Corra started at that, then schooled her face into a bland mask. “I see.”
“It’s the only way, Majesty. I have to live here too, and I’m willing to bend on a lot of things, but not that. Agents die, and they do so in a way that leaves no doubt as to the future of off-world exploitation. This is your world now,” Nolan said.
“Ours, but you get the picture,” Avina added in a cool tone.
Corra inclined her head graciously. “I’d have it no other way.”
“Almost here, Majesty,” Cherry said, shielding her eyes with a hand. “Ainault arrives and is surging ashore.”
“To his position, Taktin,” Corra called.
Taktin’s face broke the water some meters ahead. “Three minutes,” he said. The boat lurched forward again, picking up speed even as it curved toward the shoreline and numerous shapes—Ainault and dozens of fighters—and their gear.
“We’ll break north. You all go with Ainault. Majesty, you’re with Balant. No exceptions. This is my battle now,” Nolan said. “Jack, Diane? Head up and keep an eye out. Open comms to Cherry as well. Report anyone doing sneaky shit around our backsides, things like that.” In answer, the two drones launched from their resting place on the stern, both streaking away in a blur.
“Majesty? Are you onboard with this?” Nolan repeated, looking at Corra with intent.
“Agreed,” Corra said, unclipping her sidearm. The handle was smooth from use, as was the scabbard in a long knife she strapped to her narrow waist. Across the small boat, everyone readied themselves in quiet, efficient movements—an excellent sign, Nolan knew, because they would need experience and calm almost as much as aggression and skill.
Flexing his muscles, he gave Cherry and Avina a knowing look. “I’m getting wet first.”
“I’ll go in second,” Avina said.
“Wet? You—ah,” Corra said. “You will approach from the north, of course. We’re close now.”
“Close enough. Taktin, get us near shore for a dropoff, then take the boat to Ainault’s crew?” Nolan said.
Without a sound, Taktin submerged again and the boat accelerated even harder, angling toward a copse of trees that sheltered them from Ainault’s position. Shouts and the sounds of North’r fighters came across the air, followed by the distinct hiss of arrows.
Then a rifle cracked, and Nolan leapt into the water in a smooth arc. Avina and Cherry stayed at the ready—they would bolt ashore at the nexus of trees and sand, just north of the fight.
Then, the boat arrived, breaking out into open air—
And Ainault screamed, pierced by an arrow as the fight erupted all around.
Corra stood, balanced in the hollow bow, gun at the ready. “Now!”
The River Children pulled hard, frothing the shallows as the stolen hull rocked hard to starboard, and Corra and Balant stumbled out into the water, throwing spray from their boots. The boat began moving away in seconds, and before Corra could call out, she saw Avina and Cherry running full tilt toward the sandy incline.
Above them, the fury of a battle raged, and two men fell, tumbling back down toward the water, limbs flopping in the way of the dead.
“Heads down, now,” Balant wheezed. His face was pink with effort, lungs working like a bellows. Corra’s party was already sandy, wet, and alarmed, but they crept as one up to the edge—
And froze. Avina’s howl of rage shattered the air as she raced along the sandy edge at eye level, firing her sidearm in a staccato fury. A spray of blood shot skyward, followed by the mewling cry of a mercenary in the witch’s service. He died, then fell down the same ridge Corra and her people were perched on, his body rolling to a stop halfway in the river water. A pink cloud bloomed and swept away in the current, turning the limp corpse in a sickening dance.
Three sharp cracks tolled the death of Ainault’s people, one ending in a piercing shriek as the victim flipped backward to slide directly on top of Avina.
“Cherry!” Nolan bellowed from his position some hundred meters north.
“Go,” she told him via their connection. She’d worked her way close to the hottest fighting, leaving Nolan alone in the green tangle of trees. His vantage point gave him superior intel, which he relayed in a series of still images captured by his eye.
“Too many guns across from you. I make at least—eighty, no, ninety—mercs, spread out in a fan ahead of Rukisa. She’s tucked up in a pair of boulders, got a long gun. Think you can cause a scene?” Nolan asked.
