Blood Harvest (25 page)

The rifled muskets rippled in volley fire and all but two of the pale giants toppled and fell. Sylvano put them down with a burst each from his auto-blaster. “Reload!” Two female nightwalkers came screaming from an alleyway waving stone-tipped spears. “Third rank!” Sylvano bellowed. “Fire!” The pair of she-things fell almost at Sylvano's feet. “Reload!”

“First rank! Loaded!” Vasco called.

“Second rank! Lo—” A stone the size of a bowling ball crushed the skull of the second rank leader. A spear tore through another man's back like the bolt from a siege engine.

“They are on the rooftops!” Doc shouted. He flicked the hammer on his LeMat and the blaster brutally recoiled as he fired the shotgun barrel. A nightwalker on the eaves above screamed and clutched its face as the cloud of buckshot shredded its skull.

“Fire at will! We make for the church!” Sylvano shouted. Doc followed the surge across the square. They lost two more men to stones and spears hurled out of the alleyways and from the rooftops. The nightwalkers faded back into the alleys and out of sight on the rooftops. Sylvano snarled as he fired bursts at shapes in the smoke. “Where is your friend Jak and the Sons of the Sun?”

“I do not know!” Doc started as a throw stick the size of a scythe whirled inches from his head and broke the neck of the man next to him. Doc fired at the thrower, but the nightwalker had already melted back into the night. “He is delayed!”

“Delayed…” Sylvano roared. “Chosen men! Form square!”

The remaining men formed a very small square and moved in good order with bayonets bristling across the ville main square.

Raul's voice boomed across the ville in mocking thunder. “You are too few, Nephew!”

Doc looked at the mutilated body of Xavier Barat in passing and then at the new baron of the ville. Sylvano's face was desperate.

“Your rate of fire too slow, Nephew!” Raul taunted.

They ran up the steps of the church, and Sylvano hammered the butt of his blaster on the massive door. “Open! I command you!”

The bars were thrown back and the chosen men spilled into the church. It was already packed to the rafters with refugees. Doc estimated over two hundred, most women and children. A young man with a scalp wound and wearing the robes of an acolyte greeted them as other men slammed the great door closed and barred it. “Sylvano! We—”

Sylvano's voice was iron. “Baron Barat.”

The acolyte goggled. “Baron…”

“Where are the landowners and their men?”

“Barricaded, each in their own manses, Baron. Barricaded as we are. It is the only safe place.”

“This church is not safe at all. The only reason the nightwalkers have not taken it already is because they do not wish to, and that keeping you bottled up here serves their purposes.”

“What shall we do?”

The conversation was cut short by a deep, feminine voice calling out in singsong outside. “Oh, Sylvano,
my dearest! I have a new lover now! Come out and meet him!”

“And whom is that?” Doc asked.

“Xadreque.” Sylvano's long teeth ground. “The woman I loved.” Sylvano raised his voice angrily. “Fight me, Uncle! Let this be between us!”

“Very well, Nephew! Let it be a duel. Let this battle be decided by champions!” Raul's voice boomed amiably. “Come out and let us see the man you've become!”

“You don't want to go out there,” Doc advised.

“You are right. I do not.” Sylvano unsheathed his great sword and handed his auto-blaster to Vasco. “If I slay my uncle, break out and charge. The nightwalkers may falter. If I fall, go out the back. Either way, make a fighting retreat of it to the beach and link up with the doctor's friend Jak. Take the pier if you can and get our people on boats.”

“Baron?” Doc said. “I would come with you.”

“Oh?”

“If this is a duel, then you will need a second.”

Sylvano smiled bleakly. “Then I accept, Dr. Tanner. Come, let me introduce you to my uncle. Vasco, bolt the door behind us.” The door was opened and Doc followed Sylvano down the steps onto the square. Doc gaped at a nightmare. Raul Barat strode out of the smoke with horrible casualness. Red-velvet drapes stolen from a house were belted about him with ropes in a toga of royalty. Laurels of woven branches crowned him in a twisted mockery of Roman splendor and the crucifixion. He carried a horrific, hafted blade with sickening ease in one hand. A woman well over six and half feet tall and similarly bedecked spooned into his side. She
carried a net over her shoulder and a spear in her hand. Blood smeared both their mouths from feasting.

“Greetings, Nephew.” Raul turned his ghoulish gaze up and down Doc. “Dr. Tanner, I presume.” He looked at the huge sword in Sylvano's hands. “For me?”

“I had it forged specially.” Sylvano nodded. “I named it Raulslayer.”

