friend shrugged her shoulders and shook her head slightly. Margaret turned to face Denny again, who was sitting with her back to an olive tree.
“Denny?”
“I’m not going,” she said quietly, and pushed the alien sword further away with her foot.
Margaret squatted down beside her. “You can’t sit here while people are dying for you.”
There was a haunted look in Denny’s eyes as she answered. “You’ve read the book,” she exclaimed. “You know what happens out there.”
“No. You said yourself that the book isn’t always right. You can’t keep out of it, you’ve got to help us.”
Denny jumped to her feet and started pushing Margaret away. “No, no, no.” A push on each word. “Your future’s safe, You’ll be the house of Valens. You’re not going to hell.” There were tears in her eyes now, and she whispered, “I am.”
Margaret stepped back a pace, sighed and then turned and waved her little troop forward towards the whirling, confusing mass of screaming women.
Halfway along the battlefront, two small figures darted among the adversaries.
“You’ll have to keep up, can’t look after you if you don’t keep up.”
Tanya slowed down to let her breathless ally close the gap between them.
“It’s all these knives you makin’ me carry, what we want all these for anyway.”
“Don’t you listen Sali Vorden? I told you, knife goes blunt on you and you’re dead ain’t you. Not like doing one goat, there’s lots of these, and they’re fighting back.”
They ran on, Tanya keeping tally. “Over there,” she shouted, and veered left towards a knot of screaming women waving spears.
“Wait now.” Sali hung back as Tanya’s tiny form shot forward and swarmed up the back of one of the mail clad warriors. The knife flashed in the sun as it crossed the woman’s neck, and an unstoppable spray of blood spurted from the severed artery.
Tanya grabbed Sali and they ran between the groups of female soldiers swaying across the bloody field.
They were in a dead spot now and sat between two boulders in a shallow dip.
“And that makes eight,” said Tanya proudly, “that’s our four each, and I reckon it’s up to the others now.”
The two fourteen year olds had heard that the odds against their side winning were four to one. “Told you it was easy, didn’t I, wouldn’t want to do it every day though.”
“There’d be nobody left, if we did it every day Tan.”
“Yeh well, that’s why we don’t innit?” She paused, listening, “Someone coming.”
A red faced woman slid into their haven in a shower of pebbles.
“Bloody hells. Two kids, where’ve you come from?”
“We’re from South… ouch,” as Tanya kicked her before she could add, ‘Farm’.
“South, from La Via? Thought you’d never get here, it’s turning nasty out there.”
“Yeh,” said Tanya, “we’re the advance scouts, the rest are coming now, look, over there.”
The unfortunate woman turned and peered over the edge, and Tanya’s right arm swung round, plunging her stiletto into the exposed ear and piercing the brain. The body convulsed for a while and then was still.
“Oops.”
“Oops what Sali Vorden?”
“Nine. You think we’ll be in trouble for it?”
Chaos
The fortunes of war should have swung back in Centrals favour with a discordant blast of horns, when a monstrous figure grew among the priestesses, but one look at the grotesque shape was enough for most of the combatants, both friend and foe to put aside their differences. Marco had his back to it and never noticed the sweeping tentacle coming in his direction, but Ella, one of his amazons, leapt on him, yelling, “down.” The huge appendage hurtled past above them, and she dragged him to his feet again then turned and ran. Even the dogs were retreating slowly, this was taking the joke a bit too far, and the amazons joined them.
Underneath the horns and fur, Marco’s helmet was a mining standard series 3, and the voice activated vid screen obediently slid down into place.
Up on the ridge the initial shock of the monsters sudden appearance was wearing off.
“Where’d that come from?” asked Mona, speaking to no one in particular. Connie Nesbitt screwed her eyes tighter. “Look careful, Mona, but don’t look at it, see it.”
Mona, Tammy and Joannie looked at it, and saw it for what it was.
“Cheating buggers,” whispered Tammy.
“Can you do anything Jo? You’re the best hope we’ve got now,” and Connie looked at her hopefully.
At another blast of the awful horns, the monster had grown a gorgons head and the snakes were inviting everyone to dare to come within reach of their deadly bite.
The panic stricken mob that had been two armies pounded past Tanya and Sali’s shelter. “Sounds like they’re going home then,” said Sali hopefully. “Making a lot of noise about it though, aint they?” she added.
Tanya frowned. “’s not right,” she said quietly, and peeped over the edge. She ducked down, then slowly looked over again. “Still not right,” and shut her eyes, then turned back to Sali in amazement.
“Give me your shirt Sali Vorden, and stay put till I come back for you.”
Whatever the others could see over there behind the enemies centre, Denny could only see mister snakehead with the writhing tentacles, but the words of her prayer book came unbidden into her mind and she knew what the Dark Angel had to do.
"The earth cried out at the sacrifice of blood," she whispered.
300 metres away, Caren stared at Denny, willing her to be strong, and as if drawn by some unnatural force, Denny looked up and found herself transfixed by her adopted sister’s accusing eyes.
She could stand it no longer, and an inhuman cry started to creep out from between her gritted teeth. "And the Dark Angel raised the vampire sword high," she quoted. Then louder, walking forward. "The sword took the soul of the beast." She started to jog down the slope, and her voice rose to a scream. "And the Dark one was no more". She had to get there before Joannie.
So, as the battlefield emptied of the former antagonists, Marco alone stood his ground while three others sped towards him and the monster, and the dogs hesitated in their unwilling withdrawal.
Marco looked on in bewilderment. At the edge of his vision the livid tentacles still swept to and fro across the field, but they weren’t attached to anything, and in his vid plate the camera showed him reality.
He’d seen one of these before. Memories of the battle for Jalon bridge came back to him, and his dormant nightmares flooded back and turned his puzzlement to fury. In front of him, on a wagon was an alien they had nicknamed ‘mind bender’. It had appeared at Jalon and projected images of hordes of alien tanks into their minds, and dozens of his comrades had died in the confusion. How this one was still alive was a mystery, but he could see that it had lost various bits and pieces of anato
my or armour, and a goat seemed to be growing out of it’s face plate.
With an anguished roar he held his swords out in open defiance and walked resolutely through the writhing tentacles towards the wagon and the red faced priestesses who were still blowing those bloody trumpets. The dogs stopped going backwards. This was more like it, Mad Marco at his best, and about to become lunch.
As he thrust his twin swords through the goat’s carcase at the aliens head, his three rescuers arrived within seconds of each other. Tanya was nearest and fastest.
Her white blindfolded shape swept past the dogs with the nimbleness of the 29 goats that had willingly given their lives to her in the last year, and she leapt at the grand mistress of the temple who was running towards Marco with an altar knife in her hand.
Tanya got her first battle wound as the blade slid down her leg, but through the pain, the little goatherd sliced open the others belly with her best knife.
“Goats get it clean. You get it dirty, cow face,” she said through gritted teeth, then fainted. (She was a devout Lunist, and had a thing about cruelty to goats).
Violet was panic stricken. “You stupid charlatans,” she screamed, “give you the best of everything and let you keep whatever you can steal, and this is all you can do?”
Then Dockside’s