Cherry peeked over the edge, confirmed what Nolan said, and slid back, tapping Balant on the shoulder. “Give me two swords. Don’t care where you get them, I want two swords and some covering fire just to get up and over.”
“Two, but—never mind,” Balant said.
Corra handed a blade over, and another young soldier, his face streaked with sweat, handed the second, a longer, thin sword of gleaming steel. Cherry inspected both, then tossed the second one down. “Give me Thirst.”
Corra frowned, then brightened. “How about this one?” She produced one of the knives Nolan found in the cave, wrapped thickly in an array of coverings. Even so, the tip peeked out from the bundle, shining with malignant purpose.
“Perfect,” Cherry said, taking the knife gingerly from the young queen. She looked up into the light as more of Ainault’s people came back down, wounded, dying, or dead. Her face went utterly devoid of emotion, and she spoke in a low tone. “When I go up there, do not get in my way. Understood? Avina, keep them clear. Lay down suppressing rounds, but keep everyone the fuck out of my way.”
“I—we will,” Avina said.
Corra twitched, then gave Cherry a nod of respect as the fight escalated even further. Rukisa’s mercs were higher up, dug in, and patient. The North’r would lose, and badly—
Then, with a deft flick of her wrist, Cherry cleared the blade’s wrapping and sheared through the tough array of coverings like they were made of mist. She stood, holding a knife, a sword, and the bearing of an avenging angel.
A man screamed—it was Ainault—and Cherry bunched her legs and jumped.
Nolan and the North’r
East
Four minutes in and the North’r were getting slaughtered.
Nolan began to move, eeling forward as gunshots raked the air, punctuated by arrows and crossbow bolts and, to his utter surprise, a spear, thrown down the slope at a speed that left the shaft a mere blur.
The mercs of Silence were winning. They splayed out in nooks and crannies across the rugged shelf, using any and all cover to rain fire down on the advancing forces led by Ainault, who was hit twice and bleeding freely from his neck and thigh. He fired a pistol with one hand and directed his remaining fighters with the other, urging them to sweep south and flank Rukisa’s forces.
But the land was against them.
Pinned by the river, a steep incline, and thick trees, the North’r could only hope to vault the incline and take cover behind the dun-colored columns of ancient ruins, some toppled, some standing, but all large enough to provide critical protection in the claustrophobic, dizzying fight. Nolan had eighty meters to get into the enemy’s midst, and he was upstream, uphill, and unseen, as far as he knew.
All good things, and all advantages he intended to use.
In spite of owning the battlefield, the mercs of Silence were falling, mainly due to superb, high-arching arrows that fell on them from near vertical angles. Ainault’s archers lofted arrows directly into the sun, but even their killing hits wouldn’t buy enough time for Balant and the saltier fighters to get up and over.
“Just a little closer . . .” Nolan hissed. He was meters away from three mercs, huddled together in a shooting blind made of dried limbs. The mercs were far too close to each other to avoid a grenade, but Nolan didn’t have any explosives on hand.
He did, however, have denser muscles, a wicked knife, and the element of surprise. Nolan jumped out and down, landing on one knee in the middle of the left shooter’s back. With a sickenin
g crack, the man spasmed and went still, fingers dropping the rifle he’d been firing in a devastating metronome only seconds earlier.
One down.
The other two tried to flip, firing as they rolled—but Nolan was faster. His knife took the center target high in her throat, opening a cut so deep that white bone gleamed for a flash before her lifeblood broke free in a hot jet—then Nolan’s fist crunched into the base of her skull, finishing the job even as his other hand lashed out yet again, slicing down and in on the third soldier’s exposed stomach.
With a savage jerk, Nolan ended the man’s life, cutting so far up into his lungs that the blade tip poked through the skin of his neck, just above the collarbone. The man had time enough for a startled uffff, and then he too was dead, and Nolan was rolling out and down the decline, enhanced vision selecting targets faster than any human had a right to be.
Rising ten meters away, a woman in dusty robes fired wildly with a long gun, then gamely drew a throwing knife with the intent of sticking Nolan someplace soft.
