The Fire Islands Read online

  But Castor was a fool and Marcus was on his own and he was determined to win anyway. He led his green band in a charge against the newcomers, contemptuously brushing aside the last couple of warriors who had come off the mountain. At the same time he shouted for Acteon and Severus to reform on his position. They would finish off their enemies quickly as they could and run to form ranks behind the green band.

  With Marcus in the front rank beside a stout legionnaire named Cletus, they drove hard into the deep shadow of the mountain to confront the chiefs, shields raised against their spears as they stabbed repeatedly toward the bare chests of their enemies. The numbers of the Kanaka actually worked against the survival of the chiefs as their men, eager to follow their leaders into battle, pressed hard against them from behind preventing the chiefs from keeping the distance which would let them wield their spears effectively while staying far from the Aquilan weapons.

  Marcus stabbed a man with blackened teeth and slammed his dying body back with his shield. Then he blocked a vicious thrust from a second man and saved Cletus’ life with a quick jab of his sword. Their line was bending as some men advanced more quickly than others, but the rear ranks had been well trained and stepped up to keep the line from breaking.

  A man in the green band cried in pain and dropped but his mates stepped over him and kept the pressure on the Kanaka who continued to die by the dozen.

  Acteon hollered for his men to form ranks behind the green band, reassuring Marcus that not only had he accomplished his mission, but he was ready to throw his veterans into the fight when Marcus called for them.

  They were ten steps from the mouth of the cave and the outflow of new warriors had ceased. Only something was still coming and it occurred to Marcus that it was not eagerness to follow their chiefs but terror at what pursued them that motivated these men to throw themselves against his ranks.

  He killed another man trying to catch a glimpse of what else his men would face and froze. It was only for a moment, but that is so often enough in war. Had Cletus not returned Marcus’ earlier favor, a Kanakan spear would have taken him out of the line. “Steady there, Tribune!”

  “Stand fast!” Marcus ordered as a skeleton wielding a spear pushed through the line of warriors and thrust the weapon hard at the face of a legionnaire. The man, unfortunately, caught sight of his assailant at just the wrong moment, and like Marcus had done, he froze—dying an instant later with a obsidian spear head in his brain.

  A shudder of revulsion rippled through the green line and Green Vigil Janus shouted, “Fall back!”

  “No!” Marcus commanded, but the damage had already been done. Even as he screamed at them to, “Stand fast!” men backed away from the dozen horrors rearing up in front of them. Part of him wanted to follow them back to the clean light of day, but he knew he could not permit this retreat to continue. He had only one hope to salvage the battle and he acted instantly, without any hesitation, because to weaken now was to lose half his men as the remaining Kanakan warriors thrust their spears into their retreating backs.

  “Red band advance! Black band kill any man who tries to run away!”

  Raging at this turn of events he cut down another warrior and broke discipline, stepping forward ahead of his line to try and rally his frightened men. “Come here, you horror!” he shouted at the nearest fiend. “And I’ll kill you again with good Aquilan steel!”

  Half the green band paused in their retreat—fascinated by the spectacle of their Tribune calling out one of the undead monsters.

  The nearest skeleton turned to face him, its joints clicking as it seemed to stumble from step to step without muscle tissue to coordinate its movements. An unearthly cold radiated outward from its bones and despite the heat of the day, Marcus shivered.

  Then the spear came forward to be deflected with practiced ease and Marcus hacked off one of its arms. As the severed limb clattered to the ground, the legion officer broke the skeleton’s knee toppling it over.

  His men cheered and the red band shoved the less-experienced green men forward again and skeletons began to shatter before the force of a disciplined wall.

  Something grabbed Marcus’ ankle and squeezed so hard that the bones seemed to shriek inside him. Glancing down he found the monster’s hand which he had severed, hanging onto his leg and trying to cripple him.

  As Cletus battered the creature with his shield, Marcus instinctively chopped at the bones with his sword, breaking off many of the fingers and almost cutting his own leg.

  Men shrieked, doubtless from similar discoveries.

  Marcus remembered what the Magus had told them at the briefing so many days before. “The skulls!” he shouted. “Break the monsters’ skulls!”

  Kicking the remains of the hand off of him, he hacked at the eyeless head of the undead thing, knocking it to the ground without breaking it.

  The limbs of one remaining arm continued to clutch at him, while the bones on the ground squiggled across the black rock to rejoin the main body of the dead.

  The ground trembled beneath them as if the earth itself was buckling in disgust and terror.

  Marcus killed one of the few remaining human warriors and a second skeleton clattered up against him. He fended the horror off with his shield, horrified by its strength, and chopped off one of its legs. This time he caught the creature’s head with a cleaving blow as it fell and whatever force kept the bones moving instantly departed so that they collapsed to the black rock beneath them.

  The ground trembled again and the mountain in front of them groaned. Something new and even more terrible was about to happen and all that Marcus could think to do was to destroy the first threat before the new one arrived to increase the danger.

  The order of his hand had largely broken down. They were no longer fighting in disciplined ranks, but surrounding the undead things so they could hack at them from all sides. Calidus, Marcus’ adjutant and a solid member of the red band, knocked a skull from atop a body and chased it down until he could shatter it with half a dozen blows.

