Current location:	The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	Apocalyptica- Worlds Collide

Apocalyptica Fic: What Could Go Wrong? Part 9

Aedd’s head swung around as a woodswomen next to him fell, her eyes widened in shock, a silvery bolt protruding from her neck in a spurt of dark blood.

“Trap! Deceit! Trick! We are betrayed!” In his agitation, Aedd had forgotten that most of those present would not understand Finnish, and so it didn’t help his case any, now that the woodsmen were waking up to the very real danger of some lunatic with a crossbow firing at them from the other end of the clearing, that he appeared to be closer to the stage, had not been fired upon, and was speaking the language of the interlopers…

In mindless rage, a couple of the larger woodsmen growled- they actually barked with frustration, and as the crowd milled in that awful confusion that isn’t yet certain whether to scatter and run or turn and fight, these two launched themselves bodily onto Aedd. Standing right at the front of the stage, Eicca grimaced and prepared to see the worst- such a small man could not hope to stop two large, angry psychopaths from ripping his throat out.

But in a moment, there was a howl- as clear as Perttu’s fingers had ever wrought on his strings, but with all the animalistic power that only a true beats can create- beyond beauty, into feral race memory,. It fair out the wind up Eicca, and made Mikko glance up from his prone position; Antero’s head twitched in response and Paavo was up and standing in a moment., only Perttu remained crouched- lost to the world.

There was a heaving of the two large, scrambling bodies at his feet, and then Eicca- joined by a horrified Paavo- watched as the two six-foot-plus, twenty-five-stone-plus men- were picked up and thrown across the crowd, flattening some poor blighters who didn’t move fast enough. Revealed... well... Aedd had looked better, it was true- only because it’s a damn sight easier to deal with a human being and retain one’s sanity, than face a ravening demon and try to strike a deal.

Still small, Aedd’s body nonetheless had appeared to grow in every dimension to a subtle degree. The muscles had roped and knotted; the forearms expanded, covered now in a thick dark pelt; the hands expanded into fingered paws- long, strong, ripping digits ending in inches-long slashing claws. His chest, visible through the low neckline of his tunic, looked bulkier, muscled, and equally hairy. His boots were gone- the leather torn to ribbons as the wolfine rear paws- including the cocked, reversed ‘knees’ had expanded into shape; the feet ending in wicked-looking claws as well. And his face… still mostly human, but with long, heavy sideburns of hair, massively pointed ears, a snouted nose and mouth- the nostrils flattened against the muzzle; curving teeth jutting from under the upper lip… and his eyes… all humanity gone: pitch black and golden-slitted, they widened, then narrowed, staring hard at Eicca. He grinned. Eicca gawped.

“A pune aceştia sînge bărbaţi afară de meu durere Acum!”

“What?” Paavo whimpered.

“Not good!” Eicca yelped back, preparing to sell his life dearly. He realised he was thrusting the Strad forwards, like a musical relic, as if the wildmen’s avowed love of beauty could stave off an attack by thrusting it between himself and them.

 

THWACK, SHOOOP, CHUNK! The bolts were flying from the Driver’s crossbow with deadly force, cutting holes of confusion into the crowd. Only those close to Aedd had heard the lycanthrope’s command, and consequently were rather too busy stalking the band to pay much heed to the chaos happening on the edge of the crowed. Aedd grabbed two by the shoulder and, dragging them with him, left the handful now slowly surrounding the band’s little island of a stage, their grins vulpine, their eyes dangerously red. Aedd dragged his two surprised henchmen through the crowd, rounding on confused, frightened werewolves with a snap of his elongated jaw. It worked- the crowd was responding instinctively, and before the band’s horrified stare, more and more were morphing (a disgusting process that looked as if their flesh was melting and reforming into a new, supernaturally impossible configuration between man and wolf) and chasing Aedd towards the Driver- the source of the attack. The Driver, however, remained calm, crouching atop the rig, firing off a lightening array of silver bolts. He glanced towards the band- small figures in the near distance, frozen in shock, surrounded by a ring of hungry-looking werewolves.

