by CW Tickner
The crowd of untrained warriors stood as one, and, with Harl, Uman and Kane in the lead, they surged inside the cave system. Damen joined them at the head of the newly-formed force.
‘We should find the armoury further down on the right,’ he said. ‘I doubt they’ve had time to clear out all of the equipment.’
‘Uman, take point,’ Harl said, following closely behind Uman as the scout slipped into the lead.
They bustled into the tunnels, a hundred wary eyes scanning ahead for any hastily made traps. Small clusters of men kicked open doors and checked rooms as they passed. Uman raised a hand as he reached the armoury door and they halted, waiting anxiously for orders. He eased his head a fraction into the open doorway and then jerked back. His look of warning told Harl that the room was occupied.
Harl crept in front of him, crouched down and then peered inside, only to duck out the way as a blue streak of light shot past his head. It crashed into the wall behind him and dissipated in a flash, leaving a sooty scorch mark on the metal panelled wall.
‘Trouble inside,’ he said as Damen jostled his way through the crowd of anxious faces to reach Harl.
Another shot exploded into the wall.
‘There’s no way we can get inside against that pistol fire,’ Harl said.
Uman clashed his sword against his metal shield. ‘I can use this,’ he said, raising the shield in front of both of them.
‘How many are inside?’ Kane asked.
‘Only one,’ said Harl. ‘He’s at the rear of the room behind the tables.’
‘Rush him as one,’ Damen said, looking to Harl for approval.
‘As one,’ Harl said, readying his sword. ‘We go in behind Uman. Use the tables as cover. Go!’
Uman stormed in as the defender opened fired. His shield caught the blast, but Uman held steady as torrents of blue burst against the metal sheet. Harl ducked and ran for the nearest table, Damen close behind.
‘It’s getting hot!’ Uman cried as shot after shot bored into the shield, which was starting to glow red in its centre.
Harl crashed into the table and kept low as another volley of rounds flew overhead. At his signal, Damen stood and fired his bow, and Harl darted to the next table, careful to keep out of sight as Damen ducked back down.
Harl peered around the table. He was close now and in a good flanking position. He recognised the shooter as one of the Enlightened Council. The man was focused on Damen and Uman, firing rapidly from behind a pile of armour stacked on a workbench. He crouched to reload his pistol with trembling hands, only to twist round in panic when he caught sight of Harl. Harl gripped his sword and leapt out into the open, rushing the man as he pivoted and raised the pistol to fire.
Time slowed as shots flashed either side of Harl’s head, so close that he could smell singed hair. Fighting panic, he raised his sword into a two-handed grip above his head and screamed, slashing the sword down through the Enlightened’s chest. The councilman’s fingers twitched on his pistol, causing a few wild shots to flare across the room as Harl pushed in and down, twisting his sword as his enemy crumpled to the floor. He stepped back, breathing hard, and yanked the bloody weapon from the lifeless body.
Relief flooded the faces around him as he slid his sword back into the straps on his back and then bent down to retrieve the dead man’s pistol. He passed the pistol to Kane and looked around the smoke-fogged room.
The councilman had been piling weapons into boxes on the workbench. Pieces of scrap metal lined some of the other workstations where they were being assembled into crude armour held together by leather straps. A pile of cables and rope were heaped in a corner next to a neatly stacked bundle of smooth metal spears.
‘Hand out these weapons to the others,’ Harl said. ‘Make sure everyone is armed.’
Damen handed armour and weapons to Kane, who passed them back through the ranks of people in the corridor. Soon, nothing was left in the room but scorch marks and the dead man.
‘I expected more,’ Damen said as they left the room and stalked down the corridor, eyes scanning the gloom ahead.
‘More?’ Harl asked, thinking that if they had faced more men then they would likely be dead.
‘More weapons,’ Damen said. ‘More armour. When we used to collect equipment from here before a hunt, there was always more than that.’
‘Maybe they took it all,’ Uman said. ‘They’re going to need it.’
