Sergeant Kurtz’s augmented weapons squad, now designated Team Rogue, due at the Lost Library to provide sniper overwatch at just after dawn on the morning of the hit on the fortress of Barad Nulla… was late.
“Augmented squad” meant Kurtz and Specialist Brumm. Specialist Rico and PFC Tanner. Private Soprano attached as AG, assistant gunner. Me, official linguist and, unofficially, Kurtz’s plaything. Meaning in the chain of command he was responsible for me.
I was there to interact with the indig, Last of Autumn, and also, according to the sergeant major, “Ya got that fancy invisible ring, Talker. May come in handy down there in the dark with them creepy-crawlies. May not. But I ’spect the undead can see in the dark. So, might want to be extra careful if ya go knockin’ around and all. Like I said, be meaner than it, son, and that’ll go a long way in any fight.”
PFC Kennedy was with Rogue too, and as a source of possible intel on what the world of the Ruin might or might not look like in accordance with some old game most of us had ever played, he’d increasingly gotten called into every detail of the planning for the detachment. His made-up names, strategies for imaginary monsters that might not be so imaginary now, and general nerdstalgia, infected everyone. It was not uncommon for some hardcore Ranger sergeant, who would have prided himself on endlessly straight-up smoking PFC Kennedy back at the batt, to ask, regarding some particular phase of mission planning he was responsible for, “What does Kennedy have to say about that?”
I actually saw the command sergeant major, normally cool and collected, go completely ballistic on one of the assault platoon NCOs who dared to voice that common refrain.
What does Kennedy have to say about that?
He’d become the detachment’s Magic 8-Ball.
Then came the sniper section part of Kurtz’s augment. Three snipers and three spotters. They’d do the dirty work on the objective. Sergeant Thor led that section. Every day since we’d been in this world, this Ruin, the sergeant had devolved more and more into his Viking warlord fantasy. Nightly pagan ceremonies complete with torches and MRE cookies were
becoming an actual thing. Word had it he was asking around if anyone knew how to do tattoos. Apparently he wanted to start adding tick marks to his biceps. A sort of running kill count. Most of the Rangers had no idea how to do tats, but more than a few were willing to try. I had a pretty clear image of Sergeant Thor just cutting himself with his own karambit knife and rubbing ash into the slash. But for all that, he was still the same good- natured and friendly guy who, had he not been here, would’ve probably been surfing some incredibly dangerous waves down in New Zealand no one else dared to surf and picking chicks up at the local bar at night.
“When this is over, Talk,” he said to me on the hump south one afternoon when it was hot and there were bees buzzing in a beautiful lavender field near a twisted old stand of wild olive trees. The day was so vibrant and beautiful it was like something out of a Van Gogh landscape. “When this is over, technically, Talk,” he said all low and hushed. “We’re, y’know, technically ETS’d really when you think about it.”
Expiration of Term of Service. Yeah. About ten thousand years discharged. As in technically we’d been discharged from service about ten thousand years ago. We didn’t owe the Army anything. But we did owe the detachment, the Rangers, the 75th, everything. Our lives had depended on each other back there at Ranger Alamo, and we still depended on each other. But yeah, technically Sar’nt Thor was right. We could do anything we wanted.
I started thinking about coffee. That’s what I wanted. But yeah… we could—
“I was thinking I’d take off and go north.”
We were walking through that field of wildflowers and lavender with the sun beating down on us and Sergeant Thor was just staring off like he could see all of it. Every crazy thing he was dreaming of. Everything he was going to go do on the other side of Throat Punch. Every epic adventure. Every Viking chick. Probably fighting a three-headed demon dog with his tomahawk and a braided beard. The Thor high score.
“I was thinking…” he continued. “Thinking I might try and head up to that Dire Frost the old guy’s always going on about.” Vandahar. “See if I can make it up there.”
Go for the high score. Up there.
“Yeah,” I said. Because there was nothing else you could say to
something like that.
“You could come with, Talk. You never know… languages could come in handy up there. We could become warlords. See the things no one else has ever seen. Y’know, kings of the north and all.”
We could do that. That could be an outcome—emphasis on could. Or we could die… oh, about a hundred different ways I could think of. Three- headed demon dog. Vampire polar bear. Other Viking warlords who wanted to stay numero uno in the high-stakes game of Viking Warlording, as it were. Fall into an ice crevasse where something horrible waited. The possibilities were endless.
