The third one saw. Saw his companions fall, saw the muzzle flash from the barn loft. He turned and ran, scrambling back toward the tree line with his head down and his arms pumping.
I let him go.
Let him carry the message back to whoever was waiting. Two down in seconds, and a woman who’d watched him flee without bothering to shoot.
Fear was a weapon too. Torek had taught me that.
The fourth one was smarter. He’d gone to ground the moment his squad started dying, and now I couldn’t find him in the grass. I swept the scope left, right. Nothing. Just shadows and the bodies of his friends.
A crack from the ridge.
The grass twitched forty meters from where I’d been looking. Something heavy settled into the soil.
Four.
His voice in my ear, calm as still water: “Eastern flank clear.”
“Copy.” My own voice sounded strange. Too steady. “I count four down on my side.”
“Two more on the north. They’re pulling back to regroup.”
Half of them down. The rest pulling back.
We’d planned for this. Calculated the odds, set the traps, positioned ourselves for maximum efficiency. But planning was different from doing. Numbers on a map were different from bodies in the grass.
I kept my eye to the scope and waited for more.
The south approachlit up twenty minutes later.
Three of them this time, coming fast, trying to punch through before we could reposition. They made it past the first trap line, boots pounding the dirt path that looked safe and wasn’t.
The second line caught them.
Two went down in the blast, thrown sideways by the pressure wave. The third kept coming, limping now, dragging a leg that bent wrong at the knee. He made it to the barn door. Got his hand on the latch.
The sound Turnip made when he charged was something I’d never forget.
Not a roar. Something lower, wetter. A sound that came from deep in his chest and promised violence. Then the impact, heavy and final, and the man’s scream cut short by the crack of bones and the thick, tearing noise of Turnip’s tusks finding purchase.
I stayed in the loft. Kept my eye on the fields. Let Turnip finish what he’d started.
When the sounds stopped, he grunted once. Satisfied.
“South approach clear,” I said into the comm. My voice didn’t waver. I was proud of that.
“Copy.”
A long pause. His rifle cracked once more from the ridge.
“North is quiet. They’re pulling back.”
Dawn crept over the fields.
Gray light replaced shadows, and the damage we’d done emerged piece by piece. Bodies scattered across the grass. Dark stains spreading into the soil. The man still draped over the fence, one leg caught on the rail.
We’d cut their numbers in half. But I didn’t know about the ridge. Didn’t know if those precise rifle cracks had been his last.
Don’t die.
