by Chris Walley
Trying not to shudder, Merral peered through the window into the deepening gloom, seeing the thickening mist on the lake. He turned to Vero. “And so it begins.” But how will it end?
By half past six, the darkness was such that it was hard to see the far end of the causeway.
Balancal had emergency lighting brought in and mounted on mobile arms so that, if needed, the causeway could be illuminated. For the moment, the lights were kept lowered and switched off. To aid the defendants, they decided that most of the streetlights would be switched off. The lines of unlit streets and rows of darkened houses gave Ynysmant the air of a deserted and stricken place.
Final preparations were made. The regulars took positions behind the parapet wall. The few reserves waited below in the square and in the adjoining streets. Karita’s sniper team positioned themselves at upper windows and at other vantage points overlooking the causeway. The two cannons were primed and firing wires run out to the point just above the gate where Merral, Vero, and Balancal stood listening to the steady trickle of intelligence reports from Betafor and observers mounted on the town’s towers.
Luke, wearing armor and with a sword at his belt, stood nearby, gazing intently into the darkness.
Soon information began to come in that the main Dominion force had arrived at the airport and had merged with the Krallen units already there.
Just before seven, the cry went up: “Here they are!”
Merral peered through a fieldscope to the far end of the causeway. Through the swirling strands of dark mist, he could make out something that looked like gray liquid turning a corner on the airport road and flowing down onto the causeway.
Something deep inside him twitched. It’s better when the attack starts. I’ll have no time to be afraid. “They’re coming.”
As Balancal turned to him, Merral glimpsed a look of resolve. “Commander, we’re ready. The charges are primed. You may want to warn the troops.” His tone was calm and unflustered.
If this man feels fear, he shows no sign of it.
Merral caught Luke’s attention and gestured for him to be ready to speak. Then he touched the microphone stud. “Soldiers of the Assembly, you know the drill. When I shout, ‘take cover,’ get down behind the parapet. When the blast is over, get up and kill anything that makes it over in one piece. Take your time. Make every shot count. Our chaplain will now pray.”
The howls could be heard now, a high, horrid, and fleshless sound that made the pulse beat quicker.
“Better be quick, Luke,” Merral whispered to himself.
“Lord of the Assembly,” Luke prayed, his strong words echoing around the streets, “Father, Son, and Spirit, have mercy on us, your people, here this night. Give us courage and defend this town through that mightiest of all armor—the blood of the Lamb of God, through whose name we pray. Amen.”
Amid the resonating chorus of “amens,” Merral saw Balancal take hold of a box on the end of a cable, flick a safety cover off, and then peer through the fieldscope.
Merral looked ahead, his eyes gripped by the awesome and chilling sight of endless lines of gray forms sweeping toward them. Over the howling, he could hear the rising drumming noise of the countless feet on the causeway.
“Any second, Merral,” Balancal said, without the least hint of tension. “I shall let a good number of these things over before I press the button. Ready?”
“Take cover!” Merral shouted.
With a clatter of swords and guns, the soldiers slid down.
As Merral squatted below the parapet, he caught a glimpse of the front Krallen line, twelve wide, now barely a hundred meters away.
Come on, Balancal!
“Now,” said the quiet voice.
Light flashed and a numbing, hammer-blow pulse of sound struck him. The walkway beneath Merral’s feet convulsed and a vast wave of hot, dust-laden air billowed around.
Debris—masonry, stone, dust—fell about him. Something thumped him on the back and bounced off his armor while other fragments rained down. A thud nearby ended with a scream.
A great hissing and splashing noise came from the lake as the debris struck the water. Waves of spray lashed over the parapet, dousing the cloud of dust.
Merral rose and looked around, blinking. On either side of him, soldiers covered in mud and dust were scrambling to their feet and shaking themselves free of fragments. A few meters away, soldiers were trying to help a man pinned under a chunk of masonry. Another man threw a severed Krallen limb over the wall with a shudder of disgust.