“What about our weapons?” I asked after a moment. “They’ll break down in time if the nano-plague still has teeth.”
“Nah.” He shook his rifle. Mjölnir. In old Norse that meant the Grinder. Or the Crusher. He placed it over his shoulders like it was just a weight bar and he was about to do squats. And not a powerful anti-material weapon system capable of shooting a round that would choke a horse. Letting the big rifle stretch his massive chest muscles. “We’ll fight with our tomahawks. We’ll find the real Mjölnir. Blood and steel, Talker. Blood and steel is what it’s all about.”
Last but apparently not least in Team Rogue was our wizard. PFC Kennedy spent much of the long walk south in the company of Vandahar, whispering and discussing many dark and mysterious things. It was clear he was learning something about what this world called magic, and when I tried to listen in the old wizard simply glared at me and said, “This is not for you.”
His voice softened after the initial rebuke.
“You have other talents not known to you yet, one who speaks many tongues. In time, perhaps I shall show you where to go once I understand them better. But for now, we have more pressing matters.” And he turned back to his tutelage of Kennedy.
When I pressed the old man later, he simply waved me off with one long and bony hand. Pipe smoke drifting in its wake.
“The Ruin changes many into what they will become. It reveals. Even now…” He looked off toward the command team nearby as we settled in for the night. The captain, the sergeant major, and Chief Rapp. They were discussing some facet of the upcoming op as we made ready to set up our
night watch. “It is doing its revealing work among… some of you. Be careful. Very careful, Talker. The truth of what we all really are will come out eventually.”
He was watching Captain Knife Hand, as though trying to see something that could not be easily seen. Or rather, as though he were waiting for something to appear. Our commander still looked like he had a bad case of the flu. But you wouldn’t know it by the way he worked day and night. He was everywhere all the time. He rucked harder than anyone else, all up and down the line of our march. Constantly adjusting and focusing his platoon leaders and NCOs. Encouraging the Rangers in general in that calm, taciturn way, if just by his competent presence. I’d seen him late in the night, moving about the various watch points in our circle, making sure we were safe. He seemed restless. And once again I thought of Blake’s poem about the tiger.
So that was Team Rogue. Kurtz’s weapons squad. The snipers. Autumn. Kennedy the wizard-in-training, and me. And it was our job to surprise the enemy. Everything depended on Team Rogue showing up at the right time, with the right tools, ready to work. Or that’s how the sergeant major put it.
Shooting sprees from ruined towers in mountaintop fortresses guarded by orcs and the unquiet dead was just “work” to him.
“Rogue,” he’d said as we parted from the main element on that last day as we entered the mountains of what the map had once called the Auvergne in France. “All you gotta do is show up at the right time, with the right tools, ready to work. Never mind the rest.”
Apparently, rogue was a “character class” one could play in the game of Dungeons and Dragons, though PFC Kennedy pedantically stated that in the first edition of that game they were just called thieves. And somewhere in the mission planning, Rogue had come to be our designation with regard to our hit on the Dark Spire, or what the elves had once called Barad Nulla, to reclaim our Forge.
Tanner assured me more than a few of the Rangers played Dungeons & Dragons, or had, though none had absorbed the lore quite like Kennedy. But most kept their hobby to themselves, as the more hardcore Rangers like Kurtz were liable to view games that were not sports as some kind of weakness that needed to be purged by multiple laps around the four-mile-
long airfield back at batt.
As the Rangers atop the crag were hitting the main gate in standard raid-style fashion that morning, supported by a weapons squad and a wizard who could throw fireballs, Team Rogue was already twelve hours into the first phase of their mission.
Back Door. Sergeant Thor said this was basically a “wall shot,” which was a Ranger breaching term for going through a breach in a wall, either an existing one or one made by breachers. We called it Back Door because we were hitting the fortress from a whole other direction.
We were coming at them from below.
In the two weeks of planning after reaching the Hidden Cave deep in the Charwood, Last of Autumn told us everything she and the Shadow Elves knew about the Dark Spire. We needed to take that fortress if we were going to have any chance at survival here in the Ruin. That much was clear. If the pandemic nano-plague that had wiped out the world ten thousand years ago was still active—and Chief McCluskey had indicated that it was, take that for what it was worth—but if it was still active, then in a matter of no time our weapons and equipment would start to fall apart. Everything right down to our fatigues. And even if the nano-plague wasn’t still active, there was still the matter of ammunition. Either way, time was short, and we didn’t have much left to lose, truth be told.
