Chris Kuzneski - The Hunters

Not so for Decebal. The wilderness had always been home, and the wilderness was more than just one bluff with an aging train. It was an idea. He would start a new life elsewhere for himself, for the villagers, rather than stay here in a village that no longer had a purpose. And to do that required more money than the prince had left for them, funds stored in accounts that had been eaten away by a century.

Decebal quietly led his horse away, down into the grove in the shadow of the bluff. As soon as he entered the grove, he knew something was wrong. Before he even saw them, he knew that invaders were here.

His horse shied, then stilled beneath his powerful thighs. Decebal looked ahead and he saw them. Dark shapes stretched in a line all the way across the grove and into the valley beyond. He saw at least ten long, low shapes, with taller shapes moving amongst them. And amongst those taller shapes were even taller spikes with rounded ends.

His horse snorted and reared, whinnying. The taller shapes all seemed to snap around toward him. He saw slashes of moonlight reflected off lenses, scopes, and eyes.

‘Kill him!’ he heard a voice hiss in Russian.

Decebal was already galloping back the way he had come, as fast as his horse could take him. Behind him, it sounded like dragons. He hazarded a glance and saw several of the low, monstrous beasts clawing the earth at the lip of the grove.

As always, Decebal looked ahead, peering through the darkness. He could see the first suggestion of light outlining the horizon. He could see steam rising from the southwest. It had to be the explorers’ train, retracing the prince’s path. He could also see the sparks of the nocturnal village fires ahead and considerably above him.

Too far , he thought. He would have a better chance of reaching the train on the sloping ground than trying to climb up the vertical bluff back to the village. On the far side, where the train tracks were hidden, the ascent was a long, steady curve. On this side, it was a treacherous incline where he and his horse would soon be overtaken.

Decebal charged southeast to meet the rising sun, and the train, before it was too late. Behind him the growls got louder.

If anyone on the bluff had been looking down, they might have seen the galloping horse and its rider racing diagonally across the grassland. Puffs of dawn-lit dirt rose from the horse’s hooves as two dark objects, as long as they were wide, seemed to sizzle across the field after him. From the grove, it was impossible to see they were gaining on the rider.

Grigori Sidorov stepped out from the waiting line of IMZ-Ural sidecar motorcycles, which were made by the military for the most extreme and hostile off-road conditions. The leader of the Black Robes held the Accuracy International AX338 long-range sniper’s rifle — the one McNutt had used to kill his hired help — like a royal scepter.

‘Idiots,’ he muttered. ‘They can’t even kill an old man on an old horse.’

Sidorov waved for one of his men to join him. The man was part of his inner circle, not one of those newer, incompetent recruits he had left on the train, the men who joined for the sin but not for the labor. The man arrived quickly and stood in front of Sidorov. He was shorter than the leader by more than a head: the perfect size for his new assignment.

Sidorov set the barrel of the rifle on the man’s shoulder and placed his eye behind the sniper’s night vision scope. The Romanian rider appeared in the circle like a bobbing puppet on a string. Sidorov smiled, settled, waited just a moment, and pulled the trigger.

The twenty-millimeter-long, nine-millimeter-wide, copper-colored.338 Lapua Magnum spear entered Decebal’s body traveling nine hundred and three meters per second. It was designed to penetrate five layers of military-grade body armor at a thousand yards, so going through the old man’s torso, as hearty and healthy as it was, posed no problem.

It entered between his shoulder blades and, because of his galloping posture, exited through his sternum’s manubrium, ravaging portions of both his heart and lungs while ripping muscle and shattering bone.

The projectile continued forward. Had the horse’s head been on the upswing of the gallop, it would have killed the animal, too. As it was, the bullet only cut some hairs off the very top of the horse’s mane before it buried itself in the turf ahead.

Sidorov’s smile widened as he watched Decebal’s body jerk, sag, then begin to topple.

‘Kneel,’ he ordered the man in front of him.

The Black Robe instantly knelt, allowing Sidorov to watch his victim fall.

Decebal landed heavily on his back. He bounced once, then slid, and finally settled. His eyes were blinking as he realized that, of all the responsibilities he had been given, or given himself, it was only this last one that he had failed. It was with some bitterness that he accepted it was also the most important responsibility.

But you did all right , he told himself as thoughts swirled in his head. It has been an honorable life. A loving life. All in all, a very good one .

He smiled his gap-toothed smile one last time — seeing his friends, his family, and his life all at once — then died under the stars he had loved so much.

McNutt saw a frightened Lipizzaner in the distance. The speckled stallion bolted along the tree line before it disappeared from view. ‘That’s Decebal’s horse!’

Because of Ludmilla’s monstrous roar, he had to shout even though he was right beside Cobb in the engine cab. Dobrev pushed her as fast as she could go without hurling them off the old, partially recessed rails. The train had taken an agonizing left at the tree line and swept up the slope on the far side, clawing toward a ragged swath of land between their position and the village. Using a map, Cobb had already showed Dobrev where the berm was that they’d have to plow through. The engineer had grunted, accepting the inevitability of the attempt, if not necessarily the success. Both men knew they had to hit it fast if they were going to get through nearly a century of compacted growth and debris.

Using hand gestures and the map, Cobb had made it clear to Dobrev that they had to get to the village as fast as possible. Although the treasure was being taken care of, they had to protect the villagers from the impending raid. Despite the urgency of the mission, they could only go so fast up the incline. Both men, by their intensity and silence, were clearly hoping they would be able to gain sufficient speed.

Cobb addressed the entire team through his earpiece. ‘Everybody: if you haven’t already, get your tactical vests and helmets on,’ he instructed them. ‘The Black Robes that we killed on the train were sacrifices. The rest of them are waiting in the darkness.’

‘Where in the darkness?’ Sarah hissed in his ear, as she hung onto a small ridge at the very top of the cave, her toes wedged in two rock fissures.

‘Somewhere between us and you,’ Cobb surmised. ‘They’re stalking the train. That was their plan all along.’

‘Then why attack us here?’ Garcia demanded. Back in the village, he was desperately trying to keep his eyes on all the train’s security camera images — all crammed onto one laptop screen.

‘To cover their flank or to take hostages,’ Cobb said. ‘They know the cave’s around here somewhere.’

‘God … damn … it!’ Sarah cursed, realizing she was a sitting — make that hanging — target. McNutt had explained exactly what had to be done, but he had made things seem a lot simpler than she was finding them. Still, it was easier for her to learn how to set a charge than it would have been for her to teach him how to climb a cave. ‘How much time do we have?’