Resistance (14 page)

‘Well, duh,’ Dave said, instantly regretting it and hurrying on to an apology. ‘Sorry, Zach. I was being a dick. Go on. I think I’m getting your point.’

‘Point is, asshole,’ Igor growled, ‘we can’t trust you, because we can’t rely on you.’

Zach frowned at him.

‘Too harsh, man. But not wrong. Dave, you have any idea of how much weight you could lift? Your one rep max? If a Hummer rolled on top of Emmeline, say, and we had to get her out in a hurry, could you do that?’

Dave stopped chewing on his steak to ponder the question. He had no idea, but he thought it might be possible. Zach had more questions for him, however. None of them he could answer.

‘We know you can run pretty fast. Maybe even win a bet with the Flash. But how fast exactly can you travel, and how long can you move at speed? If you were ten miles from Emmeline when the Hummer rolled would you run out of fuel before you covered that distance? How many calories would you burn fighting a dude like Scaroth for ten minutes? We all know what happens when it’s Red Bull time. If you don’t get your little pick-me-up, you’re pretty much sunk. And if we are relying on you, that means we’re sunk as well. I think that was Igor’s point.’

‘Yeah, but I was more fucking succinct,’ said the big SEAL.

‘So, what, you need me to go and do another physical?’ Dave asked, looking down at his plate, not liking the judgment he could read in the eyes of the other men. He was surprised to see he had almost finished the second porterhouse. He’d inhaled more than five pounds of prime beef in a couple of minutes without even taking the top off his beer.

‘No time for that now,’ said Zach. ‘But yeah, assuming we don’t get eaten in Nebraska, you should totally make some time to get that done. Captain Heath could set that up, no problemo. A couple of days of your time and, frankly, a load off all of our minds.’

Dave took a moment to contemplate his bottle of beer. He didn’t even know the growlers were allowed to sell bottled beer under Minnesota licensing laws. Maybe it was some special interstate, airline variety. He shrugged before necking at least half of it. He burped. He supposed Zach had a point. Be cool to know what he was capable of, and what he wasn’t. But he wondered when they might find time. He had no idea how long this Omaha bullshit would take, and then it was a laydown certainty that Boylan was going to need him to do stuff, not even cool stuff like having lunch with Brad Pitt, or trying out his newly found charms on Jennifer Aniston.

Oh yeah, he was totally doing that, no matter what Emmeline thought. But as a concession, he had determined he would not be fucking the defenceless flight attendant.

Boylan was working away a few seats up from him, his attention split between two laptops and a blizzard of paper. In contrast with his behaviour in Vegas, he had been almost entirely silent since boarding the plane. Apart from a couple of words with Emmeline when she shooed him out of his preferred seat near Dave and an order for a sandwich and a club soda, Boylan kept to himself. Dave was going to check in with the lawyer, to see about scheduling some tests, when the intercom chimed and a pleasant female voice filled the cabin.

‘Good morning, this is your captain, Claire Harvey. I have just been informed by our escort that they have detected an anomaly ahead. Two of the planes are investigating, and we will remain in a holding pattern with the other escort craft until they return. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the routine. Please do up your safety belts, return your tray tables to the upright position, and the attendant will be through to collect any glassware, utensils and so on. As soon as I have more information I will pass it on.’

Another chime and Dave felt the plane tilt to the left as the muted roar of nearby warplanes kicking it up to full power reached him. Having been told to strap in, he did exactly the opposite and unbuckled his harness.

‘Mr Hooper, sir. Dave, please, you need to sit down,’ said Joy as she moved through the cabin, gathering up anything that could become a missile in flight. ‘Professor Boylan, sir, if you could please close your laptops and stow them away, sir. Just for a short while, for safety.’

Boylan, who looked as though he was coming out of a trance, shook his head, but not in refusal. He looked a little like someone who’d just walked into a spider nest and was trying to shake himself free of the cobwebs. ‘What’s that? Oh, sorry, yes, of course, yes.’

