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“I doubt everything until these kids have seen enough of battle to be afraid. Why didn’t you order out some of the experienced warriors and leave these kids to guard camp?”

  “Are you forgetting we’ve been fighting a running battle almost since we left the summer lands?” Bannion rubbed the sore spot on his calf, a reminder of the Mag’s constant threat. “The older troops are tired; the kids fresh. They’ve been training, guarding camp, and pushing cattle. Easy stuff. Safe stuff. Not a one of them hurt. Now they get their chance to prove themselves.”

  Bannion hid the roil of displeasure Rongo’s question raised in him. Rongo was good with the young recruits, but he wished to hell the man would stop second-guessing his every move. He got tired of explaining.

  As a rule, the patrollers connected with the deputy, a tough man, but fair in his training, able to instill confidence in the kids. When it came to combat, they would’ve learned tricks from him that had kept more than one of those now experienced people alive long enough to get that way. He was also damn good at following orders. However, he lived only in the moment and wasn’t worth a hoot when it came to planning longer term strategy. Fortunately, he left that to Bannion or Nate.

  Rongo nodded as though Bannion’s explanation had been cribbed from inside his head. “Makes sense, I suppose. Still, it’s good knowing help is only a few miles away if we run into trouble.”

  “Crying for help is not my intention, Rongo,” Bannion said. “My intention is for these patrollers to fight their own battles.” He sighed. “They’ve got to be blooded sometime. Might as well be defending their home ground.”

  This drew a sharp glance from the deputy. “You think there’s going to be trouble?”

  “Don’t you? Didn’t that dead Mag tell you anything?”

  “Told me Harrison Bell killed him,” Rongo said, but now his gaze had gone to searching the surrounding hills. “Didn’t say whether there were more of the bastards around.”

  Bannion snorted. “When did you ever see just one Mag? Besides, one Mag is dangerous enough. And it means there’s probably two more either sneaking up on your backside, or is ready to drop on top of you from above.”

  Glancing up, Rongo pondered a moment. “Good point. Sonsabitches hunt in packs like wolves.”

  “They’ll come at you from all sides,” Bannion agreed. “Means you need a good rear guard. Take one warrior with you and show him how it’s done. It’ll be a good lesson.”

  Rongo wore an unwilling grin. “Cagey, ain’t you, boss?” He pulled his horse to the side to let the next rider go past and, with a side glance at Bannion, pointed a finger at a brown-haired girl. “You, come with me.”

  Squinting, Bannion saw that House’s group had reached the hills without incident. Birds flew up, calling a raucous warning of the invaders as the three entered the woods and disappeared. He winced. Damn kids were clumsy as a herd of yearling colts.

  Bannion nosed his horse into line somewhere in the middle of the patrol. They trotted single file along the grassy path following the riverbank. Insects droned in the dried weeds, water tumbled around boulders shaping the river’s flow. An hour passed. Two. A few of the younger riders slumped in their saddles. Bannion gritted his teeth, stifling a reprimand. They’d learn how dangerous slacking off could be soon enough.

  Wind, as promised by the red sunrise, kicked up, raising dust devils in the dry meadows stretching away from the river. A red-tail hawk flew overhead, dipping and gliding as it followed the thermals.

  They were approaching a copse of trees that shaded the confluence of river and lake when a flock of small, black-winged birds exploded into the sky, making their own thunder. Prickles inched along Bannion’s spine. The smaller birds were ignoring the hawk, and the only thing likely to scare them enough to ignore the predator was the presence of humans. Who those humans might be, Bannion couldn’t say, but it sure wasn’t his group who’d set off the alarm. Not House’s, either, just now riding out of the foothills, the three patrollers separated by the standard thirty feet.

  It was unlikely anybody hiding amongst the shrubbery would be a friend. For one thing, they were on O’Quinn land. Anyone seeking peace would meet them in the open, arms sheathed, and more often than not, bearing gifts. That left either Mags or Techs, which one didn’t much matter. What mattered was how large a war party his posse had to face. Logic told him it couldn’t be many. The grove wasn’t big enough to hide more than a few.

