Resistance (22 page)

Hooper stood there, taking it all in, feeling a bit useless and even duped. Southwest? He had to think about it. Survivors headed for the river and more going southwest
away
from it. The regiment had come apart. He shook his head and took a couple of Hershey bars from his ruined jacket, peeling them and eating the sweet familiar chocolate just as though he was watching this in a multiplex with the kids.

With the B-52s gone, the helicopter gunships returned and pressed their way into the smoke and ruin, releasing a storm of rockets as they passed over the river. Dave could hear something else. A high machine whine interspersed with deep bass booms mingled with the war shouts and cries of dying monsters. In his hands, Lucille purred and approved, although possibly saddened because she had not partaken herself.

The first tank emerged from the smoke and fire. An engineering marvel crafted of hard angles and set upon heavy treads. The human war machine pressed forward. It swivelled its main gun onto a point of interest, belched fire and turned to pursue. The first steel behemoth was followed by a second and a third. On the plains across the river the dying creatures faded against the armoured might of America.

‘Might have gone quicker if the mech boys from Fort Riley had gotten up here a little sooner,’ Sergeant Mecum said. ‘Not easy moving a whole brigade of badass armour on short notice. Still, I think we can stick a fork in this one, boys, it’s done.’

‘What?’ said Heath, but he wasn’t talking to Sergeant Mecum. He had that abstracted look you see on folk deep in a conversation with someone on their cell phones.

‘When?’ he asked, as the mortar rounds landed amongst the remnants of the Djinn, picking them off one by one, which seemed an extravagance.

‘Yes, sir. I’m
. . .
we’ll get on it, sir
. . .’

Everyone in the little group had turned to him now. Whatever was going on with the captain seemed more important than the mopping up ops over the water.

‘It’s the D-Tac,’ he said, sounding shocked for the first time all day. ‘They hit the D-Tac.’

‘The who hit what?’ asked Dave.

‘The Cracker Barrel, Dave,’ Zach said gently. ‘Back on the edge of town. Where Emmeline and Compton were.’

‘And your fucking lawyer,’ Igor added.

‘The Hunn, Dave,’ said Heath. ‘They’re in Omaha, and they got our people. Hit them hard at De Brito’s HQ and went through them.’

17

‘Oh man, those dudes came to chew gum and kick ass and they kicked so much fuckin’ ass they didn’t even open their fuckin’ Bubble Yum. This is like game over, man! Game over!’

Guyuk, who was becoming used to the bizarre extempore outbursts of Thresh-Trev’r, caught the looks exchanged between the BattleMarshals of the three Regiments Select ur Grymm. A wrinkling of the nasal cavities, a barely perceptible flicker of the eye slits away from the Sliveen priestess and onto the small, alien presence. An ever so subtle baring of yellow fangs.

The ill-regard of the Master of the Ways also shifted from the carved granite altar decorated with carefully crafted Seer Stone pieces. But unlike the sulphurous resentment seeping off the BattleMarshals, the palpable hostility of the Master Scolari was as frigid as the killing-breath of the great white Drakonen; the Way Master’s pride still wounded by the discovery of the smoking crater and rockfall that had replaced the cavern in which they had spoken with the Dave. Prideful he may have been; stupid he was not. Guyuk could almost feel the Scolari straining to translate the meaning and import of Thresh-Trev’r’s peculiar pronouncement.

‘Control your thinkings, Thresh,’ Guyuk warned. ‘And stay your tongue lest I cut it out.’

‘Staying my tongue, boss. Got it. But damn. Did you hear what happen –’

‘Thressshhh!’

‘D’oh! My bad!’

And the ridiculous creature actually held its tongue out, pinched between two fore-claws.

‘Resume the telling of it, Worship,’ muttered Lord Guyuk.

The Diwan to all the Sliveen who served Lord Guyuk regarded the tiny empath daemon with a flat curiosity, before she returned to moving the dormant Seer Stones around the smooth surface of the altar.

‘I shall do more than tell, my Lord Commander. I will show.’

