“Do not stop until they are dead,” Krogoth rumbled behind them before Jarek could think of anything better.
No one pointed out the glaringly obvious addendum.
Do not stop until they are dead … or we are.
Drogan stepped up to the ridge beside Jarek, craning for a look down the bushy mountainside. “The three from the main entrance have taken note of our challenge. They will be at the south portal soon.”
“Lovely,” Jarek said quietly.
Mada was closing now, the faint vibrations of his steps growing to actual, unmissable tremors. Jarek realized with a huff of bemused exasperation that Fraga had teleported up to ride into battle on his brother’s enormous furry back.
A glance back told him their second lift-load of fighters would be at their side within the minute. Which, as far as he could tell, was also right about when Mada the mammoth would be plowing straight into the mountainside with that enormous horn-like protrusion of his, provided he stayed the course.
The big hairy bastard didn’t look like he was planning on stopping anytime soon.
Jarek drew the Whacker, an odd calm filling him, easing the tension from his shoulders. Like they’d already left the hard part behind. Like they’d made their decision, and now all that was left to do was fight the best they knew how.
People were depending on them below. He was probably going to die out here today. They all might.
And somehow he felt completely at home.
“Who’s up for a giant mammoth ride?” he asked, not looking back.
“I am with you, Jarek Slater,” Drogan said.
“Guess I’d better stick close too if you’re still planning on keeping my ass in sight,” Rachel added.
“Till the sweet, sweet end,” Jarek acknowledged. “Pun absolutely intended.”
“We will meet Kul’Harga and his ilk as they ascend from the south portal,” Krogoth declared as the rest of the raknoth wordlessly fell in with him. “I yet have business with that lupine brute.”
Jarek nodded. “Kick his hairless ass, Rusty.”
Krogoth showed his fangs in what might’ve been a smile—a murderous one, but a smile nonetheless.
Off to the left, the Enochians were approaching at a moderate run along with Zach, several soldiers, and Dola and Brandt, who’d had to wait for the second lift up.
“Ready to roll, people?” Jarek called.
The ground was shaking beneath their feet now.
Johnny looked skeptically past him to the rapidly closing behemoth causing the minor earthquake. “Yeah, you guys—you handle that.” He looked doubtfully at his big rifle, which was still laughably small in the context of Mada’s bulk, and back up to Jarek. “We’ll … cover you?”
Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
Jarek smiled. “That’ll do, fire-crotch.”
Johnny gave him a kind of casual nice knowing you salute, and Jarek turned to face the oncoming titan.
Mada looked up at them with crimson eyes that looked beady in his enormous head despite the fact that they were probably each the circumference of a family dinner table. Then the beast let loose a colossal bellow and lowered his horned snout to charge.
The Kul’s battle cry sounded something like a foghorn, and it hit like a windy slap in the face, hard enough that Rachel actually staggered back half a step.
Forty seconds. Maybe less.
Jarek swallowed. “You guys ever wonder what happens when an unstoppable mammoth meets an immovable—”
“We’re not exactly immovable here,” Rachel said.
“And we shall prove presently that Kul’Mada is far from unstoppable,” Drogan added, eyes blazing violent crimson.
“Man,” Jarek muttered, “you guys ruin all the fun.”
“So we’re, uh, jumping?” Rachel asked, the first notes of real panic slipping into her voice.
“Oh yeah,” Jarek said, half to her, half to himself. “We’re talking tunes blaring, epic slow motion leap of faith shit right here.”
Three hundred yards.
“Uh, before or after?” Rachel asked.
Two hundred yards.
“Wait, what?”
“Before or after he hits?!” Rachel snapped.
“Uh …”
Shit.
“Stumpy?”
A hundred yards.
Jesus Christ, that thing was enormous.
“Stumpy?! Why didn’t we—”
“Brace!” Drogan roared.
Jarek slapped the Whacker onto his back, scooped Rachel into his arms, and dropped into a stable stance.
