Spanners - The Fountain of Youth (34 page)

Cattaga continued her unheard whine and Blur stopped vibrating to stand right in front of Mayfly.

“What’s she doing?” asked Blur.

“She’s calling a friend,” said Mayfly, eyeing Geryon who had appeared in the stairwell behind them.

Mayfly jumped up to grab the lights on the ceiling and yanked them down, leaving the room pitch
-black. Mayfly heard Geryon’s clicks in the darkness, and for the first time in his life, he was glad to hear them.

/***/

The Vikings fought nobly, but they were no match for the imprisoned. The Nordic warriors hacked and hacked at the revived men but couldn’t do any lasting damage to the horde. The imprisoned were surprisingly agile at close range, and surprisingly strong. They would either dodge the Viking’s attacks or take them in stride; and when they were hit they wouldn’t receive anything more than superficial wounds because they didn’t have much flesh to begin with. The imprisoned had their own weapons too: metal pikes that they handled clumsily but effectively, beating the Vikings back and even impaling two. The Vikings struck a few down, but those they felled soon got back up. The leader of the imprisoned grabbed a Viking, and in a single motion wrenched his head off cleanly. The ghoul threw the Viking’s head to the ground and pounded the decapitated body into submission. The Arawaks began to shoot at the imprisoned’s leader, landing shots in his body, but they didn’t even slow him down.
Our side fights bravely,
thought Adam,
but bravery doesn’t count for anything, not now.

The i
mprisoned continued their steady assault on the eastern wall, dragging the Vikings deeper and deeper into the battlefield. Since the Arawak riflemen had shifted their focus, the populous and spider-wolves took advantage and were breaching the wall. Soon the populous started to overtake the Arawaks, ripping their guns from them and beating them down. The spider-wolves were fighting from the other end, and though the Arawaks were immune to their poison, the wolves’ jaws were strong and they began to latch onto the Arawaks’ bodies, pulling several of them down to the interior of the fortress.

Adam saw Mayfly creeping out of a hatch in the ground and yelled at him.

“Stay down!” yelled Adam. “Protect the Fountain!”

“The Fountain’s
ready to help us,” said Mayfly.

Adam looked at their side; the Vikings were ineffective, the Arawak riflemen were now being torn apart by
spider-wolves, and the imprisoned were steadily marching over the fortress’s walls.

“How
can the Fountain help us?” asked Adam.

“Santos unleashed her power
of life and put it into one of our own,” said Mayfly.

“Who?”

“The power of the Fountain of Youth is now within Trey,” said Mayfly, “and he’s coming to destroy Juan’s army.”

/***/

At that moment all doors in the castle opened up and an endless stream of Treys poured out, screaming and ready to fight. They plowed over the roof from every direction, climbing down the populous on the way to attack the invading army. Some engaged in fighting with the populous, some fought the spider-wolves and some ran forward to fight the imprisoned.

One Trey climbed the highest tower on the fortress and surveyed the battle from above; Adam could see his eyes glowing brightly. The spider-wolves tried to attack him, but four other Treys protected the base of the tower, and soon the Arawaks provided cover fire.

We’re fighting an army of a thousand minds with an army of one mind and a thousand bodies,
thought Adam.

The horde of the imprisoned held its own against the Treys but were pinned down; the Treys were attacking the crowd of half-dead warriors from all sides. The imprisoned impaled many Treys on their pikes, but more Treys came and each dead Trey made a wall that that pinned
Juan’s army down even more.

“Adam, look,” said Mayfly, pointing to Phoe.

Phoe had now emerged from the basement and was perched upon the tower with Trey, tears streaming from her eyes.

“She’s with him,” said Mayfly. “She’s fallen for him.”

“Yes,” said Adam grimly. “I’ve seen that look before.”

“Does that mean she’s going to, or he’s going to … ?”

“I don’t know,” said Adam, “but something big is about to happen.”