Satisfied with their alignment, she grasped the amulet that hung on a thin belt of braided wulfin-hide around her long neck. The Grymm closed their eyes and bowed their enormous heads as she began to pray. The marshals three, Master Scolari, and the lord commander himself.

‘Thresh-Trev’r. Respect for the Diwan,’ said Guyuk in a warning tone. He did not even need to break his own submission to know the wretched thing was gawking, eyestalks everywhere, at the ceremony.

‘Got it. No peeking.’

The prayer became a chant and Guyuk felt the magicks of the Diwan Sliveen gathering in the chamber.

‘Lord Guyuk ur Grymm,’ the Diwan recited formally. ‘Nine of my finest did I consume that you might know their seeing of
dar ienamic
.’

Still speaking into the dark, his eyes closed and head bowed, Guyuk went down on one knee, the ageing joints creaking and popping with the great mass they had to lower to the stone floor.

‘Diwan dar Sliveen ur Grymm, their sacrifice will be written in the scrolls, with the blood of
dar ienamic
.’

‘Then rise and behold what you would, my Lord, that the nine finest would not tender themselves to the Seer Stones in vain.’

‘Whoa!’ breathed Thresh-Trev’r before Guyuk had even climbed back to his hind-claws. ‘Check it out, bro.’

‘Quiet, Thresh.’

The chamber was darker than it had been, the red glow of coals in the rough-hewn wall sconces smothered by an icy blackness that seemed to press in close around the altar. But within the glow cast by the Seer Stones the altar was almost painfully illuminated. Guyuk and the other Grymm all squinted into the magick. The lord commander had an extraordinary view of the field on which the Djinn and the humans met, almost as though he rode the spine of a
Drakon.

A river curved across the altar. Forests grew there. And the forces of
dar ienamic
faced each other across the fields. Men were digging into the hillsides down the end of the stone table by the Diwan. The 1st Regiment of BattleMarshal Gurj im Sh’Kur ir Djinn were sheltering under their field hides just in front of Guyuk at the opposite end.

‘See that the water course over which the Dave and Sh’Kur meet is bounded on both sides by the tilled fields and woodland hunting reserves of the humans,’ Guyuk said, meaning to make a lesson of the topography, but again his marshals bristled at calling this new foe anything other than ‘cattle’. BattleMarshal Urddun Guyur of the 1st Grymm Regiment even dared spit a thin stream of hot bile onto the cavern floor at mention of the word.

‘My apologies, Diwan,’ said Guyuk before back-fisting Urddun with an open talon blow. The BattleMarshal staggered backward but appeared to rebound off the enclosing darkness as though it were a shield.

‘Attend me, all,’ snarled Guyuk. ‘These are not the cattle of the scrolls. Make the mistake of thinking them so and you would soon join Sh’Kur in the blood pots of the human queen and the dire annals of –’

‘Bossman,’ said Thresh-Trev’r. ‘Sorry. No queens up topside. Or not for the Dave anyway. And no blood pot for Sh’Kur either. The peeps’d be like, eww, gross.’

Guyuk controlled the curse that wanted to escape his maw. After all, it was he who had ordered the Thresh-Trev’r to attend this council, unencumbered by the constraints of deference that would be natural to a Thresh, that Guyuk might better know the thinkings of his enemy and correct the failings of his own understanding. And had he not just failed to understand something of the humans? And had not the most-knowing Trev’r corrected him?

Yes. Yes, he had.

‘My thanks for your wisdom, Thresh-Trev’r,’ said Guyuk, each word a slow, thrusting bone knife. ‘Master Scolari, I would know the order of battle of the human host. Make it thus when we are done here. You will confer with Thresh-Trev’r. If the humans serve no queen, I would know to what final authority the Dave and his legions will admit.’

‘It will be done,’ the master agreed, with a stiff bow.

‘Cram session? All right! Gourd of bloodwine, some urmin giblets, I’m there,’ said Thresh-Trev’r with nestling enthusiasm.

