Guss takes aim again. This time, the Wretched are already reacting, splitting and ducking behind the charred ribs of the last group to reach the wire. They've adapted quickly. Not well enough. The first round cracks the jaw clean off a helmeted skull, sending the helmet in a lazy spiral like a coin losing its last bit of spin. He works the bolt by feel, settles back onto the firing step, and—
He notices it, the Yeomen to his left and right have pulled back. Two steps, maybe three. It wasn't them retreating but a shift in their formation. An unvoiced understanding that whatever they just saw, whatever Guss just did, is now his domain to manage. No one wants to get caught in the crossfire. The boy with the trembling hand is still there, but now it clings to his rifle like a life ring. His eyes keep flickering from Guss's chest wound to the horizon and back again, as if he can't decide which is more alarming.
Another shell lands. This one is closer, dirt raining into the trench, and with it comes a new shape: a figure in a battered green trench coat, the shoulders bulked out with mismatched plates and the hemline slashed ragged at the knees. Sword and shield strapped across his back, and a helmet that belongs in a medieval painting, bright red and crested, the faceplate pushed up to reveal a light stubble of gray hair. Eyes more tired than most, but a sharp determination as well.
He moves with the kind of efficiency you only see in someone who's learned to live by the seconds not the days. No wasted motion, no drama. Just steps into the clearing his men gave him then glances once at Guss's glow, and nods to himself as if ticking off a box on a long mental checklist.
He comes to a halt two feet away.
The Yeomen around them tense up, as if waiting for one of them to kill the other.
Guss lowers the rifle but doesn't break his stance. He sees, close up, the way the officer's hands flex around the edge of the parapet, how they bear the fine white scars of old burns and a thousand other accidents.
The officer speaks first.
"Lieutenant Duvon Lambert. Fifty-fifth, New Antioch Yeomen." His voice is crisp, "You want to tell me what you're doing in my trench?"
Guss lets the question hang, as if it's the most normal thing in the world to be asked why you're alive.
He shrugs, squinting at the field as if considering it. "Just passing through. Though I'm not completely sure where this is also."
Duvon's eyes narrow. "Right. And the lightshow, as well as the… skull collection?"
Guss snorts. "That was self-defense. The big one had an axe."
Duvon glances at the wound in Guss's chest. "You're aware you're bleeding out, right?"
Guss looks down at himself, as if surprised to find it still open. "I'll walk it off."
A short silence. The artillery above them begins to walk fire in reverse, falling back in time with a signal or a timing pattern Guss hasn't yet learned. The Yeomen relax, a breath at a time.
Duvon watches him a second longer, then tilts his helmet back. "Name?"
"Guss Rover," he answers.
That gives Duvon a half-beat of pause, but the face says he's not going to give Guss the satisfaction of acting surprised. (a/n. not everyone has last names in this alternate era.)
"You an Angel?" the lieutenant says, half accusing, half hopeful. "Or just another penitent with a death wish?"
Guss grins, dry as desert wind. "Neither. God sent me here to fight, and I sure as hell will."
There's a moment where Duvon is about to ask for clarification, but the answer sits there between them, before something else snaps their attention.
A horn blares from the opposite side of the field. Not a brass call, not a bugle. A deep, wet blare like the world's oldest conch shell, echoing off stone and mud and every wet bone in the ground. The men around them tense up.
Guss sees the color drain from a few of the Yeomen. He looks at Duvon. The lieutenant's face has gone careful.
"That your signal?" Guss asks.
"No," Duvon says. "That's theirs."
A low, hoarse command carries down the trench line. Guss doesn't catch the words, just the shape of them, the way men scramble to stations. Duvon takes the lead, gesturing Guss with him as he moves. They pass Yeomen crouched over automatic rifles, men loading grenades into battered mortars, a team heaving a box of what looks like blackened molotovs over the top. The world behind the firing step is like an industrial artery. Sandbags, wire, crates, and the rattle of stretchers hauling blood back and forth.
