Blood Harvest

by James Axler

  Hundreds of rockets streamed up into sunset on plumes of smoke.

  They flew in a very high trajectory over the dunes. They were unguided and other than high and up, their trajectory was close to random. They looped and spun crisscrossing as high as their rocket motors would take them and as their propellant burned out they nosed over and began falling back to earth. J.B. saw their glittering points as they fell from the sky. The enemy was using rocket arrows. They would be much more effective fired at a flat trajectory in a mass of men but that was not the ville men’s tactic. They were firing for effect.

  Davi screamed as a falling arrow sank into his shoulder.

  More screams tore out among the dunes. Some islanders rose and tried to dodge the arrow shower. A man ran away inland.

  “Dark night!” J.B. snarled. They had just lost surprise. J.B. rose and fired his Uzi three times on semiauto. “Now! Now! Now!” J.B. shouted. He didn’t wait. He dropped to one knee and began emptying his blaster into the milling sec men in the surf. His men rose around him, putting stone to sling. The air thrummed with their massed casting. The center rose as a unit as Ago raised the sun banner. The left flank rose at the same time, and J.B. could hear the flat booming of Doc’s LeMat. A deadly rain of rocks answered the rocket arrows and sec men fell. They answered by unlimbering their blasters. Men standing and slinging at one hundred yards or less weren’t difficult targets. J.B.’s men began dying all around him. J.B. kept firing in short bursts as another salvo of rockets sizzled skyward. More sec men kept spilling over the side of the steamer and down the netting. Some fell to the surf as stones struck them, but not enough. Many of those hit didn’t go down but kept loading and firing.

  Doc had told him you could teach a man to sling in a day but it took a long time to get accurate, much less to develop the cast for maximum power. For true killing power they were going to have to get closer. J.B. wondered when the cannons would open up. Instead one of the barge’s ramp clanged down. Sec men spilled out in a black-clad wave. Each one had a plume in his hat and white cross-belts strapped their torsos. Each man carried a longblaster with a fixed bayonet. J.B. guessed there were over a hundred of them. By Mildred’s description, J.B. knew that Sylvano Barat led them, carrying the biggest sword he had ever seen. The chosen men spread out behind their prince in a phalanx as they came out of the surf and onto the sand. War whistles shrilled and screamed. Sylvano’s men didn’t bother to fire their blasters.

  They leveled their bayonets and charged straight for the kill.

  DOC COCKED AND FIRED his blaster as rapidly as he could. Rocket arrows fell. Sec men to either side of Sylvano’s charge loaded and fired their single-shot blasters with precision. The battle was turning very quickly. Doc raised his cocked pistol, holding his last round. There would be no time to reload before the lines met. The chosen sec men charged the dunes in a 150-man wedge and Sylvano Barat was the tip of the spear. He had abandoned his blaster and rapier and hurtled forward with a great, two-handed sword held aloft. From point to pommel it was nearly six feet long. Doc knew it was a weapon Sylvano had forged for slaying nightwalkers. Pointed sticks would stand no chance. Sylvano would reap the Sister Islanders like wheat, and his men knew it. Held aloft in sunset, the shining sword was all the war banner the sec men required. They charged in good order, bayonets bright as they followed Sylvano’s gigantic burnished blade into battle.

  Doc took careful aim at Sylvano. He put his front sight on Sylvano’s center body mass and squeezed the trigger. The LeMat revolver cracked in his hand. Sylvano jerked slightly but didn’t even break stride. Sling stones struck him and bounced off. The islanders began to panic. Sylvano came on like an unstoppable juggernaut. The wave of sec men behind him came on like a deadly tide. Doc cursed himself as he remembered Ryan telling him that Sylvano and his father had worn body armor during the battle in the manse.

  The scholar could feel the courage of the men around him failing. His sword cane was a toothpick compared to the Goliath-size weapon in Sylvano’s hand. No man would follow it into the rolling line of sec steel rumbling down upon them. Doc holstered his LeMat, saving the shotgun barrel for the melee. Doc could see only one course of action. He took a deep breath, sighed, and pulled the sling from his belt. His men shouted in alarm as Doc began walking across the sand toward Sylvano and his thicket of bayonets.