  House’s squad had seen the larger patrol, and one of them waved as though to say all is well. They hadn’t paid attention to the birds’ panic. Bannion’s impatience grew. Hadn’t Rongo taught them to always watch the birds?

  The squad came on, oblivious.

  Bannion’s sharp whistle drew his patrol to a halt. The girl at the head of the column spun her horse and trotted back down the line. She stopped beside each rider, never letting on that one might be more important than another.

  Smart girl, he thought, making a mental note alongside her name. Unlike House, she hadn’t forgotten the rules for protecting the commander’s ID. Pretty girl, too, he decided as she stopped beside him. And old enough to consider becoming a partner if her bloodline checked out, which it should. Her name was Kira Shandy, another of the Bell family cousins.

  “The birds?” she asked, her mouth barely moving.

  “Did you see where they rose?”

  Although her head never moved, her eyes swiveled toward the trees. “Twenty yards to the left of that lightning-struck cedar.”

  “Good work. Take two men. You’ll find whatever disturbed the birds will have moved. If it’s Mags, they’ll slip deeper into the woods, hoping to trap our mounts. Get around them and flush’em out.”

  Her face turned pink. “Me?”

  He smiled. “And two men. Go now, before House blunders into them. As soon as you’re in position, the rest of us will ride in from the front. We’ll catch’em between us. House’ll flank them.” If the young bugger could be trusted to read the situation as it developed.

  Kira nudged her horse in the ribs, turning and lifting it into a lope. She selected the youngster in front of Bannion as one of her crew, picking up another as she rode back to the head of the column. The three of them charged the woods, drawing their swords and dropping the reins as they rode, guiding their horses by knee. But where an ambusher might have expected a frontal attack, the girl directed her riders into a wider circle. Bannion thought he saw a flash of brown body turning to meet them before it became invisible against the underbrush.

  He gave them a couple minutes, then his whistle pierced the air on a three-note, and the rest of the patrol lifted their horses into a headlong gallop—except for Rongo and the brown-haired girl, still watching the patrol’s rear. Even as he drew his sword from the saddle scabbard, Bannion saw House pull up. The three squad members seemed to confer, and then they, too, broke into a run, riding on a tangent into the fray.

  Good boy. Whoever was there would be trapped between his patrol and the river.

  “Kill them,” Bannion yelled. It was always open season on Mags, but anyone found in clan territory without prior permission came under a death sentence. The clan’s safety lay in destroying all enemies, and no quarter was the only way to assure that.

  He led his patrol into the trees, heading for the area from which the birds had taken flight. Knee pressure alone gave Nog direction, but the horse, an agile beast, choose the way. The gelding slipped between trees with inches to spare, ears pricked at the prospect of battle.

  Bannion held his short sword in his left hand, his fighting knife ready in his right. When the first Mag rose almost beneath Nog’s hooves, an iron-tipped wooden spear aimed at the horse’s belly, a quick thrust of Bannion’s sword drove the mutant backward before he could strike. Blood spurted from a deep slash across his chest. The creature stumbled, screaming his pain and suddenly Kira was there, an arrow nocked in her bow. She released it, catching the Mag in the throat, shutting off the noise.

  Ex
cept for that, the Mags fought with silent ferocity for the most part, as did the patrollers. Only the clash of steel, snorts and grunts of horses, and a few cries of, “ware” when a Mag got too close sundered the hush.

  House’s patrollers arrived and ran into immediate trouble. The young squad leader was unhorsed, his mount kicking out its life with another Mag spear in its gut. Two Mags, as though conjured from dirt, appeared one on each side of the boy. Before Bannion could spur Nog toward him, the girl, Bevee, flung herself off her horse onto one of the Mags, attacking him from behind before he could plunge his knife into House’s left kidney. She rammed her knee into the Mag’s buttocks, grabbed the pigtail hanging down his back and, before he could twist away, slashed his throat in one smooth motion. Blood splashed, but not on her. It was one of Rongo’s best moves, classically performed.

  House, Bannion noted, also had his opponent well in hand. Other than that, only a single mutant remained alive, running away fast as its thin legs could move. Nog, with little urging, followed.

