by Mark Tufo
“You okay?” Mathieu asked breathlessly.
“I’m…yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” I said haltingly. It took a few moments before I could completely shake the rage free. I high stepped my way back to Mathieu who reached out an arm when I was close enough and yanked me free from the clutches of the ground. “You’ll get your chance again,” I told the ground, in a foreshadowing of death. “Just not today.”
“Who are you talking to?” Mathieu looked around.
“Fate, I suppose. Thanks for the help.”
“Thank him.” Mathieu pointed back to the dead Lycan. “If he hadn’t started howling I would have never found you.”
“Wow. That sucks. Call for help and bring an assassin right to you. Poetic justice.”
“How did you know they would get stuck?” He was referring to the mud marsh.
I planned on giving him a spiel about how I had scoped the location out and then done some trial runs with test dummies but for once I went with the straight truth. Not as impressive, but much easier to remember. “Dumb fucking luck.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“It’s still pretty good dumb luck.”
“I am happy you are alive, Michael, but you do not get credit as a tactician for luck.”
“Fine. You ready to go?” I asked.
“You want to keep attacking from behind?”
“Naw. This time I think we should get ahead and defend with the rest of them. Xavier’s not going to stop until he’s dead or we are.”
“And Lunos?”
“I’m not sure how you figure I would know what’s going on in the mind of a psychotic Lycan. Maybe we’ll get lucky and a micrometeor strike will come and wipe out the hunting party and the day will be saved.”
“Does that kind of thing really happen?”
“Only in books, and even then it’s not believable.”
We stayed on the path for as long as we could. The Lycan in the rear seemed much more vigilant, especially since at least two of them had been killed and three were missing in action. We peeled off to the right and got far enough in that our less than quiet passage would not be noticed. It was not exceedingly difficult to get past the starved human-led column. I’d had enough with being poked by brambles and scratched by branches. I cut back in, maybe a little quicker than caution dictated, but if any of the people saw us they weren’t in a rush to say anything about it. To do so would mean that the Lycan would only push them harder than they were already going. I’d not gone much farther when I saw Oggie standing in the middle of the pathway. The sight of him at first sent a quiver of fear through me but he looked happy enough, the stub of a tail wagging as he waited to greet me.
“Hell of a place to meet up.” I patted his head before we continued back to Azile.
“Consider yourself lucky you don’t have to pull burrs from your fur for the next six months.” I was covered in the little brown offending fauna. Looked a little like a mutated porcupine, though my quills were pointing inwards and scraping against my skin in a hundred different spots.
He barked. He said, “Pretty happy I don’t have all that on me too,” or maybe it was, “Got any beef jerky?”
Mathieu came pounding through the woods another hundred yards from where I’d emerged. Bull in a china shop did no justice to the sound he made as he forced his way through.
“Infernal vines! I will burn this whole place down!” His arms were pinwheeling as he pulled through the vegetation. Every once in a while he would use his large maw to tear through something. “It is like they are trying to ensnare me in their clutches!”
If we weren’t being chased, or in this case followed, I would have taken a moment to enjoy Mathieu’s suffering.
“If at any point you want to get back on the path, you should,” I told him. I received a glare worthy of the ages. I was trying to find a balance in the pacing, quick enough to give ample warning to those in front, but not so fast we got tired. In reality that didn’t matter much, we caught up to them entirely too quickly. What was left of our force wouldn’t fill up a school bus. We had roughly a half hour lead on the Lycan, maybe less; they weren’t overly pushing their people but ours were hardly moving.
There wasn’t much more than acknowledgment that we had returned, Azile was cool in her greeting. Got to figure she was pretty sick of my constant straying from the game plan. I don’t know why she would have expected anything different.
“Should we stop, Azile?” We were trotting at best, at times we were shuffling. There was no more point in running. It wasn’t like there was a fort we were striving for or a great river that would divide us from the enemy. We weren’t marching towards death, exactly, but we certainly weren’t marching away from it either. “Let’s sit, eat a last meal. Maybe share a smile.”
“You’re right.” Her head sank. “Goddamnit, you’re right.”
“Well, you don’t have to say it like you lost a bet.”
“Bailey, is this not a good place to die?” Azile asked.
“As good as any,” was the stoic reply.
“Great. You have absolutely no idea how fucking sick of running I am. Used to enjoy it before I joined the Marines; it’s been all downhill since then.” I just stopped short and went to the side of the trail. There was a small ridge that looked like a perfect place to park my ass. I let out a heavy sigh of satisfaction as I landed. Mathieu sat across from me and handed over a hunk of jerky nearly the size of my head. I tore it in two unequal halves; Oggie snagged the bigger of the two before I could stop him.
Azile paced back and forth a couple of times, deciding whether I was insane or incredibly intelligent or a blend of the two. Most likely the two halves would be as uneven as the jerky and on any given moment you could say which half was the dominant one. I was sitting, I had my dog, my friend, some food, and my friend that was a girl. How’s that for non-committal?
