Operation Arcana

by John Joseph Adams

  Of the twenty kine captured with them, twelve were bulls, their long horns twice the length of their mates’. Starvation had weakened them, bloodsuckers had drained them, but they were still four times the size of any goblin, their horns as long and as sharp as any spear.

  They were prized for their use as decoration, as the stuff of handles and pins and bracelets.

  But on the living kine, they were weapons.

  Twig turned to the Three-Foots who remained, surrounding The Gibberer, dipped into the current again, passed along to the kine behind him.

  The animals dipped their noses farther, horns low.

  The pounding rhythm of the song built, the tempo quickening, a tide building behind a dam.

  The Gibberer looked up, sniffed the air. His misshapen eyes narrowed.

  “Come on, Stump,” Twig said.

  The big goblin lifted his head. “Where?”

  “To war,” Twig said, and charged.

  The kine charged with him. Their hooves churned the frozen earth, kicking clods of it into the sky, a spray of rocks and soil mixing with the drifting snow.

  They parted around him, thundering past and toward the Three-Foots, who scrambled to their feet, shouting, snatching up weapons.

  And then they were gone, swallowed by the rising and falling of the kines’ giant shoulders.

  Twig ran behind them, pouring his exultation into the song, willing strength and fury into the animals. “Black-Horns!” he shouted. “For White-Ears!”

  “For White-Ears!” came Stump’s shout as the big goblin ran past him, a heavy rock in his wounded hands.

  They reached the enemy just as the lead bulls tossed their heads, sending Three-Foots warriors flying into the air, hands clutching at their opened bellies, purple ropes trailing from them. One of the kine lowed in rage, head dragged earthward by the Three-Foots warrior impaled on its horn, fingers scrabbling uselessly against the hard bone plate of its skull.

  Another bull had stopped, throwing its weight to one side to arrest its charge, channel it in another direction, circling back into the fight. Screams echoed, the unbroken expanse of white was suddenly churned to black and red. Here and there a Three-Foots warrior stood his ground, drove his spear into the side of a charging bull. Twig could feel the agony of the metal grinding against bone, cutting through muscle and organ, felt the animal’s desire to flee, to lie down and give up.

  He Drew and Bound again, reaching into the song, amplifying it to even greater intensity, so that the wounded kine knew only rage, only a desire to charge and turn and charge again. All they knew of rival males, of endangered young, of the thousand cuts that at last would drive them mad, Twig channeled into the song.

  The kine fought like ravening monsters, the song driving them, refusing to die.

  Within moments, the Three-Foots began to throw down their spears, the warriors racing off into the snow in ones and twos, their legendary speed put to a different use.

  Then one of the kine skidded to a halt, shivered . . . and turned inside-out.

  Its hide unraveled, as if a skinner’s knife had worked along the seams, showing the fat and gristle beneath as it rolled backward. Its bones followed, ribs tapering to sharpened points opening like a predator’s mouth, then snapping inward to pierce its heart, its lungs.

  Even the song could no longer sustain it. The bull fell, twitching. Beside it, another of the huge animals exploded, chunks of meat sailing through the sky to land at Twig’s feet.

  The Gibberer waded into the press, one arm grown horribly large, gripping a cow by the head, flailing the animal’s body like a club, beating aside the others.

  One of the Three-Foots raised one of the human fire-bows and aimed it at the advancing kine. It barked, louder than thunder, spat fire, but it was made for the bigger humans and sent the warrior tumbling, weapon flying from his hands.

  Stump had snatched up a fallen spear, struck about him at the few remaining Three-Foots warriors, their courage failing in the face of the weakened prisoners who had suddenly become armed enemy.

  Blood covered Stump’s face, his bared teeth. The tip of one ear had been sliced off. He screamed at them, charging forward, the spear spinning about his head, trailing gore.

  Twig marshaled his magic, turned the tide of the bulls against The Gibberer, forsaking the rest of the Three-Foots for the greater threat.

