Within the hour, the first ORP was secured at the bottom of the canyon and teams were coming in to rest, redistribute, and head out again toward the next phase line up at the top of the canyon. The captain took charge, and the command sergeant major, along with the scouts, led the way up toward Black Witch Pool.
It was clear the enemy was on to us, our location and direction of march. Other than trying a few sorties against our rear at the entrance to the canyon, they didn’t do much to hit us directly as we got ready to jump. They knew where we were going, and they’d try to cut us off using another route once we reached the other side of the ridge.
Last of Autumn had recovered from her fainting spell and was hungrily munching another one of her leaf-wrapped cakes. I asked her if the orcs could actually intercept us on the other side. She seemed distracted for a moment, but as she ate more she came back into the tactical situation we were facing.
“They can,” she said. “But if we move fast… they may not be able to.” We were forward, reunited with the scouts and the sergeant major,
working our way up through a tight crevice in the canyon climb. Ahead of us, in the silver moonlight, we could see ancient stairs carved into the living rock spiraling higher along the face of the cliff. They climbed up through the ragged gash in the small mountain that was really just a large hill and then upward and onto the top of the ridge high above.
The going was getting tough, and slow. Rock-hewn steps climbing up the face of the wall were near vertical. We stopped when one of the scouts almost walked off a cut ledge and out into open air. Sergeant Hardt barely got a hand on the fatigued Ranger before he went over and down past everyone else below.
The exhaustion was getting real. Even for Rangers. Three days of fighting. A night march. And now mountain climbing. All of it on a thin promise that there might be some defense we could get behind most of a day’s march ahead.
If you thought about that at all, your motivation took a dump. So you didn’t. You just kept picking ’em up, and putting ’em down. Boots, that is.
Sergeant Hardt passed me, checking everyone, moving fast, and working dip. Seeming tireless and endless in his ability to go all the way. He saw the look in my eyes as I bent over under the heavy load I’d assumed for the climb. Saw me doing the terrible no-win math.
“Don’t think about it, Talker.”
That was all he said. No snappy motivational phrase. No insult. Just a simple command not to think. So I didn’t. And it worked.
An hour later the captain called a halt and told us to clear our minds. It was going on two o’clock in the morning and we were dragging, legs smoked. Every step was like doing squats with close to two hundred pounds of gear on your back. Mistakes were bound to happen at this rate and under these conditions. Problem was… we couldn’t afford even one. We were broke with no survival credit to spare.
We got a brief rest, all the Rangers with their backs to the wall, eased against the cold rock, on a comparatively wide ledge in the midst of the cliff climb. Some took the opportunity to piss off of the ledge. Others just dropped and changed socks.
I think one guy even fell asleep.
Then…
“Last of the Rip It!” one of the Ranger scouts called out as he popped the top on a can of the stuff and guzzled the coveted energy drink. Others were doing the same. Those who didn’t have, got a pull. Mouths were packed with fresh wintergreen dip, or instant coffee in my case, and once more we began the arduous climb upward.
“Ain’t nothin’ but a thang,” noted one of the Ranger scouts. “Embrace it. Wanna be hard, gotta live hard.”
Others could be heard saying similar things. We didn’t have the strength to laugh. But it was funny, nonetheless. Here’s one I remember between two Rangers.
“Right… Once this is over, I’ll quit tomorrow.” “You said that like three days in a row.”
“Well, when I wake up… it’s today. I can’t quit today. Only tomorrow.” “Something is clearly wrong with me that this makes sense.”
Soon the climb was as steep as it would get and to look back was to court vertigo, and invite a bad fall. We were nearing the top of the ascent. So of course that’s when a sudden swarm of evil birds screeched out of the
night and were everywhere and all around us. Like something out of a movie about killer birds who ravage unsuspecting towns. I think that movie was called The Birds.
Thankfully, no one fell. Rangers are pretty solid on mountaineering. Me, I was frightened to death, so I took my time with everything because I’ve found the laws of physics to be inviolable and completely unforgiving. On the plus side, fear cured my fatigue.
But like I said, swarms of black birds, ravens someone said later, came shooting up out of the night and trying to knock us off the cut stairs as we climbed up that last bit. Like they purposely didn’t want us to make it to the top. They fluttered all about us, hammered at our gear, flapped in our eyes like mad things, all while shrieking angrily at us. And then they were gone just as fast as they’d appeared. For one long moment the narrow canyon had been filed with a sonic sea of chaos that was their mad calling back and forth to one another. Warning us back from something worse? Or promising us something far more horrible? It was hard to tell which in the moment. The experience had seemed like madness personified and you could almost hear them crying out something as they tried to knock us back down to the rocks below with their frenetic feathery treachery. Some warning. Some promise. Some threat.