“Screw it.” Azile sat down and took the other half of the meat that I was half an inch from having in my mouth. It took a few more seconds for word of the stop to pass down to the front, within a minute we were all congregated in that small area. There were some smiles among friends. Maybe some relief as well, because it was finally over. There’s a certain acceptance to that; I hate to say comfort, but it was akin to that. Death was no longer the terrifying unknown—by this time it had been a constant traveling companion. Instead of feeling fear, there was acceptance, almost a welcoming for the conclusion. There was no longer a need to worry.
It wasn’t too long before the mood began to change to pensive, somber, in a few cases. We could hear the coming storm. It sounded a lot like zombies, the destroyed feet smacking wetly on the ground, the moans and groans of the suffering, mirroring the communication of the undead.
“You ready?” I asked to no one in particular as I stood. Most likely it was to myself. Sword in right, left free for now, I’d grab my axe when needed. I’d like to think I had a war face on, but I was just too damned tired to pull it off. The people in front of the enemy column stopped short when they saw us standing there. They were immediately pushed over or to the side as the ones behind ran into them. Looked for a moment like Black Friday at Walmart, that was until the new leaders saw us and did their own version of the game Red Light Green Light and stopped in place. This continued three more times until the entire sad parade of people saw us. The cracks of multiple whips spurred them on. Death may have been familiar to us, but those poor people had become intimate with it. They stopped, they died, they moved forward, they died.
Lana pinched my ass hard as she came up beside me. “Might be the only time I get to do that. I’m going out with a smile, and you can be mad if you want to, but it was worth it,” she smiled.
After I’d recovered from the shock of being goosed, I think I blushed—if the flush of heat going up my neck was any indication.
“Michael.” It was Azile.
“How could I know she was going to do that?”
“Do what?” s
he asked.
“The what now?” I did my best to move on.
She pointed to the woods. If I thought Lana had startled me, it was nothing in comparison to what I saw there. Fully armed and ready for battle Landians moved silently through the woods. Lana had moved out in front of me. I should have stepped to grab her but my attention was rapt on the sight to my side. Take a guess where my hand landed when she wasn’t exactly where I thought she was going to be? I fell forward into her back; my hand grabbed a significant portion of her posterior.
“I’ll have you note that I am a princess!” she yelled indignantly.
“Yeah? Then maybe you shouldn’t be grabbing other people’s asses. Get back here.” It was unfortunate, but the only handhold I had was her ass, so I pulled her back to me by the cheek. “Shhh,” I told her as she looked furiously at me. Her eyes grew wide when she finally saw what I’d seen. My ass infraction was immediately forgotten.
“Oh,” she said.
By now everyone had a good idea of what was happening, except for the Lycan and that was fine by me. In fact it would be in our best interests if they didn’t know what was happening, and I knew the perfect way to distract them.
“Hey Xavier! Is your pansy ass out there? Or are you in the back with the old and the infirm?”
He was a lot closer to the front than I’d expected. “The end is nigh Michael,” his voice boomed over the column. “Another Old One removed from the world will only add to my legend.”
“Will that legend include how you didn’t do it personally but rather had your decrepit contaminated ones fight for you?”
“Do not belittle my plans!” he roared. Birds alit from trees, animals fled.
“Hey, don’t get mad, tough guy! I’m just looking out for your legacy. It would be a shame if there was an asterisk next to your name in the history books.” I knew he didn’t know what I was talking about, but he would have had a hard time missing the derision that those words were coated in.
“Have you already forgotten the beating I administered to you? Perhaps it was the brain damage I inflicted.” He seemed pretty pleased with himself. “That is all your precious books need record.”
Shit…maybe he did know what I was talking about. Never underestimate your enemy. “Wouldn’t it feel better if you could say you struck the final blow? Wouldn’t you feel better inside?”
“I don’t swear much, Michael,” Mathieu whispered next to me, “but what the fuck are you doing?”
“Stalling.”
“By taunting the devil?”
“Not much faith huh?”
“Unlike you, I remember all too vividly how badly the last encounter ended.”
“You have nothing left, Old One. Why would I risk anything? There is no sense to that course of action,” Xavier bragged. The mark of overconfidence.
“Why the hell are Lycan so smart?” I asked softly. I could see some of the Lycan heads starting to glance around. They knew something was up. “I’ll tell you where the guns are!” There were many audible gasps from those around me. He was intrigued. I wasn’t sure if they could use them properly, but still the idea of that kind of power had to be intoxicating, especially to a megalomaniac like him.
“How are you going to tell him if you’re dead?” Mathieu asked.
“You’re really starting to downpour all over my parade, man,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
“How will you give me this information once I have killed you?”
“See! He fucking heard you,” I told Mathieu.
“How about this.” I was thinking fast, which unfortunately is not my strong point. “We meet in the middle, I’ll whisper it to you. The secret either lives or dies with you. Can you imagine? You wouldn’t even need the werewolves anymore.” That caught the attention of the other Lycan. Getting rid of the scourge would be a boon to them. More food, less work. “Come on…come on, you big fucking oaf,” I urged under my breath.
“You reek of deception, Old One,” Xavier said, though I could hear hesitation in his voice.
