Hector grunted affirmatively. He straightened up, holding the torch by the middle, which he now used to hoist the guy to his feet. Then he started off back down the path.
His movement was slow and painstaking, step by step, but each movement of his feet felt lighter. It was as if traction came easily on the return.
It wasn't from relief to have found someone else. Hector didn't care about his classmates too much. But he was meeting with success, and that pleased him.
Hector lightly hummed to himself, tuneless and drifting in and out of audibility. Ice and gravel crunched and shifted.
It felt like several minutes of walking when he spoke.
"Camp's ahead," Hector said. "Not far."
He gestured with the thicker branch and there it was, visible fifty feet down the path: tall stones, a faint haze of smoke drifting above them, a dim glow of reflected firelight dancing against the side of a boulder.
"Dinner's about done," Hector said. "You can share. Unless you're vegan. Or Jewish."
His brows furrowed for moment as he turned that over again.
"Because it's pork chops," he added.
He wasn't paying attention to the guy anyways. What Hector had acquired, what he now realized he had wanted, was an audience. He was doing well for himself. He was clever. This situation, terrible as it was, was grinding his classmates into paste, while Hector cooked dinner. He could be satisfied with that, but to be able to reach out and pluck someone else from the chaos for a brief time, then shove them back in with a pat on the back once he tired of their presence, felt good. He was in control.
Hector felt so confident that he let his eyes drift closed for a moment. His imagination took him somewhere else, somewhere far away that he'd never even been. The earth beneath his feet was tilled soil, rich and fragrant. Tall, leafy stalks grew as high as his head in neat rows. The sun's rays warmed his face, only wisps of cloud in the sky.
He was in a field—a corn field.
He heard the pitter-patter of goat feet.
The young buck had been watching the strange interloper for a long time.
It had first caught sight of the creature during the waning hours of the daylight, picking its way along the path. It seemed hesitant and unsteady, moving slowly, and the goat had been confused. Was this creature injured? Or was it a predator, attempting stealth? Bipeds did not make intuitive sense. The herd had all paused to regard it, but had then returned to grazing when nothing particular happened.
But later, the creature had found a place to lurk, a sheltered place between stones. It was a place where the goats could easily scramble up towards higher elevations, but this creature did not seem to climb well. The goat was up above, at a vantage point the creature did not seem to realize existed, but still the presence of the strange being caused concern.
This intensified when the creature shuffled around and then did something, and a blaze of light sprang up, and then it did something else, and the scent of death carried on the air.
The goat did not understand this creature, but its presence was unwelcome. It was an intruder, and possibly a predator. Its clumsy demeanor did not mean it was harmless.
The goat had not seen the wolves for some time, but it remembered them. They had been a dire threat, and sometimes they used cunning to hunt for the little ones. Was this creature like that? It had seen other beings akin to this, but only in passing. They had not stayed like this. They had not made dens.
The other goats were further up the hill. Some slept. Others chewed scraggly growth, cropping the alpine grasses just above the dirt. But the young buck watched, alert, and when the creature came near, the goat saw that it was with another of its kind. A herd... or a pack?
There was only a split second to react. The goat had heard movement, but had not expected it to be two coming around the bend. In that moment, the instinct that took it was to defend itself and the herd.
Predator or rival, this beast did not belong here. It would leave, by force if need be.
Finding its footing, the goat lowered its head and charged.
Hector's eyes flew open.
Wide, round pupils locked with horizontal, rectangular ones.
In the flickering light of the burning branch, the goat looked like Satan himself, orange light illuminating snowy white fur and gleaming hooves and thick horns that curved upwards.
The charge was only ten feet. The goat had been standing there behind a rock, hidden from view until a moment before its surge of movement. There was no time, and nothing could have prepared Hector for this circumstance in any event.
He let go of the torch, raised his hands as if to shield himself, holding the thicker branch in front of him. It didn't matter. The dense skull impacted him, and the horns caught him in the chest, pushing the branch against him with a crack, and the momentum rocketed him off the side of the path.
((Hector Quayle continued in
Falling With Style))
The goat was gone in an instant. Maybe it spun and ran back the way it came. Maybe it continued its charge down the trail, vanishing into the darkness with all the grace the humans could never dream of. Perhaps it miscalculated and followed Hector over the lip, tumbling out of sight with him like Holmes and Moriarty over the Reichenbach Falls.
In any case, the flurry of movement and chaos lasted less then three seconds. Then the night was still again.
Up ahead, tucked away in a sheltered alcove, a campfire burned merrily. Three pork chops, almost fully cooked, were propped up on spits nearby. A pack, almost fully loaded, lay on the ground, and aside from the typical contents it also held another three pork chops, raw, in a plastic bag.
With the camp's creator vanished, it might as well have manifested from nowhere.