Duvon pushes past a knot of men crowded around a field radio. The signal is gone, either jammed or just obliterated by the noise. But one Yeoman is banging on the box with the flat of his hand. Guss seeing this lets out a light chuckle thinking, 'Should have hit it with a hammer, always works'.
Guss follows the lieutenant up a flight of sandbag steps, ducking under a collapsed timber and into what passes for a command post. It's a dugout at the bottom of a crater, lined with planks and bandoliers of heavy ammunition. There's a table, the surface a topographic map riddled with pencil marks and thumbtacks. Duvon doesn't waste a second, he finds the first available Yeoman and jerks his head. "Report."
The Yeoman, a thick-set kid with dark hair matted flat to his scalp, barely blinks at Guss's presence. The new normal is already working its way through the line.
"Movement across the field, sir," the Yeoman says. "Big, yet not a Wretched surge, it's moving slower than usual." He looks at the map, then at Guss's already healing chest. Before looking through his periscope again. "Sir, lights are flashing, a warning signal."
Duvon doesn't even look at him. "Where's the enemy movement now?"
"Seventy yards out and closing," the Yeoman says. "Direct center. Looks like—" The kid stops, squints at the field through a periscope stuck through the crater wall, and finishes: "Heretic Priest. Confirmed. I see the mask."
Duvon's face shifts. Not fear, but a harder version of the same.
"Is there cover?" Duvon asks.
The Yeoman shakes his head. "It's walking straight for us. No attempt to hide."
Duvon looks at Guss, then the map, then back to Guss. "You ever seen a Priest before?"
Guss shakes his head, not trusting himself to say anything clever.
"Don't get close unless you mean it," Duvon says. "They'll cast from range—blood magic, rot, stuff that doesn't make sense to sane people. But up close they're glass. Break them, you break their command. There'll be a Death Commando with it. Always is. If you see one, the other's not far. The Commando will wait for a distraction, and then come for your throat."
Guss tilts his head, absorbing. "And your plan is?"
Duvon smiles, no joy in it. "We throw everything we have at the Priest. You and me get close, take it out before it can cook up a major spell. If we're lucky, the Death Commando stays hidden, and we worry about it after."
The Yeoman by the table interrupts, voice shaking: "Sir, the last time they sent a Priest, half the line went blind."
Duvon nods, as if the information is useful but not a game-changer. "That's why we'll kill it first."
Guss glances over the table, notes the old battle scars, the places where blood has soaked into the wood. "So. Lead the way?"
Duvon checks his sword hilt, tightens a gauntlet. "We go now. Priest will be setting up soon, the best time to hit is before it gets to close."
He turns to Guss, looks him up and down, lingering on the blood-soaked shirt and the way the golden glow has receded to just the edge of his skin. "You sure you're up for this? There is no certainty for survival."
Guss grins. "I'll manage."
Duvon nods. "Good. Let's go make a mess."
They leave the command post, stepping over a Yeoman laid out on a stretcher, his leg a red-black mess but his face serene as the morphine does its work. The trench is filling with a new energy, the men shouting, others running ammo up and down the line, some just standing still and shaking, waiting for whatever comes next.
As they reach the top, Guss can see the shape moving through the smoke at seventy yards. The Heretic Priest is impossible to mistake: a tall, gaunt figure in shredded black robes, the head covered by a mask like a bird's beak made from barbed wire and shards of glass. It carries a staff, topped with something that pulses wet and red, like a heart cut out minutes ago. The staff radiates something wrong, a pressure in the air, and every time the Priest lifts it, the ground at its feet sizzles and cracks.
To either side, the Wretched form up in rough files, but they keep a healthy distance from the Priest itself, as if the thing scares even them.
Guss and Duvon take up positions at the lip of a shell crater, behind a pair of Yeomen setting up a Lewis gun on a muddy tripod.
Duvon leans in, voice low. "See the bodyguard?"