Adam looked over the battlefield and saw that the Treys were beginning to lose their edge. They had no weapons and no training for the battlefield, so the imprisoned slaughtered them easily, much as the Arawaks had slaughtered the populous. Adam looked up at the Trey in the tower; he was bleeding from the nose and eyes, and bruises were forming on his body.

“The Fountain’s power gave him thousands of bodies,” said Adam. “But many are dying and the shock is too much for him.”

“He knows this,” said Mayfly. “He’s setting the stage for something.”

“The Treys are setting the stage for Phoe,” said Adam. “She’s about to meet her destiny.”

Phoe kissed the Trey in the tower
, and he fell to his knees as his other bodies were slaughtered on the battlefield. She kissed him once more and he fell again, unable to stand back up. She was crying, but Trey whispered words into her ears and then pointed to the battlefield. She cried for one more moment and then held it back in, turned around and climbed down the tower. She walked up to Adam and hugged him.

“Things go bad when I grow up alone,” she said. “So please, find me in my next life.”

Adam nodded and she walked off, tumbling over the side of the fortress, using the dead populous and dying Treys as a bridge. She walked into the battlefield towards the horde of the imprisoned, climbed the Treys surrounding the army and soon disappeared into the mass of soldiers.

There was a moment of silence and then smoke came from the center of the horde, and Adam heard the sound of roasting flesh. The fire grew and the
imprisoned howled as they burnt, but there was nothing they could do; they were all trapped beneath an endless pile of Trey’s dead bodies.

A few spider-wolves got hit with the flames and also caught fire
; as they ran, the flames spread outwards. The creatures near the flames let out a high-pitched collective howl, and soon the spider-wolves in the courtyard heard it and scurried over the walls to run away.

A few flaming wolves ran into the populous, and that was enough to turn the mob’s rage to fear, and soon they
were fighting each other to flee. Inside the fortress, the Vikings who were still intact started to cheer and the Arawaks put their rifles down; there was nothing they could do that their enemy wasn’t doing to themselves.

Santos had come up from the basement with Giselle and his two guards; all of them were covered in blood
, and Adam reasoned that they must have all helped infuse Trey with the Fountain’s power.
We all had a part to play in this war
,
thought Adam,
though not all of us survived.

Giselle came close to Adam and put her hand on his back, and together they watched as the flames surrounded their fortress. Santos looked upon the battlefield with a grim face for a few moments before speaking to Adam.

“We’ve won this battle, but it’s not yet ended,” said Santos. “We’ve knocked their army down but must make sure that they can’t get up again; if we don’t do this, everything will be lost.”

/***/

The entire imprisoned army was reduced to a pile of smoldering ashes, but they were still intact and still alive. The Arawaks took them one by one and placed them in makeshift metal caskets that Santos had procured; no one yet knew what to do with their corpses, but the metal coffins would contain them indefinitely.

It was dirty, hectic work and they were racing the sunset; if night fell, Juan might come back to steal a few and turn them into a small but powerful militia. The Arawaks stood on the periphery of the pile with their guns as Brogg and the remaining Vikings separated the corpses of the imprisoned from those of the Treys.

“We must not fail in this difficult and odious task,” said Santos. “Every single corpse must be accounted for.”

Adam saw the work from afar; he was mainly concerned with cleaning up Geryon’s handiwork in the bowels of the fortress. Geryon had handled his enemies brutally, but Adam wanted to be sure that none had escaped. Their bodies had been torn to pieces and cast around the room, and Adam had to count the torsos and limbs twice until he was assured that all had been killed. He was glad that Geryon had saved Mayfly and subsequently the Fountain, but he couldn’t help but be horrified by Geryon’s ability to kill. Drayne looked like someone had shoved a bomb in her midsection, and Blur looked as if he had been dragged through thorns for a week. Adam felt a pulse coming from Cannon’s limp body, but didn’t fear him any longer.
Even if he recovers,
thought Adam,
he’ll not be the same, and he’ll always fear the dark.

