by Alan Baxter
“Don’t worry about the bullet with your name on it,” one of his instructors had said. “It’s the ones marked anonymous you have to be concerned with.”
If the team can catch them by surprise, they can take the bandits down before they have a chance to fire a shot. If it comes down to a fight, one of the marauders may just shoot the women as a final ‘Fuck You’.
Speer snakes his way under the trees, pushing small limbs and needles out of the way prior to setting his foot down. Ortiz follows silently behind. The guard sits on a fallen tree, intently studying his finger nails. Leaning against the bark to the man’s side rests an AR-15 style carbine. A short distance behind the man, Speer and Ortiz slowly lay their M-4s on the ground and Speer withdraws a six-inch blade from a sheath.
Approaching from behind, using the trees for cover while keeping the man in sight, the two SEALs inch toward the guard. One step, crouch and wait, another step, crouch and wait. The man is oblivious to the danger edging toward him, that his life is measured in seconds. So silent are the two men, they move to within a few feet directly behind the guard.
The man, apparently finished with whatever manicure he is contemplating, looks up and gazes toward the logging road. With a nod toward Ortiz, Speer rises and takes a step forward. He brings one hand around the man’s head, grabbing his face to cover his mouth and pinch his nostrils. Pulling back his head, Speer brings his knife around, plunging it under the bottom ribs and driving it up into heart. Removing the knife, he plunges it in again, this time going for one of the lungs.
Ortiz, upon seeing Speer grab the man’s head, steps over the log and takes a firm hold of the man’s legs to hold them still. The other guards are close enough that any sound of a scuffle will reach them and may cause them to investigate. Speer feels the body stiffen with his first thrust. Hot blood spurts against his hand covering the mouth and he feels it pour down his knife hand. Withdrawing his blade again, Speer drives into the side of the man’s throat.
Speer remembers one of his lessons. “Never stop until your target is down for good. Don’t stab and step back to admire your work or wait for a reaction.”
Blood gushes from the wound and pours through Speer’s fingers to run down the man’s cheek. With the head pulled back, Speer stares into his eyes and watches them dull. The body goes limp. Quietly, Ortiz lifts the man’s legs over the tree and they lay him out of sight along the fallen tree.
“That shit never gets any easier,” Speer whispers, cleaning his blade on the man’s jeans.
“No. No, it never does,” Ortiz says.
Lifting the carbine, Ortiz ejects the mag. “Kind of them to give us more ammo. Do you want me to get the next one?”
“No, I’ll do it. I just don’t have to like it.”
Retrieving their weapons, they leave the iron smell of blood behind and creep back toward the next guard with the others moving up to provide cover. Ideally, they would have taken all of the guards out at once, but nothing is ever ideal. One by one, they dispose of the remaining guards in much the same fashion.
A scream erupts from the bandit camp a short ways uphill. The team turns as one toward the sound, spreading behind cover, weapons ready. Another woman’s scream reverberates through the trees, followed by a couple of loud voices.
“Online and quietly push upward,” Krandle radios.
With eyes on the camp, Krandle watches as a woman is dragged across the ground and unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the encampment. Three men kneel beside her, one holding her legs with the other two on either side. The others, with a variety of weapons hanging from their shoulders, stand in a semi-circle, grinning.
“I count fifteen. Does that match what you have, Speer?” Krandle whispers into his throat mic.
“Yep.”
“Franklin, Miller, Ortiz, take the three near the woman first. Watch your shots. No use waiting. Let’s hit ‘em hard,” Krandle orders.
As one, the team rises from cover, carbines going to their shoulders in one fluid motion. Together, they flow into the camp like a fast-moving dark mist.
Pop pop pop. More follow like a string of firecrackers.
The two men next to the woman collapse to the side, blood misting from where rounds slammed into their skulls near their ears. The man holding the woman’s legs falls back on his rear, looking down at the red flowering on his chest. A round strikes his nose, the bullet splitting as it penetrates his nasal cavity. He crumples to the side.