We were out of MREs, too. The elves were teaching us how to forage for local food.
The Forge could fix all that. The Forge, in the capable hands of tech Josh Penderly, who knew how to run it, and the Baroness, one of the developers of the fantastic machine, who knew the science behind it… the Forge could make us anything. Those two could have the entire Ranger detachment rearmed with brand-new equipment and full combat loads in less than a month, according to the Baroness. That was our best chance at survival in the Ruin until we figured things out.
Chief McCluskey had known that. Had known how powerful the Forge was and what a game-changer it was here ten thousand years in the future. My guess was he’d try to rule the Ruin with it once he got it up and running. He knew its value. That was why he’d burned five to ten thousand combat troops attempting to take it from us at Ranger Alamo. He’d probably been waiting for years for one of the special ops detachments from
Area 51 to show up.
But like I said, back at the temple, Last of Autumn detailed everything she knew about the fortress we were now attempting to take. And her details made it clear in short order that there was no way the Rangers, with the small amount of munitions they had, were taking the fortress via the front door. The ring of defenses the Rangers would need to thread just to reach the Dark Spire itself were too much. The odds too overwhelming. Once inside the main gate, they’d have to cross open ground between the interlocked defenses with no supporting fire or cover. Then clear that ring before hitting the next, higher level of defenses as they climbed up the last of the ancient crag toward the prize.
The Forge.
Or at least, where we hoped the Forge would be. The Dark Spire.
Barad Nulla.
But after Old Mother’s prompting, as she served me and Last of Autumn healthy bowls of her restorative vegetable stew the next day as we drew the fortress in chalk on the temple floor, the old blind woman, listening, first muttered the words “Tumna Haudh.”
Last of Autumn had asked some clarifying questions of her elder and been given long responses. In all the years since the Shadow Elves had been tossed from the fortress, forced to flee due to treachery, the whispers of the Deep Tomb, Tumna Haudh, had been frowned upon by the few remaining warriors and the rest of the tribe of once-again-wandering Shadow Elves. It was forbidden to speak of such evil. To their children it became a place of mystery and terror. The home of devils and boogeymen. Don’t eat your herbs and mushrooms, it’s off to Tumna Haudh for you, little Shadow Elfling.
Or at least that’s as near as I could tell what they meant via translating between Gray Speech and Tolkien. Shadow Cant would have been easier, but of course, that was forbidden to outsiders, so we couldn’t use that. This was early on, and I was still struggling with the Tolkien. Only our third day in the Hidden Cave. The Rangers, I recall, after getting a luxurious entire day’s rest, were out there being PT’d to death by Chief Rapp in the woods. I’d managed to dodge some of that because I was working with Autumn, but when the first sergeant decided to Rifle PT the teams after a lunch of mixed herbs and fruits, I got caught. An hour later my arms and legs were
burning.
The Army felt there were two cures for everything that ails you, Motrin and PT. And if the Army simply felt that, the Rangers believed it as holy writ from on high. Except they were heretics who believed endless amounts of PT cured everything. So, CrossFit people.
It was a doctrinal deviation that, as I have indicated, verged on the cult- like. Or at least that’s what you thought when you were dying as you did endless mountain climbers for forty minutes and you were sure you’d never be able to walk again once the pain that would never stop, stopped.
Seriously, what doctor’s office do you visit to have something looked at and the guy just starts smoking you with all the burpees in the world? Which one? Because I would not go to that doctor. That is a bad doctor.
The command team knew we needed to do this mission and they knew the Rangers needed to be ready for the one shot we were going to get in order to collectively save their lives. So there was no leave, no rest, no break, after we got to the Hidden Cave. Just that one twenty-four hours of rest after three days and a day-and-night march while being attacked the whole time. That one day of rest and then it was back to Rangering. Which meant trying to out-Ranger every other Ranger who was trying to out- Ranger every other Ranger… and so on, and so on. You get the idea.
