"Hood!" a Wolf shouted, squeezing off a shot and working the bolt on his rifle. The caped and cowled figure, still twenty feet from the barn, made a leap and crashed bodily through the old planks and beams as if they were papier-mache.
The Reaper landed on all fours, arms and legs splayed like a spider. Before a gun could be turned in its direction, it sprang at the nearest Wolf, a shovel-bearded wedge of a man named Selbey. It was upon him before he could bring up his gun. The Hood's satchel-size mouth opened to display pointed ebony teeth. Large, inhuman jaws sank into Selbey's arm, thrown up in defense. The Wolf's scream matched those from outside as the thing opened its mouth to bite again.
Chaos reigned as the refugees began running. Wolves at the exits had to restrain them, taking up precious seconds when they should have been employing their guns. One Wolf pumped shot after shot, working the lever-action rifle from his hip, into the Reaper pressing Selbey to the detritus-covered floor. The Reaper fed, immune to the bullets hitting its heavy robes.
Valentine grabbed a candle flare from Patel's two remaining at the south door. He thrust the candle into the lantern, waiting for it to sputter into life. It caught after an eternity, and he ran toward the Hood.
The thing raised its blood-smeared face from its twitching victim to receive the burning end in its eye. It howled out its fury and pain and slapped the candle out of Valentine's hand with the speed of a cougar's paw. The flaming wand fell to the ground as the thing rose. Behind it, the Reaper's menacing black shadow filled the wall of the barn. Death reached for Valentine, who struggled to draw his blade from its sheath in time.
A bullet caught the Reaper in the armpit, staggering it. A heavier leather-clad missile hurled itself onto the Hood's back. Patel's body blow brought it down, and using every ounce of his formidable strength, the sergeant managed to keep it on the floor until Valentine brought his machete onto the back of its neck. The blade bit deep into flesh and bone, but failed to sever the head. Oily, ink-black ichor poured from the wound, but still the thing rose, rolling Patel off with a heave. The sergeant fought on and bore down on one arm, ignoring the deadly teeth opening for him. Valentine lashed out again with his machete, catching it under the jaw. The Reaper's head arced off to land with a thud next to Selbey's lifeless body.
"Jesus, they're in, they're in!" someone shouted.
A few Ravies, ghoulishly white in the glare of the candle, clambered through the gap in the wall created by the decapitated Reaper. Valentine shifted his parang to his left hand and reached for his pistol. The empty holster turned the movement into comic mime as he realized he had dropped the gun while getting the candle. But other Wolves drew their pistols, snapping off a shot at the shrieking forms.
The screaming grew into a chorus: a Ravie plunged in among the families. Valentine rushed to the corner to find the howling lunatic pinned against the wall by a man who'd had the presence of mind to grab an old pitchfork when the fight started. The Ravie had both hands on the haft of the weapon, trying to wrench the tines out of her belly, when Valentine came in, swinging his parang to strike and strike and strike again until she sank lifeless to the floor, at long last silent.
The screaming outside had ceased. The Wolves opened ammunition pouches and took bullets from belts and bandoliers. A final bullet or two ended the spasms of the few crawling, crippled targets still living and therefore still dangerous. The men in the loft called downstairs, in anxiety over their comrades. Valentine ignored the chatter and saw with a kind of weary grief that one of the wives had been bitten by the impaled Ravie. He went to check on Patel. The husky sergeant was on his feet, one arm hanging limp and useless, Valentine's pistol in his working hand.
Patel handed the pistol back to the lieutenant. "Quiet, up there! And keep your eyes peeled," the sergeant shouted at the uncomprehending floorboards above. He held his hurt arm closer to his body, grimacing.
"Broken collarbone, I think," he explained. "Could be my shoulder is out, as well. Are you okay, sir?"
"Hell, Patel, enough is enough. Next it'll be 'I hope you liked your drink." Let's get that arm in a sling, for a start." Valentine motioned an idle Wolf over to help his sergeant. He saw another of his men bandaging the Ravie bite on the woman as her anxious family crowded around. "We've got a widower there who doesn't know it yet," he said, sotto voce. His sergeant nodded with sad understanding, and Valentine thought of Patel's family. They had been taken by the Raving Madness five years ago.
The lieutenant walked through his shaken command, checking on his men, and came into the corner sheltering the escapees. He shot a significant glance at his Wolf attending to the woman; the man caught the hint and nodded. "The bleeding's stopped already, sir."
"Quick action, Mosley. Grab someone and get that"-he pointed at the lifeless Ravie-"out of here."
The candles outside were sputtering out. Valentine walked over to the ladder, intending to check with Gonzalez upstairs...
... when the floor suddenly tilted beneath his feet. Thrown to the floor, he saw an albino-white arm open a heavy trapdoor in an explosion of dirt, dried leaves, and twigs.
The barn had a cellar.
The Reaper got halfway out the trapdoor as the bullets zipped over Valentine's head. His Wolves, still keyed up from the fight, aimed their guns with lethal accuracy and pumped bullet after bullet into the yellow-eyed creature. Under the point-blank cross fire from five directions, the black-robed shape jerked wildly and fell back into the basement.
"Grenades," Valentine bellowed. Three of his men gathered at the trapdoor, now shooting down with pistols.
Striking matches or using the lanterns, two Wolves lit fuses on the bombs and hurled them down the square hole. Valentine grabbed the trapdoor and flung it shut. The rusty hinges squealed their complaints.
The first explosion threw the door forever off its aged fastenings, and the second boomed with an earsplitting roar. Smoke mushroomed from the square hole.
A Reaper sprang from the gap like something a magician had conjured from the smoke, arms nothing but two tarry stumps, and head a bony mask of horror. Even with its face blown off, the Reaper was on its feet and running, seeming to favor them with a splay-toothed grin. The guns rang out again, but the creature fled through the exit, knocking Patel aside like a bowling pin in the path of a cannonball as the sergeant attempted another body blow. A tattered and smoldering cape streaming out behind it as it ran, the Reaper disappeared into the darkness.
Some of the children had hands over their ears, screaming in pain. Valentine tried to shake the drunken sensation that had come over him, but it was no use. The acrid air of the barn was too thick to breathe. He staggered to the doorjamb and vomited.
An hour later, with the barn cleared of bodies except for the unfortunate Selbey, who lay in his poncho in the empty blackness of the blasted cellar, Gonzalez again shared his discovery with Valentine. His scout, after asking for permission to speak privately in the loft, presented him with a filthy strip of cloth.
Valentine examined the excrement-stained yellow rag with tired eyes.
"Uncle smelled something, sir, you know? He told me to check the area where we heard the bloodhounds real careful after everyone pulled out. I found this in the bushes where the Red River people... er, relieved themselves, sir," Gonzalez elaborated, half whispering.
He read the semiliterate scrawl by lantern light: "N + W, bam, about twenty gun, yrs trly."
Betrayal. That explains a thing or two. But which one is "yrs trly " ? Valentine wondered. He remembered a couple of: the farmhands had hurried to the bushes as they assembled for I the flight to the barn. He hadn't thought anything of it at the! time: the fear in the night had turned his own bowels to water, j as well.
He gathered three Wolves from downstairs and explained j what he wanted to do when the sun came up.