The Forever Man: Betrayal Read online

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 1

  Grim-son stood next to one of the myriad of camp fires and looked across the staging field. Over two hundred Vandals were scattered in groups around the fires. They had eaten earlier and now stood close to the flames, attempting to warm themselves up in the cold morning air. Some simply sat, quiet, introspected. Others played stones, a simple game that involved a board divided into quarters and six different colored stones. It was a child’s game and the flyers played it because it allowed them to concentrate on something else beside the coming combat.

  It had been over three months since the tribe of flying creatures had moved en masse behind the wall and thrown in their lot with the humans of the Free State of Scotland. Three months of almost constant fighting against the Annihilators – a race of insectoid beings that had followed the Vandals across the great divide and invaded the world of the humans. A warrior race that existed solely to prove their valor in battle.

  Such was the threat provided by the Annihilators that the humans, led by Nathaniel Hogan, The Forever Man, were now forced into an uncomfortable alliance with their sworn enemies. They had formed a pact with the Fair-Folk and their minions, the Orcs, goblins and trolls. An uneasy concord between two former enemies.

  And, under the auspices of Tad and Roo, the Vandal leader, chief Cha-rek, had formed the Vandals into a well ordered flying, fighting force. The whole thing had been based on similar structures to the British pre-pulse air force, complete with ranks and command structures.

  Tad and Cha-rek had divided the Vandals into two major groups; fighters and ground attack. There were just over five thousand male Vandals of combat age. Of these, three thousand were designated as ground support and two thousand as fighters. The smaller, more nimble flyers were designated fighters and the larger Vandals, capable of carrying more weight, were designated as ground support.

  The ground support carried a small, light weight, double winged, or dual prod cross bow capable of firing two consecutive shots. As well as this they carried six to eight pottery flasks filled with naphtha, a highly flammable distillation of peat, and super saturated sugar. The end result being a sticky, hard burning, homemade napalm bomb.

  The top of each flask was stopped by a plug of linen and a rough flint and iron striker. So all that the ground support Vandal would have to do is run his hand over the striker, thereby igniting the linen and then drop the flask onto the enemy, showering them in burning napalm. Of course this had to be done whilst under attack by both archers and the enemy Yari, flying Annihilators, who would attempt to engage them in the air and rip them from the skies.

  The fighters were equipped with a repeating crossbow based on the ancient Chinese Ch-ko-nu or continuous crossbow. A robust weapon with a ten bolt magazine that could be primed and fired with one hand using a lever. After a little practise it was possible to fire all ten bolts in under fifteen seconds and the weapon had a deadly range of around fifty yards. The fighters also carried a small casting net in a pouch on their belts. This was used to throw at another flying enemy and entangle them, forcing them to plunge to earth.

  The fighters sole task was to protect the ground support Vandals so that they could deliver their burning payloads into the enemy ranks.

  The Yari, or flying Annihilators, eschewed ranged weapons. They saw them as dishonorable and preferred to grapple hand-to-hand, using their natural bladed second set of appendages and their razor clawed feet. Many of them were cut down by the nimble Vandal fighters before they came close enough to get to grips, taken out by either the repeating crossbows or the cast nets. But it was not easy. The Yari armored carapaces meant that they often had to be shot two or three times before they were out of the fight.

  Because of this, the Vandals were getting the best of the aerial war but they were severely outnumbered. In fact, Grim-son estimated that there were in excess of twenty thousand Yari. The enemy had a four-to-one advantage over the Vandal fighters.

  Grim-son spotted chief Cha-rek walking towards him, stopping every now and then to greet one of his Vandals. A quick word of encouragement, a grasp of the shoulder. Small things that made Cha-rek the beloved leader that he was.

  He stopped in front of Grim-son.

  ‘Wing comm-ander,’ he greeted.

  ‘Chief,’ answered Grim-son as he saluted in the vandal fashion, both arms held out in front of his chest, palms facing up to show that he was unarmed.

  ‘How are your figh-ters?’

  ‘Tired, chief,’ said Grim-son. ‘But ready and keen as al-ways.’

  ‘Good. We expect an-other call soon. It seems as though the Annihilators have massed for an-other go at the wall. Not sure where. As usual they have con-centrated at three points, could be any of them. Or all,’ he added. ‘When the call comes I want you to take five hun-dred fighters up and cover eight hun-dred ground supp-ort. See how many of them you can burn out before they get to the wall. Make sure that you keep the Yari away from the ground supp-ort. Without those fire bombs the hu-mans will be over-run.’

  Grim-son saluted and bowed, keeping his head down until the chief had gone on his way, spreading motivation and bolstering spirits wherever he went. The young Vandal Wing commander took a deep breath. He hated this part of the day. Fear built up like a lead weight in your stomach and the thought of dying became less of an abstract and more of a reality the more time spent thinking about it.

