Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1) (27 page)

Chapter 26

Zala left immediately to provide reconnaissance.  Meanwhile, in looking at satellite photos of the coordinates, we knew Von Ranke had to account for logistical issues getting his vats of ichor wherever he was going.  There were no roads, no paths, and from the look of the photos, possibly some rock-climbing, as well.  Accounting for the time it would have taken Von Ranke to assemble the maps and figure out the pictogram, carrying the ichor into the wilderness, and opening the Well, we had a few hours at best.  If Von Ranke airlifted himself and the ichor to the Well, we’d have even less.  Hopefully, Von Ranke’s reach did not extend to commandeering helicopters to drop it.  Nevertheless, time was short and I already dreaded for Gavin’s fate.

As soon as I had written strengthening spells upon the gods and fashioned some scavenged scraps of steel into cloaked shields, Shred left with Shiva and Cupid to scout locations to set up his equipment and generators.  I marked my patterns on the others in various places of the gods’ bodies hoping if any of them took any bullets, some of the spellcraft would remain.  Victoria, Joy, and I found a building a few miles away with offices enough to scavenge some pens, Sharpies and even plenty of Post-Its.  I threw everything into two drawstring backpacks imprinted with the company’s logo, giving one of them to Joy to wear.  

Approaching the Well was the greatest challenge to us.  Von Ranke’s men were sure to number into the hundreds; more if he employed any kind of mercenary paramilitary outfit—rEvolve advocating enlightenment…or else. In any case, many of the rEvolvers were likely armed.  While some of them would not likely be trained to use weapons, we stood no chance if they saw us coming.  Stealth was paramount.  

We came to the end of a dirt road close near the coordinates.  Cupid and Shiva met us there via text messages, since we would not likely see each other until on top of each other.    

“The others are making their descent into the gorge,” Cupid told us.  

Victoria then asked, “Have you met any resistance or heard any gun shots?”

“No shots.  No sound.  No anything.  Nature even seems to be waiting with breath abated,” Shiva was fastening on a set of armor upon himself that looked as if it should be displayed in a museum case.

I took the spare moments to try some spells on myself.  It had been a few years, but I knew it would have the desired effect.  I took Von Ranke’s vehicle registration out of the back pocket of my jeans.   I wrote the pattern around Helmut Arthur Von Ranke.  Now, I looked like Von Ranke.

Satisfied, I turned and walked back to look at Cupid, Shiva, Victoria, and Joy.

“Gods be damned,” Cupid cursed.  “You look just like him!”  Cupid was dressed more practically.  He had sworn vengeance for the murder of his brethren.  It was not a vow he took lightly.  I was told he met with an arms dealer in Belgium shortly before making his way here.  His age was not as advanced as most of his kin.  I imagined the years of celebrating a holiday so friendly to his image and his legend sustained him very well.  Like Athena, he looked like a youthful 50-year-old, perhaps even less.  He wore camouflage fatigues, a Kevlar vest, a handgun strapped to his side, and held an M4 carbine popular with the American military-types.  He was also affixing a bayonet to the muzzle of the rifle.  
Every lover is a fighter and Cupid has his camps. 
It was a line from one of Ovid’s poems.  Could he have known? Likely.

“What will you do about the voice?” Joy asked, still uneasy with this aspect of the plan.  Both her backpack and mine were on her back, acknowledging she would be my pack mule.  It would also, hopefully keep her from being fired upon if she doesn’t lag too far behind me.  

“I try like hell not to say anything until I’m closer.  Then, we take whatever rEvolver we see out,” I rejoined.  “Is Shred starting soon?”

“Yes,” Victoria, for the first time since I had met her, was not wearing a pantsuit.  She, too, was wearing a set of fatigues Cupid had procured for her and the others.  “Cupid and I need to leave.”  Cupid handed her her own vest and rifle. Though she looked briefly taken aback by the fact she was forgetting to arm, she shuffled the vest onto her frame and examined the rifle with a keen eye.  They were already leaving the field of my camouflaging spell, so disappeared from sight in an instant.

