Chapter Thirteen #2
Bang and splinter of Garner’s second barrel, fired again into the door.
Another howl. Something hit the floor on the other side with a thump.
Duncan spared a side glance across to cover the other man if he needed it.
Saw Garner break the Woodward, handily hook out the spent shells with farm-calloused fingertips, drop them smoking to the floor—fresh load slammed in, the gun snapped up closed, a curt nod.
Duncan nodded back, went back to watching the barricade.
He thought he heard one of the Huldu he’d hit crawling about in the dirt outside, moaning weakly.
No words, in Skogurtal or any other tongue he knew; he guessed the owner of the voice was bleeding out.
“How many’d tha get?” Garner hissed, into smoldering quiet.
Duncan held up two fingers.
The other man nodded at the blocked-up door behind him. “And mine’s down for sure. Three. That’s a bloody good start.”
“It’s a bloody nose, at least.” Almost absently, Duncan fed three new shells into the McCulloch—actions automatic now, all one with the odor of cordite around him, his thudding combat pulse. “Now we find out how upset they really are about their cair—”
Faint scrabble of talons overhead, rustle of foliage. The two men stared at each other.
“They’re on’t bloody roof,” snapped Garner.
“Get ready! This is it!”
Duncan raised up to peer over the parapet they’d made with the dresser.
The two dead Huldu crumpled in the dirt, one still twitching.
And across the space beyond, over the drystone wall and into the yard came the next wave; he counted at least six as they leapt the wall.
He grabbed a Kegg bomb from where he’d set them out in a little pile.
Yanked the cord with his teeth—sudden, soft swooping, pale bodies through the air from above—he’d already tossed the bomb…
Two more Huldu, almost in the doorway—they’d hung and dropped from the roof—landed at touching distance. The Kegg bomb bounced off one of them, fell back into the room.
“Shit!”
No time to grab it again. He settled for a desperate sweeping kick, sent it flying, right across the room to the larder door. “Loose bomb! Cover!”
He just had time to see Garner huddle by the table, one hand up to shield his face.
Then a long-taloned arm lashed inward over the dresser, grabbed him awkwardly at the shoulder—he guessed the Huldu had been aiming for his throat.
He felt the claws go down through his coat, shirt, the skin beneath, sudden searing pain in furrows—
The Kegg bomb blew.
Sludgy thump/bang, like furniture being moved badly.
Sandy blast of the iron filings across the room.
His ears picked up the shockwave; it wasn’t too bad.
He’d already slitted his eyes shut, got no worse than surface sting.
But even through his closed lids, he saw the pinprick flare as filings hit Huldu flesh. The Fae shrieked, let go his shoulder.
Duncan swung away, skittered back on the broken tile floor on his arse, dusty smolder in the air, pointed the McCulloch not quite blind, and fired.
The Huldu who’d had him reeled back, fell from view.
He lurched to his feet, pumped the action, made out a second figure, fired again. He hit something that screamed.
“Garner!” Pumping in a third shell, ears still ringing.
“I’m alreet, lad!” The deep bellow of the Woodward—another shriek from outside. “Get up here!”
Duncan scooped up another Kegg bomb left-handed, tore the stalk out with his teeth, hurled the bomb out into the night on not much more than instinct.
He leaned into the barricade beside Garner, saw the advancing phalanx of Huldu freeze and turn as the bomb hit the yard in their midst. One of them even reached out—
At distance and out in the open air, the crump as the Fae-fucker exploded was mild and unwarlike. Nothing like the hard metallic whang! you’d get from a Mills bomb.
But the impact on the Huldu was something to see.
Those closest to the bomb as it detonated were wrapped in instantaneous bluish-green flame that seemed to stick to them as it burned.
They staggered, screaming, clawing at their own eyes, limbs, torsos, wherever the iron filing scourge had hit.
Those farther out yelped and beat at the smaller patches of flame where they’d been touched.
The one or two who’d escaped harm froze a fatal moment, staring at their comrades.
Garner’s over-and-under boomed again and one of them jerked backward, fell scrabbling at its own guts.
Snap/clunk of Garner breaking his gun.
“Reloading, lad!” he yelled superfluously.
Duncan was already firing—spaced shots, aimed as calmly as he could. The shorter barrel on the McCulloch meant he had less range than Garner, but in the killing field they’d created it made little difference. He put down three more Huldu in five shots.
The rest scattered and fled. Or slumped over and collapsed in the farmyard, shrilling weakly as the blue-green fire ate them to death.
Garner, reloaded, chased the few survivors with a final, booming shot from the Woodward.
Duncan, slamming fresh shells into his own gun, stared out at the mess they’d made, realized suddenly that he was laughing out loud, harsh and hard as some shell-shocked maniac in the aftermath of German guns…
“Two fucking lunatics, was it?” Burbling wildly, waving a hand at the still-burning bodies of the Fae, grin like a razor slash across his face.