  Grim-son knew that fear was like a barnacle build up on the hull of a ship, it built up below the water line where no one could see it and then one day it sank you. Grim-son knew that most of his men were weighed down with fear at the moment and he wished that he could do more for them. As it was, all that he could do was show no fear and fly as hard and as fast as he could and kill as many Yari as possible.

  Thirty minutes later they got the call and all fear disappeared in a rush of adrenalin. A female teenage human came running over. She was psychically connected to other teenagers on the wall and, when the Annihilators attacked they would pulse a message. This message would be relayed to Grim-son and the Vandals would fly.

  ‘Tower number two,’ she shouted. ‘Annihilators attacking in strength. Maybe six thousand, plus four thousand Yari.’

  Grim-son wasted no time as he unfurled his leathern wings and jumped into the air, driving himself upwards with powerful beats. ‘Scramble,’ he shouted. ‘Ground support groups one to eight. Fighters, wings one to five. Form up on me, fighters we go high, ground support stay low, we’ll keep you
covered.’

  Within thirty minutes the Vandal group had formed up and were heading south for tower two on the wall.

  Chapter 2

  Tad watched as the Annihilators started to march forward. Vast ranks of them neatly formed up in ten perfect squares of one thousand soldiers each. Their multicolored carapaces shone in the sun as they moved, a symphony of yellows and reds and greens. A veneer of festival like gaiety that covered a deep well of savage and brutal cruelty.

  The Annihilators, or Roaches, as the humans had come to call them due to their insectoid-like appearance, were perfect warriors. Their top pair of limbs, attached to their shoulders like human arms, ended in natural blades some two foot long, razor sharp along one side and jaggedly serrated along the other.

  Their second set of appendages protruded from the sides of their chest and they ended in three fingered graspers. Large, extremely powerful hands, capable of crushing a human throat or delivering a bludgeoning blow to the head or body. They used those same appendages for throwing spears and javelins and their range was quite phenomenal. Almost as far as a human archer could fire.

  Their final appendages were legs, long and double jointed bending backwards at the knee like horses’ back legs and they provided the Roach with a powerful jump, kick and turn of speed.

  But they were not innovative fighters. Their fighting style and swordsmanship was mired in basic patterns and set responses. Far removed from the human style that verged on the random berserker method of fighting. Simply throwing everything that you had at the enemy until either you or they were vanquished.

  Also – the humans were fighting for their families, for their king, for their country...and for their continued existence. Whereas the Roaches seemed to be fighting for little more than conquest. A way to prove themselves in the cauldron of battle. A test of their own courage and prowess. A ritual or a sacrament to combat as opposed to a battle for continued existence.

  The Little Big Man walked along the battlement of the wall and, as he did, the warriors there all called to him. Shouting his name or simply giving him an Oorah. There were swordsmen, spearmen with billhooks, archers and axmen. Every fifty yards was a large catapult, next to it a pile of round boulders ready to fire at the advancing enemy.

  He shouted back, laughing loudly and making ribald comments. A man at ease before battle. And his demeanor lifted the spirits of all around him. For Tad was a dwarf in physical size only. His reputation, his leadership and his skill in battle towered above his mere stature, for he was a man amongst men.

  He stopped next to Bobby Tiernan, a teenage boy who had mere days ago turned sixteen, an age that allowed him to fight on the wall alongside the other men.

  ‘Bobby,’ he greeted.

  The teenager saluted, fist to chest. He was dressed in a leather jerkin strengthened with squares of steel plate sewn in an overlapping pattern. Cotton trousers with hardened leather greaves, and leather forearm protectors. He was armed with a billhook, a short heavy spear with a hook at the bottom of the blade. The weapon was perfect, both for punching through Roach carapaces and for hooking the tops of the Roach ladders and pulling them down.

  ‘Little Big Man.’

  Tad smiled. ‘You ready?’

  Bobby nodded. His face was pale and Tad could see the thin sheen of cold sweat that coated his brow like a varnish. But his voice was steady.

  ‘As ready as I will ever be, sir.’

  Tad patted him on the shoulder. ‘Good man.’

  As he continued his walk the Roaches started to move forwards, scraping their bladed forearms together as they did so. The noise was a high throbbing squeal. Like a giant child playing a broken violin. An awful disturbing dissonance that addled the brain and cramped the stomach.

  Tad immediately climbed onto the crenulations on top of the wall and raised his voice in song. A powerful tenor that rang out over the insectoid screeching.

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

  His truth is marching on.

  The rest of the men on the wall joined in for the chorus, shouting out the words in a lusty fashion, concerned more with volume than with pitch.

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

  The truth is marching on.

  And then the Little Big Man drew his sword, held it high above his head and then brought it chopping down. As one, the catapults on the wall opened up, lobbing their large boulders high onto the sky, their crossbars cracking against the stops with a sound like thunder. Another gesture with the swords and the archers drew and fired, filling the air with thousands of yard long steel tipped arrows.

