Wolfehaven

  WOLFEHAVEN

  by

  Foy W. Minson

  Copyright © 2019 by Foy W. Minson

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  Books by Foy W. Minson

  CHAPTER 1

  The stitch in Sherri’s side was like a knife blade twisting under her ribcage. It had begun to develop about half a mile back when she forced herself to pick up her pace. She was sure it would ease off if she could just rest for a minute, if she could just set Sarah back on the ground and let her daughter run on her own legs to keep up with her. But, even with that stabbing pain in her side and with the minimal weight of tiny Daryl cradled in her arm, Sherri would soon pull ahead of the little girl. Four-year old Sarah would have no chance of keeping up for more than a few paces and would quickly fall behind to die. But that was the way of the world, wasn’t it? Each one had to survive the best way possible, at whatever the cost.

  The summer sun’s rays beating down on her as she crossed a small meadow felt scorching hot after the coolness beneath the trees, and she stretched her pace to reach the shade on the other side. Just as she ducked behind the first tree, an arrow whirred past her head and thudded into the bark of one just ahead. She turned and saw the pursuers back at the edge of the meadow where the trail came out of the forest, an easy bowshot. When the peril closing in on them from behind became more than merely an abstract possibility, it seared her soul with the reality of what her brief fantasy of easing her pain would have meant. She could no more leave Sarah behind than she could have callously laid her son on the ground to fend for himself, and she berated herself for savoring the luxury of such a thought before she flung it from her like the offensive bit of offal that it was. Even the thought of such an act was loathsome.

  Doing her best to push the pain aside, she slipped into deepening shadows. But, even as she disappeared from the sight of the assassins, she couldn’t escape the certainty of the two bowmen close behind and gaining with each stumbling step she took. Twice more, arrows narrowly missed her, deflected in the heavy growth or denied their target when she dodged behind another tree. Her daughter’s weight soon had her dragging the little girl’s feet across the ground as Sherri forced each step…too much...too much. Not really setting the girl down, she merely released her so her daughter could run. Too winded to speak, Sherri motioned for her to follow. The route was often overgrown with ferns, no barrier for deer and other common users of the trail but clawing and grasping fingers on the legs of the exhausted woman and girl.

  Too soon, the open expanse of another meadow confronted them. The growth was too thick on either side of route for her to divert her path. She didn’t doubt that the pursuers would reach where she now stood before she reached the other side. Still, crossing the meadow was their only hope. The longer she delayed the less of a chance they had to make it across safely. Gritting her teeth against the agony in her side, she picked up her sagging daughter, holding her about the waist. Cradling her son in her other arm, close to her breast, she tried to sprint.

  She was only a little over halfway across when Sarah slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground. Sherri stopped and turned to go back the few steps to pick her up, and there they were. The two men emerged from the trees on her back-trail. They stopped when they saw her, and both drew arrows from the quivers on their backs. She darted back to her daughter, knelt and picked her up, then, peering over her shoulder at the two men, began to run again.

  She had covered only ten feet, with a hundred still between her and the safety of the far edge, when an arrow flew over her shoulder, just missing her ear. A fresh rush of adrenalin drove her legs, carrying her and her children another fifty feet before the next arrow pierced her left side just above her waist, its gore smeared head protruding a hand’s breadth out the front. The breath-taking burn was excruciating, like a hot poker had gone through her. She staggered but stayed on her feet and continued to run toward the safety of the forest ahead. She was only twenty feet from the nearest tree large enough to offer a shield when another arrow tore into her, burying itself deep in her left leg just above the knee. The only reason it didn’t penetrate through the front of her leg was that it had struck the bone.

  She cried out and stumbled to the ground but continued to crawl and shuffle forward. Sarah had fallen free, but she scrambled back to her feet and grabbed Sherri’s arm, trying to help her mother, but unable to do more than distract Sherri from her own efforts. Sherri still cradled Daryl in his blanket, refusing, even now, to leave him behind in order to gain safety for herself. She steeled herself for the burn of the next arrow and urged Sarah to go on ahead of her, to run into the woods where she, at least, would be safe. But the sobbing girl adamantly shook her head and continued to tug on Sherri’s arm.

  Gazing beyond the nearest trees and into the dark haven she was to be denied, Sherri glimpsed movement. Focusing on it, she realized it was two people, two young women dressed in greens and browns to blend with the forest as though they were as much a part of it as the oaks about them. Moving from the shadows out to the edge of the meadow, they peered out beyond Sherri and her children, toward the pursuers. One of them, a blond girl of sixteen or seventeen years thrust her arm out before her with her fingers splayed. Then, as though grasping something from the air, she firmly curled her hand upward into a fist.

  Behind her, Sherri heard cries of awe or shock. She turned to look back at her would-be assassins and gasped.

