Chapter 29 – Ram-head

  Cole barely managed to duck, feeling Ram-head’s pole-axe skim across the top of his high-cut helmet. Undeterred, the armored giant shield-slammed him right in the front plate, sending him rolling across the ground. The man looked worse for wear, stained and sullied armor sprouting orange fungal growths in several places, snaked with the blue, veiny fibers that choked the forests of Curahee. His breathing under the great helmet was ragged and labored, but the man was as tough as they came.

  “Got a bit of the fungal fever, yeah?” said Cole, climbing to his feet. He wiped dirt and blood off his face. “Bet they could treat that right up for you at home.”

  “You have medicine, Earth rat,” said Ram-head. “You will give to me.”

  “Ooh, sorry, fresh out. But you can have this!”

  Cole raised his rifle, but the armored giant ducked behind his shield. While the heavy rounds put serious dents in the metal, it had the slightly reflective surface of an otherworld armament. Cole stopped shooting when he noticed a glow building up. His eyes widened as he realized the warrior must have some sort of ability that triggered on damage to his shield, just like Roxy.

  Ram-head burst forward, swinging his pole-axe in a wide arc that clipped through multiple trees and sent the trunks crashing to the ground. Cole threw himself forward, inside the reach of the weapon, then juked right and extended his spear. Striking the pauldron of Ram-head’s weapon arm, he was rewarded with the spread of a bark-like texture across the metal that slowed the warrior’s movement on that side even more.

  He bellowed with rage, just as Besson opened up behind the giant. Otherworld bullets began to crash into the back of the warrior. Cole saw two more spots where mushrooms bloomed, and even a burst of blood where one of the rounds managed to punch through. But this guy was higher level than Morganstern, and it would take more than one bullet to take him down. Hell, even without his helmet, he might have been able to shrug off a 7.62 Nato round to the skull, unlike his buddy.

  Behind, he could still hear the rest of the squad squaring off against the old Curahee king with a mix of semi-automatic and full-auto fire. Cole pressed in again with the spear. Ram-head parried him—still more skilled with melee weapons, despite the infections wracking his body. Cole almost lost the weapon and barely registered what happened when Ram-head slammed the spike on the end of his pole-axe into his chest.

  The front armor insert in his MSV cracked. Though the spike didn’t penetrate, it did send Cole back to the dirt with the wind knocked out of him and let Ram-head pivot on Besson. He started advancing toward the isolated Kicker behind his shield. Cole raised his rifle and activated the web launcher underneath, sending out a line of gossamer webbing that latched onto the fighter’s leg. He braced his own leg against a tree and yanked.

  The web went taut, and Ram-head stumbled, looking back. He looked down at the line connecting them and slammed his pole-axe down, but the ground was too soft to let him cleanly slice the web. Cole shot him several more times with the few rounds remaining in his magazine.

  While on his back, he began to feel tremors under the ground and raised his head to see the Curahee king thundering through the orchard parallel to them. It was a mess of open red sores, trailing black and orange sludge as it built up speed and wheeled around, heading straight for them. Ram-head saw it too, and frantically brought his polearm down again and again, raising it up a final time with a fierce, red glow lining the blade. Cole burned his ability and planted his feet against the trunk of the tree, blasting himself backwards across the ground.

  His shoulders burned as he gripped his weapon as tightly as he could. From a simple mass standpoint, he didn’t weigh enough to pull Ram-head along with him, and the silk line probably wouldn’t hold all that weight anyway. But with the web attached to his leg, he could at least pull the limb straight toward him and twist the man around. With his leg at an awkward angle, Ram-head had to slam his axe into the ground just to anchor himself, but the man was now prone on the ground as the old king charged.

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  The armored otherworlder planted his fist to get himself the leverage to get out of the way. But Nutmeg chose that moment to shoot out of the mist again. She threw her full weight against the warrior’s torso. He had to sprawl just for balance. Which meant he couldn’t angle his shield to deflect attacks from above. He swung at the dog, but the boxer was too wily for him, slipping through his reach as she barked back at him.

