The animal stopped and panted, its long pink tongue lolling in and out. Its tail began to wag.
“What the devil?”
The thing whimpered and its tail wagged faster.
“It’s friendly?” Thaxton said incredulously.
Dalton returned. “Looks like.”
“But it sounded as though it wanted us for supper.”
“Dogs can be very territorial. Maybe this is his turf.”
“Look at the thing. Paws as big as melons.”
“Nice doggie.” Dalton went up to it and scratched its enormous head.
The animal seemed to appreciate the gesture. Dalton patted its head and ran his hand up and down the neck.
“What sort of breed is that?” Thaxton asked.
“It’s big even for a mastiff. Looks a little like one, though, around the droopy cheeks. It’s a mutt, probably.”
“Mongrel from Hell.”
“Oh, this is a good dog — aren’t you, fellow?”
“Whuuff!”
“Thank heaven it can’t talk,” Thaxton said. “I’m full up with bloody sentient beasts.”
“It seems to understand.”
“God, look at it drool. Looks like marshmallow sauce. It’s making me ill.”
“Looks like he wants to come along! Maybe he can find balls. Probably make a good hunting dog.”
“I’ll fetch the clubs, you entertain Baskerville, here.”
“Wonder what his name is. Oh, wait, it says on the collar. You were right, Thax. He is a mongrel from Hell. ‘Cerberus.’ Good name for an occult canine. Hey, where’re you going, boy?”
The animal shot past Thaxton and bounded across the moor. Thaxton stopped and both men watched. The dog went straight to one discarded golf bag, picked it up gingerly by the fake-leather strap, went to the other and somehow managed to get hold of both of them with its mouth, hoisted them up, then ran back and dumped them at Thaxton’s feet.
“Never saw a dog do such a thing,” Thaxton said.
The moor continued but became less boggy. They found the next hole, and from the tee it looked to present no special problems. Heather carpeted the rough, and this time there was an acceptable fairway of fescue grasses, though toughened with numerous rocks, deep swales, and pot bunkers. The green looked conventional.
“Let’s call this par four,” Dalton said.
“Looks a little long for a four. And a little difficult.”
“Try a three-wood off the tee.”
“Do you really think? It looks over five hundred yards, Dalton. Par five.”
“That’s about …” Dalton held his club out, using some undoubtedly arcane method of judging distance. “Four hundred fifty yards. A long par four.”
“Oh, all right. Where did I put my bag? I —”
Cerberus was standing beside him, Thaxton’s three-wood in his mouth.
“Hmm. Thank you. Good dog.” Thaxton gave his partner a bemused look, shrugged, and took a square stance.
The sixteenth hole wouldn’t have gone well even if the herd of wyverns hadn’t shown up.
Dalton lost his ball in the rough. Cerberus found it for him easily enough, but it was a steep sidehill lie in the tall heather. Thaxton wound up in a deep swale and had to pitch his way out, but the lob shot merely put him into a fairway bunker.
Then the wyverns arrived, squawking and twittering, their stubby wings flapping noisily. Two-legged and green-scaled, they liked the tender leaves of tall bushes and could bend over easily to forage. As they did so, their long barbed tails writhed like angry snakes.
They got in the way. Thaxton’s wood shot from the bunker hit one of them and sent the poor thing shrieking away. Cerberus chased them, woofing his delight, herding them this way and that and adding to the confusion. Wyvern claws chewed up the turf, wyvern teeth chewed up the rough, and wyvern innards landscaped the approaches to the green with wyvern dew. The place reeked.
Thaxton’s ball landed smack in a huge pile. This didn’t deter him. He hit a mean Texas wedge shot that splattered the stuff and sent the soiled ball bounding across the green and into a trap.
“Dung hazards!” Thaxton groaned.
“We shouldn’t have to take this crap,” Dalton said.
They putted as best as they could. Both wound up with triple bogeys.
“Rum show, that,” Thaxton said.
“On to seventeen?”
“Of course. Why would we stop now? By the way, fairly soon we’re going to have to face up to the problem of getting back to Perilous.”
“That’s certainly true,” Dalton said.
“Have any ideas?”
“Why don’t we start worrying about it after we’ve sunk the last putt? Or even after we’ve had a drink at the Nineteenth Hole.”
“Right. What good to worry now?”
“That’s the ticket.”
They walked on, Cerberus tagging along. The moor petered out, giving way to rolling grass spotted with patches of sand. The sky changed, the overcast breaking up a little and revealing patches of blue sky.
“Looks like we’re in for a bit of pleasant weather,” Dalton said.
There was a new smell in the air: the sea. It sparkled to their right, its breakers washing a rocky shore.
“Here’re your golfing roots,” Thaxton said.
And indeed it was. What spread before them was an ancient course laid out on links land, the sandy grassland of the Scottish shores. Sheep grazed on the lee side of the hillocks.
“Lad, do ye ken the Highland fling?” Thaxton said.
“Aye. But I’d rather do the lindy. This is wonderful. I’ve always wanted to play on the real links. Wish we had some traditional clubs instead of these high-tech cheats.”
“Well, to my way of thinking, anything that helps to … wait just a minute. Oh, no, not again.”
A fog bank was quickly rolling in from sea. It was thick, impenetrable, and seemed to possess a reality all its own.
“Uh-oh,” Dalton said. “Another change-fog.”
“Oh, dear.” Thaxton chose a flat rock and sat down. Cerberus lay down beside him and held his head up to be petted.
The mist rolled in, blotting out sea, sky, and land. It reached the golfers and their caddy-mascot and swaddled them in moist silence. Cerberus jumped to his feet and let out a few defiant barks, then lay back down and whimpered quietly.
“I have the feeling,” Dalton said as he settled down to wait, “that the last two holes are going to test our mettle.”
“I’m already suffering mettle fatigue.” Thaxton gave his partner a wink. “Sorry.”
“Well, you should be.”
They waited.
Twenty-nine
Country
The countryside was deserted, its fields silent, its eroded asphalt roads devoid of traffic.
They walked through overgrown hayfields and pastures, encountering the foundations of demolished farm houses and buildings, sections of rusted barbed-wire fence, and other remnants of what were once working farms. The fields had been allowed to go wild for so long that saplings had grown up in them, the surrounding patches of forest reclaiming lost territory.
They ate a lunch of wild raspberries. There was nothing to drink but creek water, which Gene didn’t trust. They did find a well site but the pump was long gone. The raspberries’ juice was enough to hold them, though, and they continued their cross-country journey, keeping away from roads and not staying too long in the open.
Occasionally they would hear the whine and roar of turbines and take cover. Rural areas were well patrolled. Gene wondered why.
He began to suspect the reason when they discovered a destroyed tank in an old cornfield. It had been hit in the turret with an armor-piercing shell. The top hatch had been blown off and the inside of the vehicle had burned out. Judging by the amount of rust and weathering, Gene put the event at four to five years ago.