The sky was just beginning to lighten with the coming dawn. The dusky light made the creature that came around the corner next look like a living shadow cast against the stone of the path. It actually stopped and looked up toward them in defiance when they cast their volley of stones. All three found their mark. The beast took the brunt of the attack as it hunkered against the wall. The force of the impact would have killed a prized bull, but it only stunned the nether wolf, knocking it to the ground but not off the path. The third nether wolf bounded over its stunned companion and loped up the path toward the gatehouse.
Anatoly hurled another stone with all his might at the monster lying on the path below and scored another direct hit. It sounded like bones broke but still the beast stirred and came to its feet, looking up and snarling. Alexander and Jack cast yet another set of small boulders at it. This time they drove it from the path, spiraling to the ground below. It hit hard and didn’t get up right away. Alexander thought maybe there was some hope that the creatures could be killed, and then the beast staggered to its feet and looked up at him again.
“To the gatehouse,” Alexander commanded as he turned and sprinted to the only high ground they had left.
By now the horses were in near panic. They could smell the unnatural enemy coming toward them and were straining to break free of their tethers. Alexander ignored them and made his way to his sister as fast as he could.
The first nether wolf to fall off the ledge rounded the corner more warily this time and hesitated as Jack and Anatoly cast one last stone each at the beast. Both fell short but succeeded in slowing the thing down by a few steps.
The gatehouse stood nine feet tall, eight feet wide and a dozen feet long. The top was ringed on three sides with a low wall and was open on the end where the gate passage led onto the plateau. As Alexander raced toward the gatehouse, he saw Abigail loose an arrow down toward the path.
He leapt up the side of the wall and caught the rope Lucky and Abigail had used to climb up. Even with the stiffness in his shoulder, he had more than enough adrenaline-fueled strength to climb the wall. Lucky caught his hand and helped him the last few feet. Jack was right behind him and Alexander cleared the way so Lucky could help him to the top as well. Abigail let another arrow fly.
Alexander unslung his bow, stepped up next to his sister and took aim. The beast charging up the trail toward them already had two arrows sticking out of its bony shoulders. He could see the hate in its eyes and the malice of death itself powering the beast as it bounded toward them. He and Abigail released as one. Their twin arrows drove side by side into the heavy bone of its forehead. The creature flinched and stopped for a moment to shake its head wildly. It tipped its head back, arrows still sticking out of it like the horn of a unicorn, and howled with unearthly fury.
Alexander found himself in a strange place. Time seemed to be moving more slowly. Everything was clearer, more focused. He could see the bony skeleton of the creature beneath the taut black leather that covered it. He remembered all of the lessons he’d ever learned about battle and war and strategy all at once. They all flowed together into a background symphony of skill and instinct and the singular purpose to survive. In that moment, he understood at a basic level all of those things he’d learned about war in an academic way but had never actually experienced outside the safety of his imagination.
He’d never felt a more serene calm in all of his life.
There was no fear, only stillness. A quietness that filled his soul and gave him a kind comfort he’d never known before. The comfort one can only feel when he discovers his purpose in the world. He knew in that moment that the Old Rebel Mage had chosen well.
He released his next arrow with confidence. He knew before he drew it from his quiver where it would land. It drove into the place where the creature’s heart would have been if the nether wolf actually had a heart. Abigail nearly matched his shot for speed and accuracy, driving her arrow into the beast’s chest not an inch from Alexander’s mark. The creature gibbered and mewled as it shook wildly to dislodge the arrows. When it came close to the edge of the path, Anatoly heaved a stone with all his strength from the top of the gatehouse and caught the creature on the side of the head. It pitched off the top of the path and fell the full fifty feet to the ground below, shrieking with a ghastly howl that was silenced by the ground.
The next came loping up the trail but rather than charge, it stopped thirty or forty feet from the gatehouse, then crouched and sprang straight up to the perimeter wall. It caught the top of the wall with talons that cut into the stone itself, then scrambled up and over onto the plateau. The second nether wolf to be driven from the path came around the corner. Abigail and Alexander fired in unison. Both hit the beast in the shoulders but it kept coming as if nothing had happened.
The one on the plateau was moving toward the gatehouse in a crouch, as though it was preparing to spring. Anatoly pushed Lucky and Jack into the far corner to give himself room to work, took his war axe in both hands and planted himself in a firm stance. He eyed the beast with his best battle grin and watched it gather speed for its attack.
Alexander and Abigail sent arrows with speed and accuracy into the nether wolf coming up the path, but it had taken half a dozen hits already and it still kept coming. It sprang at them, and Alexander sent one final arrow into the creature’s chest. The nether wolf sailed up toward the top of the gatehouse. Abigail pulled Alexander down just as the beast passed over them and stumbled off the other side of the gatehouse onto the plateau.
The other nether wolf sprang at Anatoly, who knew that once a creature or a man left the ground their course was set. Unless they were a bird, they couldn’t change direction in midflight. He used that simple piece of knowledge to his advantage. The moment the huge black wolf left the ground, Anatoly sidestepped to his left toward the front of the gatehouse and spun, swinging his axe in a tight arc. When the creature landed on top of the gatehouse, Anatoly caught the front of its right leg, cleanly chopping it off just below the shoulder joint.
There was no blood, no gore, just the snap of bone and the tear of its black leather skin. The beast crashed into the little eighteen-inch wall that ringed three sides of the gatehouse roof. It tried to regain its footing, but Jack and Lucky rushed in as one and shoved the creature off onto the plateau. Anatoly picked up its leg and peered over the edge, waggling it at the beast before he tossed it over the edge to the plain below.
