Fighting should be avoided whenever possible…

* Shadows of Inveritus training manual.

Kalissa was wetting the manor with buckets of water when she heard the whistle from Sarina. That was the signal that the enemy was approaching. It was sooner than Kalissa had hoped, but that’s enemies for you; inconsiderate.

She went inside and two nervous-looking guards barred the door behind her. Carrus had dismissed the servants once they had completed the most necessary preparations, over Kalissa’s repeated objections, so it was just them and the guards left in Bermont’s home. Well, most of the guards. One of them had apparently had a sudden attack of common sense and had disappeared while they were fortifying the manor.

Kalissa went upstairs to the third-floor bedroom Sarina was watching from.

“What do you see?” Kalissa asked.

“Warriors,” Sarina said, staring into the distance. “Some horses. And Hunters. Coming from the city.”

“Well, I guess we just have to hope we’ve done enough.”

“We can do more than hope,” Sarina said, gesturing at her bow.

Kalissa smiled at the delkin and joined her in looking out the window. After a time, she saw the Lhintish approaching too. It was hard to tell from so far away, but it looked like their estimates had been correct. About fifty men and eight Hunters.

“Is there a man with a scar running across his whole body?” Kalissa asked. “If you can kill him, it might disrupt their chain of command.”

“I don’t see him,” Sarina said.

“In that case, aim for the Hunters. They’re the biggest threat.”

Sarina nodded and nocked an arrow. She took breath and then loosed.

“Damn,” she said a moment later. “It caught the arrow. From this far away they have too much time to react.”

In the distance, the Hunters began to run towards them.

Kalissa sighed. “Damn, I was worried about that. Can you hit the regular people with Bermont’s arrows from here?”

“Not reliably. They’re too far away.”

“Then I guess we just have to wait till they get closer.”

They didn’t have to wait long. The Hunters ran fast and seemingly never slowed. They pelted across the grounds towards the manor, naked and bloody and terrifying.

The lead Hunter was perhaps two hundred feet out when it came across a roundish, fuzzy creature about the size of a small dog, one of several that were now wandering around the grounds. The furry little thing bounded up to the Hunter, clearly seeing its presence as a challenge to its territory.

The Hunter mostly ignored the creature, kicking it aside with one foot as it ran on.

At which point the bombat exploded.

The volatile little fuzzball went up in a ball of fire that took the Hunter’s leg, and a good chunk of its torso, off completely. Even this wasn’t enough to actually stop the Hunter though, and it kept coming for them, scuttling on three limbs and leaking blood and other vital fluids across the grounds.

“That is unpleasant,” Sarina commented.

“Well worth the money though,” Kalissa said. “Even if they did use up all the coin Bermont had on hand.”

Two more of the Hunters ran into bombats and blew themselves up. One died on the spot, but the other only lost a foot and kept running along on a bloody stump, barely breaking its stride.

The nearest Hunter, no longer the one without a leg as that had slowed it down somewhat, got within what Sarina obviously determined to be acceptable range and she nocked six arrows in her bow at once. She took aim for a moment and then let fly.

The Hunter twisted its body, caught an arrow mid-flight and avoided two more, but the other three hit home, taking it in the leg, the neck and the chest. The Hunter kept going, but it wasn’t looking so steady on its feet anymore, and it was clear it would be dead soon. Sarina took aim again with another six arrows and this time killed the Hunter she fired at outright, putting an arrow through its skull.

The first of the Hunters reached the manor. There was a smashing sound as the Hunter broke straight through a thick, wooden wall. The other Hunters were through to the house in moments, all except the first one Sarina had shot, which collapsed from its injuries before it could reach the house.

Then the Hunters were inside with them.

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The Hunter burst through the wall in front of Sal, mindlessly coming for him, and ran straight into the wall of spears Bermont’s servants had made. The Hunter was going too fast and there wasn’t any way to dodge between the tightly-packed spears. It impaled itself in several places, but it kept coming regardless, breaking off the spearheads and clambering over the wall. Then another Hunter came in behind it. And then another. The wall of spears didn’t last long after that.

So, Sal used a sword to cut the rope tied conspicuously in one corner and release the pile of lumber they had tied to the roof earlier.

Heavy wooden beams crashed down on the Hunters while Sal made a run for it to the stairs and deeper into the house. He got to the second floor and tipped a bucket of poisoned caltrops down the stairs. Then he turned to go to the room where Carrus and two guards were waiting with spears, knowing the Hunters would go straight for him ignoring almost any obstacle in their path.

And that’s when the plan turned to shit.

A Hunter burst through the floorboards in front of him, smashing its way up through the wood. It came through bloodied and broken, but it landed on its feet and came straight at Sal, reaching with broken fingers.

Sal held a sword and shield with shaking fingers. The creature came at him and he swung his sword at those grasping arms. The blade sunk deep into the meat of the creature’s arm and lodged there. The Hunter ignored it and kept coming, easily ripping the shield away and raising it to bash Sal’s skull in.

When a spear erupted from its throat.

Carrus stood behind the creature. He had stabbed it through the neck while Sal had distracted it by almost dying.