  The Mag, a female, darted from tree to tree, leaping over a windfall with a grace more animal than human. She headed toward the river, seeking the steep banks and cover to be found there. If she made it, her escape was assured.

  “Go, Nog.” Bannion spurred the horse, forcing him to jump the windfall while trusting a safe landing lay on the other side.

  It did. They gained several strides on the Mag, but she was fast enough to have already reached the riverbank and one of the huge boulders scattered there. She ran out on the boulder, but instead of jumping, she turned and flashed a triumphant grin at Bannion, her filed teeth showing razor sharp.

  Without pause, he hurled his fighting knife, burying the foot long length of steel in her stomach, just below the ribs. Her eyes widened before she collapsed, still soundless, in a heap atop the rock.

  It had been, he thought, a pretty good throw from the back of a running horse.livepag

  Chapter 5

  Caught off guard by the…the awful thing in front of her, Lily Turnbow recoiled in horror as she gazed through a cluster of green-scented ferns at her intended prey. Instead of a pheasant, she’d found a…what?

  Her vision wavered. Blinking, she reared backward out of reach of the sharply pointed object thrust at her face. On automatic, she fended the jab off with a quick backstroke, and followed up with a downward thrust of the big survival knife already in her hand. The blade must’ve been razor sharp, slicing through the creature’s hand…paw…appendage…and digging deep into a bony chest. The thing threshed its feet a couple times. Then it went still with a bubbling, choked breath. The eyes—were there truly three of them?—remained open.

  The stench of putrefying flesh rose, overwhelming the smell of forest and earth.

  Lily yanked her knife from the body as though afraid it would catch fire. That, or fizz away into nothing in a kind of chemical reaction. She lurched out of the brush and retching, fell to her knees.

  “What the hell?” The red blood dripping from the knife blade appeared ordinary enough, but in a frenzy of revulsion, she plunged the steel time and time again into the soft ground until wrenching tremors called a halt.

  What if were more of those awful—creatures? Staring into the nearby woods, her eardrums pulsated in the effort to sharpen her hearing in case anyone—a monster—might be creeping up on her.

  Holy crap! That thing hadn’t been real, had it? In an already unreal day, maybe her mind was playing tricks. Hunger and dehydration could do that to a person.

  What had she actually killed? She needed a second look.

  Taking a firm grip on the hilt of the knife, Lily drew in a deep breath and wiggled through the bushes, dry leaves raining down on her head. Ice seemed to incase her innards. Why? She wasn’t afraid the damn thing would come back to life, was she?

  Logic told her nothing came back from a knife stuck through the heart, but that didn’t prevent replays of every horror movie she’d ever seen from running through her head. She closed her eyes, half-hoping the body would be gone when she opened them.

  No such luck. The corpse sprawled in a bed of greenery, smelling worse by the moment, as if the rot had already spread. She pinched her nose and drew a minimum of air in through her teeth.

  The creature wore clumsy looking sandals, tied on with bands of leather. Narrow at the heel and wide at the toes, sort of like a duck’s, the calloused foot seemed out of proportion. Walking, it would make very strange looking tracks indeed. Her inspection continued, moving up the body.

  Upright, it must’ve stood well over six and a half feet, with thin elongated bones. Strangely mottled brown skin covered legs sticking out of short pants. And the skin appeared tough, less like a human’s and more like the hide of an animal.

  The middle part of its body looked normal, both in size and proportion, although again, with inordinately long arm and finger bones. The spear with which it had tried to skewer her, lay fallen beside an out-flung hand. Though pointed and sharp, the broken haft had no added tip, she saw. Old blood showed in the dry crevices of the wood. Releasing a bit of air from her lungs, the examination toiled on.

  The thing’s head gave her the collywobbles. Stretched and misshapen as though fused when squeezed through a narrow birth canal, it had apparently never assumed a proper shape. But the third eye is what really startled her. Set in a shallow socket, it was a milky blue color, although the other two eyes were brown.

  Her stomach lurched again and the rest of her air gushed out. A freak. Living out here in the woods, evidently alone. Why? How could such a thing happen and nobody know?

