Greg could tell they entered the closest thing to a home the Beast had ever had even without Snorri the dwarf tugging at his sleeve to announce it. The noon sun wrapped several cloudy blindfolds around its yellow eye to avoid looking down. The unintrusive but everpresent noise of the forest died out as they stepped inside the gloomy edelwood grove: Snorri pushed the cart with bone skis at the bottom, inside which the rabbit was a trembling ball of white fur next to the magic chest of the Guardians, and Greg trudged through knee-deep snow just behind him, ogling the surroundings with wide eyes. One could easily see how the Valley of Empty Song got its name. Open your mouth to sing, and the melody would listlessly spiral down to the ground, deflated and defeated. Jason Funderburker seemed to have sensed it – he was quieter than usual in Greg's pocket. No hope, no joy could survive there, for the winter's reign was eternal where the Beast had once taken up his abode.
Shadowy memories descended like hungry ghosts from the bare looming treetops to gnaw at Greg. His brother in the deadly embrace of an edelwood. Greg himself, tricked by the Beast, alone in the snows, and not a single star in the darkness above him. The false promise of warmth as the branches caress you, claw at your skin, tickle you with their sparse leaves. Greg shuddered as a particularly vivid memory found its way inside his mind, and concentrated on the task ahead.
The magic chest, according to Snorri, would hold anything one might put inside, as long as it was fed enough moonlight every night. The plan was to get into the Valley unseen, pack everything in the chest, get out unseen, save Blodie back at Llewellyn's Gift and, with the help of other Guardians, take the artefacts to a safe place or somewhere else to destroy them. Even though he was a Loremaster, Snorri was quite vague about that last stage as if he wasn't entirely sure about a safe enough place himself. Then again, the abruptness with which the plan went into motion when Greg had arrived must have unnerved the little man to no end.
"Do you think they're here? The other Guardians?" whispered Greg as they were slowly exploring the desolate valley: all snows and trees and not a single hint of spring. The silence around them was palpable, but in a way you wouldn't want to touch it, lest it exploded with pus all over your face. "Do you think they found my brother?"
"Pray that the warlocks and witches aren't here," retorted the dwarf, grumpy as ever. "I told you how thin we're spread. This whole affair is ridiculously careless. There's no telling if my yesterday's messages even reached them…"
They sent the rabbit out to scout ahead. Snorri wouldn't say it out loud, but Greg suspected he didn't know where exactly the Beast had put his treasures. Soon the fleet-footed creature returned, reporting that the coast was clear and not a single soul was in sight. Greg would have preferred that no-one had mentioned souls or the lack of them while they wandered in that horrible place.
The expedition finally found it in the darkest nook of the Valley, half-hidden behind gnarled old edelwoods protectively spreading its hideous branches. Greg almost fell over an unexpected obstacle lurking in the snow (a derelict railway branch, he was surprised to find out), and the place caught his eye as he was trying to regain his balance. There, in the half-circle of its dead guardians, was a giant edelwood trunk that seemed to suck whatever light was allowed in the Valley of Empty Song, munch it into gloomy nothingness and spit on the ground all around it.
As they approached it, they saw that it was hollow. The cold darkness inside the trunk beckoned to Greg when he precariously leaned over the opening to peek in.
"It's here. It has to be here," whispered Snorri, nervously looking around.
"What, right in the open?" asked the rabbit. "No traps, no hidden levers to pull or stuff like that?"
"Nobody knew what place the Beast called his home until he was gone. This Valley was never on any map. What's the point protecting something no-one but you can see in the first place?"
"I still don't like it, that's all," said the rabbit. "So don't expect me to go down there and prove you wrong."
"I don't. Only someone touched by the Beast can access his treasures, remember?" Snorri nodded towards Greg. "I bet if we came alone we wouldn't even find this trunk. I sure didn't see it before the kid pointed it out to us."
"I'll go," said Greg, who was staring inside the ominous entrance while they talked, as if his gaze was an insect's antenna that could map out the surroundings without a light or touch. "We have to save Blodie."
"You have a very big heart," said Snorri thoughtfully.
Greg's heart was a wrecking ball bouncing all around his rib cage. He supposed there was a sort of truth in the dwarf's words: had it not been big enough, it would have surely squeezed through his throat and jumped out of his mouth a long while ago.