Merral straightened his helmet and, wiping dirt out of his eyes, peered over the parapet. Through the lifting smoke and dust clouds, he saw that a full fifty meters of causeway had vanished to be replaced by a dark mass of swirling, seething water.
Beyond the severed causeway, the Krallen lines came to a hasty stop. The hooting died.
Caught in front of the gap were perhaps a hundred Krallen. In disarray, some continued onward while others stopped in their tracks.
The firing began.
Amid the whistles of the XQ guns and the crack-crack of the sniper fire, the Krallen stumbled and fell. They tried to reform their ranks, but even as they did, they were cut down.
In moments, the causeway in front of the gate was littered with a tumbled, chaotic mass of gray bodies oozing silver fluid onto the wet and muddied roadway.
“Cease fire!” Merral ordered. “Snipers, take down any that are still moving.”
For a few seconds, there was silence; then a single Krallen broke free of the pile of bodies and ran toward the wall. A single shot rang out and it spun over and was still.
“Tuh,” Balancal said quietly. “That must have ruined their day. Your uncle did a splendid job.”
“Yes, he did,” Merral replied. “But we haven’t stopped them. We have only delayed them.”
For the next hour, though, nothing happened. The ordered Krallen lines on the far side of the shattered causeway stayed mute and immobile while on the defenses, the soldiers took turns relaxing at their posts.
Increasingly, the mists on the lake thickened, the cloud grew denser and lower, and the light faded still further. Soon the spotlights were raised and switched on. Cones of brilliant light illuminated the causeway and the mist tendrils that drifted across.
Yet the presence of the enemy could not be ignored. There were occasional wild cries by the airport that made the soldiers shudder and every so often there would be a faint swishing sound from high above. Once, Merral glimpsed a diamond-shaped shadow flying overhead, faintly illuminated by the few lights on in the town.
Around half past eight, all diary communications failed. Although he had expected it, Merral found it unnerving. It is a reminder that our foes have powers that we do not have. As the backup systems of cables and wires were switched on, Merral ordered his forces to be ready for an imminent attack. Yet nothing happened and slowly the soldiers began to return to their state of partial alert.
Not long afterward Merral was summoned to a cable-linked communication system to receive a call from Betafor.
“Commander,” she said, “as you know, the Dominion has imposed a . . . blackout of electromagnetic communication on Ynysmant. But three minutes ago, I picked up a single brief signal from within the zone.”
“Within the blackout zone?”
“Correct. One hypothesis is that it could be a small Krallen party. That would be consistent with their strategy in the past. A reconnaissance or . . . disruptive unit.”
“Where did the signal come from?”
“About a kilometer to the northeast of where you are.”
“Wait a minute. That’s the lake.”
“I am aware of the geography. On the maps I have, I would estimate it was just off Vanulet Pier.”
“Odd. A landing party?”
“Possibly.”
“I’ll look into it. What other news is there?”
“Only a rising volume of signals from the airport area. I would s
ay that they are making preparations.”
“Thank you. Call me with any more news.”
Merral stared into the misty gloom, pondering Betafor’s message. A signal from somewhere in the lake? The visibility was now so bad that a surprise attack from a boat or raft couldn’t be ruled out.
Merral made his decision and turned to Balancal. “Can you get a message to your irregs at Vanulet Pier? Warn them there may be a Krallen sneak attack by boat. I’m going to take a dozen of my men and take a quick look. The pier is just below my house. I know the area.”
“Sneak attacks? Tuh, what next? That’s cheating. Go take a look. If an attack begins here, I’ll fire a red flare.”
Merral quickly summoned a dozen soldiers out of the reserves waiting in the darkness below the walls. Then, with Lloyd just behind, Merral led them in a steady jog up the dim roads. As they moved through the deserted streets, Merral glimpsed watchful eyes staring at them from murky doorways and saw muzzles hidden in the dark depths of windows. The irregs. He wondered how effective they would be.
In a few minutes, they reached the square next to Merral’s house and there they came across a party of four men armed with cutter guns, peering up at the buildings.