  The two killers had each gotten a shot off — they both still stood with their bows extended and their arms still drawn back to the release points. And their arrows had flown true toward their target — as far as they went. But, then, as though each arrow had stuck solid wood five feet before reaching her, they were at a dead rest — in midair.

  Sherri jerked her head back toward the two young women and saw the blond with the extended arm slowly rotate her fist and flick her fingers downward as though discarding something distasteful. She turned her head back in time to see the two suspended arrows dashed to the ground.

  When she looked back toward the young women, they were both striding boldly into the meadow. But even in the open, with their long, tight leggings of bark-brown leather above ankle high boots and loose, belted shirts of mottled green, they still seemed to be of the forest. Behind her, the two men that had been so bent on killing her and her children still stood where they were, although their bow arms had lowered their weapons. They continued to gape into the meadow at their impotent, grounded missiles, at Sherri and her children, and at the two young women.

  When Sherri turned back toward the women, the dark one had already set an arrow to her own bowstring and drew it to her ch
eek as she stalked forward. Sherri now saw that she was a black woman, probably two or three years older than her, slim, and a couple of inches taller than the blond.

  She stopped beside Sherri and called out towards the men in a commanding voice, “Drop your bows and raise your hands above your heads. Do it now or my first arrow goes into the guts of the fairest one of you. My second arrow won’t be far behind into the other.”

  Sherri turned and watched as one of the men dropped his bow to the ground. The second one held his bow forward as though to drop it, but after a moment, he spun with it and ran back into the woods at his back. Had he not ducked low after his second step the black woman’s arrow would have embedded between his shoulder blades instead of thudding into tree bark thirty feet beyond him.

  When Sherri turned back towards the strange women, one with skin the color of strong coffee and the other as pale as she, she was further shocked to see a giant dog come charging out of the brush behind them. She was pretty sure it was a dog, although it looked like something that could guard the gates of Hades. The muscles of the beast, bequeathed to him by his Mastiff forebears bred as war-dogs for Rome’s armies, flexed and writhed beneath his tawny hide like those of a racehorse as he tore across the meadow in bounding leaps, past her and the two young women, and into the woods after the fleeing assassin. The black archer followed close behind him.

  Drawing her own arrow to a shooting position, the blond aimed at the man who remained. She used the tip of the arrow to motion him to walk across the open space to where Sherri lay with Sarah cowering beside her. Then, pointing to the ground with the drawn arrow, her meaning for him to lie down there was clear.

  After he was face down and turned away from his intended victim, the blond squatted beside Sherri, laid her bow on the ground with the arrow still nocked, and asked, “Are you okay?”

  Sherri turned at the words from the girl that had seemed to pluck arrows from the air.

  “Are you okay?” the girl repeated, then added, “Well, no, of course you aren’t okay. You’ve got two arrows stuck in you. May I take a look?”

  Reluctantly, Sherri allowed the girl to examine her injuries. Then, as Sherri cringed and watched awestruck, the girl took a firm grip on the shaft protruding from the back of her leg and, with her gaze seeming to burrow along the shaft and deep into the wound, simply lifted it from the flesh of her leg.

  After an incident two years past in which one of the men back home had gone crazy from drinking too much and started shooting arrows around the street just for laughs, Sherri had experienced the removal of one from her leg, the calf of the opposite leg, and it had been unbearable, sending her into a dead faint. It had felt as though the barbed head was ripping half of her flesh from her leg as it was yanked out. This time, the pain of the injury remained constant. There was no sudden increase to a sickening agony to indicate the shaft, the arrowhead binding, and the arrowhead, itself, tore the flesh further as it withdrew. In fact, with the foreign object no longer intruding where it was not meant to be, there was even a lessening of the searing pain. And, then, to her astonishment, within moments the burning throb had lessened to the ache of a week-old wound.

  Before Sherri realized what was happening, the girl moved around behind her, lifted her waist-length hair from the arrow in her side after disentangling several blond strands tinted red that had wrapped around the head where it emerged from her flesh. With her finger, she gently touched the arrow shaft where it entered her back and the feathered end snapped off as though it were a flimsy, brittle reed. Then she gripped the arrowhead protruding from her front and pulled it free, again as easily as though it had been merely held there loosely between fingers.

  “I’ve got ‘em just starting to heal enough to stop the bleeding, but I’m afraid that’s the extent of my healing abilities. I still want to bind them, just in case they break open again before we can get you to Lila. Lie still for a bit.”

  Sarah huddled against Sherri, watching in silence.

  “By the way, my name is Emmie, Emmie Wolfe.” the strange young blond said as she proceeded to tear bits of cloth from the hem of Sherri’s long dress to use for bandages and bindings of the wounds. She continued to talk as she worked. “My friend, who should be back shortly, I hope, is Raven. That’s all she goes by now, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. Her dog is Satan — although, I guess he’s not really her dog. She says he’s just her friend and he doesn’t belong to anyone but himself. But he’s closer to her than anyone else — except for Lila, maybe. Satan and Lila are really close, but that’s ‘cause he really likes little girls. He used to be really close to me back when I was just a kid, but then I went and grew up. And Lila’s not really a kid anymore, either, I s’pose.”

