James Axler – Demons of Eden

Beasts and men clad in beast skins ran across the open ground, screaming war cries, swinging knives, tomahawks and holding crossbows. Ryan and J.B. were forced to stop shooting as the Wolf Soldiers and the packs crashed through the brush and trees at the edge of the red-lit river. They swept into battle, and not even the rapid-fire barking of Joe’s automatic rifle stopped them.

The Wolf Soldiers ran up and down the riverbank, their lances stabbing, their arrows flying, fangs tearing, claws flaying. They fought breast to breast with their brothers from the forest city. Great, shaggy bodies leaped and rolled, and slashed and clawed. Bodies fell on the banks or splashed into the shallows. The warriors fought over them, treading faces with their feet, slipping on blood and viscera.

Ryan and J.B., watching from the bridge, were held in a horrid fascination. Lit by the leaping, gouting flames from the forest and the backfire, the scene took on an unreal, deranged, almost hallucinatory quality, like something out of jolt-inspired dementia.

A crackle of autofire broke the stunned spell, and they left the bridge, running toward the encampment. Halfway there they met Jak, Doc and Mildred. Krysty and Sisoka were kneeling beside the fallen Pizi. His breathing was labored, rattling, and a crimson froth spilled out of his mouth.

“Got him through the lungs,” Mildred said grimly.

“Get me up,” Pizi husked.

Sisoka patted the man’s cheek. “No, Uncle. We’ll take you to your tepee.”

“No,” he rasped. “Let me make one last appeal to our people, to stop this war before all of Ti-Ra’-Wa is destroyed, before it succumbs completely to the curse of the outer world.”

Summoning all the strength he had left in his bullet-shattered body, Pizi, with Mildred’s help, stumbled and staggered to his feet. He began a shambling walk toward the screaming chaos at the riverbank. Sisoka made a motion to go with him, but Ryan restrained her.

“It won’t do any good,” he said, holding her tightly by the upper arm. “It’s gone too far for a peace-making speech to make a difference.”

“Guess he has to try,” Jak said.

Pizi managed to shuffle to within a few hundred feet of the boiling mass of men and animals. He stood outlined in the glow of the firelight on the opposite bank, his arms raised as his voice rolled out onto the river. He spoke in Lakota, so Sisoka had to translate for them.

“Men of Ti-Ra’-Wa!” he bellowed. “Will you destroy our ancient land in blood and fire? Wrath of the First People, wrath of Ah-badt-dadt-deah, will fall upon you if you follow this road farther.”

An instant of comparative quiet followed this pronouncement. The combatants didn’t fall completely silent, but some of the blood-mad screams decreased in intensity.

The burst of autofire that came from the brush on the river’s edge was short and contemptuous. Pizi folded in the middle, clutching at his belly. He sat down, then slowly stretched out on the ground, trying to arrange his feet and hands in positions of grave dignity before he died.

A mad cry, a cry of fury that exploded from human and animal throats, rose into the smoke-choked air.

Sisoka buried her face in her hands and turned, pressing against Ryan. Krysty caught his eye, raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

A sudden, bright flare caught his eye and he turned toward the river. The land between the bank and the encampment was ablaze. The backfire had jumped both the firebreak and the river. Ryan realized that Joe had mounted his attack in order to draw the Wolf Soldiers away from their fight against the firestorm, and the strategy had worked. The flames had overrun their line of defense and were now moving on the wings of the wind toward the encampment.

“Shit,” J.B. groaned. “The fire will be into the camp in an hour. We’ve got to retreat.”

Retreat was a lesson the Wolf Soldiers had never learned or never knew was an option. Though they had recovered from the stunning shock of their chieftain’s murder, they were slowly being pushed back.

It was the death fight of warriors who courted death in order to deal death, blind, panting and merciless. Back and forth the battle rolled, blades sinking into chests, blood spurting, feet churning the ground into crimson sludge. The Gewehr started hammering from the press of bodies, and more Wolf Soldiers crashed to the ground.