Path of the Tiger, стр. 432
Hrothgar laughed like a crazed madman as the firing started, and with deft swiftness he flung his hardwood chair back behind him, as effortlessly as if it were made of cardboard, and then slid under the table feet first, his gleaming dress shoes gliding with slick speed over the plush Persian rug. There, hidden in a secret compartment built into the table by a master craftsman some three hundred years ago, Hrothgar wrapped his hands around the pistol grips of a pair of double-barrelled shotguns, each loaded with buckshot and sawn off at the barrel a mere eight inches from the trigger.
‘Fuck the Huntsmen!’ he howled as a barrage of firing started. ‘Fuck the Alliance!’
With a sawn-off shotgun gripped in each hand he fired one barrel to the left and one to the right, the thunderous booms rocking the space with floor-shaking violence, roaring out hurricane-like sonic power over the chattering of submachine gun and automatic pistol fire.
Hrothgar’s first shot took Jing-Sun Park in the midriff, tearing a basketball-sized hole in her lower body, and his second shot caught Pablo Silva right between his wide-open legs, obliterating his entire pelvic area and leaving nothing there but a mess of ragged, bleeding meat. In another second Hrothgar squeezed off the remaining two barrels, and their fiery lead loads of deathly hail kicked Duchess Younghusband and Mitchell Fletcher off of their chairs, ripping the flesh and muscles of their torsos wide open as if they were nothing but wet paper.
Abruptly the firing of the other guns stopped, and the only sound that remained in the room was the anguished groaning and whimpering of those who were dying, and the hysterical screaming of those who were about to die.
Hrothgar dropped the now-empty sawn-off shotguns and reached into one more secret compartment. His hand curled around the haft of his favourite melee weapon: his Dane axe. With a devilish grin smeared across his craggy-featured face, he pulled the axe out of its hiding place and crawled out from under the table, jumping up and gripping the weapon in his left hand. He saw the remaining board members stumbling about in fright and confusion in the impenetrable blackness; these people, these mortals, who were some of the most ruthless and powerful people on the planet, were now cowering in abject terror and soiling themselves.
Exhilaration; euphoric and demonic at once. This was the only way Hrothgar could describe the violent delight flooding his system. Ten thousand orgasms couldn’t come close to this sensation, this feeling ofabsolute power, absolute domination.
He surveyed the room before he began his butchery. The bodyguards had all been killed, but so had all but one of his own assassins. This didn’t matter; they had served their purpose and had won him the battle. Blood and gore were splattered over every surface in the conference room, and on the floor four of the board members lay wailing, writhing, moaning and gasping from the brutal wounds his sawn-off shotgun had dealt them. They would be dead soon enough, and they would suffer greatly on their passage to the underworld. It was exactly how Sigurd would have wanted it.
Hrothgar’s thoughts immediately turned to Sigurd, his shield-brother. How he wished that he could have been here, but there was no way his shield-brother could have, not after the grievous wounds he had been dealt in his last battle. They had lost the opportunity to capture Parvati, but at least Sigurd had not been killed. Now it was up to their commander, Yaotl, to heal Sigurd up fully, and then their mission could be resumed in its entirety.
Still, this evening’s section of the plan had to go ahead as discussed. This was the only opportunity that Hrothgar and Sigurd had had to strike such a devastating blow against both the Huntsmen and the Rebels at once. By luring both groups into a trap – a masterfully set-up snare devised by the brilliant strategic mind of Sigurd – they had not merely climbed up a few rungs on the ladder of power, they had vaulted clean over it.
But how soon would Sigurd, architect and mastermind of all of this, recover? When would Yaotl decide that the time was right to trigger the next phase of the plan? How much or how little assistance would Mira and her co-conspirators, who had betrayed their Huntsmen colleagues, actually give them? Hrothgar did not know, and not knowing things made him worried. Worry, yes, a condition of the weak and pathetic, of the slaves and those-to-be-slaves. He could not shake it, though, as strong and fierce as he was. Still, what else could he do at this time? Worry became anger. Anger became bloodthirsty wrath. And wrath surged in flame-heated red washes through Hrothgar’s nervous system.
He strolled casually up to Suntosh Gupta, who was fumbling blindly and whimpering like a lost puppy, and raised his axe above his head, pausing for a moment to chortle before bringing the blade down in a whistling arc. There was a crunching wet pop as the heavy axe head destroyed the tycoon’s skull in an explosion of bone fragments, splattered brains and spurting blood. Hrothgar laughed, digging the heel of his shoe into Suntosh’s neck so that he could pull the embedded axe out of the man’s caved-in skull.
It was time to finish the slaughter.
***
Zakaria pressed his back up