Greyborn Rising

by Derry Sandy

  His decent terminated abruptly when he slammed through the foliage of a mango tree, hitting what he imagined, was every single branch on the way down. Miraculously he landed on his feet. An ordinary man would have died. Rohan Le Clerc managed to escape only with a broken right arm, two broken fingers on his left hand and a broken left shin. His body began to knit itself, not as fast as a lycan and not as fast as it would with one of Kat’s potions but far faster than any other human being. He could not afford to be out of the battle. He picked up one of the larger branches that his body had broken as he fell through the foliage and used it as a crutch as he hobbled back towards the fight.

  ***

  Voss saw Rohan sailing through the night air like a Frisbee. He heard the man’s body crash into the trees in the distance and hoped he had not broken his neck. Either way Rohan was out of the fight for now. The Moongazer that had flung Rohan now stretched twice as tall as the one that Voss was currently attempting to disembowel. He had to find a way to put the first creature out of commission so he could focus on the other. Kamara and Tarik were still firing ineffectually and the tallest Moongazer began walking toward them.

  Voss clawed his way up his giant’s body, dodging its powerful attempts to swat him off. He clambered around to the creature’s back and dug into its flesh, trying to reach the heart from the same inaccessible spot that Rohan had attacked earlier. He burrowed into the bitter flesh head first, worming his way forward like a man-sized parasite. The freezing, glowing blood got into his eyes and filled his mouth as he advanced deeper into the body of the Moongazer searching for a heart. He crooked his neck forward to his chest creating a few inches of space to breathe. Forward advancement became difficult then it became impossible, the flesh of the creature was congealing into a cold implacable jelly.

  He tried to back out, only to find he could not do that either. He was trapped in the body of the Moongazer in a cavity that was closing in on him. He was going to drown in the ice-cold silvery innards of a giant man from folklore.

  ***

  Kamara was terrified. Rohan had been thrown so hard that he had vanished beyond the treetops. Now it appeared that the flesh of the second creature had healed with Voss inside. The third giant was dead. Its open eyes no longer glowed, Cassan’s dog had prevailed. The giant dog however was badly hurt. Three of its legs were broken, but it still crawled in pursuit of the remaining enemies and Kamara appreciated its tenacity.

  The remaining giants sauntered towards her, all their pursuers apparently vanquished for the moment. Neither she nor Tarik fired, but only because they were out of bullets. The taller giant, the one that had flung Rohan reached down toward them. Then several things happened at once. A massive hound erupted from the undergrowth, with Rohan clinging to its back. One of his arms was dangling and obviously broken.

  The dog leapt and bit into the throat of the shorter giant. The dog’s muscular weight dragged the giant to the ground. Rohan leapt off the back of the animal while the dog pinned the giant to the ground and began wildly stabbing the felled giant with a big branch.

  Tarik’s body lit into a soucouyant nimbus, but instead of attacking the taller giant, he dove into the mound of dirt that covered Kat. He did not burrow or dig into the dirt, he simply melted into the ground like a ghost, disturbing not a clod in his passing.

  He did not abandon me, Kamara thought. He must have gone to summon Kat.

  Someone fired a rocket propelled grenade from the bushes. It hit the last giant in the face and exploded, wreathing its visage in fire and oily smoke. That did not stop it from reaching for Kamara. She grabbed her sword and began running towards the boundary of her invisible confinement. She did not make it far before the giants grasp, pinned her arms to her body preventing her from drawing the weapon.

  The Moongazer lifted her heavenward, until they were eye to eye. Its face was a scene from a nightmare, the grenade had completely burned away the hair on one side of its head and had charred the skin black. Where the wound had not been cauterized it oozed glowing, silver ichor. The eye on the side of the grenade’s impact had imploded into a pool of silvery gum. The giant’s mouth opened wide, a foul humid wind escaped. Then the unthinkable happened, the giant ate her.

