Dean’s hand restrained him. “Wait! Any closer and you’ll bring the rest of it down on her!”
J.B. stepped back quickly, suddenly snapped into an awareness that the younger Cawdor was right. The soil, scree and rock along the path where they had just walked was loosened to such a degree that it could tumble at any moment.
Below them, Mildred had come to a halt. She knew that every bone and muscle in her body ached, but at the same time that nothing was badly damaged. She had been lucky, but this luck was holding only by a tenuous thread.
The disturbance of the falling rocks had roused a flock of birds that nested in the dwarf elms on the summit of the hill. They rose, large and dark against the sky, with a deep cawing and croak of a call. Looking up, Ryan could count about twenty of them, and they didn’t look friendly.
Krysty had also observed them.
“Somehow I don’t think we’ll find the Gate here, and I think I know why.”
“Me, too,” the one-eyed man agreed. Glancing down quickly at where Mildred lay—conscious but dazed and unmoving—he added, “She’s easy meat for them right now, if they want.”
It was a shrewd assessment of the situation. The birds—the like of which they had not previously seen in this seemingly peaceful area of the land—were obviously hostile, circling and forming to dive down on the companions below.
“Ryan, would I be correct in assuming we must draw their fire in order to prevent the good Dr. Wyeth becoming a target?” Doc shouted across the gap in the hillside to his leader.
“Got it in one, Doc. They’re mean looking bastards, and Mildred’s still out of action. We can get her after we’ve got rid of them. Wait till they swoop.”
The companions didn’t have long to wait. With one circling motion up above, the flock turned and dived on the waiting companions as they stood on the hillside path. Ryan raised his Steyr, Jak had the .357 Magnum Colt Python ready, Dean raised his Browning Hi-Power and Krysty steadied her aim with the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson Model 640. Doc raised the LeMat percussion pistol, deciding that the shot charge would do most harm, and he would use that first, while J.B. raised his Uzi, set to Rapid Fire, with which to sweep blasterfire across the flock.
It was at that point, as they were about to begin, that Mildred began to move on the hillside below. She, too, could see the flock of birds above, and although she couldn’t see her companions preparing to fire, she was well enough aware of the wildlife across the land to know that the birds were hostile—and she was vulnerable. She pulled her Czech-made ZKR target pistol from its holster, but was painfully aware of how slow her fall had made her. As she struggled to raise the pistol, all she did was make the flock aware of another—and relatively defenseless—piece of prey.
As the flock descended, some of the birds suddenly veered away from the main group and began to dive toward Mildred, who was still slowed by her injuries and was only just drawing the ZKR.
“Dark night!” the Armorer cursed, seeing them break away. He changed the angle of his Uzi, so that he could fire into the group of birds as it passed him. As the birds drew level with the path on which he stood, he squeezed gently on the trigger, pressuring until the machine blaster kicked with the white heat of rapid fire, spraying almost molten death into the middle of the birds. He moved the Uzi side to side, trying to take them all out in one blast.
He was almost successful. Most of the birds were ripped apart in midflight, their calls harsh among the chatter of the machine blaster as their chilling rattled in their throats. A rain of feather, blood and flesh fell upon the side of the hill, splattering the rocks and earth and covering Mildred in their stench.
But not all the birds were dead. Two of them had managed to avoid being chilled by the expedient of being on the far side of the group, and so protected from the majority of the Uzi fire, which embedded itself in the rest of the birds. And as the two homed in on the struggling Mildred, she had a chance to see how big they were. Looking like eagles, they had bodies the size of an average dog, and a wingspan that kept them flying far enough apart for her to have to adjust her aim rapidly if she were to take out both of them.