“You are not wanted here.”
All of it over and over again and again from a thousand birds all crying the same thing all at once, but never in any kind of chorus. Every rebuke angry and hectoring. It was psychosis personified and I just pulled into myself, bent down, kept my place on the stairs, and tried not to fall off to my death on the rocks far below.
Other Rangers swiped at them and fought them off. Because of course, that’s what Rangers would do to everything. A few even got ahold of one or two and pulverized them into the cliff face, which was a pretty solid hand and arm signal for the level of annoyance and frustration the ravens brought with them.
There’s a whole phase in Ranger School where they just play with deadly snakes. Why? In case the enemy invents some sort of deadly snake- shooting catapult or something? When they told me that part, about just handing deadly snakes back and forth to one another, I could hear myself thinking Yeah, that’s a pass on Ranger School.
Except there was that other part of me that likes learning things and getting certificates of achievement. That part is straight junkie. That part would handle snakes if there’s an achievement involved.
I blame the Read-a-Thon program from my elementary school days.
Almost as soon as the terror birds had come, they were gone. And the canyon once more descended into ominous silence. The ledges filled for just a moment with awestruck Rangers, the wounded and the overburdened, staring at the empty night all around.
Then, as one, they began to climb again.
This was just Tuesday for them. Never mind all that supernatural otherworldly horror. It was Tuesday for Rangers.
We finished the climb and came out on a high slope that led up into a twisted old vineyard of ancient vines long dead. Short stunted trees stood with the dead grapevines organized in curving rows, twisted and gnarled by the wind. They reminded me of olive trees, but I wasn’t sure about that in the dark. The grapevines were like the wine vineyards I had been to in my travels before the Army. During winter. Except dead and twisty. Trimmed and pruned to look like the horns of demon skulls. This place was that kind of place. It had that feeling. Timeless endless death. It was always dead dry winter up here. There’s no life or love in it. You could feel that almost from the get-go.
From the top of the ledge, using our powerful Moon Vision, the scouts could see the forces of the enemy in the valley below swarming off toward other hills and passes along our flanks. It was clear they had some idea where we were. And some plan to get ahead and cut us off. They were fast, busy large misshapen masses that seemed… dark… like a virus spreading across the land.
And then… “Look at that.”
One of the scouts spotted it. Following the direction he was pointing, we saw it too.
It was another giant. Big, huge. As in Godzilla huge. It was the most unreal thing to ever see in your life and even as you watched it, you kept saying, Well that’s not real.
Except it was.
Far off and coming slowly toward us across the land like some myth of
an elder age when titans strode the earth, stepping over mountains and crossing oceans, this giant was headed down along the mountain range. It had to be the size of a small skyscraper. And here, trying to force ourselves up each step of the pass, we could hear the dull artillery strikes of its massive feet going off against the ground as it came on. It was still miles off. Moving slow. But given time it would arrive. That was easy to see. And easier to believe.
It had a big lumpy face and a hawkish nose. A long beard. It was dressed in robes, and the most prominent feature we could make out was its iron crown. Like the crown of some ancient king.
“I think it’s carrying a sword too,” said someone with better eyes than most. But that detail could not be confirmed. The order went to the rear to see if PFC Kennedy was up to identifying our new enemy and how we might possibly deal with such a thing with only three Carl Gustaf rounds left. And an 84mm HEDP round didn’t look like it was going to do much to a thing that size anyway. Except maybe get its attention so it could come over and stomp you flat with no further thoughts on the subject.
The Rangers voiced their concerns in impolite speech. Basically, the consensus was, “What’re we gonna do about that?” Followed quickly by, “I volunteer to kill that thing if it means I can get a four-day pass. One solid headshot with the Carl G might do it, Sergeant Major.”
Last of Autumn caught the drift. She’d come back from the dead after a vitamin boost and IV rehydration courtesy of Chief Rapp. She tugged on my sleeve and said, “There’s nothing we… can do to fight… Cloodmoor the Terrible. No one can stand against him. But if we reach the Philosopher’s Palace then… all will be well. He cannot pass the old river there. It is… law.”
I relayed this to Sergeant Hardt, who told the captain, and soon we were on the move again. Hustling faster under our packs and burdens with new resolve now. Heading deeper into the dead and rolling vineyard. The distant artillery strikes of the giant’s steps slowly getting louder and louder. The ground shaking a little more with each one.
Our only option was effectively to run.
