CHAPTER TWENTY SIX: HUNTING THE PREDATOR

The camp seemed ominously silent, except for loud shouts coming from the soldiers in the distance. It was clear they were frustrated that the horse was giving them such a hard time at the same time knowing they had to catch it before the captain came upon the scenario.

With a flick of his wrist Calin checked the time on his digital watch. It only helped to fuel the tension. He looked past the smallest house and drew his gaze toward the open gate.

Their time had run out, all they could do now was hope that time wasn’t as precise here as back home. The captain was late. Even so, they had to hurry.

Problem was he couldn’t see the Nighthound. It frightened him almost as much as the idea of taking the thing on. There was a small relief though in the fact that the creature wasn’t outside of the fort with the guards.

Before setting off, an odd question popped into his mind and he looked at Tyas and asked, “What was this village called when you lived here all those years back?”

The man thought for a moment before answering him. “Needlewood Village; it used to be a logging community. The barracks was one of the larger saw mills. That building over there...” Tyas pointed to a building right at the far end of the fort. “That was where the lumber edger was. All of that was run by donkey powered mills.”

It was hard to miss the pain crossing the man’s face and Calin moved closer and said, “I bet it was a good place to live back then.”

“Yes it was,” Tyas admitted in a strained voice. “We should hurry, as much as I think this is an extremely dangerous task, I want to be done before the captain gets back.”

With a nod Calin snuck around towards the barracks with Tyas right behind. He was quite surprised that all the guards had left the fort to chase down the big war horse, but then again it must be one of the captain’s prized horses. Calin snickered at the chaos Jerry had started. It wasn’t long after until the far side of the barracks came within reach.

He was about to go around the corner when he spotted the closest guard tower. It was empty. A frown split his face. It had been manned no more than a few minutes ago.

With a few steps back he squinted past the only building that obstructed the open courtyard, a small wooden well house. He looked past the gate on the far-side of the fort and counted the guards running after the horse. There were only the ones that had been patrolling inside the area.

He started to voice his suspicion when growling reverberated through his body to his core. He spun around, nothing. But as he approached the corner, the black creature came into view.

He quickly signalled Tyas to be quiet and made a maw like signal with his hands. His heart beat was increasing rapidly, but at least he wasn’t alone.

A quick glance at Tyas only revealed the set determination in the man’s face. With a nod Calin reached down and drew his own sword. Even without the armoured gauntlets the sword would’ve been alien to him, but he didn’t have time to worry about it now.

He stepped around the corner.

The creature was gnawing on a bone and Calin couldn’t help but shudder to think what kind of bone it was. He eased his feet forward and a twig cracked beneath his boot. With a cringe he stopped, almost sure the creature would hear him. But somehow it did not.

Then from behind them a door crashed open and a man tried to shout, “The girl escaped!” but it came out as a wheeze followed by a cough. Calin spun around and there was a guard. Tyas was already facing the armoured man with his sword drawn. The guard looked at Tyas and said, “You! You’re one of those kids that got through and... by the silver sands, it’s my lucky day, there is the other one too. The captain will be most pleased to see the two of you after all these years. Be good lads now and drop those swords. Otherwise I’d be inclined to take the lot of you by force.”

“Just you try!” Calin hissed. He was about to move to join Tyas when the crunching of bones stopped behind him. A sickening feeling swept through Calin and he froze before he fearfully glanced over his own shoulder.

There stood the Nighthound looking straight at him, its two meter long, waist-high body was quivering with excitement. In the event shaking off streams of raindrops from its black scales as it looked Calin in the eyes. He swallowed hard and shuddered at the grim evil that lurked in the creature’s crimson eyes.

With trepidation Calin tried to coax his unresponsive muscles to turn his body to the new threat. He glanced back hopelessly then to Tyas who was already circling the guard. They were taking measure of one another.

Calin tried to clear his suddenly dry throat and croaked. “Tyas ... I would love to help you, but the creature is looking at m—” He didn’t even finish the sentence when the sound of gravel beneath claws met his ears. He swung his sword arm out of pure reflex and met the creature with a glancing blow. Its weight still sent him tumbling to the ground.

He rolled to his knees awkwardly and only had enough time to see the creature’s open jaws coming at him. He threw up his sword arm again and was sent skidding into the wall with a slam.

As he looked down, the creature had latched onto his arm and the large white teeth were scraping against his armoured gauntlet. The teeth to Calin’s befuddled mind were as long as his own index finger, and there were six of them. Two large ones on top were accompanied directly by two smaller ones just beside it. The bottom two scraped on his gauntlet with its cruel intent. The maw was closing again and again around his arm.