Shiva remained close enough to observe.  He strapped his trident-like spear on his back, but Cupid handed him his own M4.  “You don’t bring a
trishulu
to a gun fight.”  Cupid, on the other hand was perfectly content with the rifle, which made me believe he had traded in his bow for a rifle centuries before.  “My eyesight isn’t as good as it once was,” Cupid commented.  “I will, however, keep track of your initial descent into the gorge and take out any obstructions you encounter.  The foliage will make it difficult, I’m afraid, but I will do my best to keep you safe.”

“I’ll make sure I stay about 10 paces behind Grey at all times.  As long as the terrain doesn’t dictate otherwise, I will remain straight behind her,” Joy told Cupid.

“I will destroy whatever of them is left behind.” Unlike the others of his ilk I had met, Shiva was the most vivacious of all them.  I did not ask him why others of his pantheon—other than Ganesh--did not join us, but knew better than to ask as I would not likely receive the kind of answer I sought.  However, it did occur to me that Shiva—like the rest of us—was only part of the first line of defense, not the last.  The other gods were falling in quick succession—his colleagues likely viewed themselves as the last, best hope for the rest of them.

Sadly, if Shred or I fell today I wondered if our kind would beat the gods to extinction?  Something in the back of my mind started to percolate.  There was something going on here that we had not considered; something even more sinister.  A slight nagging at my intuition was now something more like a slow boil. 

Victoria jumped into the air.  Though I did not see her wings, I knew they were there, hidden from mortal eyes like they have been for…centuries, I would guess.  I took one look at the GPS on my phone and followed Victoria at a full-sprint into the woods and down to the river winding through the bottom of the gorge.

No sooner had I begun my run, the opening notes of Shred’s salvo echoed all around me.  If I died today, I’d at least have a kick-ass soundtrack.

                  Wherever Shred had set up, he had paid particular attention, of course, to the acoustics.  He had experience playing outdoors, but I would have never thought he had experience playing in a gorge. I thought wrong. There must have been a concert in the Grand Canyon or something because he played with the acoustics of the rocks themselves and translated whatever he learned to this battle now.  It was louder than I would have ever thought possible.  He was, no doubt, enhancing it with his musimancy, but it was invigorating to begin with.  This had to be his intent.  I only hoped rEvolve was excluded from feeling these effects.  

                  Crossing over our first ridge and down, we encountered our first set of gunmen.  The three of them looked at me, puzzled.  I imagined they thought Von Ranke was below and were confused to see him there.  I did not slow, I only pointed back and to my left, and did my best to feign horror.  

                  One shot.  Two shots.  Two of the men were felled.  I kept running, knowing that Cupid would soon have the third man on our flank.  Two more shots.  I did not know why there would be two, as turning around would slow me down and likely send me tumbling down into a wiry thicket.   Over my shoulder, I heard Shiva shout, “RUN HARD!”

                  This struck me with fear, despite the cords echoing in the gorge.  With camouflage, I would have no way of seeing him anyway.  There must have been much more than the three I had initially seen.

                  “JOY!” I barked, hoping she was following just as she promised.

                  “HERE!” she shouted back.  

                  Shred’s overture transitioned into a new movement—one that held a chorus of several of our voices—even mine was sampled into a percussion-like rhythm.  I was overcome with hope and solidarity.  Joy had my back, Shred was playing the greatest concert of his existence—and we had hope we would vanquish the enemy.  

                  I skidded on a batch of loose rock and into some grass.  I heard Joy skid to a stop, but thankfully she did not run into me.

                  “HO THERE!” A French-accented voice rang out from the nearest patch of trees.  He recognized me as Von Ranke or else he would have opened fire.  

                  I waved him over, hoping Victoria and Cupid were keeping pace.  It was a ridiculous thought—they were taking the aerial route and had cover of Von Ranke’s visage.  Four more shots…

                  In case anyone else was watching, I hit the ground and started crawling behind a tree.  