  The Flesh Sorcerer knocked the first bull aside with the animal in his hand, then threw it aside. His giant arm pulsed, the flesh rippling as he added muscle to it, leaning deeply under the weight. The huge limb snatched up another bull, slammed it down, snapping its neck with a sharp crack that Twig could hear across the intervening distance.

  The misaligned eyes roved, searching for the source of the magical flow. Twig crouched among the dust and spraying snow, driving the animals on, praying The Gibberer would not find him.

  Then the uneven eyes fell across Stump as the big goblin lunged with his spear, skewering a Three-Foots warrior through the thigh, pinning him to the ground.

  “Tricky rat!” the monster shouted, hurling the dead bull.

  The animal’s body flipped end over end, bouncing over the ground and catching Stump in the back. He shouted and fell, spear ripped free of his enemy’s leg, flying from his hands.

  Twig forgot his danger and stood, running toward his friend, who lay pinned beneath the animal corpse, wrestling to get free.

  The Gibberer’s legs thickened, rippled with sudden muscle. He crouched and leapt through the air, landing hard on the dead bull’s ribs, cracking them over Stump. The big goblin screamed in pain, snarled something unintelligible.

  The Gibberer bent, retrieved the fallen spear, small as a toothpick in his giant fist, raised it over Stump’s face.

  Twig ran with all he had, feet pounding the broken ground, kine heaving out of his way. He leapt as the spear came down, throwing himself against The Gibberer’s giant arm.

  The limb was as hard as stone. Twig felt something snap in his shoulder, cried out and fell at the Flesh Sorcerer’s feet.

  But the spear was knocked aside, the point driving into the frozen earth beside Stump’s head.

  The Gibberer snarled, looked down, the smaller eye narrowing into a slit of hate. He cursed, dropped the spear. Twig could feel the force of his magical flow focus, Bind, the tendrils of his magic worming their way into Twig’s body.

  Twig shut his eyes, praying it would be quick, desperately reaching his magical tide into the song.

  Nothing. Twig opened his eyes.

  The Gibberer stood over him, huge jaw open in shock. Just above it, Clover’s bovine head pressed forward, forehead hard against the monster’s chest. Her horns were shorter than a bull’s, but just as sharp.

  One of them was sheer through The Gibberer’s center, so deep that Twig could just make out the far tip, dripping blood, streaked with tiny gobbets of purple meat. The shreds pulsed. Twig had butchered enough kine to know heartmeat when he saw it.

  The Gibberer’s strange eyes swiveled down, staring at the top of Clover’s head as if he had never seen such a creature before. Twig felt the current of his magic reverse, turn inward to heal the damage.

  Twig shouted, snatching up Stump’s rock, raising it over his head and bringing it down on the Sorcerer’s larger eye, feeling it pop and squelch, then something crunching beneath.

  He raised the rock and hammered it down again, the steady rhythm he’d used to dig the windbreak, rising and falling, rising and falling, each blow cracking and digging. The Gibberer’s flow grew wild, fluttering. The huge arm flailed, battering him, but Twig ignored the half-hearted blows, too confused and weak to throw him off.

  Twig heard a cry as Stump broke free of the kine’s body, snatched up the spear, and drove it under The Gibberer’s armpit, leaning into the thrust, sinking into the monster up to his shoulder.

  The other bulls turned, added their horns to the assault, piercing the Gibberer again and again, rearing and snorting and plungin
g.

  The current pulsed, slackened. The flailings of the giant arm limped to a stop, and at last the bulk of the Flesh Sorcerer went still, the remaining eye turned upward, staring at Twig, seeing nothing.

  Twig felt for The Gibberer’s current. It was gone.

  He slid down off the mound of dead flesh, so ragged with holes it could barely be recognized even as the misshapen thing it once was. He slackened his magical tide, let the tempo of the warsong relax.

  The kine milled uselessly, pawing the ground, lowing in anger.

  For there were no more enemy to fight.

  The ground was a slushy mud pit. Torn bits of flesh and bone dotted the steaming puddles of blood. Three-Foots corpses lay gored and trampled, a few crawling weakly, crying out for water.

  The only goblins standing were Twig and Stump, panting, blinking, unable to believe they had won.