A badly maintained witch’s shack would be coming next at the end of an old track through the dead vineyards. The moon’s light wouldn’t last much longer, and I wondered what would become of the Moon Vision then.
Was it permanent, or did it fade after time? There was no pausing to ask and find out. Last of Autumn urged us to move forward quickly. When I asked her what dangers lay ahead that we should be aware of before we met them, she just told me, “The danger here… is already aware of your… presence. Move fast… little of time left… to us.” And then softly in the silence at the center of the scouts as they moved forward, weapons sweeping their sectors, she added, “It… is waiting for us, Talker.”
The night was unusually warm now. And there was something wrong about that. We were higher up in elevation, and it had already been cold with a wet chill down in the river valley. Now, it felt like a summer night up here. We were sweating through our gear as we moved through the ruins of the ancient vineyard. The terrain was low and rolling, and we followed a badly used track through the dead and twisted vines, their withered heads looking like the horns of comic book demons planted in the dry dirt, as I’ve already mentioned. They were unnerving. A few minutes later we spotted the dilapidated shack Autumn had warned us of. Sergeant Hardt called a halt and the captain came forward to assess the situation.
As far as I could see, we could easily head off through the dead vines and circumvent the dilapidated falling-down shack altogether. Autumn had let us know this was the chokepoint in our route. That we’d need to stop and “deal with the old witch woman,” she’d said. Manyeo yeoja. Her words. The Shadow Cant I couldn’t use once we reached her people.
Sergeant Thor, who was scanning the hills and the shack through his rifle, noted something unusual.
“Hey, this Moon Vision don’t work on the hut?” he rumbled in the darkness of our patrol circle.
“Affirmative on that, Sar’nt,” said the scouts’ designated marksman.
For some reason, the shack remained a source of dark shadows inside the bright world of Moon Vision. I tried to iris in and study the place, but they were right. The shadows that surrounded the derelict place kept it in a kind of permanent gloom. Thick. Like black velvet, those dark shadows absorbed the light of the moon and gave nothing back for comfort. You could see from here it was just an old rundown dwelling long forgotten and falling into slow ruin. A collapsing front porch and one lone candle burning somewhere inside upstairs in what had to be a single room at the top of the house. A high room, loft, or attic. But the light was greasy and thin. And it
was the opposite of the comfort that often came from such simple primitive lighting. Then, as I peered close…
“Got a target,” murmured Thor. “Old woman. Rocking chair. Porch.
East end. She’s looking right at me.”
I squinted my eyes and studied the porch from our position on the trail leading past the shack. And just barely, just barely… you could see an old, old woman in a rocking chair. Shifting slowly back and forth to the accompaniment of a creak you could hear now. It was well past midnight and heading on toward three in the morning. This was definitely creepy. I asked myself, how did I know she was old? Features and details weren’t clear from this distance and especially with the gloom. Age wasn’t apparent. But something in the way she rocked slightly back and forth in the creaking chair made you think… no… know… she was old. Older than anyone you’d ever met. You just knew that in some place in your mind you didn’t go to often.
Then the light of a cigar came up to her ruined face, and smoke like vaporous ghosts wraithed out into the night all around her. Sensuously. A small late-hour breeze, the last of the night, the hour would turn toward morning soon, and on that breeze you could smell the raw scent of the stub of the cigar she smoked in the dark. It smelled foul and stagnant.
Then you felt the earth shift slightly. The dead leaves of the grapevines shook all around us. That massive giant was closing, and the ground strikes were like a ticking horrible doomsday clock made by unseen forces. Maybe a few hours now before he overtook us. What had Last of Autumn called him? Cloodmoor?
The Terrible.
What kind of name was that?
Whatever. That thing bearing down on us made sitting here in the vines and sweating feel like a giant waste of time. You felt stuck and knew there was some other place you should be real soon and it wasn’t here. Staying was a good way to get yourself stomped flat, eventually. Sooner rather than later.
“What does our indig say we need to do?” asked the commander, coming up to kneel beside the scout section leader. We were huddling in a deep furrow of dead, dry dirt, and you could feel your own nerves and anxiety like a palpable thing beating out of control inside your chest and
radiating out into your arms and fingers. A jittery thing let loose inside you that could be touched and handled and screamed when you tried to tell it to just relax.
Again, these were Rangers. They’d just fought one of the biggest battles the US military had faced since the Korean War. And now we were all freaking out over an old woman rocking in a chair and smoking a cigar well after midnight. She made even the toughest uneasy. But I had no doubt they were going to confront her and smoke her even if they all got turned into toads doing so.
