The Hero

Chapter 19

Dagger had moved off to the east, trying to keep calm and think of nothing. But it was hard, very hard. The Darhel would be out there somewhere, and now the tracking was on the other foot; for the first time the Darhel was the hunter instead of the prey. Of course, that meant that he was closing. When Dagger saw him he would be too close to dodge a round. If Dagger saw him first.

That meant the hummocky terrain to the south. If he could bypass the Darhel, who was sure to be coming east, and get to the hills, especially to the southeast, he would have a good chance of getting the first shot in. If he moved by bounds, found an open area, set up, waited, then moved again, he had a good chance of getting the first shot in anyway. The Darhel didn’t appear to be able to zero in on his position, just get a vague feel for his general locale. That would work. And keep calm.

Tirdal sensed the change in Dagger’s demeanor. He was somewhere to the northeast, and even as a strong feeling of gloating came through the contact began to fade until it was almost impossible to discern. Apparently Dagger had taken his comments to heart about masking his feelings.

He let a little of his anger slip and felt the trickle of tal hormone fill his being with a feeling of lightness. But even with his enhancement he was back to “near/far” and the sniper was… somewhere in the middle.

Obviously Dagger was doing one of two things. Waiting, or swinging around to get on Tirdal’s backtrail. Since the plan was to lead the sniper into another trap, it was important to make and then break contact. But with the feel of location fading it was going to be difficult. He or Dagger could walk right up to each other without even realizing it.

He marched into the scrub, and it was as bad as he’d hoped. Tendrils caught at his boots, coarse grass dragged at his suit, rocks of every size protruded into his path. Small flyers lofted past him, and once a boot-sized insect jumped from in front of him, digging frantically under the matted grass to find shelter. Then there were the choking vines, stiff plants and gnarled, low trees. It was sere and desolate and perfect.

Edging a little closer to the savanna, he headed due south, every sense alive for the slightest sign of Dagger.

Which was why he didn’t notice the tiger beetles.

The creatures were not tigers, of course, and not beetles. But they were two meter long predators, albeit with short legs, and their mandibles were adapted to cut through the tough shells of the local herbivores like can openers; they were more than capable of taking apart a lone Darhel. Their evolution had taught them to be stealthy, lest the large prey crush them underfoot with their knife-edge hooves, or bite with their own jaws. Such a bite wasn’t likely to be fatal at once, but would cripple the predator. That led to death from starvation, and improved the stealth and reactions of the surviving lines. The tiger beetles moved stealthily toward this strange little snack, darting and freezing.

Tirdal sensed the attack before the first rustle of underbrush and the things were on him. He dodged the first, but his Sense said “seven” and he knew he’d have to fire.

Dagger heard the hollow slap of the punch gun to the east and grinned. The Elf had run into something he couldn’t run away from and it was going to cost him. The sniper cut immediately to the southeast where he knew the Darhel’s trail would be. He listened to the shots, gauging direction and distance. He must be in that patch of crud across the stream. The Elf had been stupid not to press the attack when he could, and now Dagger would exploit it. At a run, weapon high, he bounded down the bluff, keeping ears open for the punch gun, eyes open for the Darhel and feet alert for tripping hazards.

It was a good kilometer, which was a long run on this terrain with this much crap. Add in lack of sleep and water, fatigue and a bad ankle plus a few new dings and Dagger was worn out and panting for breath by the time he neared the stream.

