FIREFANGED

Chapter 7 (Demon Hunting Party)

The early summer night started perfectly. The clear weather, high moon, and a cool breeze flowing down from the mountains offered ideal conditions.

My chainmail was covered with a thick layer of dark leather, the left sleeve cut short, making room for my steel vambraces and leather wraps. An axe was strapped across my back with my fang-dagger secured below it.

We slipped out of Berykholt via a small gate from the north tower around midnight as the early night patrol returned. They had run a loop up through the Everest Gap, as the nearby mountain pass was known, and then searched westward before turning back. Their fifteen-mile excursion had come up empty of any sightings, and it seemed like we were in for a quiet shift.

Jacka took the lead and sketched out our route. A mile north of the valley, the Everest Gap opened into rough vertical terrain dominated by Adam's Peak, which forced patrols to circle east or west around it. Tonight we'd be taking the eastern route, following game trails counterclockwise in search of predators and caves.

Besides Jacka, Sentinel-Scout Pika Havens was our third. He was a smaller man of about thirty years with a hunter's eyesight and attitude. I liked him immediately. We traded stories of our favorite kills to pass the time as we hiked into the mountain pass.

Adam's Peak wasn't so much a peak as a tall cliff, and I wouldn't expect anything but mountain goats to call it home. As far as I could tell, the area around us lacked any serious predators.

We moved a few miles eastward and turned to the northeast—through another small valley—and something was off. I could feel the anxiety of the sentinel-scouts ramp up, while my senses were telling me that we were safe from anything predatory or demonic.

As we trekked further, I noticed the dull scent of a not too recent kill and tried to put things mildly: "Sentinel Jacka, what can you tell me about this place? I mean, there's a scent of death here."

"A scent?" Jacka glanced at Pika Havens before continuing, "We lost a scout patrol here a couple of weeks ago. Both sentinels, Drake and Dillon, were torn apart. Their remains were found about a quarter-mile ahead, near that huge flat boulder. Drake was Corbin's second at the time. Somehow, they had been cut off and ambushed, but by what we don't yet know. Too many caves around these parts that could hide just about anything."

"Could I take a look at where they were found?"

"Sure, though I doubt you'll find anything new. Especially not while it's dark."

We approached and circled the kill-site. There was the scent of widely scattered human blood and a mixture of others, mostly animals marking their territory, but also traces of something beyond rotten.

I've read kill sites before—animal attacks or poachers not caring what they left behind—and knew this was different.

"There's mostly human blood here—scattered as if thrown. The men had their backs to that boulder." I crouched, running my hand across the rocky ground, working my way up to the truth. "They were overwhelmed by several demons, and they didn't have a chance to kill any of their attackers."

Not wanting to consider the full implications of that, Jacka ordered, "Let's get moving. This area seems clear, and I want to pull a full circle around Adam's Peak before the break of dawn."

We picked up the pace pushing another couple miles straight north. As we were turning westward to circle back around Adam's Peak, my senses picked up something that wasn't there a minute ago.

Something dark—maybe a mile away—moving rapidly in our direction—the tang of blood riding in on the north breeze.

I stopped the sentinels. "Are there any caves nearby? I think we may have found some rogue hunters." I pointed up the rough slope on our right and touched my nose.