Four deadly, highly-trained killers were somewhere out there, intent on murder.
She stared down at her hands, jet black and tacky with blood.
For Maya, Perry and all the others.
It was a beautiful night, balmy and calm, without the slightest breeze. A night to be admiring the stars, not killing fascistic thugs.
A second later, all hell broke loose.
The thunder of gunfire was deafening.
The remaining Paladins must have elected to come around the house and approach from the west, as the gunfire came from that direction. Tonttu and the others, she thought, in the tree beside the house. And judging by the duo-tone of the gunfire, it was being returned.
She sprinted around the house and stopped at the corner.
Two Paladins lay messily dead on the cobbles, one of them chopped in half.
Ten down, two to go.
At the foot of the tree, Tonttu and another elf lay very still.
Aware that she was taking a risk, she sprinted across to the elves. She knelt beside Tonttu and felt for his pulse. He was dead. She turned to the second, Parisa. There was no need to check her pulse. Multiple bullets had ripped a gaping cavity in her chest.
She slipped into the shade of the tree, knelt and scanned the area before the house.
The lights went out. All was still again.
Two Paladins remained. Maybe they’d seen the carnage, their dead colleagues, and decided to cut their losses and beat a retreat.
Not at all what she wanted.
She took off, sprinted past the house and along the track down which the elite Paladin force had approached the nursery.
She came across the remaining pair a split second later, and she was gratified to see that they were not retreating. Far from it. Assault rifles at the ready, they advanced through the forest to her right, separated from each other by ten yards.
One of the Paladins halted, gesturing back to the other to do the same. Ajia crouched, her pulse pounding.
The nearest Paladin spoke into a lapel mic.
She approached stealthily.
The Paladin said, “Do you read, Danny? Do you read?”
He turned to the other and murmured, “Nothing.”
“Shit… What’s happened?”
“Fuck knows. And Danny said it’d be a walk in the park.”
“Some walk.”
“Some fucking park.”
“O-kay. Let’s get in there. After me.”
They set off again.
Ajia followed. These were the last two. No back-up called in, no pitiful pleas to a command centre asking what the fuck they should do now.
They were on their own.
And their days––their minutes––were numbered.
As she crept after them, she wondered if these two had taken part in the massacre at Summer Land.
She ran a fantasy. Before she killed the last one, she’d ask him: Were you at Summer Land? And if he admitted his part in that crime, she’d kill him very slowly.
She told herself to grow up and concentrate.
The Paladins came to the edge of the woodland and peered out at the nursery standing innocently in the moonlight.
From this angle, no bodies could be seen.
One of the pair gestured to the other: You take the back, I’ll go in at the front…
Ajia smiled. They were playing right into her hands.
They split up. One crept from the cover of the trees and moved around the back of the house. The other sprinted across the cobbles and pressed himself against the gable wall. He approached the corner and peered round. Ajia set off.
She crossed the cobbles in less than a second.
Her first cut slashed the man’s Achilles tendon. Her second, as he pirouetted, pierced his abdomen below his body armour. He lunged at her, catching her by surprise and knocking her backwards. She scrambled to her feet as he moved towards her in slow motion, blood falling in a stuttering cataract from his belly.
She leapt, knocked him onto his back, then straddled his chest as he lay on the cobbles. She stabbed down hard with the knife, into his face.
Her moment of victory was short-lived.
She heard movement behind her, but before she could move, arms encircled her waste like steel hawser and lifted her into the air. She kicked and struggled, but the last Paladin––the very last of the bastards!––pinned her to his body and hissed in her ear, “Don’t move or you’re fucking dead!”
And her incredulity was compounded when she realised that, somehow, the man had dispossessed her of the knife and was holding it against her throat as he backed across the cobbles.
She struggled, and the blade bit into her neck. She felt blood trickle down her chest.
“I said don’t fucking move!”
She stopped struggling.