Tirdal wasn’t sure how he had dodged the first rush but now it was a furball. Two of the predators were down, one of them twitching, one broken, but those were lucky shots. Two more had been hit but it wasn’t stopping them; he had to hit a nerve center to kill the creatures. Neck or belly were the targets. Neck or belly, he reminded himself as he dodged another leap. They were pack hunters, and waited for cues from each other. They circled around at a run and dove in a tight sequence, one to distract, one from behind, the rest from the sides. He Sensed their leaps only instants before, but it had been enough so far. He knew their pattern, now, but could he maintain his luck and speed? His first evasion had sent pain shrieking through his lower chestplate. The second one had almost caused him unconsciousness. There was another danger; that of a reaction equivalent to human endorphin response. Part of his brain was Sensing his enemy, part clamping down tightly on agony, part controlling tal and preventing the cloying sweetness and urgency of lintatai, leaving badly eroded mental processes for wielding the punch gun, twisting through the blades of their jaws and staying mobile.

It took three quarters of a second for the punch gun to cycle and the pauses between shots were the most incredibly long three-quarters of a second he could imagine. He had accepted that he would have to fill each of the beasts full of holes until he hit a nerve junction, but the question was who would be dismembered first. He ducked a leap, rolled to the left through thick weeds, untangled from them and the matted grass beneath, skipped back a step and fired. The gun went poounk, his chosen target staggered, lintatai surged toward the center of his brain and his training locked it back down. The contortions and battle outside were a mere shadow of the war within, of hormones versus self-control. It was literally as hard as controlling an orgasm in progress, that threatened to spill over at the slightest opening. Except that this orgasm would kill him.

The insects scurried back into a circle around him. He backed away through a gap, delaying the inevitable, almost stumbling in the thick, close-spaced stalks, until the punch gun recycled. He pointed and snap-shot just as he’d been taught on the training range, pointing for the head of the nearest beast, hoping for a stun, blunt trauma or perhaps something better. The creature was stretched out at the run, and the shot caught it on the short but exposed neck. It wasn’t dead-on, as the head rolled between the forelegs but remained attached by a sinewy string inside the articulated plates. Still, the insect tumbled and began to twitch. It was a kill. A surge of tal brought bright halos to everything in Tirdal’s vision, and he took another breath, laden with the coppery stench of blood, the earthy smell of insect guts and the ozone tang of the shots. He focused on the sensations, through them. See the calmness of the lake. The currents run underneath. Only the ripples wash the shore…

Pain lanced again, this time through his right thigh. His Sense had been distracted and missed this one. He drove the butt of the weapon down, tearing the mandibles free, fabric and flesh following them with an animated trail of blood droplets. The blow might have damaged the creature’s jaw, as it seemed askew. A twist, point, shoot. Point-blank through the open mouth would also kill one, it seemed, and another surge swept through him. Forcing the searing pain in his chest and leg aside, he leapt over the horse-sized carcass, its legs thrumming the ground in death, and turned to face the remaining three as the tortured nerves in his shoulder, chestplate and thigh caused a cramp the entire length of his right side, from shoulder to ankle. The tiger beetles seemed to lack the rational sense to leave a losing battle. Or maybe they were starving. Or maybe Darhel smelled like chicken. They were going to leap now, and Tirdal dropped. It wasn’t hard to let gravity do the work.

As they jumped, he fell behind the last corpse, its legs still twitching, brushing him in a macabre caress. But he was pointing straight up as they went overhead, and his shot caught one of them at the rear of the underside. That one split, its rear legs and joint tumbling free with a gout of entrails and yellow goo to land in a twitching heap. Tirdal dragged his feet painfully under himself in a squat, then shoved as hard as he could, rising up the curve of the carcass and over to the other side of the corpse, twisting as he went. The ankle on his already injured leg responded too slowly to the landing, and he felt it crunch, trauma inflaming the soft tissue into an instant sprain. He shot again and nothing happened. It had not been three-quarters of a second. The remaining pair spread wide, and he fired as the weapon recharged, getting one obliquely underneath as it left the ground. He dropped and rolled in close to the corpse behind him and waited for recharge and another attack.

The final tiger beetle continued its leap into a run and disappeared.

