From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel (25 page)

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Authors: Simon R. Green

BOOK: From Hell With Love: A Secret Histories Novel
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I’d been back for only a few minutes, but with everything that had happened, it felt like hours. And I hadn’t really achieved anything. For all the Accelerated Men I’d killed, thousands more were streaming past me on all sides now, heading for the Hall with murder in their hearts. I looked back, wondering whether I should fall back and raise the alarm, and to my relief I saw the main entrance doors slam open, and a great force of Droods came out to defend the family home, led by the Armourer and the Sarjeant-at-Arms.
I knew them immediately, even though they were fully armoured, by the awful weapons the Armourer and the Sarjeant were carrying. Hundreds of armoured Droods came pouring out after them, because when an enemy comes, everyone fights. Every man and woman, no matter what they normally do. All Droods are trained to be warriors from an early age, because we all know that the day may come when everyone has to fight. For the family.
Many of the emerging Droods had transformed their armour into strange and terrifying shapes, to scare the intruders, but they couldn’t concentrate long enough to sustain them, in the face of such an immediate threat. And besides, the intruders were so lost in the embrace of the Acceleration Drug they didn’t care who or what they fought.
The Sarjeant-at-Arms was carrying two really big guns, a Colt automatic repeater in each hand. Massive pistols that could fire endless series of bullets, and never run out, and never miss. Their bullets exploded inside human flesh. Only the Sarjeant was authorised to use them, and only then in direct defence of the family. His bullets blew off arms and legs, punched through guts and chests, and exploded heads. Accelerated Men fell by the dozen, but the others kept coming. I didn’t know whether they were brave, or determined, or whether enough of them was left to feel such things. They ran right over the bodies of their own dead to close with us.
The Armourer had chosen a really appalling weapon: the Kirlian gun. I winced when I saw it. The Armourer had never authorised its use in the field, not least because it was almost as dangerous to the user as to the people he aimed it at. Every living thing has its own energy field: the Kirlian aura. The gun explodes that aura. The Armourer aimed the Kirlian gun at the Accelerated Men, and they exploded into messy bloody gobbets as the aura that held their bodies together was suddenly removed. The Armourer trained the Kirlian gun back and forth, and suddenly whole sections of the lawns became bloody butcher’s shops, with offal lying steaming in the early morning mists.
The two forces finally came together, as hundreds of armoured Droods slammed into the first ranks of the Accelerated Men, and stopped them dead in their tracks. They crashed into the golden armour and were immediately thrown back. Others were savagely clubbed down, or cut open with golden blades, or just thrown aside with such force that they died of it. Even a Drugged-up superhuman is no match for a Drood in armour. But . . . there were just so many of them, and for every Accelerated Man we struck down, more came racing forward to take their place. They moved so terribly fast, shooting past us, sweeping in and out of our ranks, come and gone before we could even lay hands on them, most of the time. Some Droods used their armour to boost their speed, to meet and match that of the intruders, but the Droods couldn’t maintain it for long. Use up too much energy, and the armour automatically reverted to basic, to preserve itself and the Drood within. So for a while there was a stalemate, as blurred figures warred up and down the lawns, dead and dying men appearing out of nowhere to bleed out on the soaking ground. And then one by one the Droods reappeared, falling back to only human speed. They struck out viciously at every enemy who came within reach, but far too many of the Accelerated Men just raced straight past them, too fast to be touched.
And more and more came through the glowing circle, in a dark endless tide.
So the Droods nearest the Hall fell back, and linked arms, and made a golden wall between the main entrance and the approaching enemy. More Droods fell back to reinforce the wall, until it was four ranks deep, of Droods standing firm, ready to take on all comers and not be moved. They shall not pass . . . The first Accelerated Men came howling out of the mists at incredible speed and ran straight into the wall, as though they thought they could crash right through it. The golden line didn’t budge an inch, the armour protecting the men and women within from the impact. The Accelerated Men had no such protection and were thrown back, dead or damaged. Bones cracked and splintered, organs were torn loose, or crushed through abrupt compression. Some kept their feet, even as blood flew from their mouths and eyes, and the Droods struck them down.
