WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3RD 2008

by Dave Przybyla

I pulled Unerring over my right hand. The dark leather molded itself to my fingers and palm, supple as the last day my grandfather wore it over a hundred years ago. The magic enveloped me with a familiar presence, the faintest ghost of the man who first donned it.

A dislodged stone and a shifted weed betrayed the route of the Visserian patrol. Sparse signs for such a tumbled terrain, indications they had sent good men. That meant they were looking for us. I held up a fist to hold Jake and Rafael in place. We needed a few more seconds of distance before I would let them move.

Unerring sensed the patrol moving north in a jagged path. They surely understood that hunter and prey were interchangeable in this game. I stepped around a mound of rubble and signaled Jake and Rafael into a triangle with me at point. My mental map of Autron put numerous buildings between the Visserians and us. There was no line-of-sight, which gave my unit the advantage. I extrapolated expected positions like one of the elaborate board games played by Erwin Jacobs. In a few moves, they would cross an intersection commanded by an intact building. I had scavenged the structure before the war for a good haul of ancient metals. Those diggings offered multiple lines of retreat known only to me. A good plan, and I felt a smug sense of inevitability. Far from the inhabited ruins of the eastern city, the starlight and crescent moon provided more than enough visibility for an elf and two half-orcs. We had to assume the enemy had similar capabilities. They likely matched us in all aspects, except for our knowledge of the city and, of course, Unerring. We drifted north, always separated from the Visserians by at least a street. Eyeless facades paced our movement, sentinel storefronts and residences that had witnessed a thousand years of dust and weeds. Gaps in their ranks marked the attrition of time: mossy mounds of tumbled stones or shapeless humps of fragments dissolved by wind and rain. Prospectors combed the remains for treasures they sold in Lomerman or Warten, yet we still understood little about how the original Autron lived and died.

A faint whistling tugged at a corner of my awareness. The wind streamed through the empty buildings. Such breezes were common across the abandoned expanses of Autron. The sound intensified until it had a direction, coming in fast from behind and losing altitude. Odd behavior for the wind...

I motioned Jake and Rafael to the ground, landed on my belly beside a half-height wall. Seconds later a shadow flashed over us and banked east, the direction of the Visserian patrol. A glider! I hissed annoyance and rolled onto my back, scanning the sky for more. Another glider came in over the buildings one street to our west. I assumed there were others we could not see. Fresh gliders had enough magic for at least a few more passes. We were now the prey, even if the gliders had not seen us. The Visserians were throwing a lot of resources into the hunt, and my pride over the powers of Unerring had closed my mind.

We sprinted west one street and dived through a jagged window ahead of the next glider pass. I took measured breaths and looked into the eyes of Jake and Rafael. I saw no fear, only the glint of excitement and the assumption that I had a plan. Well, the plan was still good, that building was still defensible. We just had to skirt the patrol and get there first.

Rafael's whisper rasped harsh in my ears. Voices had not disturbed the night since we left camp. "They don't play with gliders. They won't let us run away from this one." Jake nodded.

I watched the sky while I spoke.

"The more coins they throw in the pot, the more it will hurt when they lose the hand."

I once scavenged a building a few blocks north. I dug a lot of tunnels, and hid them when I left. That's how prospectors do it. You don't want someone else poaching your claim. We can turn it around in there. We can hunt them."

"Before morning," Jake said.

"If the gliders still have us pinned down at first light, they'll send in the Wizards."

I shook my head. "No. It will be over by morning. I can still sense the patrol." We circled west of the Visserians. They remained stationary, perhaps waiting for the gliders to report our location. Soon I saw our target building looming above a block of more dilapidated ruins. I sent Jake and Rafael ahead with instructions on where to set the first layer of traps. Within a few minutes a glider arced overhead, turned, and began a pass down the street towards me. The wings rocked from side to side as it approached. The flyer's head grew until I could discern his halfling features. I pivoted from a doorway and raised my Oathbow. I tracked the glider for three heartbeats and fired. The magic arrow tore through one of the wings. A flap of fabric fluttered loudly in the wind and the glider lost altitude until it flew below the scattered rooftops. The halfling locked eyes with me for an instant. I grinned, and then he pulled back on his wings and soared above the city.

The patrol was moving towards me at a trot. I kicked over a low wall and ran, leaving a clear trail in my wake. I entered the building through the main entrance. A narrow hallway stretched past a number of doorways. At the first intersection, I paused and gestured towards each corridor. A detection spell settled over the area. I hesitated after the conjuring, my breath misting in the late night air. By morning the ground would be dotted with frost and tracks would be difficult to hide.

Ancient buildings often seem so small, as if the people of forgotten times were tiny or loved cramped spaces. I am not an especially large man, yet my shoulders brushed pebbles from the corridor walls. The low ceiling crowded me into an instinctive hunch. I continued straight ahead, leaped over a hidden pit at another intersection, and made a number of turns by reflex drawn from memory. What was the purpose of this building, that it held so many branching corridors? The metals I had uncovered gave me no clue, and I had never asked a scholar. That would have betrayed the prospector code. Let the scholars find their own sites. I joined my comrades near a second entrance. Jake had already set a tripwire between the doorway and a filled pit. The loose dirt might slow an enemy.

The Visserians were outside my original entrance. Unerring could not tell me numbers, or whether the patrol had gained reinforcements or split up. I could only sense the owner of the initial tracks I had found. Educated guesses and extensive knowledge of the Visserian military filled in the gaps.

"They're coming in now. Assume at least six men, ten maximum, plus the gliders. If they had any more on the ground, they wouldn't have been so cautious. Are you with me so far?" We had to be on the same page from the start. Jake and Rafael inclined their heads in assent.

