Cold obsidian

Young Crogan uttered a shrill scream and fell to the ground, clutching at his leg. All the thuggish insolence he had been so proud of washed away in an instant, he cried like a child he was. His pants were soaked with blood and the stain was growing wider and wider.

“The ghost shooter! The Wood Ghost is here!” the bandits around him shouted, their fear quickly turning into panic. A moment later they broke the formation and started shooting in all directions in a desperate attempt to reach the unseen hunter in the fog.

The second bullet bit the young Crogan in the palm, adding to his agony. Then it was the thugs’ turn. The ones who had carelessly removed their kevlar cowls in the heat got shot in their heads and died instantly. The others weren’t so lucky and shared the young Crogan’s fate: the Ghost shot them in the legs.

Vlada and Kan froze where they stood, with their hands still up. Both were afraid to move at first but soon realized the ghost shooter was after the bandits, not them. They, on the other hand, had a new problem to deal with: the hyenas. The beasts, maddened by their masters’ panic, decided to go for the kill and charged.

“Kan, pick up your sword!” Vlada came to her senses first, just in time for the spotted monsters were already advancing from both sides.

The chargas took the first two hyenas and were busy ripping them apart, rolling and splashing in the reddened water. The rest of the pack targeted Vlada and Kan. Whoever that “ghost shooter” was, his attention had obviously been somewhere else at the moment, so they were on their own.

The outer world where people shouted and died, where two strangers fought back to back against the hyenas in the middle of the river, where everything that could go wrong did go wrong, no longer existed for old Crogan. There was only him and his dying son. The boy no longer cried. He curled up in the grass, gasping for air, his face as white as chalk. There was nothing the mighty gang leader could do, nothing.

When Vlada and Kan had finally crossed the river – Kan walking with a limp because one of the hyenas had bit him – they saw not the famous leader of the dark horde, but a broken old man devastated by his grief. Crogan wept, wept inconsolably, helpless and defeated for the first time in his life. His son was dying in his arms, nothing else mattered. Crogan's gun lay beside him in the grass, thrown away and forgotten. He took off his kevlar cloak, his only protection against the ghost shooter's bullets, and covered the boy with it so the Ghost would not torture him any more. One of the hyenas that survived the fight by ru

"Please…" the boy whispered, "No hyenas, dad… I'm afraid." He went silent.

That was the moment when old Crogan went mad. He cried, tearing his hair out one moment, praying the next, he cursed, he begged his son to wake up… Then the world went dark for him, literally, for Crogan went blind.

Kangassk caught a glimpse of a dark figure walking through the fog. Soon, a stranger emerged from beyond the misty veil. He wore no kevlar, just a green woollen cloak over his worn leather clothing. The gun he carried had a black, bulging “eye” on its barrel. Uncovered, the “eye” blinked with every step. Kan couldn’t stop looking at it.

“This is your punishment, Crogan,” said the stranger, “Do you remember how you tortured my son to death? He was about the same age as yours. Does it seem fun to you now?”

The old man didn’t answer. He kept raving – praying, cursing, begging… but suddenly there was a glimpse of consciousness, so brief yet so bright.

“Kill! Kill me as well!” demanded Crogan.

“No,” the ghost shooter shook his head. His voice was icy cold, merciless. “I want you to live. And suffer, like I did.”

That said, he stepped over the dead boy’s body and approached Vlada and Kangassk.

“I’m Sasler,” he introduced himself. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you left the old road, wanted to keep you safe. Little did I know where you would lead me, kids. But I’m grateful. I dreamed of revenge for years. It feels good to be free again… Now, take the guns from the dead and be on your way. No one will hurt you any more.”

He didn’t wait for the answer, he just turned around and walked away. Soon, he was no more than a dark silhouette in the fog. The “eye” on his rifle kept glimmering through the white veil long after he had disappeared altogether.

Vlada and Kan left the deadly place with a heavy heart. All the way to the border of the region they kept hearing the old man’s cry.

Chapter 3. White gloom

The wounds didn’t let Kan and Vlada walk far, so they camped as soon as they left the Burnt Region behind them. Making a fire so close to the bandit territory was a bad idea but they needed hot water to wash the wounds, so Vlada decided to risk it.

They made their camp at the foot of a bare hill near a chatty cold rivulet snaking between the stones. Vlada left Kan with the chargas and went to fetch water. While she was away the good-natured beasts licked the boy’s wounds as well as their own. He didn’t protest. He was unable to, being barely conscious with fever. Hyena bites are nasty.

The travellers were lucky that burngrass, a field medic’s best friend, grew in abundance around that hill. It makes an excellent antiseptic when boiled in water. The chargas sniffed suspiciously at the cauldron with the burngrass potion. Obviously, treating them with it was out of question.

Kangassk’s leg, the one bitten by the hyena, swelled so badly it barely fitted into the boot now. Vlada, too, hadn’t come out of the battle unscathed this time. She got a stray bullet to the shoulder. Her kevlar cloak did help a lot, but the nasty piece of lead went through it anyway which resulted in a shallow but painful wound surrounded with a darkish bruise.

Their wounds treated, the travellers ate a cold supper and tried to sleep. It wasn’t easy. Kangassk could only guess what his companion might have been thinking about; as for him, he couldn’t close his eyes without seeing the battle again, the old man crying over the dead boy, or a dark shadow of Sasler the punisher walking through the mist, the bulging eye on his rifle glinting with every step.

“Why did he do that to the boy? Revenge or not, that was over the top.” Kangassk muttered, his gaze wandering among the early stars in the sky.

“Snipers are like that. They’re cruel,” answered Vlada in a strangely knowing way.

“Who?” Kan asked again. The word was unfamiliar to him.

“Snipers. That man invented a scope to aim and shoot from afar. He is a sniper, the only one in the world for now.”

“How the heck do you know all these things?”

“Experience.”

Kangassk decided not to pursue the matter further. He felt weird. Something was definitely wrong here but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Vlada seemed as young as he was yet knew a good deal more. Was she older than she looked? It’s not that you can safely ask a girl such a question… Was she a mage? That would explain a lot. No, she didn’t look like one. A warrior’s daughter then? Possibly the only child, papa’s girl that had been given a sword as soon as she could walk.

“Experience!” Hah! Kan would have known a thing or two about the outside world as well had he travelled instead of breathing ash and dust in his master’s workshop.