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Inez has drawn both her knives and prepares to stab the nearest hell jackal. Before she can strike, Preston is in front of her and his hands clasp the invader’s shoulders. With a wrench, he sends the beast flying off the boat, into the river. It screams once, then disappears beneath the crimson surface.
The other four hell jackals howl and focus on Preston. “Back away to the edge of the craft,” he says to Inez and me.
“I can help,” Inez gasps, but the steer shakes his head.
The hell jackals are on him before he can say anything else. They surround him in a roiling blur, hissing and screeching, lashing at him with jagged nails, snapping with their fangs, their yellow eyes flashing brightly with the promise of death.
One of the hell jackals sinks its teeth into Preston’s thigh. Another snakes its bony fingers round his throat. He fends off the other two with his hands.
“Inez,” I groan. “We have to help him.”
“He told us not to,” she says, her teeth chattering.
“But they’re killing him,” I cry.
“If they do, they’ll kill us soon after,” she says. “He seemed confident that he could handle them. Let’s hope he was right.”
The hell jackal that’s choking Preston leans in close to bite a chunk out of his face. As it presses in, something pulses in Preston’s unnatural silver eyes, then twin bolts of silver light shoot from his sockets and hit the hell jackal’s tiny, yellow eyes.
The hell jackal’s eyeballs explode and it reels away from Preston, still screaming, but now with excruciating pain instead of delightful hate, the remains of its eyes dripping down its cheeks.
The hell jackal that bit into Preston’s thigh starts to cough. It falls backwards, a strip of flesh tearing free from Preston’s leg. The creature’s mouth is full of blood, but it’s not the juicy, tasty blood it was expecting. This blood is acidic, and the hell jackal’s jaw starts to dissolve from the inside out.
The two hell jackals still on their feet are fast and strong, but Preston is faster and stronger. In one swift movement he smashes their heads together. As they stagger away, dazed, strands of cloth whip free of the robes that he’s wearing and wrap around the hell jackals’ necks. More strands follow, and within seconds each of the monsters is in the grip of a tightening noose. The choking beasts thrash across the deck, wheezing pitifully, clawing at their throats as their faces turn purple.
As Inez and I watch in stunned silence, Preston turns to the blind hell jackal, picks it up, then lobs it ashore. It almost crashes into Orlan and Argate, but they duck and it smashes into the man with the binoculars instead. The handler, Clara, moves forward to try and calm it, but the hell jackal lashes out with fear and rage, its claws ripping into the petrified man’s stomach.
The hell jackal’s fingers find the binoculars and tear them free, then whack the man over the head with them. He spins in a circle with his tormentor, crying out with terror, and the pair topple into the red, all-destroying river of blood. They go under and neither surfaces again.
Preston has turned his attention to the hell jackal that bit him. Most of its face is now a gooey mess. As the acidic blood eats into whatever is left of the ruined thing’s shrivelled brain, Preston uses a foot to gently nudge it overboard, where the blood of the river finishes the job that the steer’s blood started.
The only hell jackals left are the two that are choking. Preston stands between them. The material of his robes billows around him, even though there’s no wind, and lengths of cloth extend like extra arms. One length wraps several times around the torso of the hell jackal to his left, the other around the creature to his right. Then Preston tugs the arms sharply back towards himself, and the hell jackals are sent spiralling across the deck like spinning tops. They shoot off the craft and hit the river at the same time, still tugging at the strands that are digging into their throats, and that’s the last we see of them.
Orlan tuts and Argate curses. Without a word, they draw their weapons, take aim, and send them flying at Inez.
Preston makes a short gesture with the fingers of his left hand, and jets of liquid shoot out of the river and hit the sword and axe. They dissolve in the air, hitting the deck in a stream of sticky ash.
Preston turns to face Orlan and Argate, who are staring at him with icy awe.
“You’ve surprised us, Steer,” Orlan says.
“We didn’t know your kind made such good fighters,” Argate sulks.
“I have more surprises up my sleeve,” Preston says coldly, wincing as he rubs his leg where the hell jackal bit him. Letting go of the leg, he waves a hand and a plume of blood rises out of the river.
Orlan and Argate sense what’s coming, and turn and streak away with the speed of Olympic sprinters. The distraught Clara yelps and hurries after them but she can’t run as fast as they can, and neither man stops to offer her assistance.
As the trio flee, Preston sends a geyser of blood from the river whipping through the air above the bank. It strikes Clara across her back and knocks her sideways, but although it crackles close to the heels of the assassins, they’ve outpaced its reach and keep on running.
The whip of blood snaps back towards the river, not a drop falling on land. Clara is on her feet, shrieking, gaping wounds in her back where the blood struck. It strikes her again as Preston hauls it in, and this time she’s pulled along with it, vanishing beneath the surface of the river, to follow her hell jackals to wherever it is that such wicked souls go.
Moments later, all is peaceful. Orlan and Argate are still tearing away from us, and the surface of the river is still.
The boat starts moving again and Preston sits down to examine his wounded leg.
“Are you alright?” a stunned-looking Inez asks.
“Nothing too serious,” he says. “It will heal.”
“That was...” I blabber. “I’ve never seen... The way you...”
Preston sighs. “I’ve never had to fight before. Every steer is equipped to defend their craft, but few of us ever have to test those skills.”
I laugh sickly. “Orlan and Argate won’t mess with a steer again in a hurry.”
“No,” Preston says, but he doesn’t look happy. “A pity they escaped. We try to keep word of our powers to ourselves.”
Inez crouches beside him. “You saved our lives.”
“It was my duty,” he says. “I would have done the same for them, if they were my passengers.”
“Not that you’d ever give passage to a pair like that,” I snort.
“The steers grant passage to everyone,” Preston says. “If they return to this realm and seek a ride, I won’t deny them.”
“After they tried to kill you?” I ask incredulously.
Preston flashes a rare smile. “They didn’t try to kill me. They only had eyes for Inez.” He points to my cloth-wrapped head. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind returning those, I’ll make bandages out of them.”
I start to quickly unwrap the cloth, worried that Preston’s injury is worse than it seems, and as I’m doing that, we slip through a borehole in the zone’s buffer and exit this wasteland of savage conflict and death.