"First they'll secure the perimeter and cover the two entrances." I chuckled under my breath. "At least the two they know about. Then they'll send a team in one and hope to flush us out the other.

We need to bloody them enough that they won't follow us out that third exit."

Little more was said. Months of living and fighting together had generated a deep rapport. Jake checked his bow and took a position at the intersection nearest the entrance. He staked arrows in the ground and gave the "Ready" signal. Rafael and I backtracked towards the other entrance. Rafael advanced at point, sword in hand, while I covered him with my Oathbow. I guided him with gentle taps on his shoulders, sharper raps indicating holes or other dangers. My spell had not been triggered.

We stopped one intersection from my spell. Rafael peeked around the corner and sighted the ensorcelled area. I passed him a smoke bomb. The wait seemed longer than it was, I am sure. Despite the chill air, sweat dripped from my armpits. Then I felt the mental tug of an intruder breaking the perimeter of the spell. I touched a signal on Rafael's neck.

He leaned into the corridor and lobbed the bomb halfway to the intersection. I drew my Oathbow. The Visserians should have moved past the spell, towards us, following my trail. I sensed my quarry flatten against one wall. The escaping smoke hissed, but there were no other sounds, not even the scuff of a boot against loose rocks. These Visserians were very good, but they had never been in my building.

I needed my man alive for the rest of the chase, so I stepped out and fired at the wall opposite him. I heard the arrow strike something soft, and a muffled exclamation of pain. Now that I had the range, within the same breath I loosed again and was rewarded by another, weaker cry. I rolled across the passage and pressed myself against the wall, blending with the shadows. Slowly, I stowed my Oathbow and drew R'iest Ton Fas.

The wounded moans masked more careful steps.

This time, I sorted out the sounds and showed Rafael two fingers up, one down. He strode into the smoke with a shortspear and buckler. The clash of steel on wood signaled my own advance. I held my blade against my body, point up, and crept along the wall. Rafael grunted as he pushed back the Visserians, masking my movement with his exertions. Smoke enveloped me. One of the Visserians called for support. We had brief seconds to finish here and fall back. I shuffled forward until my foot brushed a leg. The leg jerked away and the soldier managed a gurgling wheeze as a warning to his fellows. My rapier silenced that effort. I stabbed again to make sure he was dead and magical healing would be useless. The enemy had greater resources in this battle. If we let them heal, attrition would literally kill us.

Head low, I emerged from the smoke whistling a popular Confederacy tune. Rafael launched a last furious assault before pulling out. When he reached the intersection I dropped another smoke bomb to cover our retreat. He staggered past me, bleeding from a deep wound in his bicep, and dropped the shortspear. I watched our rear as he yanked a healing potion from the bracer at his waist and swallowed it in one gulp. The gash closed, Rafael immediately stood taller. He picked up his spear.

The spell triggered two more times. I bowed my head close to Rafael's. "I think they're pulling out," I breathed. "One casualty. But they'll be more careful next time. Let's pull back towards Jake."

The rest of the night was a blur of running, dodging, and sharp engagements. They sent in six men, forcing us inexorably towards Jake. We killed one in a prospecting pit lined with chemical fire. A second man fell when we doubled back through a secret passage behind some loose wall stones and caught him in a snare. We bled from numerous cuts and scraps, but by now our potion bracers were empty. My prospector's tricks were running out, and I had to save the final one, the hidden exit, for our escape.

Our pursuers sensed our desperation. They pressed us, sometimes reckless, yet we were too battered to strike another killing blow. I was sure they also left behind a number of empty potion flasks. I drew them along a roundabout route to Jake. As we neared the final turn I sheathed R'iest Ton Fas and readied my Oathbow. Then I saw Jake past the next intersection, bow nocked and careful rows of arrows sprouting before him.

Jake tossed Rafael a potion flask. I settled in behind Jake and to one side, so that we both had firing lanes. Rafael drained the potion and picked up a shield to cover us. The Visserians rounded the corner. We let them close half the distance before we released the first barrage. One man went down, another might have been hit. Shouted orders called for the outside perimeter to converge on the entrance.

In the space of a heartbeat, two more arrows flew from my Oathbow. Jake fired more slowly, though with no less accuracy. The orders cut off in mid sentence. I tapped Jake's shoulder and whirled to face the doorway. I staked a handful of arrows before the first faint shadow cut across the opening. Rafael gave a pained exclamation and swore, but such a foul oath meant the injury was minor, and his anger worse than the wound.

Suddenly, I realized that Unerring no longer felt our quarry. I had to smile. We no longer needed him alive. A Visserian soldier hit the tripwire and a snare pulled his legs into the air. I skewered him with cool precision. The soldier behind him tried to close before I reloaded. Instead, he floundered in the pit. I shot him down, and the one who followed him. The staked arrows were gone. I dropped my Oathbow and reached for R'iest Ton Fas. But there were no more Visserians, just the groans of the wounded and Rafael's complaints. We had a brief lull before Visserian reinforcements arrived, if there were any. "Let's go," I said, with a deliberate intonation that spoke much more than my words. We cut their throats without mercy, even those who appeared dead, as we remembered the men who died with Lord Siljar in the Fight to the Sea, and the Dogon sack of Tun.

I flexed my hand inside Unerring. These were my men, my responsibility. We would teach the Visserians that this was a war like no other. Let them find these bodies, and learn fear of what awaited them in the ruins of Autron. I led Jake and Rafael to the hidden exit, and into the vast empty streets.