Lara Croft and the Blade of Gwynnever

  “There’s a site in Antarctica!” exclaimed Lara.

  “This culture goes back into prehistory,” said Florence. “To before recorded time, thousands of years into our past.”

  “To a time when Antartica was far enough north to sustain any kind of population?” asked Lara.

  “You should not doubt,” said Florence. “I know you have seen things.”

  Lara sighed. It was true. She had seen things. The long drive, the extraordinary sites, and Florence’s demanding company were beginning to get to her. She closed her eyes and rubbed them with the heel of her left hand.

  Her palms felt strange, like chamois leather, and there was a sudden draught on her cheeks. She dropped her hands from her face and opened her eyes. She was sitting in a circle of women, and the women were looking at her. They all had coppery-brown skin and black eyes, and they were all smiling gently at her. The women wore soft, pale skins, drank from bone beakers, and laughed together. There was a plan. They looked to Lara for guidance.

  She was about to say something.

  She blinked again, and the sword was in front of her face.

  “All we have to do is say the words and place the sword in the groove on the altar,” said Florence, “and it is done.”

  “We...?” said Lara.

  “The words are for a group,” said Florence, “in the form of a call and response. I don’t want to do it alone.”

  “And you expect me to do it with you?” asked Lara. She snorted.

  “I want you to do it with me, Lara.”

  “And the last time we met, you wanted to kill me,” said Lara.

  “That was business,” said Florence.

  “As far as I’m concerned, so is this,” said Lara.

  “This is sisterhood,” said Florence.

  Lara snorted again.

  “You mock me,” said Florence. “You should not mock, Lara.”

  “What’s taking them so long?” Carter asked Denny.

  “Girls do like to talk,” said Denny.

  “We’re talking about Lara Croft and Florence Race,” said Carter. “Not exactly bosom buddies.”

  “In my experience women can always find something to talk about. I’ve never understood it.”

  “Lara’s right. You really are a sexist pig, Denny Sampson.”

  Carter noticed a small smile on Sandler’s lips. The bodyguard was pretending not to listen.

  The three men were sitting on high stools at the long table in the anteroom.

  Carter reached for one of the books that Florence had left there.

  One of the guards banged the barrel of his submachine gun on the table, hard.

  “No touch,” he said.

  “You’re not the only one with a gun,” said Carter.

  “You’re outnumbered,” said Denny. “You could try making it easy on us.”

  “So much for trying to find out why Race wanted the sword,” said Carter.

  “Does it matter why she wants it if Croft wants it too?”

  “It matters to Lara,” said Carter.

  “What’s that noise?” asked Sandler after a few moments of silence.

  “I don’t hear anything,” said Denny.

  Then one of the guards looked up and shared eye contact with one of his colleagues.

  There were sounds of a scuffle somewhere, outside or in the passage to the tomb, and a pop.

  “The locals are getting restless,” said Denny.

  “So we can add racism to your misogyny, can we, Denny?” said Carter.

  “Quiet!” spat one of the guards. All five of them were armed and facing the exit.

  There was a sudden, loud bang. They all felt the pressure of it in the tight confines of the chamber. One of the guards hurried into the passageway.

  “What the hell is going on?” asked Carter.

  The second flash bang went off in the entrance to the antechamber, its light and shock amplified by the room. Everyone reeled, deafened and blinded. One of the guards began shooting wildly into the passage.

  “Crap!” said Denny, dropping to the floor and covering his head with his hands. Another flash bang bounced into the room and went off under the table, scattering the books and loose notes, sending them floating down through the choking smoke and haze.

  Lara and Florence turned at the sound of the explosions.

  “Are you coming?” asked Lara, drawing her second weapon.

  Florence hesitated for a split second and then turned back to the altar.

  A gun in each hand, Lara began to make a move in the direction of the explosions. She could deal with Florence later, but right now, she wasn’t going to allow the site to be destroyed.

