Wodan waited until the steps seemed nearly upon them. Slowly, he leaned forward and chanced a look over the edge. Brad saw his eyes widen in shock, as if the Ugly were close, much closer than he had thought. He jerked his head back, said, “Now!” and the riflemen leaned over the edge, weapons raised.
The line of marching Ugly and horses were almost directly below them, but few of the experienced killers were caught unawares. They had been eyeing the ledge the entire time and, as soon as they saw movement, many stopped and began to spread out to either side of the pass. Wodan heard rifles blasting on his left and right and saw one Ugly’s chest explode; he spun in a shower of his own blood, covering his companions as he fell. Wodan stared down the length of his rifle and felt his eye and trigger finger lock in sync. His mind shut out the sound of the explosions ringing from the walls of stone. He found Barkus immediately. The man stared directly back at him, as still as stone. As Wodan pulled the trigger one of Barkus’s fanatical guards leaped backwards upon his master. His chest was run through by the bullet and he fell in a heap at his master’s feet. Brad’s shotgun sprayed the horses, causing them to panic. One Ugly gripped the reins and was slung about like a rag doll, then another horse threw its back legs in the air and kicked the man’s face with such force that the head twisted about completely, the eyes open as if pleading for assistance. One grenadier held his weapon lengthwise, as if to defend himself, then felt his legs disappear in a hail of bullets, sending corpse and grenade launcher clattering along the path. The remainder of the Ugly split in half and hugged the walls of the pass for partial cover, then raised their weapons.
“Back!” shouted Wodan, rolling away. “Back, get back!” The rocks the primitives hid behind chipped and shattered as an incredible shower of bullets tore into their position. Wodan waved them further and further back, for they could not hope to continue the ambush under such a focused assault.
Barkus scanned the ledge and the pass while his men fired round after round, chipping at the stone until the air was thick with dust. He tapped one Ugly on the back and pointed to the launcher lying in the pass. The man nodded, ran low into the middle while his brothers covered him. “Wallach!” Barkus shouted. The blond beast lowered his rifle and cupped a hand to his ear. “Get some horses, take two of my shotgunners and two others. Ride around the pass, hit their position from the other side of that ledge!”
“Right!” barked Wallach. “Keep covering me!”
Barkus unsheathed his two massive handguns, leaned against the wall, and breathed deep. An Ugly returned to his side with the launcher. Barkus nodded, tapped the other grenadier, said, “Get in the middle of that pass! Watch me!” They nodded.
Barkus, one of his personal guard, and another Ugly left their cover and walked casually to the base of the ledge, firing indiscriminately at the primitives’ former position. From the corner of his eye, Barkus saw the robed demon shift his weight, then bound up the sides of the pass. The climb was nearly vertical, but the monster bounded up the side faster than a man running on level ground. Barkus reached the base of the ledge with his men and stopped firing. There was silence as his men stopped firing and reloaded. He heard the hooves of Wallach’s horses in the distance. He laid his back against the stone. Rain fell softly, turning the rock from gray to black. He nodded to the two grenadiers in the middle of the pass.
At that moment, Brad tried to stop his friends from bunching up. “They’ll be up here soon!” Wodan shouted. “We’ll have to go further up the mountain, then try to pick them off as they climb-”
They heard two dull thuds. As everyone scattered or dived, Wodan grabbed someone’s arm and ran. There was a flash of light, then the ground shook and tossed his legs into the air. Wodan felt a sledgehammer inside of his lungs. He felt strangely at peace as he drifted through the air. He sensed movement from the person he’d been pulling, then saw that he was only holding an arm, the fingers still flexing in his grasp. Suddenly he slapped into hard stone and skidded along the floor, sharp stone biting into him savagely. Cold stone and hot blood rained on him as he laid against the ground, staring upward. He turned his head slowly and saw a man running; there was a flash of another explosion and the man simply disappeared; only his boots with ankle bones sticking out of them remained and slid along the ground.
He rose. The ledge was littered with dead and wounded, too torn apart to number. He was amazed to see that Brad and three others had reached a safe niche further away along the ledge. Wodan saw a man lying near him. He pulled at the man, slapping him roughly.
“Can’t give up!” Wodan shouted, his own voice distant in his ears. “Keep fighting! Die fighting if you have to, but get up!”
The man stirred, nodding and wiping a thick line of drool from his face. A small hand grabbed Wodan’s shoulder, hard as a vice grip. Wodan turned and saw Rachek with Maxil and three other primitives. Agmar was nowhere to be seen.
Lightning lit the precarious folds of the mountain above them. “Get up there!” shouted Wodan. “They’ll be firing more grenades or coming up the sides themselves! Let’s go!”
* * *
The storm poured into the valley and threw its thunder against the mountains. Wind ran shrieking along the black walls. The grenade launchers fired round after round onto the shelf until the southern reaches were demolished, sending clouds of white dust racing past. Barkus waved for them to stop.
“Let’s go,” he said to the two on either side of him. “They’re either dead or further up the mountain. You two launchers - stay down here and wait for my signal to fire or follow.”
