Kainda leaped, knowing I could keep us from pancaking on the forest floor below, but this...man—I think he is a man—jumped after Kainda without that knowledge. I quickly decide the man is insane, a theory that is supported by the white froth around his mouth, the wild look in his eyes, and the fact that his mud-coated body is clothed by the smallest of leathers. His hair hangs in long, clumpy tendrils and is coated in mud, but I can see the blood-red sign of his Nephilim corruption here and there.
A gust of wind buffers me and slows my fall, allowing Kainda and Mira to catch up. Mira doesn’t stop screaming until I catch her in my arms and say, “You’re okay!”
“She threw me!” Mira shouts.
Kainda reaches us, clasping arms with me. “Almost there!” she shouts, warning me of the impending impact with the ground. I’m facing up and can’t see the ground, but I can see the man above us, dropping like a bomb. His arms are stretched out toward Mira’s back, fingers hooked and tipped with thick yellow nails. His jaws are open wide, revealing teeth filed to sharp points. He’s more monster than human.
Kainda looks back over her shoulder and sees the man falling with us. “Let him fall!”
I can’t. It’s a thought, but Kainda knows I’m thinking it.
“This is war, Solomon!” she shouts.
I...can’t!
Whoosh! A strong gust of wind slows our descent and turns us upright. I still haven’t looked at the ground, but I feel the tickle of vegetation on the soles of my feet. I lower us down and deposit the now bewildered man ten feet away. We’re in a clearing between the jungle and the nunatak’s harsh cliff face.
“Weak fool!” Kainda shouts, and her anger catches me off guard. She shoves past me, unclipping her hammer.
“I don’t kill humans,” I argue, but my voice sounds feeble in comparison, like some part of me knows this is a losing argument. But I don’t kill people. That’s been my one golden rule. It’s why Kainda is still alive, and why her father, Ninnis, who has wronged me in so many ways was able to return fully to himself before Nephil claimed his body. But something about this feels different.
“He is plagued,” Kainda says. She takes up a defensive position between the man, who is looking up at the cliff we just fell from, and me. “Check your forehead. Are you bleeding?”
I pat my hand against the skin of my head where the man punched me. No blood. “Nothing.”
The man suddenly goes rigid, like his confusion has just worn off. His head cranes toward us with a kind of stutter, like there are gears in his neck. His eyes widen. His mouth opens. He charges, reaching out his hands and loosing a shrill cry. There is no skill in his attack. Only ferocity. This man is not, nor likely has ever been, a hunter.
As Kainda moves to intercept the man, I manage to say, “Don’t—” but then it’s too late. She sidesteps the man’s attack. He turns his head toward her and stumbles as he passes. He looks angry more than confused, or frightened. I look for some sign of humanity in his eyes. I find nothing. And then, Kainda’s hammer connects with the back of the man’s skull and a loud crack punctuates the end of his life. As he falls to the ground, I note that his eyes don’t change. When people die, or even when animals die, you can see the life fade from their bodies, as though the soul seeps out from the eyes themselves. But not with this man. His soul was already missing. Still, I am not in the business of killing men.
I turn to Kainda, anger filling my voice, “Hey!”
“We are at war, Solomon,” she says before I can express my distaste. “People on both sides are going to die. I might die.” She points to Mira. “She might die. Billions already have.”
“Not when I can save them,” I say.
“He was infected. He has no mind of his own. Only madness.” Kainda wipes the small amount of blood on the head of her hammer off on the grassy ground. “One bite or scratch from him, and you would be no different. A war ended from a scratch. Is that what you want?”
“I—no...” I’m not sure what to say. Was this man really past saving? Is he really that dangerous? “Who was he?”
“A weapon,” Kainda says. “Nothing more. Human once, but no longer.”
“How?” I ask.
Kainda is scanning the jungle nervously, wary for danger, which she should be, considering we are now in the path of an approaching army. “They are what a man becomes when he is too weak to become a hunter. They are broken...and stay that way. They are kept in the depths and fed filth and refuse. Their madness becomes contagious.”