  “You can’t leave!” Florence called after her. “Not now!”

  “Don’t worry,” said Lara. “I plan to finish up here. First things first.”

  Agitated, Florence glanced once in Lara’s direction as Croft jogged away. Then, she breathed out long and hard, and took the sword in both of her hands.

  She raised it above her head and began the incantation that she had learned by heart from the hieroglyphics that had been transcribed for her, at great cost, by a local expert.

  She began the rite alone.

  Florence Race’s local guards did not respond well to the invasion. With guns to their heads, they were on their knees with their hands in the air before they could properly see or hear anything.

  “Mr. Sampson,” said Dritan Vata, an armed, black-clad bodyguard standing on either side of him. “I implore you not to shoot.”

  “This looks like another standoff,” said Carter.

  “But we’re on the same side, now,” said Denny. “A man can’t stay neutral forever. I never did like Switzerland.”

  Denny, Carter, and Sandler all had weapons aimed at Vata, despite his entourage of half-a-dozen Wolf-Heads.

  “Nobody is going to shoot,” said Vata. “I have come to give you a second chance to fulfill our contract, Mr. Sampson. I’m sure you won’t let me down again.”

  “The sword is sold,” said Sampson.

  Vata shook his head.

  “Who said anything about a sword?” asked Vata.

  “The artefact that you were bidding on at the market. The deal that Denny struck with you...the double cross. You wanted to buy the sword,” said Carter.

  Vata’s lip curled in what might pass for a smile.

  “I have no interest in trinkets,” he said.

  “Then what did you want to buy?” asked Lara.

  She was standing on Vata’s right, in the doorway of King Tut’s burial chamber. She had both guns raised, one covering Vata and his goons, the other on Denny.

  “What else was in that consignment, Mr. Vata?” she asked.

  “Ah, Miss Croft,” said Vata.

  “I asked you a question,” said Lara.

  Vata did not answer. His face puckered slightly, and he raised the back of his hand to cover his nostrils against a rancid smell that had begun to fill the room. Denny coughed. Sandler’s eyes drifted away from his gun sight, up towards the ceiling from where a white mist seemed to be descending.

  There was a low rumble, and the ancient room trembled. One of Florence’s guards fell from his knees onto his belly and moaned.

  “What the heck...” began Denny.

  Then the low rumbling sound was joined by a high-pitched scratching. Then a screech.

  Something moved in Carter’s peripheral vision.

  “Jesus!” he exclaimed.

  One of the local guards turned his head and screamed. He scrambled to his feet and fled from the room, down the passage, apparently not caring whether he was shot or not.

  But no one was shooting. Everyone was looking around in bewilderment and fear.

  The walls wer
e crawling with bugs. Scarabs, locusts, and grasshoppers were climbing over each other, clicking and squealing, the clatter of wing cases forming an unlikely chorus with the sawing of legs. The black, seething, fricative mass of them covered every inch of the chamber walls like heavy tapestries.

  One of the Wolf-Heads began to gag at the stench. He shifted his aim from Carter to the wall and began to fire into the mist.

  “Don’t shoot!” spat Vata. “Cease fire!”

  The mist evaporated, for a moment. The gunfire had blown patches of bugs away from the walls, leaving gaps, but those gaps quickly filled and vanished as the bugs moved. There were so many of them. They shifted and drew new patterns. Iridescent, they changed colour, and coalesced.

  They became a mass of shimmering blue-black, like an oil slick on the wall. Then the pattern changed again, and everyone watched, mesmerised, as a recognisable shape emerged. The shape moved, flexing. It began to stretch out, three-dimensional and solid, from the crawling black mass of the wall.

  It was a falcon. A falcon formed from thousands of cooperating insects.

  Its neck stretched and its head rose, black eyes blinking out at them. The falcon opened its beak, shrieked, flapped its wings, and launched itself into the room. A strong smell of incense followed in its wake.