Most of the men drop to the ground as if mowed over with a scythe. Some have a split second longer and attempt to use it to make it to cover. They manage one step before speeding projectiles intercept their path, sending them to fall face first onto the forest floor.
With blood spraying across her, the woman continues her screaming, trying to crawl backward away from the bodies. It’s over in seconds. Whitish smoke drifts across the camp, dissipating as it moves. The women stare at the scene in shock. Several of the injured bandits moan and attempt to crawl away. One reaches his arms out in front and pulls his body forward a few inches. Blood seeps into the dirt around him. Settling his red dot on the man’s chest, Krandle fires twice. The man’s shirt puffs up and the body jumps as each round strikes. With a forced sigh that stirs the dust around his mouth, the figure goes limp. The rest of the team begin delivering rounds into the wounded.
Whatever world materializes from the ashes of the old one, these kind of people don’t need to be inhabitants.
“Blanchard, see to the woman. The rest of us will form a perimeter. If they’re able to move, we’ll head back to the others courtesy of these vans,” Krandle says.
Blanchard kneels next to the first woman, looking for injuries. As she answers his questions, her expression reflects a measure of fear and shock. She watches his ministrations, her gaze wandering down to the knife secured to his leg. Narrowing her eyes, her frightened look changes to one of anger, with the red glow of hate hiding just behind.
“Is that sharp?” she asks, nodding toward the six-inch blade.
“Uh, yeah,” Blanchard says.
“Can I borrow it?”
“Um, what for?”
“For something.”
“Chief, she wants to borrow my knife.”
Krandle looks over and sees a look of vengeance hidden deep within. He has an idea of what the hours may have held for the women, and understands what her request will probably entail. Glancing at the bodies, he knows the bandits have long since departed this world and won’t feel a thing. He feels torn between desecrating a body and the understanding that the woman needs something to gain a measure of herself back.
“Give it to her,” Krandle says.
After a couple of women enact their vengeance upon the bodies, they team helps gather supplies from the bandits’ storages, including their weapons. They load them into the vans for the civilians to use on their journey. The bodies are left lying on the forest floor, their blood congealing and soaking into the dirt.
* * *
The thanks are unending as the men and women are reunited. Krandle has never been good at the emotional things, so he just nods and gives the expected responses, wanting nothing more than to leave. The women are physically well for the most part, but he’s sure the emotional trauma will haunt them the rest of their lives.
With the sun rising higher in the morning sky, Krandle hands the keys of the vans to the group, giving them directions north to Olympia where Captain Walker is fighting back against the night runners and building a sanctuary for survivors.
They hit the rolling surf, the chaotic water soaking the men aboard before the raft noses up and over. The waves turn into breakers, Speer timing it so they don’t roll up on a cresting wave. Powering down the backside, they motor through Pacific swells. Ahead, a dark menacing shape slowly rises from the surface, clearly one of the ocean’s predators. Speer drives t
he zodiac onto the barely awash deck. Stowing their gear into the locker, they make their way below decks. The USS Santa Fe submerges as quietly as it surfaced, the ocean once more just an endless series of waves.
A Debt Repaid
A Tales of the Prodigy Story
Tim Marquitz & J. M. Martin
Gryl crouched on the roof’s ledge, knees long since gone numb. His fingers played at the rope in his hands of their own volition, plucking at the frayed strings as he waited, eyes on the dark alley below. He huddled inside his cloak and bit back a curse. Spring had come to Amberton weeks before, hints of green returning to the woods sitting sentry north of the walls, but winter had yet to surrender. A frigid breeze cut through the narrow streets once the sun retired, stirring the trash into a frenzy and chasing all but the most foolish or entitled of citizens inside.