Before I can ask how she knows all this, she adds, “They are a Norse weapon.”
Then it all clicks. The Norse history. The madness. “They’re berserkers.”
Kainda’s forehead crinkles as she turns to me. “You know of them?”
“From human history,” I say. Berserkers were Viking warriors that some believe took a drug that put them in a fury, and reduced or removed their sensitivity to pain. They’d keep fighting even while they bled out. This man certainly fit the description, but I have no recollection of the madness being transmittable. That increases the threat exponentially...especially if you’re trying to not kill them.
“Then you know they are to be feared,” Kainda says.
I say nothing. I can’t condone killing people. Mind or no mind.
“Solomon,” Mira says. She looks a little wind-whipped and startled, but her eyes are serious. “You remember how my husband died?”
“Of course,” I say.
“If you were there. If you had the chance to kill the man who shot Sam, and spare me that pain, would you have?”
I stumble back, unprepared for the question. How can I say no to that? Mira’s husband. To allow his death, if I had the chance to stop it, even if it meant killing a man...could I do that?
Before I can answer, she takes the question further. She points to the dead berserker. “If that man was about to kill me, would you have taken his life? What about Kainda? Could you let him kill—”
A high-pitched wail rings out, drawing my attention up. A man, as wild and feral as the dead berserker, leaps from a nearby tree branch. He’s a second away from careening into Mira. His fingers are flexed. His mouth stands agape. Mira would survive the attack, but not without wounds...which means...
Whipsnap comes free of my belt and I twist the nearest end up, shoving it at the man’s chest...impaling him with the Nephilim-forged blade. It sinks past his sternum, slips through his heart and catches on his spine. The man’s momentum helps me carry him clear of Mira before I fling him down to the grass, dead, beside his kin.
Question answered.
I look at the man’s dead body, motionless, devoid of life. I did that. I killed a man.
Whipsnap falls from my hands, landing in the grass. I follow it, dropping to my knees, which divot the earth along with the tears already dripping from my eyes. I feel two sets of hands on my back, both women offering comfort for what I’ve done. But I can’t accept it. What I did was wrong. It was evil. Corrupt.
My eyes snap open and I see the blurred ground a foot below my bowed head. There is a litmus test for corruption, I realize. At least, there is for hunters here on Antarktos. Through spit and sobs, I make my request.
“What?” Mira asks.
I spit and clear my throat, struggling to control my emotions. “My...hair. My hair! What color is it?”
There’s a pause as both women lean back from me.
“It’s blond,” Mira says. “What other color would it be?”
“Check it all!” I shout.
Hands dig through my hair, searching. As they search, Kainda explains my fear. She no doubt understands it. “Red hair is an outward sign of a hunter’s corruption, but if Solomon were paying attention, he would have noticed that my hair is also without blemish.” She gives my head a shove. “You’re fine.”
When I stand up and wipe my eyes, I’m a little too embarrassed to look at Kainda. What guy wants to cry in front of his girlfriend? And I was full on so
bbing. Probably not the first time, of course. Despite my breaking, and hardening over the years, I’m still kind of a leaky faucet.
Kainda takes my chin in her hand and turns it toward her. “You’re heart is still pure, and I would never ask you to risk darkening it again. We are at war, Solomon. Men will die. On both sides. Some by your hands. It cannot be avoided. And if you run from this responsibility, you will put us all in danger.”
Her point finally starts to sink in and I dip my head to nod my agreement. But this revelation is interrupted by a sharp scream. I turn to the sound, and I find another berserker standing at the edge of the forest.
The man repeats the cry.
“What’s he doing?” I ask, snatching Whipsnap up off the ground.
When a second voice shouts a reply deeper in the forest, and another more distant scream follows, I understand and answer my own question. “He’s calling for help.”