‘Diwan dar Sliveen, continue,’ said Guyuk, ‘and Thresh-Trev’r, you would best serve me with silence now, that I might have the seeings of the Diwan.’

‘Five by five, boss.’

The chastened BattleMarshal Urddun resumed his place at the altar as the Diwan swept her long, pale hands across the living world. As she reached into the scenery, the tattoos under the coarse black hair on her forearms curled as sinuously as vipuren and the gnarled ridges of ceremonial scar tissue puckered and knotted as though the dead flesh lived again.

‘The Djinn emerged from the mouth of a great rupture less than a league from this water crossing,’ she said. ‘The passage remains open to the Djinn realms, for the Dave and his minions seem not to perceive the way between the worlds as even a lowly Thresh might,’ she said, regarding Guyuk’s pet daemon inferiorae with distant interest.

‘Or the
. . .
human champion has not yet scouted the passage,’ Urddun offered in the silence, perhaps to make redress for speaking out of place earlier.

‘Perhaps,’ said Guyuk, still annoyed with the BattleMarshal, and now irked by this interruption. ‘But let us see and know what we can, rather than guess at what we do not. Way Master, what say you?’

The old Scolari navigator bowed to the Diwan, rather than to Guyuk who had questioned him.

‘We do not perceive the Dave or any of his legions upon the ways between the realms. They seem not to have the knowing of it, Diwan, my Lord.’

The Sliveen priestess inclined her long head toward Guyuk.
‘My Lord. If you wish it, I will detail more scouts to observe the human host as it seeks the point at which the Djinn entered their fields.’

‘In time, Diwan. Thresh-Trev’r, do you think it likely the Dave or his lieutenants will seek out the portal between their realm and that of Djinn?’

‘Are you fucking kidding me? Man, they’re gonna be all over that like big-ass on Beyonc
é
.’

‘That is a yes?’

‘Totes. I mean yes.’

*

The longer Thresh allowed Thresh-Trev’r to leash him like a subject Fangr, the harder the empath daemon found it to throw off the leash. It was as though Thresh-Trev’r was the real daemon, and poor Thresh the thin vessel in which this new, alien intelligence was bottled. Thresh did not much like it. One bump, one stumble and what was to stop the vessel shattering, freeing Thresh-Trev’r to run amok? The memories of the doughnut merchant also lay somewhere deep inside the thinkings of Thresh. But it seemed that Thresh-Trev’r, the first human mind he had consumed, had somehow taken dominion.

And as soon as the lord commander understood that Thresh-Trev’r knew best the thinkings of the cattle – the
humans
– the matter was settled.

‘As difficult and distasteful as it will be, Thresh, I need the thinkings of Thresh-Trev’r, not your translations of the same.’

And so, Thresh found itself fading and fading, as the vulgar, ungovernable mind of the animal it had consumed turned around and all but devoured poor Thresh like a tasty doughnut of Darryl the doughnut merchant.

‘Totes, I mean yeah,’ said Thresh-Trev’r, who was diggin’ on this. Once upon a time, the feeble thing that had been known as Trevor Candly might have cowered before the likes of the BattleMarshals and that puckered ass the Master of the Ways, unless he was totally smiting them on Xbox or something. But Thresh-Trev’r was no Trevor Candly. Thresh-Trev’r was a badass motherfuckin’ daemon and a genius level brainiac into the fuckin’ deal. At least on matters human
. . .
you know, compared to these nimrods. Thresh-Trev’r wasn’t even freaked by all the bugshit crazy monster magick these guys were laying on him. Of course they had some kick-ass magick monster chops. They were fuckin’ monsters!

And this bitch they were all bending over to booty-kiss? This ugly-ass Sliveen priestess? Fuck her, too. Thought she was so fucking cool with her Seer Stone bullshit.

The orcs might lose their shit over that. Not Thresh-Trev’r. Just a monster magick holodeck trick is all that was.

Still, cool trick.

