The Nycht gunner was crouched behind their single, light machine gun, knuckles white, waiting for the right moment. An Arpak reloader sat behind the gunner’s elbow with a replacement magazine already in her hands. They were both as still as statues and had lumpy, handmade muffs over their ears.
The amorphous polyp of winged destruction had mutated into a jagged edged sphere sprouting two tendrils on either side. The flashes of red Jordan spied brought Caje's words crashing back to her memory: ‘They're organized’.
Two pincering vanguards of agile male harpies broke away from the main body of the attack. One dropped fast, toward Lower Rodania, as the second spiked upward, driving hard for Rodania's highest island. Jordan had no time to marvel at the coordinated precision with which the harpies made this strategic move; the rest of the force was headed straight for them.
Jordan's mouth twisted with disgust, as the air curdled with the all-too-familiar stink.
When the Lewis guns began to fire, the clack-clacking sound seemed to fill the world. Spent shell casings flung themselves wildly sideways, and the Strix on the parapet pressed inward, away from the flying metal. In between firings, the booms of guns all over Rodania could be heard echoing in the distance. Jordan wondered what the poor citizens had been told to do in the event of an attack. She hadn't been involved in the communications strategy, if one existed at all.
The noise was incredible.
The Strix, unaccustomed as they were to this mechanical barrage, winced at the relentless sonic assault. The hapless loaders had their hands full keeping themselves and their crates of ammunition out of the path of the casings that tumbled and twirled, smoking and filling the air with another kind of stink––that of hot metal.
Jordan realized with a gulp that the Strix had fired too soon. The range was too great for an effective volley, but the sheer weight of the combined fire took three harpies out of the sky, their bodies tattered and bleeding, and several more joined shortly after. They plummeted like feathered bags of cement to the water below.
In spite of the auditory excess of the Lewis guns, a cheer could be heard as the Strix drew first blood. As if pausing to hear their own applause, many of the guns fell silent. Their magazines ran dry with a final, fatal ping, and there was a scramble to reload.
Her mind recovering from the battering waves of sound, Jordan realized the opening barrage had lasted less than two minutes. A quick glance at the ammunition beside the loader revealed less than half of what they'd started with. But the machine guns had begun to open up again, as the quickest loaders stepped clear and signalled the gunners to fire.
More harpies fell, but they were now close enough that the Strix could see their bodies writhe as the gunfire perforated flesh and wing membrane. One side of the approaching mob began to lose its cohesion, the harpies’ innate aggression and cruelty weakening in the face of a furious and unexpected storm of bullets.
Some of the leading harpies crumpled in midair, tumbling toward the sea, while others wheeled wildly away with the grating cries Jordan had come to despise. Harpies died, but more and more of the guns fell silent as their magazines were spent. The sky was growing dark as though it were dusk, not dawn, as the harpies’ wings blotted out much of the already diffused sunlight.
Caje's body was tense. He was watching, waiting for the right moment. When no repeating clack-clack came, it meant every one of the machine gun nests was out of commission. The Strix raised their eyes, their hands posed on the hilts of their weapons.
The Lewis guns had been no salvation; there were simply too many harpies. The sky was now black with them. The realization was settling over their ranks like a chilly, invisible fog.
All the hard work and preparation, all the trouble of going back to Virginia and retrieving the antique, seemed paltry now. Jordan clenched her teeth, and with great effort, threw off her despair with an angry mental shove.
When the call came, she was the first to react.
"To the air!" Caje bellowed in a battle cry that seemed too large for even his impressive frame. "To the air, you Strix!"
And with that, the stinking harpy horde was upon them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Sol threw himself from the tower with a yell, and was immediately out in the open air, his wings powering him upward and forward. A potent gale of stink assaulted his senses as he climbed, and his eyes watered at the heavy, clinging odor. He gagged in spite of himself, succumbing to the noxious odor.
Bodies filled the sky––twisted, feathered, viciously armed bodies—–until it seemed they crowded all dimensions. There were so many; too many. They outnumbered the Strix defenders at a ghastly ratio.