The sound of running legs, ragged breathing and frenzied excitement fills the jungle to the west. The berserkers are leading the way for the Nephilim army, clearing the path of anything living that might stand in their way, and making so much noise doing it that they won’t go unnoticed for long, especially if there are hunters not far behind them.
We can’t fight this.
“Run!” I shout. We break for the jungle, heading east, moving as fast as we can with an army at our heels.
14
Within the first thirty seconds of running, I realize that although Mira can run long distances without any trouble at all, she can’t do it at a sprint. Or rather, she can, but she’s just not very fast. Granted, she’s tired, beat up and overwhelmed, so I should cut her some slack, but the shrieking berserkers not far behind us aren’t going to go easy on her. Still, I can’t make her run any faster. I turn to Kainda, who is ten feet to my left. “We need to slow down.”
“What? Why?” she asks.
I motion back to Mira.
She glances back and sees Mira, twenty feet behind us, which is just about half the distance to the nearest berserker. When I look back, I not only see the closest berserker, but I see the fifteen others behind him, counting their number in a flash. But that’s not all of them. I can hear many more as they hoot and scream in bloodlust. I have little doubt the army behind them can hear the din as well.
“She sets the pace,” I say. “We’ll take care of anyone that gets too close.”
“Can you do it?” she asks.
It’s a vague question, but I know what she’s asking: can I kill?
My reply comes without thought. There is no time for it. “Yes.”
She slows and drops back.
Every muscle in my body screams, “faster!” But I slow my sprint, falling back with Kainda.
Mira sees what we’re doing and grows angry. “Don’t wait for me!”
“Just keep running,” I say back to her. “They won’t get past us.”
I say it with such confidence that it surprises even me. And it’s true. A hundred of these wild men wouldn’t make it past me and Kainda. They lack the skill and cunning to prove a threat to almost any hunter worthy of the title, but I’m also much more than a hunter. I’ve killed Nephilim. I’ve beat Ninnis, the best of the hunters. And I’ve gone head-to-head with Nephil on more than one occasion. These berserkers shouldn’t be a problem.
A sharp pain erupts from my shoulder, spinning me with a shout of pain. I look to my flesh first, worried I’ve been bitten, but the skin is just red. A shout to my side warns of trouble, and I turn to find a frenzied woman charging in from the side. She reaches back and whips a stone at me. This one sails past.
Just a stone, I think with relief, and then I direct a gust of wind to carry the woman away. She’s so stunned by being lifted off the ground that she simply clamps her mouth shut and allows herself to be carried away. I cut the connection and let her fall a moment later. By the time she lands, I can no longer see her...or her fate.
“Uh, guys!” Mira shouts.
I face forward and quickly spot ten more crazed men and woman closing in from the front.
We didn’t come down ahead of the berserkers, we came down among them!
“Kainda!” I shout.
“I see them!”
We close in on either side of Mira.
“Just keep running,” I tell her. “Don’t stop for anything.”
The first of our attackers arrives a moment later, but he’s intercepted by Kainda and clubbed to the side. The man is dead on impact, but I cringe as his body slams hard into a tree trunk and then to the ground.
The man who attacks on my side fares little better. I bend Whipsnap back and let the mace end fly. The solid metal ball is covered in spikes, but even without them, the man’s head wouldn’t have stood up to the blow. I turn away from the man just before his life is ended and see that a third attacker is taking advantage of the opening left by Kainda’s assault on the first.
I have no choice. Leaping a full stride ahead of Mira, I pull the mace end free of the berserker’s head and thrust the spear tip on the other end into the new attacker’s throat. And I see every gory second of it. With a gurgle, the man spins away and slumps into a stand of ferns.
Three more rush at us from the front. Too many to take on without slowing down. I reach out with the wind, scoop them from the ground and launch them skyward. It’s a different kind of attack, but I’ve killed them all the same. They’ll land in twenty or so seconds, as dead as the others.
It doesn’t seem fair that the moment I come to terms with the idea of killing a human being to save the world...or even another life, I’m forced to perform the act over and over, but these aren’t just random men. They’re an army. And they’re going to kill us, and everyone else in the world, if I hesitate, maybe even once.