“Any news?” Merral asked.
“Some odd debris at the lake edge,” the leader of the four said, his eyes still on the skyline. “Might have been some sort of inflatable boat. And some people reported noises on roofs.”
Merral looked around, seeing nothing untoward. Time is not on our side. He snapped out a command to his men. “Split into fours. Take a street each. Get back here in ten minutes. And, if you see anything, fire.”
As they left, Merral turned to Lloyd. “Follow me. My house has a good view. Remember the bedroom you stayed in?”
Like everywhere else in the street, his house was quiet and deserted. Merral opened the door, finding the deep darkness of the interior broken only by stray shafts of light from the few operating streetlights. There was a stuffy, desolate odor.
“No lights,” Merral whispered. “And let’s try to keep quiet.”
He made his way to the stairway, dodging furniture. A thud and a sharp intake of breath behind him suggested Lloyd had been less successful.
“Upstairs,” Merral hissed.
As softly as they could, they climbed the stairs. Merral paused to look out of the landing window, but failing to see anything, continued up.
In the attic room Merral groped his way past furniture to the window. He opened it as softly as he could and peered through the darkness over the serried ranks of rooftops, gables, and little streets toward the dark mists of the lake. Nothing moved.
A waste of time. There is noth—
“There!” Lloyd’s voice was an electric whisper.
Barely thirty meters away, something moved. Strange angular shadows slipped along the rooftops, bounded noiselessly from balcony to balcony, and leaped from drainpipe to drainpipe, moving from left to right.
Merral, realizing they would be out of sight in seconds, said, “Lloyd, take the right. I’ll take the left. On my word, open fire.” How easily I have slipped into the language of warfare. He slipped the safety catch off, and braced himself on the sill, sighting on a moving gray shape.
“Fire!”
A long tumultuous roar shattered the silence as the two guns fired together.
Merral’s target spun wildly and tumbled off the roof.
As the smell of propellant enveloped him, Merral sighted on a new target and fired again. Lloyd just kept firing.
There were cries from the ground; the other men had seen the Krallen. The whip whip of the guns echoed through the streets and yellow flashes knifed out of the darkness.
Merral paused, blinking and coughing in the fumes. He heard a grunt of satisfaction from Lloyd. “Chew dust,” Lloyd muttered.
Merral looked at the skyline. The remaining Krallen had vanished. But where were they? Suddenly, he glimpsed something below in the inky darkness of the alleyway. Pale shapes clung to the buildings and flung themselves from wall to wall like acrobats.
“Sir, they’re coming for us,” Lloyd said, and fired again.
“Stay here,” Merral snapped. “I’ll take the window downstairs.”
Trusting to his memory to guide him in the darkness, Merral ran down the stairs as fast as he dared. As he passed his parents’ bedroom, he noticed a pause in the firing. In the tense silence that followed, he heard a faint noise: a tiny, almost inaudible scratching in the darkness of the general room below.
Merral froze. Straining his eyes, he could make out that a window shutter was wide-open. He was wondering what to do when he heard the front door open.
“Commander?” a man’s voice cried. “You in here?”
Merral heard another tiny movement below. There’s something else there!
Blinking sweat out of his eyes, Merral tried to recall the exact layout of where he was. Two steps would take him to a landing light switch and a shelf with ornaments to his right. He reached out and found the shelf, his hand closing around something. A vase. He remembered it—a blue one with delicate white tracery. One of his sisters had made it for their mother as a birthday present. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the base.
“Coming in!” shouted the soldier.
Merral threw the vase hard across the room.
It exploded in a thousand fragments. “Get out!” he shouted. “Krallen!”
As the door slammed shut, his fingers scrabbled for the light switch and pressed it.
Below, something like a great hairless hound crouched on the floor. It twisted its head toward him and opened its mouth in a loose-jawed leer.
“Get out of my house!” Merral yelled.