‘Sit down, Dave,’ barked Heath, who compromised the authority of the command by unbuckling his own seatbelt and following Dave to a free window to see what was happening.

‘What is it?’ asked Boylan, finally becoming animated as he synced back to reality. ‘Is it dragons, Dave, is that what it is? Because I’m not ready for dragons. I prepared myself for giant pig demons and carnivorous monster ghouls. Not dragons. Not on a plane. I can’t do dragons on a plane, Dave.’

‘I think it’s dragons,’ Dave confirmed. ‘Look.’

And soon almost everyone was pressed up against the windows on that side of the plane, either shielding their eyes from the sun and staring out of the window next to their seat, or moving seats to do so. Everyone except Emmeline, who remained asleep, and Compton who had followed the instructions to strap himself in and was now craning around, looking very unhappy with his travelling companions.

It took a few seconds to find the aircraft against the background of the mountain range.

‘Over there, near those lakes,’ said Igor, and then Dave had them. Two bright geometric shapes, metallic flashes picked out in the morning sun, moving impossibly fast and straight amidst the visual clutter and chaos of forest and rock.

The Super Hornet, an arrowhead of the Gods, left the Warthog behind. Dave tracked its flight path for a moment then extended ahead a few miles, squinting with the effort to pick out whatever they were chasing. It didn’t take long; a plume of bright orange fire lit up the tree line well ahead of the fighter.

Dar Drakon.

From this distance the torrents of beast-fire looked a trifling thing, like a barbecue flaring up in someone’s backyard. And yet he knew that the arc of super-heated bile could reach out the length of a city block and was hot enough to crack rocks and melt sand into glass. Trees would be exploding down there, their sap flash-boiling to vapour, detonating like a string of bombs dropped on the side of the mountain.

The Boeing turned in its holding position and they lost sight of the creature. Everyone hurried to the other side of the plane.

‘Oh come on now,’ shouted Compton, still firmly strapped in, but nobody was paying attention. Even Joy had found herself a spot to view the battle from down near her station at the rear of the plane. Dave ended up crouched next to Heath who didn’t need any superpowers to find the creature again, or the two human aircraft screaming toward it.

‘At ten o’clock,’ he said, pointing into the middle distance, where Dave saw the flying tank they called the Warthog and, by extending its flight path, the Super Hornet. It seemed that the moment he locked eyes on the jet fighter, twin puffs of smoke appeared under her wings, as two small points of light appeared to detach themselves and speed away.

‘AMRAAMs?’ said Dave. He’d read that in a Tom Clancy book.

Heath didn’t turn away from the window and neither did Dave, but he sensed the officer nodding. ‘Heat seekers,’ he said. ‘Air-to-air. Pilot must’ve got tone. We’ll see soon enough.’

It did not take long. To Dave’s untutored eyes, as quick as the jet was travelling, the missiles seemed to move away at two or three times its speed. He followed the burn trail all the way down to the slowly circling figure of the dragon. It must’ve been miles away, but he was certain he could see the great leathery wings as they flapped slowly, carrying the monster across the forest canopy. It was possible, he thought, that he could even make out the great tail, although he had no hope of picking out details like the giant spikes at the end, with which a dragon could impale up to two or three Hunn with one vicious swipe. His eyesight had improved as radically as his physique and he wondered how much detail the others could make out. None of them were complaining.

‘Praise God and pass the ammunition,’ said Zach, just before twin explosions bloomed silently around the dragon. Dave flinched, expecting to hear its death shriek, but of course he never would. It was miles away and they were safely enclosed within the insulating steel and glass tube of the Boeing. When the fire died away there was nothing to see. It was gone, but the A-10 Warthog pressed on anyway, and after a moment Dave saw long, fluorescent strands of light reach out from the tip of the plane to rake at the mountainside where, he presumed, the dragon had fallen. The pilot poured on the heat for at least ten seconds, and fired rockets that followed the line of tracer fire into the burning forest.

