The Hollow: At The Edge (15 page)

For a while all he
could do was cough and splutter, struggling for breath while curled
in a soaking wet ball. With the last of his strength, he rolled on
his back to face the blue sky.

He lay flat on the
ground, unwilling to move. His mind was still too jumbled from
shock and terror, and he couldn’t hold a coherent thought for very
long. Eventually, he just closed his eyes, and let the darkness
overtake him.

He wasn’t sure how much
time had passed, when suddenly there was the sound of some kind of
large animal, panting as it stood right next to him. His eyes shot
open to behold a large black and tan dog, tail wagging and tongue
lolling, standing over him. He breathed a sigh of relief.

“Hello, Vost,” he said
weakly.

The dog started licked
his face happily. Serrel spluttered again, this time from dog
saliva.

“Get off!”

The dog barked, then
suddenly turned and bounded off. Serrel contemplated going after
it, but couldn’t rouse the strength. But the dog reappeared just as
quickly, dragging what, at first glance, appeared to be a long
branch in its mouth.

It was Serrel’s staff.
The dog brought it over to him, and dropped it on his head with a
wooden clunk. He stared at Serrel expectantly as Serrel rubbed the
newest lump on his head.

“Thanks, boy,” Serrel
said finally. He reached up and scratched Vost behind the ears in
gratitude.

Vost barked happily,
then turned and once again disappeared into the trees. Serrel
examined his staff, and found that despite a few teeth marks, it
was not badly damaged. Hopefully it would still work. He held it to
his chest and continued to lie on the ground, regaining his
strength. When he eventually lifted himself upright, Vost returned,
this time with Ripper, followed behind by Sergeant Caellix.

“Fresh Meat? Still
alive I see,” she said, perhaps even with the tiniest hint of
relief.

“To an extent. I think
I may have swallowed half the river,” Serrel coughed again.

“Take it easy, Fresh
Meat,” Caellix told him. “Don’t rush. You know how close to dying
you just were?”

“Closer than you might
think,” Serrel replied. Between coughs he explained in a raspy
voice about the creature coming after him.

“That’s why I could
only see two,” Caellix nodded. “You are a crafty little bastard
when you want to be, Fresh Meat.”

“Thanks, Sergeant.”

“But we still have a
problem.”

“Really?” Serrel was
crestfallen. “What now?”

Caellix nodded towards
the river. Serrel looked to the cliff on the other side, and caught
a flash of movement at the top, and a quick glance of green
eyes.

“Don’t those things
ever give up?”

“I guess not,” said
Caellix. “They aren’t following us into the river at least. But
there’s a crossing up ahead. That was where we were heading before.
They’ll be after us in no time.”

“So what do we do?”

“Simple. We kill them
first.”

“Of course. Simple,”
Serrel repeated, still leaning on his staff for support. “Where are
the others?”

“Up and down the river.
We had better go find them before they get into trouble. Come
on.”

Serrel followed tiredly
in Caellix’s wake. In a rare moment of sympathy, she went slowly
enough for him to recover.

“You do have a plan for
getting those things, right?” asked Serrel.

“Of course,” said
Caellix.

“Is it better than your
last plan?”

“Marginally.” She gave
Serrel her predatory smile. “But it worked, didn’t it?”

Dhulrael stumbled
through the forest, cold, wet and lost. He was still fatigued from
the loss of energy, and teetered close to the Hollow, or the waking
abyss as he called it. He wondered where the others were.

“Sergeant!” he called
out.

There was no reply. The
forest was quiet. Dhulrael went onwards, almost tripping on a tree
root with his typical lack of coordination. His progress was
observed by several onlookers, including two green eyed crows that
perched side by side, watching the elf’s progress with happy
optimism that their future would most likely hold an easily
scavenged meal. And from the looks of it, fairly soon.

“
Sergeant
Caellix
!” Dhulrael called again. “
Caster Hawthorne! Corporal
Wells! Brant!
” At rather a lower volume, “Dogbreath?”

Something snapped
loudly in the trees, not too far away. The two crows realised they
weren’t
that
hungry and took off, frantically squawking.

