Pero glanced at Rizzetti, who appeared to be dozing again, and sidled closer to William. In a low voice he said, “Rizzetti won’t have recovered by morning. Force him to move and we’ll find ourselves dragging a corpse.”
William’s face was grim. “Well, that’s up to him, isn’t it?”
Pero frowned, which prompted William to add, “He’s earned the right to die where he wants.”
When Pero still looked unconvinced, William sighed and said, “Look, I’ve been left to die twice. It was bad luck.”
“For who?” Pero muttered.
“For the people who left me.”
William smiled, inviting his friend to join in, but Pero merely turned away and spat on the ground. “Bien,” he said, his voice flat. “It is your call.”
Before William could respond, a sudden, ear-splitting scream tore through the darkness. It was a hideous sound, like nothing he had ever heard before. Despite his experience of war, despite having witnessed the awful depths of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, the sound chilled him to the core. He spun towards the blackness beyond the flickering firelight.
“What—”
And then all hell broke loose.
Something came at them out of the darkness. Something huge and savage, but that moved so fast it was little more than a blur. In less than the time it took to blink, William was aware of both Rizzetti and Najid being plucked from their positions beside the fire and disappearing into the blackness. Najid’s brief scream was one of agony and mortal terror; Rizzetti made no sound at all. As if in sympathy, the horses began to scream too. There was a brief, confused thrash of panic as they tore themselves free of their restraints, and then William was half-aware of the sound of pounding hooves receding into the distance as they bolted.
A flash of green, and then Pero, who had leaped to his feet and instinctively run into the darkness in pursuit of whatever had taken their companions, was flying through the air. He landed in the fire, scattering logs and extinguishing flame, plunging the camp into near-impenetrable darkness.
William spun instinctively, sword in hand, as their attacker turned its attention to him. He sensed it rather than saw it—a vast, thunderous presence bearing down upon him. Then it seemed to stop—and that was worse. Now he had no idea where it was. Moving forward, he swung his sword desperately, and felt it connect with something; felt it judder in his hands as the blade slashed through bone and tissue.
The animal—the thing—remained oddly silent. Pressing home his advantage, William swung again and again, slashing and thrusting and hacking, his reflexes lightning fast. As his sword blade flashed with reflected moonlight from above he saw vivid green splashes in the darkness. The beast stumbled, and William swung his sword towards the sound, and again felt it cut through tough living tissue.
And then the thing, whatever it was, was falling back. William got the impression, as it thudded away from him, that it was vast and meaty and weighty. At least as big as an elephant that had reared up on its hind legs, if not bigger.
Could this be what it was? A rogue elephant? A rogue elephant that moved like lightning and bled green blood? Tingling with terror and the exhilaration of battle, William stepped forward, still thrusting and slashing with his sword.
There was a tumble of rocks, and then suddenly, as the creature moved back from him, an awful, otherworldly scream.
But the scream was fading, receding, as if the thing was falling back into the hell from which it had come. All at once William realized what must have happened, and he came to a halt, his heart thudding madly. Sure enough, limned by moonlight, he saw the edge of a chasm a few feet in front of him. And peering hard he glimpsed—thought he glimpsed—the silhouette of something huge and monstrous falling down and down.
Stepping back he heard a crash of rocks, followed by a distant splash. And then…
Silence.
Still gripping his sword, William sank to his knees. Although he was a veteran of a thousand battles, he had never faced an enemy of such speed and ferocity. He began to shake with reaction.
Then a voice came from the darkness behind him. It was Pero’s voice, though William had never heard it sound so lost, so plaintive. It called his name, once and then again.
William roused himself. He clambered shakily to his feet.
“Aye,” he called, turning.
Pero emerged from the darkness, blood trickling from a wound on his forehead, his dark eyes wide. Standing beside William, peering into the blackness of the chasm, he muttered in Spanish, “What fresh hell is this?”
William didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Still gripping his sword in both hands, his breaths came hard and fast.
The two men stood shoulder to shoulder in the black night, listening to the eerie wailing of the wind in the canyon.
2
When the sun rose over the Painted Mountains, the two men were able to clearly see what their attacker had fallen into—and what they themselves had narrowly missed in the darkness. Less than a hundred steps from their camp was a narrow but horribly deep crevasse, the inner walls jagged with rocks, a stream or river just visible as a dark thread far below.
Their attacker, whatever it had been, was gone, its body presumably swept away in the turbulent waters. In its wake, though, it had left devastation—the hideously mutilated bodies of three horses that had been unable to break free of their restraints, and all that remained of Najid and Rizzetti.
The two men had been torn apart, their guts and limbs strewn across the dusty ground. At first light William and Pero had performed the grim task of tramping through the blood and gore to collect up the pieces and lay them out in a manner more befitting a pair of fallen warriors.
It was a token gesture only. William and Pero had no intention of burying their companions. The task would be too arduous and time-consuming. If they had any chance of surviving this ordeal, they had to conserve their energy and move on quickly. The remains of the three men would become a feast for the vultures, insects and wild animals. Their bones would bleach in the sun and eventually crumble into the sand of the desert.
Such is the fate of us all, William thought, staring down dispassionately at Najid and Rizzetti’s mutilated bodies. He thought of the time and care they had taken to bathe and dress Rizzetti’s leg wound yesterday. Pointless. Utterly pointless.
The news wasn’t all bad, though. At some time in the night the two horses that had bolted during the attack had returned. Rising from a fitful and exhausted sleep, William had spotted them grazing on the meager scrubland nearby. Though skittish, the horses had been unharmed, and by working together and speaking gently to the animals, William and Pero had eventually been able to coax them back to camp. Now the horses were waiting, their saddlebags stuffed with the most valuable and useful items that the two men had selected from the packs of their dead companions.
Before they could leave, however, there was still one task left to perform. It was a task William had been putting off since waking that morning. Cleaning the thick green fluid from the blade of his sword had been bad enough. The fluid had been as thick as blood—thicker perhaps—and it had a foul stench, worse even than the high stink of rot that William was used to from the many battlefields he had fought on over the years. A thick trail of the green fluid, copious spatters of it, led from the area where William had clashed with the creature to the edge of the crevasse it had fallen into. But right on the edge of the chasm was something even more alarming than a pool of green fluid. There was a piece of their attacker. A trophy. Something that William must have severed in the darkness with a slash of his sword.