“Yessir!” said one. He laughed grimly and clapped a hand on his friend’s back. “Not a bad job of it!”
“Hope we don’t get done too quick,” said the other. “Gettin’ back on that boat is the last thing I wanna do!”
Suddenly there was a sharp crack, then one Ugly’s hand split open. Flecks of blood and bone peppered the face of the other. Two more sharp reports sent the Ugly’s vest jumping, then blood flowed out from the bottom. The other Ugly dropped his launcher and ran before the dead man hit the ground. Barkus saw the flash of the gunman’s rifle higher up the mountain.
Agmar’s back was against the wall, his long rifle perched against a stone. “Get you back to the Hell you came from!” he whispered harshly. He had clambered up onto a lonely crevice just before the explosions started, then ran up a steep pass with all his might to save his skin. But when he saw Wodan and some others scrambling up one of the steep trails before the final devastating wave of grenades, he swore he would do everything in his power to keep them safe.
“Sniper!” shouted one of the Ugly guards.
“Go back and get those launchers!” Barkus shouted to the Ugly.
“Screw you!” said the shaking Ugly. “I’m not dyin’ out here, not for you or nobody!”
“We’re immortal, you fool,” grated Barkus. “Don’t you know we have a demon here watching over us?”
“He wasn’t watchin’ my buddy!” he said. The purple scars on his face twitched with fury.
Agmar eyed the remains of the ledge. Suddenly Barkus rose over the edge, handguns drawn. Agmar swiveled his gun. Several Ugly ran around Barkus, who walked calmly to the place where Wodan and the others had fled. But Agmar had not been ready for them, and cursed himself for a fool as the four killers reached the concealed rise where his friends must still be hiding. Agmar could no longer see anybody from his vantage point, but if he stayed there then he would most likely be found and killed. He left his crevice to climb higher.
Lighting flashed, and for one second he could see a lone figure crouching further up the mountain. Black robes whipped around its body, and in the sudden darkness he could see its yellow eyes glowing faintly. Agmar stumbled and raised his rifle, but the thing disappeared in an instant.
“Flesh demon!” he said. “Oh, no! Gods help us!”
* * *
Brad and his three friends huddled under a narrow stone roof while the area down
below was destroyed by seemingly endless grenades. In the silence that followed, they had no idea if their friends were alive or dead. Finally they heard the sharp reports of a rifle, then horse hooves further down the pass.
“Hear that?” said Brad. “That means someone’s still fighting the Ugly!”
“Come on!” said another. “We gotta help!”
They crawled from their niche and slid back down to the blasted ledge. They heard hooves clattering up the northern side and knew that the Ugly were trying to sneak around and hit any survivors from behind. They ran straight for the side, their fear drowned out in a typhoon of adrenaline, each one knowing they would risk anything to save their friends. At the edge of the steep incline they saw five mounted warriors with guns drawn cresting the rise with the blond beast Wallach in the lead.
“Surprise, bitches!” Brad screamed, and both groups fired into one another simultaneously.
With deadly precision Wallach aimed his revolver and blasted one primitive in the face, killing him instantly. Without pause he leveled his revolver at Brad, then their horses panicked as bullets tore into their necks and chests; Wallach ended up fighting his mount as it spun about wildly. Brad managed to fire two shots from his shotgun, then a hail of buckshot tore into the side of his face. He stumbled, then gunfire blasted his knee, crippling him. A dead man fell on top of him. As he fought to free himself, he saw horses and riders crash into one another and slide away from view, cursing and blasting anything in sight. The last rider regained control of his mount, saw that he was alone, then turned and followed his brothers back down the side.
Brad felt hands pulling him away from the dead man on top of him. His eyes were covered in blood, but he could dimly make out the man with the Mohawk – the one Wodan had saved from drowning. The man pulled Brad back to their hidden niche, then fell beside him.
Brad cleaned his remaining eye, then felt an awful wave of pain wash through him.
“We didn’t do so well,” said Mohawk, crying.
“They won’t be so quick!” said Brad, choking on each breath. “They won’t be so quick to come up that way again!”
Wallach dragged himself away from the horses and the man that had fallen into him. His own horse rose painfully, ready to serve again. “Thanks a lot,” said Wallach. He laid his revolver against the horse’s head, fired into it, and the animal dropped instantly. One horse bearing a dead man scampered nearby, and Wallach jerked a shotgun from the dead man’s clenched hands. He slapped the horse and it continued further up the pass with its ghostly burden.
“We do it without horses this time,” said Wallach. Three surviving Ugly nodded to him, visibly shaken. “No need for embarrassment,” he said gruffly. “Let’s just get some heads for Barkus. Remember, it’s the winners who get to say what went down. None of... this... ever happened.”
He led them back up the steep ledge, ignoring the pain in his knuckles and knees that disagreed with his statement.
* * *
Spears of lightning flew and stabbed into the black mountains, shrieking and bellowing. Rain turned to razors in the killing wind, howling like the gates of a hateful world thrown wide open. Black, white, black, white, over and over flashed the heavens, all reason rent asunder, pure savagery laid bare, the world burning and drowning all at once.
