Chapter Eight

As darkness craves the mind,

We are undone without our pride.

No time on earth to come

All the pleasure's just begun

Forty miles from the sun

In our coats beneath the layers

Wash my skin of all the hate

We should sleep late

Everything just kind of grates

Forty miles from the sun….

Bush-Forty miles from the sun.

Squall. Naked Squall

Quistis smiled.

A hand descended on her shoulder. "Quistis? It's three a.m."

Seifer.

She groaned.

"Quistis, did you just try to grope my hand? Dreaming about me?."

She groaned again. It felt like a parrot had just been sleeping in her mouth. An incontinent cracked one eye open and glared at Seifer in the doorway. She was more or less resigned to never getting to lie in on missions, and her normal six am start she normally had no problem with, but..damn..she was tired. And no coffee.

Coffee.

Three am.

Despite the fact that she had no other visible vices, Quistis loved coffee. Loved coffee with such a passion that several of the more observant Trepies' fantasy lives involved reincarnating as Quistis Trepe's bedside coffee maker.

She shrugged out of her sleeping bag and winced as the warm air rushed in to fill the place where her body heat had been. Sleeping fully clothed had its advantages. A deep breath and a few seconds later and she tied on her boots with cold stiff fingers. Seifer dragged down the tent behind her. He turned as she got up and shoved a tin into her hand. A similar tin was lying crushed in the fire.

"Found this in your bag."

The smooth metal surface beneath her fingers was beginning to heat up as she turned it round, curiously, trying to make out the writing on the can in the embers of the fire. After all, she wouldn't put it past him to giver her a can of baked beans, and then laugh as she took a big swallow.

The scent was familiar. She caught a glimpse of the label in the night. Coffee. Self-heating. Thank Hyne.

Quistis took a large swallow and sighed, dragging her sleeping bag out of the tent and packing it into her stuffsack. Bag compressed, and system re-caffeinated, she turned to Seifer. "Any problems?"

"No," he eyes were ringed with dark smudges, underneath the dirt and stubble. Quistis thought about saying something, but when he turned his back on her in an adamant I-don't-want-to-know way to sweep snow over the fire she decided to leave it.

They finished packing the rest of the camp fast and in silence, working by the light of glowsticks and by touch. Seifer didn't even try to feel her ass again. Quistis was worried, just a little bit. Seifer had the abstracted look of someone who had just been mugged down Memory Lane.

"Are you sure?" She forgot to lower her voice and then mentally clapped a hand over her mouth. The sounds they were making were lost in the rising wind, but even…..well., what was she thinking. She hadn't been.

Must have caught it off Seifer.

"Shh. I'm bloody fine. What the hell are you so worried about?" Seifer half-turned. The light from the glowsticks traced a faint shadow over his cheekbone. "Trepe, are you looking at me funny? Wake up." He reached over, knocked gloved knuckles on the top of her head and quickly swiped them back as Quistis turned round "Don"t do that."

He shrugged. "You look like someone's just hit you over the fucking head. Since when do I have to organise things round here? We better go."He shouldered his pack and turned away, all ragged coat, steel toecaps and determination.

Quistis picked up her pack and followed. "I hope they don't want you that badly," she whispered.

Seifer shrugged again. "How dedicated are they? One charge of trying to End The World plus associated charges. Six counts of first degree murder, …twenty three counts of being Drunk and Disorderly back in Marduk, plus Being found Drunk, Being found Very Drunk, Using Offensive Language, Using Language that was Probably Offensive if anyone else could understand it, Malicious Lingering, Committing a Breach of the Peace...Don't give me that look."

She sighed. "Seifer, you ARE a breach of the peace."

"Think they'll let me off with a pardon? I"ve stopped running." He smiled, a bitter savage grin that somehow managed to disconcert rather than hold any vestige of humour. He looked down at his feet and then glanced up at Quistis.

They continued on in silence after that.