A rope was secured around the nearest tree and handed to Greg, who prepared for a long and dangerous descent. Like many of his expectations about the second visit to the Unknown, it turned out to be a false one: he was barely ten feet in when his feet struck the virgin snow gathered at the bottom of the trunk. In the light of the glowing rock on the string around his neck, which Snorri had generously provided, he could see a short tunnel leading to a spacious chamber.
Greg waved to the dwarf and the rabbit who peered from above, and fearlessly stepped in, half-expecting that the crooked fingers of the roots hanging from the earthen ceiling would reach and try to choke him. But gone was the dark hand that once might have moved them, and he went on unmolested.
The cave was not an impressive museum-like treasury Greg had expected to see, but there was no doubt they had found what they'd been looking for. Mysterious items of all sorts and sizes were haphazardly thrown around the floor, as if the owner barely cared about their well-being or maybe even kicked them into the chamber from afar, without bothering to make a few steps forward. There were chests and lockboxes, a silver mirror, a fragile lute half-buried in the ground, a rolled-up carpet, a sword half-stuck in the wall, a set of creepy marionettes, a spider statuette, a cuirass of some black metal, a framed painting covered with a red curtain, a golden cup, a quiver of silvery arrows… Greg trod carefully around all those relics, holding the glowing rock like a torchlight in front of him.
As he went deeper into the cave, he saw that some artefacts were hanging on the roots protruding from the wall, as if to escape the mess below. This is where he found the one object he desired the most – a huge black cauldron into which Greg himself could fit, its outer walls covered in ancient-looking patterns. He stared at it suspiciously, still expecting a trap, but eventually shrugged and grabbed it with both hands, taking it off its hook. Nothing happened, unless one counted the massive weight he was suddenly burdened with. He was barely strong enough to keep the cauldron above ground, and yet he persevered, backing out of the cave and back to the dim circle of light below the maw of the trunk.
"Got it!" he groaned after putting the cauldron down to tie the rope around it. The dwarf showed surprising strength by pulling it out all by himself, and the rabbit nervously shooed Greg back to the treasury, urging him to bring all the other artefacts as quickly as possible.
It was a lot like helping Mom sort out the attic, Greg decided, as he was running back and forth to carry out more and more stuff. Perhaps mysterious boxes and swords were an improvement on old chairs and broken appliances, but in practice it made little difference since he didn't have any time to learn the secrets of the former anyway. If Snorri was to be believed, neither should he want to, for the unstable nature of the artefacts was bad enough without the touch of the Beast in whose possession they had remained for quite some time. Greg indeed felt the ripples of that treacherous power once or twice, when the ancient lute brushed against the wall and played a sad, high, droning note which made his nose bleed a little, or when he accidentally kicked a ball of yarn with two knitting needles sticking out of it and, as he reached to pick it up, had an abrupt but menacing vision of a thin figure hanging upside down from a giant tree.
Greg saved the huge black cuirass for the very end, since his muscles were still complaining after the weight of the cauldron. He dragged it through the empty cave, bumped his head on a thick root in the tunnel and sat down to tie the cuirass to the end of the rope, which he then tugged to attract Snorri's attention.
"That's the last of them!" he announced, leaning against the earthen wall to catch his breath. "Did all of that stuff really fit into the chest? I absolutely gotta see it."
"Alas, my boy," said the familiar ingratiating voice from above, and Greg's blood froze in his veins as he saw Monsieur Renard's grinning face appear in the opening, "this particular request your ever-humble servant will be unable to satisfy. But I'll soften this blow, don't you worry, by telling you it is merely the first item in the endless list of your hopes which are forever doomed to remain just that – empty wishes from the bottom of our not-so-metaphorical well."
Greg was not impressed with his eloquent threats even despite being at a clear disadvantage and scared out of his wits. Although he was pretty sure Renard had already dealt with the rest of the expedition – hopefully just scared them away and nothing more – he cupped his hands around the mouth and shouted at the pitch of his voice:
"Snorri! Er… Mr. Rabbit! Run! The Fox is here!"
Monsieur Renard made a big scene out of pressing the open palm of a gloved paw to his ear and pretending to listen for a few moments.
"The Fox is indeed, as you brilliantly put it, here," he said at last. "It's the running part I have great concerns about."
"I'd rethink that if I were you!"
The exclamation was laced with defiance. It reached Greg's ears as if from far away but no doubt sounded clear enough to the Fox, who twitched and turned around to look. Greg had no idea what Renard was going to see there, but his heart finally sped up for all the good reasons at the sound of that voice.
"Wirt!" he yelled, jumping up and down in excitement. "I'm here, below! I missed you! I missed you so much! Be careful!"