Through tear-blurred eyes, Sol spied a smaller, faster shape gaining altitude parallel to him. There was time enough to register Chayla's snarling grin. He'd forgotten in his fury that they were meant to stick together; already he was falling back into the habits of his solitary life.
His thoughts swung wildly to Jordan. His love was not ready for this, but then, none of them were.
A male, crimson crested and shrieking, came spiralling toward him, and Sol recognized the trick. The harpy would roll mid-flight and try to sideswipe him with its whiplike tail, so that the harpy following could lay its claws into him. Hatred for the flying monstrosities lent Sol speed, strength, and a frightening focus.
He matched the roll of the harpy, taking the beast through the chest with a spear. With a second spear, Sol stabbed upward, halting the follow-up attack. There was no time to savor his victory, though. More and more harpies filled the air—–there seemed to be no end to them.
Time grew meaningless, and rational thought became a ponderous luxury. Sol's and Chayla's training took front seat as they reacted, and reacted, and reacted. It was an endless twisting, turning, deadly aerial ballet. A thrust here, a slash there, a dodge, a barrel-roll, a vault; on and on they fought, doing their best to stay close and watch each other's backs. Being moments and inches from death became the way life was lived. In the corners of his vision, Sol saw his companions fight, and he saw them die.
The world stopped making sense. His ears closed to all sound but his own breathing, and oddly enough, the distant grunts and cries of Chayla. The screeches and roars of harpies became a soft background drone. A harpy's throat could let a scream fly mere feet from his eardrum, and the sound seemed to come from somewhere far away. Yet Chayla could shout a warning across the battlefield, and it entered his ears as clear and crisp as springwater. Sol had never before observed the shift in psychology that happened in combat like this. He would have marvelled at it, had he the luxury of time.
The death and pain being dealt around Sol lit a white-hot fire within him, driving him to fight harder, faster, and fiercer than he ever had. He may be doomed to die; every warrior might share his fate, and all of Rodania may succumb to ruin, but with every ounce left of his life, he would wreak terrible damage.
Hurling one spear, and then the other, Sol pumped his wings hard to gain altitude. He snagged the spears jutting from a falling corpse, turned, and sent one into the belly of a bloated female. The harpy gave a shriek as her talons raked the air above Sol's head, blindly missing. As the stricken female swooned, the raging Arpak tore his spearhead free. He spun to meet another oncoming female who sought to gore him with her forward sweeping horns like a maddened bull.
Sol cleared her onrushing body, but the hag's barbed tail gouged a red line across his calf. He snarled at the burning pain, but used the momentum of the blow to fuel his torsion. The harpy struggled to turn her bulk, her demon-face twisting back with a rattling hiss. She caught a throwing blade in her eye for her trouble, and the beast shuddered and plummeted from the sky.
Sol turned from one stricken foe to hurl his spear at another. And so it went.
Looking beyond a fallen enemy, Sol saw Chayla smeared in blood, and with a nasty gash over one eye. She spun her single remaining hand-axe and unleashed a frenzy of hacking slashes at a passing fem
ale.
Sol barely had time to clear the taste of harpy filth from his mouth before he was drawn back into the raging current of war.
•••
Jordan tried her level best to stay with her unit as they swept along one flank of the harpy flock, but the diving attacks by the agile harpy males made it impossible.
She had been heartened when a thrown knife had cut off the flightpath of an oncoming attacker. Now though, as more and more of the speeding demon-birds rushed over and through them, that one kill was such a meager thing.
The harpies came at them in rushes, a male or two at a time pelting toward them at breakneck speed. These were easy to ward off with thrown missiles or evasive moves. The Strix spun or parted to let the bolder harpies pass by, where rearward ranks could surround them and tear them apart.
At least, that was the hope. This had been one of the ploys Toth had taught them.
Jordan could hear a voice bellowing, doling out instruction, encouragement, and rebuke all in one thunderous blast. She could not see Toth, but she would recognize his voice anywhere.
