The finger seemed to dip just a little. The four men were scattering. Even the monstrous ork samurai knew that whatever those hands were going to deliver in the way of chastisement, his samurai’s killing weaponry was going to be about as useful as papier mache armor.
The blue arc of energy left the fingertip. Serrin spoke the last words and fell back into Kristen’s arms. Xavier only had time to launch a frag grenade to discourage anyone from getting too close to him before be looked around to take in what had to be the mass funeral to his left.
The power struck the barrier and arced around and across it, great ripples of force thrashing at the invisible ward like breakers against a rock cliff. And the barrier held.
For a moment.
Then there was a deafening, nerve-shredding screech, like a thousand fingernails being dragged down a hundred blackboards, and the power bolt grounded itself-fifty meters away, to the left of its target.
Michael didn’t remember much after that. This time, his head landed where his back had the first time, and he was lucky to get away with concussion and mild amnesia. After a few moments, Geraint was also blasted off his feet, then managed to pull himself up onto all fours. In his swimming, hopelessly unfocused vision, he saw shells bursting into the chapel and, this time, disintegrating stone and thatch, smashing at the fabric of the building. Towering above him, an ork tottered around with his gyromount arm swinging relentlessly around to its designated target.
Not the chapel, bonehead, Geraint prayed. Don’t let him waste energy on that. Please.
The shell smashed into the truck. This time it did a lot more damage than the first. The side of the vehicle ripped open like a tearing flap of skin, and a rain of bodies was flung into the night, screaming and groaning. A second later, Xavier’s frag grenade changed that to silence.
Unbelievably, the truck’s engine groaned into life and, unsteadily, the vehicle turned itself around. Juan was staggering around, trying to focus his senses on a last shot to send the truck and its surviving occupants to final oblivion. Then, of all things, a monstrous black dog sped across the terrain toward him, its eyes afire in the flame-streaked night.
Geraint leveled his pistol. prayed, and emptied the clip.
The dog rolled over and didn’t get up. The truck made its away down the hill and into the night. Geraint dropped to his knees and tried hard to keep the nausea down; two shock waves had wreaked havoc with his body. A thin stream of blood trickled down his chin from his bitten lip.
Striding jauntily over to him, Streak looked like a walking nightmare. The elf was wide-eyed, his face a manic grin, and both face and body were covered in fresh blood. Horribly, his guts seemed to be spilling out of his abdomen, and he didn’t even seem to care. Geraint stared at him, stupefied.
“Nah, it’s not me,” the elf laughed, looking down, “One of their bloody dogs. Ripped ‘im” he added flourishing his serrated knife with pride. “Always the best way. Nothing like hand-to-hand, I always say.”
“You’re mad,” Geraint said incredulously.
“Barking, mate, fragging barking!” the elf -laughed. “Not like poor old Lassie. He’s barked his last bark. I can tell you.” He looked around at his companions. “Rakk me, this is a mess. Como esta, Juan? Okay?”
The ork grunted. Streak took that as an admission of good, rude health.
“Looks like matey here is a bit fragged,” Streak said, kneeling down over Michael and scanning him. “Pulse okay, bit febrile. Banged his head, though. Ouch! Look at that lump. Patch job should be okay.” He kneeled down closer, and then shrugged his shoulders. “EEG’s okay. More or less. He'll be all right.” The elf took a trauma patch and applied it to the unconscious man’s wrist.
“Not much left up there, by the way,” Streak continued, gesturing to the remains of the chapel. Now that Geraint had recovered most of his wits, he could see that the Inquisition-for it surely must have been them-had, at the last, succeeded in flattening Sauniere’s historic chapel. Anyone inside it would surely be dead. Streak seemed to read his thoughts.
“I wonder who’s in the basement,” the elf said thoughtfully. “Let’s check on-ah, here he comes now.”
“All dead and gone,” Xavier said cheerfully. “I let the survivors have some frag and newt and there’s nothing left now.”
“Newt?” Geraint was unfamiliar with the term.
“Nerve gas. Deadly, but it decays inside five seconds. Absolutely lethal. Packed in a cloth- and armor-dissolving unstable gel base. Squelch. No more Mr. Bad Guy. I’ve scanned, there ain’t nothing and no one left alive, Your Lordship.”
Geraint suddenly realized that the burden the man was carrying was Serrin. His face changed expression.
“Reckon he saved your hides from those hands in the sky,” Xavier told him. “Fainted away. He’ll be okay. Want to scan him. Streak?”
Streak took a few seconds to make his diagnosis and confirm that the unconscious elf was not in any immediate danger.
“We’d better go in,” he said to Geraint. “Xavier, you want to stay and take care of these terms?”
“Fine by me,” the man said cheerfully. “Frag, that was a lot of fun. Thanks for the invitation. Some party!”
“Not bad, eh?” Streak grinned. “All right. Your Lordship, let’s see if the boys at the chapel have learned some better manners. Better put that respirator on, we may need trank gas just in case they’re still a bit lively.”
“I wish Serrin could check it out first,” Geraint said anxiously. “Those mages up there had to be good.”
“Past tense is dead right,” Streak replied. “If they were still up and firing on all cylinders, I don’t think the chapel would be doing a good impression of Dresden right now. Let’s get n before they recover. if there’s anyone left to recover.”
Before they moved off, Geraint went over to the forlorn figure sitting with her gun held loosely between her knees and put his arm around her. Kristen was shaking, but her eyes were dry.
“Don’t worry. He’ll be right as rain in the morning,” Geraint reassured her.
“I know,” she said in a voice stronger than he’d expected. “He told me what he was going to do.”
He hadn’t told anyone else. Geraint tried not to look surprised.
“Stay and look after him,” he said.
“No, Xavier will be with him, and I trust him. He’s okay.”
“What do you want to do then?”
“I’m coming with you. I want to know what’s happening, and you say the answer is up there. Since Serrin isn’t awake to hear, I’ll be able to tell him all about it. Whatever it is.”
Geraint looked askance at her, and then a smile spread across his face. “Good for you. Come on, then. Let’s not keep Streak waiting. You know how impatient he gets when us civilians dawdle.”
She took his arm and they walked up the hill to the ruin.
16
It wasn’t easy frying to find any sign of a place of access beneath the rubble. Most of the walls had been shattered, and heavy stone lay everywhere. There were bodies, badly mangled, and Geraint had to look away from them. To his surprise, Kristen seemed less squeamish, though she obviously disliked what she was seeing. Her previous life on the streets of Cape Town must have been far harsher than he’d ever fully comprehended.
“Ah, here,” Streak said at last. “Here are the steps leading down into the dungeons, master.”
The trapdoor had been shattered and rubble was piled up in the stairwell below. A haze of dust and vaporized plaster gave the depths the impression, indeed, of some macabre Victorian underground labyrinth or prison straight from a Fuseli drawing. The twin flashlights of Geraint and Streak lit the gloom. They showed the first of the bodies at the foot of the steps. Stepping carefully over it, Streak led them on.
They found him within moments, his perfect suit covered in dust, the man lay sprawled on the floor, groaning. There was no blood visible on him, but his left leg was crooked at a horribly unnatural angle and it was obviously broken. He looked up at them, pain distorting his face.