Tirdal did what any human martial artist would. He went into recovery breathing, slow and controlled, forcing his chestplate to obey. That alone reduced the pain somewhat, and he curled into a comfortable position. Sitting folded was preferred, but any position that helped an injury was the choice in the field. He grounded his thoughts and drifted for just a moment, pulling himself from the edge of unconsciousness. The cliff marks the edge. The edge can be walked. From the edge one can see into the distance. Behind is safety. Look not behind, but over the edge to the fear… He came back enough to feel the lintatai, and split his mind to deal with it. The wind stirs ripples through the leaves. The leaves sway the tree. The tree bends and flexes but does not yield. Supple is the tree. Supple is the mind. Emotions are but leaves in the wind of existence…

It took only a minute, but it was a minute well spent. Control returned, his mind aglow with the thudding of his heart and the warmth of emotion. All fell away into a cool, refreshed focus on a stalk in front of his eyes, its dun length covered in fuzzy white hairs.

That, and a gaping wound in his thigh and a sprained ankle. For the former, a self-healing bandage was called for. He cut away more of the damaged suit, keeping the hole as small as possible for protection. He eased the bandage inside, pressed it gently around the edges to seal it, then stroked its surface to activate it. It would disinfect the wound, staunch the bleeding, and drop nanites in to effect repair. It would be healed in a day, if he could only rest and eat. But of course, that was out of the question.

Rising painfully to his knees, then his feet, using his arms and the punch gun for support, he pressed a patch to his neck, letting a mild analgesic and more nanites into his bloodstream. What he needed was the Darhel equivalent of a narcotic and a muscle relaxer, but that, too, was out of the question.

The scrapes and minor tears he’d have to ignore. It was time to move. He lurched off deeper into the brush.

Dagger squatted low. The firing had stopped as he came down the hill. That could mean dead Elf, or crippled Elf, or that he’d won his engagement. It was time to be cautious again. That thick tangle of crud was definitely where he was, and there was nothing to do but ease in slowly, rifle raised at the ready and be prepared to shoot at any disturbance. This had to end soon, and there would be no better time. The Darhel had to be disoriented and possibly injured, too. Even likely injured. That had been a lot of shooting, indicating a predator.

So watch out for predators and wounded Darhel. Shoot both, ask questions later, he thought as he brushed fronds aside with the barrel of his rifle. The undergrowth was thick and matted, and he’d have to step carefully. What he needed was a hint as to where Tirdal’s trail was. From there, he could stalk him down. And it would be damned near impossible for the little freak to dodge in this undergrowth.

Dagger was smiling faintly as he pushed forward. He raised branches carefully, stepping underneath and then lowering them to avoid swishes or snaps. Each step was thought through before the foot went down. He twisted as he walked, turning his torso to avoid growth where possible, so as to minimize his own trail. The sun was hot, flyers drifted up past him, disturbed by the movement, and pods and seeds clung to his skin and his gear. Rather than prickly like earth seeds, most here were gooey. That had to be because most life-forms had shells and not fur or feathers.

Then he came across a cracked stick. Near it was a flattened patch of grass. There, a turned log. This was trail, certainly. In a few moments, Dagger had it. A drop of violet blood glistened on a tall blade of grass.

He smiled; a drunk blind man could follow this trail. There were broken stalks from clumsy footsteps, bent and torn leaves from the passage of a body. Now to get in a good position to take the Darhel down. Though from the size of the blood trail the Darhel wasn’t going to be much of a challenge anymore. More violet drops and faint greasy smears showed him to be injured.

Had Dagger seen the size of the area torn apart in the fight, resembling a tornado touchdown, and the corpses of six dead tiger beetles blown into pieces, he wouldn’t have been so confident.

It was likely that Tirdal would seek shelter, somewhere to patch himself up and rest. He might have major trauma from that fight. He might have a strain or other damage. A concussion, even, if Darhel were susceptible to them. Shock. All things that would slow him down. Dagger would exploit each one of those, find and nail him. He would be calm, methodical and professional, and afterwards he’d gloat.