 

“For God’s Sake- JUMP AND RUN!” he bellowed, setting down the crossbow and letting rip with the large shotgun he swung around from his back. The pellets must be full of buckshot- the effects of their explosive range went beyond one flesh-ripping explosion- scattering carnage in a wide circle around the original target. Lycans were falling, screaming, and clutching faces, legs, bodies. Then the Driver lobbed a few solid objects lightly into the front rows of Aedd’s charge. The resultant bangs and spray of glittering shrapnel from the grenades took out large swathes. Aedd ducked behind a tree, the others following suit and going to cover.  He growled and barked at the Driver, but it had worked; a path had opened up, right down the middle.

“MOVE- YOUR- COLLECTIVE- ARSES!” the Driver hollered, and this time the intensity of his command could not be nay-sayed.

Paavo and Eicca glanced at each other, and dropping their cellos and bows, they each grabbed Perttu under one arm and heaved him upright.

“Whassafergit?” the dark youth enquired, woozily. Paavo slapped him lightly.

“Running now, youngster!”

Eicca had shot a glance backwards. “Mikko! Antsa! We are leaving!”

“Forward?” Paavo asked.

“Only way,” Eicca replied, grimly, and taking a stronger grip on Perttu, they made a short run-up (Perttu’s legs gamely joining in, even if his mind was utterly away with the fairies), and leapt.

 

Further back on the stage, Mikko had performed a creditable leap right over his drum kit, and had gripped Antero by the arm.

“C’mon!”

“Bu-but, the ladies!” Antero had eyes only for the gorgeous instrument on his lap. Death could claim him; destruction take him; but be parted from his wooden mistress? He would not!

“Get on!” Mikko snatched at the neck, causing Antero to tighten his own grip and be dragged upwards, glaring. Mikko hardly saw the affront he caused, however, because he was legging it- and Antero had to trot to keep up- as the pair of them sailed over the heads of the stage-guarding man-dogs. What Eicca, Paavo and Perttu had already discovered post-leap upon landing (badly), rolling (Eicca), tumbling (Paavo) and cartwheeling (Perttu) to a stop; the stupid creatures had only been one row thick. They looked impressive and scary, yes- but were not too bright. The two older men scooped up a softly complaining Perttu and frog-galloped him towards the opening in the wildmen ranks. It was damn risky going right down the middle- but the Driver was still laying down an impressive covering fire, and their captors actually seemed to prefer dropping to each side, using the bushes and tress as cover, leaving a ‘No Man’s land’ down the centre.

One small snag presented- the entrance to the rig was actually on the other side to the one presented to the struggling figures below. The band would have to run up, around, and then in. That made it riskier.

 

More concerned with getting a woozily giggling Perttu to safety, Paavo and Eicca had little time to spare for tactics. As it was, they hit the start of the gauntlet-run that was the only escape channel, and immediately stepped into a war zone. Werewolves lunged at them from both sides- huge swipes of paw and claw, tooth and bellowed rage. Paavo caught a tip of a claw on his upper arm and yelled as it opened a nasty but superficial gash. Eicca narrowly avoided being orally scalped, but his long hair became snagged in an eye-tooth, and he screamed as his head-long flight caused the hair to be painfully ripped from his head. Clutching at the tortured patch of skin with one hand, he dragged Perttu along with the other. As for the youngest member of the group, he was watching the bangs and explosions; the gunshots and silver death that kept the werewolves at bay, with wide eyes, making soft “bang bang!” noises and waving his hands in gun-slinger style. He loped along quite happily between the other two, for all the world looking as if he was out for a jog.

 

Aedd howled as they went past, and kept on howling, sending out silly-sortie after silly-sortie. The important thing was to keep the humans busy and focused on this side, so the party he’d sent around the back, behind the Driver’s line of fire, could progress unregarded. Let these pitiful mortals think the Clan were brainless animals- they would repent of their arrogance soon enough.

Behind the three cellists, Mikko was still locked in mortal spat-fight with Antero.

“Drop it!”

“Never!”

“Lose the cello, Antsa! It’s not worth it!”

“How can you-! It’s a Strad!”

“Big fat deal! Its heavy arse is slowing us down!” The two keenest joggers in the band were actually making good time- they were all but on top of the other three.

“I cannot leave her!”

“This is not a lonely hearts!”

“Just because your kit wasn’t anything special-!”