As they crested the rise, Quistis hissed at Seifer to get down, and he flattened immediately. She turned her head slowly to the right and pointed at a guard. He was a dark silhouette in the even darker night, a source of almost inaudible sounds-the rustle of clothing, the scrape of boot against rock, the creak of leather.

She waved a hand to the left, keeping it in and close to her body, relying on the vegetation to screen their movements. He crawled after her, the gun at his hip. The air smelled of snow and wet earth, sharp green cold smells and the wind that was rising. Quistis risked a cautious glance behind them. There was no movement in the shadows. The tiny sounds softened and faded into the distance

One down, two to go.

They crept forwards through the Galbadian lines.

Seifer squinted after Quistis and rose to a wary crouch. The wind whipped at his coat. He grinned in the dark. A wind would mask any sounds that they might make.

That was the point, Seifer realised afterwards, that it all started to screw up. It felt like he had an itch in his brain. He shook his head, blindly, half expecting to hear something rattle round in there. Dammit.

Time to go crazy, on top of everything else.

Something watched them.

Its gaze scanned out across the mountains it had seen before a hundred million times. It saw a man and a woman, ghosting through the trees. There was a soldier they hadn't seen yet close to their right.

But it was so weak, and spiderweb threads of old memories and the echoes of feet in dusty halls was all it had had for so long. The lives of the humans burned so brightly. The monster was drawn to them like a moth to the flame.

It waited patiently, and watched.

Its vision d absolutely nothing to do with eyes, and nothing more to do with the echolocation of a bat or the infrared vision of a snake, but it might have been a combination of them all, if such could be done..

It had been so long.

There was a pack of wolves not far away. The monster sent out the last remains of its power, hoping it might …what, it didn"t really know, having no words yet, blind vestige of past dreams as it was.

It spoke, and the wolves, although they didn't know it, listened.

Isak shivered.

It was twenty past three in the morning. He stared off into the darkness, his mind spinning lazy thoughts like a half-asleep hamster on a wheel.

There was a small noise off to his left.

He crouched forwards, hunkering down, and peered along the low ridge in front of his post through the trees. He heard it again, above the wind. The sound was a harsh, low sighing, like something breathing, if the thing in question had been struck down with laryngitis.

He whipped his head round,his hand going for his gun. Adrenaline sang through tired veins. The gun was in his hand before he even realised he'd drawn it.

Far off to the left, there was a scream. Isak rose from his crouch and prowled silently along the ridge. He checked his back constantly, spinning, weaving between pools of shadow and bare trackless patches of snow.

Something winked in his goggles, down the bottom of the ridge. There was a sudden small rustle in dry vegetation that drew his eyes.

He pulled his gun and sighted on the spot, and then sighed as a large black dog stepped out of the clearing.

A wolf.

Just a wolf.

Isak reached up a hand to the focus control on the side of his head. He twisted the knob of the night vision goggles and focused in. The wolf walked towards him fluidly. He slid the goggles up on his forehead and rubbed at his face, while his brain frantically tapdanced behind his eyes. There was something not right about the animal's confidence.

Isak's breath frosted in the air.

The animal's didn't.

Two other shadows joined the first out of the bushes either side of the ridge. The wolves were large and black. They moved with a sinuous purposeful grace as they flanked the lead creature and trailed towards him. They left no footprints behind them, but Isak suddenly knew with a dead sick kind of certainty that their teeth would slice just fine.

Everything started to happen very fast.

He pulled his trigger. The bullets passed through the animals as if they weren't even there.

He shot at the wolves until he ran out of bullets, loaded more and then shot again. He might as well have been shooting air.

Look out for Almasy, they'd told him. Almasy and monsters. Nothing about freaky ghost wolves.

Isak's hands fumbled the familiar signs of magic. He realised he was shouting, in fear or rage or just to prove that he was still alive, and that there were other shouts.

He managed to focus and cast.

