As he fell, Taniel felt the smallest surge of sorcery dispel as the disguise dropped, and he was able to see and sense the Privileged in the Else. Taniel forewent his normal examination of the following chaos and nodded to Ka-poel as he prepared to switch spots.
“Just one to go.”
Taniel didn’t find the last Privileged until well after midnight. The Kez had made camp less than two miles from the outskirts of Planth and gunshots had stopped hours ago, telling him that the Ghost Irregulars and Mad Lancers had pulled back to get some sleep for the night.
Small scouting parties scoured the swamps around the camp, no doubt looking for Taniel but none of them traveling far enough away from the camp to find any sign of him and Ka-poel. Taniel could easily clear a two-mile shot with the proper line of sight and the Kez had left the trees and were now camping in open farmland.
Ka-poel signaled him by gently tapping him on the back of the hand. He took a sniff of powder and made her repeat her flurry of hand-signals twice before he got the gist of her message and began scanning the very center of the army camp for one particular tent among hundreds of others. He found it quickly, his Third Eye revealing a pastel glow, like the flickering of a candle flame, leaking through the Else.
He smiled to himself, the tension leaving his body immediately as he lined up the shot. This was what the entire plan hinged upon – the death of the last Privileged – and he was going to manage it with enough time to slip back to Planth for a few hours of sleep before morning. He examined the target, watching the light flicker in the Else. The Privileged must have fallen asleep and let his disguise slip.
He would die for that mistake.
Taniel slowly exhaled and squeezed the trigger. He burned powder, counting quietly under his breath. “. . . eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve…” Through his sorcery, he felt the bullet hit its target. He ignored the discharge of the rifle still echoing in his ears and waited for the flicker of the Else to fade as the Privileged’s brains dripped down the side of his tent.
The light didn’t fade. Rather, if flared to life and suddenly moved, as if the Privileged had leapt to his feet. A cold sweat broke out on the back of Taniel’s neck. The shot had missed. Missed, or…
Taniel knew what had happened almost immediately. The Privileged had let his disguise lag on purpose, surrounding himself with a shield of sorcery. Taniel’s bullet had pinged off the shield harmlessly and allowed the Privileged to pinpoint exactly where Taniel was.
“It didn’t kill him,” Taniel whispered desperately. “We have to move. Now.”
He handed Ka-poel his rifle and searched for a handhold, almost losing his balance. Taniel forced himself to pause, take a deep breath, and descend calmly.
That’s when he heard the noise.
It was a snuffling sound, not unlike those he’d heard from pigs searching through countryside streets for leftover morsels. This sound was much louder, however, almost directly below their position. Taniel expected to hear infantry crashing through the underbrush or feel approaching sorcery as the Privileged moved within range to retaliate, but this sound was more terrifying than either of those things.
He exchanged a glance with Ka-poel. Her eyes were wide, attentive, and she seemed to be sniffing the wind like a fox.
“Warden,” he whispered.
Ka-poel worked her way onto the end of the branch and leaned out, looking down. She nodded back at him. The snuffling stopped, and the branches trembled as something very heavy ascended the trunk of the cypress.
Ka-poel swung the rifle off her back, swiftly reloading. Taniel, his heart thumping, tossed a powder charge into his mouth whole, crunching the grit between his teeth, swallowing the bitter sulfur as strength coursed through him. With so much powder he could outrun a horse, punch out an ox, or outstrike a snake. But could he kill a Warden?
“Rifle,” he said urgently. He caught sight of the creature below him, dark, beady eyes looking up from beneath an overhanging brow. What had once been a human man was now shaped by the sorceries of the Kez cabal into something else – a creature of strength and speed, meant to tear the cabal’s enemies limb from limb; a monster created to kill powder mages.
He took the rifle from Ka-poel’s outstretched hands and flipped it around, sighting down the barrel, only to find the Warden gone.
He listened desperately, eyes searching the dark tangle of branches below him. The silence seemed to laugh back at him, as if the Warden had disappeared into this air. The realization that he’d gone from hunter to hunted in a handful of heartbeats turned his blood cold.
“Where is he?”
Ka-poel had that fox-like look on her face again, head tilted to one side. She’d lost him, too, and that did not bode well. Taniel searched nearby branches and craned his head. Had the Warden fallen? There was nowhere else it could have gone, unless…
Taniel spun just as the creature emerged from around the thick trunk of the cypress, moving between branches like an ape Taniel had once seen in the Adopest zoo. It was huge, hunched over, towering above him at six and a half feet and coming so quickly he could barely raise his rifle in time.
The barrel of Taniel’s rifle flashed, stock bucking in his hands as the shot took the Warden just above the heart. The creature didn’t even slow, and Taniel had to fling his rifle to one side, hoping the shoulder strap caught on a nearby branch, before the Warden could grasp it in its big, muscled hands.
The beast lashed out, catching Taniel’s shoulder with a glancing blow that threw him off his perch. He fell half a dozen feet before he hit a tree limb, a sharp pain going through his chest. He grabbed a handful of leaves, then a branch to keep him from tumbling further. Stars floated in front of his vision and he pulled himself up onto the branch, trying to focus through the pain.
Above him, Ka-poel squared off against the big creature without an ounce of fear in her. She balanced on the end of the branch, nowhere else to run, and thick, black cuts across the Warden’s face attested to her skill with the machete in her hand. The Warden snapped its jaws at her like a wolf, growling angrily, bracing itself for a charge.
It would grab Ka-poel and send them both to their deaths forty feet below.
Desperately, Taniel got to his feet, balancing on the tree limb, and leapt upwards. He grabbed the Warden by the ankle, pulling down with all his weight.
The Warden lost its footing, letting out a yelp as it fell, chest and chin hitting the branch on the way down. Claw-like fingernails scrabbled for a hold and Taniel threw himself against the trunk of the cypress to avoid being grabbed as the creature fell.
The Warden crashed through the lower branches until it hit the thick roots of the cypress far below, its body twisted in an unnatural shape. Taniel’s relief was immediately arrested as the creature began to move. It was still alive.
It soon began to howl and thrash, trying to right itself, no doubt ready to ascend with all the fury of an animal in pain. Taniel found his rifle tangled in a nearby branch and checked the mechanisms quickly before reloading as fast as he dare.
Grappling with a wounded Warden, even with all his strength and speed, would probably get him killed. He had one shot to finish this.
He secured his foothold and aimed downward.
A Warden, he could hear his father’s voice say in his head, is a creature twisted into madness. Its skin is like leather, bones like iron. Skeletal mutations surround its heart and sorcery will keep it alive long after any other beast would give up the ghost. The surest way to kill it is to penetrate the brain – and to do that takes considerable force.