Elite: A Hunter novel (17 page)

I was about to ask Hammer what the plan was when a Portal opened up right in front of us, no more than twenty yards away, and a horde of
Nagas
began pouring out.

Hammer cursed and jumped back, and I shot my Shields up and made a grab for my assault rifle.

But the
Nagas
ignored us completely; instead, they slithered at high speed toward the town, moving low to the ground as the Portal closed behind them. A moment later, they were a hundred yards away and all but invisible in the grain. Hammer made a split-second decision.
“Kent,”
I heard over the radio,
“change of plans. Snake-men heading for town. Joy, get the giants to chase you and get them away from the buildings so the artillery can take them out. We already know the
Nagas
know how to open doors; if we don’t stop those snakes from getting into town and into the shelters, there’s going to be a slaughter.”

He and Steel called up their Hounds with the emergency summons and pelted after the rapidly vanishing
Nagas,
leaving me…

…alone…

Oh god…
I summoned my Hounds the same way, ignoring the burning in my hands and the sudden drain of power, in order to bring them in as fast as possible. I knew Hammer was right, totally right: those
Nagas
could open or just plain hack down doors, smash in windows, and go where anything human-size could go. But at the same time, those giants had to be pulled away from the town too—and even if the pack and I could probably have caught up with the
Nagas
and dealt with them on our own, I didn’t think that Hammer and Steel could handle both of the giants at once. Sure, they could smash one, but while they were doing that, the other one could squash them like a pair of bugs.

A plan…I needed a plan.

As soon as the Hounds were all across, I reached blindly for Dusana and swung myself up on his back as he skidded to a halt beside me. A vague plan sprang up in my head, and I just hoped it was going to work.
Bya, take the rest of the
Alebrijes
pack and give the Magog hot feet. That should get its attention. Get it to chase you to the north. Myrrdhin, you and I will take the rest after the Gog. Go!

Bya didn’t argue with me—he and the others
bamphed
themselves across the intervening space, and a moment later, I thought I saw a flicker of flame somewhere below the Magog. I
definitely
heard a roar of outrage and pain, and the giant lumbered angrily northward. Gogs and Magogs were hard to damage. Their skin was thick and tough, and bullets generally just bounced off unless they were armor-piercing or specially coated. But the fire of my
Alebrijes
Hounds definitely stung that Magog. It was mad, and it was going after what had hurt it. Its partner didn’t seem to have noticed; the Gog was still feeling around inside the silo, its one eye squinched up, and its nasty gray tongue sticking out of the corner of its mouth.

Bamph to the Gog?
Dusana asked.

Yes!
I said.
Shield and go!
A moment later, there was a gut-writhing flash of disorientation, and then we were standing within thirty feet of the Gog, its ugly butt looming up above us. I didn’t want to get any closer. I didn’t want to chance seeing what was under that filthy tunic. Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai were with us; Hold and Strike were somewhere behind us, but if my idea worked, we’d be packed up again soon enough.

I’d never been this close to one of the giants before. My gut was all in a knot. And oh
god
, it stank! Like…concentrated rotted meat and socks someone had worn for a hundred years and the armpits of a nasty, greasy octogenarian mountain man who hadn’t bathed since the day he was born. Gagging on the stench, too busy gagging to feel scared, I pulled my assault rifle around and gave it a burst in the back of the knee. I had armor-piercing bullets in there. It was going to feel it, even if it felt like a flea bite. That was okay: flea bites are annoying and they hurt, and that was the point.

It stopped feeling around in the silo, turned, and looked down at me. It couldn’t furrow its unibrow, of course, but it managed to look annoyed and puzzled anyway. The head was like a huge boulder, with a smaller blob of a boulder for a nose. The teeth were the only things about it that looked clean. It snarled, showing them.

Now that I had its attention and it was facing me, I fired off the spell I’d been preparing. This was a levin bolt, which I expected to sting it at the very best. I wasn’t really trying for much damage; the amount of energy I would have to put into a spell that would hurt it would probably drop me to my knees. But I’d piggybacked the skunk stink on top of the levin bolt, and my target was that little divot in the lip just under his nose.

It hit, square on target, right where I wanted to put it.

First came the sting. Then the stink.

The giant let out a roar of utter outrage, its eyes reddening and watering immediately. You wouldn’t think something that smelled that bad would be that severely affected by another stench, but it was pretty clear I’d achieved my objective and then some. I had
all
of its attention, and it wanted me, not just for my manna, but for payback.

The Gog picked up its foot to stomp us flat, then drove the foot down so hard that the ground shook, and the foot left a crater in the dirt.

Of course, we weren’t there to be stomped on. Dusana had taken off the second the giant started to bellow, running without any real direction except
away
. I hung on for dear life as Dusana dodged and wove erratically, avoiding the pod-size clods of torn-up earth and pieces of grain silo the Gog started to lob at us.

It continued throwing things at us as we got farther away. Then it started to chase us. Dusana took off in a straight line, due south. I hung on; Dusana had helpfully sprouted a bunch of spikes I could cling to and brace my legs on.

I managed to get my arm up so I could see my Perscom. “Location,” I panted. “Nearest army unit.” Lucky. The Perscom was smart enough to figure out what I wanted.

The Perscom obliged, showing that we weren’t quite going in the right direction. I corrected Dusana so we were headed straight for them. Hammer wanted me to get the giants placed where the artillery could take them out without endangering the town? Best way to do that was to bring them
to
the artillery. “Contact nearest army unit,” I ordered. “Hunter Joyeaux calling command. Come in command.”

