Hans looked around in puzzlement.

  "The place is open, the beasts around are hungry, yet the body is untouched. Why haven't they scavenged it yet? Not even the crows have touched it."

  Baron Coen stood behind, trying not to look at the mutilated remains. The silence that fell over the road after Hans's words seemed unnaturally heavy. "Why haven't they scavenged it yet?" Dmitry whispered, not recognizing his own voice. "Not even the crows have touched it."

  Hans, not looking back, gripped the spear shaft tighter. His figure in the beam of the lamp seemed cast from iron.

  "Because the one who did this is much more terrifying to beasts than the cruelest hunger, Master Dmitri," the old man replied hollowly. "Wolves sense the master of this prey. And if they don't approach the meat, it means the master is still somewhere around here. We must leave. Quickly!"

  Hans almost shouted the last words, and it served as a signal. The trio broke into a run. It was a mad dash through the sticky, squelching darkness. The adrenaline hitting their blood temporarily burned away the remnants of fatigue and back pain, replacing them with primal terror. Dmitry ran first, piercing the gloom with the cone of his headlamp. The beam danced madly over roots, stones, and rotting puddles.

  Blood hammered in his ears like heavy mallets, drowning out the sounds of the forest. In the wail of the wind moving through the pine crowns, Dmitry occasionally heard a long, mournful howl, and behind his own back, just beyond the boundary of light, he seemed to hear the heavy thumping of many feet. It seemed the darkness had gained density and was now pursuing them. His brain melted from tension: every snap of a twig was perceived as a predator's leap.

  "Faster!" Coen rasped somewhere behind, choking on the cold air.

  Dmitry didn't look back. Suddenly the road turned left, and the lamp caught the ruins of the old outpost from the night. It looked pathetic—the remains of a lone wooden tower, with only blackened walls about three meters high remaining. There was no roof—instead, the same leaden sky hung overhead. The travelers literally flew into the narrow, gaping entrance. Hans immediately turned, leveling his spear outward, and Dmitry, breathing heavily, leaned against the wall. In this cramped wooden box, Dmitry for some reason felt even more defenseless than outside. Out there in the forest, there was at least a ghost of a chance for maneuver; here, he felt cornered in a trap. The walls of the shack seemed thin, barely capable of stopping even a gust of wind, let alone whatever might be lurking behind them. He gripped the Benelli's forend with a death grip, aiming the barrel into the dark maw of the doorway. The world for him narrowed to the size of the front sight: he saw neither walls, nor the dust under his feet, nor his companions.

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  Hans, standing for a while at the entrance and professionally listening to the sounds of rain, quietly moved deeper into the room. He cast a brief, assessing glance at the frozen stranger, pale as chalk, and silently began to work at the hearth. Previous guests of this place had carefully lined the fire pit with stones, and in the corner, fortunately, a bundle of old brushwood was found.

  Baron Coen sat down next to Hans, trying to stay close to the budding warmth, but his gaze constantly returned to Dmitry. The engineer looked horrific: he sat leaning against the wall directly opposite the entrance, jaw muscles working under his skin, lips pressed into a thin white line, and the strange black club in his hands was motionless, aimed into the night beyond the threshold.

  In a half-whisper, the Baron asked the veteran busily fussing with the fire:

  "What is wrong with him?"

  Hans momentarily raised his head from the fire pit, looked at Dmitry, and answered with that terrifying commonality found only in old soldiers:

  "He’s just spooked, that's all, my lord. Common thing. I've seen it more than once among recruits after their first big fray—when it hits them that death is walking right beside them. It often happens. This one is still quiet, just frozen; in our regiment, they’d sometimes charge their own with weapons in a frenzy. It’ll pass as soon as he warms up and eats."

  "Perhaps I should talk to him?" Alarm was clear in Coen's voice.

  "That would be unwise," Hans warned, intercepting the Baron's movement. "I don't know what kind of weapon he has, but that thing clearly isn't made for decoration. See how he’s clutching it? Right now, he’s like a taut bowstring. Take a bad step, and he might let fly from that pipe of his. Leave him; he’ll come to himself soon enough."

  Hans spoke softly while deftly stacking damp twigs into a neat tepee over a pinch of tinder.

  "Ugh, the wood is completely wet... if only it’ll light..." he muttered under his nose.

  Dmitry didn't hear their conversation. He sat, fixing a motionless gaze on the blackness of the doorway. One thought pulsed in his head: *'Who is capable of killing a person like that? And what if it really is here, behind the wall?'*

  The fear in his consciousness became almost tangible, sticky. He imagined the heavy, moist breath of something massive right behind the blackened boards of the wall. It seemed another second—and it would leap from the shadows directly into the doorway to end his life as easily as those other lives in the forest. His heart fluttered somewhere in his very throat; his ears rang so much that he stopped noticing reality. He stood on the very edge of banal, animal panic, ready to break into a scream or senseless shooting. A silly internet tip flashed in his head: to calm stress, you need to ground yourself. Feel the support, touch something solid. But his hands were death-gripped on the shotgun.

  Dmitry shifted his focus. The rough grip, the metal of the trigger biting into his finger, the cold of the heavy barrel... He suddenly realized he was holding an absolute argument. From three meters, any creature entering this doorway would turn into nothing.

  Fear receded, leaving room for anger. A beast would flee from a single sound, and a person simply wouldn't outrun buckshot. Dmitry froze, peering into the beam of the lamp. He had never had to shoot people with his Benelli, but now he almost wished for the unknown enemy to appear. He was ready to turn into mincemeat anyone who made him so afraid.