“Crumley and Kegg? Hah! Toys, was it? Fucking toys? Look at that, Garner! Just look at it!” Grabbing the other man by the shoulder, shaking him.
“Know what that is? Combat science! You’re looking at the fucking future there, old man! ”
Something in his own voice, the tone, like the creaking of an overloaded cable about to give way.
As abruptly as he’d realized he was laughing, he snapped his jaw shut. He let go of Garner’s shoulder. Cleared his throat.
“I mean.” Blinking back sudden tears—rage, joy, something else, he couldn’t tell. He coughed, made a noise, midway between a stifled snigger and a sob. “I’d say the Kegg bomb lived up to its name, wouldn’t you?”
Garner was still staring at him, as if he was speaking in a foreign tongue, as if nothing he said made any sense.
Ah. He realized he hadn’t told the other man Kegg’s original name for the new weapon.
He chuckled again, more dryly now. Cleared his throat again. “See, Kegg’s first idea for a—”
“Duncan. Duncan, listen to me. Snap out of it!” Garner, pressing a hand urgently on his shoulder this time. “Tha’re not well, lad. Tha’re in shock—”
“Oh, shock won’t help. Shock’ll just get you—”
“Killed. Aye, tha said that already.”
“Never a truer word.” Duncan felt a slow, graveled sliding off in his good humor, the beginnings of the postcombat drop.
He drew a deep breath, held it for a moment.
Let it slowly go. For the first time since it happened, he registered the sting and throb in his shoulder, where the Huldu had clawed him.
“Aye, sorry.” Wiping at his eyes with the cuff of his coat. “Got a wee bit carried away there. Won’t happen again.”
“Duncan—”
“I’m not in shock. God’s honest truth. I’m just…”
He looked out at the still smoldering corpses, the few faint remains of life and motion in the bodies. Impossible to explain to the other man. He lied instead.
“Look, Garner, you live through summer on the Somme, there’s not much left that shocks you. This?” He gestured around—the cordite-reeking kitchen, the smoldering dead, the whole rotting farmstead and the Forest that had drowned it. “This is manageable.”
“Hoy, Treefuckahhh!”
It came out of the night like a lone artillery shell falling, a cry driven hoarse, a weight of rage and longing that dripped off every syllable as it smashed into the shadowed room.
Even Garner, with no reason to recognize the voice, flinched visibly at the sound.
For Duncan, it hit deeper than the shock he’d just told the other man he was numb to.
Instantly, he was back in the spring evening cool of Kettley Cross.
The same voice, the same amiable menace, now tightened and ratcheted into something worse. He saw the Huldu noble amble toward him again, fanged mouth grinning, one taloned hand reaching…
I don’t think you realize who I am.
“Do you hear me, Duncan? Did you think we were done?”
“This another friend of yours?” Garner glancing at him in the gloom. “Lad, are there any Fae in this forest tha’re not on first-name terms with?”
“Aye, very fucking funny. Keep your head down, let me handle this. Let’s just hope he didn’t bring archers.”
Duncan edged up to the dresser, risked a quick glance over and out into the farmyard. No movement there but the smoke off the bodies. The trunks of trees beyond loomed in the darkness like some massed audience gathered for a blood rite.
“Do you hear me, Duncan?”
“It’d be hard not to, you Fae fuck,” he yelled back, straining the ornate strictures of Skogurtal for the most vulgar registers it could manage.
“You want to stop screeching the Forest down like a tree creep and get on with it? Send some more of your useless tongue-to-arse sycophants to die with the iron while you cower to the rear and fondle yourself and watch? Happy to help out with that!”
The silence that followed was like a bomb in its own right. The Forest seemed to stagger with it, like some pub tough hit with an unexpected left jab.
“You…” The same rage, but reaching now, knocked back. “You are in our world now!”
Involuntarily, Duncan’s upper lip peeled back off his teeth.
“Yes, and here we’ve already handed you your own guts!
” he called. “What will we do to you next, you tree skulkers, you fucking pixies? Tell me—can the gathered host of Faerie do anything except sneak and steal children too small to fight back? Can you meet on an even field of battle with even one of us—”
Voice draining abruptly out on the last syllable he uttered…
The sudden idea—the understanding of what he was about to do, what he might earn, what it might cost—leaping fully formed into his head like a vision.
He stood up at the barricade, all fear of archers fled in the drain-swirl force of his realization that this was what the witch had seen, this what she had prepped him for, this the answer to his pleas, this the path.
Faint, numb delight through his whole body, a kind of taking leave.
It was as if a small, cold voice dictated the words into his ear, and all he need do was spit them out, assume the role.
“Face me, you Waste of Blood and Root and Age! Face me!”
It was an antique insult to honor, deeply formalized, one from the Huldu annals, taking in denigration of family, lineage, rank, and prowess. Duncan raised his voice again, paced and pitched his words for the whole Forest to hear, roared out the challenge.
“Blades and bodies, if you dare! You think I need the speaking iron to take you down? Blades and bodies! Come on out to play, you nameless fuck!”