by David Weber
The days when Bahzell had sat the saddle like an abandoned sack of meal were long past. He and his courser were one being, and his right hand flashed down to the quiver at his belt. Another arrow fitted itself flawlessly, perfectly, to the string, and he sighted, drew, and released in one flowing motion.
Another blue-flaming arrow shrieked across the night, but this time the demon wasn't taken by surprise. Mere arrows had never posed a threat to it in the past. They'd rattled uselessly, harmlessly, off its hard scales and thick carapace, but these arrows were a very different matter, indeed. Not only could they drill effortlessly through its armor, but they exploded deep within its unnatural flesh like lightning bolts when they did. Yet this was one of Sharnâ 's greater demons. It was more than a mere appetite. It was capable of thought. It could learn from experience, and it realized that these arrows could hurt it and twisted aside with the lizard-fast quickness of its breed. It couldn't completely evade the arrow—not one fired by Bahzell Bahnakson at a range of under fifty yards—yet the steel head which should have struck its throat almost on top of the original ichor-spurting wound struck it in the chest, instead.
The demon staggered, howling in fresh pain and fury, but it didn't go down. Instead, it gathered its feet under it once again, wings beating for balance, and lunged. The wind from those flailing wings buffeted Bahzell and Walsharno like some foul-smelling hurricane, and there wasn't time for another shot. Bahzell dropped his bow and raised his hands, summoning his blade, and five feet of burnished steel, glaring with the blue furnace-fury of the war god, appeared in them.
"Tomanâk!"
Walsharno charged to meet the demon, screaming the wordless whistle of his own war cry, and the glittering sword hissed as it descended in a two-handed blow like Tomanâk's own mace.
The demon twisted its head out of the way at the very last instant, and Bahzell's sword slammed into one of its wings, instead. A fountain of blue light exploded upward, the demon shrieked, and Walsharno pivoted with lithe, impossible grace. He swerved to one side, and both rear hoofs lashed out, ablaze with the same blue glare as Bahzell's sword. They caught the demon in the side with a gruesome, ear-shattering "CRACK!" of splintering carapace and a fresh eruption of blue lightning.
Not even a greater demon could shake off that impact. The creature lurched sideways, stumbling, almost falling, with a fresh shriek of pain. Walsharno snapped back around to face it, and it was slower as it gathered itself this time. It hesitated, crouching down, hissing and bubbling in mingled fury and anguish. Walsharno started towards it, and it actually backed away, sidling sideways, head cocked, watching its enemies.
"Something's wrong."
Bahzell and Walsharno were too deeply fused for the hradani to be positive which of them that thought came from, yet he knew it was accurate. He'd fought Sharnâ 's demons before, and none of them had ever reacted the way this one was. He could literally feel its hatred, its need to attack, despite the agonizing wounds he and Walsharno had already inflicted, but still it continued to back away, instead. It shouldn't have done that. Painful as its injuries might be, they were far from incapacitating and their torment only fueled the demon's blazing rage and hatred. So why —?
And then reality twisted suddenly.
"Behind us!"
This time there was no doubt; the screamed mental warning came from Walsharno, not Bahzell, as the carefully prepared spell opened behind them. For all their experience, neither champion had been watching for Carnadosa and her worshipers. Their attention had been focused entirely on Sharnâ and the menace of the demon directly in front of them, and the perfectly timed execution of the spell took them totally by surprise. The solid earth fell away as Tremala and Rethak opened a gate between the heart of Cherdahn's buried temple and the hillside directly behind Walsharno and Bahzell. A noisome stench erupted from the opening, and a hurricane of fresh fangs, wings, and claws came with it as the second demon hurled itself straight at their backs.
XI
"Angle to the right, Jack," Ken Houghton suggested as the LAV shoved its way through the tangled underbrush. "The slope's more gradual. Looks like there's probably a runoff channel from that range of hills. See the big boulder at about two o'clock?"
"Yeah. For what it's worth," Mashita grunted.
"It's at the left edge of the channel. See?"
"Oh, I see it all right, Boss. I just don't know if I can get this bitch up it!"