  “Doc!” Nando howled for him to come back. “Doc!” Yet none of Doc’s men followed or made any attempt to pull him back. The islanders were heartbeats away from breaking. Doc was at his limit, as well, and knew it was only the Blood of the Lotus he had been fortifying himself with all day that was allowing him this bravado. Doc comforted himself with scripture.

  “‘And it came to pass,’” Doc quoted. “‘When the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.’”

  “Mine!” Sylvano saw Doc stalking forward and bellowed. “Dr. Tanner is mine!” Sylvano shoved his sword skyward and the blade seemed to catch fire in the sunset. The sec men roared as their champion ran forward, hastening to meet the scarecrow the despised Sister Islanders had sent against them.

  “‘And David put his hand in his bag—’” Doc spiked his swordstick in the sand and put a hand into his pocket “‘—and took thence a stone…’” Doc loaded his sling. Sylvano suddenly saw what Doc was about. He kept his sword aloft but his right hand clawed for the blaster strapped to his hip. The piercing Doc had given that hand made it a second too slow. Doc’s sling hummed as he ripped it through the Z-shaped windup that had impressed his schoolmates as a child and awed the islanders. “‘And slang it’!” Doc shouted. The polished white sea stone hurtled through the air straight and true. Sylvano’s black hat was torn from his head from the concussion.

  “‘And smote the Philistine in his forehead,’” Doc continued. “‘And he fell upon his face to the earth.’” Sylvano stumbled two more steps forward and collapsed. The reflected red light of the sunset left Sylvano’s great sword like a snuffed candle as it fell to the sand. “Samuel, Book 1, Chapter 17, Verses 48 and 49,” Doc concluded.

  The charge faltered as some sec men stopped to defend their fallen captain and the men behind piled into them. Others ran past but looked backward and slowed. The amazed islanders sent a great roar of triumph rolling through the dunes and renewed their slinging. The range was now much shorter and their target a compact mass of men. Only a few of Sylvano’s front-rank men had predark body armor or flak vests beneath their cloaks, and they began to fall as sling stones broke bones and cracked skulls. Doc knew if there were to be any moment, it was now, before the sec men could reform. “Nando!” Doc shouted back to where Nando stood by the swivel blaster. “Now!”

  Nando yanked the cord and three hundred nails blew out in a bee swarm into Sylvano’s stalled charge. Sec men screamed and flailed. Islanders slang. Those who had run out of stones shook their spears. Doc pulled his swordstick from the sand and drew the rapier, thrusting the steel point skyward. “They are unmanned! Their formation is broken!

  “Sons of the Sun!” Doc shouted. He turned and stalked down out of the dunes, pointing his blade ever forward, daring his men to follow.

  “Sons of the Sun!” tore from every islander’s throat left, right and center. The right flank came rumbling out of the dunes like an avalanche in Doc’s wake. The left and the center followed within heartbeats. The islanders charged the invaders’ blasters in a human wave. “Sons of the Sun!”

  “OH…MY…GOD.” Mildred hunkered down behind her rifle. For good or ill, a broken-minded man from the nineteenth century had bet the entire battle on a single roll of the dice. Not that it was ever going to come down to anything but this, but Mildred would have been a lot more confident if it had been J.B., Jak or, better, Ryan who had called the charge. Still, Mildred had to admit that Doc was cutting quite an impressive figure marching down upon the beach, pointing his blade like a judging finger from God on High.

 
A short series of whistle blasts stopped Sylvano’s men in their tracks. As a unit they took to a knee, aimed and fired en masse into the charging left flank. The wave of islanders rippled like sea grass. Untold scores of islanders fell. Mildred couldn’t see what became of Doc through the powder smoke. The sec men had no time to reload. Instead sec whistles shrieked the battle order and the ragged wedge of black cloaks formed themselves into a square. Howls, shouts and screams lifted to the sky as the lines met and the battle went hand-to-hand.

  Mildred cut loose.