Above, he heard the clatter of heavy feet. Afraid and outraged at the idea of Krallen in his own home, Merral moved forward two steps, keeping tight against the wall. Behind him, up at the landing window, he heard a faint scratch.
The Krallen in the general room suddenly leaped onto the banister and swung its head to face him, flicking its tail and flexing its hind legs.
As it began to pounce, Merral fired. The flash blinded his eyes and the roar numbed his ears.
As the smoke lifted, Merral could see that the Krallen and part of the banister had gone. On the floor, amid a pile of wood fragments, an ashen figure lay twitching ever more slowly as a metallic liquid leaked into the carpet.
Merral descended a few steps carefully, his finger on the trigger.
Suddenly the landing window behind him exploded.
He spun round—almost slipping on the stairs—seeing in the midst of the flying splinters and glass at least two Krallen pour through. He swung the barrel around, and sighting by instinct, pulled the trigger.
Click.
The magazine was empty.
A Krallen leaped for him and he swung the gun butt hard at it. It connected, and the goblin fell back against the wall. Merral dropped the gun and ran down the stairs, tugging out his sword. He leaped the last steps, landed on the carpet, and spun round.
A Krallen leaped from the stair rail to a light fixture, grabbed it, twisted around with a flowing energy, and lashed out at him with a forelimb.
As the knifelike talons arced toward him, Merral swung his blade at his attacker.
There was another flash and an explosion.
The Krallen and the light fixture seemed to disintegrate in a hail of fragments. The room was plunged into semidarkness.
What was left of the Krallen crashed to the ground and Merral saw that it was headless. Puzzled, he turned to glimpse Lloyd at the top of the stairs, smoke drifting from the muzzle of his shotgun.
“Thanks, Llo—,” Merral began, but suddenly there were more opponents. While Lloyd turned to face one goblin another crept toward Merral from out of a darkened corner. He slashed at it as it pounced at his face. The sword struck its neck while it was still in midair and bounced off. Yet the force of the blow had deflected its attack and sent t
he Krallen crashing against a table. There was the detonation of breaking crockery.
As it rolled onto the floor, Merral, aware of howls and Lloyd’s yells on the stairs, ran round the table and jabbed his sword hard into his enemy. The blade sank deep, but as it did, the Krallen writhed and the handle flew out of Merral’s grip. Just as he bent to regain his weapon, he heard something land on the carpet behind him.
“Look out!” Lloyd shouted.
Merral twisted around. Another Krallen sprang toward him with its forelimbs wide and its shining claws extended. He lurched sideways, its claws scrabbling futilely on his sleeve.
The Krallen slid past him and cannoned into a chair.
All too aware that he was now unarmed and conscious of the continuing fighting on the stairs—a cabinet had just tumbled over what was left of the banisters—Merral ran to the half-open kitchen door. He leaped through and tried to push it shut behind him. But a limb with scything razor-edged fingers hooked around the door. Merral pushed as hard as he could. The limb stayed in place.
His feet slid as the Krallen thudded against the door.
Merral desperately looked around the half-lit kitchen for a weapon. There were more violent noises and explosions from within the general room. There has to be something to kill this thing! I can’t meet death in my own home. That would be too ridiculous.
A large kitchen knife lay within reach. He grabbed it and slashed at the arm. To his horror, the blade simply bounced off, barely leaving a mark.
He felt the Krallen thud against the door once more. There was an ominous creak.
Merral threw the blade away and looked for something else. There was the kettle, just within reach by the sink. He managed to snag the cord and tugged it toward him. It was full of water. As he touched the heat button, a red light glowed and there was the sound of bubbling. He waited the five seconds that it took to get the water boiling, unplugged it, and tugged the top off.
He jumped aside, letting the door fly open. As his pursuer tumbled in, Merral flung the boiling water over its head.
“Compliments of my mother!”
Enveloped in steam, the creature stopped, and in a disturbingly human gesture, slowly wiped its gleaming eyes with its knuckles, then, apparently unperturbed, turned to face Merral.
