“Bring it up. Bring it back up right now.”
The man showed no sign of understanding. Instead of moving to operate the winch, he merely pointed down beyond the door, just as another barking roar echoed around them. The scream, when it came, was close now.
“Watch them,” Hynd said to Davies and Wilkins and moved to the top of the door so he could look down. The balcony had been lowered in a single unit all the way to the ground where six figures still hung on the X-shaped frames. The flickering flames from the torches on the wall sent dark shadows dancing on a forest canopy but there was something else there too, something that moved in a two-legged loping walk, head held high. It was only when a thick tail lashed the greenery that Hynd realized what he was looking at.
A dinosaur—a raptor some eight feet tall—walked out of the jungle and came forward towards the hanging captives. Even in the darkness, its colors seemed to swim in the flickering light and as it closed to where the captives hung, Hynd saw it was not skin that rippled, but a soft sheen of multicolored feathers. He had no time to consider the how or why of an impossible beast in this situation for it came on fast, head bobbing and legs pumping, its gaze fixed on a promised meal.
The raptor roared.
The captives screamed.
Hynd looked for an easy way to go to the captive’s defense but saw no way to bring them up quickly; the winch was protected by natives and getting them out the way was going to take time they didn’t have. The raptor roared again. Hynd fired two shots towards it, but the distance was still too great and he’d shot too hastily. The beast didn’t even flinch and kept coming on.
We’ll have to go down there.
The thought and action followed each other.
“After me, lads,” he said, shouldered his weapon, and went down over the wall, lowering himself first then dropping and rolling with the landing in one smooth action so that he was standing, weapon raised and facing the raptor as it roared again and came on like a train.
Wilkins was beside him two seconds later with Davies right behind both of them, so that all three stood in a line between the approaching beast and the hanging captives.
“Let’s show this fucker how we do things in Scotland,” Hynd said, raised his weapon, and fired three quick shots aiming for the largest target—the broad chest below the long neck of the raptor. At first, he thought he’d missed again but there was a darker patch among the feathers where he’d blown out a wound. The beast barely slowed though, still coming on and roaring even louder. The night was suddenly full of noise and confusion; gunfire and roaring, captives screaming, and more distant gunfire from the other side of the wall where Hynd guessed that the captain had problems of his own.
Davies and Wilkins each put tight groups of three into the beast’s chest. Even then it didn’t stop, as if its nervous system wasn’t able to process the fact it should already be lying down and dead. Hynd moved to meet it head-on, stood his ground in the face of a final defiant roar and a stench of rotting meat from its breath, and put two rounds down its throat. It finally realized its fate was sealed and fell with a ground-shaking thud at his feet.
Hynd put another round in the skull to make sure before turning to the younger men. The six captives had gone quiet, wide-eyed and staring at the dead thing on the ground.
“Get these folks down, lads,” he said. “Quick as you like. I’ll keep an eye open.”
Although quiet had descended for the moment on this side of the wall, the echo of gunfire still rose from the other side, accompanied by loud yelling and screaming. Davies and Wilkins were slowly getting the captives free from the binding ropes but two of the men collapsed to the ground immediately, as if their legs wouldn’t hold them. Hynd searched on both sides of the gate for a ladder, a rope, anything to get them back up top. As his gaze went up towards the balcony above, he caught a quick movement from the corner of his eye. He stepped nimbly aside as a spear thudded into the ground where he’d been standing. Another spear struck and stuck into the wood of one of the crossbeams a second after Wilkins had got the last woman free.
More spears hit the ground around them, only dumb luck and cover of dark shadows saving them from injury.
And dumb luck never holds.
“Fall back away from the wall, lads,” Hynd said. “We’re sitting ducks here.”
As the younger men led the captives out into the clearing, Davies having to take the weight of one of the men on his shoulder, there was more movement in the foliage to their north. A barking roar echoed across the clearing.
Three more answered it from deep under the canopy.
- 7 -
The shit hit the fan for Banks and Wiggins almost as soon as the other three men had reached the balcony above the gate.
“Cover them, Wiggo,” Banks said but at the same time the throng of townspeople quickly surged to fill the space between them and the gate, effectively cutting off the escape route of the men above. Banks put two shots into the gate itself above the heads of the throng but all that got him was a barking roar in answer from the far side.
“What the fuck have they got in there?” Wiggins said. Banks had no answer for him.
The crowd inched closer to Banks and Wiggins’ position. They were a motley crew, some in western shirts and trousers, others in swaddles of cloth wrapped around like kilts, some wearing tall, brightly colored headgears of feathers, others with feathers seemingly implanted into the skin up and down the length of arms and legs. Almost all of them were dark-haired and pale-skinned, no darker than Banks himself. Several hundred of them, women and befeathered children among them, stood between them and the gate. He heard gunfire and looked up to see Hynd and the others descend on the other side.
The roaring of whatever was over there got louder.
“Any bright ideas, Cap?” Wiggins said at his side.
“Let’s try calling their bluff, shall we?” Banks replied, raised his weapon and took a step forward towards the throng. Almost as one the crowd matched his step and the next until there was only a matter of a few yards between them. More gunfire echoed from beyond the wall.
“Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it now, Cap,” Wiggins said.
Banks saw movement high on the wall, natives throwing spears down on the far side. He raised his weapon to aim then saw three men at the front of the crowd raise spears of their own in reply. They all stared at each other across the empty space.
I don’t want a bloodbath here.
He wasn’t given a choice. The three spear wielders readied themselves to throw.
“Fuck it,” Banks said and took two of them out in quick succession. Wiggins put a round in the head of the third then both of them had to back off fast as the throng surged forward, screaming a single roar that sounded far too similar to the barking they’d heard on the river earlier.
“Cap?” Wiggins said, and Banks heard the worry in the corporal’s voice.
“Keep backing off,” he replied. “These buggers aren’t giving up.”
He was forced to shoot another spear-carrier who threatened to skewer Wiggins, then was face to face with a pre-teen child, hair full of feathers, face full of rage and a long, serrated blade in her left hand, raised ready to strike. He couldn’t shoot so he reversed the rifle, clubbed the child on the side of the head as gently as he could manage yet still put her down, then turned to Wiggins.
“We’re getting nowhere here. Double-time, back along the trail. Let’s see if we can lose then in the night and double back ’round.”