Dhulrael swallowed, and
turned in a slow circle, trying to see as much of the forest as he
could at once. He saw movement in the brush, and six green eyes
staring back at him. He turned and ran as fast as he could.

One of the creatures
exploded from the undergrowth, and sprinted after him. It could
have overtaken him and killed him easily, but it held back, content
to herd him in one direction. Dhulrael did not even bother to call
for help. He saved his breath for running.

Then right in front of
him, the second creature leapt out and blocked his path. Dhulrael
slid to a stop and changed direction. The first creature was
already in place, cutting off his escape. The elf stumbled, and
backed away. He pushed himself against a tree as though he could
sink right through the trunk and escape to safety.

The creatures advanced
on him slowly. Dhulrael waited for the attack, to be torn to
pieces. Or were the creatures going to be content with dragging him
away, back to the Ferine as he feared they would?

A twig cracked loudly
somewhere in the distance. The first creature’s head snapped to the
side, seeking the source of the noise, and got an arrow straight
through one of its main eyes.

It howled in pain, and
pawed at its head desperately. The second creature barely had time
to register the attack, before another arrow shot through the air
from the opposite direction and impaled itself in the thick hide
behind one shoulder. It turned and saw Brant half hidden behind a
tree with his bow in hand.

Brant said, “Oh,
bollocks,” then turned and ran.

The second creature
took off after him, while its companion swept its remaining eyes
across the trees looking for its attacker. It spotted Holly,
balanced deftly on a tree branch with her bow, just in time for the
girl to shoot out another eye.

Dogbreath charged
screaming out from his hiding spot, axe raised over his head. He
dashed in close and swung his axe at the creature’s head. The blade
hammered across its snout, severing off one mandible and breaking
several teeth. Dogbreath jumped out of the creature’s reach as it
lashed out at him. With both its front eyes blinded, it could only
try to see out of the eyes on the sides of its head. This kept it
confused long enough for Holly to shoot it again.

The two Hounds kept up
the attack this way, with Holly firing at it from a safe distance,
and Dogbreath circling around it, continually hacking at it with
his axe. When it finally regained enough sense to try and run,
Dogbreath cut at its legs, and felled it. Once on the ground, he
hacked at its head over and over until it was dead. Then he hacked
at it some more, until he was certain it was not coming back. Then
a couple more times, just because.

Brant meanwhile ran
screaming through the forest, the other creature rapidly gaining on
him. When it was close enough, it pounced at him, soaring through
the air, claws outstretched. Moments from impact, it slammed
straight into the invisible barrier that formed before it in
mid-air. There was a flash of green, and the crunch of bone, and
the creature dropped to the ground, stunned.

As its vision cleared,
Serrel and Caellix stepped out of hiding. Caellix pulled back her
bow and aimed at the creature’s head, as Serrel dispelled the first
shield he had raised, and formed a new one, right over the prone
creature. He formed it so that its body was trapped inside a dome
shaped barrier, but that its head was outside, letting the shield
shape itself around the creature’s neck, much like it had done with
Caellix’s spear days earlier out at sea.

The creature, realising
what had happened, thrashed violently in its restraints. Serrel
shrunk the shield as small as he could, preventing as much movement
as possible, but the creature fought him all the way, threatening
to lift the shield and itself off the ground several times. It took
all of Serrel’s willpower to keep it in place, and he was burning
energy fast.

“This isn’t easy,
Sergeant,” he pointed out.

Caellix ignored him,
and waited with her bow still aimed unwaveringly at the creature’s
head. She watched it struggle to throw off its prison, to shift its
legs enough to gain purchase on the ground. She just waited, her
face blank, her breath held, for the moment.

The creature looked at
her, threw back its head and roared furiously. Caellix released the
arrow. Her aim perfect, it flew through the air and stabbed
straight into the creature’s mouth and through into its skull. Its
roar cut off in midstream, and for a second it stared with an
expression that seemed almost surprised. Then it went limp, and
collapsed, its head held aloft only by Serrel’s shield.

He dispelled it, and
dropped the body to the ground. They watched it for any signs of
life, but it stayed motionless. To be sure, Serrel used some of his
remaining energy, and shot the creature in the head with a bolt of
energy. The corpse twitched, but it didn’t otherwise move.