  Red Vigil Acteon staggered with a skeletal hand on his throat until one of his men broke the offending skull in two and left him on his knees desperately gasping to force air back into his lungs.

  The creatures were all down now but the bones kept reforming as men hunted through the shadows of the Killing Basin for skulls that had bounced and rolled like balls across the rocky ground. Their search was not helped by the fact that hundreds of skulls from the forty-years-ago battle continued to litter this place, along with the bones of their decomposed bodies.

  The ground shook again and the mountain gave a hiss and belched forth a cloud of dense black smoke.

  The words of Makuahine Akela flashed back through Marcus’ mind. Beware of him—especially when the sun ceases to shine during the day. She had not been talking about an eclipse—but an eruption.

  The ground about them was littered in the bones of hundreds of dead—as were the arroyos they had advanced down and the terrain leading up to them. If Kekipi truly did know the secrets of the Rule of Twenty—if he really did have that level of power—the entire phalanx might be destroyed.

  “Form ranks!” he shouted. “Form ranks!”

  Confused legionnaires looked around trying to perceive the new threat.

  “Form ranks, you bastards! Right now!”

  Severus snapped an order and the black band moved, understanding as only true veterans could that they did not need to understand the threat to obey their commander’s orders. They ran to form their two lines with Severus standing facing the arroyos—not the caves—to make certain they were not vulnerable to attack from behind.

  Ash began to rain down upon them as Acteon and Calidus muscled the red band back into ranks. Why wasn’t Janus pulling his greens into line? Where was—the Green Vigil was rifling the body of one of the chiefs, probably looking for pearls or gold nuggets.

  Rage flushed through Marcus’ body. There was a time and place for looting the dea
d and this was not it! “Green Vigil Janus! Get your men formed in rank!” Marcus shouted at him even as he stormed to his side and yanked him up by one arm.

  Janus cursed and started to turn on Marcus, but the Lesser Tribune slapped him on the helmet and the young officer finally started to do his duty. “In ranks, green band, in ranks!”

  Widespread movement on the ground caught Marcus’ attention and he recoiled back toward the green band in horror. The bones—all of the bones upon the ash-covered ground had begun to wiggle and squirm, finding life again after forty years of exposure to the wind, rain and sun.

  Even as Marcus watched, arms, legs and rib cages reassembled themselves as an army of skeletons began to rise…

  Chapter Twelve

  Legionnaires Run Toward Battle

  “Hold up there, Tribune!”

  Festus Migellus paused long enough to school his face before turning back to address his superior. “Great Tribune?”

  Xanthus Aurelius pointed at a small side chasm breaking into the arroyo. “Direct one of your hands to guard the mouth of that gulley. It wouldn’t do to let this Kekipi try and get clever by sending a force through here to try and get behind us.”

  Festus suppressed the urge to instantly comply with his instruction. He realized something in that moment that truly shocked him. While he had never liked Lesser Tribune Marcus Venandus with his insistence on following regulations and his overly-superior attitude when confronted with the other officers of the legion, Festus respected the man. Marcus was everything Festus, himself, had dreamed of being when he first entered the lycee on his way to joining the legion. He was dedicated, ultra competent, charismatic, and patriotic in a manner Festus’ father had talked about, but which was becoming all too rare in the legion today.

  On the other hand, Great Tribune Xanthus Aurelius was a venal, lazy, greedy, self-serving excuse for a man whose political connections were the only reason he had a command. Festus despised him. He had joined the cohort today for the sole reason of making certain that the legion lost its best hand and half of Festus’ able-bodied men. And why did he do this? Because the Praetor had a randy young wife without the sense to be discrete about her indiscretions.

  Festus found a spark of the young man who had entered the lycee with such dreams still lived deep inside of him. “Great Tribune, I don’t have the manpower to block every opening in this arroyo wall that we’re going to come across. What’s more, my best hand is spearheading our attack and if I try and block every possible avenue through which the enemy can come at us, I won’t be able to give him support when the actual battle takes place. He’s already far out ahead of us.”

  Xanthus glowered at him, probably wondering how much trouble Festus was willing to make. The Tribune was honest enough to realize that the answer was not very much. Still, he had just gone on record opposing the order and—

  A shriek of pain and terror broke through the heat of the afternoon and every head in the hand, including Great Tribune Xanthus’, whipped around to look toward the scream and the black mountain to the west.

  A shiver worked its way up Festus’ spine as he remembered the face of the barbarian who had almost killed him the first time he stood at the front of his green band.

  Another scream was followed by the shouts of Aquilans charging into battle.

  Xanthus smiled. “And so it begins.”

  “Yes, it does,” Festus agreed. His hands trembled and he squeezed them into fists to disguise the fear bubbling up inside of him.

  “Use all your remaining men to block this side chasm. There’s no need to march deeper into the arroyo,” Xanthus told him.

