Logan looked around, desperation dulling his pains. Cupping his hands he plunged them into the tepid pond and began flinging water onto the meager campfire. When it fizzled out with a hiss and darkness flooded into the camp, Marla whimpered.

“Dagny, can you see?” Logan whispered.

“Yes.”

“You help Marla. Cover yourselves in as much mud as you can. Quickly!” Logan staggered over to the razor grass. He wrapped his tunic around his hand, grasped a handful of grass stalks, and used a hunting knife to cut them short. The kids wallowed, returning for more when Logan told them to get even dirtier. As the hounds closed in and voices could be heard shouting directions, Logan shakily placed each child into the chopped patch in the middle of the razor grass. He then ‘planted’ the hardy stalks in clumps along their backs.

Putting a finger to his lips, he began to look for a place to hide himself in what little time he had left. There was no way he could manage the same disguise, he’d never make it and might draw their eyes to the kids. Patting Gilly on the rump to get her attention, he gave the hand signal for ‘home’ and was pleased to see the riding dog obey.

A final, rushed assessment convinced him that the mangrove was his best chance. Sliding into the water, grimacing at the thought of how the stagnant pond would surely do his wounds ill, he swam beneath the stilted roots, submerged from the nose down. The mud would hopefully mask the scent of the kids, he had to hope the water would do him the same favor.

What followed were some of the longest and most tense minutes of his life. His pursuers were closing in on one side, and that… that THING, was penning them in from the other. Only his barren stomach prevented the thought of that sludge of offal from pulling a meal from him. What it did to Liam and Magne before his eyes would haunt him for as long as he lived.

His thoughts were thankfully derailed when a light poured out like liquid summer, casting impossibly long shadows off of the western trees.

A slobbering bloodhound bounded forward, shaking off the water from its ruddy coat as a lone man with a lantern trailed behind.

“OOOOY!” the man bellowed as his lamp revealed the still steaming fire. “OVER HERE!” Logan’s belly was twisting into more knots than he knew were possible. He risked a glance at the children, pleased to note that they were barely visible, even to his eyes. He turned his attention back to the hunter and discovered that he recognized the man, if only vaguely. He’d never learned the lad's name, but he’d seen him at the gate when they first arrived at that accursed stead.

Logan’s hands clenched and unclenched beneath the water as more people closed in. He had no idea how widespread they had become in their attempts to find himself and Emma. He could only hope that there was enough distance between the hunters that only a few of them would be within range. Two more figures waded onto the little isle, a second hound joining the first in sniffing around near the fire.

“What’d you find?” came Erik’s gruff, smoke-hardened voice. Logan’s mouth filled with the slightly salty, green taste of the stagnant pool as he grit his teeth in a hidden snarl. If there was any justice in this world he would choke the life out of that thrice-damned Erik Marsh with his own bare hands…

“Found that fire Hod noticed earlier. Still fresh. Bjarke is pointing at that wet spot. I think the sneak was here,” the first man reported dutifully. Logan inspected each in turn, noting that the old man was unencumbered, and the wall-eyed boy that had brought their evening meal carried nothing but a lantern. That left the man with the crossbows and two hounds. In his condition, he didn’t care for those odds, but it wasn’t entirely beyond hope.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Fan out. See if the hounds can figure out a direction,” Erik commanded as yet another body, a hardy-looking woman with another crossbow, arrived on the scene and drove Logan’s hopes even deeper into delusion. He’d never be able to run fast enough to lead them away or fight hard enough to take on so many. It was hide or die. Then the bottom fell out of him as he saw the second hound sniffing its way closer and closer to the grass where the children were hiding. Mud or no, too close and that hunting hound would figure them out.

“I hope you're not expecting hospitality, Marsh,” Logan called from behind a root. “You’re in my house now.” Taking a deep breath, he dove below the water, swimming away from where the hunters stood. He emerged moments later, in the Mangrove’s shadow, to hear the latter half of Erik’s retort.