It was weird.
I translated for Autumn and gave the captain her response.
“She says we need to go forward and parley with the old woman in order to pass. She’ll offer us three choices. We have to choose one to pass her land and reach the pool on the other side of the ridge. Otherwise she indicates the old witch could give us a real bad time. Sir.”
One of the Rangers hissed, “Seriously, man. That’s jacked up. Let’s just have Sar’nt Thor do her at range!”
The captain studied the situation. He activated his NVGs hoping for some juice still left in the batteries. By the wan green light around his eyes I could see he was getting some night vision. But whatever he saw was the equivalent of what we were getting with Moon Vision.
“Get PFC Kennedy up here,” muttered Captain Knife Hand.
File that under things I never thought I’d hear. Two weeks ago the Ranger company had been hell-bent on driving Kennedy out of its hallowed ranks for some arcane reason probably no one who wasn’t a Ranger would understand. Every unit has that one soldier who spends their time in the barrel. The guy who’s on everyone’s list. He’s always on extra duty. And sometimes it’s for good reason. Too many off-post incidents. Too many counseling statements. Not hardcore enough. Now here we were, here’s the Ranger captain, literally the best of the best as far as combat infantry officers are concerned. Sober and murderous. And he’s calling for a PFC who probably dropped out of college because he wanted to see if he could Call of Duty for real when he wasn’t reading books or playing games about wizards and elves. He was literally the soldier that sergeants like Kurtz and Hardt hated the most with the pumps that kept them alive where their bitter black hearts should have been.
I laughed to myself and I knew I was afraid because the laughter felt good. And wild. Like some kind of defiance against the noose closing about our necks that was the impending giant about to stomp us all flat. And then I wondered two things. Was this the old woman that Sims, who everyone now just called “Old Man” because of his gray hair and worn features, was this the one he’d seen? The one that had used the Spanish word gilipollas and turned him into an old man with nothing more than a curse and a pointed finger.
Incidentally, Old Man had survived the battle on the island and his buddy hadn’t. Crazy. Now everyone called him Old Man and he made it clear, cantankerously so, that he didn’t like it one bit and kept angrily reminding everyone he was actually just twenty-three years old. Technically. But his angry protests came off as crabby and the equivalent of “Stay off my lawn,” which just made the other Rangers laugh at him even more because they’re merciless and cruel that way. And because it was funny also.
Old Man even had a ruck hump now. Something reserved for NCOs thirty-five and older who’d spent their best years humping in line units and now hobbled into the PX for cases of beer and cheap novels to distract their minds from the constant pain they lived with.
And it was Sims, Old Man, who brought Kennedy forward to the scouts after the commander called for him. Old Man was carrying both of their rifles, and Kennedy had hold of the dragon-headed sorcerer’s staff with both pale hands. That had been a command decision. That Kennedy work the mysterious staff as a weapon now. But he was not to use it unless ordered to do so. Clearly it was dangerous. And Kennedy was the only one who could make it work. Then again, no one had else had tried to. So who knew.
“Hey Old Man,” said Thor when Sims led PFC Kennedy up to the scouts planted in the dry dirt of the dead vineyard. Clearly Kennedy was still operating at half speed after passing out from the last time he’d used the staff.
“Shut up,” hissed Old Man, who was only a specialist himself. But because he looked old, he got away with it now like he was some twenty- year man. Sergeant Thor snorted and let it go. It was clear Old Man’s new rank would now be something between NCO and warrant officer. Because
his hair had gone gray, he now got to be crabby and cantankerous to everyone if only because he seemed like everyone’s grandpa.
“Sir,” said Kennedy, sitting down cross-legged with the powerful staff across his knees. The captain ignored this.
“PFC,” said the captain, starting this conversation off like it was an actual normal military conversation. Target objectives. Sit-report. Normal military stuff. “We’re facing a witch, PFC. What can you tell us about this… this type of enemy?”
Clearly the captain had embraced.
Then again, what other choice did he have? He was the ultimate realist. “Ummmm…” began Kennedy, and I was sure every NCO there would suddenly kill him for daring to address an officer with the equivalent of a non-syllabic grunt. But then one of the giant’s footsteps struck the ground and shook more dead leaves off dead vines and the sense of mission and priorities were clearly explained without the use of words. Or corrective punishment. Cloodmoor was getting closer and I was betting for sure it knew exactly where it was headed. Straight for us. Then stompy-stomp
time.