It was the former that brought Gryl back to the city for the first time since he’d laid Korbitt low in his quest to rescue the Xenious girl, Vai. Memories stirred in the wake of the warlord’s name, the sweet tang of his fear, teeth shattering to make way for righteous steel. Gryl had left his mark in both blood and terror, hence his clandestine watch atop the roof. Even with all the time between, the people of Amberton would remember the Avan prodigy who’d left more than a dozen bodies littering the floor of the Broken Lizard.
The town had scrambled in the wake of Korbitt’s death, or so Gryl had heard, their illicit leadership so brutally and publicly cut down. The void left behind threw the city into chaos until the empress herself took notice and sent her knights to secure its peace. Their presence was the true reason Gryl was here. In these times of war, all traffic leading to the Southern Reaches, to the heart of Shytan, was routed through Amberton first.
A sudden rush of noise broke the silence – giggles and soft platitudes spilling from an opened door, the clink of well-earned coin – telling him his target had left the lurid embrace of the brothel that stood two buildings down. Boots scraping awkwardly against the weathered cobbles of the nearby street set fire to Gryl’s veins. He stretched to chase away the stiffness, reveling in the caterpillar of pops that reverberated down his spine, while he tightened his grip upon the rope. The time had come at last.
Even from the roof, Gryl caught whiffs of perfume and musky incense wafting off the man, remnants of his excesses laid bare by the traitorous wind. He appeared around the corner several moments after his scent had marked his approach. Gryl smiled with recognition, the silver he’d paid the local boys to learn the overseer’s routine well spent. And as foretold, Jaret Gailbraith, Mayor of Amberton – if only in title since the knights had come to town – stumbled off the walk and, secure in his safety by dint of royal decree, staggered drunkenly down the alleyway without so much as a cautious glance.
Gryl swallowed a chuckle at Gailbraith’s misplaced confidence. The prodigy had come to Amberton to tweak the nose of the empress. One more misdeed would hardly tip the scales against him given what he intended. She could only want him so dead.
He checked his snare one last time, ensuring it was levered about the nearby chimney, and set his ambush into motion. The rope slithered through his fingers and struck home, the noose cinching tight with a satisfying hurrrk. Gryl wasted no time reeling in his squirming catch. Hand over hand, with easy motions to keep from snapping the mayor’s neck, he hauled Gailbraith up the wall until the man’s purpled face appeared above the ledge, his feet swinging three stories above the alley. The man clasped at the rooftop with desperate hands, fingers digging grooves in the aged mortar between the stones, finally managing to secure a tentative hold with the prodigy’s help. Gryl leveraged the rope around his elbow, loosening its hold just enough so Gailbraith could breathe, and leaned in close.
“Scream and I drop you.”
The mayor’s eyes widened into black pools. Hood peeled back and skullcap set aside, Gryl’s scars gleamed in the pale moonlight, his pedigree on full display. Gailbraith offered a shallow nod at seeing them, choking himself with the effort, but he remained silent otherwise.
“Where is he?”
“Wh-who?” the mayor asked, the word little more than a ragged gasp.
Gryl let the rope slide through his fingers a few inches before tightening his grip again. Gailbraith gasped as gravity threatened to pull him down despite his grip on the ledge. The barest scent of urine tainted the air until the breeze swept it away. His frantic heartbeat fluttered at his temple.
“Bal Surathanan, the slaver,” Gryl answered. “Don’t make me ask again.”
“The… the knights have him,” Gailbraith offered, only hesitating for an instant. “At the Lizard. One of the rooms above the bar.”
Gryl bit back a groan. He’d seen enough of the tavern his last trip through town. “And the woman who was with him?”
The mayor shook his head. “I don’t know anything about a woman.” Gryl wiggled the rope. “I swear it! There was no one with him save the knights.”
No reason not to believe the man, his soiled pants attesting to his honesty, Gryl nodded. He let the rope play out and peeled Gailbraith’s fingers from the ledge, the mayor dropping to dangle below the rooftop by his neck. He hissed and clawed at the rope squeezing the life from him. Gryl leaned down and clasped the man’s flailing wrist and slipped the other end of the rope into his hand. The mayor seized it out of instinct, his other hand following suit not a second after.