He’d been in multiple crashes throughout his life. He’d felt the turbulence when Golga’s men had shot his ship down with an RPG back in New York. Somehow, even those experiences didn’t quite prepare him for the feeling when Mada hit Cheyenne Mountain with a deep boom.
Some part of his brain screamed that it didn’t make physical sense for hard, rocky ground to move like that. The rest just worked to keep his ass from falling over.
The air was full of dust and debris. The sound of crumbling rock seemed to be everywhere, steady as a waterfall.
“Holy fuck,” Rachel whispered, coughing in his arms as, behind them, Johnny and the others chimed in with their own colorful additions.
For a second, the world felt still, silence pressing in on them from the thick, dusty air. It was almost peaceful in an end of the world kind of way.
Then the stony ridge shuddered beneath their feet with a profoundly deep cracking sound, like a mountain-sized bone snapping. Something roared off to the left. Harga, Jarek thought. And the enormous shape that could’ve been mistaken for part of the mountain in the debris-laden air began to shift below them, sending ripples of aftershock through the ground.
Mada. Backing up.
The aftershock intensified, and the ground lurched beneath them with another crack and a low rumble of stone shifting on heavy stone.
“Now, Jarek Slater!” Drogan cried, pointing emphatically to the edge of the ridge.
Jarek willed his legs to move.
This might be the stupidest thing he’d ever do. But they couldn’t let that thing have free run of the mountain and their vehicles.
And, if the shifting ground underfoot was any indication, he didn’t exactly have time to second guess the decision now anyway. It felt like the entire ridge was about to come down.
Drogan was already plunging forward with a wordless bellow.
“Shit,” Jarek whispered.
If Rachel had encouraging words, she kept them to herself.
Al didn’t.
“Tunes blaring, sir.”
Then Al broke their long-standing rule of minimizing distractions during battle and started blasting Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song through Fela’s speakers loud enough that half the mountain could probably hear.
Jarek barked a laugh, the hesitation melting from his limbs.
The ridge was most certainly teetering underfoot now.
He didn’t care. He let the electric energy of that guitar riff flow through him, filling his head with all sorts of ridiculous delusions of grandeur. He kissed Rachel’s forehead, securing her in his arms, and slid his face plate closed with a thought.
“Epic slow motion jump time, then.”
And with that, he darted forward, pumping Fela’s powerful legs after Drogan.
Ahead, Drogan reached the edge and leapt into the dusty sky with a mighty roar. Jarek wasn’t far behind.
His brain screamed at him to stop. He centered himself in the music, the pulsing beat, the shrill battle cry. They reached the edge.
He jumped. And then they were flying, and he was yelling—a mad, wordless battle cry of his own.
Behind, a series of cracks and rumbling crashes announced the crumbling downfall of the ridge they’d jumped from.
Below, the dark shape of Mada’s bulk rose up through the dusty air to greet them. Jarek spotted Drogan, peering up with crimson eyes from behind Mada’s massive front sh
oulders.
Something wasn’t right. That was all Jarek had time to register before he braced for impact, preparing to spring into a wide, looping roll so as not to crush Rachel.
There was no need.
In the last twenty feet, their fall inexplicably slowed as if they were reaching the end of an invisible bungee cord’s stretch.
And that was why it was nice to have an arcanist around.
They touched easily down between Mada’s front shoulders, which probably spanned about fifty feet in width, if not more.
Massive didn’t even begin to describe this thing.
Jarek looked around, testing the furry terrain with an armored boot that disappeared like they were standing in a field of overgrown grass. “Kind of anticlimactic, don’tcha—Shit!”
He nearly face-planted with Rachel as the ground—or Mada’s back, rather—lurched backward with one of Mada’s great steps away from the crumbling ridge.
Fraga.
It hit him like a punch as he staggered upright. That’s what had been wrong.
The little gremlin had been riding Mada’s back. Where had the shifty bastard gone?
No sooner did Jarek have the thought than the air popped just behind him and Rachel drew a sharp breath. She jabbed her hand past Jarek’s head, and there was a low thrum and the irritated snarl of something rocketing away from them.