The enemy coming up behind saw what had happened, and were forced to slow their speed to nearly human levels. They threw themselves at the golden wall, and the Droods stood their ground and killed everyone who came within reach of the deadly golden blades protruding from their hands. They cut and hacked, and the Accelerated Men fell before them, but there were always more, pressing forward.
The Accelerated Men took on a new tactic, and used their superhuman strength to leap right over the Droods in the wall. But the Droods in the rear just jumped up to meet them, and cut them out of midair. The Droods threw the dead bodies aside, so they wouldn’t get in the way of the fighting, and took their place at the rear again. And that was the end of that tactic.
I was still fighting alone on the lawns, surrounded on all sides by Accelerated Men. I cut them down with my golden blades, over and over again, my arms and my back aching fiercely; and still they came. I could feel sweat running down me, inside my armour. Fight long enough, and I would collapse from my own human weaknesses, long before the armour would wear out. Because the armour only augments the man inside it; he still has to do the fighting. But I had already decided, quite calmly and rationally, that I would fight till I dropped, would die on my feet, inside my armour, before I would stop fighting, as long as one Accelerated Man remained.
The intruders streaming through the glowing circle suddenly had new weapons in their hands—strange bulky guns they turned on everyone who wasn’t them. They strode forward, firing indiscriminately into the Droods before them, and I heard shocked and startled screams, as Droods were thrown to the ground by bullets that could pierce Drood armour. I saw one defender rolling on the ground, clapping an unbelieving hand to the blood flowing down his golden side, from the ragged hole in his armour. I saw blood spurt from a featureless golden mask, as a bullet punched through his forehead. More and more Droods lay screaming and dying on the bloody lawns, brought down by bullets that pierced golden armour as though it was paper. A bullet whined past my head, and I crouched down instinctively, because I thought I knew what those guns were, what they had to be.
I’d only seen one, once before, in the hand of my late Uncle James. He’d had a gun made by his brother, the Armourer, a gun specially designed to fire strange matter bullets. The only kind that could pierce Drood armour. The Armourer swore he’d made only one, and had it destroyed, but I’d been told a lot of things that had turned out not to be true after all.
All around me Droods fell, spurting blood and screaming for help that never came. The rest of us were far too busy just trying to stay alive. I glared about me, not knowing what to do for the best. The Accelerated Men with the new guns were pouring through gaps they’d opened up in our ranks, and it wouldn’t be long before they reached the golden wall, and forced entry into the Hall . . .
I reached out to make contact with Ethel. “You have to do something! Those guns are using strange matter!”
I know!
said Ethel.
It’s my strange matter! Those guns are tearing it from me, by brute force!
“What? How is that even possible?”
I don’t know! It shouldn’t be possible! And Eddie—some of those bastards have taken enough to make blades out of strange matter!
The Armourer and the Sarjeant-at-Arms were working together to target the invaders with the strange matter guns, taking them out as fast as they could identify them. Through the dimensional door came the next wave of Accelerated Men, brandishing swords and axes of glowing strange matter. The Droods swiftly reorganised, urged on by the Sarjeant-at-Arms, as the last of the enemy with the new guns crashed to the ground, or exploded messily as their Kirlian aura was ripped away. The Droods moved steadily forward to meet the Accelerated Men, with glowing golden swords protruding from their armoured hands.
Droods and supermen slammed together, and fought fiercely under the early morning sky. Duels broke out, with both parties moving at incredible speed. Golden blades crashed together, and both sides stamped back and forth on the muddy, bloody ground. The Droods quickly took the upper hand, because they were experienced in the use of sword and axe, and the Accelerated Men weren’t. Superhuman strength and speed is no match for experience and training. The invaders had skill, and the raging fury of the Drug, but the Droods were fighting to protect their family.
And that made all the difference.
Men with glowing axes came running out of the thinning mists towards me. I had time to remember the strange matter arrow that had pierced my armour, fired by an elven lord, and just how much that had hurt . . . but that just made me angrier. I smiled a death’s-head grin inside my mask, and went to meet the enemy with long glowing blades protruded from my hands. I’d seen too many Droods die. First the Matriarch, and then my Molly, and now . . . I wanted to hurt the enemy, and kill them, and make them pay and pay and pay . . .