Weapons were cleaned and re-cleaned several times over. Equipment inspections were run. And of course, medical and PT. When the Rangers got back to the temple floor inside Hidden Cave each night they were too tired to talk. They racked and did it all over again the next day. A few days later we hit the road south for the objective.
“Time’s burning, Talk,” said the sergeant major on the first day of the march. “We got us a rogue SEAL to dispose of.”
We were back in the game.
When Autumn explained to me what she knew of the Tumna Haudh, and the Old Mother filled in the gaps, we had something to go to Captain Knife Hand with. As our map of the fortress began to come together in white chalk on the ancient temple floor, it was clear that the Deep Tomb was our best shot at evening the odds we’d face on the objective.
According to the captain, you needed five-to-one odds to take an enemy fortified position. We were fairly sure we didn’t have that, not by a long shot. We had no idea how many enemy forces were located in and
surrounding the Dark Spire, Barad Nulla. But we knew just how little we
had.
The only group of Rangers who had no shortage of ammunition was the snipers. They had cases and cases to burn of their very specialized long- range engagement ammo. But using the snipers against the front door wasn’t going to do much good, as the enemy had some pretty thick walls to get behind and it was clear they were getting crafty about our boom sticks. There were only so many special munitions rounds the Ranger snipers had that penetrated lighter walls, and a castle ain’t mud huts and third world construction techniques. This ancient pile of rocks had weathered war, siege, and the Ruin for what seemed going back several thousand years. It was here to stay. We had to hit it where it was weak.
The front gate was made of wood. The Carl G did the work explosively there. But as soon as we did that, they’d know we were there. So we had to hit at the same time from a direction they wouldn’t think we could come from. Normally, that meant Rangers jumping out of C-17s all over your rear screaming, “Surprise, losers!” Then machine-gunning down everyone you loved and laughing about it as they high-fived over your corpse. They’d probably poison your water supply and shoot up your supply lines just for bonus points.
But we couldn’t do that. Our ride was rusting and falling apart back on an island that would probably get drowned in the spring rains or next winter. It wasn’t gonna fly ever again. Plus, chutes were a problem.
So once we understood what the Tumna Haudh was, we knew what we were going to do. We’d come at them from right under their feet. We’d hit like sudden heat lighting and move like hot rolling thunder before the enemy could figure out what the game was. If we did it right, we’d have access to the remains of a tower that provided a perfect position for the snipers to go on a killing spree against the defensive positions the assaulters needed to get through. The snipers could work over the defenders from the rear of the fortress. Shooting them in the back as it were.
Why not take everyone through the Halls of Sleep, you ask? Halls of Sleep? Yeah, I’ll explain that in a sec. Why not do that? Why not sneak the entire detachment in the back door and then jump out and go murdering our way to the Barad Nulla? Because the Halls of Sleep are really dangerous. In fact, no known person, entity, or army had ever managed to survive their
passage up through the rock that was the crag. And people had tried. It was so dangerous, according to the Shadow Elves, that when Chief McCluskey took the fortress he hadn’t even bothered attempting that route. It was impenetrable. Tight with traps. And dangerous in a way they didn’t explain, which only made it seem more ominous and forbidding. They were fanatically superstitious about the place.
“More men,” Vandahar had contributed while musing over the chalk outlines and sucking at his long-stemmed pipe while listening to us trying to coax intel out of the Old Mother. “Will mean more death down there. Much, much, more. Best to go light and slow through the Halls of Sleep beneath the fortress itself. Very dangerous indeed.”
It was clear he wasn’t interested in taking that route either.
“I will go with your men against the front gate. I stood at the Valka when I was young. I will stand with you now, and perhaps… perhaps we can begin to change matters going forward if we live to see the sun rise again on the day we conduct our attack. And I would offer this to you, warriors. Triton is a servant of the Dark One in the east. The Lord of Umnoth and the Pit. There is every chance he has made fellowship with the dreamers in the deep down who lie within the Halls of Sleep. And though they have no common cause, they are as evil as he is. They may warn him of the assault. If so, he will position his forces around the old tower and surround it in order to kill you all when you intend to surprise his host. Although… if he does do that… then perhaps it may be a good thing for our little surprise. For if it is just a small force that tries the Halls of Sleep, and if they fail, which they most likely will, then the fortress guard that goes to intercept them won’t be near the gates or main defenses, and that may give those of us going in the front door, some… slight advantage.”
