The Witch's Eye by Steven Montano, Barry Currey Page B

eyes were locked on the ridge.  Ronan’s heart pounded as he leapt, cut, dodged, and ran.  He was fifty yards from the mortars. 
    The red flares in the sky fizzled just as the mortars fired.  Shells popped into the air with hollow thuds.  He saw flashes of white flame. 
    A Gol gunner saw him and took aim, and was about to fire when a chain of explosions destroyed the ridge. Heat washed over Ronan’s body as mortars and dwarves vanished in a violent blaze of fire.  He was thrown back and landed on sharp stones that punched hard against his armor.  Pain flashed through his ribs.  He lay on his side, head ringing, and tried to pull himself up.
    Another blast came from further up the hill.  The Gol scattered and ran.  Red flares were replaced by white flares that hung in the night like angry suns.  He heard machinery to the west, the groan of wheels and tank treads.  A fast-moving Bloodhawk warship passed overhead with a sonic scream. 
    Southern Claw.
    Ronan rose on unsteady legs.  His eyes burned, and his sense of balance was gone.  Gol scattered all around him, but he wasn’t about to let them go. 
    His blade flashed in the ghostly light.  He hacked through limbs and sliced heads away from their brittle bodies.  Guns shattered and throats split.  Hot blood flashed onto his hands.  Exhausted though he was, Ronan moved without mercy or pause.  He was in the Deadlands.  He would not be stopped. 
    Ronan saw eyes and grey skin and open hands thrown up to defend against his attacks.  He moved with deadly grace and precision and ran his blade into every grey-fleshed enemy he met.  His boots were soaked in blood, and bits of Gol skin covered his face.
    He dimly heard an order to stand down.  Some distant part of his brain, the part unaffected by the rush of hate and anger that waited for him in the Deadlands, understood it wasn’t his enemies who ordered him to drop his weapon. 
    A Gol a pproached him, and he almost raised his blade to strike before he realized it was Maur.  His friend put a blanket over his shoulders.
    “Easy,” Maur said.  “Easy.”
    Ronan closed his eyes, and let his body rest.
     
    He was debriefed s ome time later by Captain Alex Crylos, a lean and blonde-haired man with a strong jaw and a commanding presence.  Crylos’s second-in-command was a witch named Ankharra, an exotic Southern beauty with dozens of tattoos beneath her loose black cloak. 
    “Maur and this man were members of a Southern Claw funded mercenary team led by Eric Cross,” Maur explained.
    “That’s all fine and good…but who’s Maur?” Crylos asked.
    “ He’s Maur, for God’s sake,” Ronan growled.  He realized it was the first words he’d spoken in some time.
    The tent was long and wide and fille d with tables and maps.  Crylos, Ankharra, and another officer named Stark sat at a long wooden table across from Ronan and Maur.  The two of them had been cleaned up, and now wore thick winter coats to combat the night’s chill. 
    Ronan saw the deep of night through the tent-flap.  The howling wind sounded like a choir of lost voices, and the air was bitingly cold.  Snow blew by outside.  They seemed to be in an extended military camp filled with bivouacs and tents and armed Southern Claw soldiers.
    “It speaks,” Ankharra laughed.   It took Ronan a moment to realize she was talking about him.
    He recalled little of what had happened after the battle, which meant he’d had a particularly bad trip into the Deadlands.  That happened from time to time, especially back when he’d been a young initiate.  The more one isolated their mind, the greater the cost.  When he was fourteen, Ronan had been tested against a pair of Vuul gladiators.  He’d had no chance against them, and had been forced to go so deep into the Deadlands it was a wonder he’d been able to come back out.  Ronan had lost two days of his memory by the time it was all finished, and he’d done his best to avoid delving