The gloating would be very sweet. It had, after all, been a hell of a chase and a bastard of a fight. That made the coming victory that much more enjoyable.

Behind both combatants, the local scavengers had found the sign of the battle. Snuffling and twitching their antennae, those niche-fillers moved in to examine the area. There was protein in plenty here, with six large, well-fed predators dead, and their shells were already open. The meat would be efficiently disposed of in ever-smaller bites until the antlike legions scoured the skeletons clean. Then the insect borers would crumble those and the sun would break down the structure until it became merely crunchy soil underneath. But for now, best to feast quickly, lest some other predator dispute the rights. Most of them tore at the dead animals, but the area was crowded and blood had splashed widely. Some of that blood was interesting, different. What tasty flavor might such a wounded creature yield when dead?

A pack leader chittered, and brushed her antennae over her pack. At her lead, they trundled off through the scrub, following the scent of that strange blood. One stopped for a last bite of tiger beetle.

Tirdal could sense the sniper back on his trail; Dagger’s control was slipping in the thrill of the hunt. Not that it mattered; there wasn’t much he could do about it. Admittedly Dagger had been supposed to follow him but Tirdal wasn’t supposed to have half his thigh bitten away at the time.

He splashed back across the shallow stream and up the other side, which was a dry rock shelf that might help hide his passage. He reached down to try to get his bandage into better position. He was dealing with a lot of problems at this point; multiple injuries, exhausting lack of sleep, the tal hormone which also responded to injury, general stress, and he hadn’t eaten all day. But right now all he could do was hunker down and try to set his planned ambush.

Once across the water he headed along his backtrail for a distance, then swung back towards the stream. He could sense Dagger getting closer; the mental “scent” almost had horns attached to it. But he should have time to get into position. Whatever happened he should have the advantage at these ranges.

This would be a good spot, he decided. Solid rock would shield him from the gauss rifle. There wasn’t much on the other side for Dagger to hide behind that a punch gun wouldn’t blow gaping holes in, and if Dagger tried to cross the stream he’d be exposed. This was as good as it was going to get.

While Tirdal didn’t have any dedicated tracking gear, there were motion sensors built into his suit. He slowly dialed up the sensitivity, so anything over twenty kilograms would register. That was overly sensitive, but he wasn’t sure just how good Dagger was at sneaking. It might be that his audio or motion signature would be quite small. Twenty seemed a good number.

Then he sealed his suit. Gloves and boots hermetically joined to cuffs. A membrane dropped from his helmet and fastened to the neckline. The suit’s fabric stiffened molecularly and became impermeable. Tirdal was now wearing an almost solid barrier that should keep any genetic or chemical scans from locating him. There was leakage through the hole on his thigh, but that could not be helped. He leaned back against the rock and brought the chameleon effect up slowly. At low level, it wasn’t an easily detectable power source, would last several hours, and would make him as close as possible to invisible, provided he didn’t move.

Of course, now he was in a pressure cooker. Air was thick and humid and would get worse, with only carbon dioxide escaping. Incoming radiation and heat, unradiated body heat, sweat and exhaled moisture would steam him. It was unpleasant already, in this environment hotter than the one he was used to, but he estimated he could survive an hour or so if he kept activity to a minimum. A bit of Jem meditation, without using tal, which was a change, reduced his awareness of the discomfort.

Slowly, he raised his awareness again. He’d have to be very sensitive until he had Dagger located, then withdraw his Sense and use his eyes and ears. If it came down to a direct shot, he’d have to lock everything down and hope for the best. He still wasn’t sure he could kill, but a solid maiming would do as well, and even a moderate wound would keep Dagger and the artifact here, which was a less than optimum solution, but acceptable and preferred over the box leaving.

