Now don't tell me you didn't see that," Private Yimt Arkhorn whispered, peering into the night from around the trunk of a bulbous wahatti tree. Fat, broad leaves like the ends of paddles hung down from the wahatti's branches, providing perfect cover.

"I can't see my hand in front of my face," Private Alwyn Renwar said, feeling in the dirt for his spectacles, once again cursing his decision to join the Imperial Army. Deemed marginal for frontline duty, Renwar had been unceremoniously transferred to about the farthest-flung outpost one could draw—the Protectorate of Greater Elfkyna. As if that wasn't bad enough, when he got there he found he had been assigned to one of the rear-echelon guard battalions, with the noble task of watching over the wagon trains of the Outer Territories Trading Company. The food was terrible, the discipline ferocious, the duty alternating between long stretches of numbing boredom and short, sharp bits of sheer terror (like now), and women most certainly did not flock to his side.

Alwyn despised the army, all three months of it so far. He was thousands of miles from home, sweaty, miserable, and scared, and partnered with of all people a dwarf who appeared to be a couple of batwings short of a potion.

"I never should have taken the Queen's gold," Alwyn muttered, the enlistment coin long since spent, on what he couldn't remember.

"Quit your nattering and look," Yimt ordered, spitting a stream of crute juice onto the ground. The rock spice made a sizzling sound as it bubbled on the dirt. "It's a shadowy thing, real big like."

"I still can't find my specs."

"You don't need specs to see it. It's a sight bigger than Her Majesty's twin jewels and the cushion she rests them on," Yimt said with a lecherous grin.

"I shouldn't even be here," Alwyn said, patting the ground frantically. "Piquet duty for a month and for what? I didn't do anything. You're the one that ‘accidentally' bayoneted then cooked and ate the officer's goose. All I had was a drumstick."

"Quit your griping, Ally," Yimt said. "Squad mates got to stick together. An' like I told that officer, that goose of his came at me with a right wicked look in its eye. I was defending myself, I was."

"They'll write you up in a dispatch for bravery uncommon," Alwyn said, now scrambling around on all fours.

"My mum would like that. Here," Yimt said, shaking his head in disgust, "it's for certain there ain't no elves in your family tree, with the pair of eyeballs you got." He reached out a thick-fingered hand and pushed a leaf to the side. "The thing is right there, seventy paces and no more. Have a swig o' this drake sweat and take another look."

Alwyn put his hand down and felt his spectacles…covered in gritty crute juice. He quickly buffed the lenses against his coat sleeve before the crute ruined them and put them on, staring with some trepidation at the proffered canteen.

The canteen was typical army issue, made of wood in the shape of a small drum, a large cork stopper at the top. What wasn't typical was that it appeared to be glowing.

"Go on then, it'll clear up your sight right proper," Yimt encouraged, shaking the canteen in front of Alwyn's face. Drops of the liquid sloshed out and hissed when they hit the ground. The sound reminded Alwyn of a snake and a new, horrifying thought occurred to him.

"You checked that we weren't over a viper nest, right?" Alwyn asked, his bowels clenching. He still woke up shaking sometimes, remembering the writhing mass of slick, black snakes that had come boiling out of a hole Yimt had assured him would serve perfectly well as a latrine.

"It's a wild land; you never know what's around the next tree, or down the next hole," Yimt said, still holding out the canteen. "You heard the news crier this morning…all that talk by the new Viceroy about the Empire shining the light of civility among the heathen. That's like taking a lit match into a powder room, and guess who they'll be sending."

Alwyn didn't know what to think. A rider in the employ of the Imperial Weekly Herald had come into their camp on the outskirts of Port Ghamjal just that morning, usually a cause for celebration because it meant news from home. This time had been different, however, the crier speaking in high, flowery language with veiled references to things Alwyn couldn't begin to understand, and none of it sounded good.

"You think the new Viceroy is up to something?" Alwyn asked, still staring at the canteen. "After all the problems with that elf they had before, I figured this one would calm things down."

"Ah, the naheeviteh of youth," Yimt said, shaking his head. "Things have been calm. There ain't a war going on anywhere, leastways not any big ones. Let me tell you, lad, I'll take peace and boredom any day."

"But you don't think anything really bad is going to happen, do you?" Alwyn asked.

Yimt's voice became grave. "Something bad always happens. The trick is being as far away from it as possible when it does. You stick with me and you'll be fine."

It was the closest to logic he was likely to get. Alwyn made the sign of the moon and stars, took the canteen from Yimt, brought it to his lips, and took a sip.