“That’s probably a storm giant,” said PFC Kennedy, casting his watery eyes off toward the dark horizon. The moon was going down and storm clouds were moving in from the east. Interesting. “But to your point, sir…” His words were slow like he had all the time in the world. Like he knew he was now incredibly valuable to the people who had hated him to death just a few short days ago. That he had them right where he wanted them all.
Go figure. Life comes at ya fast.
“Let’s see…” continued the PFC. “Early Dungeons & Dragons, what they called Advanced back then… and which in my opinion…” But then he must have seen some murder look cross the captain’s permanent look of sour indigestion, as he cut short his lecture on the history of games you play with pens and paper and oddly shaped dice. “Right… powers,” he said. “They, witches that is, sir, they could… curse you, summon devils. That would be pretty bad right now. Wouldn’t want to deal with one of those. Cause wounds. Turn you into stuff. Hypnotize you… you know… like make you fall in love… with someone.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. The word love seemed to make him uncomfortable. Like there were probably pics of sexy anime witches on his phone.
He recovered once the scout leader prompted him with another question.
“Are they like…” asked Sergeant Hardt, who seemed like he wanted to pound PFC Kennedy right between the RPGs worse than the captain. “Good or bad, PFC?”
“Well,” began Kennedy, adjusting his issue glasses, unaware of how close he’d just come to death by Hardt. “Good and bad are relative in D&D, Sar’nt. And it’s evil. Not bad, Sar’nt. At least it was in the older editions. But I think the term you’re looking for, Sar’nt Hardt… is lawful or chaotic. If I remember, they’re supposed to be lawful. But again, I have no idea if what we’re facing here is based on a game I play. There’s just a lot of stuff that seems very… similar. If that’s what you’re asking me. So let’s say—”
Captain Knife Hand held up a knife hand to stop the conversation right there.
PFC Kennedy stopped instantly. Which was probably a good thing for him if he wanted to go on living. Kennedy might have been some kind of wizard, but Captain Knife Hand was still the commanding officer of a Ranger company. And he’d probably forgotten how many more people he’d killed with his hands than everyone else had killed with rifles, explosives, and even called-in airstrikes.
“If we have to fight her… is she gonna use magic, PFC?”
“She turned me into a…” Sims barked out suddenly like some angry customer at an Applebee’s who’d gotten a bad order of Onion Ring Dippers or whatever they served there. His indignant interruption clearly righteous. For an old guy.
But he didn’t finish. Didn’t say “old man.” At the last minute he probably saw the trap he’d set for himself. The nickname that had already stuck, and would stick even harder if he uttered the words. Even once.
Everyone ignored him anyway. That was part of his amazing new Old Man Powers. The CO didn’t even see him and didn’t have Sergeant Hardt pull out Sims’s liver and show it to him.
Wow, I thought to myself as an aside, if Sims would just embrace his… Old Man-ness… he could get away with murder around the Rangers. It would be like winning the Medal of Honor and staying in. Everyone had to salute you forever.
“Do I have that right, PFC?” continued the captain. “She’ll try to attack
us using some kind of magic, if negotiations go badly?”
In the ensuing silence, the strike of the closing storm giant’s massive footfalls, hitting the earth somewhere out there in the dark, punctuated the moment. Crushing a lot of who knew what. Like it was practicing for us.
Kennedy nodded an affirmative.
“Yeah. I mean… yes, sir. That’s her thing. The witch monster class… that is. She’ll do that. But my guess is she’ll want something from us to let us pass if I understand the situation right.”
The captain thought about this for a brief second. You could tell, even he was feeling the time crunch. We needed to get moving to avoid getting crushed from the rear and flanked from the sides on the other side of this.
“Can you fight her?” asked the captain to PFC Kennedy. Then gave the worst look of indigestion I’d ever seen cross his face. Like he couldn’t believe he was actually acknowledging what he’d just said. He nodded toward the powerful staff on Kennedy’s crossed legs. Have I noted the rest of us were on one knee in standard Ranger? “Can you fight her with that?” he said, indicating the arcane staff.
Then Kennedy said the most Ranger of things that was probably ever going to come out of his mouth. He took a deep unsteady breath and looked Captain Knife Hand right in the eyes.
“I feel like someone walloped me with about two hundred pounds of flu, sir. But yeah, she gives us a problem, I’ll light her and smoke her like a pack o’ Kools. If that’s what you want, sir.”
Captain Knife Hand gave his version of a quick smile. It was unnatural and almost sick-looking. But it was clear he was impressed with his PFC’s motivation. It was Ranger all the way.
“Solid copy, PFC,” he said finally. “All right, let’s go forward and parley with the old woman. See what she wants. If not… then we burn the witch.”