"As well he should," hissed Monsieur Renard before leaping away, once more letting the ghostly light of the Valley into the well.
Greg counted to five Jason Funderburkers and jumped up to claw at the rotting walls of the trunk, trying to find any sort of hold and climb up as soon as possible. He couldn't even begin to guess how his useless, wonderful older brother was going to fight the Fox but he knew for certain Wirt was doomed to fail without his help.
After hearing Greg's voice again, as muffled and distant as it was, Wirt let out a breath which he seemed to have been holding for the whole time since their separation. The relief on his face must have been obvious to Beatrice, who squeezed his hand supportively. Of course, it was not yet time for dramatic family reunions and boxed ears, for there was still the small matter of the mortally dangerous Fox standing between the brothers and smugly studying the newcomers' faces.
"What have we here, then?" he asked himself in a sly sing-song voice. "A horse, a girl and a useless simpleton who hung himself from a tree. Frankly speaking, I find I only fear the horse. It looks like a walking flea feast, and I can't possibly have any of that nonsense on my fur, now can I?"
"Well, that was completely uncalled for," muttered Fred and showed his huge white teeth like a dog might.
Wirt's eye caught sudden movement behind Herr Reineke, and he saw the familiar motley hat with a pompon appear out of the great edelwood trunk. He made sure not to reveal his awareness by meaningful glances or gestures and gave Beatrice a barely noticeable shove with an elbow. Her silent physical reply of the same kind most likely stood for, "I know, you idiot."
"Oh, please don't fight, you wonderful lovebirds," the Fox pulled a mopey face. "As if I don't know our little honey pie is climbing out behind my back even as I speak. As if I couldn't fish his guts out of his throat in a single moment had I wanted to."
Shoots of cold sweat sprouted up all over Wirt's back and sent a shiver through his whole body. Beatrice made a move as if to rush the Fox but thought better of it. Wirt was busy despairing and calculating how he could possibly cover a hundred and a half feet that separated him from Greg before the villain made his deadly move.
"But I don't," shrugged Herr Reineke. "That's the point not one of you precious dolls seems to understand. There are so, so many ways to hurt a person without resorting to primitive violence. Isn't it so, lads?"
He clicked his fingers and pointed to the cart, where a treasure chest was guarded by an unlikely pair of a white-haired dwarf and a fluffy rabbit. Wirt couldn't say for sure, but they didn't seem to manifest any fear for their lives. Greg, who started to sidle away from the trunk and the Fox, couldn't help but turn and look. He froze on the spot, confusion plain to see on his ruddy round face. Wirt silently, and then not so silently urged him to keep moving, but his little brother didn't care.
"Are you with him?" Greg finally asked, the tone of his voice deceptively dispassionate. "Have you betrayed the G-guardians?"
A half-sob at the very end showed his true feelings, and Wirt, even though uncertain as to what was the connection between the three, couldn't help but wince on his brother's behalf.
"Guardians?" laughed the Fox. "What Guardians? Oh, my little poor honey pie you."
"The Guardians of the Unknown!" shouted Greg, the sleeve of his jacket surreptitiously darting to the corner of his eye. "You're supposed to help us and protect the treasures of the Beast! And… and what about the owl?"
The Fox looked confused and scratched his chin, thoughtfully looking upwards at nothing in particular. Then the overstated realisation dawned on his wily, all too human face, and he pointed behind Greg's back.
"What, that owl?"
Everyone turned to look, as it seemed beneath Herr Reineke's dubious dignity to descend to pathetic tricks. There, in the bare branches of an old crooked edelwood, indeed sat a huge grey owl, its yellow eyes looking below. It blinked as it was found by every pair of eyes in the Valley of Empty Song.
"But… I thought you were… that you were… and the Cauldron, and… and back there when he…" It pained Wirt to hear his brother's helpless, floundering voice becoming quieter and his spirits visibly sagging with every word he spoke at the owl. "There are no Guardians of the Unknown, are there?" Greg finally asked the snow beneath his feet. "I'm just a huge stinky doofus."
"If it helps you just a little bit – and I hope it doesn't – you're not the first and won't be the last," grinned the Fox. "I've seen more doofuses – or should it be doofi? – than you've seen days, my little honey pie."
That seemed to instantly turn Greg from anguish to anger.
"You shut up!" he yelled at Herr Reineke, stomping his foot. The Fox, who was clearly enjoying the situation, stepped back in mock fear. Then Greg turned back to the owl. "And you! I trusted you! I thought you were dying! I came here to save you! Why did you fight him when he tried to attack me, then?"
