A voice echoed. Laughter, a slow, gurgling cackle that grew from the darkness down one the tunnels. Mugs could feel the skin crawl on the back of his neck, a sinking dread growing as the voice spoke.

“Good. The boy brought dessert.”

*  *  *  *  *

With three men against near over a dozen, silence, patience and a perfect ambush were key to the survival of Mugs’ crew. Thomas crouched behind a small pile of what was now rain-soaked mud, overlooking a good stretch of miserable road with a ten-foot vantage just seconds ahead of the convoy, a short axe gripped in both hands. Jim was lying next to him with a crossbow, chewing heartily on a stale piece of bread he insisted on eating before the fight.

“Only thing worse than death itself is dying on an empty stomach,” he whispered, offering some to Thomas with crumbs falling from his lips. Thomas couldn’t eat, though. His throat was dry. His pulse raced. He worried about Kate, who had disappeared into the dreary rain with maniacal glee. The man was downright mad.

Their victims approached. The first carriage was a mere three paces away, the horses unaware to their stench in the rain. The men themselves seemed tired, almost exhausted. They rested palms on their pommels, heads drooping and rising every so often, a sure sign of fatigue.

Lucky them.

Without warning, Kate burst from a pile of rubble on the other side and slaughtered two foot soldiers before anyone could react. The driver of the first carriage began to yell something and gripped his sword but it was too late. Kate stabbed him from below, blood spurting from a split abdomen, and the man crumpled from his seat and fell to the road. The carriage stopped unexpectedly, and as the other foot soldiers realized their mortal danger they began to yell and scream, either from alarm or the pain of the crazed man’s twin swords. Jim and Thomas looked at each other and then rose. Jim shot the driver of the center carriage and began to reload as Thomas leaped from their perch, axe in both hands, poised to crash onto a man below him no older than twenty-five and paralyzed with fear.

Thomas gave a tremendous bellow and cleaved the young man almost in two, sprawling in the thick and soggy mud and coming up swinging, joining the howls and shrieks of battle, thinking quite annoyingly of how much he really did want that stale piece of lousy bread.

*  *  *  *  *

The smell of gunpowder was obnoxious. Mugs sidestepped the boy’s remains on the table and yanked an intimidating dagger from his waist to defend himself from the cannibal that was already atop him.

It was an ugly creature, even more so than the day-old corpse he had seen before. Razor-sharp claws reached for his neck, dirty and caked with old blood, equally sharp teeth poking from beneath a terrifyingly wide and lipless grin. Its eyes were a dirty, sulfurous color set unnaturally high on an elongated, sunken face filled with rage.

Mugs was hard-pressed to believe the monster used to be human but was more concerned with its claws and dangerously lethal speed. He jumped back, his spine slamming against the wall. The creature laughed and lunged again, swiping at his belly, while Mugs found room to dodge left and parry weakly with his dagger, severing quite luckily one of his assailant’s fingers in the process. The creature hissed and retreated, cradling its wounded hand.