“Rather not,” he said, sliding down as she released the glittering blade. It was a good throw for her angle, but the knife glanced off his hip as he spun, and he let gravity take him downhill, then planted a shattering right hand in the woman’s neck.
She dropped as if brainshot, and then Nolan saw nearly a dozen weapons, all trained on him with the steady hands of seasoned fighters.
Rukisa’s voice called out, light and mocking, from somewhere ahead. “Take him. Dead is just as good as—”
One of the shooters fell into two distinct pieces, split evenly down the middle from skull to pelvis. His guts uncoiled before he could even reach for his own weapon, and there stood Cherry, smiling as she whirled to slash another merc from balls to sternum.
“Hey. Shitty odds up here,” Cherry said in a conversational tone. A bullet tore through her forearm, spinning her in an elegant twirl that only accelerated the mono-edge knife in her left hand. She put the speed to good use, driving the knife into another fighter who had the excellent sense to fall back after only losing an arm.
“Getting better,” he said.
They were too far into the enemy to turn back, and a quick glance told them that Balant and others were now above the sandy beach, climbing forward with near suicidal bravery as the lower tiers of mercs continued their harrowing fire.
There was only one thing to do.
“I’ll go for the witch,” Nolan growled, and with that, Cherry began to move in a blur.
In seconds, there were limbs and blood and howls of pain filling the air, confused firing as mercs tried—and failed—to hit Cherry, who was now drawing on the entirety of her inorganic fighting abilities. She was an angel of death, whirling and cutting with movements so fluid that they looked scripted, and Nolan seized his moment, advancing across a narrow ridge that led to Rukisa’s command post.
The fallen column was two meters high and ten long, and Rukisa slipped behind it with a predatory grace. Shrieks of raw fear and agony filled the air, and Nolan sensed the mercs were coming to regret joining Rukisa, but it was too late for anything but pain.
And revenge.
Every North’r pouring up the slope had murder in their eyes—except for Corra.
She alone was still choosing her shots, a stoic, cool presence in the midst of a battlefield gone mad with bloodlust. Even Balant was on the edge of depravity, stomping a huge foot down on the thigh of a merc who fought back, weakly, then tossed his weapon away while raising hands in supplication.
Balant fired once into the man’s skull, and the hands, begging for quarter, fell to the gritty soil with the dull thud. Balant’s eyes cleared, and he stood for a moment, awash in the horror of his brutality. Around him, the shots began to slow, but the cries of pain still pierced the air, both North’r and Silence mercenary.
No one died with an accent. They just died.
Avina stood, swaying as the adrenaline drained away. She was speckled with blood and cut on her cheek, with two fingers that hung at a grotesque angle, but she was alive and ready to fight. That was far better than many of Ainault’s people, and if blood alone was an indicator of death, then Ainault himself might be passing on, given the hideous stains all over his gear.
Balant drew a deep breath, then spoke over his shoulder to Corra, shaded by his bulk. “My queen, do you think Nolan found—”
Above the beach, Nolan roared, a primal sound of such fury that Balant twitched despite being on the same side.
“I’d say he did. Up to him, now. Guard any survivors, but we must get to him now,” Corra commanded. Around her, two dozen fighters assembled in varying states of health, and as one, they began to run up the hill.
Chapter Seventeen
Rukisa
He was hideously strong, being a heavy-grav bastard, and when she slipped the knife into his ribs, she was sure it would at least slow him down. He’d come over the column in a single leap, killing her two guards with a single swipe of his knife and firing a round at her that missed by less than a centimeter.
Rukisa’s answer was always the same—she attacked. Cornered, stripped of her forces, and guarding the secret to more money than anyone could imagine, Rukisa drove her blade between Nolan’s ribs, her teeth bared in a rictus as she twisted the blade left, then right.
Nolan’s bellow shook the sky, but Rukisa merely grinned. He was dead on his feet, but he didn’t know it.
Then his fist connected with her gut, and Rukisa thought he’d ruptured her spleen with one punch, an impact so horrific that she nearly soiled herself. He snapped her wrist in one motion, then pulled the knife out of his body while hissing like a serpent from the bowels of hell.