As far as Wirt could judge, the bird looked pretty uncomfortable as it moved slightly along the branch, away from Greg's fiery eyes, and very quietly hooted something about having her own reasons.
"So that you would think she was dying, obviously," explained the Fox with a yawn. "And come here to save her. And got all the Beast's treasures out for me, before any of those tiresome chancers who are rumoured to have followed me here even found this place. We staged all of it, my dear. Every little part of it. Oh, there are many, many ways to make a man do your bidding – your own big brother can vouch for that, actually. But none are as pleasant as a wonderful, complex, overwrought scheme, don't you think? And I just… love it when a plan comes together!"
And he let out the nastiest, craziest snigger Wirt had ever heard, and the sound of it made all of them instinctively make a step further away from Herr Reineke. And then the Fox cut it short so suddenly that Wirt half-expected another trick from him, but the madman only threw back his head so that his nose became the topmost point of his body, and started taking disgusting deep sniffs, quietly growling as he exhaled.
"Ah, that's not a part of your amazing plan, then?" enquired Beatrice. "Being torn apart by the Hunter's hounds?"
The Fox threw her a look of pure hatred and snarled before turning around and seeing half a dozen sleek white dogs appear from behind a cluster of edelwood trees. They were huge, muscular beasts with red ears and red eyes, and in the dim light of the Valley they resembled a pack of canine ghosts as they slowly walked through the snow towards Herr Reineke, radiating primeval menace. Greg squealed and looked like jumping back into the trunk, the owl and everyone else temporarily forgotten. Wirt tried to attract his attention to make it known the hounds were on their side, but in truth, he still wasn't entirely sure of that himself.
A tall, grim man in hide armour followed the dogs, his mane of hair as white as their fur. There was a quiver on his back, only instead of arrows it contained massive throwing spears. His arrival inspired Herr Reineke to a particularly venomous snarl, but the Hunter didn't react to that one way or another, unless one counted the cold, calculating look he scanned the Fox with.
"Ah, the dog walker of Arawn, the most famous hobo in all the land!" Herr Reineke gave out a mocking laugh as if he didn't care all that much, fooling nobody. "Took you long enough to catch up with me in this delightful place."
The hounds were slowly approaching him in a loose half-circle, their ears forward, their eyes not moving away from their prey for a single moment. The Fox danced in place, steadily backing away from them and towards the cart, where the dwarf and the rabbit looked a lot more alarmed than before.
"What a sorry bunch of underfed mongrels," tutted Herr Reineke in a soothing sly voice. "And I do mean your dogs this time."
"You will not escape today, Reynard," said the Hunter, not a hint of emotion in his deep voice – just a statement of a fact.
"Watch me!"
"Hey, are you already aware that those warlocks and witches are about as real as those "Guardians" you've invented?" shouted Beatrice, but the Fox didn't risk looking behind and taking his eyes off the hounds. "The Hunter spread those rumours about them to slow you down and make you jump at every shadow instead of strolling around the place like it's your backyard."
"You shut your mouth!" snarled Reynard.
"So you didn't know, did you?"
"I know more than all of you combined!"
"Yeah, just not the things that actually matter," giggled Wirt, following the girl's cue. "How does it feel to be duped, then?"
The Fox didn't reply for quite a few long moments and even stopped growling – only his deft feet were writing an intricate pattern on the snow as the dogs deliberately ate the distance between him and them foot by foot. And then his hands dived inside the pockets of his coat and flew back out before anyone could blink, and a shower of golden dust scattered in the air all around him. As the tiny specks landed on the hounds' fur, little flames blossomed and died, making the ghostly animals yelp in pain and fear. The dust hadn't settled yet, and the Fox was already racing towards his treasures and his allies, the priorities obviously in that particular order.
"I'll show you duped!" he bellowed as he jumped on the cart and threw open the lid of the chest. "I'll show you all duped! No-one dupes me! Nobody dupes me and lives!" He kicked the dwarf and the rabbit off the cart and bawled, "Deal with those!" pointing at none other than Wirt, Beatrice and Fred.
The Hunter chose that moment to throw a spear at Reynard: the weapon flew in a perfectly straight line and with such a speed as if it was spat out by an arbalest. But the Fox merely bent backwards, holding his fedora with one hand so that it wouldn't fall on the ground, and the spear pierced one of the edelwoods behind him.
