Chapter 64 - The Kraken Gate
Banks dropped onto a ledge, hopped down a couple of steps before alighting on the floor, keeping the crossbow levelled all the way.
‘This is cosy!’ he sneered. ‘Have you two finally made it up? No, don’t tell me! I really don’t care.’
‘Banks! What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in charge of security on the estate.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Lieutenant Scott,’ said Banks, smoothly. ‘Where you’re going, it won’t matter a jot.’ He advanced to within a few paces, panning the crossbow back and forth between Benjamin and me. ‘But since you asked, I’m here to mop up, doing the godsdamned job myself. I have to hand it to you, Ms. Derringer, you’re a hard woman to kill!’
‘As Private Coleman found out, to his cost,’ I said. ‘What lies did you spin to get him onside?’
‘Honestly, I barely remember, but I don’t think he cared for anything much except money.
‘Did he know you were working for the Nallians?’
Banks shrugged. ‘Gods, no, but I’m pretty sure he’d have sacrificed young children to Aballas if it helped him to pay off his debts.’
I saw Benjamin glance at where he’d rested his own crossbow earlier. It was loaded. Banks also noticed.
‘Go on, go for it if you want,’ he urged. ‘I’ll put a quarrel through your brain before your hand even touches it. Once the two of you are out of the way, I’ll lock down the manor and invite my people in.’
‘I don’t understand, Andrew,’ insisted Benjamin.
‘Of course you don’t, Lieutenant Scott. You’re a halfwit who thinks he’s made a friend of a fellow squaddie after sharing a few beers and exchanging a couple of hearty slaps on the back. And your next fatuous remark is going to be that I work for the security services, how can I be working for the enemy?’
Benjamin stared, genuinely hurt, and unsure what to say, so I interrupted.
‘Where else but the security services is there such a rich vein of information and direct orders from above to get close to the opposition?’ I cursed myself, but if S.I.S. didn’t know their own man was a double agent, Ellen and I would never have worked it out from his records. So much for my deep paranoia, but maybe his spotless record was a clue.
‘But why, man!’ Benjamin was working his way up to angry.
Banks was about to reply when we heard the call of a Charg, not far away. The querulous cry was unmistakable. The three of us froze, hoping the sound would melt away. It didn’t. Instead, we heard another cry, closer this time. It was hard to say if it was one creature moving towards us or two calling harmlessly to each other across the fractured landscape. Then a third cry, even closer.
Banks spoke. ‘They heard you shouting, Lieutenant. This should be fun, eh?’ He backed slowly to the ledge he’d used to descend into the fissure. ‘Either of you move, I put a bolt in you…or you stay, and the Charg find you. What a dilemma.’ He glanced at the handholds then, ‘A-a-ahhh! Last warning!’ he chided, as Benjamin made a move for his weapon.
‘Don’t,’ I said.
‘He’s only got one shot,’ whispered Benjamin. ‘If he hits me, pick up my crossbow and finish him off.’
Just then, one of the hell-creatures rounded the curve of the gully. Banks was distracted, so Benjamin lunged. He got one hand onto the stock of the crossbow, but Banks was onto him. There was a click and a noise beside me like a dropped pack of butter. Time slowed down. The Charg hadn’t yet moved. It was trying to work out what we were, and perhaps we didn’t look like its usual prey. Benjamin hadn’t moved either, but something about him was off. Then I noticed the quarrel protruding from his eye socket. His lips moved, but if he was trying to say something to me, I didn’t catch it. Slowly, he toppled backwards off the rock he’d been sitting on.
I cursed and jumped over him, grabbing the crossbow on the way. The world was still moving on treacle-time. I reckoned I had thirty ticks while Banks reloaded his weapon, but he’d already scrambled up the ledge he’d first appeared over. As I took aim, he ducked out of view.
Seeing that there was only one target to hand now, the Charg swivelled to focus on me. Its toxic gas sacks rippled, readying to blow a cloud of pink gas my way. There’s no chance of me hitting one of its stalk-eyes at this range. I’m not Mahkran, after all. I aimed low and squeezed the trigger. Thok. The bolt disappeared into the creature’s sack-like head. Pink-hued cloud belched from it, but I had wounded it, or at least distracted the thing, because as it exhaled, it winced, causing the toxic cloud to miss me to my left. I had to move, and now, because if the Charg didn’t get me, Banks would soon be ready to loose off another shot…or maybe he’ll just watch as the kraken does his work for him.
Benjamin’s eyes were open, but I’d seen enough dead people to know I wouldn’t have to feel for his pulse.
Army training kicked in as I processed all the critical information required to keep me alive. I couldn’t follow that bastard, Banks, or he’d shoot me the tick my head appeared over the top. But I needed fewer opponents, so I had to get up close to the wall that he’d scaled to make it harder for him to get a bead on me. That meant I was stuck in the ravine with the Charg. It’s a good job there’s only one of them, and not a pack, or a phalanx, or whatever the collective noun is for these fuckers.