Raul eyed the great blade. “Charming.” He weighed the flensing blade in his hand. “You know the sad thing of it is, we have taken most of the ville's blasters, and yet our hands are too large to wield them.” He plucked Xavier Barat's blaster out of his toga. “But my petite flower Xadreque has no such problems.” He tossed the weapon to her.

The titaness caught it with a grin. “Goodbye, my love.” Xadreque shot Sylvano through the head. The iron cap he wore beneath his hat could stop a stone but not a bullet and he fell dead to the ground.

“Foully done!” Doc shouted. His sword hissed from its cane. Instantly he knew he had made a mistake. He should have drawn his pistol and shot, but the shreds of his honor and the dark clouds of madness often fought within him. In this case they were in agreement. Xadreque pointed the blaster at Doc. He ignored her as he drew himself up and saluted his blade. “Raul Barat, I challenge you for the barony.”

“I gave my dear brother the fate I had long planned for him. Sylvano died like the fool he was, but you, Dr. Tanner? My brother actually suggested a duel between you and I. Let us see what you can do.” Raul's flensing blade hissed through the air like a razor-sharp meteor at Doc's head.

The duel was lopsided from the onset. Doc was a
scarecrow standing in front of a mountain. It was like a man with a toothpick battling a man armed with a shovel. Raul's reach was literally inhuman and his whale-breaking weapon threatened to shatter Doc's slender blade with every parry. All Doc could do was evade. Raul had every advantage Sylvano had had, but at twice his power level and even greater speed. Raul was as fearless as he was cruel, and he was insane. He played Doc like a cat with a mouse as Doc's strength flagged. The old man once more took refuge in the one thing he had faith in.

“Why do you smile, Dr. Tanner?” Raul enquired.

“Because I know something you do.”

“Oh, and what is this mutual information we share that amuses you so?”

“That no matter what happens here, my friend Ryan will kill you.”

Raul snarled and Doc hurled himself into a last desperate attack. At that moment explosion after explosion rocked the shore batteries and the call “Sons of the Sun!” rocked the seawall. Automatic blasterfire ripped into life on the inland edge of the ville followed by crashing and nightwalker screams. Raul disengaged and stepped back. All Doc could do was put his hands on his knees and wheeze in relief.

A twentieth-century ambulance came tearing down the main street of the ville with its lights flashing and siren blaring.

Ryan and Honore rammed the roadblock with the lights flashing and the siren wailing. The carts blocking the road came apart, and so did one of the nightwalkers behind them. The med wag's tires were from a carefully maintained stock of preskydark material, but the ancient rubber ripped off the steel belts as the wag fishtailed across the cobblestones from the impact. Honore struggled to keep the wag on course. Ryan leaned out of the passenger window, his blaster on full-auto. A nightwalker towered out from between two burning buildings, topping the roof of the wag by a head. Ryan shoved the submachine blaster out like a big pistol and held down the trigger. His burst walked up the giant from crotch to collar.

Behind them Balduino and his tiny army of landowners charged the broken roadblock. The new freemen of the main isle limped after them in a mob. The med wag caromed down the street toward the square. The men in the back shouted in alarm, and the wag swerved even more wildly as huge rocks and chunks of lumber struck the wag's sides. Honore hit the square and weaved through bonfires, barbecuing bodies, crucifixions and rape racks. Ryan's eye narrowed. Dead ahead Doc appeared to be in another fencing match. This time it was with Raul, and Doc appeared to be losing. “Step on it!”

Honore put the hammer down, and the med wag roared forward. Raul stepped away from Doc, and the old man collapsed. Ryan and Honore flinched as Xadreque emptied a blaster through the windshield. She hefted her spear and hurled it. The windshield of the wag proved no obstacle. Honore proved even less as the spear punched through his chest, his seat and a screaming ville man behind him. Ryan grabbed for the wheel and the windshield shattered completely as the wag hit Xadreque at forty miles per hour. The shredded tires lost their grip on the cobbles, and Ryan braced himself as the wag flipped. Ryan's world spun and became one of flying glass, screaming metal and brutal impact. The wag rolled three times, but it felt like a hundred. It came to rest on its roof like an overturned turtle.

A huge hand snaked through the empty windshield and bodily ripped Ryan out of the wag and hurled him to the cobbles. Ryan rolled and came up on one knee. Raul stood in front of him, limned in firelight like a colossus. “Good evening, Senhor Cawdor.”

Ryan looked about him.

