Following Joe, the six companions rode pell-mell down the rocky slopes, the horse’s hooves triggering miniature avalanches of loose shale. The forest came up to meet them, and they galloped between tree trunks, ducking limbs and slapping branches aside. The horse beneath Ryan ran with all its strength in a stretch-legged, thundering stride. An undulating howl drifted from somewhere to their right. It didn’t sound like any of the other wolf cries, but the screech was full of anger. Ryan glimpsed dark blurs sliding among the trees, only momentarily visible through the tangle of foliage and underbrush.
Suddenly they emerged from the forest and galloped across a rolling, grassy sward. Far ahead were a few closely grouped flickering lights. Joe directed his pony toward them, then they were lost from view as the party raced down into a declivity of the plain.
The wolves hailed one another with their eerie call as they loped and bounded across the valley to encircle the fleeing humans and horses. Ryan leaned over his animal’s neck, its mane smacking his face.
The seven riders topped a rise in the plain, and at the same moment the distant firelight came again into view, Doc uttered a strangled yell, “Damn hellhounds!”
Ryan turned in his saddle and saw a dark shape snapping at the legs of Judas Redux. The mustang screamed in fear and reared, then began to buck frantically.
Doc lost his seat, his silver hair flying out like a sunburst, and he went up and then down on the shadow-splotched plain.
Shaggy forms leaped all about them, eyes gleaming and teeth snapping. There were too many moving too fast to be counted, so Ryan didn’t try. Dragging back on the reins, he shouted, “Off saddle before they pull us down! Make a stand here!”
Even as he yelled the order, he was sliding from his saddle, kicking free of the stirrups, trying to hold the reins of his terrified horse. A black, hairy bulk rushed soundlessly from the murk, and he triggered his SIG-Sauer three times. The staccato crack of the blaster seemed to startle the bounding, snarling forms. The wolf howled in pain, yelped and loped away on three legs.
Krysty, Jak, J.B. and Mildred formed a rough circle around Ryan, standing back to back, blasters at the ready.
“Where’s Doc?” Mildred asked, her voice tight with tension and worry.
At that moment he staggered up to them, grass stained and groaning. He had the Le Mat in his right hand and his unsheathed sword in the left. Through gritted teeth he said, “Just when I was reconsidering rechristening that monster, he has to live up to his name.”
Joe dismounted with a feline grace, drawing the blaster from its beaded scabbard with one smooth motion. “Shoot to kill!”
“Look!” Krysty cried. “It’s not just wolves!”
The shaggy beasts charging them were apparently the advance guard. Painted men upon horseback, wearing wolf-skin cloaks and hoods, wielding feathered lances and tomahawks, pounded across the plain like a wave. They voiced high-pitched “Yi-yi-yi!” screams.
Ryan, Krysty and Joe fired more or less simultaneously at the anthropomorphic forms surging toward them through the moonlight. The horses neighed and reared, then turned and galloped away, and three writhing figures were left behind on the grass.
“Chill men!” Jak shouted, triggering his blaster. “Wolves run away if we shoot masters!”
Ryan knew, without really knowing how he knew, that Jak was mistaken. The wolves displayed independent tactical thinking. They showed it by the way they came on in irregular zigzag bounds to minimize the chances of falling victim to weapons that were obviously new and fearsome to them.
For a long moment it was all crazy confusion with everyone firing in random patterns, the air full of gunshots, animal and human howling and pounding hooves.
Then, as always, the veterans of hundreds of fights for survival tightened into a well-oiled gestalt of destruction. Ryan and his friends chose their targets coolly and squeezed off careful shots, oblivious to the racket their attackers were deliberately making.
Though flights of arrows and the occasional lance zipped their way, the steady storm of lead exploding from handblasters broke full on their human and beast enemies. The blood-chilling war cries and predatory howls became screams of pain and surprise.