The magic whited his goggles out with the dead sizzle of frying circuitry and he ripped them off with a curse, regretting it immediately as his vision tried to accustom to the darkness and to the close proximity of three now very large very fast animals coming towards him at full speed.

Isak did what any sensible man would ran.

The Galbadian camp was in trouble before they even reached it.

"What the hell?" Seifer spoke without moving his head from his arms as they both rested against a tree.

"Someone"s got a problem."

"Yeah. Us."

Quistis glanced round the tree. "That"s not it. There's something haven't even seen us."

"Looks like they're under attack." Seifer joined her, staring out at the camp."Shit. Quistis, some fucker"s throwing grenades."

"I know." She shaded her eyes with her hand. "Looks like…wolves."

"Monsters? They're asking for it in such a big group out here. They want their fuckin' heads testing."

She shook her head. "No, just wolves."

"Pussies." Seifer watched as a Galbadian soldier ran from a blazing tent. He fired abstractly as a dark shadow that followed him, drawing back, attacking. The soldier ran on, coming closer, turning round every so often to fire. Someone in the distance shouted orders. "Think they"re theirs? The things? Let's ask them."

"I don't think so." Quistis said. She realized that she was talking to Seifer's back. He crept forwards towards the soldier. He spun around as Seifer approached and she watched his face open up in relief before he realized that Seifer wasn't wearing any uniform. His hand moved to his gun. He frowned. "You're-"

Seifer decked him. Quistis heard the crunch of the soldier"s nose as cartilage collapsed. The Galbadian went down as if poleaxed.

Seifer crouched down in the snow beside him and started emptying his pockets of ammunition and grenades.

"Carry all those," Quistis called, "and you won"t be able to walk straight, let alone fight."

He glanced up. "Not planning to hang on to them for long. Now we're equal. They're being hunted, and so are we. But just what the fuck are those wolves?"

She scowled at him. "You're enjoying this far too much."

He shrugged. "It"s just nice to hit something."

She bent down, unzipped the collar of the Galbadian's uniform and felt for a pulse. "Good. He's not dead."

"Give me a second, he will be."

"How can you say that?"

Seifer grinned. "Easily. If I'm outnumbered ten to one, I"d at least like the guys who I"m trying to kill not to try to kill me. It evens it out."

Quistis wondered just where the old idealistic Seifer had gone and left in his place this cynical, battle scarred soldier. One minute he"d be fine, on top of the world like the old Seifer. The next moment he'd be ablaze with a frayed rage that seemed to simmer just under the surface. Experience, maybe, but she wasn"t sure it was an improvement.

She noticed him going through the pockets of the coat in the hope of finding any loose change. "Seifer. Really. We don't need cash."

His eyes flicked to the side in a distant kind of way, as if he was looking for something that wasn"t even there. "Behind you."

Quistis spun. A black wolf stood there with its jaws open. She drew Save the Queen. It charged.

Quistis stepped sideways in one fluid movement and snapped the whip in a straight line across the wolf's eyes.

It didn't flinch.

Quistis snapped the whip down again with a force that could have sliced flesh. The wolf growled.

Seifer raised his gun, sighted in one movement with the ease of long practice, and put a bullet neatly between the wolf's eyes. There was a shower of splintered bark as the bullet hit the tree behind the wolf. It snapped its head round and charged for Quistis.

She spun to face the thing, neatly vaulting it as its teeth snapped at empty air. She landed close to Seifer, leaving deep prints in the snow and then dodging to the side. Seifer pulled the pin on the first grenade with his teeth and then the other two on quick succession. He flung them behind Quistis, and they both turned and ran.

Quistis glanced over her shoulder as they dived for cover. She caught a quick glimpse of the creature sniffing at the nearest grenade before it detonated.

The shock wave pushed them both off their feet.

Quistis landed on top of Seifer, her nose buried in his evil-smelling coat. backShrapnel and woodchip whined past her head and a sliver of bark sliced a long groove over her leg, through the trousers. She hardly noticed it.