So I don’t.
We run. And fight. And kill.
Some of the berserkers feel the tip of my blade. Others fall under the crush of my mace. And even more are simply cast away into the trees, or the sky, by the wind. These attacks become so natural that some berserkers are flung away as soon as I see them, the wind acting as a kind of offensive reflex.
While we are making good progress and no doubt distancing ourselves from the marching army, we’re also making a racket and leaving the world’s most easy to follow trail. I have no doubt that hunters will have found the first bodies by now. But will they give chase like I would expect a hunter to do, or will they call for help? Or worse, will they inform their masters?
When there’s no more resistance ahead, I realize we’ve cleared the front line of berserkers and now only have to worry about attacks from behind. In the momentary reprieve, I reach out to the east. A half mile ahead I find our way out.
“There’s a river,” I say, pointing to the left. “Just over there. It ends at a waterfall. They won’t be able to follow.”
No one replies, but we adjust our course toward the river.
A loud hooting draws my attention back for a moment. What I see is totally unexpected despite the fact that I shouldn’t be surprised by anything any more. There are at least a hundred berserkers. Probably more. They’re charging through the jungle’s thick growth without any concern for their well being, oblivious to the thorns tearing at their skin, the sharp stones cutting their feet or the branches lashing their faces. By the time they reach us, they’ll be covered in infectious blood. Any contact with just one of them could be serious trouble.
I’m not sure we’ll make it to the river in time, so I start brewing a wind above us. The trees hiss loudly, bending from the strength of the power I’m unleashing.
“Careful,” Kainda says, glancing up. She knows it’s me. “If Nephil sees it...”
She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. If I use my powers in a way that’s visible to the Nephilim hovering like giant hawks, they’ll know I’m here. Right now, they might think the berserkers are having their way with some stray humans, or cresties, or even a flock of turquins. The thick canopy
hundreds of feet up, does a nice job of hiding us from the sky, but too much wind will act like a flashing neon sign that reads, “Solomon is here!”
As the wind dies down and the hissing fades, I hear a telltale thwack! An arrow has just been loosed! I focus on the air, sensing its passage, and react without looking. I reach to the side and shove Mira. Her head shifts to the side.
The arrow misses her by inches, but its blade still slices skin as it passes.
Mine.
No one questions why I shoved Mira as the arrow stabs into a tree just ahead of us. We just keep running.
I ignore the sting and focus on the hunter behind us. A gust of wind, small enough to go unnoticed, slams the man from behind and launches him from the tree branch a hundred feet from the ground. He might be a skilled hunter, but there’s nothing he can do to arrest his fall. To his credit, he falls in silence, not fearing his death.
As my arm begins to sting, I realize that I’ve just killed a hunter. It was as quick and easy as killing the berserkers, but I know for a fact that the man could have been redeemed. A single blast from the Jericho shofar would have freed him from his breaking and corruption.
But the shofar is not here. And we must live.
“Almost there,” Kainda shouts and I can hear the roar of the river ahead.
“When we get to the edge,” I say, “don’t stop. Just go over.”
We break into the sunlight a moment later and run along the rocky shoreline of a fast moving river. The air is fresh here, cleansed by water welling up from some distant spring. As I step into the water, I can’t feel its temperature, but I instantly detect it. I take a deep breath as I sense the foul pollution flowing downstream. The river carries the filth and stink of the army following its path. This whole landscape will be in ruins before the day is done. And a part of me, whatever supernatural aspect of my being that is connected to this land, revolts. It’s nearly enough to make me turn around and fight right now, but Kainda’s urging keeps me moving forward, though I have to keep my feet out of the water.
Mist rises up ahead of us. A roar loud enough to drown out a shout announces the presence of a powerful waterfall. Kainda goes off the side first. Then Mira, who leaps without hesitation. I follow last, spinning around as I leap. Taking a last look back.
5 Onslaught Page 8