Across the cobbles, Reed Fletcher dropped from the oak tree and stood in the silver glare of the motion-sensitive lights, staring across at her and the Paladin.
Loud in her ear, the man yelled, “Drop your weapon or the girl gets it!”
Fletcher, like the soldier he had been, was careful when depositing his assault rifle on the ground. He ducked and laid it on the cobbles, then rose slowly with his hands in the air.
A grain of hope: he still had his bow slung across his shoulder, and his quiver on his back.
The Paladin’s breathing was loud in her ear. The reek of his sweat was overpowering.
“You others! Show yourselves. One by one, and lay down your weapons. Now––or the girl dies! Come on––all sixteen of you!”
Sixteen. So they had the intel: the twelve inhabitants of the nursery, herself, Mr LeRoy, Fletcher, and Smith…
She managed to say, “Fourteen.”
“What the fuck?” he hissed.
“Fourteen left. You killed two, over there, below the tree.”
He yelled, “Update. Fourteen of you fuckers! Out, now!”
Bogdan and Gregor emerged from the tree behind Fletcher. They set down their weapons and stood with their stubby arms raised. Fletcher murmured something to them, perhaps counselling them to caution.
Others emerged: two elves and a boggart from the potting shed, their arms aloft.
“And the others!”
Fletcher called out, “They’re in the woods.”
“Then call them!”
Fletcher said, sounding amused, “I doubt they’d hear me.”
“They don’t have phones?”
One of the boggarts murmured something to Fletcher, who said to the Paladin, “He has a phone. He’ll reach into his jacket…”
“Do it!” the Paladin yelled, deafening her. His grip on her tightened, the knuckle of his thumb pressing into her carotid.
One slice with the blade and she’d be dead.
A new voice said, “That won’t be necessary.”
Daisy Hawthorn.
The Green Woman stepped from behind a long greenhouse, flanked by Mr LeRoy and two brownies, and advanced with her arms in the air. She stopped five yards before Ajia and the Paladin and smiled. Ajia felt warmth and reassurance radiating from the woman.
“Now, I suggest you release the girl and take off into the forest. We won’t come after you.”
“Like hell you won’t!”
“You have my word. If you let the girl go, you’ll live.”
He was panting, desperate. He’d seen his dead colleagues. He pressed the knife against her throat. She felt the blade bite into her flesh. She cried out as hot blood trickled down her chest.
Daisy stepped forward, holding out a hand. Behind her, Mr LeRoy lifted a fearful hand to his mouth.
“Please, give me the knife,” Daisy said.
“Like fuck!”
“Please, let her go, and you’ll live. Keep this up, and you’ll surely die.”
“Go to hell.”
The Paladin’s arm around Ajia’s waist tightened painfully.
Daisy reached out. “Give me the knife.�
�
The Paladin backed off, dragging Ajia with him. “Any of you move, and she dies.”
Ajia looked at Daisy’s warm, motherly face, and she saw the woman wince.
She sensed movement behind her and the Paladin.
She heard a sudden, sickening crunch and the soldier grunted, released her, and slipped to the ground.
Ajia spun round, staring down at the remains of his shattered skull.
Then she looked up into the face of Wayland Smith. He stared down with stunned bemusement at the bloody hammer gripped in his right hand.
Reed Fletcher lost no time in issuing commands. He briefly clapped Smith on the shoulder, then turned to the others. “Bogdan, get the bus. Everyone else, follow me up the track. Ajia… If you’re up to it, take off along the track and scout the way ahead. We can’t leave here if they’re scoping the place. Got that?”
Still stunned, either by the fact of her salvation or the nature of the intervention, she nodded.
She was about to set off when she heard the distinctive whump-whump of a helicopter’s rotor blades beating the air above the woodland. A second later a jet-black Paladin chopper swept down and hovered above the cobbles.
Fletcher screamed orders, and he and the boggarts and elves retrieved their discarded weapons and took cover around the forecourt.