The clearing they had just been in was a smoking wreck, a neat crater chopped out of the hillside and the trees, with bits of flaming branch crashing to the ground and sizzling out in the snow.

The wolf's shoulder broke through the wall of flames. It snarled and charged again.

Seifer grabbed her, throwing an arm protectively over her head. He threw them both to one side. The thing"s teeth raked a long scar along the sleeve of his already tattered jacket. He shoved the barrel of the gun up against its belly and pulled the trigger. The blast knocked it back slightly but there was no damage.

They stumbled to their feet together. The wolf feinted in front of them, its ears laid back.

Quistis slid one foot backwards without taking her eyes off the creature.

And right at that minute a party of Galbadian soldiers came through the trees to their left. Quistis saw the shock on Seifer"s face, clearly illuminated by the flames of the burning trees.

The head of the wolf swung from one group of potential targets to another.

"Stop!" somebody called from the Galbadian ranks. "You're under arrest!"

Seifer snarled "Bite me." Quistis jerked him back by the collar of his coat as bullets whined through the trees.

"Which way?"

She pointed, at what she though was the right way. "Run"

Seifer scowled at her. "Fucked if I"m going with them. They want a fight, they"ll damn well get one."

"Run!"

They ran with the flares of magic at their back. Quistis crashed through a veil of last year's dead nettles, fell, rolled, and was up and running again in seconds. Dark shapes crashed through the brush behind them. Quistis noticed that not all of them were human. "Keep going!" she screamed at Seifer.

More bullets and magic whined through the night behind them.

Seifer looked around for Quistis.

She wasn't there.

There was a sudden flash of light in front of him. Seifer stopped, fast, his boots slipping on wet rock. He dragged an arm across his face to shield his eyes. He raised his pistol, not knowing or caring what the hell was in front of him and hoping he wasn"t about to blow a hole in Quistis but whatever it was had better get out of his way. Fast.

He stared down the barrel of another gun. Snow gleamed wetly on the stee. It was as bright and as cold as the eyes of the soldier staring down the other end at him. A captain, from the insignia on his torn Galbadian scout uniform. Seifer choked back a bubble of laughter for the way you always noticed such strange things at the worst times. He lowered his arm from his face. His identity was no secret.

"You"re under arrest."

"Piss off, fucker," Seifer said.

"I should kill you now."

Seifer watched the dark shadows of figures starting to coagulate around the edge of the circle of light. "Look. If you"re going to fight, fight. If you"re going to talk, then talk. Don"t talk and fight."

Any minute, he thought, and then someone else was going to break.

It wasn't going to be him.

Isak stood on the edge of a clearing. There seemed to be a fight going on. He was just trying to identify the fighters and work out whether it'd be a good idea to join in or just melt back into the shadows and pretend he hadn't seen anything when something sharp and metal pricked against his throat.

A cool feminine voice hissed in his ear. "Don't move. I'm not going to hurt you. Do you know what's going on here? It"s all right, you dont have to talk. Nod once for yes, shake your head for no, and if you try anything I"ll have your head. Understand?"

He swallowed, shook his head, and came within a hair's breadth of cutting his own throat. There were two men in the clearing, and more around the edges. He couldn't make out any of their features in the dark, but from the whispered snatches of conversation all around him he could guess who one of them was.

The voice cut behind him like a razor edged whip "Really, Seifer. I leave you alone for two minutes and you"re hosing the decks down with testosterone."

"Piss off, bitch," somebody said. "We"ll come for you next." Some distance away there was a flicker in the darkness. It was followed by more panicked screams and a flash of futile magic before the noises were abruptly silenced.

The woman's voice was cool and clear, each syllable a diamond-edged sliver of ice. "Listen to me," she said. "There's not much time! If we don"t fight together we're all going to die! I"m not sure what these things are. They they don't even feel whatever we throw at them! Not bullets. Not magic, not anything. People are dying here. Look, I"m sure he"ll come with you later. Just wait until these things are dead.