His awareness came up slowly, and there was Dagger, stalking him from “near.” So he was likely just across the creek. Tirdal focused on that. He’d get an immediate warning of any predators, which would have to do, as he couldn’t be distracted any further. Only Dagger should be in his Sense now. No distractions, nothing to require more tal. The trickle he was using was a dangerous level of itself, with all that had happened so far.

Now to wait.

The pack could tell that the prey had headed for the crossing and it knew a shortcut. It was aware that there were two smells ahead but it could expect to overtake at least one of them by the time they came to the stream. Then they would feed. They took their food where they could find it, and only from the weak. That was their role. The alpha female kept the others focused with chemical exudations. Wounded prey could be dangerous, and all might be needed to subdue it. It might even be that one or two of them would die. If so, they too would become food. There was little thought in the creatures, only hunger and focus.

Dagger consulted his HUD and frowned. The stream was ahead; the trail probably crossed it. He would need to be careful there; it was a good place for an ambush. He wasn’t assuming Tirdal couldn’t shoot him, no matter how strong the evidence so far was that he couldn’t. There were no bluffs to fall on him, no trees to fall around him. Those memories momentarily shook his concentration, but he suppressed the anger. Calm. Stay calm. Locate target, shoot target, score points for the team on the exercise. Only an exercise, like so many others.

Yes, the trail led to the muddy banks of the stream. The target had jumped across there, not leaving footprints but leaving slickened grass and a silty eddy in the water. It couldn’t have passed more than a few minutes before. Target was across there somewhere.

Dagger bristled alert, extending a human version of Tirdal’s Sense. It was neither trained nor sophisticated, but anything out of place would send a warning to him. He moved to his knees in a slow sink, rather than a drop, taking more than a minute to do so. It was rough on his ankle and painful on abused and exhausted muscles, but it was a necessary step.

From his knees, he bent gradually to rest one hand on the ground. From there, it was simply a matter of patience. It was more than five minutes before he was settled. Another minute passed before the chameleoned muzzle of his rifle parted two stems of grass to overlook the stream.

Okay, Target. Where are you? I need those points for a win.

Tirdal settled on his rock with a quiet sigh. Nothing trying to eat him, no one trying to kill him for the moment. Just a big slab of limestone and dirt. And, shortly thereafter, a sniper, who would try to kill him. He breathed slowly, evenly, overmind controlling the pain and the rising core temperature, and alert for trouble with his normal senses. His submind kept alert with his Sense and worked on healing him. At this point, it might even be considered damage control. Medical care and recovery was certain to be involved.

Local small beetles and ant analogs crawled over his boots and suit. He was still enough to be part of the terrain to them. An odd, unseeable part to be sure, but not unusual enough to bother such sensitive but nonsentient creatures. There was nothing to do but wait until Dagger moved from “near” to “very near,” unless an image came to him sooner.

Dagger was nearly close enough to see if Tirdal rose, but still obscured by brush. The punch gun would go through it but Tirdal wanted to make sure he got a good shot. So he calmed himself and waited for his nemesis to come fully into view, or expose himself by shooting.

Dagger had slipped into a perfect shooting trance. He wasn’t even aware of it, of course. What he was aware of was that the Target was hiding over there, probably behind that rock. That would be the best place for hard cover. Should he toss a few hornet rounds and see what happened? But there might be additional cover he couldn’t see. Hornets weren’t magic. Frequently, they were only distractors. Too frequently, recently. For a moment, memories rippled his calm, but he recovered and was back in trance at once. Best to wait for a good, clean shot. He moved forward a few inches to get a better position with a wider field of view.

The pack could smell the prey ahead but they were wary. This was probably the “prey” that had killed the pack of tiger beetles. And the smells were wrong. But they were the smells of protein on the claw, the smells of meat. So it was worth the danger to try to take it down; meat was hard to find. Dangerous it might be, but hunger drove them. They too could be cautious slinks. The female retracted her legs in closely and cautiously probed ahead with her antennae. There was no movement, though wounded animals often didn’t move much until attacked. There was something there, insubstantial as it was, but it was definitely an animal of some kind. She sprayed a hormone signal to the others, and squeezed between two more blades of grass.