  ***

  The Moongazer ate Kamara and ran off into the night. For a moment, Rohan wondered why Kamara’s compulsion to remain in the area around Kat’s grave did not apply when she was consumed by the giant. With a roar Rohan plunged the mango-limb club into the eye of the prone giant as it struggled against the mass of the largest of Cassan’s hounds. He leapt to the ground, landing on his one good leg, and hobbled after the escaping giant.

  Where the hell is Voss? he wondered, assuming the worst.

  Jonah drove up to his side astride an ATV, a grenade launcher slung across his back. Without a word Rohan mounted the bike behind Jonah and they sped off after the fleeing giant. The dog dispatched the fallen giant with a crushing bite to the head and bounded after them in pursuit.

  ***

  Thankfully, the Moongazer swallowed her whole. Her sword was gone, lost somewhere in the giant’s cavernous mouth. She managed briefly to cling to the back of the thing’s throat before the muscles in its esophagus clenched around her and dragged her down. It was dark and airless. She gasped for breath but, instead of air she got a mouthful of the cold liquid that coated the alien creature’s gullet.

  She coughed and gasped again only to choke on more of the frigid slime. She was drowning in a fetid soup of icy foulness.

  Need. She frantically clawed upward, but the flesh around her was like the embrace of a constrictor. She was headed down. Desperately she reached upward again and her fingers closed around something hard.

  Sword. But it had come down the wrong way, scabbard-first, there was no way she could flip it around in these tight quarters.

  Air. She felt as if someone was pulling a black hood over her eyes. Even in the pitch darkness she could discern the deeper black of waxing unconsciousness. She was falling asleep never to wake again.

  Wake. She was awake, but wakefulness was an airless place. She did not want to be awake. Her chest would not burn if she was unconscious. The oblivion of insensibility was enticing. She willed herself to cling to wakefulness, to quell her panic and think clearly.

  Her efforts were rewarded. Somehow the sword worked its way downward and it was now pressed next to her. Her fingers closed around the hilt. Kamara executed a cutting draw, marshalling all the power she could. The Nights of Need burned on the back of her hand as if the tattoo had caught fire. Air.

  ***

  Jonah drove the ATV like a man possessed. Rohan hadn’t known that the old man had it in him. The four wheeled bike leapt over mounds of dirt, powered up inclines and crashed through bush and shallow streams in hot pursuit of the last Moongazer. Rohan ignored the pain in his leg every time the bike jolted.

  They crossed an open field, gaining on the running giant. They were about forty feet behind when Rohan unclipped the grenade launcher from around Jonah’s back and began trying to center a shot on the back of the creature’s knees. Maybe if he brought it down they could cut her out before she suffocated or was digested. But if it had chewed her? He was about to pull the trigger on the grenade launcher when the torso of the giant, split horizontally in a heavy torrent of silvery blood.

  The Moongazer tried to hold its ruined body together but the damage was too great. It fell forward like an oak tree with worm-eaten roots in a gale. Rohan and Jonah sped over to the dead creature and began rooting through the ice-cold entrails looking for Kamara. When they found her, she was soaked in glowing blood and fluids, unconscious but breathing and gripping the hilt of the sword so tightly that she had crushed the hardwood of the handle and driven the splinters into her palm.

  ***

  Voss had never beheld a better sight than Kat’s lovely face looking down on him as she and Tarik cut him free of the Moongazer’s flesh. Only Kat could die and return looking better than she
had when she left.

  Chapter 28

  Agrippa was missing and one of the giant hounds appeared close to death. Another had three broken limbs and several missing teeth. If Agrippa had been thrown like Rohan had been, there was no telling where he had landed or if he had survived. Kamara had regained consciousness but was shivering uncontrollably, chilled to the bone by her silvery bath. Voss too was cold. The blood was strange, it felt ice cold regardless of how long it remained out of the Moongazer’s body, and it clung to them, making them wet and cold and uncomfortable. Kat saw to the wounded while Tarik went to look for Agrippa. The boy returned about thirty minutes later at a run and carrying a large black form cradled against his chest like a child. Blood had soaked the front of his shirt. The dog he carried was unmoving.