  Festus made another important discovery about himself. Two in a single hour—that had to be a record. Years ago, after his first battle, he had incorrectly concluded that death was the most terrifying thing a man could face. Years of playing politics had followed, years in which Festus had successfully maneuvered through the ranks with minimum risk, rarely putting himself close to the danger of that first terrible day. But now at the far edge of the Republic’s conquests, nearly a thousand miles from mighty Aquila, he learned the truth about himself. His hatred of his own cowardice hurt him far more than his fear of death.

  “Form up!” he shouted to his surprised men. “Form up, you lazy bastards! The cohort is in battle!”

  “Excellent,” Xanthus whispered. “Go through the motions. It will look better in the report.”

  Lesser Tribunes and Vigils stirred themselves to browbeat their men into a proper marching column—side-by-side with seven rows of green each three men wide, followed by the red and the black. It took a terribly long time to get the tired men into order and all the while the sounds of combat raged in front of them.”

  “Shields at the ready!” Festus ordered. “Swords drawn!”

  The ground shook beneath them knocking stones loose on the arroyo walls.

  “The cohort will advance at double time!”

  Many of the men groaned, but the combination of the sounds of battle ahead and the shaking ground beneath their feet convinced the veterans of the black and red that it was well past time to get serious again.

  The cohort advanced.

  “What are you doing?” Xanthus shouted as he grabbed Festus’ arm.

  “What every child of Aquila knows to do, Great Tribune!” Festus shouted back. He wanted his men to hear this. He wished that Marcus could hear it! “When Aquila is attacked, legionnaires run toward battle—never away from it!”

  He shook his arm free and started at a trot after his men.

  “I order this cohort to stop!” Xanthus shouted. A few of the men in the green tried to do so, but the press of their fellows, not to mention the reds and the blacks behind, forced them to start to run forward again.

  Ahead of them, the mountain, Keahi, began to belch forth a cloud of black ash.

  ****

  “The whole area surrounding the mountain continues to be blocked to me, Praetor,” Master Magus Alena Adrastus said. “I’m sorry, but I cannot see what is happening.”

  “Disappointing,” Praetor Castor noted with a wide grin, “but at least that means we can be sure that Kekipi is here.”

  “I am…confused, Praetor,” the Magus admitted. “You aren’t following the plan you laid out back at the castrum in Maleko. Only Tribune Festus’ cohort has marched out. Were you not planning to send the other cohorts down the northern and southern arroyos?”

  “That was the original plan,” Castor admitted, “but then I began to wonder what I would do if your prediction of thousands of native warriors is actually correct.”

  “I did not predict thousands, Praetor,” the Magus corrected him. “I said quite explicitly that I have only seen perhaps three hundred cross from the other islands to Mokupani. It is certainly possible that hundreds, or even thousands more, also made the journey, but I did not see them cross.”

  Castor waved his hand dismissively. “No matter, until I have better intelligence, I will keep the main fighting force here with me, ready to attack where it is needed.”

  “And yet we are at least two miles from the Killing Basin where you hope to catch the natives,” the Magus reminded him.

  “Are you questioning my judgment, Alena?” The Praetor made the question a challenge.

  “No, I’m trying—” She broke off when the ground shook beneath them. She glanced around them with concern, her eyes finally focusing on the summit of Keahi.

  “What is it?” Castor prompted her after several moments of silence

  “I’m not sure, but—”

  The ground shook again.

  Around them, legionnaires scrambled to their feet, unhappy that the world was moving beneath them.

  With a groan and a hiss, the top of the mountain belched forth a cloud of ash and darkness.

  Utterly horrified, Alena stared upward as the growing cloud blocked out the sunlight and continued to spread. Still, it wasn’t until the magical ash began to fall that she real
ized the true extent of their peril.

  “Sol Invictus preserve us,” she whispered before turning in a frenzy toward the Praetor. “We have to get out of here. We have to get out now!”

  “I don’t understand…”

  His voice trailed off as the ground around them began to wiggle with newly animated bones.

  ****

  Makuahine Akela looked up at the dark cloud of ash forming far to the west over the summit of Keahi and the cold hand of fear gripped the heart within her chest. It was happening again, as it had when the Iwakalua—the Rule of Twenty—had risen up against her grandfather. She had been only a small child then raised to be one of the royal maikai kahuna, but the Iwakalua had put an end to their reign as now this hewa ke kahuna, Kekipi, would try to do to the foreigners. She prayed to Lani and Kai that Marcus would be strong enough for the trial ahead of him. She saw such promise in his spirit and yet his internal flame was as weak as any other fully mortal man’s.

  “What is it, Kiekie Makuahine,” one of her older cooks asked. The fear on the woman’s face discouraged Akela from chastising her for using the old title.

  “Quickly, Mele,” she ordered. “Spread the word, let all of the children and the women come to me on the parade ground. He I Do Not Name makes his move. I will shelter all who come for as long as I may.”

  The woman’s light brown face turned pale with fear and then she ran, screaming for the serving girls to carry her message.

  Akela took a deep breath and started toward the parade ground to perform what was most likely to be the last work of her long life. All she could do from here was buy the helpless time. Everything else depended on Marcus.

  Chapter Thirteen