Bending down, I held out the gun, pointed at it, and showed the Reapers how I'd done this. Immediately, they all startedtalking, clearly having ideas of their own. Questions were asked and answered, but it seemed Xav's demonstration had been exactly what they'd needed. A larger man, a bigger dog, and someone who had never lived in the compound was enough to convince them this would work.
Over the next two hours, I helped a few of them figure out how to get their dog to correlate the weapon itself with the command. Then Rymar had to act as a Mole, wandering around with a gun so they could convince their dogs to take it from him instead of their own person.
Bit by bit, we were making progress, and I had a feeling that if these dogs could all learn how to attack Moles, disarm them, and make chaos in the fights, we would start winning drastically enough the Moles might stop coming back. The question was how much would count as "enough."
Then one man caught my attention. His dog refused to listen to him. When he tried to show her the gun, she was more interested in what the dogs around her were doing. Seeing him getting frustrated, I made my way over.
"Can I help?" I asked. "You've probably been training longer than me - "
"I haven't," he broke in. "No, Pepper just doesn't care."
"She doesn't understand," I countered. "Can I try?"
He waved at the dog. "Be my guest."
"Pepper?" I asked, crouching down to her level.
At first, the dog ignored me. She was a cute little thing, smaller than Holly, but not by much. Her coat was black, but she had tan toes and lips. There were also some cute little dots over her eyes and brown triangles on her chest.
"What's her color called?" I asked, since I'd been trying to learn all the proper names.
"Black and tan," he told me. "I mean, she's really more black and rust, but the pattern just gets called black and tan."
I nodded, but the whole time, I never took my eyes off her. Combined with Holly beside me, Pepper finally began to get a little curious. She leaned in to sniff, and I offered her my hands.
"Hey, Pepper," I said. "Who's a good girl?"
And those words? It was like something came to life in the dog. She began to wag excitedly and rushed in to get attention. Naturally, I praised her. Then, I told her to sit, making her behave the same way I would with Holly.
"Did Lansin train her?" I asked.
"No!" her owner said with a laugh. "No, my partner did." And then he looked over to where the others were working, almost as if he'd been distracted the way the dog was.
But I could help with this. So, offering as much praise and attention as I could, I held out the gun and pointed at it. Over and over, I told her to "disarm," and when she even looked at it, I praised her. Then I had both her and Holly do it.
Each time Holly nosed the weapon, she got praise. Pepper kept watching, almost like she was confused - and then tried it herself. Maybe I looked silly doing it, but I made a big production out of how good she was, and petted her more than I had yet. I actually petted her so much Holly shoved in to get a little attention of her own.
And from there, it was easy. Pepper began to tie touching the gun to attention, and that was all it took to convince her to go after it, to carry it, and bit by bit, to consider fetching it. Each time she started to lose focus, I would throw a stick for her, and let her run off some of her energy.
"I think that's a good start," I told him.
"Yeah," her owner agreed. "And I'm sure there are more who need your help. Thank you, Phoenix."
That felt good. The praise? The name recognition? It made me stand a little taller when I went to find the next person who needed help. But this? It was working. Bit by bit, these Reaperswere convincing their dogs to take the weapons straight from someone's hands.
Not all of them were good at it. In truth, most didn't want totakethe gun, just touch it, but that was a start. Holly was young and dumb, Lansin had told me, but it seemed that had worked to our advantage. Sometimes, being excited was all it took to try something we'd always been told we shouldn't.
Thinking about that, I looked over just in time to see yet another dog slam Rymar to the ground to take the gun he'd been holding. I was pretty sure he hated it, but he was doing this because I'd asked. BecauseIhadn't realized he might not want to.
Most of all, because he respected me enough to set his pride aside - and that was proof of how good of a man he really was.
Forty-Four
Rymar
Iwas getting my ass kicked by a bunch of dogs. In truth, it didn't hurt that bad, and it was a little funny. I also knew I would pay for it later, but seeing so many dogs trying to figure out how to disarm me?
This could actually work! I didn't want to get my hopes up yet, but I also couldn't stop. Ayla had once said this was an arms race. She thought she was wrong, but she wasn't looking at it the right way. Moles had ancient battle weapons we'd long ago left behind. Our weapon was nature.