Doc was on his hands and knees throwing up. Things looked better elsewhere. There was a full-on battle raging on the seawall. Another was shaping up within the ville proper as Balduino and his men surged inside and engaged. Sec men were emerging from the church in good order with bayonets fixed. The ship Ryan had seen exchanging cannonades was back in the harbor. It was smoking, but still heading for the pier. “Looks like you lost, Raul.”

Raul smiled. “You know? Your friend Dr. Tanner said that no matter what happened, you were going to kill me.”

“Doc's right.” Ryan considered a lunge for Doc's LeMat, but he knew he'd never make it. Sylvano lay closer. Ryan very slowly picked up the fallen blade Raulslayer where it lay beside Sylvano and rose to his feet. “I'm going to cut off your head.”

Raul's hunting scream shook the sky as he attacked.

Ryan felt the damaged vein in his left elbow reopen as he flung the great blade underhanded like a harpoon. The six-foot sword was a clumsy missile, but it was heavy and it flew point-first, and Raul's insane blue eyes went wide at the unexpected danger. Raulslayer rang like a bell, and Raul's flensing blade bent as he batted the flying sword aside. Ryan closed the distance between them with his panga already in hand. The shaving-sharp blade whispered in. Purple ichor flew as Raul's arm opened from wrist to elbow. Raul roared and Ryan ducked. The return swing of the flensing blade literally clipped an inch off the top of Ryan's unruly black locks as Raul sought to open his opponent's skull from temple to temple.

Ryan was no swordsman, but he and Raul fought with chopping blades, and machete fighting was a science unto itself. It was a science that Ryan had assiduously mastered. He stayed within the giant's reach, dancing in the jaws of the serpent so that he could land his blows. Ryan cut and cut again. He relieved Raul of his left little finger. The panga passed across Raul's ribs, but the giant's bones and muscle were so thick it was impossible to make a killing cut. Raul was just as fast as Ryan but at a cubed power level. Like Doc, all Ryan had in his corner was experience. Raul had been trained as a swordsman in his youth, but now he wielded a flensing blade and he had spent the intervening decade
terrorizing slaves in the night. Cuts weren't enough. Raul wasn't afraid of bleeding to death. Ryan's death consumed him, and his strength and stamina were far beyond human.

Raul accepted a cut across his collarbones that was meant for his throat and swung with all his might. Ryan had no room to dodge. All he could do was put his panga in the way. Sparks shrieked off the blade as the flensing knife shaved metal. It didn't stop the blow, but it was enough to turn it. Ryan took the flat in the chest rather than the edge.

Nevertheless it was like being slapped in the chest with a cast-iron pan by a man who was eight feet tall. Ryan's heart made a fist as he was flung backward. Instinct took over and he rolled as he hit the cobbles. Raul bore down with his blade held overhead in both hands for the killing blow.

Ryan threw his panga.

It revolved once and punched into Raul three inches below the rope belting his toga and sank to the hilt into his bladder. Raul screamed in real agony. Ryan tottered two steps and grabbed Doc's swordstick and drew the rapier. Raul put up his giant hands to protect himself, and Ryan lunged low. Raul screamed as Doc's blade entered his bowels beside the panga. Ryan staggered back as Raul fell to his knees, clutching at his belly with his viscera full of steel.

Ryan picked up Raulslayer.

The cutting edge had been brutally turned by Raul's parry, but the great sword had two of them. Blood spurted out of Ryan's left arm as he wearily bore the sword aloft in both hands. Ryan swung. Raul fell forward to hands and knees as the blade his nephew
had forged to slay him bit into the bull-like muscles of his neck. Ryan swung the blade like a man chopping wood. With the third blow Raul's Frankensteinian skull left his shoulders and rolled across the cobblestones. His body collapsed, fountaining blood and fluids.

Ryan dropped to his knees and leaned on the great blade. It was the only thing holding him up.

Doc crawled over and shoved his kerchief against Ryan's elbow. He gasped as he spoke. “I am sorry…I tried…I tried as hard as I could…”

“I get the feeling you did real good today, Doc.”

Doc was done. The Blood of the Lotus had left him. His strength was gone, and madness and exhaustion danced around his damaged mind, but a flicker of sanity surged at Ryan's rare praise. “You should have been there. The battle for the Sister Isle…” A smile cracked across Doc's fatigued face. “We were something to see.”

“You can tell me about it late—”

Ryan stopped as Doc dropped face-first and twitching to the stones of the square. The one-eyed man eased Doc's LeMat out and leaned on the great sword like a crutch as half a dozen sec men ran forward. Blood stained their bayonets. Ryan cocked back the antique blaster's hammer. The sec men stared back and forth between Ryan, Raul, Doc and Sylvano. Their leader eyed Ryan uncertainly. “I am Vasco.”