How have we gotten so close? Toth's squadron had begun this battle a whole two kilometers west of her. She should have been encouraged by the power of his voice, but the insistence that it now carried struck at her heart. She had never heard him sound like this.
Contemplations of Toth were driven from her mind as she heard a different warrior at her shoulder; a redheaded Nycht with an impressive scar across her cheek.
"Head's up!"
Jordan's eyes swung about. She was treated to the harrowing sight of three large females rushing toward them.
There had been innumerable blessings in having her eyesight supernaturally enhanced since coming to this world, but as she registered these oncoming monsters, she found herself wishing for the comfort of a softer-edged, bleary world. Jordan could, unfortunately, pick out every vicious detail: the flex and sag in the enormous muscles of their shoulders and breasts, their wickedly curved horns, their cruelly hooked beaks, and brutally barbed talons.
Yet for all that, fear did not numb her mind like it might have before. She was facing the end of her life––a brutal end. But her head was clear, and her mind was fixed; she would go down fighting.
The trio of harpies charged, their horns lowered, seeking to scatter them. Jordan and the Strix had trained for this, and as one, they looped around each other in pairs. The harpies, having zeroed in on individual quarries, tangled with each other as they tried to respond. Croaking and snapping at each other, their charge stalled, and Jordan and her comrades fell on them like a pack of lions.
The entire performance unfolded over the space of a few heartbeats, and came to a crescendo as Caje led three warriors in a gloriously insane charge through the midst of Jordan’s squadron, heading straight for a wave of oncoming harpies. Jordan watched in battle-shock as Nycht and Arpak screamed their bloody-fisted defiance, and were swallowed by the harpy horde.
•••
Everything had fallen to pieces, but Toth refused to surrender to despair.
A short broadblade sword in each hand, he took turns hacking at passing harpies, and gesturing feverishly as he bellowed directions to the pieces of his army which still held some kind of order.
Caje and a band of Strix emerged from a clump of broken harpy corpses, their weapons stained with dark blood and trailing feathers like pennants. A single battle-mad harpy male flew straight at Caje, and was rewarded for his trouble with a flayed chest.
Jordan had been assigned to Caje's tower, and yet she was not with them. The Nycht leader refused to believe that meant the worst; it was nearly impossible to stay together in the chaos.
Toth had no time to watch his brother's wrecking crew, but he kept his eyes away from the battle line long enough to see Caje and his party smash through a cluster of harpies like a meteor. Each harpy was easily ten feet from horned head to taloned foot—–many were larger, but they buckled beneath the brutal onslaught like kindling before the axe.
Mace, sword, and spear rose and fell, loosing their share of harpy blood. By the time Caje and his warriors were banking back toward Toth, corpses were pitching brokenly through the sky.
Toth scanned the battlefield for another target, another knot of resistance that just might buy them a little more time and hope. The deadly fury of the Strix fighting around the Nycht brothers gave an impression to all involved that the battle was being won.
They fought. Harpies fell.
But Strix who found a moment to raise their eyes and look beyond their immediate surroundings endured a dismaying shattering of that illusion. The harpies seemed like the mythic hydra: for every head sliced off, four more took its place. The skies over Rodania were riddled with the enemy.
Toth watched this collective realization dawn in the faces of his combatants, and he fought all the fiercer to keep it at bay.
•••
Jordan rammed her dirks into the back of a bucking harpy. She felt the creature's body sag, and, drawing her knees toward her chest, she kicked free of the dying monster and took to the air. Casting about, she searched for her comrades. Toth's plan had fallen to pieces under the sheer size of the harpy onslaught. There was only one directive any of them could follow now––kill as many invaders as possible, and try not to die.
When the mass hit, it was like being submerged in a stinking ocean. The air was choked with wings and bodies, and the reeking stench was everywhere. Every which way you turned, some snaring claw or gaping beak was bearing down. The battle felt like it had been raging for days. The sun hid its face behind thick clouds, giving nothing away.