  “I did what I could, but the medicines do not work on animals as well as they work on men. He needs to be stitched.” Tarik said. Rohan noted that he was not breathing hard even though he had arrived at a dead run.

  “That dog must live.” Kat responded, urging everyone towards Stone. “The two big ones will be fine, even that one that is barely breathing. Those beasts won’t die easy.”

  The group bruised and battered, with the exception of Kat, headed back to Stone. She looked like she had just returned from a relaxing trip to the Grenadines. She even had a tan. She set Agrippa on the dining-room table and set to work. The dog was bleeding badly from a big gash in its side. Rohan could see the slick white of ribs through the tear in the dog’s flesh. Kat began to shave the dog’s side with an electric razor, to better access the wound. As the hair fell away Rohan's heart began to pound. The dog was covered in tattoos, Orderman’s tattoos, Kimani’s tattoos.

  “Kat, is this a joke? Because if it is a joke it is not funny,” Rohan managed to croak.

  “This is no joke I would play, Rohan,” Kat replied, barely audibly.

  Kamara took Rohan’s arm. “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “Your brother has been reincarnated as our Agrippa. I suspected it earlier.” Kat said as she cleaned the wound with salves. Agrippa whimpered.

  Rohan moved next to Kat and looked at her as she worked on the ugly jagged gash. “Will he live?”

  “This is bad, Rohan. He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s a young dog and he has the marks.”

  “He is a young man,” Rohan said angrily.

  “Kimani is gone, Rohan. Agrippa has no memory of the man. Only his warrior spirit remains.”

  Rohan felt like he had lost his brother for a second time. “You must save him,” Rohan said, a fullness welling up in the back of his throat.

  “I promise I will do my best. You should go scrape that stuff off. You all look like ghosts.

  Imelda began making dinner or breakfast or lunch or whatever giant-slayers eat at indeterminate hours of the day. Rohan could neither eat nor leave Agrippa’s side. He watched as Kat did her work. When the wound was clean she packed it with a yellow powder the consistency of cornmeal. Then she stitched the wound closed around the packing. It was a nasty jagged gash. In some places there was not enough skin left to pull the sides of the wound together.

  Where the flesh could not be stitched Kat simply packed the wound with the yellow dust and left it open to the air. Jonah brought IV bags and a stand and they carefully moved Agrippa to the white leather couch where they set up a mini hospital bed. When it was clear that there was nothing else to be done but wait, Rohan sat next to the couch to keep watch over the dog.

  “Rohan, I will keep watch tonight. You and Kamara get some rest.” Kat said. “We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

  Kat had to repeat the offer twice before he left reluctantly. Kamara was waiting for him.

  “How did you do what you did earlier, cutting the giant in half?” He asked her before she could ask him how he felt about Agrippa. He was not ready to address those emotions.

  “I’m not sure. It has to be the marks. It all just comes to me.”

  “The marks enhance physical abilities they don’t teach you new sword techniques or how to apply them. Also, I don’t think either me or Voss could slice our way through a giant, marks or no. What you did was impossible.”

  “I don’t know. The need to survive took over, in the moment I know what to do and the marks grant the power to do it. There is something about this sword too. I feel like it is part of my arm.”

  Rohan looked thoughtful for a moment before he spoke again, “When I saw you get swallowed…”

  “Are you crying Ro?” Kamara asked.

  “No, of course not, some of this silver shit got into my eye.” Rohan replied with mock gruffness. “Kam, I don’t know what I would do without you,” Rohan said kissing her forehead.

  “Well you won’t have to do without me if you behave yourself,” she said. “Did you notice Kat is back,” Kamara said changing the subject before they got too sentimental.

  “That she is. Is it just me or is there a glow about her, she looks…rested.”

  “Well we did lay her to rest, and she did get to see her lover.”

  “He’s been dead for hundreds of years I’m surprised he still has that effect on her.”

