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“For Imaginariumia!” shouted Keith as he nobly clove a goblin in twain.
Eddie hated that. He hated that Keith had breath left in him to shout after that charge; he hated that Keith had dragged them into a wondrous land of magic and adventure where the sun always shone and then gotten them both dressed in chainmail and padded leather; but what he REALLY hated was that Keith was always cleaving goblins in twain, or smiting them, or striking them down. Eddie tried his best, but it always turned out like the goblin in front of him – his sword drove up through the goblin’s torso, shredding organs and spilling out viscera, then wedged hard into its ribcage and stuck fast. There Eddie was, in the middle of a battle for the lives of the Good People against the Evil Horrible Unpeople, noble deeds and heroic valour all around him, and his sword was jammed in gritty cartilage.
And the goblin wouldn’t stop whimpering. It was a nasal sound, probably not helped by the puncturing of one of its lungs by the cold-forged, elf-enchanted, dragonfire-hardened tip of Eddie’s blade, Swiffyfangg. Blood was frothing up its windpipe, and it sounded like wet hiccups.
The sword was still stuck. Eddie’s hands were slick with blood and worse – the goblin’s sphincters had relaxed. His mouth had clenched, gibbered, and clenched again; his teeth were grinding themselves down to meal. Finally, he licked his lips, opened wide, and let loose the foulest curse he knew.
“Let GO, darn you!”
At that moment a screaming goblin with an axe reached Eddie, Eddie’s neck, and his jugular, and he lost consciousness permanently.
*
There was a change in the rumble of the guns. Something undetectable, in a pitch that had noting to do with sound and everything to do with the human pulse.
It’s time, said Tom’s heartbeat.
“It’s time,” Peter whispered to him, crouched in the mud.
“It’s time,” said the nameless corporal.
“GO!” yelled the sergeant, and they were up and over the wire, running and screaming – inside, where it’s always louder – into the grey world with its grey sky and its shockingly dull blood pooling everywhere, arms pumping, packs wobbling, guns ready.
Tom couldn’t see the enemy. He wondered if that was a mistake. Tom couldn’t see the sun. He wondered if that was significant. Tom wondered something else, but just then he was interrupted by the accidental discharge of the rifle clutched in the hands of the nameless corporal, who’d stumbled in a hollow. It tore through Tom’s spinal column at the base of his neck and that was that.
*
A twig snapped.
Sarah froze as still as a statue, as still as an unworked stone, as still as the bedrock that insisted, continental drift or no, it hadn’t ever once moved an inch.
One foot hovered just above the dirt, muscles shrieking. She ignored them.
No more twigs, but the game was up. Something was there, something trying to be quiet in that way that mutes sound but raises hairs. On the other side of the copse, something was waiting with a bloody mouth and a deadened pulse.
Sarah checked the revolver – in the quiet way, with her brain alone.
Two shots fired. Four remained.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Ghostly.
Sarah took a step into the thicket into extremely thin and slightly foggy air, fell six feet down a gulley, and landed headfirst, snapping her neck.
*
Dusk parted in a flash of shadows and moulded muscles. Fred and Bert were snatched up as something drove their heads together with nauseating force, cracking skulls and driving soon-to-be-fatal blood clots into brains.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” enunciated Joe as the caped crimefighter whirled towards him. “It’s Capeman!” He fumbled at his gun with frozen fingers, but the shadowed finger was faster and sent a razor-sharp knife spiralling into his wrist with a contemptuous flick. Joe screamed and involuntarily squeezed the trigger, sending forty-eight bullets through the wall of the bank and out into the general public and three through the central mass of Capeman, where they shredded and pulped several vital organs.
*
Fred Steele crouched in his basement, a smouldering mound of pythons stacked like tyres, surmounted by a grey-eyed glare. In his beef-slab hands he held – with immeasurable care and finesse – the power of Azrael, the angel of death, incarnated as the components of a half-made pipe bomb. He sneezed and blew himself up.
*
Despite his best efforts, Colonel Wagner was eaten by the lion.