“You take that back!”

The werewolves, aware of Aedd’s ambush plan of allowing the enemy to make this first pass unmolested, watched the two go by with some confusion.  They didn’t bother to even make a show of threatening the pair- the fight over the cello was cruelty enough, they figured, although why they; innocent  lycanthropes, should be subjected to the punishment of having to listen to these weird Northmen b*tch their way along was anybody’s guess.

 

Still bickering, the two lost their way and took the longer path, around the back of the coach.

Aedd gave a low curse- his attackers had gone that way. He signalled a few to follow him, and made to take the rear path himself, forgetting the Driver’s eagle eye was still on them- a rain of automatic fire- silver bullets, naturally, brought him up short. He stopped, letting off a stream of multi-lingual invective.

Daciana appeared at his shoulder, and hung onto it, pouting prettily- not a bad feat for someone whose face was all but muzzle.

“I’m hungry,” she complained in Gaelic, locking her and Aedd into a private world from the surrounding non-Celtic woodsmen. His arm snaked about her waist, even while his hot-eyed stare raked the top of the rig, where the Driver remained hidden by the awkward angle presented by the undergrowth where they crouched in relation to the vehicle.

“Soon, soon,” Aedd muttered, his foul mood lifting into an anticipatory grin.

And then the shouting started.

“NOW!” Aedd hollered, leaping from cover. As he anticipated, the Driver was no longer looking their way- distracted by the band’s efforts to get into the rig on the other side.

The yelling showed that Aedd’s sortie party had played their hand. Time for reinforcements. With a whoop of victory, the proud leader belted around the rig, to throw himself and his remaining men into action.

 

Behind the rig, confusion reigned. Mikko and Antero, still carrying the exquisite instrument between them, had trotted behind the rig- and straight into the back of the ambush party, waiting patiently behind a clump of bushes by the main door. There had been a moment of shocked recognition between the two groups, and then, something had snapped in Mikko. Wresting the cello completely away from Antero, he had rounded on the werewolves, yelling and screaming like a lunatic possessed. Seeing a madman come rocketing towards them, waving a heavy wooden instrument over his head, the werewolves had taken the better part of valour- and scampered to either side, so that Mikko had run plum through the middle of them and smack into the other three coming the other way.

There was a moment’s confused scrambling as the bowled-over musicians struggled to right themselves- made harder by finding their limbs wrapped very which way around a cello and an irate drummer.

Watching this with high amusement, the werewolves- their cover blown and out in the open- did not notice the Driver appear at the opening door, and so the first round of bullets took out all but three where they stood  before they had any clue as to what to do next. The remainder, standing a little further back, closer to their original cover, saw the death of their comrades and became incensed. Two went for the sprawling heap of humanity and cello, as the Driver’s gun jammed, and the last one turned to face Antero.

“Time to kiss goodbye,” it told him in the shakiest of Finnish.

But for Antero, this was about outside of enough.

He and his friends been threatened and terrified that night, he had had his wonderful cello stolen before his eyes, watched in shock as a stray bullet had just been shot right into the body of his wooden darling, and now some idiot was mangling his mother tongue!

Antero didn’t have a cello to wave about and appear a dangerous madman; no, he had only his wounded sense of pride, his fear and his surging fury.

More than enough.

Mr Cool-

Lost.

It.

Big Time.

 

The werewolf that turned on him never knew what hit it- although much later on, Antero’s knuckles were to realise that supernatural jaws are hard. Leaping over the shocked, prone body, Antero advanced on the other two like the Angel of Righteous Butt-Whipping, and taking up his cello, swung it with all his might- clouting the pair of them a hard, heavy blow across the chin and throat. They fell heavily- clutching instinctively at the thing that had clouted them- dragging away the cello once more; now nicely cracked along its right flank. Antero answered with a roar that scraped his throat dry and rattled the teeth in the heads of all who heard it- making even the Driver pause. The others looked at him in awe. Aedd and his posse, rounding at that moment the end of the rig, stopped, temporarily rattled.

The Driver snapped out of it first, stepping out to pick up the bandmembers and bodily hurling them towards the door. Antero dithered. Mikko grabbed his hand and strong-armed him around to the doorway, Antero protesting all the way about wanting to go back and rescue his precious.

