The Angaran Chronicles: The Underside; An Extract - Ben Agar (most read books of all time TXT) 📗

It was dark when they left town. Raleas drove like usual and checked the rearview mirror for what must’ve been the tenth time. She could easily see the headlights of the four vehicles following in their wake. It seemed now the locals had thrown away all pretense of subtlety.

 

Raleas sighed and switched gears. The rocky, rough gravel road wound around the mountainside, affording a brilliant view of the desert below and even as far off as the vast, mountainous terrain of Hamar to the west. The going was slow; the road was horribly treacherous and poorly maintained. If the locals looked after the roadway, it would’ve been a brilliant tourist attraction just for the view alone, but Varmor cared little for their tourism industry despite having many beautiful vistas like this one. Perhaps if they did, they could one day compete with Isstarrsia in that industry. Isstarrsia was a beautiful country in the north. Amongst many things, Isstarrsia had the tallest mountain on the continent and the red sea, a vast body of water partitioned from the rest of the ocean by an extensive mountain range. It was said to be the deepest water in the world. She’d seen it firsthand as a child, and it was a breathtaking sight. Raleas had fallen in love with Isstarrsia and loved it when her job gave her the excuse to visit it.

 

Raleas shook away her train of thought and glanced at Anargrin next to her. He was hunched forward, his fingers intertwined together in front of his face, elbows on his thighs. She wondered what was going through his head, and it could be anything, knowing him, from planning on the best way to lose their tail or maybe just general daydreaming.

 

“When you find a good area to stop, pull over,” said Anargrin. “Let them catch up.”

 

“Then what?” asked Jelcine, bemused.

 

“I’m going to slip away, investigate the coven alone. The rest of you take care of our tail in whatever way you see fit,” said Anargrin. “Perhaps find a way to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, if you can.”

 

“These guys are selling their own people into slavery,” said Jelcine. “I say they more than deserve to die.”

 

Anargrin shrugged. “Perhaps. But nothing’s usually that simple. Not much is truly black-and-white.”

 

“Anargrin,” said Jelcine, “you hate slavers more than anyone.”

 

“I do,” said Anargrin. “I do, but we don’t know all the circumstances, the how and the why. They may have loved ones held hostage and are being forced into it. You don’t know everything about them.”

 

“Yet you killed those soldiers back in Camaria, without hesitation,” said Jelcine. “You even went so far as having Emilia stay behind to ‘clean up any witnesses.’ You didn’t know all their circumstances either.”

 

“That’s different,” stated Anargrin. “While I won’t try to justify their deaths, they were soldiers. They’d joined the army knowing they might die. That’s the way things go when you’re a soldier. It’s just the same as you and me.”

 

Jelcine “pffed!” and said, “Yeah, and how many were conscripted against their will? You and I both know that Camaria happily conscripts their own into their vast military.”

 

“That’s enough, you two,” said Emilia, so suddenly it made everyone jump in their seats. “Now isn’t the time for another philosophical debate. Yes, Anargrin, we’ll try to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, right, Jelcine?”

 

Jelcine sighed. “Yeah, sure. But if they attack us, I’m not hesitating.”

 

“It’s also pragmatic,” said Anargrin, “if they are doing this against their will. If we spare them, they might be willing to help us, tell us more about what’s going on, exactly. Or even aid us firsthand, once they learn we’re actually here to help.”

 

Raleas smiled, there always with an ulterior motive to his supposed altruism.

 

“Raleas, a good place to pull over is coming upon us, twenty meters on the left,” said Anargrin.

 

Raleas couldn’t make it out beyond the headlights. She didn’t have the Hunters’ enhanced dark vision.

 

Raleas had often wondered why he’d usually get her to drive because of this, and when she’d finally asked him, he’d answered, “Because I was raised in a time when the horse and carriage was the most common type of transport. While I know how to drive an automobile, I feel you are much better than I will ever be, having been born and raised around it.”

 

Raleas grinned to herself. She’d felt he was bullshitting at the time, but he’d been proven truthful when they’d taken the children back in Camaria. Raleas hadn’t driven then because she was the best shot amongst them.

 

They converged on the outcrop. It was a good six meters wide, and ten in length, and Raleas pulled over, bringing the Jeep to a halt carefully, so there were at least four meters’ free space between them and the descending cliff face.

 

Anargrin opened the door and climbed out. “This is me, guys. Good luck.”

 

“So what? You’re just abandoning us?” asked Jelcine, sounding surprisingly bitter, causing Raleas to look at her.

 

Anargrin gave her a bemused look. “When did you ever really actually need me, Jelcine? You’ll be fine. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think that.”

 

Then he was gone, disappearing into the darkness like he was never there.

 

With practiced ease, Anargrin climbed the cliff face. The wind whirled through his enhanced ears so vigorously that it made it almost impossible to hear much else. He made it to the top seconds before the followers arrived. Anargrin watched as two of the cars stopped farther up the road, blocking any escape north, and the other two halted a bit downward. Then the twenty total occupants climbed out—all of the locals wielding an assortment of bolt-action hunting rifles and shotguns.

 

Anargrin clenched his jaw. If rogue Hunters were in charge of this farce, they must’ve suspected by now they were Hunters themselves. They must’ve known sending these idiots was pretty much a death sentence, assuming, of course, none of these ambushers were disguised Hunters themselves. Anargrin doubted that though. He remembered then that the next train was due to leave in just over an hour, and perhaps the true kidnappers felt they were exposed and were abandoning the town, leaving the locals they’d recruited to die, now that they’d outlived their usefulness.