‘It’s not the armoury,’ Kane said, a guilty look on his face.
‘What do you mean?’ Damen asked as though he had just been told a spear was a fishing pole.
‘There’s a secret armoury deeper inside,’ Kane said ‘It holds far more weapons and technology than the spears and scrap metal we found back there.’
‘More damn lies!’ Damen said, banging a fist against the metal wall, making Kane flinch. ‘It’s past time they paid for their greed.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ Harl said, hoping to calm him. ‘There’ll be no need to hold back anything from the people after this. The more they know, the better.’
He just hoped they lived to see it.
Chapter 43
At last count I have one thousand five hundred and eighty four individual specimens left. If my breeding calculations are accurate I will only be able to open the shop seasonally to allow time for their reproduction.
Uman led them deeper through the winding tunnels, stooping so his shield provided cover. The Enlightened had been clever and turned most of the lights off. The passages dark became tunnels where the threat of attack grew with each step they took into the gloom. A heavy silence hung in the air and, as Harl’s men inched forward, the jingle and rattle of their equipment gave their location away as surely as if they’d been singing.
‘Left at the next junction,’ Kane said from somewhere behind Harl.
When they reached the junction Uman took the turn and then stopped. Harl followed and almost slammed into the back of the scout as he began to back-pedal around the corner.
Ten paces down the tunnel was a jumbled wall of crates and boxes with a small gap between the metal containers. Harl had just caught sight of movement through the gap when blue light burst out of it. He dived aside as Uman raised the shield to absorb the shots.
‘Back!’ Harl said, struggling to retreat as those behind blocked the way.
A man pushed past Harl from behind, eager to engage. A shot struck him in the head, knocking him backwards as he clawed at the burning light melting his face. Harl watched him fall as more shots hit the lifeless body.
Harl scrambled to get back around the corner, but there were just too many people crowded behind him. Abandoning the idea, he grabbed a spear from the man next to him and hurled it around Uman’s shield towards the barricade. It clattered off one of the boxes and he cursed the feeble attempt.
Damen stepped out into the open and loosed an arrow just as a flash of blue streaked past his head.
‘Back!’ he roared at the men crowding the corner behind Harl.
The pressure of bodies eased and Harl was able to slip back around the corner beyond the line of fire.
Uman knelt in front, just out of sight of the attackers, letting the heat on the shield dissipate.
‘Give yourselves up!’ a man shouted from behind the wall of crates.
‘No chance,’ Damen said, letting off another arrow. It shot between two boxes and was followed by a cry of pain. Damen grinned as he stepped calmly back around the corner to safety.
‘I doubt you can do that for all of them,’ Uman said, ducking out from behind the corner for a quick peek.
Damen grunted. He knocked an arrow and leant out again, ready to take on the challenge, but a blue streak clipped his shoulder, sending him reeling back behind Uman’s shield.
‘Curse it,’ he said, scowling down at the burn on his shoulder. The smell of seared flesh filled the air.
‘We can’t get past like this,’ Harl said.
‘Wait here,’ Kane said from behi
nd as he turned to push through the backlog of waiting men.
‘Coward,’ Damen said, half-heartedly. He winced at the fresh burn on his shoulder then set his face in grim determination.
Kane returned a moment later holding a metal tube that Harl remembered seeing stuffed into one of the boxes back in the armoury. Kane pulled the pistol from his belt and then reached into his white jacket for a small, cloth-bound tool set. He extracted a pointed tool, like a sophisticated lock pick, and deftly stripped the pistol, splitting it in half.
‘Hey,’ Damen said, ‘we can still use that.’
‘Its only got a few shots left,’ Kane said, prising out a small metal cube from the centre.
Shots still flashed past the corner causing the metal plating further down the corridor to blacken.
‘Hold this,’ Kane said, passing the scrap tube to Harl. Harl looked inside and saw that one end was blocked. He turned it in his hands, feeling the pattern of criss-crossed grooves cut into the outside of the cylinder.