                  Shred was launching into a live guitar that carried on a conversation with string-segments.  The effect was both beautiful and triumphant and it provided me with hope I didn’t know I actually felt.  But it was there—and it was real.  We could do this.  Evil, bigotry, violence, fear was put aside.

                  The orchestra built into a resounding crescendo—I had no idea such sounds could come from what Shred had on hand—but there it was, permeating through my being.  Shred was summoning the spirits of the Muses themselves and was synthesizing the very essence of rock-n-roll into something different; something new and greater.  

                  I was nearly to the river, but the music he played made me feel as if my very soul—something I did not truly believe in—were floating out of my body.  

                  Before crossing the river, I caught sight of nearly a hundred men carrying barrels as carefully as if they were laden with glass.  Several of the men were guarding the convoy as they had fashioned a set of platforms with levers and pulleys to bring the barrels up to a cave on the cliff face some 40 feet up.  

                  Four of the guards noticed me.  One of them exchanged words with one standing near him and the recipient came out to speak to me.

                  I quick-glanced down to check my visage-shifting spell and confirmed its integrity.  I took a Post-It out of my pocket and scrawled a new spell upon it.  I hoped Cupid would not take any shots.  I hoped Shiva was still following us and he would hold back just long enough…

                  “Sir, has something happened?” the man asked, over the music.  His accent was as American as mine. “Something else?” He gestured around, indicating the music.

                  I smiled and shook his hand as he stepped closer—placing the Post-It squarely in his palm.

                  “Turn,” I urged, knowing there was no coming back from the order I was about to issue him.  I closed my eyes, “empty your clip on those men.”

                  The young initiate did exactly as I compelled him.  Knowing they’d return fire in mere moments, I ran across the shallow river and tried to cover myself in the rock face as a torrent of bullets made their way to where we were.  I turned to see if Joy were within the spellcaster field.  She was, and she was panting for breath.  I grabbed her arms to check her spells.  Crossing the water had cleared some of the writing.  I rewrote over the old words, and Joy found herself renewed in body—and with Shred’s song—in mind as well.  

                  The gunfire stopped momentarily.  The music did not. Like a roar building from the back of this mountain’s throat what came next bowled me over in a very literal sense.  Shred was playing delicate arpeggios in the distance; men howled in anguish; but what erupted was the cry of a man that evoked earthquakes and cataclysm.  It was a war-cry uttered by a 3500-year-old man-god Homer had christened, “The Lord of the War-Cry” and at his back, Athena, Jupiter, Kali; Shiva rushed from the trees from which we had just come.  They had rubbed off their concealment and were now using holy dread to defeat their enemies.  

                  It was beautiful; it was heart-wrenching.  Those not cut down by the initial friendly-fire unleashed their own volley of fire.  Kali, black-skinned, and fierce was eviscerated in a shower of bullets.  Diomedes, firing his own M4 had did not stop bellowing.  Shred timed it all well and was echoing Diomedes’ cry with one he had recorded and fed into his processor.  The effect amplified.  Though the men—and women, I could now see—depressed the triggers on their guns, they huddled in fear.  Jove threw bolts of neon that at one time must have evaporated a man, the bolts shocked them into silence and hesitation.

                  And then he, too, was cut down.  His last bolt fell flaccid in front of woman he had been rushing only seconds before.  She reloaded and began emptying her new clip on Jove’s corpse.  

                  Shred played another solo, and it was answered by an additional guitar, as if on loop.

                  Could Kali and Jove truly be dead?  Were not their only weaknesses the disbelief of man, not its bullets?  And, as I have come to learn, the
Sucikhata
?

                  I crumpled up the paper that portrayed me as Dr. Arthur Von Ranke.  I then wrote my own cloak spell and stepped out from where I had watched the scene play out.  I kept close to the rock-face, scraping my back several times as I moved along it.  Joy must have been doing much of the same as her grunts were slightly delayed echoes of my own.