‘Nothing left of that sucker but loose meat,’ said Igor, standing up and returning to his original seat. And indeed there seemed to be little left to see. The two aircraft were returning, and Dave lost sight of them as the Boeing resumed its original heading.

The intercom chimed and Captain Harvey thanked them for their patience, telling her passengers that they anticipated no more than a ten-minute delay. She kept her voice calm, but Dave thought he could hear the anxiety and wonder beneath that professional mask.

‘Is that it?’ Boylan said. ‘There are no more? We’re sure there are no more, Dave? I mean, that was quite spectacular, and reassuring too, but I would like to get back to my work, and I don’t think I can do that unless someone can assure me this isn’t going to be like that scene in
Jurassic Park
when the raptors tag-teamed poor Bob Peck. That’s not about to happen to us, do you think, Dave? Because it will be quite difficult for me to provide the full suite of services you need if some airborne fire-breathing raptor is about to bite through the fuselage and turn us into human kebabs.’

‘I think that’s it, X.’ Dave turned away from the window at last and found Heath waiting for him.

‘Dislodge any memories?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think they had jet fighters back in the golden age of the Horde. What about you? You learn anything?’

Heath stretched and turned his neck from side to side. Dave could hear the bones clicking and he wondered how the guy’s artificial leg handled long-haul flights. Probably quite well on a plane like this, not so well in economy.

‘I’ll make sure we get the After Action Report,’ he said. ‘Is that likely to be it? Mr Boylan won’t have to worry about getting blindsided?’

‘Professor Boylan,’ said Dave, ‘And no. I’m pretty sure they don’t travel in packs.’

Everyone slowly resumed their seats, with Dave headed back toward the ass end of the plane to resume his conversation with Zach and Igor, wondering if he might be able to talk them into splitting a few beers. Maybe a couple of lights. They were on duty he supposed, but
. . .

The intercom chimed again, sending a jolt through everyone’s nerves.

‘Dave?’ Boylan squeaked. ‘Dave, you said there’d be no more dragons. And I have a considerable amount of work to get through.’

‘Thank you, everyone. This is Captain Harvey again. We have an incoming call for Mr Hooper on the air phone at the front of the cabin.’

Heath shot him a look somewhere between confusion and irritation.

‘Did you tell anybody you’d be on this flight?’ he asked, getting to the phone a few steps ahead of Dave. ‘Your bookie? Some girlfriend?’

‘Nobody,’ Dave protested.

Compton, up out of his seat now, picked up the phone.

‘Compton. OSTP.’

He paused and confusion won out over irritation. But only for a moment. ‘If this is your idea of a joke
. . .’

Emmeline, finally woken by all the excitement, blinked at Dave through bleary, bloodshot eyes.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Yes. Yes, okay,’ said Compton, his voice irritated. He passed the handset to Dave.

‘It’s for you. Routed here via the Pentagon. A Lord Guyuk of the Grymm.’

11

Lord Guyuk ur Grymm lurked back in the shadows, away from the mouth of the limestone cave. Forced to crouch under the low ceiling he still dwarfed the terrified calfling. The creature appeared to be babbling, and it had certainly soiled itself, but Thresh-Trev’r assured him that the calfling was doing as ordered. Lord Guyuk did not consider himself a conservative. In the long and ancient history of Her Majesty’s Grymm, few commanders could claim to be as open to new ideas as he, and surely none had braved the sort of risk he did when he placed his faith in Thresh-Trev’r.

But he was not at all sure about this plan. The captive human was not entirely insensible with terror, and for that he paid the lesser daemon due tribute. Conversing with the creature in its own language, using the intonations and accents of the calfling that called itself ‘Trevor’ had been
. . .
Well, not a stroke of genius. The Thresh was still just a Thresh after all. But it had cracked
dar Drakon
egg. Now Guyuk wondered what they would taste inside.