  “Hatchet—” Twig began.

  “He ran off,” rasped Stump.

  They were both too tired to go after him, couldn’t track him in the criss-crossing maze of footprints in the snow all around them.

  Stump sank to his knees, head hanging, too tired to exult in victory. “What now?”

  Twig marshaled the song again, reached out to the kine, the herd that had been his family from his birth. He grabbed a double handful of Clover’s hair and swung up onto her back, Bound his magic, so that one of the bulls lowered its head and nudged Stump up onto it.

  The big goblin looked a question at Twig, and then nodded, clinging to the bull’s neck as the animal raised itself up and tossed him onto its back where he clung to it weakly.

  Twig channeled the song again and moved the herd back toward Blackfly, where she lay beside White-Ears’s body. He would gather them up and wait for nightfall, when the stars would twinkle brightly from their seat in the black winter sky.

  The Watcher, the Staff, the Horned-One.

  The Three-Foots were fast, but not faster than galloping kine. Forewarned, his people had a chance.

  Twig looked over at Stump, lying across the bull’s back now, all strength gone, arms dangling limply. The creature steadied under Twig’s magic, balancing the big goblin carefully.

  He looked at the bodies of the dead bulls, turned away. There was no time to honor them as was their due. To delay would be to lose all.

  The wind sighed across the plain, sweeping over Twig’s shoulders, chilling him. He hunkered down closer to Clover’s back, feeling the sharp ridge of her spine pressing up against his chest. She lowed encouragement and turned back toward the patch of ground where Blackfly and White-Ears lay.

  Soft, cold touches thrilled across his ears, his head, as the wind died and Clover picked up speed.

  The black and red of the shattered earth slowly began to fade back to white.

  Twig looked up at the graying sky, blinking, shaking his head against the wet.

  Snow was falling.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Myke Cole is the author of the military fantasy Shadow Ops series, which has been described as “Black Hawk Down meets the X-Men.” As a security contractor, government civilian, and military officer, Myke Cole’s career has run the gamut from Counterterrorism to Cyber Warfare to Federal Law Enforcement. He’s done three tours in Iraq and was recalled to serve during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. All that conflict can wear a guy out. Thank goodness for fantasy novels, comic books, late night games of Dungeons & Dragons, and lots of angst-fueled writing.

  HEAVY SULFUR

  Ari Marmell

  Late autumn, 1916

  The Western Front

  Amidst the roiling clouds of mustard gas, bilious and billowing, I could just make out the alchemancer positioned atop the hillock.

  He stood tall, arms spread, apparently untroubled by the fusillades filling the air with lead, the bursting ordnance raising geysers of shrapnel and mud across the field of no man’s land. Ritual robes of rusty hue hung open over an officer’s uniform of the German Empire; unseen eyes glared through the lenses of a heavy gas mask, a hideous insectile thing that looked to have taken the place of the man’s head. The carbine strapped to one shoulder hung unused, for his right hand was occupied by a rune-carved staff of oak, from which the impossible banks of flesh-searing gas flowed. He directed them, as an orchestra conductor, sending them against the wind, positioning them where he would. They rolled toward the trenches and the brave British defenders; far behind the alchemancer, I could see multiple squads of German soldiers preparing to rush any breach the mustard gas might open.

  I wasn’t meant to have spotted the poison-witch, none of us were. His occult defenses were far too strong. That, however, was why men such as I fought on the front lines. I could feel the faint wetness of the oil with which I’d anointed my own brow and eyelids, the charm that permitted me to overcome such protections.

  “Smythe!” I hissed between clenched teeth. “Hamlin!”

  “Sir, yes sir!”

  “Top of that rise, lads,” I told them. “No time to share the sight with you. Just shoot where I shoot.”

  “Understood, sir!”

  Was a simple enough matter, that. So many of us were charging hither and yon across the battlefield, I was able to draw nice and close to the alchemancer before he realized I was approaching him directly, could see him where and for what he was. By then, there was little he could do. Even if the multiple rifle rounds I offered him from my Lee-Enfield hadn’t cut him down right nicely, the burst of automatic fire from Hamlin’s Lewis gun would have left him in tatters.

