The giant slowly did as ordered and backed away with his hands up.
Cal got off the ground and joined his wife. Another cry of pain from the sorcerer’s battle echoed in the night. This cry was deeper… a man’s voice. And then that part of the wood went still.
“Guess your man wasn’t as good as you thought,” Cal said.
It was hard to read the giant’s expression in the dark. When Cal moved to relieve Cat of the shotgun, the giant rolled to the ground, disappearing into the darkness.
Cal fired where his adversary had been. After two shots, the gun clicked empty. Cat heard his footsteps crunching in the snow, heading toward the forest. The giant ran past where the mages had fought, then broke through a row of bushes in the tree line and was gone.
Cal and Cat followed. Cat tripped over something big on the ground. It was the centaur.
“Wait!” Cat told her husband.
“I have to go after him,” Cal said.
Cat felt around her fallen companion’s body and found the bolts that were lodged into her. She was warm and still breathing. Cat’s hand came away wet and sticky. “Lelani’s hurt.”
Cal dropped beside her and looked the young mage over. He cradled the centaur’s head in his hands. Her clavicle was broken in the same place the bolt hit her earlier in the day. There were several other knives and small bits of metal protruding from her. She breathed in rapid pants.
“If we pull these blades out here, she’ll bleed to death before we reach the tree,” Cal said. He looked out in the direction the giant had fled. “Cat, can you get Lelani back to Rosencrantz?”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“After that guy.”
Cat couldn’t stand the thought of Cal in that pitch-black forest alone with that monster. More so, she didn’t want to be left alone in the meadow.
“How am I going to get a four-hundred-pound centaur across this meadow without your help?” she said.
“We can’t let him report to Dorn,” her husband responded.
“It’s pitch black in that forest, you’re bleeding, and you can’t even see five feet ahead of you,” Cat insisted.
Cal stared into the night like a wolf that’d lost his pack.
“We won,” she emphasized.
“Barely,” Cal said. “Most of these guys clearly got here recently-no guns, no body armor-they were still using crossbows and daggers. Luck won’t always be on our side.”
Cat’s attackers were scary enough without the modern weaponry in their arsenal. She did not think it could get any worse than it did this night.
“We’re going to need Seth and Ben’s help to get her back,” Cal said, acceding to her wishes.
Cat looked inside Lelani’s satchel. Something cold and cylindrical popped into her hand. She pulled it out. A flashlight.
“This thing won’t shoot lasers, will it?” she asked.
“Only one way to find out,” the cop said.
She clicked it on, and there was light. Cat surveyed the immediate area. The beam fell upon the other mage a few feet away who lay facedown in the snow.
“Cal, look.”
Cal took the flashlight from his wife and examined the area around the fallen sorcerer. The footprints of a seven-foot man were around the body. “Our friend stopped here first before taking off into the woods. Cat, hand me one of Lelani’s arrows from her quiver.”
Cal gingerly searched the dead mage’s pockets with the arrow. It clinked on something metallic in the inside jacket pocket. He pulled out a small, heavy metal canister with symbols on it.
Cat came up behind her husband and put a hand on his shoulder. “Cal, we have to get her to Rosencrantz,” she urged.
He shone the light on the canister. It bore the infamous black and yellow symbol for radiation. Around the symbol it read, Danger! Fissionable Material. Property of Indian Point Nuclear Facility.
Cal and Cat gave each other worried looks.
“What the hell is Dorn up to?” he said.
5
Seth climbed down and went to check on Ben. The old man was next to one of the pyres brushing himself off.
“What’s the score?” Ben asked him.
“I think we’re okay, old-timer.”
“In that case it’s pasteles and rum by the fire in PR.”
“Ben! Are you done getting your butt kicked?” Helen asked from the trailer door. “Get back home, now.”
Seth and Ben smiled. Helen had earned the right to nag after this night.
Their smiles turned to abject fear when they realized a gnoll was on the roof of the trailer just above Helen. Before Ben could warn his wife, the creature reached down, grabbed Helen, and hauled her over the top of the trailer. It jumped off the roof on the other side and took off into the north meadow with Ben’s wife.
“Helen!” Ben screamed. He hobbled after them as fast as he could.
“Ben, no!” Seth shouted. The old man did not heed him. Seth looked for Cat, but she was gone. Seth didn’t know what to do. It was madness to go out there and face a nocturnal creature in the dark. But what choice did he have? The phrase What is good? popped into his head. Ben had delved into the realm of the amateur philosopher by questioning absolutes, but what Seth knew for sure was that abandoning your friends to the darkness was definitely not good. He had abandoned people who needed him all his life. It was second nature to him, and he needed to end it. Seth looked around for a weapon and spotted Ben’s ax. He grabbed it, lit two rolled-up magazines and pocketed a few extra ones, picked up a can of kerosene, and followed Ben into the night.
Ben wasn’t hard to locate. A few yards away from the trailer, where the grass met the snowline, he gripped a small hunting knife and yelled into the winter night, “Helen!”
“Ben, keep it down.”
“Those things have night vision, punk. You think it doesn’t know where we are?”
Seth was acutely aware of their tactical disadvantage. But he couldn’t tell Ben to abandon his wife; even though that was the sane thing to do. All that would come of them chasing that gnoll in the dark was three dead people instead of one.
“It’s a trap,” said Seth.
“No reason we should feed it two mice,” Ben responded. “You go back to that tree and see if the wizard can help us out.”
“Nice try, but I’m not leaving you out here alone.”
They heard Helen’s weak cry in the distance. “Ben!” She was still in the meadow, at least-somewhere near the tree line.
“She’s still alive,” Ben whispered, relieved. “Helen!”
“Go back,” Helen cried.
“Ben, we’re fucked if we stay here.”
Ben contemplated something big in a way that only a member of America’s greatest generation could. He took the can of kerosene from Seth. “Listen up,” he said, “it’s a dog-man, right? I’m injured. It senses weakness, smells blood. I’m going to walk out along the edge of the snow line a couple of yards. It’s going to come after me. I’m going to grab it and hold on for dear life. No matter what it does, I ain’t letting it go. When you hear it, come to me and hack away. We won’t even have a minute, so don’t hesitate.”
“Ben, I don’t like the idea of you being bait.”
“Well we’re a few cans short of Alpo, kid. This is no time to split hairs.”
“Ben, I can’t even see out here.”