Thresh-Trev’r sat on the floor, hunched right down next to the calfling, babbling in the strangely liquid and glottal tongue of the cattle. Thresh had said there would be a deal of difficulty and unavoidable frustration in trying to find and talk to the human champion, the Dave, by stroking the small magick amulet many of the human captives carried with them.

The lord commander let them get on with it. Guards in heavy war cloaks to protect them from daylight stood across the mouth of the cave, acting as a shield. They did not block the view of the outside world entirely, however, and Guyuk could not help but be drawn to the sight. So alien, so wrong. He had not even words to describe any of the colours and images he caught sight of over their shoulders. But the strangeness of it burned his eyes until they watered and he blinked.

The senior Scolari Grymm, a Master of the Ways, who had travelled with them Above, who had indeed navigated them to this very point, assured Lord Guyuk that they were nowhere near the Dave. The Way Master lived to study the perverse geography of the passages between the UnderRealms and the world of men, but it was entirely beyond the lord commander. There had been no need to ponder such things in the long eons since the capstone had trapped their kind so far beneath the hairless little feet of men that men had forgotten entirely about their rightful lords. The calflings had multiplied and spread across the world Above with such fervour that it seemed their hairless little feet ran everywhere. The Master of the Ways had attempted to explain to Lord Guyuk how they effected their passage from the realms of the Horde to a place far removed from the spot at which the Thresh had first emerged, but he had grown impatient with arcane theories and exposition, finally roaring at them to simply take him where he needed to go.

The small party had stepped through a breach in the barrier between the worlds a good few leagues from the rift discovered by the Thresh. They emerged into this cave system, bringing their captive with them. The human’s whining and mewling had started soon afterward and at one point it had asked to be allowed out of the cave. It was only because Thresh-Trev’r assured them that such an exigency was necessary to facilitate the magick of the amulet that Guyuk allowed it. The amulet probably drew its power from the cursed sun. Truth be known, Lord Guyuk could only understand one in every three or four words of the Thresh when it spoke in the voice of Thresh-Trev’r, but having come this far there seemed no alternative. None that would deliver the victory toward which all of his efforts were now bent.

‘My Lord, we have him. We have the voice of the Dave conjured within the amulet,’ cried the Thresh.

Guyuk turned around as quickly as the confines of the cave would allow. Some undignified shuffling was involved.

‘And he will parlay with us?’

‘His warlords insist on it,’ said the Thresh.

‘But how do any insist the Dave do anything he would not wish of his own will? These cattle vex me more every night. Gah! Never mind. Are you ready to translate, Thresh?’

‘Thresh-Trev’r stands ready, my Lord.’

And thus began the strangest, most perverse negotiation with which the Lord Commander of the Grymm had ever been involved.

*

Thresh-Trev’r tried to encourage the calfling not to fear for its life; an admittedly difficult thing to ask since the natural reaction of a calfling to a daemon was mortal fear.

‘Dude, just chill, we’re almost there and then you are on the down low, my friend. Free to roam.’

The argot of the calfling, which once knew itself as Trevor, still felt strange in the mouth of Thresh, but the Scolari Grymm had been correct when they surmised the little daemon might consume all the creature’s thinkings in one gulp by the simple method of sucking the sweetmeats from its head. As unnatural as the sounds felt in its mouth – and Thresh’s mouth was not at all well suited to making them anyway – as strange as those sounds were, it understood them. It understood much now. Or rather, the part of its mind that had become Thresh-Trev’r understood.

The prisoner called itself Darryl and Thresh-Trev’r understood that this Darryl was a merchant of ‘doughnuts’. Or at least he had been until captured by a Sliveen scout on the edge of the battle in New Orleans.

Thresh-Trev’r also understood now that the little village they had thought they were raiding was in fact a great metropolis. Blasphemy to say it, but a metropolis far grander in scale than even the inner
and
outer palace grounds of Her Majesty.