  She ignored the beach bash and concentrated on the gun crews along the steamer’s rails. For some reason the ville men had been husbanding their cannons. Her first shot sparked as it caromed off the black iron cannon barrel. Her second took one of the loaders. The gun crew noticed the flash of her blaster and suddenly took a very dim view of her activities. They raised their aim slightly and traversed the gun a degree in its wooden track. Mildred shot the man cranking it and the man who took up the task. The other three cannons all began traversing her way. Mildred began to feel panic as the gaping black muzzles looked her way. She fired three more times and one of the gun crew twisted and fell. The gun captains yanked their cannon lanyards and the iron guns belched smoke and fire.

  “Bastard!” Mildred yelped. She rolled down the back of dune as the crest exploded like a volcano. The slings had been a surprise, but the mission of the enemy artillery remained the same. Sylvano’s men would deal with the pointed sticks. The gunners would pound any snipers in the dunes with explosive shells. Mildred found herself drowning in sand as the dune was violently rearranged and a great deal of it fell on top of her. She did a push-up and shook her plaits, spitting and blinking at the grit invading every exposed orifice. She hacked and coughed in the burning, brimstone fog of black powder smoke enveloping her. She scrabbled blindly for her rifle.

  “Shit!” Mildred clawed about in the sand but it was nowhere to be found. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” She found the bolt-action rifle, but the spare ammo was lost in the sand slide. Mildred had five rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. She crawled back up the sundered dune. The beach was one big brawl. Mildred lay in a firing position. She took aim at the steamer once more, and despite his disguise she made out Jak climbing up the invasion netting draping the side of the steamer. It looked like he was hurt. Mildred settled in and kept her sights on him.

  Jak’s one-man boarding party now had a guardian angel.

  ROCKS FELL OUT of the sky like rain, and now that the battle was engaged Jak was just one more black-cloaked and hated sec man. Two stones had struck him. One had grazed his face and it was swelling magnificently. He no longer had to fake the limp he had adopted as he retreated toward the ships. Stones clanged off the side of the steamer’s steel hull and rattled down on the decks. Sec men swarmed down the nets as the invaders deployed their reserve into the battle. Jak splashed through the surf and began climbing up the side. A sec man stopped in midclimb and pointed at him and his auto-blaster and began to shout. Jak didn’t see any way around it. He had to get on deck. Jak nodded and handed the man the weapon and kept climbing up the net. The climb was difficult. No bone was broken, but Jak felt like someone had hit him in the thigh with a hammer.

  Jak looked up as he reached the top and found himself staring up the barrels of a double blaster. He doubted this one was loaded with salt. The sec man shouted and shoved out his hand. Jak’s long platinum hair was tied back and shoved up under his hat. All the sec man saw was a face as pale as his own, half swollen out of all recognition behind smoked lenses and struggling up the net with an injured leg. The sec man grabbed Jak’s arm and hauled him aboard. He shouted something encouraging and rejoined his gun crew.

  For a moment Jak had freedom of the deck.

  Almost every sec man without an artillery task was deploying down the netting. Two men stood in the steamer’s wheelhouse, but their eyes were on the battle. The cannon men kept their weapons trained on the dunes. A team of four men had reloaded two of the rocket batteries and were swiftly stuffing rocket arrows down the smoking racks of the third. Jak considered his options. He limped over to the rocketeers. He picked up a rocket arrow and helpfully began to assist in loading. The rocket captain nodded and said something. Jak responded by shoving the barbed arrowhead into the sec man’s throat. The other three gaped in shock at the sudden violence. Jak took the opportunity to put a throwing knife into the throats of two more. The fourth rocketeer shouted, and his sword rasped from its sheath.

  The man flew backward as though he’d taken a huge invisible fist to the chest.

  Jak smiled. Someone out there liked him.

  The albino youth went to one of the loaded rocket racks. Ignition was fairly simple. Each row of rockets rested against a wooden tray with a runnel carved in it. Each runnel was laid with fuse cording. A coil of slow cord smoldered in a bucket on the deck. Jak considered the possibilities. The entire device was basically a wheelbarrow loaded with arrows. Jak lifted the handles and found it surprisingly light. He lifted the handles to maximum declination and kicked the wooden elevation stop so that the rocket rack was level with the deck. Jak aimed the rocket battery at the cannon crews. He took the burning slow cord and touched it to the master fuse hole and prudently stepped out of the way. The lines of fusing hissed down each row of rockets, igniting their motors. The rocket arrows hissed out of the racks in a rippling, random swarm. The weapon was hopelessly inaccurate, but it made for quite a deck sweeper. Gun crewmen fell pin-cushioned across their cannons or flopped to the deck. The arrows slammed against the cannons and even the explosive iron shells, but lacked the velocity to detonate anything. The far gun crew escaped most of the carnage. Jak put the cord in his teeth and took his Colt Python in both hands. The remaining gun crewmen died beneath Jak’s blaster as they went for their swords. Jak ran to the partially loaded rocket rack.

