something pull at my mind from behind and I pivoted, rifle half up, to find a familiar dark form loping up the slope in my direction. I grinned, took a knee, and let Scooter headbutt me. “Nice to have you with us tonight, buddy. Let’s go get my sister, shall we?”
The big cat rumbled a brief, deep rattling purr like a feline motorcycle and then slinked off ahead of me. I didn’t expect to see him in my monocle thanks to prior experience, but I knew he was out there. That’s enough.
Periodically checking behind me to make sure Tomas and company were still trailing like they should be, I arrived at the edge of Fiddler’s Green a few minutes later. The construction wasn’t shoddy, per se, and vaguely reminded me of the old Wild West movie sets, if the West had used thatched roofs. Most of the houses had a high fence around them and small lamps flickered in windows here and there. The garrison proper sat off to my right, and aside from the two guards atop the wall at the closed gate, I saw no movement there. I checked the sky, gauged the cloud cover wouldn’t break suddenly any time soon, and stepped forward.
Sometime later, I returned to where we’d agreed to meet. Tomas and I had darted house to house, listening and moving as quietly as possible between each stop, for at least the last half hour. The Green was not a large settlement, but the layout and fences made for quite a few blind alleys and neither of us were going to leave it to chance that Jenna had appeared just out of sight. We’d circled the place at least three times by that point.
Millwall waited for us, just inside the recessed doorway of what we figured was an unoccupied storehouse. With the low roof over what appeared to a loading area, even when the moon emerged from the clouds, he’d remained safely in shadow.
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“You doing okay?” I whispered to the giant.
“Aye. Any sign?”
“No.”
“Might be we’re here too early. ‘Tis still a fair bit ‘til midnight.”
I quietly sighed. “I’m hoping it—”
It caught my ear, a sound, faint at first and familiar. It was still barely audible when I realized it resembled the weird sliding echo of an approaching train coming down a long tunnel. All the hair on my body stood on end as it quickly gained volume. I glanced across the way to find Tomas walking across the dirt street toward us, unhurried but casting glances this way and that.
The sound suddenly surged to the point I could feel it in my chest, as if I could reach out and touch the train as it passed, and I knew Tomas was in danger. Without saying a word, I launched myself out, off the entryway toward my friend.
The moment my lead foot hit the dirt, dazzling light flickered and broke into brilliance off to my left. I lowered my head and leaned into the shoulder tackle, casting my eyes in the direction of the light, only to see the impossible, a light show reminiscent of dozens of flares ejected from an evading aircraft, yet these shined with light never seen by human eyes. At the center of it all, reality crumpled and fell away into a pitch black maw whose darkness was so complete I couldn’t tell how far away it was.
The sound of a fiddle pierced the angry scream of a passing freight train, and I glimpsed a 90s era Dodge truck shoot from the darkness. My shoulder struck Tomas in the sternum and momentum carried us clear of the careening truck moments before its passing.
Next thing I knew, I was staring at the sky, my chest heaving. Tomas groaned. The sound of tires finding no traction on grass and dirt filled the night air. I rolled over just in time to see the truck start to roll, side over side, as it bounced toward the garrison gate. A dark form flew from the truck, followed by another, and then the trailer decided it didn’t like what was going on and fucked off on its own in an impressive splash of shit just coming right apart.
My blood froze in my veins. MOVE! MOVEMOVEMOVE! It felt like I was trying to sprint a marathon in a tub full of super-chilled molasses. No matter how hard I told myself to move, the world and my body inched forward in slow motion. Blinding light erupted, washing out my vision entirely with blue and green after images. I stumbled, torn between launching off the ground into a runner’s sprint and reflexively trying to shield my eyes far too late.
The air physically slapped me. I felt it in my socks, felt blades of grass cut grooves across my cheeks as they passed, and it hit hard enough to turn my starting line launch into a Bollywood movie magic moment of me simply standing up. Nearly falling over on my ass from the sudden shift in momentum, my hands went to my eyes. Some part of me, far in the back of my mind, pointed out the danger close field artillery strike back in Iraq had been more gentle. That same part insisted it recognized the passenger riding in the truck just moments ago. It insisted that person had been me.
Out of sorts, I blinked away sudden tears and realized the garrison’s gate was missing, a side-ways truck shaped template cut through both it and the structures behind it with laser accuracy. A pair of burning boots, each complete with their respective leg, fell into view, presumably from the walkway above where someone had been sleeping on watch.
“What the actual fuck?” I gasped. Instinctively I pawed for my rifle and brought it up just as I noticed a single still form in the open ground before what remained of the garrison’s entryway. “JENNA!”
I advanced with my rifle at the low ready and noticed the back-up red dot sight atop the ACOG was missing the dot. Two steps and some percussive maintenance later, it flickered back to life. A handful of steps later, a harsh pop hit my ears and a human form appeared from nowhere not far from Jenna. It raised a staff and brilliant white light erupted, revealing it was in fact Jenna on the ground. The staff-wielder was clad in gold-fringed black robes, but bright metallic chainmail dangled from his arms where I could see them.
Moments later, the night filled with what sounded like firecrackers as plate armored human figures appeared one after the other in a wide rough circle around the staff wielder. Each hefted a shield before them, outward from the center of the circle, and leveled a short spear over it moments after appearing.
I skidded to a stumbling halt, red dot square between the eyes of the nearest guy. My thumb dragged the selector from ‘safe’ to ‘fire’ as the staff wielder bellowed, “Company! Call target contact!”
Silence followed. The spearman before me focused his eyes on me but said nothing.
“Company! Call all contacts.”
The spearman before me bellowed, “Contact!”
Every face on my side of the circle pivoted in my direction, including the staff wielder, who responded loudly with, “Ignore him. Lieutenant?”