"Ack…ack," was all he could say for several seconds after the burning liquid roared down his throat.

"Flower sniffer," Yimt said, taking the canteen back and pouring a healthy dose of the stuff down his own throat without even swallowing. "Have another look then."

Alwyn felt as if the top of his head had been removed and molten lead poured straight into his stomach, but his vision did seem clearer. He inched his way around the other side of the tree and poked his head through the leaves. "What, that big thing by the fence?"

"That's one of them water buffaloes. Mercy, how many times did they drop you as a baby? Look to your left, there, see the shadow?"

Alwyn strained his eyes and thought maybe he did see something, but he couldn't tell what. Blast his eyes. He took off his spectacles and rubbed the lenses on his jacket some more then put them back on. "Right, I see it now. By the third post."

"By the quack in a duck's bill, you found it. All right, on the count of five we'll shoot," Yimt said, pulling back the heavy iron lever on his shatterbow, a two-and-a-half-foot-long crossbow with two musket barrels side by side. Each barrel was easily twice the diameter of a regular musket and fired an iron dart the size of a grown man's thumb. As if that wasn't destructive enough, each dart was filled with gunpowder and a tiny fuse that was lit when the shatterbow fired, in essence making each projectile a small cannon shell.

The dwarf grunted and let out a deep breath as he levered back the steel-reinforced wooden bow located halfway down the barrels. Alwyn edged away, hoping all the while that Yimt knew what he was doing.

"What, we're just gonna shoot?" Alwyn asked, his voice rising to a squeak. He'd heard about Yimt from other soldiers. The Little Mad One. He'd been in the army most of his life, starting out as a boy drummer at the age of thirteen. Back then, long before Alwyn was born, that was about the only way a dwarf could join the Imperial Army, that or the engineers, the artillery, or a flint knapper. And here it was today and Yimt was still only a private. Alwyn was beginning to see why.

"What if it's an officer out checking the piquets?" Alwyn asked.

"Good point. We'll shoot on three." Yimt brought his shatterbow up to his shoulder and took aim.

"Hang on, my musket isn't loaded," Alwyn whispered furiously, fishing for a cartridge in his pouch. "You really think it's an officer?"

Yimt turned and made a face at Alwyn. "Course it ain't no officer. Them peacocks strut around like a whore on payday. Whoever that is don't want to be seen, which means we got every right to shoot. Still…it's nice to think it could be an officer."

Alwyn finished loading his musket and crawled forward so that his upper body was outside the mass of leaves. He took aim, his hands shaking so that the musket bobbed around like a dandelion in the wind. The shadow was moving along the fence line as if looking for something. It was large, very large.

"Ready…fire!" Yimt yelled.

There was the click of the trigger, the throaty twang of the strings propelling the darts up the barrels as the bow sprang forward from its bent position, followed by a double crack as the fuse on each dart was ignited by two embedded flints. A fraction of a second later, the two darts hurtled out of the barrels trailing a brilliant shower of sparks that turned the darkness into broad daylight.

"What happened to counting down?" Alwyn yelled back, then fired, too, the flash and bang of his musket rather puny in comparison to Yimt's cannonade.

Alwyn heard three heavy sounds, like a butcher slamming a hunk of raw meat onto a marble table, followed by a muffled explosion.

"We got him!" Yimt exclaimed, charging forward. He ran surprisingly fast on his stubby legs.

"Wait up," Alwyn cried, stumbling after him toward the fence.

Shouts rang up and down the line and the sound of running boots could be heard.

"So what did we hit?" Alwyn asked, slipping on something and having to grab Yimt's shoulder to keep from falling. Yimt said nothing, just stared down at the body before him.

Alwyn let go and knelt for a better look, then jumped back. Great chunks of flesh and bones littered the ground and dripped off the fence. The head, however, was still intact. "It's…it's a rakke! I don't believe it. I seen one once in a picture book my granny used to read to me."

"Your granny had one twisted way of showing affection if she was showing pictures of that to a youngster," Yimt said, handing his shatterbow to Alwyn and unsheathing his other weapon, a drukar. Like the shatterbow, the drukar was made for dwarves. The blade reflected no light at all, its blackened finish appearing like a darker shadow in the night. It was a foot and a half long, six inches wide, and angled down at the halfway point, giving it a distinctly talonlike appearance.

"Granny was from the old country," Alwyn said, slowly edging backward from the scattered remains of the monster spread out before him. "She used to tell me all kinds of stuff about magic, especially the stuff that was evil. And that thing was one of them."

"Ally, relax," Yimt said, hefting his drukar between his hands. "It's dead."