He tried to dislodge himself. But a yelping escaped his own lips as the steel was bending against his fore-arm. The teeth were set to penetrate the gauntlet at any given moment, there was no doubt.

Frantic, he shifted his other arm free from under his leg and swung the armoured gauntlet into the creature’s side and again on its neck with as much force as he could muster. Each punch hardly seemed to faze the creature in the least.

Desperate to break free, he tried again, but the attempt failed again. He looked into the menacing eyes of the assaulting Nighthound, the terrifying notion that his own fear was only fuelling the creature’s ferocity was almost at the forefront of his mind.

With an anxious grunt, he tried again to dislodge its jaws. To his dismay the metal gave way with a pop under one of the top sets of teeth.

He punched wildly and grabbed hold of the hard black scales on the things cheek and worked his hand up.

The pressure on his long sleeved shirt alerted him. The sharp edges of the teeth were pressing down seeking entry into his arm.

He jerked on his trapped gauntlet, but it didn’t move. All he could do was edge his free left hand higher onto the creature’s face. He pushed hard to try and force the jaw to dislodge from his gauntlet, but that didn’t help either. The creature’s right eye looked at him with the sure arrogance of something that was on top of its food chain.

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Calin gasped when something presented itself and he jumped on the opportunity and pressed down onto the creature’s eye with all his might.

It yelped and with a slip of tooth and metal grinding against each other, the creature sprang free and pawed at its hurting eye.

He scrambled to his feet and brought his sword in line of the creature. His lungs heaved.

It didn’t help as he looked down at the damage done to his right gauntlet. The Nighthound was just a baby compared to the others who had chased him, yet it had bitten right through his steel gauntlet. And it made him infinitely glad of the decision to take them from the unconscious guard. If it was just my arm, he could only shudder at the thought.

For the first time through his ordeal, he could make out the clear ring of swords clashing against each other. He couldn’t see Tyas, but he hoped the man was faring better than he was.

A second later, he watched the creature lift its head from its paws. The snarl painted across the creature’s muzzle placed fear in his heart.

Calin was keenly aware of the fact, that even with it being much smaller than the ones that had chased him, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to stop it, much less kill it.

With a shaking sword arm he started circling the creature. The Nighthound was watching him with pure hatred. It wasn’t hard for Calin to see that it was waiting for a moment to strike again. The Nighthound’s large tail was waving from side to side, like a snake ready to launch.

A profound wish surfaced that he had followed the others to safety. He didn’t have any illusions of really standing a chance against the monster. But the thought of it hunting down Kara and probably finding her without much trouble with the strong scent left in the prison cell, made him swallow some of his fear and steel himself, It has to die.

He was determined, but also downright scared of the thing. With a great intake of breath, Calin lunged forward.

For a moment a different scene flashed before his eyes. A cave he swore he could remember as his own memory, but was not. A dream of a man he had followed in a kind of outer body experience while he was fighting something. He considered the worth of that memory.

He shook his head to clear it, Focus Calin. Luck would not win him this battle. But as he spread his feet slightly he was far from ready to really face his opponent. He couldn’t even finish the thought as the creature acted first and lunged forward. Calin sucked in a breath and awkwardly swung at the creature with his sword, but only the flat of the blade struck the thing before the sting of claws scraping his leg sent him stumbling.

He tried to keep his sword aimed at the creature, which was again pacing like a true predator, calculating. Calin was just glad for the moment of respite the thing gave him.

Using the moment given, Calin stared at the creature but tested his own leg. It was aching, but still in shape. He had to be better than that. He couldn’t defend well enough to be sure the next time wouldn’t be more serious than that. He silently scraped together what nerves remained and prepared himself for the next attack. But then a grunt of pain split the air from around the corner.

The sudden panic for Tyas was distraction enough.

The creature seized the opportunity. Somehow the realization popped up in Calin, having endured the exact same thing only a minute ago. He jumped desperately to the side and slashed down. His instincts were true for once as the creature growled in pain. But unexpectedly it reversed its landing to jump at Calin again. The agility of the move astounded him and he wasn’t even remotely ready for it. With a jerk he brought up his arms to defend himself. The muscled shoulder of the creature slammed into him. The force sent him flying backwards into a wall close by.

The wind gushed out of Calin’s lungs. Even through his oxygen starved haze, he spun away from the thick paw slashing at him. It only caught a grazing shot on his back. But it was enough to make him clench his teeth in pain. But as he expected the next attack from behind, he franticly looked around and just a metre away there was a door. The top half was open.

With a great leap forward he fell awkwardly over the thing, onto the hard solid floor inside.

His sword went clattering to the side and a grunt was forced from the impact. There was only a moment, as he got to his knees, before a loud crash of claws scraping against wood sounded behind him.