“Yeah?”

“I am Sylvano's second in command.”

Ryan nodded at Sylvano's corpse. “Looks like you're first now.”

Vasco started. “I…do not claim the barony.”

Ryan regarded the blasters and bayonets that weren't quite pointed at him. “Neither do I.”

“Then you want—”

“I want to get Doc off the ground and someplace safe.”

Doc feebly shoved himself into a sitting position. “I am all right.”

He wasn't, but at least he was lucid. Ryan and Vasco turned as a small army came marching up from the seawall. Jak led a band of spear- and sling-armed Sister Islanders. J.B. was limping alongside Zorime, and a small contingent of ville sailors and sec men from the boat. Zorime stood for long moments looking at the butchered, crucified thing that had been her father. Then she cried out and ran to her brother. Ryan looked at his friends. “Where's Krysty?”

“Back on Sister Isle,” J.B. said. “She did her Gaia thing during the battle, but she's okay. She and Mildred are tending the wounded.”

“Saw your sea battle.”

“It was a diversion.” J.B. shrugged. “Looks like it worked.”

Ryan nodded. “Jak?”

Jak shrugged. “Snuck up. Blew shore battery powder stores. Took seawall.”

Zorime looked up from her brother.

“You should know your brother died going forward,” Doc said. “Sword in hand. I was with him.”

Balduino and his force of landowners reached the square, followed by the limping mob of ex-slaves. They looked to have lost half their number. “My lady?”

“I am baron now. What is the situation?” Zorime asked.

“We killed at least fifty nightwalkers. The rest have fled the ville for the hills. I did not think pursuit wise.
My men are too few and the…freed men?” He sighed and looked at the hobbled left foot of an ex-slave. “Cannot give chase. I thought it best to secure the ville first and then mount a proper hunt in the morning.”

Ryan scanned the rooftops. The surviving nightwalkers had pulled a fade. “Jak?”

“Killed least as many,” Jak said. “More.”

“We slew fifty more on the other island,” Doc said.

“Then they are crushed and leaderless.” Zorime rose from her brother's side. “And by the population rolls I would think there can be fewer than fifty functioning adults left. The survivors will head back to the caves. Some will undoubtedly go feral in the hills. All must be hunted down. Vasco, secure the ville. Balduino, take a heavily armed patrol and visit each farmstead. Tell them we have retaken the ville and to be armed and ready for the hunt at dawn.”

Balduino gave Ryan a hard look. “Baron, you should know that this one destroyed both the clinic and the powder mill.”

Zorime flinched as the mess she had inherited kept getting messier. “I suppose that was to be expected.”

Balduino shook his head. “And what is to be done about this?”

The freed men and the men of the Sister Isle had begun mingling. Many fathers, uncles and sons were tearfully reuniting, and the younger generation was quickly swelling with anger as they saw how their elders had been hobbled and enslaved.

“First tend to the wounded, theirs and ours,” Zorime ordered. “Then break out the festival caldrons and open the storehouses. Feeding them will be a first step.”

“Baron.” Doc rose shakily to his feet, and Ago rushed
over to support him. “Though it grieves me, there is something I must tell you.”

“What more can you add to this night, Dr. Tanner?”

“Simply this. You told me the story of your people, and the refugee fleet who were the Sister Islander's ancestors. They know the story now, as well. I warn you, if it is your intention to drug these people at feast and then cull them like you did their forebears, they are forewarned. You should also take into consideration that you have scores of wounded back on Sister Isle, and sufferance of the islanders is at its limit. If you betray these men here, my friends Krysty and Mildred will not be able to stop the answering slaughter across the strait.”

“I admit the idea did occur to me, Dr. Tanner.” Zorime looked out across the burning ville. “However, we will need every man.”

“Every slave goes free,” Ryan said. “Or the battle begins again right here.”

“You misunderstand me, Senhor Cawdor. Both islands have sustained terrible casualties, and nearly all of it among the able-bodied male populations. We are all going to have to start making babies very quickly, and if the curse of the nightwalkers, indeed the porphyric curse of my people is to end—” Zorime gave Ago and his oxlike physique a frank look of appraisal “—then a great deal more interbreeding will be required between our two islands.”

Balduino and Vasco made appalled noises.

Zorime cut them off with an imperious glare. “I believe I gave you both orders.” Ryan noted that Zorime wasn't having many problems assuming the mantle of the barony. “Take Dr. Tanner back to the manse and make him comfortable.”

“I will not rest until my friend Ryan is attended to,” Doc protested.

Zorime nodded. “I will see to it personally.”