"Well, that's where Wencit says we need to go, and I know you always perform best under pressure," Houghton said encouragingly.
"Gee, thanks! Why not just hold a gun to my head and be done with it?"
Houghton chuckled, yet the truth was that Jack had a point. There were many things Gunnery Sergeant Houghton loved about the LAV-25, but for all that, Tough Mama had her drawbacks. For one thing, no wheeled vehicle could turn as sharply as a fully tracked one, like the Army's Bradley. A Brad could literally pivot in place, turning through three-hundred-sixty degrees in its own length, while any wheeled vehicle had to continue to move forward through its turning circle. For another thing, although he didn't expect that to be a factor under current circumstances, a LAV's wheel wells couldn't be as well armored as the rest of the vehicle, which made them vulnerable targets for hostile fire. But what had Mashita worried at the moment—and Houghton as well, whether he wanted to admit it or not—was that the LAV's higher center of gravity simply made it less stable. Which, given the nature of the terrain through which Mashita had been picking his way for the last forty-five minutes or so, wasn't exactly an academic consideration.
"Do we really have to go up there, Wencit?" he asked quietly—or, at least, as quietly as the noise of Tough Mama's passage allowed.
"Yes, and as quickly as we can." For the first time, the wild wizard actually sounded tense, almost brusque, and Houghton felt his own nerves tighten in response.
"Quickly and sneakily don't exactly go together very well," he pointed out. Then he snorted in amusement at his own words. A LAV was far quieter than a tracked vehicle. That, unfortunately, was much the same as saying that a chainsaw was quieter than a thunderstorm. Both statements were factually correct, but that didn't exactly make the chainsaw hard to hear when someone decided to cut down a three-foot oak in your front yard on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
"At the moment speed is more important than sneakiness," Wencit replied. "Besides," he looked back at Houghton, and despite his tension, there was more than a hint of a smile in his voice, "you might be surprised at just how quiet your vehicle is being at the moment."
"Quiet?" Houghton couldn't keep the skepticism out of his own voice, and Wencit chuckled.
"Remember what I said about glamours, Gunnery Sergeant Houghton. They don't work just against spells, you know."
Houghton turned to look at him for several seconds while Mashita threw Tough Mama into full eight-wheel drive and began—noisily—working his way up the drainage chute Houghton had spotted for him. Then the Marine laughed out loud.
"Wencit, if you can make this thing 'quiet,' then I really am ready to believe in magic!"
"That's good, Gunnery Sergeant. Because unless I miss my guess, you're about to see quite a lot of it. In fact, I'd suggest that you get your main weapon ready. We're going to need it shortly."
Houghton's eyes sharpened and his nostrils flared. Then he grunted to himself.
"Get your ass buttoned up, Jack!" he said over the commo link. "Wencit says we're about to run into the bad guys."
"Damn it! Why does this always happen in the middle of terrain like fucking this?!"
Mashita's intense frustration was obvious. Not surprisingly, given how limited a LAV's driver's buttoned-up field of view was. But he dropped his seat down and slammed his overhead hatch, sealing himself in his small compartment beside the thundering diesel Wencit had just assured Houghton no one else could hear. Wencit, on the other hand, stayed where he was, peering into the dark with those glowing eyes.
"Time to get your
head down, Wencit," Houghton said sharply.
"I'm afraid not," the wizard replied. "Believe me," he continued before Houghton could explain that Tough Mama was neither a democracy nor a debating society, "nothing would please me more than to do just that. Unfortunately, I not only need to see what's going on; I may also need to be able to cast spells, and I can't do that with your vehicle's armor between me and the spell's object."
Houghton had opened his mouth. Now he closed it with a snap. He didn't like it one little bit, and a part of him wondered if Wencit wasn't . . . shading the truth just a bit in order to keep his head up. But Wencit was the wizard around here, and Houghton had no choice but to accept that the old man knew what he was talking about.