  Everyone ducked, and Vata’s right-hand man, Dibra, took a potshot at the vast bird.

  “Fire again, and I’ll have you killed,” yelled Vata. His men ducked and shouted as the falcon swooped around their heads. The mist was growing thick again, filling the chamber air.

  “Let’s get out of here!” said Lara. She holstered her guns and quickly dragged Carter through into the next room. Sandler followed them.

  Neither Dritan Vata nor his men tried to stop them.

  “We’re leaving, right?” said Carter, unable to hide the fear in his voice. “Now seems like a good time.”

  “No,” said Lara. “We’ve got to find Race. Find her and stop her.”

  The mist around them grew thicker.

  Two of the Wolf-Heads tried to drive off the strafing falcon, swinging the butts of their rifles. Dibra gathered together everything that had been on the table and shoved it into the duffel bag. He worked fast, his hands shaking. He held the German gas canister up for Vata to see it. It was dusty and dented, but appeared to be intact.

  “Good,” said Vata. “Now we leave.”

  Dibra could see the panic in his boss’s eyes.

  More of the bugs on the walls had coalesced, and a new pattern was forming in the writhing mass adjacent to the exit. Another falcon. Its head protruded first from the wall, then its wings, and then it was flying into the room, joining its companion.

  They flew low over Vata as he ducked, reaching down and plucking at his shoulders. One of them banked hard and swooped at one of Vata’s men.

  There was a sound, an impact like a cabbage being split by a cleaver.

  Its talons took off the man’s face.

  “Holy God!” Dibra cried.

  He got off a shot, and one of the falcons hissed. It swung around and dived at Dibra. Another Wolf-Head threw a flash bang across the room. The light and sound disabled everyone for the next four or five seconds but appeared not to deter the beasts.

  It seemed to anger them. Another falcon emerged, then another, then another, until the air was full of beating black wings and hissing beaks. The bird-shapes spiralled around, mobbing them, pecking and rasping.

  Dibra was the first to recover his vision. Frantic, he looked for a safe exit. Then he looked for his boss. Vata was doubled over the table, facedown, his hands over his head. The exit to the passage was crawling with insects. The air was full of flickering, rushing wings. The conjured falcons were attacking Florence’s local guards, the weakest of them. The falcons were swarming the length of the passage, diving back and forth, picking off the dead and injured. One impact followed another. Talons sliced. Men screamed. Blood spattered up the ancient walls.

  “No way out,” said Dibra grimly.

  “Then we go in. We follow Sampson,” said Vata, rising from the table, his hands still protecting his head. “For now, we have no choice.”

  The walls were not moving in the antechamber to Nefertiti’s tomb, but the grave goods were.

  As they hurried in, Lara and Carter could see the dense white mist fogging the light of the halogen bulbs dotted around the space. But where the fog was most dense, visibility was low. Race had left men stationed in the chamber, but there was no sign of them.

  Sandler and Denny blundered in after them.

  “What is this?” Denny murmured.

  Around them, the grave goods stirred. Caskets shuddered; boxes and flasks rattled. It was as though they were being vibrated by a train going past outside.

  It wasn’t that, Lara realised. The lids of the jars and boxes were rattling as if the contents were trying to get out.

  The room was changing, and it wasn’t just the heavy scent of incense or the mist. It wasn’t just the movement of the air, or the faint trembling.

  There was something in the room with them. Something was manifesting.

  Lara heard a growl.

  The growl reminded Lara of the howling dogs in the Toros Mountains. She turned, guns held at arm’s length in front of her. She had almost rotated full circle when she detected movement to her left. She jerked sharply in that direction.

  There was something in the ghostly mist.

  She saw the hands first and then looked up to see the head. The figure loomed at her: two-and-a-half metres tall, slender, androgynous, and black, with almond eyes and gold jewellery.

  “Idiot!” Lara said, and relaxed. It was a statue.

  “Lara!” Carter yelled.