The nether wolf watched its leg sail over the edge of the cliff while the other beast regained its footing, turned and sprang from a standstill onto the top of the gatehouse. This one didn’t go over the edge but instead stopped and spun to face Alexander and Abigail, leaving its hindquarters exposed to Anatoly, Jack, and Lucky.
Abigail struck first. She still had her bow in hand and an arrow nocked. She sent it straight into the creature’s mouth and out the back side of its head. The beast flinched but then snapped its jaws shut on the arrow and shattered it.
Alexander dropped his bow and drew his sword. He had plenty of training with a long blade but it had all involved fighting another man with a sword. This was different.
Anatoly struck next, a great downward stroke with all his might onto the rump of the nether wolf. His axe sliced cleanly through the beast’s left hindquarter in a blow that should have crippled it. Instead, it turned, quick as a cat, and backhanded Anatoly in the chest hard enough to send him sailing off the top of the gatehouse and onto the plateau below. He hit the wall of the square barracks building, fell forward to the ground, and lay still, face down in the lush grass.
Alexander took full advantage of the moment of distraction that Anatoly’s attack had bought him. When the nether wolf turned to swat at Anatoly, it exposed the back of its neck. Alexander brought his sword down with all his might and fury. His strike was true. The nether wolf’s head came free and the beast crumpled into a heap of broken bones in a bag of black leather. The head rolled up against the low wall and Alexander watched the glow fade from its eyes.
As he brought his sword down, his mind registered all of the other things happening around him: Anatoly flying off the gatehouse; Jack and Lucky casting stones down at the three-legged beast on the plateau in a desperate effort to distract it from the man who had, just moments before, tossed its leg off the cliff; Abigail shouting behind him, “Here comes another one,” followed by the telltale twang of her bowstring. He even registered the rising light in the sky and the Reishi camp still huddled inside the protection of their ring of fire on the plain below.
He came to the edge of the gatehouse roof next to Lucky and Jack and saw the three-legged nether wolf moving to pounce on Anatoly who was still lying face down, either unconscious or dead.
Alexander called out, “Your master sent you for me!”
The beast turned and made eye contact with Alexander. The depth of hatred he saw in those glowing yellow eyes made his hair stand on end. The beast very deliberately looked at Anatoly and then back at Alexander again before moving toward the stunned man-at-arms. The message was clear. Alexander would watch his friend die. The beast almost laughed as it opened its huge jaws wide enough to take Anatoly’s whole head.
Then Abigail screamed.
Alexander whirled to see the third nether wolf, the one they had shot in the head and sent off the top of the plateau, hurtling through the air toward his sister. She had sunk an arrow into it and was defenseless. He was torn. In an instant, two of the last people he had left in this world could be taken from him. Their lives would be lost protecting him. All of the calm certainty he’d felt moments before melted away into the kind of fear that can only be felt at the idea of losing a loved one.
He was paralyzed with it, sick with helplessness. In that eternal moment, he was torn between throwing himself toward his mentor or his sister. And yet, he knew he had no power to stop either attack. Both were going to die and he couldn’t do anything to prevent it. Once they fell, the nether wolves would kill him as well. He saw the magnitude of his failure stretch out into the coming centuries: countless innocent people suffering and dying for nothing except the depraved malice of a single man who craved power over the lives of others and was willing to kill for it. He watched the nightmare unfold in slow motion, powerless to affect the outcome. Despair flooded into him and filled him with a kind of hopelessness he didn’t even know existed.
Chapter 17
Then the first rays of sunlight stabbed out from behind the horizon. In that instant everything changed. The beast that sailed through the air toward his sister abruptly transformed into nothing more than a cloud of heavy black smoke. The inky cloud stopped in midair and sank quickly to the ground where it was drawn into the cracks between the stones of the path as if it had been inhaled by the earth itself. Alexander spun to see that Anatoly lay unconscious but alive. There was no trace of the three-legged nether wolf.
Everyone stood stock-still in the sudden silence. The immediate threat was gone, banished by sunlight. Alexander glanced to the Reishi camp and saw that they hadn’t yet moved. He slammed his sword into its scabbard, slipped over the edge of the gatehouse, and dropped to the ground. He was kneeling beside Anatoly in three steps. The big man-at-arms was just starting to come to. Alexander looked up and nodded at Lucky, who started down off the gatehouse using the rope.
“Jack, keep an eye on the Reishi camp. Abby, watch the path; we can’t afford to be surprised right now.”
Jack nodded, slipped off the gatehouse and headed to the perimeter wall.
Abigail nocked another arrow.
Lucky knelt next to Anatoly just as he came awake with a start. He got to his knees with a wince and looked around wildly for the threat.
“Anatoly, the wolves are gone. We’re safe for the moment,” Alexander tried to reassure him so he wouldn’t hurt himself with any sudden movements.
Anatoly looked to Lucky for confirmation and got a nod and a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Why don’t you lie down and let me have a look at you?” Lucky said reassuringly.
Anatoly nodded through obvious pain as he gingerly eased himself back to the ground.
“What happened?” he asked with his eyes closed.
Lucky nodded to Alexander while he rummaged through his bag.
Alexander took a deep breath before he began. “The truth is I’m not really sure. One moment we were losing the fight badly, then the sun broke over the horizon and the nether wolves turned to smoke and just disappeared.”
Anatoly opened one eye and frowned up at Alexander.
He shrugged and continued, “Couldn’t have happened at a better time, that three-legged wolf was just about to crush your skull and the one we pincushioned and sent off the top of the plateau came back and was about five feet from landing on top of Abby.” He shuddered. “For a second there I was sure we were all done for. It was a pretty helpless feeling.”
Anatoly nodded, “It’s one thing to place yourself in harm’s way and quite another to watch those you care about risk their lives.”