Several skiris looked over at the figure in the doorway.
The guy started flinging his arm towards me, pointing towards the top of the ridge. “Up there! Go up there!”
He knew where I was.
I’d counted on that, though. The trajectory of the arrows was obvious.
In fact, I wanted him to know where I was.
The skiris, though, seemed confused by his shouts and gesticulations.
From their grunts and roars I’d heard before, I was guessing skiris weren’t exactly conversant in English yet. Maybe they were smart as dogs and could understand rudimentary verbal commands, but I was guessing that was about it.
Time to help them out.
The next arrow I fired from a lying position, and more at a 30-degree angle.
The skiris had all started to gather in a group near the fort, so it was like shooting fish in a barrel. There were so many of them clustered together that there was no way I could miss.
The arrow sunk into the back of one unlucky fellow, who howled like he’d been shot.
Which he had.
The other skiris reacted in shock to hear his screams. Then they started looking at their buddy’s bloody back and the arrow sticking out of it. Then they looked up at my position.
Mr. Hunter was doing his best to urge them onwards from where he crouched in the safety of his fort.
“He’s up THERE, you stupid motherfuckers! Go, go, GO! GO KILL HIM!”
They still seemed confused –
Until another one of my arrows landed in a skiris’s chest, and it howled in agony as well.
They’d all been facing me that time. They’d seen where the arrow had originated… and they might have even seen it flying through the air towards them.
Now they understood.
Now they set off through the snow towards me.
They ran as fast as they could, and they made pretty good time – as long as they were on the snow they’d been walking over the last couple of weeks. Their constant footsteps and the weight of all the trees they’d dragged over it had packed it down into a hard, even surface.
But things changed considerably as soon as they reached the beginning of the snowdrifts.
Suddenly they had to high-step it through two, then four, then eight feet of snow. Within a few seconds, they were in up to their necks. It was like swimming through fresh-poured cement – they had to physically burrow their way through the snow.
Meanwhile, their heads were still visible.
And they were only 80 feet away now.
Which made for a lot better target practice.
I started shooting directly at them. I hit a lot of snow, and arrows skittered away uselessly across the surface – but I also hit at least three skiris dead-on, either blinding them or mortally wounding them. Agonized screams rose up from the trenches like some icy, hellish version of World War I.
I looked back at the fort. Almost all of the skiris had left and were heading for me.
There was only one skiris standing by the front of the fort, and another over by the wooden pen with the three elf women. That was it.
Excellent.
Then I heard the first gunshot.
BLAM!
A split second later, snow kicked up about six feet to my left as the gunshot echoed through the canyon.
Oh SHIT!
I ducked back down for a few seconds… scuttled over to my right, close to a rock jutting up out of the snow… and peeked out over the rise.
The skiris who had been hanging back by the door of the fort had come closer, but he was still waaaay back at the rear of the pack. He was just standing there while all his buddies were charging ahead into the snowdrifts.
I understood why a second later.
The hunter stepped out from behind the skiris, his rifle braced against his shoulder, and sighted along the barrel.
The asshole was using the skiris as a living shield.
I hated the abominable snowmen, but this human made them look like Nobel Peace Prize winners by comparison.
What a fuckin’ douchebag!
The guy suddenly stopped moving. The barrel of his gun pointed up towards me –
BLAM!
I saw the muzzle flash the split second before I jerked back down.
Snow blasted to my left, again – although this time it was only about three feet away.
I was freaked out, sure, but the guy was a pretty bad shot… at least at distances farther than 150 feet.
That made me feel better about my chances.
I went back to shooting at the skiris near me. Even though I had to stay down low and just pop up long enough to fire, I managed to nail another two of them in the face. Which meant their buddies had to haul them out of the way so they could continue coming for me, slowing everybody down.
I didn’t want to directly attack the hunter. I didn’t want him to get spooked and retreat back into the fort – I wanted to draw him out.
So I concentrated on the skiris.
My plan worked. The skiris shield (like a human shield) kept advancing slowly, and the hunter kept taking his potshots, which never came closer than two or three feet away, not even when he got up to the base of the snowdrifts.
BLAM!
BLAM!
BLAM!
The gunshots only stopped when the bastard started up into the snowdrifts, following his minions into the massive pathways they had carved up the mountainside.
While the asshole was still shooting, though, I noticed that the gun blasts were starting up small avalanches along the edge of the gorge. Nothing big – the equivalent of small rockslides. Enough to freak you out, and maybe even knock you out if one fell down directly onto you, but not enough to bury you. We were talking the equivalent of a minivan-sized amount of snow, not the hundred-ton monster that had killed me back on Earth.
I was worried about Lelia and the others, though. There was definitely the possibility that an avalanche could start up near them. There were plenty of cliffs around them, laden with precariously