The chemtracker function of the scope was off the scale. The Target had likely sealed up, but there would still be vapors in the air, especially after exhausting exercise. Sweat laced with ketones and pheromones dispersed slowly. So the Target was nearby, probably behind that rock on the right, waiting for Dagger to show himself or shoot. Where, exactly?

Dagger’s helmet highlighted a small IR trace as a probable threat but he carefully stilled any rush of feeling. The Target was waiting for him to come fully into view before he took his shot. That would be his undoing. Dagger would shoot from right here. Then he would divert to the right and shoot again, and work his way around that cover. This was it. That protruding ripple might be a head or a hand, but an antimatter round would shatter it. He thumbed the selector, breathed, relaxed and squeeeezed.

Overhead, chunks of rock shattered, sharp pieces stinging through his suit though they did not penetrate. Tirdal cursed the Aldenata that had put him in this mess and flattened out on the rock, then hunched low. Dagger had him pinned down but the reverse was true as well. If he could get one shot he probably would be able to take the sniper. Unfortunately, if he tried to move he’d be a target. But… the punch gun could be set to repeat to the helmet systems. He toggled the punch gun’s sight into his HUD and cleared the direct view. He could switch it back in a moment and he didn’t need to see what was around him right now, but did need to see what the gun saw. Now, if he inched it around the rock…

Dagger triggered another round at the Darhel’s position and grinned. Sure, if the Darhel got one good shot he was dead; there was no such thing as “cover” with a punch gun. But the Darhel’s chosen spot had nowhere to crawl back from and he wasn’t going anywhere so it came down to who could outwait who. And a sniper is the definition of patience. There was another faint disturbance, and he shot the edge of the rock. More chips flew.

He stilled his thrill as the heat sensor noted a movement to the side. He saw the edge of the Darhel’s weapon come around the rock and took up slack on the firing button…

The pack paused at the crack of the shot and then the flurry that followed. However, again, the sounds were strange but meat was meat. They waved their antennae at the scents to the east. Close, very close that meat was. Tantalizing. And the insubstantial animal was barely moving.

Tirdal cursed his foolish eagerness as the weapon spun out of his hand, tumbling in two large pieces with innards hanging out. The weapon’s casing was tough, but antimatter didn’t care. He hunkered back down and carefully drew his rail pistol, it being mounted just above the wound on his thigh. One last chance. And it would really be bad to use it, because the EM field it emitted when fired was obvious to any sensor. It was all he had, though. Calm. He must remain calm. The ripples reflect the clearness of sky. The ripples are steady and even. The ripples wait for the shore, they do not rush to their fate.

The pack paused. They were scavengers, not predators. But this soft prey would be no threat. They waved their antennae in momentary indecision then leapt.

Dagger’s first warning was the sound of scuttling behind him as the dog-sized pill bugs charged. Their mandibles were even more oversized than the predators, designed for rapidly ripping chunks of flesh from recent kills, and the first took his left leg and snipped the foot off at the ankle, right through the suit’s tough fabric. Another ripped a hole in the thigh. Neither of those wounds registered at once; they were too quick and too clean for conscious thought to follow.

Then he was being chewed all over. Large bites, small bites, sawing and chewing through the fabric, his skin, muscle and grating on bone. He thrashed around in instinctive reaction, tried to swing his rifle around and realized there was no room. He reached for his pistol.

At the shriek, Tirdal froze. Then he peeked around the edge at a fusillade of pistol shots. He noted the scene and leaned back to wait. Dagger was occupied. It would be interesting to compare his abilities in this type of battle to Tirdal’s. It would be best though, to wait for resolution before peeking again. Tirdal listened to the crunching of brush, the curses and screams and shots. Underneath, barely audible, were the chitters and the scrape of super chitin. Pistols, he recalled, were not likely to have any effect at all on these creatures, and it didn’t sound as if Dagger were disposed to seek cover or evade. It was proof, after all the suspicions, that the man really was too cowardly to do the brave thing. His mental and physical courage was weighted by an emotional cowardice that was leading to this… In only a few seconds, the shots became scarcer, the screams softer. Shortly, they died down to rustling moans.