Jarek was about to spin to face the threat when Fraga popped into existence straight ahead, flying toward them, daggers at the ready.
“Agh!” Jarek threw a reflexive high kick before he could think about it.
It was an awkward affair, kicking that high with Rachel still in his arms, but his armored foot connected, and Fraga’s flight took a violent course correction.
Drogan stepped to their side as Jarek set Rachel down. Fraga twisted around and watched them with fiery eyes as he sailed calmly through the air. Then he vanished.
Jarek tensed, but Drogan touched his shoulder and pointed to the south portal where Fraga had reappeared beside his emerging brethren.
Harga’s size didn’t seem nearly so intimidating looking down from the back of the colossal mammoth.
“Can you turn the damn music off, Al?” Rachel said.
Jarek almost laughed. He’d nearly forgotten it was even playing, absorbed as he was in the jump and the fight that had abruptly followed. Now, it did seem like a silly juxtaposition to the collapsing wreckage of Mada’s impact and the sight of the rakul leaping their way up the mountainside toward Krogoth and his raknoth.
Al killed the music. A deadly silence seemed to press in around them in its absence, despite the roars and gunfire beginning to erupt from the mountain.
“I thought it was quite cinematic, sir.”
“You done good, buddy. We’ll tell them all about it when they decide to make a movie about—Shit!”
Jarek staggered forward as Mada took another aggressive step back. He reached over and caught onto Rachel, steadying both of them. Mada lurched again.
Was the Kul trying to throw them off?
It was hard to tell from their turbulent vantage point as the beast backed out of the mess he’d just made of the mountainside, but Mada’s movements seemed unsteady, slightly drunken. As if maybe running headlong into a freaking mountain had actually fazed him. As if maybe he wasn’t so unstoppable.
Fazed or not, they needed to take Mada down before he could wreak any more havoc or destroy the escape route from The Complex.
“Where are we aiming, Stumpy?” he called.
Drogan started toward Mada’s head and made quick sign language for eyes and then for shush, reminding Jarek that this wasn’t some dumb brute they were riding. Mada was probably listening, and Jarek doubted the Kul would be pleased with their plan to come gouge his eyes out.
So he drew the Whacker quietly and started forward to join Drogan, figuring speed was their best friend right now. Rachel padded along right beside him.
When Mada lurched backward another step, they were ready for it. But when the Kul actually tried to throw them off …
Jarek had been wondering whether Mada was simply too stunned or too large to notice—or care—about the little pests on his back. But no. He’d just been waiting for them to get closer to his head for maximum whiplash effect.
Jarek fell to his left knee on the first sweep of Mada’s gigantic head. He jammed his sword blade down into the thick scruff of the Kul’s neck hide and reached for Rachel, who teetered dangerously. The sword sank deep enough to give him some semblance of an anchor, but Rachel was too far to reach—at least until she jabbed her staff his way.
He grabbed the staff and yanked her to him just as Mada finished the first half of his enormous head shake and flung them back the other way.
It was like a demented amusement ride.
Jarek held on, squeezing Rachel to him, planting his knee against the buried blade for support. They reached the apex of the swing. Stilled for one peaceful moment. Jarek’s stomach fell as Mada tilted his head to an angle that rendered his sword useless as an anchor.
Then the Kul whipped his head high right.
“No!” Jarek growled, gripping Rachel close, trying in futility to hold on.
The sword slid free, and they left Mada’s head, flying into open sky.
For an instant, Jarek was frozen—time seeming to dilate just long enough to make him painfully aware of just how completely helpless he was.
Then something clamped around his wrist, and Drogan was there, belly down in Mada’s fur, limbs spread wide, every claw that wasn’t gripping Jarek’s wrist buried firmly in the Kul’s hide.
Mada’s enormous head braked at the end of the swing, dropping them back to the furry terrain. They all took copious handfuls of the thick fur just before the Kul tilted his head up to loose a frustrated bellow that made Jarek’s insides vibrate oddly.
They scrambled to their feet and pushed on as best they could on the shaky terrain, determined to reach their target before Mada tried to uproot them again.