He was really getting sick of that combat strategy.

Unfortunately, the Hunter didn’t seem to know it should be dead, and it brought the shield around to snap the spearhead off. Then it turned back to Sal, blade still protruding from its throat and breathing coming in wet gasps.

And Sal stabbed it in the face with a dagger. The Hunter half-dodged the blow and Sal ended up carving out half the creature’s mouth, leaving a flap of meat hanging from exposed teeth.

The Hunter didn’t care and brought the shield down on Sal.

Sal threw himself to the ground, trying to get away from the bone-crushing blow. He only partially succeeded, and the shield clipped him in the back, forcing him to the ground and knocking the air from his lungs.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Sal tried to scramble out of the way of the next attack, but he knew he was going to be too late.

He heard a grunt and a wet noise from above him.

The Hunter stood there with a spearhead sticking through its neck as before, but next to that was a jagged piece of broken wood. Carrus had driven the broken end of his spear’s shaft through the creature’s throat. The Hunter tried to move, but then collapsed, finally dead.

“Thanks,” Sal wheezed.

“Idiot, run!” Carrus barked, pulling the bloody piece of wood free from the corpse as another Hunter climbed up through the hole the last one had made in the floor.

Sal didn’t need to be told twice, and he scrambled to his feet and ran for the next set of stairs as Carrus ducked into a room and out of the way of the next Hunter.

Sal jumped where he knew they had lain a tripwire and stepped around several long nails they had pounded up through the floorboards from below. The Hunter didn’t notice, and it went down, landing on the nails. But it twisted its body and none of the nails did any significant damage. Still, it gave Sal enough time to scramble up the stairs with the Hunter close behind him.

Then Sarina appeared at the top of the stairs and fired a volley of arrows at the Hunter. The creature had little room to dodge in the confines of the staircase and took three arrows to the chest. At least one of them hit something vital and the Hunter collapsed. Sarina moved to retrieve her arrows while Sal scrambled up the stairs and past her.

Before Sarina could get to the body, another Hunter appeared at the bottom of the stairs and surged up at them.

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Carrus opened the door he was hiding behind just as a female Hunter approached it. He struck out with his broken spear, but the creature just wrenched it away from him. It had a terrifying strength, but Carrus was ready for it and ducked back into the room moments before it hurled the remains of his spear at him. It continued on down the hall on one foot and a bloody stump, deeming Carrus irrelevant.

Useless, Carrus thought. The Hunters just weren’t interested enough in killing him to draw any into the room where two guards were waiting with spears and shields. They had planned to bottleneck one in the doorway and kill it, but the creatures only wanted Sal. Carrus and his men didn’t even seem to matter to them.

The plan had been to finish off the Hunters first and then use Sal’s forceshaping to give them an edge against the Lhintish soldiers, who would take longer to reach the manor without the Hunter’s unnatural speed and stamina.

Though, if they had brought horses, not that much slower.

“We need to get downstairs,” Carrus said to the guards. “The Lhintish could be here at any moment.”

The guards seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. The thought of fighting ten to one odds must have seemed almost comforting compared to the prospect of fighting the unnatural horror of the Hunters. They followed him to the stairs and started clearing off the caltrops with their spears as they descended, always pushing them off to their left so they wouldn’t be in their way to reach the front of the house.

About halfway down Carrus heard a scream coming from below.

The guards below must have already engaged the Lhintish, and they would need all the help they could get.

“Follow when you can,” he said, vaulting over the right-side balustrade and falling to the floor below. He landed hard and pain shot up his leg and through his back. That sort of thing had been a lot easier when he was younger.

But he didn’t have time to be sore. He ran for the room Sal had been positioned in near the main entrance and one of his guards arrowshot through his shoulder and the other pinned down on the opposite side of a hole torn in the wall.

Lhintish cavalry were circling around outside, taking shots through the hole in the wall at the men inside.

Carrus dragged the man away from the hole, eliciting cries of pain when he moved him. Then he picked up a spear that had been dislodged from the trap they made earlier and got into position on the other side of the hole, ready to stop any Lhintish who tried to force their way in.

The man on the opposite side nodded his thanks but flinched halfway through as an arrow whizzed by and stuck in the wall behind them.

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Kalissa stared down the stairs as her friend ran for her life. Sarina was fast and had a half-staircase lead on the Hunter, but the Hunter could run down a horse. She didn’t stand a chance.

Unless Kalissa helped her.

Kalissa cursed herself for an idiot and then dashed down the stairs towards Sarina, drawing her knife as she did. Sarina slipped to one side as Kalissa neared, the stairs not being wide enough for two people to pass comfortably. This was enough of a slowdown for the Hunter to catch up and, since they were between it and Sal, it reached out to do something horrible to them both.

Which is when Kalissa threw her knife at its face.

The creature was fast enough to catch arrows and, while Kalissa was pretty good at knife throwing, her knife wasn’t anything like as fast as an arrow. The Hunter snatched it from the air easily, only slightly cutting its hand as it did so. It kept coming.