  “What are you saying Rohan? When I die you’ll stop loving me? Hmm?” Kamara got in Rohan’s face and punched him playfully in the arm. Kat appeared before Rohan could place his foot any further into his mouth.

  “Rohan, Cassan is here.”

  At this hour, what could it possibly be? Rohan and Kamara followed Kat back into the living room where Agrippa lay attached to an IV bag, breathing slowly, but breathing.

  Cassan was well-dressed as usual. The left sleeve of his smoke grey jacket was folded and held in place with a large gold pin. Leave it to Cassan to turn an amputation into a fashion statement, Rohan thought. Cassan’s face was somber. Standing off to the corners of the room were two lean men who made no attempts to hide the fact that they were hired muscle.

  “To what do we owe the honor Cassan?” Rohan asked.

  Cassan spoke without preamble. “Uriah’s family has been killed, everyone, down to the poodle. He flew back to London yesterday after making sure I was back on my feet. When he got to his flat it was surrounded by police. They were wheeling out the bodies.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Was all Rohan could manage.

  “What happened?” Kat asked, her eyes narrowing to slits, her brow furrowing.

  “Official report, break-in, home invasion, murder, but of course I dug deeper. It was a werewolf, a European werewolf. It broke through the skylight, slaughtered them all. My only family.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cassan.” Katharine said.

  “How is Uriah doing?” Rohan asked.

  “He is doing precisely as he should be, bloody fucking poorly. He is sedated, on suicide watch and has been unavailable for comment since the incident. I would go to him, but I suspect that the man responsible for sending the wolf is here in Trinidad. Lucien must be paid in full.”

  “Why do you think it was Lucien?” Kamara asked.

  “Because the wolf wrote a note in blood, that pretty much congratulated us for escaping the house, but reminded us that good fortune has its price. Lucien needs to be found and killed.”

  “We couldn’t agree with you more. We have some new clues in the search, I was told to seek out a man called Crayfish,” Kat said.

  When Cassan heard the name, he hawked as if to spit, then remembered that he was indoors. “That lying, cheating, liar.”

  “You’ve met him?” Rohan asked.

  “Yep, he moves around a lot, sailing between the islands but I have heard that he is in Cumana now.”

  “That is what we were told,” Kat replied.

  And with that there was nothing more to be said. “We are very, very sorry for your loss.” Rohan said somberly.

  “Lucien must die painfully then we can mourn our losses. You folks appear to have had an exciting night. There’s a dead giant man on the lawn. What are you planning on doing with it?”


  “There are two more of them in the back. I was thinking a bulldozer, a backhoe, and a big hole in the woods,” Rohan said.

  “Oh three, nice. I can take them, I know a great taxidermist and I think they would look awesome in the King’s bar doing the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkey bit.”

  “That’s pretty damn disturbing, but if you want them they are yours. They’ve been mauled, shot, and hacked to shit though.”

  “Like I said, great taxidermist, I will be back in the morning to pick them up.” With that Cassan headed toward the door. But before he left he added, “Rohan, he is enjoying the sport. He doesn’t think we’re lethal. We must show him differently.”

  After Cassan left, Kat sat on the couch next to Agrippa, opened a large ancient book, and began reading. Rohan did not know what the book was about and did not have the energy to ask. He followed Kamara upstairs where they got into the shower together and helped each other scrape off the remnants of the silver blood. Then they lay in the tub. Kamara began to kiss Rohan hungrily and Rohan responded with equal passion, but suddenly she went heavy on his chest. She had fallen asleep mid-kiss.

  Rohan stood cradling her to his body. He dried her off as best as he could then lay her on the bed upon a towel. He tucked the sword in with her, placing her right hand on the splintered hilt. Then he got behind and spooned her. Rohan Le Clerc fell asleep almost instantaneously; tomorrow they would try to get truths from a liar.

  Chapter 29

  The Grey was breathtakingly beautiful. Virgin wilderness extended in all directions. There were forests, marshes, mountains and cliffs of such spectacular majesty and of such a grand scale that the vistas stretched comprehension and overwhelmed the eye.