The thought sent sickening waves through Anargrin’s gut. He’d done many questionable things in his lifetime, but such ruthless, cowardly callousness didn’t sit well with him.

 

He moved on, slinking in silence through the rough terrain like a specter born of darkness.

 

Not well at all.

 

“Where’s the elf?” demanded the leader, a fat, slovenly man in his late fifties. He wore an old, dirty, and worn blue rule enforcer uniform that looked two sizes too small. But he held his shotgun with practiced confidence.

 

Jelcine, Raleas, Emilia, and Wilom stood beside the Jeep, relaxed but ready.

 

“Why are you following us?” asked Jelcine. “We are just here on business.”

 

“Quit the fucking act!” snapped the rule enforcer. “We’re not stupid. We know who the fuck you really are. You’re Hunters, nosing around in other people’s business, like always. We’ve got no vampires here. Now, where the fuck is the elf?”

 

Jelcine grinned. “Well if you’re so sure we’re Hunters, then why would you think we’re going to tell you ‘where the fuck’ the elf is?”

 

The man grimaced. “Because you’re cornered and have got twenty guns aimed and ready to kill you.”

 

The rule enforcer racked his shotgun in emphasis, echoed by many others.

 

Raleas smiled and shared a look with Jelcine. To anyone else, these fools would’ve been intimidating, but for them, it was beyond pathetic. As much as Raleas disliked this idiot, she still hoped Jelcine would be able to negotiate out of this. Raleas doubted it though. They seemed out for blood.

 

“Alright, I’ll tell you,” said Jelcine, sounding a little too smug for Raleas’s liking, like she was talking down to a petulant child, and it was becoming evident that Jelcine had no intention to negotiate.

 

“If you can all just put down your guns so we can talk this over like civilized people, okay?”

 

“Why would we do that?” asked the rule enforcer.

 

Jelcine furrowed her brow in bemusement. “Uh, because you think we may be Hunters. I would’ve thought that to be enough.”

 

“Smug bitch,” said the rule enforcer. “We’ve got you cornered, outgunned, and outnumbered two to one. So I’ll ask one more time, where is the fucking elf?”

 

“It’s actually five to one, dumbass. And did you fools actually stop to consider that we may have allowed you to corner us? That even with all your numbers and all your over-compensatory guns we wouldn’t be sure we could take you out?”

 

“Jelcine,” said Emilia.

 

“I see that you’re just a bunch of fucking stupid-as-shit, inbred, back-town hicks who are willing to sell their own into a life of slavery just for a little extra coin, so fuck you. Anargrin was wrong. There isn’t any gray about this at all, just black.”

 

“Jelcine,” snapped Emilia.

 

“Oh, fuck this,” roared the rule enforcer. “We’ll just find that fucking elf ourselves. Kill them. Kill them now.”

 

“I assure you, no matter how hard you look, you will never find him,” said Jelcine grinning her scary smile. “But you won’t live long enough to ever get the chance.”

 

In the blink of an eye, Raleas had her Stegran Mark IV drawn and readied its rough grip familiar, comforting in her sweat-slicked palms. While in a blaze of light, Jelcine summoned her great ax into being.

 

Then the locals opened fire.

 

Anargrin paused in his ascent as he heard the gunfire.

 

He couldn’t say he was surprised, just disappointed.

 

Anargrin sighed and moved on.

 

The hailing wall of fire smashed and bounced off Wilom’s hastily summoned shield, allowing Raleas, Wilom, and Emilia to leap behind the cover of the Jeep. Jelcine’s ax flourished and deflected showering shots as she charged. With a roar, she messily cut an attacker’s torso in two in a massive fountain of blood.

 

Raleas was up and shooting, her shots ejecting out the craniums of two locals before their returning gunfire caused her to crouch back behind the Jeep.

 

Emilia had already started her gruesome change, and Raleas tried to ignore the girl’s pained grunts and groans and the tearing, the horrid tearing, which Raleas knew wasn’t just her clothes.

 

“Wilom. How long until you can get another shield up?” Raleas asked.

 

“Precisely twenty seconds,” yelled the young Hunter. “It will be stronger than the last. I assure you. That one was hastily prepared and summoned. I would have started summoning it earlier but was afraid that even my slight gestures might have provoked them to attack.”

 

Raleas nodded. Wilom shouldn’t have worried that Jelcine had done an excellent job of that already. “Forget the damn shield, then. Use a fireball . . . or something.”

 

“As you wish,” he said as he raised his hands, and they began to light up.

 

Raleas was up again, shooting off three more shots, each hitting a target despite them being spread out and taking cover behind their vehicles. She was shooting to kill; there was little point in not, even with her considerable skill. Going for nonlethal shots was hard, more likely to make them die a drawn-out, painful death than not. She just hoped they’d take someone, anyone, alive.

 

Jelcine was in amongst it, fighting six of the fools at once as they swung the butts of their rifles at her ineffectually as she was blocking, weaving, and dodging through it all, looking like she was toying with them. They should’ve spread out and tried to catch her in a crossfire. Still, they were stubborn, misogynistic men who believed, due to their gender, they were innately superior and thus able to take down the crazy, bloodthirsty female Hunter with a giant ax.

 

Raleas shook her head and ducked back into cover.

 

As she knelt, Wilom was on his feet and flinging his fireball. Raleas watched as the vast thing traveled slowly through the air and hit one of the enemy cars in a loud explosion, forcing Raleas to flinch away.

 

There were blood-churning screams and the