Kenneth Bulmer - Keys to the Dimensions 03 by The Wizards of Senchuria

Author:The Wizards of Senchuria
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-10T13:06:22+00:00

VIII

The crossbow looked like a solid hunting job. The windlass creaked. As Redfern pitched forward on hands and knees, stared up with the reality of the final act and his imminent death upon him, he saw three more of the graveyard ghouls march from a thicket, swing toward him, their bows leveled, the sunlight a tongue of flame on each bolt-head.

From the sides the furred roaches closed in.

Val’s sobbing nearly unnerved him. He spared her a quick glance.

“It’s going to be all right, Val! If they want to change the rules they made, then we’ll go along with that.” He started off for the rifle again. “I don’t know what graveyard they dug these things from; but a rifle bullet will send them back there again, damn quick!”

He understood now that the wizards of Senchuria had maintained a strict control on the happenings in the forest. He realized that he could only have comprehended what they intended through their own wavelengths impinging on his brain. He just knew, somehow, that they wanted to run and faze these humans, to bottle the extracted emotions of fear from them for subsequent use.

But now the humans had broken out of the ring. They had refused to run. They had not been herded in a wild chase through the weird forest but had broken back toward the city. The wizards of Senchuria must guess what Redfern intended.

So now the game was over. The play was done. The humans had consistently refused to pay, so now they would be killed.

Their deaths would not go uselessly abegging; Redfern knew without knowing how he knew that the collection of their emotions as they died represented a great and delectable tidbit for the wizards of Senchuria.

The rifle was in his hands now, slick and hard and reassuring. He had never been a man to go to war. He realized that he had been left the rifles as part of the ploy. Maybe the things wouldn’t shoot. Maybe the pins had been removed. Maybe all the cartridges had been emptied of powder. Maybe, even, the wizards of Senchuria wouldn’t mind if he shot a few of their pet hunting cockroaches. They would be expendable in the hunt.

And these graveyard ghouls? Were they expendable, too?

Redfern lifted the rifle and squinted down the sights. He’d find out right now.

He pressed the trigger and heard and felt the satisfying explosion and jolt. The bullet hit the thing high in the chest as it was about to loose the crossbow.

It went over sideways, skirling a weird call, the bow flinging high into the air and the bolt spinning crazily in the sunlight.

Without giving it a second look Redfern slammed the bolt out and in and lined up on the first of the advancing three things from the thicket.

He hit it first time off. As targets, they had the humanity of clay pipes at a fairground. That, in a tiny fraction of sanity amid the turmoil, comforted Redfern. Shooting a fellow human had always seemed to him an act beyond his capabilities.

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