  Annihilator bodies were crushed under rocks and impaled by arrows as the storm of missiles marched across them. Then they were within javelin range and the Roaches started to retaliate, throwing their long, heavy pointed weapons that could cause serious injury if they struck home.

  The humans ducked behind the crenulations and waited for the javelin storm to rain down on them.

  Then Tad heard a high pitched whistling sound and his blood ran cold. He glanced up to see thousands of flying Yari above the wall. The whistling was the sound of the heavy steel darts that the Yari dropped from on high as they flew over.

  An object travelling at a velocity of only two hundred feet per second is enough to penetrate the human skull. By the time the darts reached ground level they were travelling at over five hundred feet per second. This would impart sufficient energy to shatter shields, pierce armor and literally punch straight through human flesh and bone.

  ‘Take cover,’ he shouted. ‘Shields up.’

  The defenders crouched down and pushed themselves up against the wall in an attempt to gain some semblance of protection from the falling missiles. Those who had shields held them over their heads, tilting them at an angle in the hope that the darts would ricochet off as they struck.

  The steel storm struck with a sickening cacophony of sound. A rending of shields and armor, a tearing of flesh and a shattering of bone. The clamor of physical destruction was immediately swamped by the horrific sound of men screaming in agony.

  And then, out of the sun, swooped the Vandals. In twenty five wings of twenty each, the fighters plummeted through the air, wings folded tight as they swept down on the Yari.

  The Vandals broke up the massive Yari formation as they barreled through them and then, as they pulled up, they unleashed their crossbow bolts. Hundreds of multicolored flying Roaches tumbled from the sky and the humans raised their voices in a loud cheer.

  The ground support Vandals appeared over the tree tops, flying fast and low as they dropped their loads of homemade napalm on the advancing Annihilators and then jinked out of range of their archers as soon as they could.

  A field of orange fire blossomed in the Roach ranks, followed by a cloud of black oily smoke.

  But still they marched on, closing ranks, throwing more javelins as they approached. The ground support Vandals struck again and again, expending their bombs before they wheeled off and climbed high into the sky and headed for home.

  Meanwhile, Grim-son and his fighters rolled and banked through the skies above, firing their crossbows and tangling Yari in their cast-nets.

  Grim-son drove himself hard as he flew in behind a Yari that was about to grapple with one of the more inexperienced Vandals, a youngster by the name of Rek-lee. The Yari flared his wings as he prepared to pounce. Grim-son lined up and fired. The bolt took the Yari in the back of the head and the creature spiraled down to earth in a flat spin, wings twitching spasmodically as it did so.

  ‘Watch your back, boy,’ he shouted at Rek-lee as he flew past, already looking for his next target.

  All about him bodies spun and wheeled, diving and climbing. Others falling, broken wi
nged. Plummeting to earth, flailing desperately as they struggled to stay alive, to keep airborne. To arrest their fatal plunge.

  A bolt buzzed past Grim-son’s ear. Friendly fire. Far to close for comfort. Out of his peripheral vision he saw a shadow bearing down on him so he tucked in his left wing and rolled hard, dropping a hundred feet before he flared out and beat his wings hard, climbing back into the fray.

  And then, like magic, the sky was clear. There were groups of Vandals, far distant, circling the wall. He cast his eyes around the sky but could see no sign of Yari although the ground was thickly littered with their broken, multicolored bodies.

  During the dogfight he had flown some four miles away from the wall, deep into enemy territory. He climbed high and pushed hard to get back above the enemy that were advancing on the wall, checking his crossbow magazine as he flew. Two bolts left. He had to be careful. His eyes flicked form side to side, scanning for enemy flyers. Nerves stretched as taut as a hangman’s noose.

  His final dash for home was without incident and as soon as he made it he checked on his men, reported the injuries and casualties to the executive officer and then he curled up next to a fire, wrapped his wings around himself for added warmth, and immediately fell into an exhausted sleep.

  Chapter 3

  The front rank of Annihilators threw their ladders against the wall and swarmed up, moving with incredible speed. Their numbers had been considerably thinned by the waves of napalm and the catapults and archer fire. But there were still over six thousand of them in full fighting mettle.

  Humans ran forward and, using billhooks, axes, spears and bare hands, they pushed the ladders from the walls. Hundreds of Roaches fell as the ladders toppled, screeching and chittering as they did so.

  But some of the Roaches made it to the top of the wall. It was here that Tad was needed most. Rallying troops and bolstering spirits. It was essential to prevent the Roaches from gaining a foothold on the battlements and he threw himself into the fray with dangerous abandon. Swinging his battle axe and hacking into Roach legs and lower torsos and then dispatching them when they fell to the ground.