Thresh-Trev’r knew much indeed. He knew the iron Drakon which spat fire and death upon the Vengeance led by Urspite Scaroth ur Hunn were in fact ‘helicopters’, or ‘choppers’, or ‘Apaches’. Thresh-Trev’r seemed to have many names for the flying creatures, which he now understood were not creatures at all, but some sort of manufactured tool of great complexity. Just like this Darryl’s magick amulet, which he called a ‘cell phone’.

‘R-r-really,’ Darryl stammered. It took him a few tries to say the word. Indeed, more than it would’ve taken Thresh-Trev’r. ‘You’ll really luh-let m-me go?’

‘Duuude,’ Thresh-Trev’r assured him. ‘You do a solid for the Horde and you will be our made man. You be kickin’ it, Darryl.’

The calfling still shook as he attempted to manipulate the jewels on the front of the amulet
. . .

On the phone
, Thresh understood via a strange double-thinking exchange with himself in the form of Thresh-Trev’r.

But Darryl, the provider of the delicacy known to Thresh-Trev’r as doughnuts, persevered. It seemed as though Darryl believed Thresh-Trev’r when he said he could go free after performing this one act for the Grymm. Thresh did not know why Darryl would place his faith in such a promise, since it was so very obviously a lie and they were going to tear him apart as soon as they were done with him, but Thresh-Trev’r knew it to be, if not a gambit sure of success, then certainly one worth trying. Although that’s not how Thresh-Trev’r expressed himself.

Dude
, Thresh-Trev’r thought when Thresh examined his thinkings,
dude, this Darryl asshole is a fucking nimrod. I’m telling you, he is totally going to suck this dick
.

Thresh was still not used to composing his thinkings in the mind of Thresh-Trev’r, and when he did so, he was not entirely convinced that the thinkings he had extracted from the head of Trevor were the finest thinkings the calflings had to offer. This Trevor, he was beginning to suspect, might well have been the human equivalent of a very slow, very stupid minion. His thinkings were not deep, and frequently veered away from those things Thresh needed him to think about, and onto other things. Like doughnuts.

But Thresh-Trev’r was all they had and he could communicate with Darryl, and through him to the human world of the Dave, where Thresh, Lord Guyuk and even Her Majesty were utterly incapable of making themselves understood.

‘Dude, come on. You gotta try harder. Guyuk’s getting pissed, and when he be pissed, he be eating his motherfuckin’ feelings. Which means you, dog.’

‘I’m trying! I’m trying,’ cried Darryl, ‘but it’s not easy. The reception is t-terrible. And they won’t
buh-buhlieeeve
me.’

Thresh was beginning to think that maybe they should just eat Darryl and send some scouts out to find another doughnut merchant who could manipulate the amulet.

Use the cell.

It was maddening that he couldn’t just use the thing himself. Thresh-Trev’r knew how. But talons were not suited to the task. They needed Darryl, or another calfling if they ate Darryl, to manipulate the amulet and talk to the cattle who would help them reach out across the unseen leagues so that they might actually parley with the Dave. Even as Thresh-Trev’r encouraged Darryl to persist in his attempts, Thresh marvelled at the magick these humans had harnessed. As dismal a figure as the wretched Darryl cut, Thresh could not help feel a creeping admiration, tantamount to heresy, for its kind. He wondered how a mere seller of doughnuts might come to wield such an instrument, for as much as Thresh-Trev’r recalled a great love of doughnuts, the memory was not accompanied with any great reverence for doughnut keepers.

Suddenly the calfling’s face brightened. It was almost shiny with relief. Perhaps even ecstasy.

‘I got ’em,’ cried Darryl. I got ’em. Someone just cut in on my call. Said they were from the national security agency and they’d redirect me to Hooper.’

Hooper. Another name for the Dave, Thresh-Trev’r knew. Some sort of clan designation.

‘Awesome, Darryl. So you know what to do, right? You don’t say shit, or we gots to bite you fuckin’ head off. You put me on speaker as soon as you gets the Dave, and I’ll hook him up to my man Guyuk. Then they’re like, chewing on it, they be fuckin’ Avon and Stringer Bell, you feel me? And we be sweet, Darryl! We be sooo fuckin’ sweet!’