“Ajia!” Fletcher cried. “Move!”
The others scurried for cover but she just stood there, frozen. She felt her blood trickle down her neck and over her chest––and she was overcome with sudden and all-consuming rage.
Six feet above the courtyard, a Paladin leaned from the fuselage of the helicopter, raising a pistol and aiming at her as the helicopter came in to land. Ajia ducked swiftly, snatched her knife from the cobbles, and launched herself at him.
He fired. She saw the bullets hose towards her as she ran: she zigzagged, dodging the pellets of lead, and dived at the soldier. She sliced at his gun hand and saw the weapon drop, followed by a slow-motion fountain of blood. She yanked the man from the chopper, slashing at him on the way, then leapt at the pilot. Already he was attempting to take the helicopter up and away, and Ajia was aware of the retarded whoomp-whoomp-whoomp sound of gunfire from all around as she barrelled into him. Her momentum carried both her and the pilot out of the far side of the cabin as the helicopter climbed.
Oh, shit, she thought as she fell.
Then she hit the cobbles.
Chapter 25
WYNNE GLANCED AT his watch. One o’clock.
He turned to Noble. “No word?” he asked needlessly.
The lieutenant gave a terse nod.
At one-fifteen, the first symptoms of concern niggling in his back-brain, he said to Noble, “Get through to the pilot. Demand an update.”
He paced the staffroom, nervous.
Noble looked up. “Nothing, sir.”
“Christ!” Wynne strode to the window and stopped dead, shocked at what he saw down in the darkened valley.
It wasn’t so dark, now.
The effulgent orange bloom of a raging conflagration lit up the surrounding night.
Could it be the nursery building itself, he wondered…
Or the helicopter?
Lieutenant Noble joined him and stared in silence.
“What now?” Noble said at last.
“We wait till dawn,” Wynne said, his voice catching, “then we take six men and proceed with extreme caution.”
AS THE FIRST light of the new day seeped through the forest, Major Wynne stood at the northern end of the track and sent in Lieutenant Noble and four Paladins to secure the area around the nursery.
He waited tensely with the two remaining Paladins, pacing back and forth.
If he were honest with himself, it was not so much the loss of life that was concerning him right now. Uppermost in his mind was how he might report what was surely an ignoble defeat to Derek Drake. After the fiasco of Sherwood Forest, the Prime Minister had demanded the immediate capture of Ajia Snell and her cohorts. How would Wynne break the news that not only had he failed to capture any of the renegades, but had lost a fair few of his men in the process?
Because, surely, they were lost. What else might account for the ominous silence from within the ancient woodland?
He recalled his old shibboleth: No plan survives contact with the enemy. How true! His plans were in tatters. For the first time in his military career, he was having difficulty seeing the way ahead.
He heard the crackle of a radio. He turned to see a corporal speaking into a receiver.
“Lieutenant Noble, sir. Area secured. We can go in.”
They climbed into the Humvee and trundled down the rutted track towards the nursery.
He would be lucky to emerge from the debacle without being demoted, of course. He’d had his chance, and failed. Drake’s patience––always balanced on a knife edge––would teeter and tip, and Wynne would find himself publicly humiliated and kicked back into the ranks.
He needed a miracle, and quickly, if he were to survive.
Lieutenant Noble and the four Paladins stood in the cobbled yard outside the main nursery building. They looked stunned, as well they might. They were surrounded by a scene of such carnage as Wynne had not witnessed since Iraq.
He saw the helicopter first, or rather what remained of it. The mangled wreckage had fused with the bole of a mighty oak tree at the far end of the yard. The tree still burned, while the chopper smouldered. A choking reek of burnt-out circuitry and plastic filled the air.
Lieutenant Noble and his men were moving like zombies around the area, stopping from time to time to kneel beside the bodies of their fallen comrades. Wynne crossed to a dark shape beside the house and stared down at the remains with a mixture of revulsion and rage.