  The statue was moving.

  Lara gritted her teeth and fired reflexively, two shots into the torso of the figure and one into its forehead. The statue took another step towards her. She sidestepped, and three more shots entered the chest of the figure. Lara saw dust fly out of the wounds on impact. Dust, not blood.

  The thing lunged and grabbed for Lara. It had her tight by the arm, its grip like an iron band. Its mouth opened wide in a scream so high-pitched that it was barely audible. The inside of its mouth was gold, and its tongue was blue.

  Lara recoiled. She flexed her knees, bent her back, and tossed the tall figure over her body and onto the floor beside her.

  It landed hard. She holstered the guns and reached for a weapon, anything to break the statue. Guns were no good. The statue moved like flesh and bone, but when it was shot, it acted like wood.

  Lara pulled her knife out of her boot and thrust the tip into the figure’s left eye. The statue threw up its hands and convulsed.

  She straddled its chest. It clawed at her legs. Snarling, she took out its other eye, and then thrust the blade into its mouth and shoved hard.

  The thing convulsed again, and then lay still.

  She turned and saw Sandler. He was wide-eyed and scared.

  “What’s going on?” he asked her, his tone desperate. “What the hell is this—”

  He never finished the question.

  Something under the mist that surrounded him grabbed him and dragged him down violently.

  She heard him scream and heard a wet crunch. She thought it was over. Then a figure rose through the mist where Sandler had fallen. Like some ancient warrior, it wore a horned helmet and various pieces of ancient armour over its rags. The creature’s flesh was all but desiccated off its bones. Its bright eyes locked on Lara’s. She felt a moment of recognition and then of abhorrence.

  Whatever had taken Sandler down had turned him into this ravening undead monster in an instant.

  Lara fired, reflexively. The thing’s eyes dulled, and it crashed back into the mist from whence it had come.

  Lara backed off fast. There
were things moving under the white mist, cruising like sharks beneath the surface of the sea.

  The knife in one hand and a gun in the other, Lara looked for a way out. There was no sign of Denny, but she could see Carter, wading around in waist-deep mist, like a man stuck in a swamp. He was swearing, pistol raised in one hand, trying to flap the white smoke of the rising mist away from him with the other.

  Suddenly, he uttered a brief squeak and vanished, dropping out of sight. Something had grabbed him and pulled him down into the mist. The same fate as Sandler.

  Lara started forwards, dreading Carter reappearing as some altered, inhuman wretch. He must not die. Then, she heard a dog snarling through gritted teeth as it set to rending something. It sounded wet, fleshy.

  She heard Carter scream... So, he was still Carter.

  Lara threw herself in the direction of the cry. The wet, snarling sound was hideous. She scrambled through the choking mist and almost collided with the flanks of a sleek black jackal.

  The beast had Carter by the leg.

  Lara lunged, desperately, grabbing the jackal around the throat, her arm locking like a noose. She tried to drag it back. It was strong as hell. She attacked its eyes with her blade, as she had the statue. It loosened its grasp on Carter’s bloody calf, yelped, and tried to turn its jaws on her. It snapped and bit. Holding it tight, Lara rammed her blade into its gullet.

  Lara heaved the creature’s dead weight off her and tossed it aside. She scrutinised Carter for a moment and then offered him her hand.

  “Thanks, Lara,” he said. His face was pale. His leg was a mess, blood soaking his torn pant leg, but he was still Carter. She hoisted him to his feet.

  “Use a blade, Carter,” Lara said. “Eyes and mouths. Bullets are useless. And fight like your life depends on it. Sandler came back, undead, after being attacked by one of these things.”

  Carter gasped, possibly turning even paler. Then he nodded, put away his gun, and drew his utility knife.

  “Blades, got it,” he replied.

  They heard gunfire from the anteroom.

  “Should we tell them?” asked Carter.

  Vata’s henchmen and the local muscle Florence Race had hired were squaring off.