  The mustard gas began dissipating almost instantly, broken apart by the encroaching winter winds, no longer bound by the will that had controlled it. The massed soldiers further along grew ever more exposed—as, of course, had been the point.

  “Fall back, boys!” My team was already gathering about me as we retreated, weapons trained on the much larger force.

  “Sir?” That was Waters, another of mine. “Should we not—?”

  “Relax, man. We’ve known they were coming since last night’s raid. Listen!”

  And there it was, right on cue, the dull roar and heavy chop of a Sopwith Strutter. The biplane dropped from the low clouds, cutting a straight line over the enemy contingent. A bombing run on a battlefield objective was unusual, to be sure, but as I’d told the men, we’d known they were coming, and we’d decided to do for the whole lot. Artillery rained down on all sides, keeping the bastards from scattering, as the aeroplane drew closer. Any moment now and a bloody lot of Germans would be dispatched straight to—

  “Um, sir?”

  Oh, hell.

  The dreary seasonal grey left little sun to speak of, and the pilot had released his weapon some distance across no man’s land. Nonetheless, if one knew what to look for, the glimmer of the tumbling bombardment left no doubt that it was made out of something other than metal. Ceramic, most likely—and if so, it’d be a ceramic with intricate engravings over every inch of surface.

  Engravings that would shatter when the pottery did, breaking whatever bindings they represented.

  Bloody damn idiots in communications had gotten their wires good and crossed again. This was supposed to have been a conventional armament, not . . .

  “Goetic payload!” I shouted at them. “Fall back to the trenches!” I was scrabbling about my person for various protective talismans even as I gave the order. Distance was probably still sufficient; surrounded by a whole array of Germans, the payload wouldn’t likely turn its attentions to my lads.

  But I wasn’t about to risk their lives on “likely.”

  I located the amulet I wanted, raised it to my lips, and began muttering over it as I back-stepped. Made by a devout Anglican, this one was, and it showed in the charm’s ritual of activation. Latin. Bloody hate Latin.

  So there I was, reciting a ritual I only half understood, interspersed with psalms in a language I only half knew, in praise of a God I only half believed in.

  Even with the talisman’s boo
st, none of the charms I’d mastered would hide us for long, not against anything as diabolically potent as a front-line battlefield summoning. Still, if the entity were distracted when it glanced our way, should it chance at all to do so, this was better than nothing. Still chanting, I turned and rushed to join my companions in a retreat that I wouldn’t have admitted to anyone else was one step short of a panicked dash.

  By the time we were once more snug in the trenches, safe if not even remotely half comfortable, I was near as cross as I’d been since that Serbian malcontent with a cut-rate grimoire had sicced a demon on Archduke Ferdinand and sparked this whole bloody war to start with. I’m sure none of the lads appreciated my stomping through the trench, spattering mud as I went. If the officers’ dugout had had a door to slam, I well might have, propriety be damned.

  “He’s waiting to speak to you, Corporal,” the sentry barked with a salute before I could even demand to do so. That was a splash of cold water, but I wasn’t about to let it stop me. I took the tight spiral stairs down at a rapid clip, barely seeing and only vaguely smelling the thick earth, held at bay by fat wooden supports.

  The lower level of the dugout was one of the more comfortable chambers of this whole godforsaken network. Real tables, chairs, a chalkboard, electric lights run off a small generator, a smattering of anti-clairvoyance talismans, and a radio that even worked on occasion.

  Major Grimes hunched over the table, reading some dispatch or other. The man had a tendency of muttering under his breath as he read, making his mustache bristle and twitch much in the manner of a dying anemone.

  The Officer Commanding, of course, I recognized. The other two present, I did not. One was a woman in uniform not unlike the major’s or mine, her features somewhat blocky and shoulders broad. The sort who, with a couple of decades on her, would fit the term “matronly” right perfectly, and probably proudly. The other was a tall, slender fellow in the gaudy and ludicrous—pardon, the colorful—cap and coat of a French officer.