“See,” Caellix
declared. “Simple.”

The group set up a
temporary camp a safe distance away from the bodies of the
creatures. Dogbreath, naturally, wanted to try some of the meat to
see if it was worth eating, but Caellix dissuaded him. Who knew
what was in the blood of those things? He did, however, keep the
mandible he had hacked off as a grisly souvenir.

Out of deference to the
fact that they had all, not long ago, gone for a swim in their
clothes, Caellix let them light a fire down among the immense roots
of a giant tree. They all sat around it, enjoying the warmth and
drying themselves out.

Serrel painfully pulled
off his coat and laid it by the fire to dry. When he examined his
shoulder, he found the creature that had attacked him in the river
had cut through his armour and punctured two small holes in his
flesh. That made his day.

“That?” Brant commented
cheerfully as Serrel cleaned the wound and dressed it. “That’s
barely a scratch. You should see the scar I got on my leg, from
that time I got bitten by a mountain lion.”

“You were never bitten
by a mountain lion, Brant,” said Holly, holding her hands to the
fire and shivering.

“I was too. Big one, it
was. Mouth as wide as your arm-”

“It was a kitten,”
Holly told Serrel. “He was playing with his sister’s kitten, and it
bit him.”

“It was a monster,”
Brant insisted.

Holly shuddered. “Let’s
never do that again.”

“Which part? The
getting ambushed by monsters, the jumping off into the freezing
cold river, or the bit where we ambushed the monsters that
originally ambushed us and I nearly got bitten in the arse?”

“What? I can only pick
one thing?”

“Stop griping, Wells,”
said Caellix. “We’re alive, they aren’t. I consider that a
win.”

“I’m just saying...
Anyway, I personally don’t mind if you get bitten on the arse,”
Holly told Brant. “Serves you right for being such a lousy
shot.”

“My hands were shaking
from the cold,” Brant replied, nonplussed. “Besides, I knew the
sergeant would have been upset if I didn’t let her have a shot at
the thing.”

“Right,” said Holly.
She waved her arms in the air in an exaggerated fashion.
“
Aaaagh! Save me, Sergeant, save me!
”

“He was more high
pitched,” added Caellix.

“Like a little girl,
heheh,” said Dogbreath.

“I was attracting its
attention, as part of the plan,” Brant explained, utterly without
shame. “Keeping it occupied so it wouldn’t see the sergeant or
Fresh Meat.”

“The elf didn’t scream
as loudly as you,” said Caellix. “Speaking of which, Pointy, you
did a good job today. I completely believed your fear.”

“You must be one of
those, what you call ‘em... method actors,” agreed Brant.

“I was just glad to be
of use,” Dhulrael said laconically. He was still paler than normal,
and jumping at every unknown noise. “Truly I have missed my
calling. Maybe I should have been in the theatre. Perhaps next
time, though, someone else could be the bait.”

“I volunteer the Fresh
Meat,” said Dogbreath. “Bet he’d scream loudly. Heheh.”

“Fresh Meat would make
lousy bait,” said Caellix. “He wouldn’t run.”

Out of the corner of
his eye, Serrel thought that maybe he saw a glimmer of... maybe not
respect, but perhaps just a hint of acceptance from the sergeant.
As if he had passed some unspoken test with favourable results.

“About that,” said
Holly tentatively. “Thanks for stopping us from getting killed
today, Fresh Meat.”

“Yeah, Fresh Meat. That
was some good hand waving you did today,” said Brant. “Very
professional. What with the saving my arse from getting love bites
from that overgrown lap dog and everything.”

Serrel pulled his shirt
back on and leaned against the roots of the tree. “You’re
welcome... Unless,” he added. “You wanted the love bites?”

“No, better to play
hard to get.”

“It did come on bit
strong for a weird, wolf-beetle monster.”

“Desperate, I call it,”
agreed Brant.

Serrel looked at
Dhulrael. “You honestly don’t know what that thing was? No ideas at
all?”

“Now that I have had
time to think about it, without the fear of death hanging over me,”
the elf added. “All I can suggest are theories...”