Houghton, on the other hand, had no choice. He stripped off his NVG goggles and dropped down into the gunner's seat, with the big twenty-five-millimeter cannon and coax machine gun at his left elbow. Both weapons were in Condition One, and had been for hours. High explosive had been selected for the Bushmaster, the ghost round had been cycled into the chamber, the manual safety was set on "FIRE," and only the electric safety was engaged. The machine gun's cover assembly was closed, the bolt was to the rear, and—like the cannon—the manual safety was on "FIRE" and the electric safety was engaged. Now he pressed his face the DIM-36TH sight's eye shield.
He'd just settled into position when he heard Wencit's voice over his earphones.
"To your right, Gunnery Sergeant! To your right!"
Houghton squeezed the gunner's joystick and sent the turret tracking smoothly to the right just as Tough Mama topped out on a flat bench about half way up the current hillside. For a few moments he saw very little. Then that changed abruptly, and his eyes widened in sheer, stunned disbelief.
Despite all that had happened to him in the last ten or twelve hours, nothing could have prepared him for this. The sight was configured for thermal mode, which normally left a great deal to be desired where details were concerned, but this nightmare creature's body stood out as brightly as any thermal signature Houghton had ever seen. Its body temperature must have been almost as high as Tough Mama's engine block, yet that scarcely even registered beside its impossible size and the obscene fusion of wings, claws, pincers, mandibles, and horns. The thing had to be at least forty or fifty feet long, with a squat, armored body suspended from spider-like legs that arched a good ten feet above its back. Bat-wings—two pairs of them, not just one—beat at the night as its serpentine head darted forward, striking at its intended prey.
It look a stunned, detached corner of his mind a moment or two to realize just how big the mounted man and his horse in front of the monster actually were. Compared to their horrifying opponent, they looked like pygmies, yet that detached corner realized that the horse was bigger than any Clydesdale or Percheron he'd ever seen.
Not that it should have mattered in the least. Huge as the horse might be, the monster's head alone must have been better than half its size.
The cavalryman and his horse were both wrapped in some sort of heat-shimmering cocoon. It obviously wasn't as ferociously hot as the creature they faced, yet in some odd way, it was actually brighter. Or clearer. More . . . concentrated, perhaps. Houghton's spinning thoughts bounced off of the surface of whatever concept they were trying to form, and then he realized the man on that horse's back was armed with an honest-to-God sword. The biggest damned sword Houghton had ever imagined, and one that glared with its own savage corona, but still only as sword.
Who the fuck does he think he is? Saint George?
The thought flicked through the Marine's brain between one heartbeat and the next, and then the lunatic charged.
Houghton's jaw dropped as that glittering sword lashed out at the mounted man's stupendous foe. The sudden eruption of light and power as it slammed into the monster's wing almost blanked the thermal image completely. The glaring steel sheered through the creature's unnatural flesh like an axe, lopping off the wing's innermost knuckle, and then the huge horse pivoted on its forefeet with preposterous precision and lashed out with its rear hooves.
The monster staggered, almost falling, then whipped around to face its puny opponents with a squall of rage, pain, and fury that half-deafened Houghton inside Tough Mama's turret.
As that unearthly, terrifying sound went through him, the Marine shook his head, like a prizefighter who'd taken one too many punches to the chin, and a sudden bolt of anger ripped through him. Anger directed at himself, at his own inaction. The sheer, appalling impossibility of what he was seeing had frozen him, turned him into the spectator, and his lips drew back from his teeth as he twisted the joystick and slewed Tough Mama's cannon towards the monster . . . just in time to find the cavalryman directly between him and it.
"Driver, halt!" he barked. "Target, three o'clock!"
Technically, he should have identified what the target was, as well. Unfortunately, he didn't have the least damned idea what to call the thing.
"Holy shit!" Mashita had obviously caught at least a glimpse of what Houghton was seeing through his own night vision viewer. His reaction to it wasn't exactly out of the training manual, but he responded instantly to Houghton's command, and the LAV stopped. Unlike the Bradley, the LAV's cannon wasn't stabilized to permit it to be accurately fired on the move, and Houghton's sight picture steadied as Tough Mama stopped moving. The range was under two hundred meters, perfect for a battlesight engagement. In fact, there was no way Houghton could possibly miss a target that size from this close.
