[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Tovmas ran on up the slope, his body tensed as at every step he expected the bite of bullets in his flesh.It was both terrifying and exhilarating, another sensation he knew well.He felt so alive as he pounded up the hill, painfully aware of the fact that death might come to him very suddenly.And yet he heard no shots being fired from the hilltop.The support-gunners seemed to be doing their job.His run was coming to an end; all too soon he had reached the rocks of the summit and with one last leap he was atop them and looking down on the sheltering defenders.He let rip with his rifle, strafing the crouching group, his bullets cutting down several as they fumbled for their weapons and covered their heads with their arms.His magazine ran dry, and he hurled himself amongst them, drawing his knife as he landed, spinning and thrashing and stabbing in a blur of motion as they wrestled with him, too close to bring their own weapons to bear.Though he was without doubt much older than them, they could not match his ferocity.When the rest of Tovmas’ men appeared over the rocks howling and firing, the surviving slavers, the ones whom Tovmas was not fighting with, turned and fled down the other side of the hill.It was a rout, and those who ran were gunned down by the militia.The shooting had stopped.All became quiet.Panting, Tovmas wrenched his knife from the ribs of the last hilltop slaver.The man looked at the soaking gash in his chest, his breath coming in ragged, hacking gasps.As if remembering something, he turned his head to the east, his dark eyes shining in the sun that had climbed above the mountains.He stood there for a moment, as Tovmas watched, before his legs buckled and he fell to his knees.Still he faced the sun, though he was slumped and sagging and Tovmas did not think his eyes saw anything anymore.Blood dribbled in a long string from his lips, and slowly, as if fighting sleep, the man’s eyes closed.Tovmas nudged him with his boot, and the man fell back limply onto the grass.The silence was utter.The hills on the far side of the valley were ochre in the dawn light.The white summit of Ararat sat above the haze far to the west.What a place to die.Tovmas’ men now lined the rocks on the western side of the summit, their weapons pointing at the smoking pieces of a light aircraft on the landing pad, a couple of hundred metres out on the most extreme spur of the crag.He could see the last of the slavers had taken cover around it, behind stacks of crates, amongst the rocks and inside the last corrugated steel shed.The single survivor from the hilltop was still running across the stony, undulating ground, towards his friends by the aircraft.He wore nothing but his vest, no doubt all he had slept in, and he had no weapon.For some reason, the militia hadn’t shot him.In the silence, Tovmas realised he was standing very much in the open, and promptly sat down.A few of his men were looking at him.“What now?” one of them, a young man named Nardos, asked.Tovmas wiped some blood from his eye and looked out west, across the yawning valley, seeing in the distance that the Iolaire was returning.Its twin fans were almost vertical, so it was coming in slowly and at an angle.Not far from where Tovmas sat lay the mangled remains of the slavers’ autocannon.The rocket team had hit their target, somehow.Tovmas picked up his rifle, slid out the empty magazine and replaced it with a fresh one, releasing the bolt with an oily click.Then he raised himself into a crouch, and looked down the iron sights.Aiming at the bare legs of the fleeing slaver, he exhaled, relaxed, and released a shot.The rifle bucked slightly in his calm grip, and the round flew straight, hitting the running man in the thigh.The slaver tumbled head-first into a dip in the ground, disappearing from sight.“You just winged him, Tovmas,” said Nardos.“We’re going to take him alive,” replied Tovmas, resting himself against the rock and taking the radio from his pocket.“He’ll tell us where they take their captives.”Then he switched to English as he spoke into the radio, “We’ve taken the top of the hill; the last slavers are all bunched around the landing pad at the far end of the spur.Don’t shoot near the metal shed; we don’t know if there are women in there.”“Alright, we’ll start circling the hilltop, you call the shots.”As the Iolaire drew closer to the fortress, the slavers out on the spur began shooting at it.Tracers streaked past the aircraft in long arcs, burning out and disappearing far across the valley.The aircraft accelerated, climbing and diving in short bursts as it brought the fortress into its tail gunner’s arc of fire.Accelerating further, the Iolaire howled past the fortress crag, tail gun roaring and rotors lowering for conventional flight once more [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]