“Command, roger. Go ahead, Hunter.”

“I’m bringing you someone to play with,” I said, just barely managing not to squeak it. I didn’t look back. The Gog bellowed behind us, and it sounded as close as that Drakken had been days ago.

At least it didn’t have a Drakken’s triple mouth with all those teeth.

“Roger that, Hunter. Sighting in. Firing when clear.”

“No!”
I yelped. “No, don’t wait for us to get clear! Fire when you’ve got a lock on with all weapons, and give me a three-second countdown!”

They hesitated, probably thinking we were too close for safety. Well, we were, but that didn’t matter. Not if our Shields held.
“Roger that, Hunter. Commencing countdown. Three. Two.”

Dusana
bamphed
about fifty feet ahead on
two
, and we both dropped to the ground, hardening up our Shields.

“One.”

Just like the moment when the train crew had let loose with the Hellfire missile at the Folk Mage, the world disintegrated around us. For a few seconds, we were literally at ground zero of a little apocalypse. I think they must have had at least one missile launcher of some kind, with something not unlike a Hellfire, because the light was so bright I saw it even through closed eyelids and my face buried in Dusana’s neck. I’d hardened my Shield against
everything
, including air. We only needed what was in our lungs, and we surely did not need to get turned into crispy chicken. I felt power being
sucked
out of me as the Shields countered what had hit them.

But our Shields held, and in the next moment, it was dark, and there was…stuff…pattering down on them. I went to purely physical Shields just to keep ourselves from getting buried in debris.

And in the next moment I knew just what a big mistake
that
was.

I had thought the stench before was appalling. Now…it was indescribable. I gagged and covered my nose and mouth with both hands, before I remembered my gas mask, fumbled it out of my backpack, and pulled it on over my face. I was so glad I’d kept the gas mask in my load-out! The next few breaths of blessedly filtered air were such a relief that my eyes watered. Or maybe they were watering from the remains of the Gog…there are no words for that smell.

Dusana and I waited until the rain of nasty stopped dropping on our Shields. Then we flexed them violently outward, sending all the chunks of yuck and spills of ooze flying off us.

When we could see past the Shields again, we were on the edge of a brand-new crater in the grain fields. The grain was on fire, but since it was green, the fires were going out by themselves. As the smoke cleared around us, I looked toward the army line and waved. I turned on the mic in my gas mask and said, “Hunter Joyeaux to artillery commander. Ready for round two?”

There was a lot of coughing and gagging on the other end for a moment. Then some cussing. Very creative cussing; I was impressed.
“I thought those things smelled bad on the outside,”
came the reply finally.
“Roger that, Hunter. Ready for round two.”

“See you guys in a bit,” I told him.

Bya?
I called.

Coming,
my Hound replied, sounding amused.
We will meet you halfway there; the creature has already realized what you did to its mate, and it is coming in your direction. You should have no trouble getting it in place.

With the Gog and Magog disposed of, and me as far upwind from the gross mess as I could get, I called Hammer. After all, Kent had made him the team leader. He replied promptly.
“We’re cleaning up in town. There’s not just those snake-men; there’s Redcaps and Yeth-hounds.”

Yeth-hounds; that was another Othersider I had heard of but never seen up on the Mountain. Possibly because they didn’t like mountains; their favored place was flat or gently rolling land, like moors. They were headless hounds, but that didn’t stop them from being able to tear you to pieces.

“Join up with us, and we’ll work our way toward the others,”
Hammer continued.

“Roger, Hammer,” I said, and we all headed in that direction. Their icons were still moving around on the map.

My last order from Kent had been to stick with Hammer and Steel, and that was what I was going to do. They were in the center of the town, so that was the direction I sent Dusana. The rest packed up around me, with Bya sticking so close to Dusana’s side he might as well have been glued there.

Get your mind on your job,
I told myself. It didn’t matter that all of this was
crazy
compared to the Hunting I’d done at home, because I had the best pack ever, and we’d keep each other safe. “Myrrdhin, take Hevajra and Begtse and quarter to the right. Shinje, take Strike and Kalachakra and quarter to the left. Gwalchmai, range ahead of us with Hold and Chenresig. Stay within a hundred yards of me, take care of anything you find, and if you get into trouble, bring the trouble here to me and Bya and Dusana.” That put two fire-breathers and at least one
bampher
to the left and the right and one fire-breather and a
bampher
scouting. I had Dusana and Bya, and we could
bamph
our way out of reach of anything we couldn’t handle with just the three of us. “If you don’t get into trouble, I want anything that isn’t human or a domestic animal on fire and dead. We need this place cleared, the faster, the better.”

All the Hounds nodded and arranged themselves as Dusana and Bya and I worked our way through the streets toward Hammer and Steel.

There was no sign of anyone coming to put out the burning buildings, but that wasn’t a surprise. Extinguishing fires was a job best left until after the Othersiders were gone, even back home. Hopefully anyone that had been in those buildings was in a place of safety. I couldn’t help but contrast Bensonville with Anston’s Well; here, everyone seemed to have gone into hardened shelters to wait for the arrival of Hunters and the army—back home, no one would have been waiting around; they’d have grabbed weapons and started a line of defense as soon as the first Portal opened or the first Othersider attacked. I knew why Cits weren’t given weapons in Apex, but did that hold in these smaller towns, out here beyond the safety of the Barriers? It must, because as we made our way down the street, past abandoned pods, locked doors, and vacant storefronts, there didn’t seem to be a single soul here. And I know the Othersiders couldn’t have killed
everyone
in town without leaving a sign of the bloodshed.