“Me? I am the epitome of virtue. The personification of integrity. The essence…”
“Let it go,” Azile said. “Even Lana, who for some unknown reason worships the ground you walk on, thinks you have gone too far.”
“Is that true?” I asked the girl.
She nodded slightly. “Just a little bit.” She held her thumb a half-inch from her pointer finger for illustration.
“You debase yourself in front of your people. Is all this bluster worth the extra time you have added on to your existence?” Xavier asked.
“Surprisingly, Xavier, it is,” I answered him truthfully. The Landians had got into position on either side of the enemy column.
Inuktuk shouted “Fire!” and they rose as one and loosed a volley of arrows to devastating results. Xavier knew the cost of running away, so instead urged everyone forward with the promise of death if they did not move fast enough. The infected humans wanted nothing to do with any of this and were merely trying to escape. They would need to be dealt with, but not right now. The Lycan were right on their heels and we could not spare the time to fight those that wished to pass. Xavier had locked his eyes on to me. He ripped through two people in his haste to get there.
People were streaming past me in their haste to flee. Felt, and I guess actually was, just like one of those disaster movies I used to watch. Folks just losing their minds in the face of extreme adversity. Landians were shooting bolt after bolt into the Lycan and humans alike. Lycan had crashed into the brush and were tearing at the bowmen. Wintry screams of death frosted the air—ours, theirs. The battle for this age was being waged right here and right now. The winner would be able to lay claim on whatever remained. Many of the Landians had changed over from their bows to weapons of steel as the Lycan closed in. I stood my ground even as I was bombarded with errant shoulders from those that streamed by. Xavier was tossing friend and foe away with alacrity. Somehow Xavier and I were now all alone, engaged within our own little war. It was like we’d been removed from the battlefield and placed on a stage, left to act out this final scene.
“You are the sole reason I am not victorious yet!” He pointed a finger that was nearly as large as my forearm.
I thought about protesting, but what was the point? Sherlock had Professor Moriarty, Captain Ahab had Moby, and apparently I was stuck with Xavier. I guess I’d been hoping he was going to be cautious in his approach, tentative would have been nice. As it was, I barely ducked in time to not have my head removed. The bottom of his claw cuffed me above my right ear. The blow was still hard enough that I struck the ground and slid along the side of my head. I quickly pushed myself back up; mud coated my entire left side. I reached up and touched my head. It hurt like hell but none of the crucial fluid was leaking, except maybe my brain flowing through my ear canal.
“You are nothing!” Xavier shouted. “How many times must I best you?”
I didn’t come up with anything witty, I didn’t hesitate. I merely struck. He’d not been expecting that. When the steel bit into his side, he roared out in shock and pain, just as did I when the back of his hand crashed into my nose, shattering the appendage into blindness inducing tears. I could see little except red light filtering through my eyelids. I blinked rapidly trying to dispel the water that refracted every image into a kaleidoscope of imagery. Something, or someone, yanked me back. Wasn’t sure who, but that small gesture saved my life. I felt and heard a massive whoosh of air pass right in front of my face. I could just make out a large form coming up on my right. A glint of silver reflected in my watery jewel vision. The person stepped forward past me and engaged Xavier. My ruined nose exploded in pain as I tried my best to wipe my eyes dry.
Xavier and my mystery savior had moved slightly away as they fought. I’d no sooner regained a semblance of sight when I heard the thud of a heavy impact and the snapping of multiple bones. Muncher folded in on himself, involuntarily wrapping his body around the bl
ow from Xavier. There was shock and pain in his eyes, and then acceptance as he fell forward once Xavier removed his blood coated fist from Muncher’s torso. As the pit in my chest formed, my teeth elongated and my eyes dilated. Xavier had not even had the chance to turn fully on me as I attacked. My sword struck his elbow, slicing his arm open and exposing the joint as I hacked through connective tissue. I did not back up, but rather followed the path of my blade in closer. I dragged my teeth along his side before they finally caught and I was able to sink them in. I ripped a flap of meat nearly the size of a dinner plate from his tough hide.
Tasted like you would expect lice and flea coated fur would. Xavier howled in pain as he twisted to get at me, but I’d already darted past, dragging my sword along his back, thankful for the razor blade honed on its edge as it sliced him from side to side. I’d inflicted damage but he was far from out of the fight. He twisted back; I ran headlong into another strike. Air was violently expelled from my lungs as I absorbed the hit. Felt like my chest plate had been compressed enough to touch my spine. I was airborne, a flying V as my head was nearly touching my knees. I landed hard on my ass, expelling what little oxygen I had left. There was a moment of panic when my body realized I had no air and could not get any of that life giving gas into me.
The panic was compounded as Xavier had already launched himself at me again. I forced my muscles that screamed for oxygen to move the way I needed them to. Xavier’s eyes grew wide as he saw the blade come up. He twisted in mid-flight, heavy globules of blood from his arm struck across my chest and face. I was bathed in the wet drops, the heat was intense enough I wondered if perhaps they were acidic. The point of the sword pierced Xavier’s left thigh, punching through and out, his momentum allowed me to slice a slab of muscle from his leg. He went over and rolled into a ball. Fury and pain warred on his features as his paws wrapped around the wound.