Up on the mountain ridge, Jarek caught a glimpse of Harga streaking around with a rustred Krogoth clinging to his thick back. The rest of Krogoth’s raknoth were busy with Shimo and a vaguely robotic-looking Kul Jarek had never seen. Ogrin circled on leathery wings above, preparing to dive.
Jarek was just beginning to wonder where the new Kul-bot had come from when a low rushing sound overhead announced the passing of the most likely answer. A rakul ship.
Something landed on Mada’s back behind them with a thud that almost made Jarek feel bad for the Kul. Almost.
Mada made a mournful sound like the universe’s most enormous cow as Jarek spun to face the newcomer.
Kul’Gada.
Wonderful.
Gada didn’t seem to notice or care about the pain his landing had caused his enormous brother. He just stalked toward them across Mada’s back, finger blades elongating.
“Jarek Slater.” He hissed the name with a kind of fanatic hunger that made Jarek’s insides crawl.
Jarek waved anyway. “Hey Gada.”
Beneath them, Mada gave a rumbling groan that sounded decidedly indignant.
Jarek looked down at the furry landmass and back to Gada. “Why is it I keep getting the feeling no one really likes you?”
Gada’s only answer was a deep roar as he broke into a charge.
Jarek glanced back to tell Drogan and Rachel to get on with the mammoth problem while he held Gada off. He froze at what he saw.
“Down!” he barked.
They dropped without question—just in time to avoid Ogrin’s flyby tackle. Jarek tucked into a sideways roll as the big gargoyle banked around to try to catch him instead. Long gray fingers missed him by a few inches, and Ogrin slammed down to a hard landing beside Gada, empty-handed.
In response, Mada discharged a monstrous snort.
Jarek picked himself up, and a wave of fearful déjà vu swept through him at the sight of the two Kul stalking toward him. With it
came the painful reminder of Mosen’s final moments, and he clutched his sword tighter.
“Just the two a-holes I wanted to kill,” he muttered.
Gada gave a vicious snarl.
Ogrin just seemed to sneer.
Then the two Kul rushed in eagerly to finish what they’d started at the farmhouse.
Only Jarek wasn’t alone this time.
When he dipped back from Ogrin’s lunging grab, Drogan was there to catch the muscly gargoyle with a cold clock to the side of the head. When Gada sprang in to catch Jarek at the end of his dodge, Rachel was there with a telekinetic blast that nearly sent the Kul tumbling off of Mada’s wide back.
After that, Gada and Ogrin grew more disciplined, and the fighting quickly grew in ferocity.
As well as they fought together, Jarek had little doubt he and Drogan would’ve been in trouble had it just been the two of them. But for every advantage the two Kuls held over them in strength and durability, Rachel was there, telekinetically tipping balances and deflecting blows, conjuring flashes of fire and light to harry and distract.
The furry plane of Mada’s back shifted below them as they fought, tilting steeper, steeper, until they nearly had to find handholds to avoid falling.
Mada was mounting the mountain, Jarek realized. Perhaps intending to go squish Krogoth and his raknoth underfoot. Or maybe just to stomp until The Complex collapsed below.
Whether that was physically possible or not, Jarek couldn’t really fathom. He didn’t want to find out. But before they could stop Mada, they had to get Ogrin and Gada off their backs—or off Mada’s, at least.
Jarek was drawing back to hack at Ogrin’s exposed flank when a sonorous crack from below startled all of them.
With a sound like a watermelon hitting pavement from a ten story drop, a section of Mada’s enormous head exploded outward in a shower of dark blood, shattered skull, and god knew what else.
Jarek’s brain had only begun to register that something had shot the Kul—something big—when Mada pitched sideways with a mournful bellow.
Jarek wasn’t ready for it. He had nothing to grab. Nothing to stabilize with. He caught a glimpse of Drogan holding Rachel in one arm and clinging to Mada’s fur with the other. Then gravity took him past the tipping point, and he was tumbling for open sky.
Retribution: Book Four of the Harvesters Series Page 30