"Cows and banjos, mate! Etcetera!" Reynard yelled at his enemy in murderous glee and, regaining balance, started digging inside the chest, no doubt looking for a way to return the favour. First he fished out a spider statuette and threw it at the nearest dog who, having recovered from the golden dust, was racing at him, teeth bared. Upon hitting the flesh, the figurine became a living black spider that wasted no time wrapping its many limbs around the hound's body. Wirt stared at the horrible scene, hypnotized, whereas the Fox was already searching the chest for more artefacts to use as weapons.
Beatrice tugged at his sleeve.
"Pay attention!"
And with that she pointed to the rabbit who was bounding towards them through the snow like a fluffy pompon. The dwarf lagged behind, breathing heavily and digging inside his pockets.
"What, to that cute little bunny?" Wirt giggled nervously and nearly swallowed his tongue as the rabbit took a mighty leap which would have made Mad Bill Sweeney envious, and landed on his chest, its mouth wide open to reveal two very unrabbitlike rows of creepy sharp teeth. "Ah! Get off me, you freak!"
He threw the animal away, but it rebounded off the snow like an overgrown and deadly tennis ball, and jumped at him again. Its jaws nearly locked on the arm that Wirt threw up for protection – instead the rabbit received an accidental punch in the snout, which seemed to relieve it of a tooth or two and also make it very angry. Wirt risked a glance to the left and saw Beatrice squaring up to the dwarf with a tree branch in her hands: she tried to get closer to him while avoiding the spheres of flame, which her white-bearded opponent conjured and rotated in a wide ellipse around his body like a hula-hooper on extreme sports TV.
The rabbit made another assault, its eyes now bloodshot and its teeth covered in actual blood, the combination of which made Wirt step back in panic, barely evade the animal's lunge and fall down in the snow, helplessly flapping his arms. With a cackle that rabbits were simply not allowed to produce, his opponent jumped on the boy's chest and bared its many teeth in an unhinged smile.
The rabbit would have certainly closed its jaws around Wirt's carotid artery the very next moment, but something distracted it and made it look up in confusion. Then there was a nasty but satisfying crunchy sound, and the murderous ball of fur flew for a field goal between two distant edelwoods, where it disappeared for good. Wirt didn't allow himself to breathe out until he moved his eyes as far back as his sockets allowed and saw Fred's backside looming above in dangerous proximity.
"Nice hoofing," he groaned, getting up.
"Life in prison teaches you many things."
"You've never been in prison, Fred."
"Once a thug, always a thug is all I'm saying," said the horse haughtily, and Wirt thought it best to let that one go.
Once on his feet, he used a rare moment of peace to locate Greg, and saw a terrible scene. The Fox was standing atop the cart with some mirror in his hands, laughing the way that would make the staunchest supporter of animal rights want to put him down, preferably with an axe to the head. He used the mirror to direct feeble rays of sunlight towards his opponents, and the artefact was clearly augmenting them in some nasty way, for every time it hit a hound, the beast wailed and tried to burrow into the snow, covering its eyes with its paws. The Hunter was already on his knees, his huge hands frantically rubbing his face up and down.
Of Greg himself there was no sign, until at last Wirt saw the top of his brother's head rise like a periscope of a submarine above the bush he was squatting behind. The torpedo launch followed – a massive snowball flew towards the Fox and hit him right in the face. Reynard managed to hold on to the mirror and immediately turned it towards the boy with an inhuman snarl. Greg stayed above the bush to watch if his missile hit the target, and thus had no chance to escape.
There was a ghostly silver light spreading across his stunned face, turning his eyes black and hollow, hypnotising him so quickly that he hadn't even shown a single sign of struggle. His mouth half-opened. His arms hung like ropes along his body. He looked less and less like human with every second spent facing that light.
Wirt yelled without bothering to choose a particular word, and rushed across to the cart, letting Beatrice and Fred deal with the dwarf, who seemed to be trying to retreat rather than face two opponents at once. Wirt scooped a handful of snow as he run, hastily rolled it into a ball and fired, but it harmlessly flew above the Fox's head. He picked a heavy rock and tried to hurl it at Reynard as well, but it fell way short of the cart.
However, Wirt's clumsy attempts produced the desired effect, for the Fox turned towards him first his head and then his mirror, and by that moment the boy knew better than to look at it. He bent his head low and kept running, trying not to listen to the faint, ethereal voice in his ears telling him to embrace the mirror's light. He knew he was getting closer and closer to the cart but didn't stop and braced himself for impact instead.