Thresh-Trev’r swivelled all of his many eyestalks to take in as much of the display as he could. It was some sweet hi-def shit too, like 1080p
and
3D. Not that he was gonna try to explain that to ol’ Guyuk. Dumb motherfucker had enough trouble using a cell phone with Monster Trev doing all the work for him.

On the tabletop display, which reminded him of a really badass Warhammer set-up, most of the Djinn losers were just standing around under their tarps and hoodies, holdin’ their dicks and doin’ sweet fuck all else while the bossman and his top faggots had their meet-up with this Champion Dave motherfucker.

‘Hark. The human champion and his lieutenant approach Sh’Kur.’

‘Only the one lieutenant, my Lord?’ queried Myrthr Sepcis ur Grymm, BattleMarshal of the 2nd Regiment Select.

‘As I planned.’

As you and I planned you fucking mean, homie
, thought Trev.
But we’ll let it slide for now
.

They watched without comment as the Dave and the Djinn had their meet-up, a passage of profound dullness for Thresh-Trev’r until he realised that the depth of field on the Seer Stones was amazeballz! All he had to do was focus in on a detail and it was just like the holodeck zoomed out toward him.

Okay, he’d pay the ugly-ass bitch that one. That was an impressive demo. Trev wondered how she did it, but Sliveen Diwanae weren’t in the habit of explaining themselves to mere Thresh, let alone half-breed mutants like he was now.

Thresh-Trev’r wondered if he leaped down the length of the altar and punched a hole in her stupid head to suck out all the sweetmeats inside whether he’d be able to work the bitch’s Seer Stone mojo himself.

Maybe.

Maybe the Diwan would give up her tricks as easily as Trevor Candly had his.

Still, no doubt old Guyuk would stomp him if he tried.

Thresh, the real Thresh – or ‘beta’ Thresh, as Thresh-Trev’r sneeringly called him inside his own mind – recoiled in horror at these thinkings.

What was this monster inside his head? What had the Scolari set loose in there when they bade him to feed on the hot grey skull meats of the calfling that knew itself as Trevor Candly. What did –

Hey, why don’t you just shut the fuck up
, snapped Thresh-Trev’r. And Thresh’s thinkings fell silent.

‘See how the champion moves with the swiftness of an arrowhead,’ Guyuk was saying.

Shit was getting real on the holodeck. Besides a flight of war shots from a dozen or more Sumateem archers the Dave was the only thing moving. Thresh-Trev’r knew he wasn’t called the Dave in real life, of course. That was just a mistake these ignorant assholes had made. Dude was just Dave. Dave Cooper or something. But what the fuck? It gave him a laugh whenever they said that.

‘See how the champion gives precedence to preserving the life of his minion,’ said Guyuk. ‘This weakness did we exploit while crippling our ageless foe, the Djinn.’

‘A masterful plan, my Lord,’ put in BattleMarshal Vorpukh Khutr ur Grymm of the 3rd Regiment Select.

‘Masterful,’ agreed the other two, hurrying to beat each other to the ass-kissing.

‘The advice of the empath played some small role,’ Guyuk conceded, and Thresh-Trev’r bowed his head lest the others should see him smirk. Daemon smirks were nasty. ‘Note that, Master Scolari,’ Guyuk continued, ‘when you and the Consilium have recourse to its understanding of the human ways.’

‘Of course, my Lord Commander.’

The old cunt looked to Trev as though he’d rather feed his nuts to a wulfin pack.

‘Attend now, Grymm,’ ordered Lord Guyuk. ‘For this is why I have summonsed thee.’

The Diwan did something with her magick necklace, muttered some words of power or some shit, and the close-up Thresh-Trev’r been enjoying of a Kravakh lieutenant getting its melon popped by a sniper round suddenly pulled back to display the entire field of battle again. Enough to see the lines of human soldiers dug into the small rise a short distance across the mud flats from the bridge, the great squares of the Djinn legions beginning to move as one, and the cascade of human fire which destroyed them. Thresh-Trev’r was even able to follow the line of the highway back up the ten miles or so through the countryside to the southwestern corner of the city.