He said all this aloud, but merely musing to himself. Not really concerned if anyone was listening. Intent on his study of the chalk map and his fragrant pipe smoke. Both equally.
“And besides,” he said after another moment. “You shall have a wizard among you.” He turned to PFC Kennedy. “He has the ways of Nano. The understanding of wielding. In time he may be as great as even Salazon the Mad. Or greater still if events go… our way, as it were. I shall teach him a little along the way, and perhaps we will see what he does with that. Great endings come often from small beginnings.”
So on the march down toward the Auvergne in the central massif of old France, or what the peoples of the Ruin called the Savage Lands, the plan was refined and practiced. Assaulters against the main gate. Supporting fire and consolidating on the phase line. Twelve hours prior, Team Rogue would make our appearance.
We’d broken off from the main detachment three days before. Followed a small stream up through the mountains and to the base of the crag five hundred feet below the fortress. There, in the ancient rock behind a trickling waterfall, was the heavy door that gave access to the Deep Tomb. It was guarded with fanged skulls and runes, carved in the stone, which, according to Autumn, warned us of what we were about to do.
“It says…” she began haltingly. “The dead await here. And… you will never return from this place.”
Tumna Haudh.
What was it really? This system of tombs inside the ancient rock of the crag beneath the high fortress. Because as the Old Mother had told us during the planning phase of Operation Throat Punch, it was much older than the fortress above. She, along with Vandahar, who had studied the ancient texts of a group called the “The Scholar Kings of Atlantea,” who had died out about five thousand years ago when “the stars fell from the sky,” related the story.
The Halls of Sleep were the ancient resting place of a sect of adventuring warlords who’d ruled locally in the ages before the Dragon Elves began their formal reign. They were once known as the Ilner in High Speech. Or Not-Men. The men who were not. Again, this is me fumbling through Tolkien High Speech via German. So maybe I’m getting things wrong. But, near as I could tell they were considered men who were… not.
Vandahar clarified somewhat.
“During the histories as recorded by the scribe Sustoc in the Age of Blood, they were simply ruthless men,” said the old wizard, settling to his ever-present pipe and tale. “Savage raiders and pillagers who came from other lands and invaded these lands before even the Elves of Tarragon set to carve stone for that cursed city. The prefix Il– is negative in High Speech, thus, one they call Talker, it indicates a negative connotation. The best guess of old Sustoc was that the Ilner had eschewed the ways of common men.
“Men, as you may not know, were little known in this region of the world in those lost days. And when the Ilner arrived, they became men of power, holding sway over the primitive tribes and petty warlords of that savage time. They sought the forbidden. The dark magics of the Before, so they might have power without limit. Rumors abound in various texts, and are even hinted at in the Book of Skelos, or at least the fragments I have seen, that the Ilner craved eternal life so they might continue their conquest of the Ruin, for they were powerful indeed in those terrible days.
“And then the Elves of Tarragon-to-be came to power. A rogue warrior of the Emerald Lamp, one who would become their greatest and most notorious hero, Throm the Outcast, did battle with the Ilner at the Snake River and defeated their twisted and foul saura army. But the ancient texts indicate the Ilner had planned for their eventual defeat by learning the ways of the Black Sleep from none other than Sût the Undying himself, that they might rise again in another age, when Outcast Throm and his fabled spear Tildë had gone from the times. Alas, the Silver Spike and her dark wielder have gone the way of the Book of Skelos. Sad, for they are much needed in this desperate age.”
He made a brief symbol to ward off some evil and returned to staring into the fire and ministering his pipe. He seemed sad and alone as he sat there.
“And saura means…” I prompted.
He gave me a wide-eyed look like I was the village idiot who’d just feasted on his own toe and bothered to annoy him about it. Then, “I must remember to remember how much you don’t know, my boy. Saura in High Speech means foul, corrupt, very diabolical evil. Because of the Saur who sleep and wait no more beneath the Sands of the South, of course.”
So what does all this mean for the mission? What can we expect to face down there in the Halls of Sleep?
That’s what I asked the old wizard. He thought about it for a moment.
A long moment.
“Evil,” he whispered. “Relentless, unquiet… evil.”
Okay, I thought. Rangers can do relentless and quiet violence. That’s what they’re best at. So…
So far it’s a draw.