  Emmie had seemed little more than a child until she assumed command of the situation, and then she moved with confidence and deliberation. Her hands were firm placing the compresses against the still tender wounds, but gentle as they tied off the bindings.

  “His mistress back before...well, you know...back before the old world ended and everything... Anyway, back then, his mistress was a little girl that was crippled, and he helped her and did things for her and was really good with her — at least that’s what Raven says he told...uh, she learned a lot about what his old life was like.”

  Emmie laid down the remnants of the unused cloth she had left over and looked over towards the thick growth that had swallowed her friend.

  When she looked back at Sherri, she smiled and said, “Hope she doesn’t take too long catching that guy — or hurt him too much. We could use his help carrying you back to the village.” Then to Sarah, she said, “You know what, I bet Satan will just love you to bits. He likes to wallow about on his back while you tickle him and scratch his belly. What’s your name?”

  But a look between caution and fear spread on the little girl’s face as her eyes darted toward her mother, and then she slowly curled around to bury her face against Sherri’s breast.

  “Well, that’s okay,” Emmie said. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to get to know —”

  Faint sounds of footsteps thrashing across leaf and bark covered ground quickly grew to sounds of someone crashing through the woods, coming closer, and finally bursting through into the meadow at the same place the fleeing assassin had disappeared. Without pausing, Raven dashed into sunlight and out toward them. She carried her bow in one hand and her quiver of arrows in the other. The need for encumbering her hands was apparent when she elected not to swerve around a bush in the center of the meadow. Without slowing or altering her pace, she hurtled the clump, hitting the ground on the other side still in a full sprint. A jostling quiver suspended from her waist or slung over her shoulder would have been a distraction.

  Before she was close enough to speak in less than a shout, she began waving her arms, signaling Emmie and the others back into the forest beyond them.

  Sherri was uncertain what was needed, and uncertain that she wanted to blindly follow orders from these two strange women, anyway. But Emmie left no doubt in the urgency of the situation. In one arm she lifted Sarah, and with the other helped Sherri roughly to her feet.

  Emmie got her charges to the edge of the forest and set Sarah down just as Raven drew abreast and slid to a halt.

  “Into the trees, quick!” Raven urged as she shoved the remaining assassin headlong then turned to take Sarah and so Emmie could better move Sherri into the cover of the thick undergrowth. And even then, she continued to urge them further behind the cover of the larger trees.

  As they passed one gnarled ancient bole with low, twisted limbs, a pencil-line beam of bright green light flashed for an instant from behind.

  Emmie and Sherri both turned to look back across the meadow, and even the assassin rose from where he had landed to peer over the tops of a fern thicket.

  Raven tightened her arm around Sarah’s waist, lifted her over the ferns and disappeared into the darkness just feet beyond the tree. At the same ti
me, she called back over her shoulder, “Come on! Get into cover.”

  “Oh, dear God, a demon!” Sherri whispered.

  Then as Emmie followed Raven, pushing Sherri forward and glancing back at the creature on the far side of the meadow at the same time, the girl who had been so calm and controlled in the presence of armed men stammered with eyes wide as fear gripped her, “It’s a… It’s a…”

  “A demon!” the failed assassin finished for her.

  “Demon, my ass!” Raven yelled from the shadowy depths of the forest. “That’s a kryl! Now get yourselves behind something before it pokes you full of holes.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Emmie huddled among the ferns at the edge of the oak forest, making sure the massive, gnarled trunk of the old tree was solidly between her and the monster across the way, and she wondered if this was the day she would die. She had certainly not had such thoughts when she left Wolfehaven the morning of the day before with Raven and Satan. But, of course, at that time they had only planned on a leisurely, two or three-day hunt through the forests and hills surrounding the village. They had no idea they would encounter men trying to kill a woman and her children. And the last thing they expected to run across was a kryl.

  In the minds and memories of everyone she knew, those beings were quickly being relegated back to creatures of myth and legend, to once again become trolls and goblins in order to frighten children into behaving, a development Raven often warned would happen again if it were allowed. When she thought about it, Emmie was surprised that the progression had gone as far and as quickly as it had. But it was almost exactly as Raven had predicted. And, of course, Raven should know.

  Raven came back to her side and crouched there. Her arrow quiver was back over her shoulder, and she had an arrow in her hand that she laid across her bow in a shooting position. She stretched her neck up enough for her to see over the tops of the ferns and quickly raised her bow up to sight along the length of the arrow. In a continuous movement, she drew the string to her cheek where she held it for but an instant, loosed it, and immediately dropped back down out of sight before she could have seen if it had hit the target.