‘When I drop the cube inside,’ Kane said, ‘throw it behind the barricade.’
Harl nodded.
‘And don’t miss,’ Kane said, using the tool to depress a small button on the cube before dropping it into the cylinder in Harl’s hands.
Harl stared at it as a high-pitched ringing noise began to build in intensity.
‘Throw it!’ Kane shouted.
Harl leant out over Uman’s shield and lobbed the cylinder over the boxes. He choked as Kane yanked him back around the corner by his collar.
‘Don’t look,’ Kane said, twisting away.
An explosion of blue and white light ripped through the tunnel, tearing the boxes and containers to shreds. The fragments of metal burst down the tunnel, battering Uman’s shield from his hands and forcing him to take cover behind the corner.
Harl looked at Kane who was mouthing words to him, a frantic look in his eyes. It took a moment for Harl to recover his hearing. He massaged his ears, stunned that the blast had been so strong.
‘Go!’ Kane said, hustling half-dazed men around the corner.
Harl leapt over fragments of containers as he ran towards the enemy. His heartbeat drowned out the sound of his scream; it hammered in his head, it thundered through his body. He jumped the broken barrier with Uman at his side and then staggered to a stop, his breath gone, his mind reeling at what he saw before him.
Men lay scattered and broken amid a pool of blood and wreckage. No one was left alive. Each body was a mangled corpse. It wasn’t like the cuts made by swords or even the broken limbs of a quarry accident, but sheer bloody gore. Shredded limbs had been scattered among the burnt faces and charred, smoking pieces of metal. Pale, fractured bones lanced out from inside the flesh and some had even been flung at the wall and were embedded into some of the softer earth showing between the metal plates.
Kane knelt down by one of the bodies, clearly knowing the man, and Harl read the shame in his tears as he closed the man’s eyelids.
‘I didn’t think...’ Kane said and shook his head as he stared in horror at the carnage.
Moving behind him, Harl placed a hand on Kane’s bony shoulder.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘An explosive charge,’ Kane said, looking up, wide-eyed at the destruction, as if he hadn’t expected so much damage. ‘It was something we’d been working on. But we’d only done tests out in the open.’ His eyes had a pleading look to them as if he wanted someone to absolve him of the death littering the corridor.
He raised a trembling hand and pointed past the destruction. ‘That’s the door to the armoury.’
Harl helped Kane to his feet and together they threaded their way through the blood-soaked bodies to the door. The only thing that marked it as special was an electronic locking system with a series of numbers on a keypad.
‘It will take me a while,’ Kane said, trying to compose himself, ‘but I can open it as I did the first.’
‘Good,’ Harl said. He turned to Uman. ‘Let the men rest, but send scouts down the opposite corridor to find out what we can expect as we near the main chamber.’
Uman nodded and turned to the men behind them.
‘You three,’ he said, singling out a group of hard-looking men, ‘with me.’
The men fell into step behind him as he slunk back around the corner, scorched shield in hand.
Harl walked back through the crowd and crouched next to a groaning boy who was slumped against the wall and nursing a cut arm.
‘It won’t be much longer,’ Harl said, looking at the boy’s dirt-covered face. ‘Another push or two and we will be at the council room. Here-’ He handed the boy his pistol.
‘Really?’ the boy asked, looking from the strange weapon to Harl as if unable to believe it.
‘Really,’ Harl said. ‘But remember that others will look to you to defend them now that you have such a weapon. Can you do it?’
The boy nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said, seeing the others around him taking note of the exchange.
‘Good,’ Harl said, standing. He walked back through the crowd as they stepped aside, some smiling, while others nodded.
It surprised him that they had already taken to him as a leader. The way they all looked at him was unnerving. There was still doubt in their eyes, but there was something else as well. Was it hope? He tried to think of it from their point of view. He wasn’t one of the Enlightened or a Passive, and he’d never been forced to take sides. He was something new, someone different. He could sense something stirring in them as he walked by. They seemed excited.
