Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(131)
“Now!” Horn roared, jumping up and thrusting his spear as hard as he could. To his horror, the sharpened tip touched a square of iron sewed to the leather tunic and turned. The blow slammed the closest guard into the second, however, and there was a moment of confusion while the rest of the prisoners attacked, instantly realizing what had happened, and aiming their spears for necks, eyes, armpits. But the guards were good. They battered the thrusts away, apparently unsure how to react. Sandra recognized their predicament at once. “They’re here to keep us from escaping, but also to protect us!” she shouted, driving forward with Lange and Diania. “Don’t give ’em time to decide which is more important!”
Apparently, they already had. One knocked Lange’s spear away and slammed a musket butt in his chest, doubling him over with a gasp. Sandra’s and Ruffy’s spears found its neck just as it spun and drove its bayonet in Eddie’s side. The ’Cat shrieked horribly but wrenched at the musket as he fell, tearing it away from the Grik—which was also squealing as twisting spears in its throat ground savagely deeper and Adar’s spear probed for its eyes. Horn had launched himself at the other Grik, pounding it to the ground. Both had ahold of the musket, and Horn was pushing down. He wasn’t trying to choke the guard as much as keep its snapping jaws from tearing out his face and throat—all while kicking and squirming to stay inside its flailing back legs and the claws that could rip him open. Diania, fearful of stabbing Horn, had finally positioned her spear in the armor gap down the guard’s side and lunged forward with all her surprising strength, piercing its belly.
It roared in agony, flailing even more madly, almost launching Gunny Horn. Somehow he held on, but yelled in pain when a wicked back talon raked his thigh. Diania, screaming too, her small voice a piercing wail of rage, worked the spear inside the Grik, slamming it back and forth with the speed and force of a steam piston. Blood jetted up the shaft, ruining her grip, and frothy, ghastly smelling blood sprayed Horn’s face. Slowly, the guard’s struggles began to ease, but its hand somehow found the wrist of the musket, its finger the trigger. The percussion cap exploded brightly in Horn’s face when the musket fired, the tongue of flame at the muzzle actually scorching the other guard in the back. Its spine turned to exploding salt and it dropped as if the big lead ball had severed the strings of a reeling, screeching marionette. Lange, still gasping loudly, had retrieved the other musket from Eddie’s corpse and rammed the bayonet in the throat of the Grik still snapping feebly at Horn’s face. It finally convulsed and lay still, and Horn rolled off in the sand. Instantly, Diania was kneeling beside him, her tears dropping on his face.
“No! Adar!” Sandra said, her voice rising in alarm, almost panic. “No!” she shouted. Horn scrambled to his feet and he and Diania joined the rest, already gathered around another form lying in the sand.
“It seems I’ve finally fought my first—and last—baattle, my dear,” Adar’s distinctive voice met them. Still so calm, so gentle, but painfully strained. Sandra had bunched up his battered robe and was holding it against his chest.
“The ball that killed that one passed through and hit Adar,” she explained, visibly calming herself, but her voice was brittle. “It’s probably not deep; was nearly spent.”
“Good,” Lange said, getting his breathing under control. “We must leave at once. We can carry him.”
Horn leaned hard against him. “Just shut up, you,” he hissed. “We have a couple minutes. Not like we need to pack. We got these muskets. Let’s strip the Grik for ammo and other weapons.”
“No,” Adar told Sandra, and coughed. It was like she was the only one with him now. “I’ve always studied anaat-omy as well as the Heavens. My friendship with Courtney Braad-furd increased my interest in the first to the extent . . . It grieves me to say that I feel . . .” He coughed again, more raggedly, and blood darkened the fur on his chin. “The baall went deep enough.” He raised his hand and touched the tears streaming down Sandra’s cheek. “It does not grieve me to die, you know. I will soon join my friends, my aan-cestors who’ve gone before, high in the Heavens. And have no fear: I will share the final victory with you, watching from above.” He managed a smile. “I only grieve for you and your pain, because I know you’ll miss me. As will Cap-i-taan Reddy and my brother Keje. Alaan Letts is my son, his daughter mine as well. Remind him, remind everyone of my love, my thoughts for them. You know the rest as well as I, and . . . There is not time to name them all.” His hand dropped to her belly. “I may meet this one before you, my dear. I think I hear him whispering to me even now.” His silver eyes glistened in the torchlight from across the bridge. “Yes, he,” Adar pronounced confidently, “though it might be a female—with Cap-i-taan Reddy’s voice. But it saddens me I will never hold him until the day he joins us all in the sky. Still, I can perform a final duty.”
Sandra couldn’t speak, couldn’t even tell him not to speak, to hold on, to save his strength—all the usual platitudes. None mattered now, because he was right. Hot blood was washing across her hand behind his back and the ball hadn’t been spent until it knocked the spear from her hands. If it hadn’t hit Adar first . . . The tears and darkness clouded her vision and she desperately wanted to see him clearly one last time. She shook the tears from her eyes but it didn’t help.