As I was moving forward, a pair of gryphons appeared out of nowhere, hit an Accelerated Man from both sides at once, and then hauled him down. They tore him to pieces, and then ate the pieces. They could do that, because they could see a short distance into the future, and see where the Accelerated Men were going to be. From the blood that streaked their flanks and dripped from their muzzles, they’d been doing this for some time. The sight disturbed me. I was used to seeing the gryphons as ugly, playful creatures. It had been so long since anyone had dared launch an attack on the Hall itself, I’d forgotten the gryphons were part of our defences.
Drood reinforcements arrived, swooping down from above on all kinds of flying machines. A semitransparent flying saucer swept silently overhead, strafing the approaching intruders with blazing guns, blowing great bloody holes in the ranks of the enemy. Young men on autogyros flew jerkily back and forth above the battle, dropping homemade incendiaries. Fires burst out all over the lawns, and blazing Accelerated Men ran madly back and forth as the flames consumed them. Young women on winged unicorns soared gracefully in the sky, dropping shrapnel grenades. The shrapnel couldn’t pierce Drood armour, but it cut through the running enemy like razored winds. One Accelerated Man shot a hang glider out of midair. The Drood pilot cut himself free, aimed carefully, and dropped out of the sky onto the Accelerated Man like a living bomb. He hit the intruder perfectly, and drove him into the ground like a nail into wood. After a moment, the Drood climbed out of the hole and moved away, shaking bloody mush from his golden armour.
Everywhere, Droods were fighting savagely, stopping the advance of the Accelerated men and even driving them back, for all their superhuman strength and speed. The strange matter guns might have made a difference, if the Armourer and Sarjeant-at-Arms hadn’t made a point of targeting their owners and blowing them away. And while the strange matter blades could cut through Drood armour, mostly they never got the chance.
I went to meet the Accelerated Men with glowing axes, and cut them down, blood flying on the air as my blades gutted them, sliced throats, and cut off heads. I was tired and I was slowing, but I was still death on two legs, a Drood in his armour, and all the awful pains in my back and arms, all the heaving lungs and bone-deep weariness would not stop me. I killed everyone who stood before me, and felt nothing, nothing at all, save a cold focused determination.
I was glad Molly wasn’t there, to see me like that. Reduced, to that.
I stopped, for a moment, to get my breath, and looked around me. The lawns were soaked with blood and gore, and churned up into crimson mud. It squelched under the heavy feet that trod it, and was littered with piled-up bodies for as far as the eye could see. The Accelerated Men had come in their thousands, and they had died in their thousands, and the only compassion I had was for the Droods lying dead alongside them. I looked back and forth, and it seemed to me that the number of Accelerated Men was quite definitely dropping.
There were hundreds of them now, rather than thousands, reduced to small groups surrounded by cold and murderous Droods. None of the Accelerated Men had got past the golden wall. I looked at the dimensional door, and my heart rose as I realised no more of the intruders were coming through. They’d finally run out of warm bodies to dose with the Drug and throw
˚
at us. I made contact with the Sarjeant-at-Arms, via Ethel and our torcs.
“Sarjeant; any chance we could get some of our people through that dimensional door, before they shut it down? See who or what is on the other side?”
“Excellent idea, Edwin,” said the Sarjeant’s calm, unhurried voice. “But I can’t spare anyone. The Hall must be defended. The family must come first. Feel free to jump through and take a look for yourself, if you can get close enough.”
I strode forward, through the scattering Accelerated Men, cutting down anyone stupid enough to come within reach. One threw himself at me, screaming hysterically, trying to pry open my golden armour with his superhuman strength. His hands scrabbled uselessly against the gold, his finger bones breaking, and in the end I just threw him aside. He hit the ground hard, his back snapping, and just lay there, crying. I should have stopped long enough to give him the coup de grâce, but I had more important things on my mind. Later in the day, that lack of basic mercy would upset me. But not then.

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