Darryl stared at him as though he’d slipped into the Olde Tongue.

‘Just put him on speaker,’ said Thresh-Trev’r.

*

Dave recognised the guttural accent of the creature at the other end of the line. It hailed from the same Sect as Urgon and Scaroth.
The Horde
. Dave’s own Sect, he thought, with a shudder at the bottom of his soul. And yet it spoke to him, or tried to, in English. Or some approximation of English. Something like American mall-rat dialect. He assumed he was talking to a lowly Hunn warrior, rather than a BattleMaster, who would have announced himself, his title, his glorious history of slaying this and destroying that, wasting the better part of the day before getting down to business. But this thing on the phone, which the Pentagon apparently insisted he talk to, and which insisted on calling itself ‘Trevor’, was all about the business, which it pronounced ‘bidness’ with a slight lisp that Dave put down to having too many fangs.

‘You do the bidneth with my homie Guyuk now, the Dave? Aight? Thith niggah be lord commander oth the muthafuckin’ Grymm, yo?’

Dave put his hand over the receiver and shook his head at Heath and the others who gathered closely around him.

‘I can’t be sure,’ he said, unable to keep the utter bafflement out of his voice, ‘but I think the Grymm have got some moron to translate for them. That, or I’m getting punk’d by some really fucking sad try-hard white rapper with a speech impediment.’

‘National Security Agency says to just take the damn call,’ said Compton.

‘Aight,’ Dave sighed in imitation of ‘Trevor’, before taking his hand from the receiver.

‘Er, yo. Trevor. Yeah. It’s me again. The, er, Dave. We’re good, I guess. Put your man Guyuk on.’

*

Having played his role, the prisoner placed the amulet on a large rock, where Guyuk might hail it without leaning over the calfling.

‘Champion, you address Lord Guyuk ur Grymm. Lord Commander of Her Majesty’s Grymm, dread bane of all her foe, inquisitor extremis, master of her holy terror, wielder of the great blade named –’

‘Yeah yeah, got it,’ said the Dave in the Olde Tongue, interrupting Guyuk before he’d even begun the roll of his many honours and offices. ‘I’m Dave, swinger of the maul that, you know, mauls. You’re really like the maximum Nazi?’

Guyuk found himself at a loss, and looked to the Thresh who indicated that he should just agree and carry on.

‘I am
. . .
that, yes, Champion.’

No sound came from the amulet for a moment and he wondered if the magick might have failed, or whether the Dave had abandoned their dialogue. But then the human spoke again.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘That’s cool. I guess. So. What’s up?’

Guyuk forced himself to believe, to put aside all the voices that whispered to him, all the ancestors of his nest, every lord commander who had worn his chain of office, all of them insisting this could not be so. He closed his mind to the whispers and forced himself to believe that this was indeed possible, that he was conversing with the Dave by the magick of this glowing trinket. It was the purest madness.

‘Champion, my heralds have sought you out for one purpose. To warn you.’

‘Is that right?’ the Dave said over the top of him. ‘Well, thanks to your heralds and everything but
. . .’

Guyuk’s thoughts buzzed through his head like a swarm of enraged stingers. He was finding deep wells of unexpected sympathy for Scaroth. If the Dave was as difficult and unpredictable in combat as he was in conversation, Guyuk may have been too harsh in his judgment of the BattleMaster.

‘Champion, do not doubt me. We are foe, yes. But you are not my only foe. You are not even my greatest. You are an embarrassment to one disgraced officer of the Horde and an inconvenience to me because of that. Have no doubt that we are enemies and that I will destroy you. But that shall be my privilege not mine enemies’.’

The human captive which had used the amulet to summon the Dave climbed unsteadily to its feet, brushing at itself as though the limestone dust on its coverings might be the worst of its problems. Guyuk gestured to Thresh to sit the creature down again, and the lesser daemon did so, forcing the calfling back to the floor of the cave with one claw.