Aedd snapped out of it, gesturing his horde forward with a sweep of his arm and a growl-

The Driver saw this, fumbled his weapon, and dropped it-

Paavo, Eicca and Mikko saw this and tried to shove the other two towards the door-

Antero fell over Paavo’s feet, causing a blockage-

Perttu, nearest the door, seemed to wake up as if from a satisfying and faintly troubling dream. He rubbed his face and frowned, then stooped (causing even more falling-over-each-other problems for the rest of them trying to squeeze around him). Standing up, Perttu revealed what had arrested his attention; an open packet of jelly sweets- a cheerful, jewel-bright selection of sugary goodness. With a cheerful expression of anticipatory delight, he reached into the bag-

-to have it rudely snatched from his hand, and thrown backwards by an irate Eicca. He was then summarily shoved into the rig, the others tumbling in behind.

The sweeties turned end-over-end through the air- to land, with a cinematic ‘splat’ right at the feet of the werewolves. The bag burst open. Being a family size pack- about the only thing large enough to keep the band’s (especially Perttu’s) sugar cravings at bay, there were a LOT of sweets to come flying out- and out they came, scattering across a wide area, the little shapes of sugary gelatine becoming lost in the moonlit darkness on the rough ground.

The pack ground to a halt with a howl. With longing, angry eyes Aedd and his people stared after the band- only a matter of feet away, heads poking out of the door, curiously astonished despite the urgency of the situation. The werewolves dropped to the ground and actually started digging in the dirt, desperately scraping up each and every sweetie.

 

“Well, what d’ya know,” Mikko murmured.

“Let’s go with it!” Paavo advised, dropping an unresisting Perttu and Antero onto seating in the belly of the mechanical beast.

The Driver hastened to comply, and clambered through the interior to the cab, where he turned the key, and the satisfying sound of several tonnage of heavy horsepower throttled in reply.

Wasting no time, the Driver switched on the powerful twin beams of the headlamps and turning the great thing, roared out from the clearing, sending flying clumps of earth, small bushes and the occasional lone werewolf that tired to hurl itself onto the barrelling tour coach.

Sheer weight and momentum carried the rig, grounching and gallumping on protesting axels and bumping suspension, over the rough ground. In a relatively short space of time, they had hit a gravel sweep of countrified road, and the Driver swung along it, watching for the thinning of trees that signalled the end of the woods. The thinning came, and they were crashing out onto a main road, dawn breaking in their eyes, a conveniently placed sign telling them that they were mere miles from their next gig destination.

 

Exhausted, the band flopped back gratefully against padded seats and bunks. The Driver drove with a fixed expression, as if possessed.

Eicca eyed him. Just who the hell was this guy?

From his position- half-tossed, half-collapsed onto a sofa-length bench, Perttu bubbled upwards with a giggle, then a chuckle, then a laugh that swiftly turned on a moan into a stream of overwrought tears. Nearest to him, Mikko threw an arm around his shoulders and hugged him.

Paavo’s eye rolled to Eicca.

“You ok?”

“Just peachy, thanks.”

Mikko nodded towards a pale, silent Antero, sat upright, hands clasped before him, rocking slightly, his eyes miles away.

“I think he’s missing his girlfriend,” Mikko offered.

“Huh?”

“The cello.”

Eicca winced. They had been spectacular instruments. Paavo shifted over to sit beside Antero, chaffing him on the back in manly solidarity.

“Never mind, eh? Music is a hard mistress, and her instruments are wanton fillies that will leave you as soon as play with you.”

Antero spared Paavo a dry glance. “You mean she’d have proved unfaithful?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“I hardly gave her a chance, though, did I?”

“Did you see how she flung herself at those- er- people?” Mikko piped up. “The hussy.”

“She was doing it so save us- to save me!” Antero’s face fell and he wept, too. Paavo rubbed his face tiredly, having no more words to offer in comfort, instead leaning gently against the other man, offering a silent support. Mikko and Perttu had their heads together- Perttu snuffling now, Mikko looking shaky and wide-eyed with delayed shock.

 

Eicca watched his friends, sadly. Battered, exhausted, overwrought and scared- who knew tour could be so traumatising?