Now if the idiot on the horse would only get out of the —
Houghton's belly twisted with sudden nausea. It was almost like the sensation he'd experienced when Wencit snatched the LAV into this preposterous universe, yet it was different, as well. With Wencit's spell, there'd been that sense of falling even as Tough Mama had been motionless underfoot. This time, nothing around Houghton seemed to be moving, and yet it was as if two powerful hands had gripped his stomach and twisted in opposite directions. It was in enormous sense of wrongness, and then, impossibly (although his punch-drunk brain was getting rather tired of that particular label), a huge sinkhole appeared, with absolutely no warning, and a second monster swarmed up out of it . . . directly behind the mounted man.
XII
Walsharno's cry of warning snapped Bahzell's head around, turning it towards the sudden threat from behind them.
There was no time for thought. No time to analyze what had happened. There was barely time for the hradani to begin to curse his own complacency. To realize that this time, he and Walsharno had blundered straight into the Dark's carefully crafted trap.
That this time, they were going to die.
He twisted in the saddle, fighting to get far enough around to land at least one blow, and then something thundered in the night.
The turret twitched slightly to the left.
The glowing swordsman and his horse might be betweenHoughton and the first monster, but the Marine had a perfect firing angle at the second one, and a corner of his mind noted that the horseman was well clear of his line of fire. The sight's reticle dropped onto the huge creature's side, between the third and fourth legs on its right side, and Ken Houghton's hand squeezed.
Tough Mama's 25-millimeter cannon's muzzle flash shreddedthe night as a three-shot burst of M792 HEI-T shrieked downrange, at over thirty six hundred feet per second. The tracer rounds etched fiery trails across the horror-haunteddarkness, then slammed into their target. Each round carriedthirty-two grams of a high explosive mix which normally projected steel fragments and incendiary filler over a five-meter radius when they detonated, and the monster squalled as they exploded in stroboscopic fury.
It squalled . . . but it also whipped around towards Tough Mama. The detonating shells had punched relatively tiny holes through its spiny carapace before they exploded, then blown washtub-sized openings through it as they detonated inside it and blasted wounds into the unnatural flesh and muscle beneath. Ichor and head-sized gobbets of mea
t burst from its side and streamed down its flank, but its hell-spawned armor was incredibly tough. The shells might have punched holes in it, might have inflicted enormous collateral destruction under the armor, but blasting through it had slowed them, kept them from punching deep into their target's flesh before they detonated. It was obvious that none of the damage had gotten deep enough to reach its vital organs . . . assuming that it had any! Instead of going down , it shrieked in furious challenge, and hurled itself directly towards the source of a sudden pain.
Kenneth Houghton was a qualified master gunner. He knew exactly what he'd just hit that creature with, and the rational part of his brain couldn't believe what he was seeing. Big as it was, it had to have gone down after taking three hits almost exactly center of mass! He didn't care what it was. The kinetic transfer alone ought to have made sure of that, never mind the explosion, the incendiary effect, or the shell splinters. And even if it hadn't gone down the damned thing was almost as big as a frigging blue whale! It had to wait at least fifty or sixty tons, and nothing that size could possibly move that fast! Especially not something covered with armor tough enough to stand up to a Bushmaster even for a heartbeat!
Fortunately, perhaps, his brain's refusal to accept his eyes' input had no appreciable effect on his bone-deep reflexes.
His thumb punched the button, shifting instantly from high explosive to armor-piercing, and he squeezed the trigger again. The M919 discarding sabot round left the muzzle with almost a third again the velocity of the high explosive round, and its fin-stabilized "long-rod" penetrator of depleted uranium could penetrate virtually all light armored vehicles and even some main battle tanks. It could also penetrate over sixteen inches of reinforced concrete or an earthen bunker wall three feet thick, which hade made it increasingly popular in urban fighting, and this time Houghton held the trigger down longer. Twelve rounds smashed into his target, and if the demon's carapace had been tough enough to limit the high explosive rounds' effect, the armor-piercing was another story.