  All of that left Ram-head horribly exposed when the old king thundered up behind him and slammed his axe in Ram-head’s back without breaking stride. Barbed blade buried in his armor, the old king dragged the giant along behind him, back into the mist. And Cole, still connected by the gossamer binding, found himself being pulled along as well.

  “Oh, shit!” he shouted as he slid through the fiber and dead leaves. Ahead, the old king had Ram-head like a carcass on a meat hook, except the armored giant was still very much alive—but hopefully in unimaginable pain, as far as Cole was concerned. Holding his rifle for dear life, he felt around the underside attachment until he found the control to sever the line.

  Cole slid to a stop, watching as the towering monster and the even worse Ram-head left a trail of dust and debris as they faded into the mist. But Cole could still hear Ram-head’s shouts long after he lost sight of the man. Besson appeared with Nutmeg and hauled Cole to his feet. Nutmeg nuzzled his hand, and Cole obliged her with scritches.

  Besson looked after the armored giant. “Think that’ll finish the bastard off?”

  “Not a chance,” said Cole. The shouts he was hearing were more anger and frustration than pain. Ram-head was one tough son of a bitch—too tough for a squad of would-be Kicker tryouts. “But the old king will at least slow him down. Come on, let’s regroup and get the fuck out of here before he gets free.”

  They ran back to the others, announcing themselves with “Friendlies!” before coming in. It wouldn’t do to survive that ordeal just for one of their own allies to put a bullet in their face, thinking they were a zombie. Cole found Morganstern, Howie, and Ken holding the front line against the old king’s return, though Morganstern barely even looked capable of standing. Behind them, Roxy was applying a combat action tourniquet above Han’s shredded left arm as the man grimaced and emptied his painkiller pill bottle into his mouth with his other hand.

  “Jesus,” said Besson, seeing the wound.

  “He’ll live,” said Morganstern. “If we get him back, they might even save the arm. Come on, let’s go. Where are our friends?”

  Cole tried to think of something clever to say, but he was too exhausted. “Fuck ‘em both. They deserve each other.”

  “Agreed. That gives us some time, then. The wall isn’t far now.”

  The rest of the fungal zombies in the orchard barely qualified as an obstacle after the battle with the two titans. Finally, the shadow of the wall loomed in the mist, and Morganstern directed them just to the west, where a hidden corner revealed stone rungs in the cliff face.

  Roxy had Han cling to her back with his legs and one arm around her neck as she started to scamper up the wall. Nutmeg shrank back down to the size of a normal-sized dog, much to Howie’s amusement. Besson clipped her harness to his own rig and started the ascent as the dog whined at being carted around. She gave Cole a look, and Cole could swear the poor pooch was embarrassed.

  Morganstern wrapped her arms around Cole. He turned enough to see her toothy grin. “Guess you’ve got me, then, Airborne. If you feel something hard poke you in the back on the way up, just remember I lost my hammer in the Lower Forest.”

  “Keep it in your pants,” said Howie from further behind.

  Cole lowered down so Morganstern could get a better grip and then started the climb himself while Ken and Howie covered them. Within a few minutes, all of them were making the ascent. Cole’s arms and legs burned with the effort. Even with his enhanced Lewis Field capabilities, the climb with the extra weight and coming down off the adrenaline of battle made his muscles feel like they were filled with molten lead. But he kept climbing the uneven stone for almost twenty minutes, hand over hand, foot over foot, until hands reached down and grabbed his shoulder straps, helping him up and over the threshold of the small ridge at the base of the keep wall.

  Roxy pulled him forward. Morganstern climbed down off his back, and Cole collapsed, panting and drenched with sweat. He felt like he’d just run ten miles in full battle rattle. Roxy handed him a canteen, and he guzzled the contents down, grateful.

  She helped the others up while Morganstern directed Cole and Han to move a small boulder out of the way, revealing a small tunnel underneath the wall.

  “Gentlemen,” said Morganstern, gesturing to the crawlspace, “Welcome to Chez Spore.”