  The wheelhouse door slammed open and the captain and his mate came out with swords and short blasters in hand. Jak aimed the rack at the wheelhouse stair. The captain and mate screamed and ran back up. Jak took the slow cord from between his teeth and lit up. Only seventy-five arrows had been loaded, but they shrieked satisfactorily against the wheelhouse landing. The captain dived through the door. The mate took a dozen arrows in the back and ate stairs. Jak quickly reloaded his blaster.

  The captain stood in the arrow-studded wheelhouse and yanked a handle in the roof. His foghorn boomed three times. He staggered backward and half flopped out the window as Jak’s guardian angel smote him. Jak looked around. There had to be more crewmen below, at least in the engine room, but for the moment he owned the deck. Jak ran to the side. The battle was still raging. The sec men square had taken a horrific toll. The sand was a sea of dead islanders, but the numbers game had told the tale. The sec men square was down to one-third its number. The reserve from the middle was completely deployed. The crews of the feluccas and whalers were rushing to reinforce them, but sling stones rained down among them and Jak could tell they wouldn’t be enough. The square was crumbling and inexorably being pushed toward the sea.

  Jak wondered what the captain’s horn signal had meant.

  He got his answer as the ramp of the second barge slammed into the surf. The belly of the barge gave birth to abominations. The nightwalkers came screaming out of the hold. They were half naked or naked, and their fish-white flesh gleamed like ivory in the dying light. Most carried clubs or spears of astounding size, often inset with sharpened pieces of iron or nails. Others carried stolen picks and axes, and they wielded them in their huge hands like a norm would hold a hammer or a hatchet. The leader was smaller, and still had a veneer of human proportion in comparison to the screaming grotesques he led. He carried a great whaling harpoon in one hand and a crude wooden shield in the other. A net was wrapped over one shoulder.

  Jak estimated there were fifty of them.

  He ran to the last loaded rocket battery and rolled it forward to the rail.

  Chapter Tw
enty-Four

  “Gaia!” Krysty’s men were surging past her to join the battle. Keeping a reserve had gone straight out the window. So had covering fire. Krysty shouted as Ago began to run forward waving the flag. “Ago!”

  Ago looked back and then eagerly snapped his head around as more men ran forward shouting the war cry. “Sons of the Sun!” The spirit of the all-out attack was infectious. The islanders sensed victory was within their grasp. “Sons of the Sun!” was the clarion call to battle. Ago started to drift forward with attack.

  “Ago!” Krysty shouted. She pointed at the flag and waved her hand back and forth. “Tell them to hold!”

  Ago turned to face the rush. He waved the flag back and forth in the face of what remained of the surging center. Krysty stood in front of them whirling a sling around her head. She pointed at the enemy fleet. “Sling! Sling! Sling!”

  Krysty had already lost over half the center, but J.B. and Doc were probably just as glad to have the reinforcements. The remaining men skidded to a halt in front of the flag and dropped their spears and clubs. They scrambled back to their depots of stones and got back to slinging at the men running up from the boats. Krysty could see fire and rocket trails on the deck of the steamer and knew that Jak had made it and was at his task. “Sling!” Krysty cried, and the islanders who still had stones left slang with a will.

  Krysty’s blood froze in her veins as the hunting screams of the nightwalkers rent the sunset.

  The islanders literally froze in place. Slings went limp. The men holding them almost did, as well. On the battlefield the attacking islanders recoiled from the sec men square. Every islander’s worst fear came boiling up onto the beach. Men of both J.B.’s and Doc’s regiments threw down their weapons and flat-out fled the scene of the battle in stark terror. The sec men were playing mutant power as their trump card.