When Tirdal at last came out, the eerie quiet had returned to the woods. A glance suggested the pack and Dagger were about done with each other. Some had fled. The remaining creatures were each chewing on some severed part of Dagger.

Cautiously crossing and approaching from upstream, he located the shattered growth that pinpointed the battle. He crept in, wary of Dagger’s thoughts, but found only the basic kernel of personality there. The man was badly injured. Still, he crawled into the area with only desiccated, crackly trees as cover. He kept his pistol low and ready in case of attack from either threat, or a new one entirely. His Sense was at minimum, tal tightly controlled to a trickle lest the feedback from a death throw him over the edge.

There was Dagger, and he was down and well bloodied. Some lobbed rocks and a couple of careful shots confused and drove off the scavengers, who chittered angrily but deferred to what seemed to them to be a superior predator. They knew their caste and moved off, dragging parts of Dagger with them, to seek other sustenance.

Tirdal pulled the gauss rifle away from Dagger’s twitching form. The pistol was already well to the side, still clutched in the severed hand of the renegade.

Renegade, traitor, Quisling, sellout, turncoat. Humans had a rich array of words for this type of betrayal. They despised Darhel, who always abided by a contract for the sake of honor, yet saw nothing wrong with “screwing each other over” or “sticking it to them” or even “Jewing them down.” That last one had taken some research, then a study of the concept of racism before Tirdal could define it. He still didn’t understand it. That was something else that would require more meditation.

Back now to the business at hand. Tirdal stared for just a moment, then gave a very Darhel smile; all teeth. His ears flicked in appreciation of irony. Then he started applying tourniquets to the limp form before him. He was, after all, crosstrained as a medic.

Dagger muzzily regained consciousness. Pain throbbed through every fiber of his being. His skull pounded from both bruising and clashing hormones. There were stinks in the air, of blood and urine and scorched and putrefying flesh. He realized those were his. Reaching to shield his eyes with his right hand, he discovered anew that it was missing at the wrist. The stump bumped into his cheek, leaving a smear of jellied blood. It didn’t hurt much; the tourniquet around it had killed the pain along with the flesh underneath it. Other sensations resolved as small insectoids underneath, stinging him with every tiny bite. His left leg was gone below the knee, he found when he tried to roll over. It too, had been tied off. Pain suffused his entire being, aches, sharp stabs and bites all fighting for attention. Chunks of flesh were missing all over his body, the gaping, ragged wounds covered with bandages but left not numbed. He rocked unsteadily over, iron control turning what would be shrieks into whimpers of agony. Every touch of the stiff weeds and spiky leaves around him hurt anew, and he looked through a red haze that might be the result of pain, or perhaps blood in his eyes.

There would be other animals, larger ones, coming soon, drawn to the strange but cloying scents of his meat. He’d need his rifle. Inside, never reaching his visage, a smile formed. The damned Elf hadn’t been able to kill him. The smile inside became an insane smirk on the surface. He reached for the rifle. Even with just his left hand he could shoot.

It was gone. The depression in the growth and dug up dirt where it had plowed in were visible next to him. The rifle was not.

His pistol was there, still clutched in the shattered, glistening chunks of bone and shredded flesh that had been his right hand. It was holding down a note.

The note had been written in flawless block letters, as if by an engineer. Or someone who had learned English as a second language. It read: “I left you a bullet. Tirdal San Rintai.”

From the bushes to the right, there came a rustling, followed by a chittering.

This time, Dagger’s shrieks were unsuppressed.