James Axler – Shadowfall

Then the sound came from behind them, to the east, a terrible, piercing scream of soul-tearing pain and despair.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Magnus Lette, at nineteen, was the youngest of the patrol of sec menonly by six minutesthen came his identical twin brother, Marcus. They had been with Baron Weyman since they were lads of eleven. Their mother had been a cook in the ville, but had died of pneumonia in that cold winter. As far back as Magnus and Marcus could remember, there hadn’t been a father. Eudoria Lette, their mother, told changing tales of a sailor, a packman, a whaler and a shootist.

In the end, it didn’t much matter.

Weyman was a good master, kind and considerate, never demanding too much from the men and women who served him. And Bill Rainey was also a decent sec boss.

Magnus and Marcus Lette were sitting together, part of a forty-yard defensive perimeter that had the horses at its center. Every man faced outward, into the fog that snaked between the tall pines. Every man had his powerful crossbow armed and ready across his lap.

The forest was dark and silent, only the ghost of a moon filtering through the mist.

“Marcus?”

“What is it, little bro?”

“Might only be little now, but baby boy Magnus is catching up to you.”

It was the oldest of jokes between the identical twin brothers, but it still made both of them smile.

“What do you want, Magnus?”

“Just wondering whether we might see these wild brushwood folks. Bill says there’s plenty of them.”

Marcus grinned, teeth white in the silvery light. “Raggedy-assed bastards won’t be no harm to us, bro. Just aim and loose a bolt at them.”

The brothers blinked at the apparition that had sprung into sight from the woodland. One moment the space had been empty of life, swirling with dense fog, then, in the beating of a heart, there was a man there.

Neither Magnus nor Marcus were worried. They knew what brushwooders looked like. They were filthy, in old flea-ridden furs and torn hides, had long, lank hair and blotched skin and were better than halfway toward scabbies.

But this wasn’t a brushwooder, so he obviously wasn’t any threat to them.

From top to toe, the stranger looked even smarter than the baron himself.

He wore expensive Western-style stack-heeled boots in black leather with a silver snake crawling around them, and a shirt as black as midnight, and jeans to match, with lines of silver rivets. A chunky necklace of top-quality raw turquoise hung around the muscular neck, and a large opal was studded through the right ear. He was smiling at the brothers, showing the glitter of a gold tooth at the front of his mouth.

He looked to be somewhere around fifty, with a totally shaved head.

“You lost, stranger?” Magnus asked.

“Are we not all lost, friend?” The voice was pleasant to the ear. “Are we not all wanderers through that dark valley that men call life?”

“Sure we are.” Marcus grinned, not quite certain of himself. “Sure we are.”

The man walked closer, light on his feet for a tall man. Both the brothers had quickly noticed that he wasn’t armed. All he was holding was a small disk of inlaid silver that he was spinning on the end of its long chain.

It was very eye-catching.

Magnus was drawn to it, squinting at the whirling circle that seemed to generate its own purplish light. He hadn’t realized how tired he was.

“You boys look sleepy. I’ve just been around and talked with all your good friends. Eight of them. And they got real sleepy, as well.”

Magnus glanced to his right, seeing that the next man in line, Jericho Cooder, had actually fallen asleep on watch. His crossbow lay beside him in the dirt.

Odd thing was, though it wasn’t all that easy to see through the shifting fog, Jericho seemed to be sleeping with his eyes wide open.

“That’s all right,” the stranger said pleasantly. “Lots of men sleep with their eyes open, don’t they?”

He had such a gentle, persuasive voice that Magnus found himself nodding in agreement, even though he’d never actually heard of such a thing before.