Adam called down two guards and they put the remains of Blur and
Drayne in one steel casket, and Cannon in another. Adam then walked upstairs with a bloody shirt, a bit embarrassed for it when he saw Giselle.

“Relax,” she said with a faint smile, pointing towards the battlefield. “I’ve seen much worse.”

“It’s true; I should be grateful that at least the blood’s not mine,” said Adam, sending a grim smile back to her. “And besides, the battle’s not over yet.”

“It may be,” she said. “There’s a man on a horse in the distance, and he’s waving a white flag.”

/***/

The boy came before Balthasar, running desperately towards the Arawaks, holding his own severed hand and collapsing at their feet, crying and pleading for forgiveness in their native tongue. They embraced him immediately and started to cheer, but the boy was stricken with too many emotions and couldn’t be consoled. Balthasar
then came forward on his horse, carrying a large sack and looking stern. He stopped quite a distance from the group, telling them to stop.

“I have the heads of each of your chieftains in here,” he yelled. “Come any further and I’ll flee on my horse, and you shan’t see them again. I demand negotiation
, and I’ll speak with Adam and no one else.”

Both the Arawaks and the Vikings wanted to take their chances, but Adam held them back.

“His horse is swift, and the forest is only a stone’s throw away,” said Adam. “We won’t be able to capture him if he flees.”

“He must pay for what he’s done,” said the Arawak chieftain.

“He will,” said Adam, “just not now. We must end this conflict.”

“Perhaps,” said the Arawak.

“Talk to him slowly,” said one of the Vikings. “We’ll spread wide so that we’ll get him when he leaves, even if we’re on foot.”

“We need to end this,” said Adam.

It was too late; as Adam walked towards Balthasar, the Vikings were already starting to spread out, hoping to hunt Balthasar down as soon as he relinquished the heads in the sack.

/***/

“Their bodies are stashed away in our compound, way down south,” said Balthasar. “You’ll find them eventually.”

Adam counted the heads; all missing Arawaks and Vikings were accounted for, including some that had been lost at battle that day. Adam couldn’t help but shudder; the heads
had been boiled, burnt, mangled and skewered in every way conceivable. Adam couldn’t avoid thinking what it would be like to be in the dark tank himself, disembodied and tormented for eternity under Juan’s throne. Adam made a mental note to return these heads as soon as possible to their comrades so that they could be reattached to their respective bodies. They didn’t deserve to exist like this, and the sooner he could get them whole again, the better.

“I have one more for you,” said Balthasar.

Balthasar took out another sack and gave it to Adam, and Adam opened it to see Juan’s face peering back at him. It had a bullet hole through its head; Adam looked down to see that Balthasar’s sword was bloodied from his former leader’s decapitation, and he had a pistol by his side.

Balthasar peered up into the sky and thought for a moment before looking at Adam.

“He wanted to flee, form another army over the next few decades, take the lessons we’ve learned here and use them to defeat you,” said Balthasar. “And we would have been successful too.”

Adam went through several scenarios in his mind and realized that Balthasar was right; Juan had been defeated this day, but wouldn’t have been defeated twice; he was too smart. If Juan had planned for a few more decades
, his army would have been ten times stronger and perhaps a hundred times deadlier.
But that didn’t happen
, thought Adam.
And now you’re holding his head in your hands, and history is up to you.

“Why
did you do this?” asked Adam.

Balthasar thought for a moment, peering off into the distance
, seeing the Vikings and Arawaks sneak into the forest, waiting to hunt him down as soon as he escaped.

“Juan always
said that morality was what we make it, and nothing more,” said Balthasar. “When you kill enough people,
so many
that there are no survivors to mourn them,
it’s not a wrong act
. If Juan’s world would have been made, you and your army would have been boiling under his throne, and it would have been right. What happens is what happens, and there’s nothing else, whether an asteroid hits the earth or Juan slaughters the entire world to bring a better tomorrow.”