"You killed them!" somebody accused from the circle of the light.

"We didn"t kill anyone. One of your guys might have a hell of a headache when he wakes up in the morning but that"s about it."

"What"re you talking about? Don"t move! You"re both under arrest!"

From the darkness to the left there was a growl that got louder very fast, a scream, and a gunshot. Guns cocked with a click and bullets whined through the air from a soldier too panicked or blind to realise that there were too many people around. A dark shape moved in with a noise like a jet engine and the speed of a bullet. It seemed the size of a large dog through the mist, but as it neared the little circle of figures it changed, first smaller, and then as it threw itself into the light, larger, the size of a horse or cow, but with a flash of wicked white fangs and dark mist trailing from its flanks.

The knife at Isak's throat vanished. He stumbled away and wished he'd never come.

Seifer cannoned into Quistis, who"d already begun to move, knocking them both out of the way. There was another shot. A bullet whistled over Seifer's ear. In the clearing behind them, the gentle light of the soldier's magic went out. He heard panicked screams and shouted, useless orders. A dark shape hunched over in the middle of the clearing, eating something. Something that had, until recently, been someone.

As Seifer watched the giant wolf raised its head and growled with a sharp vicious sound. Trails of dark smoke drifted from its body with a life that seemed independent of wind.

"Bullets don"t work on them!"

"Let"s get out of here!"

"Fucking leg it!"

The wind crashed down like a hurricane, howling like a whipped cat. It hurled snow from the thin covering on the ground, flicking it up in freezing white clouds of tiny ice crystals that stung Seifer"s face. It was a good night to hide in. A good time to get lost.

He could see Quistis' shape indistinctly ahead of him in the followed her. A few more figures drifted with the snow out ofthe trees, some wary, some frightened, most –and there couldn"t have been more than a dozen of them- looking about thirteen, children wrapped in dark military uniforms too light for the weather. Seifer didn't think he'd ever been that young. They all ran together.

Seifer didn"t really know where they were going, but Quistis seemed to and that was enough for the moment. He almost fell over two dead bodies sprawled in the snow, face down with strings of blood from ripped out throats freezing on the floor as everyone fought not to look. Tough shit. If they all didn"t get somewhere sheltered soon, they were all dead anyway.

What a fucking mess, thought Seifer.

He shivered from cold and exhaustion .The adrenaline that had helped all of them through the snow was wearing off. His hands and exposed face stung from the cold. One of the Galbadian cadets paused. Seifer grabbed his coat and jerked him on, cursing at his white startled face.

The wolves, whatever they were, were still hanging round, threatening and feinting from the sides.

Seifer drew the gun Quistis had given him and aimed as well as he could hope to while running through a forest. He fired off a few shots in the hope of making them back off a few paces but heard no animal squeal of pain. The dark shapes just kept right on coming, and Seifer stopped. Ther was no point in wasting ammunition. A couple more bullets and then he'd have to reload.

Idiots, he thought. If the wolves had possessed the brain power to attack together they could have wiped them all out. Instead, they'd press from one side, making the group veer off, and then in a short while another attack would come from the opposite side.

Seifer considered using the Galbadians as bait.

And then the dark shape of a building loomed up from the snow and he promptly forgot about it.

Quistis shouted "Everybody inside!" and her voice was torn away, ripped to shreds by the wind. She sent a spell shooting in the direction of the building. But it wasn't really a building, more a ruin. Her magic faded against the enormous stone walls . The fort looked big enough to fit all of them in, plus a few thousand extra guests and right at this moment they were in no position to argue.

Hyne, it was cold!

He limped through the door in a group of tired figures; some supporting others, some alone and wary, little knots of uniformed people. Quistis swung around to cover the last escapees. The Galbadians raised their heads and stared exhaustedly at the building.

Seifer watched the night behind him. He saw nothing.

Maybe, he thought, we've lost them.