Six – 02

They poured into the bed of the creek below, onto its banks, some jumping back and forth between the two sides of the ravine where they were closest to each other.  They were in wolf form as they came at us initially and as shots began to ring out all around me, I wondered if they would attack us as wolves or as men.

I got my answer as the first one transformed into a half-clad, howling madman with an axe, charging down the center of the ravine toward a likely pathway up the steep sides toward us.

Where the hell did that axe come from?

With a calmness I didn’t quite feel, I notched another arrow and let fly.

Thom was swearing under his breath—I barely heard him over the sound of gunfire mixed with howls and cries of pain from below us.  As my arrow caught the axe-wielding skinwalker in the shoulder, I allowed myself to imagine for the very briefest of moments that we might not have to face them at the top of the ravine—maybe we’d mow them down before they got to us.

But they just kept coming through the gunfire and I knew I was wrong.

“This looks like more than three dozen!”  I yelled over the din.

“Feels like it, too.”  Thom glanced away from me, toward Thordin, who was holding his fire, eyes in constant motion.  “What do you see?”

“Looking for the leader,” Thordin murmured, almost too soft to be heard.  “There’s always an alpha.”

And he wants to take him out so there’s no one there to keep order, to give direction.  I wonder if that would work.

I sucked in a breath and let fly on another arrow.  They were starting to climb the walls of the ravine, now, some maintaining lupine shape and others transforming into wild-eyed, half-naked men with weapons that were frightening as much for their size as the inexplicability of their appearance from thin air.

“Hold!”  Someone was shouting.  It took a second for me to realize that I was the one shouting, my voice booming out like some kind of general of old’s.  “Hold, damn you!  Stand fast.  Stand fast!”

Our friends were doing just that—holding position, calmly firing until they were empty, then reloading.  We were slowing the tide, but the Hamrammr kept on coming, the ugly bastards that they were.  They kept coming even as we peppered them with shotgun fire, as Thordin and I—and Cariocecus from the bridge, I saw in a momentary flash—feathered them with our arrows.

We’re running out of room to thin the—

They were on us before I managed to finish the thought, three cresting the rim of the ravine only a few feet from us.  I backpedaled frantically as Thom and Cameron both calmly discarded their firearms and drew their swords.

My heart threatened to beat right out of my chest as they moved in on the snarling trio, two wielding axes and one with a warhammer the size of my head.  All I could see was one of those axes cleaving through Thom’s ribcage, the hammer crashing down on Cameron’s skull.

I stopped thinking and fired another arrow.  It caught one of the trio in the mouth, punching through his throat and back out the other side.

He went down in a heap without so much as a whisper, his axe clattering from twitching, nerveless fingers that didn’t quite realize that their bearer was dead.

Thom spun to look at me, eyes widening in shock.

The second man with an axe moved.

Thom didn’t see him coming.

I screamed, but time had already run out.

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