Jordan had used most of her throwing knives, and then the longer blades had come out. She was not as good with those, but she was not fighting to kill. She didn't have the luxury of being that proactive. She was fighting to live, simply reacting to stay alive. Each thrust, each slash was to buy her another second, another inch of time and space, another moment in which her heart beat. Time and time again, her smaller, faster frame evaded death. The Strix and harpies were like sparrows to crows.
Jordan dodged right as a gaggle of males screamed by, then rolled a hard left as a hulking female barreled past with a snap so close, Jordan felt the wind from her beak.
Between defensive flying and striking at whatever came close, she searched the skies for her comrades. How did I get so lost? Rodanian villages and fields zoomed and tilted beneath her, the backdrop constantly changing. Her relentless surveying saved her life for the thousandth time as she spied a streaking form a split-second before it blindsided her.
As though they had minds of their own, her blades slashed, slipping between the creature's ribs. The harpy screamed and wrenched away, its breathing choked and labored. The Arpak fought to keep a hold of her weapons while the harpy writhed to get free of the blades embedded in her chest. Their struggle dragged Jordan, ducking and wincing, through tight ranks of harpies, until the creature finally tore itself free and sent the combatant spinning through the air, her blades gripped by aching fingers.
She reoriented and realized that she was suddenly flying very low, streaking through the midst of a Rodanian city. To a soundtrack of grating harpy screeches, Jordan dodged a bell tower, banked around a residential building made of gleaming black metal, and nearly rammed face-first into a red-crested male. His scream assaulted her ears as she spun, bringing her blades to bear—–but the male flapped on, intent on some other mission.
Jordan let momentum carry her around, and rode a thermal higher. She scanned in the dim light, homing in on a lone Nycht facing off with a female, and set off toward the pair.
She found herself in battle alongside the Nycht gunner who had crouched upon the tower with her at the beginning of the onslaught, what seemed like years ago. Together they brought down the female, then ducked for cover as harpies swept by in packs that would have overwhelmed them in seconds.
Without speaking, the pair finished off another crippled male
as he limped along the street. Shutters were closed up tight and doors were barred against the apocalyptic events taking place outside.
In the middle of the street ahead they spied an Arpak, one wing clearly broken, lashing wildly with a blade, bravely deflecting two males harpies. Jordan and her comrade descended from above. The Nycht cut down one with his curved blade before it had time to look around, and Jordan leapt forward to strike into the other’s back. The numbing shock of the impact shot up her arm. The harpy bucked, and she tumbled to the ground.
The pierced male hissed in rage; both of Jordan's hilts protruded from his shoulder. He lowered his jaw almost to the ground and gripped the stones with his talons, launching himself after her. Jordan rolled, and the beast snapped after her. Mad with rage and pain, he jetted forward, but Jordan reversed direction. His talons skimmed so close over her head that she felt them pull at her hair.
She scrambled to her feet, but she was now bladeless. She grabbed at her empty sheaths with her eyes on the beast, feeling in vain for a leftover throwing blade.
There was a streaking flap of wings as the gunner threw himself between her and the harpy, his sword glinting in the dull light. There was a bone-rattling crack as he hit the monster hard, and together they rolled across the ground. Jordan danced at the perimeter, her eyes catching sight of her hilts as they flew by. There was a pinging snap, and the handle of one knife went clattering across the stones. There was a garbled screech; the harpy bucked and then collapsed. Everything became still, and Jordan could hear her own breathing, her own madly sprinting heartbeat.
Scrambling, crawling, not able to move fast enough, Jordan crossed the cobbled street to roll the dead harpy off the Nycht. The beast rolled away, and she met the empty eyes of the gunner with a sob. The dead warrior's vest leaked from half a dozen punctures where the harpy's talons had done their work.
She loosed a scream of anguish and frustration. Rage tore through her like wildfire, and she knew hate like she had never felt. It was a living, breathing thing, swelling in her heart and lighting every nerve. She thought she knew what hate was, but she was learning that it had only been an abstract idea. Her life had been absent of true hatred up until this battle.
Combatant: The Revelations of Oriceran (The Kacy Chronicles Book 3) Page 23