  Lily sucked in a tiny breath through gritted teeth.

  He wore no shirt. No boobs, she thought, so it must be male. On the other hand, with anything this screwed up, there was probably only one way to be sure. Using the knife, Lily popped loose the single button holding the britches closed, and flipped back one side.

  Yes, definitely male, but the source of the gawd-awful smell also lay revealed. Sometime in the recent past, he’d been wounded in the groin. A frightful wound. From what she could tell, some kind of stab, or shot, or arrow had become infected, then turned gangrenous. Not that she had ever actually seen gangrene, but the pus, the smell, and the angry, discolored flesh was just as reported.

  Something like relief flooded through her. Already dying, killing him had probably been an act of mercy. Unintentional perhaps, but a mercy all the same. Hard on the heels of this thought came another. Who, then, had dealt him the first wound?

  The smell made the sickness rise again, and with her empty stomach she couldn’t afford any more dry heaves. Gagging, Lily retreated. Her back was still turned when a deep, long-drawn rumble sounded behind her. Whirling to face this new threat, she drew the knife into fighting position.

  A medium-sized black-and-white dog sat on its haunches looking at her. He had the pheasant—her pheasant—in his mouth.

  Lily extended her free hand. “Good dog,” she said. “That’s my pheasant. Give it to me.”

  The dog’s head tilted. The rumble came again from deep in his throat.

  “Drop it,” she commanded, her voice stern.

  The dog got up, to all appearances sneering at her around the limp bird, and trotted away.

  “Hey, you. Drop that bird.”

  His curled, white-tipped tail waving, the dog went from a trot to a lope.

  Well, dang! She needed that pheasant, and had every intention of eating it all by herself. Putting the strange, dead creature from her mind, she ran after the dog, calling every command she could think of. “Stay; sit; down.” She gave them all a try. Once, after perhaps half a mile, he looked back at her when she hollered “whoa” and even slowed for a moment, but seeing her laboring after him, turned and kept going.

  Finally, after climbing a semi-steep hill, which felt like a true mountain to Lily’s trembling legs, she discovered the terrain leveled out at the top and turned into a meadow. Dry grass waved in a breeze that, to her
surprise, had picked up and turned a little cold. Across the meadow lay a band of trees, deciduous for the most part, like white-barked birch and golden-leaved aspen. She stopped to catch her breath.

  Strange. As she recalled, the leaves, except for some of the bushes like the nine-bark she sheltered under last night as she waited for the plane, had already dropped, but here they were in leaf. Some kind of micro-climate, she supposed, but extreme for this part of the country. That had to be the reason. Any other explanation made no sense.

  The dog, far enough ahead of her by now that distance diminished him, stopped and turned his head toward her.

  “Yeah,” she muttered, as though replying to a question. “I’m coming.”

  He found a road and padded along it at a good clip. Not a real road, but something resembling an ATV trail without paving or even gravel,. Except there was no ATV. No tire tracks, either. The dog’s footprints were the only distinguishable marks she saw in a layer of powdery dust.

  How could there be dust when it had poured bucketsful last night? Unable to think of a good answer, holding her aching side, Lily straggled on. The meadow must’ve been at least a mile across, but thankfully, the dog stayed on the trail. After a few minutes, he disappeared around a bend. She hurried to catch up, and when she, too, had passed the high outcropping of basalt rock broken by small, twisted evergreen trees and sage-like shrubs, found herself at the head of a separate hidden valley.

  The dog had disappeared.

  “Hey, dog,” she called. “Good boy. Where are you?” She wasn’t quite sure what she expected. For him to speak to her? And yet, why not, considering the freakishness of everything else encountered today?

  Lily snorted, disgusted with herself. What was she doing, anyway, following a black-and-white dog that by now had probably holed up somewhere and eaten her pheasant? Wasting her time, that what, when she ought to find someone in authority to tell about the gruesome being she killed.

  Nevertheless, she pressed on, following the dog’s paw prints. His trail showed where he crossed a wide ditch. Or a canal, she thought, that in springtime would drain excess water from the meadow into the lake. An ordinary cattle guard barred the far side, although she had not, as yet, seen any cattle.