Chris Evans - A Darkness Forged in Fire

"But you don't think anything really bad is going to happen, do you?" Alwyn asked.

Yimt's voice became grave. "Something bad always happens. The trick is being as far away from it as possible when it does. You stick with me and you'll be fine."

It was the closest to logic he was likely to get. Alwyn made the sign of the moon and stars, took the canteen from Yimt, brought it to his lips, and took a sip.

"Ack…ack," was all he could say for several seconds after the burning liquid roared down his throat.

"Flower sniffer," Yimt said, taking the canteen back and pouring a healthy dose of the stuff down his own throat without even swallowing. "Have another look then."

Alwyn felt as if the top of his head had been removed and molten lead poured straight into his stomach, but his vision did seem clearer. He inched his way around the other side of the tree and poked his head through the leaves. "What, that big thing by the fence?"

"That's one of them water buffaloes. Mercy, how many times did they drop you as a baby? Look to your left, there, see the shadow?"

Alwyn strained his eyes and thought maybe he did see something, but he couldn't tell what. Blast his eyes. He took off his spectacles and rubbed the lenses on his jacket some more then put them back on. "Right, I see it now. By the third post."

"By the quack in a duck's bill, you found it. All right, on the count of five we'll shoot," Yimt said, pulling back the heavy iron lever on his shatterbow, a two-and-a-half-foot-long crossbow with two musket barrels side by side. Each barrel was easily twice the diameter of a regular musket and fired an iron dart the size of a grown man's thumb. As if that wasn't destructive enough, each dart was filled with gunpowder and a tiny fuse that was lit when the shatterbow fired, in essence making each projectile a small cannon shell.

The dwarf grunted and let out a deep breath as he levered back the steel-reinforced wooden bow located halfway down the barrels. Alwyn edged away, hoping all the while that Yimt knew what he was doing.

"What, we're just gonna shoot?" Alwyn asked, his voice rising to a squeak. He'd heard about Yimt from other soldiers. The Little Mad One. He'd been in the army most of his life, starting out as a boy drummer at the age of thirteen. Back then, long before Alwyn was born, that was about the only way a dwarf could join the Imperial Army, that or the engineers, the artillery, or a flint knapper. And here it was today and Yimt was still only a private. Alwyn was beginning to see why.

"What if it's an officer out checking the piquets?" Alwyn asked.

"Good point. We'll shoot on three." Yimt brought his shatterbow up to his shoulder and took aim.

"Hang on, my musket isn't loaded," Alwyn whispered furiously, fishing for a cartridge in his pouch. "You really think it's an officer?"

Yimt turned and made a face at Alwyn. "Course it ain't no officer. Them peacocks strut around like a whore on payday. Whoever that is don't want to be seen, which means we got every right to shoot. Still…it's nice to think it could be an officer."

Alwyn finished loading his musket and crawled forward so that his upper body was outside the mass of leaves. He took aim, his hands shaking so that the musket bobbed around like a dandelion in the wind. The shadow was moving along the fence line as if looking for something. It was large, very large.

"Ready… fire!" Yimt yelled.

There was the click of the trigger, the throaty twang of the strings propelling the darts up the barrels as the bow sprang forward from its bent position, followed by a double crack as the fuse on each dart was ignited by two embedded flints. A fraction of a second later, the two darts hurtled out of the barrels trailing a brilliant shower of sparks that turned the darkness into broad daylight.

"What happened to counting down?" Alwyn yelled back, then fired, too, the flash and bang of his musket rather puny in comparison to Yimt's cannonade.

Alwyn heard three heavy sounds, like a butcher slamming a hunk of raw meat onto a marble table, followed by a muffled explosion.

"We got him!" Yimt exclaimed, charging forward. He ran surprisingly fast on his stubby legs.

"Wait up," Alwyn cried, stumbling after him toward the fence.

Shouts rang up and down the line and the sound of running boots could be heard.

"So what did we hit?" Alwyn asked, slipping on something and having to grab Yimt's shoulder to keep from falling. Yimt said nothing, just stared down at the body before him.

Alwyn let go and knelt for a better look, then jumped back. Great chunks of flesh and bones littered the ground and dripped off the fence. The head, however, was still intact. "It's…it's a rakke! I don't believe it. I seen one once in a picture book my granny used to read to me."

"Your granny had one twisted way of showing affection if she was showing pictures of that to a youngster," Yimt said, handing his shatterbow to Alwyn and unsheathing his other weapon, a drukar. Like the shatterbow, the drukar was made for dwarves. The blade reflected no light at all, its blackened finish appearing like a darker shadow in the night. It was a foot and a half long, six inches wide, and angled down at the halfway point, giving it a distinctly talonlike appearance.

"Granny was from the old country," Alwyn said, slowly edging backward from the scattered remains of the monster spread out before him. "She used to tell me all kinds of stuff about magic, especially the stuff that was evil. And that thing was one of them."

"Ally, relax," Yimt said, hefting his drukar between his hands. "It's dead."

Alwyn shook his head. "But it always was dead-at least, long before you and I came along. Yimt, don't you understand, Granny said they died off ages ago."

Without another word, Yimt brought the weapon down hard, sending blood and gore flying everywhere.

"What'd you go and do that for? You said it was dead," Alwyn yelled, wiping his face with the sleeve of his jacket, his spectacles once again smeared.

Yimt kicked the rakke's head hard with his boot. "That's the army for you. You do your duty, you serve the high and mighty, put your life on the line, and what do you get? Monsters." He turned back to Alwyn. "What did I tell you? That news crier had it right with all that talk about darkness and vigilance for enemies of the Empire and whatnot." He struck the rakke again with the drukar. "Well, if we're going to be dumped in it, you might as well learn now. When in doubt, put cold steel in it. Kill it, and then kill it again."

"You were in doubt?" Alwyn asked. The dwarf really was mad if he thought that thing had still been alive.

Yimt cleaned his blade with a fistful of grass and shook his head. "Naw, it really was dead the first time," he remarked, the bitterness in his voice as acidic as the drake sweat.

Alwyn looked from Yimt to the rakke then back to Yimt again. "Then what's the problem?"

Yimt gave the head one more kick and spat. "There's never an officer around when you want one."

Swinging lanterns appeared out of the night as more soldiers arrived. One stepped forth and surveyed the scene.

"What have you done now?" Corporal Kritton asked, staring at the fleshy wreckage on the ground. He was an elf, one of the few still in the Imperial Army after the disbanding of the Iron Elves. His words were soft, yet they carried the weight of steel shot in them. "If you shot another water buffalo trying to infiltrate the line, you'll be marching with full packs all the way back to Calahr."

Alwyn's mouth went dry. The corporal absolutely terrified him. He was only the second elf he'd ever known, the first being the cobbler down the street from his home. Mr. Yuimi had been small, quiet, always bent over a piece of shoe leather whenever Alwyn had stopped in to see if he needed any chores done. No matter how silently Alwyn entered the shop, Mr. Yuimi always knew he was there, tossing a chunk of licorice to exactly where Alwyn was standing without ever looking. Corporal Kritton was equally good at knowing where his soldiers were, but unlike kind old Mr. Yuimi, Kritton never gave you a reason to smile when he found you.