Alwyn shook his head. "But it always was dead—at least, long before you and I came along. Yimt, don't you understand, Granny said they died off ages ago."

Without another word, Yimt brought the weapon down hard, sending blood and gore flying everywhere.

"What'd you go and do that for? You said it was dead," Alwyn yelled, wiping his face with the sleeve of his jacket, his spectacles once again smeared.

Yimt kicked the rakke's head hard with his boot. "That's the army for you. You do your duty, you serve the high and mighty, put your life on the line, and what do you get? Monsters." He turned back to Alwyn. "What did I tell you? That news crier had it right with all that talk about darkness and vigilance for enemies of the Empire and whatnot." He struck the rakke again with the drukar. "Well, if we're going to be dumped in it, you might as well learn now. When in doubt, put cold steel in it. Kill it, and then kill it again."

"You were in doubt?" Alwyn asked. The dwarf really was mad if he thought that thing had still been alive.

Yimt cleaned his blade with a fistful of grass and shook his head. "Naw, it really was dead the first time," he remarked, the bitterness in his voice as acidic as the drake sweat.

Alwyn looked from Yimt to the rakke then back to Yimt again. "Then what's the problem?"

Yimt gave the head one more kick and spat. "There's never an officer around when you want one."

Swinging lanterns appeared out of the night as more soldiers arrived. One stepped forth and surveyed the scene.

"What have you done now?" Corporal Kritton asked, staring at the fleshy wreckage on the ground. He was an elf, one of the few still in the Imperial Army after the disbanding of the Iron Elves. His words were soft, yet they carried the weight of steel shot in them. "If you shot another water buffalo trying to infiltrate the line, you'll be marching with full packs all the way back to Calahr."

Alwyn's mouth went dry. The corporal absolutely terrified him. He was only the second elf he'd ever known, the first being the cobbler down the street from his home. Mr. Yuimi had been small, quiet, always bent over a piece of shoe leather whenever Alwyn had stopped in to see if he needed any chores done. No matter how silently Alwyn entered the shop, Mr. Yuimi always knew he was there, tossing a chunk of licorice to exactly where Alwyn was standing without ever looking. Corporal Kritton was equally good at knowing where his soldiers were, but unlike kind old Mr. Yuimi, Kritton never gave you a reason to smile when he found you.

"It ain't like that, Corp," Yimt said, sounding not at all intimidated by the elf's threats. "We was mindin' our own business, being the ever-vigilant eyes and ears of Her Majesty—"

"Silence." The elf turned his stare to Alwyn for a moment, then back to the dwarf. In the bright glow of the moon, his face was cast half in shadow, blurring the sharp features Alwyn knew were there. It was his eyes, though, that gave Alwyn the willies. They were green, shining in the night like a cat's.

"What did you shoot?"

"Wasn't no officer, not in the least," Yimt said, batting the head toward the elf with the flat of his drukar. "Course, shave its face and put it in a uniform and you might not be able to tell the diff—"

"Ki rakke…" Corporal Kritton said.

Yimt looked at Alwyn and made a face that was most unflattering to the elf before turning back.

"Er, right you are, Corp, it's a rakke," Yimt said, lowering his voice an octave. "Ally here's been going on about them being extinct and all, but I never believed it. You know the stories, how that elf-witch twisted creatures to her will and all. Well, last time I heard, that Shadow Monarch was still perched on that little mountain of hers, so the way I figure it, as long as she's there, these things will be, too."

Corporal Kritton turned so fast to look at the dwarf that Alwyn thought he was going to attack Yimt. For several seconds Kritton said absolutely nothing, then he smiled, and the contents of Alwyn's stomach froze solid.

"Her Majesty doesn't pay you for your opinions. I think what we have here is a case of dereliction of duty, allowing an enemy of the Empire to get this close to the lines," he said. "I could have you flogged for this."

"Flogged?" Yimt said, puffing out his chest and looking at the rest of the soldiers now gathered around them. "All we did was save lives tonight, same as we do any time we get piquet duty, ain't that right, Ally?"

Alwyn tried to speak, but though his mouth opened and closed, no words would come out. An off-kilter dwarf, a monster from a storybook, and a maniacal elf for a corporal, and all because he thought wearing a uniform would impress women.

"See, Ally's so shocked that you'd think we wasn't doing our duty that he can't even speak," Yimt said, looking up at Alwyn with genuine concern in his eyes. "Tell you what, Corp, Her Majesty can keep Her medal. We'll take our reward in beer and call it square."

If I'm really lucky, Alwyn decided, I'll pass out before they start to flog me.