Mere feet from Jenna, a second robed man I’d missed in all the fanfare turned to the staff wielder and held out some small, wand-like device. He wore no obvious armor. “Nothing strong enough to be Vore in range, Captain. This woman registers, though.”
“Secure her. We’ll return to the hold momentarily.”
I bared clenched teeth and barked. “Leave my sister—”
What felt like a mule kick to the chest cut the rest short. I might’ve missed the gesture toward me with the spear, but I didn’t miss the runes sparkling along its length as he pulled it back, the laughter in his eyes, or the actual physical sparks flying away from me as I staggered away.
“Motherfucker,” I yelled out of pure instinct. It felt like I’d been tasered for a briefest instant.
“CONTACT!” I dimly heard the spearman yell, his humor dying when he saw I still stood.
Adrenaline hit me first, then rage.
“YOU’RE FUCKING RIGHT, CONTACT!” I bellowed over their verbal coordination. “How about some American magic, assholes!”
I brought my rifle back up and it kicked against my shoulder. Bone, brains, pasted eyeballs, and blood spewed out of the spearman’s visor, but I’d already shifted to the man next to him, and the man after that. I started forward, bodies dropping before me as fast as they gathered to shield their commander.
I hit the end of the twenty-five rounds worth of M61 7.62mm blacktip in that magazine with the softened kick of the bolt locking back. Gravity and my single point sling took the rifle away as I transitioned to my double-stack 1911, focusing first on the danger closest to Jenna. Chest. Chest. Face. New target. Face. New target. Face. New target. Face. Recognizing how close I was getting, I shifted, holding the pistol out in front with one hand as I reached behind my back and yanked a long, forward curved blade free.
“Who’s laughing now!?” I snarled as I put another 230 grains of go fuck yourself through the face of the nearest target. “WHO’S FUCKING LAUGHING NOW?”
The staff wielder pointed his staff at me, bellowing something lost in the growing roar from the flames gathering at the end of the staff, but I clearly made out what he spat when his lips twisted into a single word, “Peasant.”
Instinctively, I shifted my point of aim and squeezed off a pair of rounds that sparked when they bounced off a shimmering blue wall that appeared on impact. Arm in front of my face, I ducked as the flames roared out at me.
Suddenly I was not just cold, but absolutely fucking freezing. My clothing crackled as the fabric twisted away from the ice that suddenly coated every inch of me. Understanding the pistol didn’t pack enough punch, I dropped it and jammed the tip of the sword just far enough into the soft dirt to keep the hilt elevated when I let go of it.
Fingers found my rifle as I stepped back under the sudden thick frosty mist bellowing away from me. Once I had it shouldered, I put a finger on the magazine release. A quick rotation of the weapon flung the empty away from me while my off hand snaked the next magazine out of my vest. Slapping the mag home and smacking the bolt release was automatic, trained to the point I didn’t even notice I’d done it. The mist cleared enough for me to see the staff wielder’s triumphant expression turn to sudden panic right before I replaced most of it with pink mist and gore.
The night air filled with the din of the garrison’s alarm bell, along with a sound best described as angry popcorn. I quickly found myself in a remarkably target rich environment.
“JENNA!”
Behind me, a series of thunderous booms drowned out the sound of arriving reinforcements. Tomas, slow the fuck down. Stop panic firing. I ducked a spear that appeared from my right. Unfortunately for the spearman, I’m a left-handed shooter, so my natural point of aim easily swings in that direction. Now on one knee, I put my rifle’s muzzle into the man’s crotch and pulled the trigger. I didn’t hear his screams, if there were any. I was already trying to get to my sword.
“FUCK YOU, I’M MILLWALL!”
I didn’t even mind getting another white-hot taser moment. The impact spun me around, conveniently right around an actual spear point, and I got to briefly glimpse Millwall pushing his sword through a gap in a spearman’s armor and then, on my second pirouette, physically lift that corpse using the sword, like an olive on a toothpick, and beat the guy standing next to him with it.
I spun into the dirt. The night around me filled with people screaming, yelling, and periodically, twelve-gauge buckshot changing hearts and minds. Still partially disoriented, I scrambled forward across the ground and yanked the sword from the dirt as I threw myself to the side in a roll, hoping to block the spear I somehow knew was swinging down at me from behind.
On the minus side, I wasn’t quite fast enough. On the plus side, in the brief moment I saw his face illuminated by the sudden flare of light from every rune on his spear, the spearman in question was just as surprised as I was.
The air kicked out of my lungs like I’d been heel stomped by an elephant and everything went white as my ears filled with what I can only describe as the densest cloud of angry hornets I’d ever heard. If I was still with the program at that moment, I would’ve placed that sound as shrapnel.
The night sky over me faded in just in time for me to see the spearman stumble back, the truncated stumps of what used to be his arms out in front of him. I noticed most of his face was missing and the finger length shard of metal sticking out of his forehead just as he toppled backwards. MOVE! MOVE YOU SLOW BASTARD!
I realized my sword wasn’t in my hand at the same moment another spearman loomed into view, pulling his spear back, runes aflutter with sparks of light.
Well fuck.
The spear stopped its backward momentum and began to come forward, promising a shocking surprise to go with the very real point he was trying to make. Instead of the crackle of lightning, the air filled with the sudden roar of Silence.
Confusion bloomed on the spearman’s face as every rune on his spear flickered and died at once. A small hand snaked around his shoulders from behind, followed from the opposite side by something I’d never seen either twin carry, a slender curved blade the same lack of color as Scooter, best described as an oversized karambit. Aine’s face filled with glee as she levered the man’s head straight off his shoulders.
Predator’s eyes focused on me from atop the slumping corpse. Fuck.
