Roy gives a shiver, realizing that he may have just killed someone.
Or something... something that was trying to kill him.
When the firing stops, Hank looks around him, almost wildly- taking in
the terrain, looking at the others in the party, searching the
landscape for more attackers. For an instant, a proud grin plays
across his face ("It worked! It really worked!")...
He sees a landscape of rolling hills, covered with scrubby bushes and
trees. By the lack of vegetation it looks fairly arid, and the lack of
leaves on many of the trees suggests late winter or early spring.
The only man-made structure visible is a line of towers marching away
across the landscape. They're about a hundred feet apart, and the
tallest is perhaps a hundred and fifty feet high. Hank notices the
tops are roughly level with each other, and if it were not for one or
two gaps, they're equally spaced. An imaginary line joining the tops
of the towers would hit the ground at roughly the point at which Hank
is standing, and would continue down the tunnel from which they'd just
emerged.
Then the adrenal rush fades, and Hank begins to shake. Not in fear,
but in a sudden release of nerves, like an extended shiver. For a
moment, he looks queasy, but he gets a hold of himself. Pulling
himself together, he takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly.
"Ryzar, lets make sure they're down for good," Dharak stage-whispers.
"We'll move toward where we saw the shots, covering each other as we
go. Duplar, watch our backs. Reylorna, you help our two visitors with
the wounded and the prisoners."
"Sounds like an excellent plan", Ryzar answers back in a low voice.
"Ready... go." Dharak goes first, from one rock to another, in the
direction of their hopefully vanquished ambushers. He then braces his
weapon and waits for Ryzar to "leapfrog" his position.
At his signal the young Borderer dashes forward, running in a crouch
and a zig-zag pattern, until he comes to a halt just behind a large
square rock which may well not be a natural formation. There, Ryzar
takes a bead on the enemy position with his dartgun, then signals
Dharak to move forward.
Ryzar reaches the point from which the shots came, to find three
bodies lying motionless sprawled across the rocks. All three appear
to be kandar.
Now the firing has stopped and Hank has calmed down a but, he helps
gather the others, especially the wounded, and sees if there's
anything he can do for Jal. Unfortunately there's nothing he can do.
Jal is dead.
--
Tim Hall, http://www.kalyr.com
Read my blog! http://www.kalyr.com/weblog