I remembered the quicklime in my backpack, but it was lying on the ground close to the Charg. The creature would slice me in two before I could get to the canvas bag, much less open it and rummage around the contents. So, I picked up a handful of grit and hurled it, spraying just enough in the creature’s eyes to force it to retract its eye-stalks in the Charg equivalent of a blink. I dived for my pack, but it sensed the movement somehow and lashed out with a tentacle. I managed to roll under it, and as I came up on the other side, I snatched the flint knife from my boot top, reached over the back of the leathery, sack-like body and grabbed both of the Charg's emerging eye-stalks. My knife sliced though them and I bounced away, hurling the grisly prize aside.
Putting distance between me and the creature proved to be a wise move as it went berserk. It shrieked and reached two tentacles up to where its eyes had been in a strangely human gesture. Then it lashed out with one tentacle, and another, in seemingly random directions, hoping to catch me. Stowing the knife back into my boot top, I tossed a rock down the ravine. The Charg immediately blew a cloud of its gas in that direction and then, after a short pause, it stalked towards where the rock had landed, its limbs writhing in that strange parody of a rotary action we’d seen before.
A quarrel clattered off a rock near my foot. Banks was above me, but thankfully I was still below his line of sight. He couldn’t easily look down at me without overbalancing. Before I could figure out what to do about him, a second Charg hove into view, large as a horse, no doubt homing in on the noise we were making. The crossbow was out of reach. Also, it needed reloading, and Banks would have a clear view of me. My backpack, however, wasn’t far away. I hooked it with my foot, pulling it toward me where I could pick it up. The first packet of quicklime that I threw hit the rocks behind the Charg, but the second one hit the domed head of the monster right between its eyes. The explosion of caustic dust sprayed everywhere with predictable results. The Charg emitted a cascade of piercing whistles of pain and shock before plunging back the way it had gone, caroming off the walls of the gully as it went.
I was just congratulating myself when I was dashed to the floor and my head bounced off a rock. I’d taken my eyes off the first Charg. Luckily for me, it hadn’t been a targeted strike, or I might have been cut in two, but the power of it was like a sledgehammer. My left arm was numb, but my shoulder was spasming with the pain. Tears in my eyes and the stars circling my head meant that I was nearly as sightless as the Charg. I tried to drag myself across the scree, but my useless arm collapsed under me. I was helpless.
The Charg slid forwards on its tentacles, then lashed out again. I had a sense that it was feeling its way forwards, trying to find me by touch. It quested towards me, one tentacle touching my boot, and I was certain that my time had come. I might not be its natural prey, but now it knew for certain that I was an enemy. The beast slowed. I wanted to scream at it, yet all I could do was wait for it to reach out and enfold me, just as the other had done with Ankush before it had pulled him apart. The stars that had been dancing across my vision faded, allowing me to see that the Charg was listing oddly. Also, it was leaking. It had left a trail of milky, translucent blood all the way from the rock I’d thrown. Whether the crossbow bolt had hit something major inside it, or the shock of severed eyes had fried its nerve centres, I’d never know, but what I did realise was that it had slumped to one side and had stopped moving.
Banks shouted from his hiding place. ‘Is it dead?’
The question didn’t deserve an answer. I squeezed my eyes shut and gritted my teeth. I tentatively touched the wound in my upper arm. My jacket was wet and sticky. Blood. The tooth-edged tentacle of the Charg had ripped through my leather jacket and silk shirt. It had also torn through some of me underneath…enough to make it really smart. I was bleeding, but I didn’t think it was immediately life-threatening
Alright, the Charg didn’t kill me, but that shit, Banks will, unless I come up with something fast. Shut up, shut up! I’m trying to think!
My backpack was lying next to me. There was no first-aid kit inside it, but with my good hand, I reached inside it anyway. My water bottle was there, which was puzzling; I didn’t remember putting it back. The only other thing I could feel in there were two more packets of quicklime. How nice to have something to eat on the way back to the gate! Except I would never get that far. I was wounded and Banks was untouched. He had all the time in the world.
‘I know you’re not dead, you stupid cow! I can hear you gasping in pain.’
‘Why don’t you come and give me first aid then?’ I managed. I thought of Inigo, whose idea the quicklime had been. Clever bastard. Bloody useful weapon after all. I hadn’t come off particularly well from the recent encounter, but when I thought back to the initial terror, when we’d first heard of the Charg, they didn’t seem so formidable now. I started to chuckle, but quickly choked that off as I heard Banks climbing back down to my level.
‘You’re a tough one, I’ll give you that,’ said Banks as he approached. He came over and stared down at me, his youthful face a mask of disdain.
So I threw the quicklime in his face.
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