“Hold tight,” Gryl told him as he released the rope.
“What are you—?” Gailbraith managed to squeeze out before he was suddenly grappling with his own weight, the noose tightening even further. Veins stood out like serpents against his neck, eyes bulging. His knuckles gleamed white against the tan braids of the rope, a line of crimson snaking its way down the length as he tightened his grip and the rough cord bit into his palm.
“I’ve no interest in killing you, Mayor, but I have to admit, I’ve nothing to gain by letting you live either,” Gryl said with a shrug. “Therefore, I leave your fate in your hands. Literally.”
Gryl turned away without so much as a glance back and headed toward the latticework on the far side of the building. As he slipped over the ledge and started down he heard the fwip of the rope coming loose of the chimney and a sullen thump a moment later. Gryl sighed. He hadn’t wanted the mayor’s death on his hands but he couldn’t deny it was for the best.
He would let nothing get in the way of his freeing Jacquial.
* * *
Night still clung to Amberton when Gryl reached the Broken Lizard. Much as he wanted to take his time and prepare his assault upon the knights and their charge, the sands were against him. Dawn would find the mayor dead and the city would erupt, every shadow scrutinized, the empress’s soldiers closing ranks to deny him. Gryl couldn’t let that happen. He had but one chance to prise the location of the lord of the Guild Infernal from the slaver and he damned well intended to take advantage of it.
Grateful it was after hours, the tavern locked up tight, he pried a shuttered window open and slipped inside after making certain there was no one on the street to notice his untoward entry. He eased the shutter closed behind him, his teeth clenched at the muffled creak of it, and drifted across the tavern toward the one room he was certain of: the proprietor’s.
Gryl circled around the bar, where the room lay, and cracked the door open. He swept inside as soon as he spied the tavern keeper tucked in his cot. A hand over the keeper’s mouth and a dagger to his eye is what the man woke to. A moment later Gryl had his answer as to where the knights had settled for the night. Gryl nicked the barkeep’s neck and waited until the poison on the blade took full effect. Then Gryl left the room, the proprietor fully aware, but paralyzed in his cot for many long hours to come. He would tell no one of Gryl’s visit until long after the prodigy was gone.
The stairs creaked as he made his way upward, each step a spark of flint on steel, threatening to ign
ite the past, but Gryl would have none of it. He pushed aside the memories of Korbitt standing atop the landing, holding Vai’s naked body as a shield like the coward he was, knife to her throat, and focused on the task at hand. Clarity was what Gryl needed, not the fury that rumbled in his belly and made a forge of his ribcage. He’d brought death to the Lizard once more but this time it swept in on a whisper rather than a storm, padded footfalls its only warning.
Gryl took the last step at a leap, loosing a dagger the moment he cleared the baluster. The knight who sat sentry at the end of the hall, red-eyed and blinking away the boredom that no doubt pleaded dereliction of duty, spied the prodigy too late. The blade sunk into the knight’s eye and he slumped into his seat with a bubbled sigh. Gryl righted the man before he could topple and pressed his ear to the door. Only snores rumbled beyond.
With the key scavenged from the dead knight, Gryl unlocked the door. He drew a deep breath as he slipped his short sword from its sheath and eased into the room. The first of the knights went silent when Gryl dragged his blade across his neck. The second knight followed an instant after, meeting the same fate. The third, and last, of the empress’s men came to at the sound of his companions’ feet thrashing under the covers. He bolted upright in his cot as they gurgled their last and met the cold steel of Gryl’s blade splitting his ribs and spearing his heart, the point of the sword thumping against the wall behind him, pinning his corpse there.
A lantern burst to life and Gryl tugged his sword free, spinning about to level the blade at the man who’d chased the darkness from the room. Their eyes met.
“Oh… shit,” the slaver muttered, recognition spreading the sour tinge of disappointment across his features, his thick black mustache twitching at the corners of his mouth.
