Blood

23. Amira

We peaked through the foliage and watched them come up, pausing to scope out the 'garden' before they headed up the path.

Amira was dragging behind. She seemed to have a bad limp and to be unsteady on her feet. Damn them! I suppose being zapped repeatedly will do that to you. My teeth came out and I gritted them so hard I cut my lip but I hardly noticed.

And then the two men in front had fallen and tripped in the hidden ditch and, what the hell was he doing?, Hedges was leaping to his feet and firing his damn shotgun. Huh?

Oh. He was aiming at the sticks that were holding the bent saplings down. And his aim was good. Both men were caught by their ankles and swung upside down into the nearby trees, shouting curses as they went.

It was our moment. The lead wolf howled to his pack and I leapt forward and was there so fast that I couldn't believe the nearest Val had time to pull that big knife out and swing it at me.

No matter. Hedges had made me protective wrist cuffs out of some scraps of old leather he'd found and stitched around my forearms while we were eating breakfast. It meant that I could block a knife or just about anything short of a bullet and I did, knocking the blade aside with one arm as I slammed my other arm into his neck. Hard.

Here we go again, I thought unhappily as he went down looking unconscious if not dead. This is not what I thought my career would be!

The next man pulled Amira between us and held a pistol to her and I had to stop, not sure what my move was. But two wolves began to nip at his legs and he turned to fend them off.

Amira smiled and pushed a thought into my head: I'm glad to see you. And then she did a backflip, landing on the Val's shoulders and twisting the pistol out of his hand before he could line up a shot at either wolf.

In another instant, she'd squeezed her legs around him and twisted his head rapidly and he went down hard. When she got up, he didn't.

I guess you're not as bad off as you made them think?

Yup.

That left two Val hanging in our tree trap. They were armed not only with those electric things ut they'd dropped them. Unfortunately, they also had pistols in holsters on their belts. And although they were hanging upside down, they were looked veery dangerous when they pulled the pistols out and aimed them at Amira and me. (The wolves backed off at sight of the guns. Smart animals.)

Blam! Blam! It was Hedges off to the side with his shotgun again. He had a way of staying on the periphery and avoiding their attention until he was really needed. This time it looked like he'd loaded something heavier, probably buckshot. Anyway I couldn't look at the men after that. But he went over, only a little shaky, and retrieved the guns and electric rods that they'd dropped.

"God!" I exclaimed. "Why do they keep making us have to kill them!!!"