Guss scans. In the shadow of the Priest's trailing robe, a shape moves. Not large, but low to the ground, every step deliberate. Like a snake ready to pounce. The face is covered by a skull mask, the hands sheathed in black claws that glisten even in the gloom. Heretic Death Commando, just as promised.
"Got it," Guss says.
"We give it something to chase," Duvon says. "But not before the Priest is down."
He raises two fingers. The Yeomen with the Lewis gun nod, bracing. The kid with the trembling hand is there too, white-knuckled but focused, the world reduced to the space between the lip of the crater and the oncoming Priest.
"Fire when ready," Duvon says.
The Lewis gun spits a dozen rounds before it jams. The first few hammer into the Wretched, vaporizing arms and heads. Two rounds hit the Priest's chest, the impact making it stagger but not drop. It lifts the staff high, and with a motion that Guss cannot follow, the air fills with black shards. One Yeoman screams as his face is flayed open. Another drops without a sound, hands clutching a wound that isn't there.
Guss focuses on the Priest. He can feel the glow in his chest now, coiling tighter, ready to be called.
"Now!" Duvon shouts, and they move.
Over the top of the crater, through the wire, boots splashing in the water that's gone instantly red with blood. The Wretched reach for Guss, but the golden light surges and they recoil, their hands blackening as if touching a live wire. Duvon's sword sings as he moves, a slice of silver against the gray.
The Heretic Priest sees them. Its free hand points, and a line of blood erupts from the ground, snaking toward Guss like a whip. He dodges left, lets the line pass, and closes to ten yards.
Duvon's shield takes the brunt of the next spell. Acid, maybe, or fire, or something in between, but he doesn't slow. The sword comes down and hacks at the Priest's staff, severing it halfway up the length.
The Priest howls. The sound cuts straight through Guss's skull, but he's already on it. He drops the rifle, grabs the thing's outstretched arm, and lets the glow do the rest.
It burns. The contact sears through glove and robe and bone, and the Heretic Priest's arm dissolves in a spray of black ash and steaming gore.
Duvon moves in for the finishing blow, but the Priest lashes out with the ruined staff, catching him across the helmet and knocking him flat.
Guss feels the world contract, the Death Commando is coming, low and fast, two black claws aimed straight for his kidneys.
He pivots, grabs the Priest's mask, and pulls. The mask comes free, and behind it is nothing. But a hollow, screaming void that eats all the light in front of it. Guss jams the mask into the Commando's face just as the claws reach him.
The mask begins to burn causing the Commando to shriek and recoil, clutching its head.
Duvon is back up, blood running down his face from a cut on his brow. "Finish it!" he yells.
Guss obliges.
He drives the glow through his fist, a punch straight through the Priest's chest. The light erupts from the Priest's back in a fountain, the glow swallowing the black. The Priest goes rigid, spasms once, then drops, leaving nothing but a shell of itself.
The Death Commando, still shrieking, tries to retreat, but Guss is faster. He grabs the thing by the neck and slams it down into the mud, the glow turning its body to glass, then to powder.
Silence.
He looks up. The field is empty. The Wretched are gone, the Yeomen are staring, and Duvon is clutching his side, but grinning.
"That's one for the record books," Duvon says.
Guss wipes blood from his mouth. "You always start your mornings like this?"
Duvon just laughs, shaking his head. "You really aren't an angel."
Guss shrugs, then helps the lieutenant to his feet.
Behind them, the Yeomen are already moving in to secure the field, their faces caught between awe and terror.
Guss stands there a moment longer, catching his breath, the golden light settling back down to a low simmer.
"War's not getting any easier," he says.
Duvon grins, checks his sidearm, and slaps Guss on the back. "It never does."
They head back to the trench, leaving the scorched and broken remains of the Heretic Priest behind them.
_____
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Well that's all for today. If you enjoyed leave a comment.
Don't be too stressed about how they killed the heretic priest and commando so quickly. I am just trying to move the plot along. And I believe this is possible because they are not expecting Guss's power to do what it has done. Next time won't be as easy
35 powerstones if you want a bonus chapter.