Kalissa put one hand on each side of the balustrade and swung a two-foot kick at the Hunter. The creature twisted its body and the kick barely clipped it. It grabbed Kalissa’s leg with one hand and pulled, its grip unbelievably strong. Kalissa lost hold of the balustrade and the creature tossed her over the side of the stairs like garbage.

She reached out for the side of the stairs, missed, and fell.

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Sal watched as Kalissa went over the balustrade, too slow to do anything about it. She had only engaged the Hunter for about a second, not long enough for Sal to come back down the stairs, let alone help.

But it was long enough for Sarina to nock an arrow.

The Hunter turned back towards Sarina once it had tossed Kalissa off the stairs and took an arrow right to the head. The shaft penetrated the creature’s skull and lodged in its forehead.

The arrow slowed the Hunter down but didn’t stop it. It kept coming, its movements jerky and one eye rolling strangely in its skull. Sarina tried to nock another arrow, but the Hunter flailed an arm at her and knocked the bow from her hands. The creature got a hand on Sarina as she tried to run and yanked her down the stairs behind it. She fell with a series of nasty-sounding thuds and ended up in a heap on the ground. The Hunter heaved itself onward.

Then another Hunter appeared at the bottom of the stairs, missing a foot but still upright, walking on one bloody stump. It dashed messily up the stairs behind the first.

Sal was standing next to a heavy metal pipe they had intended to roll down the stairs when the Hunters climbed them. He hadn’t sent it down before because Sarina had been in the way and it would certainly hit her if he pushed it now, lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs as she was.

For a moment he considered sending it down anyway. This could be the last of the Hunters, and any trace of his vis would be long gone by the time more arrived. He could slip away during the fighting and disappear. Besides, Sarina might be dead already from the fall.

But chances were good that she wasn’t. A fall down the stairs wasn’t likely to be fatal, and Sal thought he had seen her moving during the brief glimpse he got of her. Which meant that if Sal pushed the pipe it might stop the injured Hunters, but it would leave him without one of his only friends. The brute fact was that he liked Sarina and wanted to continue working with her, which he couldn’t do if he killed her.

“Fuck,” Sal swore as he left the pipe where it was and ran into a bedroom Sarina had been shooting from earlier. The window was open and, with nowhere else to go, Sal dove through it.

He hit the tiled roof and began to slide. He scrambled to get his feet below him, abrading himself on the edge of a tile. He got his footing before he came off the roof entirely and someone shouted below. The Lhintish cavalry had reached the manor and the infantry weren’t that far behind. They were too close, Sal wouldn’t have been able to get away even if he had decided to. A mounted archer had spotted him and was circling around to get a shot off.

These problems were quickly dwarfed when he heard a sound behind him and turned to see that the arrowshot Hunter had leaped out of the window and was coming straight for him.

Sal ran for his life, sliding recklessly over the roof. Another thudding sound came from behind him. His footing was precarious, the roof was slick from the buckets of water they had been dumping on it earlier. Sooner or later, he would fall. But given the choice between falling and being caught by the Hunters, Sal knew which one he would prefer. He poured on the speed.

An arrow whizzed by him as he reached the top of the sloping roof and began to run down the other side.

His head-start and the Hunter’s injuries kept him in front of them for maybe ten seconds. But they were too fast to run from for long. The one missing a foot caught up to him first and, just as its uneven footsteps were right behind him, he dropped to the roof and stuck one leg out.

This would never have worked on an uninjured Hunter, their reflexes were too quick, but Sal got lucky. The Hunter was partway through taking a step with its foot, with only a bloody stump supporting it. It tried to twist around on its stump, but it was no use and the creature fell, skidding towards the ground. It grabbed hold of a tile with frightening strength, but it had too much momentum and the tile came off the roof entirely and fell with the creature.

Sal looked on with satisfaction for about a second before the other Hunter reached him.

The Hunter, still moving strangely, hauled him to his feet with one hand. The other arm seemed to have gone dead and was hanging limply at the creature’s side. The thing’s good arm moved to take him by the throat.

Sal fought back as best he could, putting everything he had into keeping the creature’s hand away from his neck. The Hunter wasn’t as strong as it should have been, and Sal was putting the strength of his whole body into heaving at its arm, but it was still barely enough.

Then the Hunter opened its mouth and came for Sal’s face.

Sal did the only thing he could, he smashed his forehead into that of the creature.

Normally this wouldn’t do much of anything. Knocking foreheads isn’t an effective fighting technique at the best of times, and certainly not when fighting something as implacable as a Hunter. But in this case, it worked.

Sal slammed his head into the butt of the arrow that was still lodged in the Hunter’s skull, the shaft broke, but the head was driven further into the Hunter’s brain.

The creature collapsed on the roof and slowly started sliding off. Blood trickled down Sal’s face, but he ignored it as he went to the edge of the roof and saw that the one-footed Hunter had split its head open on the ground below.

Sal tried releasing a little force, barely enough to notice, and blew a few ripples in a blood splatter the one-footed Hunter had left.

His face split in a triumphant grin at the realization all the Hunters were dead, until he remembered that Sarina might be too.