“- easy on you. Arrows aren’t the worst way to die,” the bark-like voice ground out. Logan took a gamble, emerging from the water and diving across the barren length of earth between its shores and the nearest tree. A bolt whistled past him as he hid behind another mangrove.

“Then I’ll be doing you a mercy!” His threat was empty. He’d lost his bow. He only hoped they didn’t know that.

“You’re fooling no one, boy.” Erik’s voice was level and cold, not quite masking the sound of approaching footsteps and the taut stretch of a crossbow being reloaded. He could try to keep them at odd angles, but he’d already used what little strength he had left. Gods, he wished he could have gotten somewhere where the children wouldn’t have to see this. Stepping out from the trees on the opposite side of the pond from where the young ones lay, he held his hands overhead. He leveled his most damning glare at the old human.

“Folk will find out what you’ve done,” Logan warned. “Consorting with dark powers? Dabbling in necromancy? You’ve cursed yourself before man and gods alike.” The doomed ranger was taken aback when the old man had the nerve to look offended. Erik spat on the ground, face twisting into a snarl.

“Necromancy? Base, crude fools.” He spoke with a bile and venom that honestly baffled Logan. “They make dolls out of bones and think themselves kings of their shallow little world.” Erik held a hand out, palm forward, signaling his fellows to hold their fire. “The Black Goat is a goddess of LIFE!” He hissed, eyes bulging with rage.

“‘Ïa, Shub-Nighurath…’” the others murmured flatly, in near unison. They sounded to Logan almost like golems, forced to respond to a keyword.

“Necromancy…” Erik hissed in repetition, stepping now between Logan and the tree, facing away from the children. Logan prayed silently, begging any god who would listen that they would return to their stead and leave his daughter be, once they killed him. “The gall of you. First, you claim the seat of the Lord of the Woods as your home, then insult her progeny, and invoke the presence of the petty children you call gods in the presence of their elder?” Erik’s eyes were bloodshot, and his skinny neck throbbed in time with his aged heart. Logan realized he was looking at a raving zealot. “Arrows are too good for you. Rejoice, boy! You’re about to learn the truth behind the lies!”

The leathery man pulled an oblong bauble from his pocket. Logan wondered if that madman was about to light a pipe, but when Erik brought it to his lips the lantern light revealed a clay face with a small spout out the back. The morbid bauble was twisted into an agonized expression, and when he blew into it, the sound that emerged was akin to a piercing scream of anguish.

The cacophony that answered from the darkness to the east was enough to strip Logan of his false bravado and bring his hands down to cover his ears. His every instinct begged for him to shut his eyes. It was better to meet his end in ignorance than see that thing one more time. Through an act of will, he forced his eyes to lock on Erik. Perhaps if he charged now, they would shoot him first? Better that than what was coming.

How were these people smiling? How did the wails and babbling not pick away at them? Logan grit his teeth and lowered his hands from his ears, bracing himself for one last act of defiance. Maybe he could take this bastard down with him…

Something changed; a silent shift that took a moment to place. The small strip of land on which they stood went from being illuminated by the various yellow lantern lights which engraved features onto the faces of his pursuers, to slowly being overtaken by a deep crimson glow. A curiously misplaced dawn was shattering the night, birthed from beneath the mangrove tree, growing until it turned the band of cultists into little more than blank silhouettes from Logan’s perspective.

It was a mystery Logan knew he would never solve, as the roiling brew of tormented flesh crossed the shallows from the east. Then all thought of his own end disappeared as a horrid reality threatened to shatter his very being. The children… It was going to pass right over the children. He fought against the very air itself, unable to will his broken vessel to move as he watched the horror emerging from the void of night beyond the isle.

Then the shapeless mound inexplicably diverted. A boom of thunder drowned out its ravings for a blessed instant as a branch as thick as Logan slammed into the quivering blob.