Chris Evans - A Darkness Forged in Fire

Konowa turned to scold Jir to get a move on. The bengar was gone.

"Jir," he called softly. Jir had excellent hearing, but that wasn't why Konowa kept his voice low-the forest had gone silent. The constant hum of life that surged through the trees was absent, the forest was preternaturally still, as if time itself had ceased to exist.

"Not good," Konowa whispered to himself as he tipped the clothes from his musket and began to load the weapon, just to be safe.

Cradling the musket in front of his body, Konowa checked that the flint was still secure, then half-cocked the hammer as his old regiment's collect sounded in his ears.

Heavenly spirits, who watch over us…

He fished out a cartridge from his pouch with his right hand, bringing the waxed paper tube up to his mouth in one practiced motion and biting the end off. …guide us into battle and make sure our hand…

The gunpowder mixed with his saliva and he grimaced at its familiar salty, bitter taste. …that we might slay our enemy…

The weight of the small lead bullet pressed against his tongue, and he heard again the whip-crack of regimental pennants unfurled in a gusting wind, the creaking timber of gun carriages, the whinnying of horses, the pounding of their hooves, and the echoing barks of sergeants relaying their officers' commands. …destroy them as those that went before us…

A tremor of anticipation coursed through Konowa's body. …and keep our honored place as your faithful servants, your harbingers of death. We are the warriors of the Hynta. We fear nothing, for we are the Iron Elves!

"Amen," Konowa said out loud, no longer alone.

He prepared the musket for firing to the cadence of a sergeant long ago dead, killed by a swarm of battle-crazed orcs in a land even more foreign than this. Something cold and black touched Konowa then, and he felt the presence of the lost souls of his old regiment. He trickled a little gunpowder into the pan of the musket before closing the hammer. Keeping time with the past, he set the musket butt down in front of him and poured the remaining charge down the barrel before stuffing the lead ball and finally the paper cartridge after it. Without pause, he pulled out the ramrod slung beneath the barrel from the four brass pipes that held it in place and tamped down the wadding and bullet, all the while scanning the forest. He replaced the ramrod and brought the musket up to his hip, imagining the bristling line of soldiers to his left and right and drawing comfort from their stoic silence.

He nudged the cock all the way back, the chunk of flint held in its steel jaws glinting with purpose. He stood like that for several seconds, his hands growing slick on the wooden portions of the gun. All too quickly the nostalgia of the past bled away, leaving him alone again in a strange land very far from home.

Another sound came from somewhere to his left and Konowa moved toward it, allowing his senses to guide his feet as he kept his eyes searching the shadows ahead. The stillness of the forest hung like a veil from the branches, and the longer he walked the harder it seemed to push forward. He had decided he would only walk another fifty yards when he stepped into a clearing, and what had only been an exceptionally bad day became a waking nightmare.

Not more than thirty yards away across the clearing crouched four rakkes around a fallen tree.

Four seven-foot-tall, boulder-shouldered, black, scraggly haired rakkes all staring at Konowa with milky eyes deep-set in scarred, leathery faces.

But rakkes were extinct.

What Konowa was seeing was impossible, yet he knew they were rakkes. He'd seen the drawings on stretched hides handed down from generation to generation, heard the ancient tales, even held a skull of one of the creatures in his hands. They had lived high in the mountain, coming down like nightfall to ravage the land below. The elves of the Long Watch had hunted them down and destroyed them. Centuries ago, and an ocean away.

Yet all of that meant nothing now. Four rakkes were only thirty yards away from him. They stood up as one, teetering slightly in this new bipedal stance, like drunks one round away from falling. Long, curving claws slid out from pawlike hands that hung down by their knees.

The largest of them opened its mouth to reveal long, yellow fangs glistening with saliva. It screamed a high, mewling cry and the other three responded in kind, shaking the forest floor.

It was a sound as cold and black as the depths of time it should have been lost in.

"Cawwnnnawahhhh…"

Konowa's chest heaved, his breath rushing out as forcefully as if he'd been hit with a cannonball.

The largest of the four rakkes had clearly said his name. The creature's mouth contorted with the effort as it struggled to pronounce it, its tongue more used to moving around lacerated flesh than words.

"Cawwnnnawahhhh…"

He should have run away. It was the sensible thing to do.

Konowa fired his musket, then ran straight at the rakkes, screaming for all he was worth.

There was a loud crack, followed by a huge billowing cloud of acrid-smelling smoke flecked with sparks as the musket bucked in his hands. The musket ball passing through the chest of the rakke saying his name with a wet thwack, blowing out chunks of eerily white spine through the now gaping hole in its back.

Running hard, Konowa grabbed the musket by its warm muzzle and swung the weapon in a smooth arc at a second rakke's head. The musket struck flesh and bone, jarring Konowa's arms and shoulders and cutting off his yell as he bit his tongue. The closest rakke went down whimpering, its skull crushed like an eggshell, one white eye pulped and oozing down its cheek. Konowa laughed then, a habit he had in battle, tasting the salty liquid of his own blood in his mouth. He swung a low backstroke at another rakke, feeling the satisfying crunch of bones travel up the musket and into his own.

A set of claws whistled by his head and Konowa dove forward, ducking underneath. His right shoulder slammed into the body of a rakke, and he pivoted onto his heels and brought the muzzle of the musket upward with all his strength.

The rakke screamed as the steel barrel slammed into its stomach, but without a bayonet on its end the musket only enraged the beast. The rakke wrapped both massive arms around Konowa and crushed him to its chest. Konowa was lifted off his feet and swung wildly through the air as he desperately tried to let go of the musket and reach for the hatchet strapped to his calf. He heard a crack-and a bolt of lightning exploded in his chest as one of his ribs snapped. His head growing lighter by the second, Konowa finally pried his hands free and reached for the hatchet. His fingers crawled along his leg in a weakening search as the grip around his chest tightened.

He found the handle, only to have it drop from his fingers as he was physically pounded into the ground. Konowa's breath rushed out of him in a scream, and he lay helpless on his back, waiting for the end to come.

A pair of milky eyes came down to hover inches from his, and he could smell the putrid raw meat of the rakke's last meal. Konowa smiled in one last act of defiance.

Jagged white teeth flashed in front of his eyes and hot, steaming blood splashed across his face.

When he focused his vision again, all he could see above him were stars. Konowa drew in a shuddering breath and propped himself up on one elbow.

Jir held the rakke by the throat, shaking the massive beast like wheat in a storm. When Jir was satisfied it was dead, he opened his mouth, letting the rakke's body fall to the ground with a thump.

Three more dark forms dotted the clearing, and the smell of blood and death thickened the air. Calling on the last reserves of his strength, Konowa staggered to his feet, using his musket as a crutch. Jir looked up at him and bared his fangs, a chunk of rakke flesh hanging out the side of his mouth.