Blood spurted down his side, and he wobbled—just for a moment, but it was enough. Rukisa drew her sidearm and put the barrel between Nolan’s eyes, finger going tight on the carbon trigger.
His foot crunched her ankle to a ruin, and the gun went off—skyward. Rukisa—the witch of Silence, the quiet ruler and agent of an evil that spanned four thousand years—went down to one knee, eyes gleaming with tears of pure pain.
Nolan’s thick hands grasped her neck, and he lifted her, howling, to her feet.
“Stand the fuck up,” he rasped.
Having no choice, she stood.
“The cache.”
“The wha—”
His hand shattered her nose before she understood he was moving. He was possessed by something more powerful than his own body.
He was driven by a vision. In that moment, Nolan saw the dead children sprawled across a wide-open world filled with horrors made worse by the sickness of greed. He saw the Pox, and the profits, and the frozen corpses tearing through clouds to land and be eaten—and forgotten, forever, except by the loved ones who would never know.
He saw it all, and he burned with hatred.
“The cache. Where you store everything agents need. The pickup place, for when you leave,” Nolan said.
Cherry was behind him now, and Corra, and Balant. Avina stood close, along with others, all watching the witch with a hatred so real it fell on her like a physical blow. So many dead. So much endless war, and forgetting, and scars.
All for the treasures of another universe, brushing against Janusia with tantalizing closeness.
Nolan put his hand on Rukisa’s throat, and there was a horrible finality to the gesture. Her arms batted softly at him, but it was so weak as to be childish, and after a few seconds, she stopped, hanging inert in his grasp.
At his mercy, but in truth there was no mercy to be had.
“Around my neck. A key,” Rukisa said.
Nolan took it from her roughly. “Where?”
She looked away, then back at Nolan. There was nothing in her eyes except hate. “Here. I mean, up there.” Her eyes tracked to another ruin, this one bigger.
Nolan tossed the key to Cherry. “Go see.”
Cherry moved away at a sprint. In seconds, she stood at the base of a short column
joined by a low, thick stone, its face clearly worked by human hands. It was old—incredibly so, and there was obvious aeolian erosion. Cherry squatted there, moved, and then stood, hands on her hips as a slow smile crossed her features.
“Do we have it?” Nolan called up to her.
“Do we ever. We got it all,” Cherry said, her voice ringing with triumph.
Over the chorus of excitement, Nolan gave a single, terse nod, then turned back to Rukisa. “When’s the next pickup?”
“Not until I call for it. The transponder is up there. They come here. Or they would have,” she said. Her words were thick. The pain and defeat were telling.
“Who else?” Nolan asked, but Rukisa shook her head, defiant.
Corra stepped forward, hand moving in a blur as she cracked the witch across her sneering face. “Who else of you is in my kingdom? I will not ask again.”
Rukisa smiled, and her teeth were pinked with blood. Corra was strong, and the blow well-struck.
Cherry arrived just then, smiling broadly. “Bad news for you, agent.”
Rukisa snorted, and Nolan loosened his hand so she could draw a breath. She used it to speak. “Worse than this?”
“Afraid so,” Cherry said. Her voice was positively bright as she addressed Nolan. “Not just the weapons and gear. The Pox. Thousands of vaccines, maybe tens of thousands. And a full ship’s surgical suite, and other meds. Some drones. You can’t imagine the things they’ve got tucked away, but the tech is—Nolan, some of it is beyond me. We’re talking about shit that can make this planet a powerhouse, if only—”
“It ends up here, and not with the Calabrians? I think that’s exactly what we’ll do,” Nolan said.
“I’d rather stay anyway,” Avina added.
“Stay? You’ll stay, alright. Your bones will be here when the Prelate Justiciars drop out of the skies and turn this shithole into a slag heap,” Rukisa spat.
“Don’t think so. They can’t land in force, or they already would have, and anyway, we hold the skies. At least, we do now. Are we done with her?” Nolan asked everyone, looking around.
Lost Kingdom: Book 1 in the Lost Kingdom Series Page 29