Wirt shouldered into the side of the cart and felt his whole body shudder at the collision. The Fox swore somewhere above, then there was a thin satisfying crack of breaking glass and a howl of rage.
"The Fairie Mirror! You will pay for his!" he hissed, looked at Wirt as if to reach for him but seemed to have changed his mind and bared his teeth in a vicious smile. He looked up towards where the owl was still waiting in the high branches of the trees, and commanded in a shrill voice, "You! Kill the little one!"
"No!" Wirt jumped back up on his feet as he saw the bird obediently descend towards Greg's hiding place, but the Fox pushed him down with a shove to the shoulder, giggling all the way.
When he managed to lift his face out of the snow and look, he saw Greg helplessly sitting on the ground and staring at the owl. Wirt couldn't see his little brother's face at that angle, but the sag of his shoulders betrayed a certain resignation. He wondered if the mirror's darkness had left for good, and he wondered if that even mattered now. Time seemed to have slowed as the bird dived for Greg, huge deadly talons thrust forward, ready to tear and cut flesh.
Wirt couldn't see his brother's face but he did see the owl, and he thought he saw a flicker of doubt it its hypnotic yellow eyes, and then he might have seen the bird's posture change from a predator's aggression to something uncertain, and then he most definitely saw the owl deliberately avoid Greg's head by a couple of inches and turn its swoop into an ascent.
"GET HIM, you useless bag of feathers!" bellowed Reynard somewhere behind, enraged beyond recognition. "Or did you forget WHY you need me?!"
The owl gave him a glance as it flew above them and slowly blinked. Then it drew a huge half-circle in the air and once more moved towards Greg, outstretching its talons.
"Oh, no, no, no, please don't…" muttered Wirt as he rose and stumbled towards his brother. He heard Beatrice scream and saw her stick fly towards the bird like a boomerang, coming nowhere close.
Then things started happening too fast for Wirt to keep track.
The owl hesitated once more. This time it stopped its dive just a few feet before it reached Greg, frantically flapping its massive wings to kill the inertia of its movement. The Fox screamed at it again, and the bird looked like finally moving in to deliver the blow, but it lingered a moment too long in the air, making itself a perfect target.
The Hunter's spear pierced the bird and the tip went out in the middle of its chest. There was no sound, there was no blood and there was no corpse falling onto the ground. The owl came apart like an unstitched stuffed toy, only instead of cotton it dropped flower petals – a snowfall of colourful puzzle pieces of spring, softly spinning in the air and landing all around Greg, who was still sitting frozen to the spot in the snow.
Before the spear even reached the bird, Reynard must have already known he had lost. The hounds were shrugging off the effects of the magic mirror following their master's example. They wanted blood and revenge. When Wirt finally took his eyes away from the flower petals which had been the owl, it was to look at the Fox, who had a handful or artefacts seemingly snatched at random in one hand and a long steel sword in the other. He was running away, waving the blade around to protect himself from the ghostly white dogs who barked loud enough to deafen everyone in the Valley as they snapped at his heels and the tails of his coat.
Reynard tried one direction, and then another, but was pressed hard by the hounds whenever he went, snarling at them and dropping his treasures one by one. More than ever before he looked like a wild animal dressed up in fancy clothes by a circus ringmaster with a poor sense of humour. He started barking, not bothering to come up with any eloquent mockeries anymore, clearly intent on one thing and one thing only – to save his hide and get out of this disastrous battle.
It looked like he would get away, after all. One hound was careless enough to allow a vicious slash on its shoulder, another couldn't avoid being kicked hard in the stomach. The Fox sped up, looking around and behind him to see how close the other dogs were, and so didn't notice what was right ahead of him. He tripped over Greg's curled body, who crawled onto his path from behind a bush, and fell gracelessly face-first in the snow.
Wirt's heart froze once more as he saw the Fox jump up and turn towards the little boy, murder overwriting self-preservation on his ugly canine snout. But neither his sword nor the hounds' teeth acted first in that pantomime. The Hunter had more than enough time to take perfect aim and throw another lightning bolt of a spear, and a somewhat comical expression of surprise on the Fox's face – once more mysteriously human – did nothing to hide the fact that the projectile landed right inside his left eye.
This time there was blood, and quite a lot of it, as Reynard collapsed in the snow like a marionette with its strings cut off.
And then there was a faint sound of harmonica playing somewhere deep inside the woods and it seemed closer and closer with each passing moment.