Corporal Johnson. A good, loyal man. One of the best. The left side of his skull had been stove in by what looked like a single blow from a heavy, blunt object. Nearby was another corpse. Captain Nicholls, a new recruit from the Marines. This had been his first active mission. He lay on his back, his throat slit from ear to ear.
Wynne made the round of his dead compatriots. Three of them had been shot dead, shredded by what looked like rifle fire. Three had been killed by arrows. Fucking arrows. The rest had had their throats expertly slit and had died within minutes. At one point, the soles of his boots meeting a tacky resistance, he looked down to see that blood had run across the yard and between the cobbles in a great reticulation, glistening in the morning sunlight.
He had no doubt who was behind the majority of these killings. His men were highly trained in every area of combat, with weapons or without. In close combat with most other opponents, they would have been unbeatable.
But not against Ajia Snell, who could run like the wind and strike like lightning. She was, in effect, invisible until she chose not to be. And by then it was too late for the hapless victim to put up any kind of fight.
And not against someone who, it appeared, was supernaturally gifted with a fucking bow and arrow.
The poor bastards hadn’t stood a chance.
Wynne felt like weeping, but he had the sorry remainder of his men to consider. Tears were no response to this massacre, but rage––rage channelled towards tracking down and dealing with the perpetrators.
He crossed to the remains of the helicopter, and saw within the burned-out wreckage the twisted, charcoaled corpses of perhaps three or four Paladins. Two others had leaped from the vehicle as it had careered towards the oak, only to be minced by gunfire.
At the foot of a nearby tree was evidence that his men had not gone down without a fight: the ugly, bullet-riddled corpses of two elves.
Elves!
He closed his eyes, controlling his rage and shame.
Oh, make no mistake, Ajia Snell and the others would pay for this…
He looked across at Noble and the remaining Paladins. Never had he seen his men looking so stunned, defeated. He had drilled into his cohorts, day after day, in train
ing and in briefings, that they were the best of the best, a handpicked, elite force of invincible warriors fighting for what was just and right for a leader whose motto was Britain First. They were Drake’s protectors, his warriors, and his knights.
And now so many of them lay inert in their own blood, massacred.
Lieutenant Noble made his way across to Wynne, but was unable to bring himself to look his commanding officer in the eye.
“What happened, sir?” he asked in barely a murmur.
“We are fighting evil, Lieutenant,” Wynne said. “What occurred here was not a fight against normal, civilised human beings, but the forces of evil.”
Noble stared at him. “Ajia Snell, LeRoy and the others?”
“They are possessed, Lieutenant. Possessed by forces that know no order, no rules. They are a terrible enemy, but an enemy that we shall, I tell you, defeat. Given time, and more men, and superior tactics, we will overcome the forces of evil and the day will be ours!”
He gave Noble instructions to call in security and the mop-up brigade, and as the lieutenant moved off and spoke into his radio, Wynne smiled to himself. He was, all things considered, not a little proud of his extempore speech.
Even if he did know that it was nothing more, really, than so much hot air.
But how to break the news to Derek Drake?
He was rehearsing the phrases he would use to mitigate the extent of the losses when one of the Paladins called out from across the cobbled yard. He was kneeling beside the body of a comrade, which was partially concealed by shrubbery. And it was evident, from the urgent movements of the Paladin’s hands, that he was attempting to give first aid to the injured soldier.
Lieutenant Noble sprinted over to the pair, soon joined by others.
Wynne hurried across.
The first Paladin was working furiously to stem the flow of blood from the man’s neck, while another joined in with a first-aid kit. The men worked tirelessly as Lieutenant Noble called in medical assistance.
The first-aider looked up. “I think he’ll live, sir. He’s lost a lot of blood, but I think he’ll pull through. They didn’t get his carotid.”
“Good work, Corporal,” Wynne said.
Age of Legends Page 27