Wodan, Rachek, Maxil, and four others climbed and ran up the slick paths of the mountain. They did not rest. Tall boulders jutted into the air, concealing them from their killers but also hiding any true path of safety from them. The paths were winding, and often they found they had doubled back and risked their lives to reach a place they had already passed. Sometimes hollow laughter followed them, laughter from a scarred mouth, and they ran harder.
Wodan held Maxil’s hand to help him keep up and to comfort him against the black world of fear they ran through. They came to a high place. The sky was black and stretched as far up as down. They knelt and rested without thinking, crouching like animals.
They heard thunder – then bullets. Gunfire smacked into the narrow platform that held them aloft. Hollow laughter rang out. In a flash of lightning, Wodan saw them: Barkus, clothed in black and sopping wet, laughing maniacally, firing with both arms, with three Ugly devils firing at his sides. The seven scattered. A woman covered Maxil, but took a bullet at the base of her skull. She fell over the edge. Maxil, moved to grab her – then teetered over the edge and fell. Wodan and Rachek screamed, ran to the edge, and saw the boy clinging to a slender crevice. His face was so small, so deathly pale in all that darkness. Stone came loose under his grip. He slid down, down, down into the hungry black. He disappeared in the darkness. There was a sharp crack and Rachek buckled. Wodan grabbed her, then someone pulled them behind an overhanging stone. The terrible laughter went on, and on, and on.
They crouched under the lee of a flat boulder, where the rain did not fall but ran in thick torrents at their feet. Rachek fell. Wodan gripped her leg. Hot blood gushed between his fingers. Tears burned behind his face.
“Max,” she cried softly, “Ma-a-ax.”
The fear rushing through them turned into cold dread. “We’re going to die,” someone said. “We’re really going to die.”
“Rachek,” said Wodan, bitterly, “this is all my fault. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
She looked at him, then her eyes lost focus and grew dim. The blood would not stop. She tried to touch his face, but could not. “Don’t cry,” she said quietly. “I thought it would work, too.”
Wodan lowered his face. He could not look at the light dying in her.
“It was beautiful, Wodi,” she said. “It was wonderful.”
The storm lulled for one moment. They heard heavy footfalls. Near, very near. The storm grew again.
Wodan raised his head. He looked at all of his friends. He knew that they were trapped in a nightmare, and he knew that he was the one who’d brought them there. The horror of that idea was inconceivable to him. He knew that there was only one thing he could do to prevent it from happening.
“I won’t let this happen to you,” he said. “I’m going to draw them away, higher up the mountain. Barkus wants me. Take Rachek and get back down the mountain. Find a checkpoint. Find the Guardians. Save yourselves.”
Wodan nodded to one of them, a strong man who took Rachek’s leg and held it tightly. Another grabbed her underneath her shoulders and prepared to carry her. Wodan rose. He squeezed Rachek’s blood between his fingers.
“I’ll make sure my promises about a better place come true for you,” said Wodan. “Even if they don’t come true for me.”
They were too numb to protest. Quietly he left them and went into the storm.
* * *
Wodan walked slowly through the storm. He scrambled over a steep ravine. He climbed a sharp rise. He reached a tilted land where the rain hit full on, splashing off sharp boulders and running in a thick sheet that soaked his boots. He stood and waited. He had long since lost his rifle, but he was armed with Rachek’s heavy revolver, the grip still warm from her hand. He rolled a handful of bullets in his palm, killing time until he could be sure that his friends had fled the area. Finally he raised the gun and fired it into the air.
“Barkus!” he screamed, firing again and again. “Ba-a-a-ar-ku-u-u-us, you son of a bitch! I’m over here! Come and find me, Barkus!” He screamed into the wind until his throat was raw, firing until his hand was numb. When he was down to his last six bullets, he loaded them into the revolver and waited.
Then he heard it. The laughter. It had found him.
* * *
“It’s a trap,” said one of the Ugly.
“So?” said Barkus. He stood tall, out in the open where the wind lashed at him. He ignored the pain of the cold water beating into him. The other three crouched under a rock.
“I don’t wanna walk into some trap,” said another. “He’s clever. That’s how a little pussy like him gets by.”
“You fools,” said Barkus, without turning.
“Don’t you know that we can’t lose? Don’t you know that we have a devil watching over us?”
The others were silent.
“We have the eyes of the gods watching over us, you pups!” said Barkus, grinding his teeth. “That boy’s death is guaranteed! We are marked for victory!”
“Knew it!” said an Ugly, peering through binoculars. The others moved to see. “Barkus, I just saw a bunch of ’em movin’ back down the mountain. That boy’s tryin’ to draw us away from the others.”
The Ugly glanced at one another, then one said, “If he’s guaranteed to die, like you say, then we should pick off the others first, right? I mean, they goin’ back down the mountain. We can hit them now, then go after the boy last, since he’s, you know, doomed or whatever.”
[Demonworld #1] Demonworld Page 37