Harl didn’t know whether that was good or not.
He returned to the armoury door and found Kane talking to Damen. Kane was kneeling on the ground as he tried to rewire the control box, his fingers moving back and forwards over the lights and circuit boards.
‘I had no idea the blast would be so devastating,’Kane said, sounding sounded guilty as he turned to face Harl. ‘Nearly there. Just one last-’
The box sparked making Kane yank his hand out. The armoury door slid open and Kane led them inside. Damen gasped at row upon row of neatly-stacked weaponry.
Tables heaped with pistols and daggers stood in the centre of the long room. They were the same as Gorman’s but with variations in size and design. Larger weapons were stacked along benches at one side of the room. Kane identified them as battle rifles. Shelves adorned with armour and shields ran the length of the other walls, along with heavy sets of armour and metal hunting traps.
‘This is what I call an armoury,’ Damen said, rubbing his hands together. He looked at Kane and then a frown creased his bearded face. ‘You hid this from us?’
Kane stepped back and hung his head.
‘It was not the right time,’ he said.
‘Not the right time?’ Damen said, shaking his head. ‘Do you know how many I’ve watched die because their spears were not good enough or their armour too thin? All this time they could have been saved simply by having...’ He slowly raised his fist as though fighting the urge to unleash it and Kane took another pace back as the hunter slammed his fist down on the table, rattling the weapons on top. Kane raised his fists in a futile gesture, ready to defend against Damen’s wrath.
‘Stop it!’ Harl said, moving between them. ‘What you’re talking about Damen, son of Terman, is in the past. You want to blame a single man for years of people dying? Then blame the leader of the council, not someone who has helped us every step of the way. If it wasn’t for Kane we would still be waiting outside for the council to die of old age.’
Damen unclenched his hand and looked at Kane for a moment, saying nothing. He raised his hand again and, as Kane flinched back, the hand opened out to a waiting palm. ‘You’re right, Harl of no tribe, I judged one man on the actions of many.’
Kane raised his own hand, shakily, and clamped it into Damen’s muscled palm.
‘What’s that?’ Harl asked, noticing a long, open tunnel leading
from the room towards a dead end.
‘Firing range,’ Kane said, releasing Damen’s grip and shaking his hand to loosen it up.
Harl walked to the tunnel and looked down to the far end where a burnt and battered hiver statue hung on the end of a pole.
Confused, he returned to the table and picked up one of the rifles in front of him; it was rusted in places and bore signs of heavy repairs, but it felt formidable compared to the pistol.
‘This,’ Kane said, pointing to the small square box at the base of the rifle, ‘is an ammo clip. It holds the power to fire the gun around fifty times before it needs charging with a new clip.’
‘How do you refill them?’ Damen asked, hefting one from a rack and admiring it from different angles.
‘At the moment we can’t,’ Kane said with a hint of embarrassment. ‘It should be easy – it should just recharge and be as good as new – but our last charger failed decades ago and our attempts to reverse engineer one have failed. Perhaps the Third Book will give us the answers to that as well.’
He shrugged and turned the rifle over to show them the clip.
‘You remove it like this,’ he said, placing his hand under the clip and then pressing a small button on the side, making the stunted square box fall out. ‘Just place a new one inside and it’s good to go again.’
‘How many of these ammo clips do we have?’ Harl asked as he watched Damen cock his head to aim down the sight, his beard scrunched up against weapon.
‘Almost eight hundred,’ Kane said, pointing to a closed door at the side of the room.
Damen moved over to it and opened the door. A smaller room stood on the other side. Dozens of shelves lined the walls and floors, each one covered in stacks of neatly arranged clips.
‘That’s more like it,’ Damen said. ‘It’ll be good hunting from now on.’
‘Thug,’ Kane said.
‘What?’ Damen asked, turning and half-raising the new weapon.
‘There’s another door further back in that room,’ Kane said as if nothing had happened. ‘It’s where empty clips are kept until we find a way to recharge them with electricity.’