He scrambled towards his sword, but then a heavy weight fell on his right side. It crushed him to the floor, his knees ached badly, but without wasting time he swung his left arm around, landing his elbow against something hard. He pressed with all his strength before the weight suddenly shifted off him, he caught a glance of the creature struggling to get back to its feet from its clumsy leap.

There wasn’t any time to think his situation over as he clambered to his feet away from the creature, but to his apprehension, also away from his sword. Which was now wholly out of his reach.

He only had a second to check his surroundings for anything that could give him some cover. The place inside looked like an old Stone mill, a large pillar like cylinder stood two meters away from him.

Its thick wooden beam connected to a network of smaller gears above it. To the right, another cylinder stood on the other side of the large bed-stone. There were worn out tracks around the wooden beams, probably from livestock powering the mill.

With a glance back, the Nighthound got to its feet and shook its muscled neck to clear its head. A low growl that rumbled from it, its eyes trained at him.

Moving slowly to the side toward the cylinder, Calin did not take his eyes off the Nighthound. His arms stretched out before him, in a way to fend off the creature, but it was an almost useless defence.

Before the Nighthound could make the first move Calin jumped for the old machinery.

Chaos erupted.

As he got behind the large cylinder, it lurched to the side. The gears above cracked with the force of the creature slamming into it, Calin ducked for cover as the heavy gears started crashing down around him.

He started forward, but then with a force he got yanked right back by the creature’s jaws clumsily snapping at the back of his right arm. The cloth beneath his shoulder ripped with the bite. A lance of pain shot through his arm as a tooth clearly pierced the skin on the side of his arm. With a jerk he plucked himself away stumbling forward past the bed-stone.

The large mill-stones were the only things between him and the predator.

A sudden crash reverberated next to Calin as stone clashed against stone. He glanced back to find the creature trying to get to him over the bed-stone. The heavy mill-stones, used for grinding all sorts of things, swayed threateningly as they were brushed by the powerful body of the Nighthound.

Purely out of instinct, he dodged to the side and the powerful creature missed him by the smallest margin and tumbled into the other wooden cylinder with a loud crack. In the confusion he had a clear line to the door. He ran to it in hope of freedom.

A hefty blow from above struck without warning, and a gear dropped from his collar bone to the floor. In a stupor he fell forwards, hitting his head hard against the solid bed-stone.

Completely dazed, he tried to sit up, but his limbs weren’t fully responsive and his vision blurry. Even through the haze Calin could still make out the black scaled monster that was walking towards him with its killer intent.

There was nothing he could do. He hardly had any strength in his arms to even attempt to block the creature’s crushing jaws.

A glance to his side revealed his sword almost in reaching distance. He tried shifting his weight to get his hand closer to the handle of the sword, but his body was almost numb, like lead was pumping through his veins.

The creature was almost on him and to his utter terror there was no time to reach the sword. As a last effort he cringed away from the teeth that would sink into him.

Then a mighty crash sounded next to him, the ground shook with force and he fell over.

Jolted from the shock, he looked back and there was one of the massive mill-stones on top of the now seemingly dead Nighthound.

Calin dropped his head to the ground and breathed for what seemed the first time since the battle had started. His lungs gladly drew in the air deeply into his severely aching body.

Somewhere a door slammed open and he awkwardly grabbed for his sword even though he was fairly certain he had no more fight left in him.

Footsteps closed in with a hurry and to his utter relief Tyas stepped around the bed-stone. With a groan, his head sagged back down while the man kneeled next to him.

“Calin! Are you alright?”

“Ugh... I’ll live ... damn ...” Calin grunted as he tried to sit up. “But please make sure that thing is dead dead will you?”

The man moved around Calin, stepping over the gears that had dropped from above with some effort. It was then that Calin spotted that there was blood dripping from Tyas’ sword. He glanced at the man’s clothing and made out several cuts on Tyas’ green cloak. Troubled by the fact, Calin pressed himself up until his back was pressed against the bed-stone before he asked, “Tyas, are you okay? I’m sorry I ...ugh... couldn’t come to help you.”

A glance back at him was accompanied with a frown on Tyas’ face as he raised an eyebrow. “Well by the looks of it you had a much harder battle than I did.”

“Uh huh...” Calin groaned before he asked, “So what happened on your ... side of things?” He didn’t really expect an answer right then as he watched Tyas step over another gear while eyeing the creature’s head that stuck out from beneath the mill-stone.

Sudden movement caught Calin’s attention. As he looked at the creature, the thing’s eyes opened. He just shouted at Tyas. “Kill it! Kill it now!”