He walked carefully through the minefield and peered down. "Those are grendels. Two. Hard to tell, but I'd say they were pretty small." He shifted the lenses. "And a couple more coming out of the Miskatonic..."

A curious expression touched his face. The binoculars traced and retraced a short arc.

"Shit," he said. "Get into the house. Don't let anyone bathe in the living room, or throw any kind of refuse into it. The Amazon feeds right down into the Miskatonic—"

Jerry's eyes widened. "People soup."

"Yeah. Then send someone for Terry—"

A shot, and then a volley. Cadmann swiveled toward the glacier. Terry waved at him as his comcard buzzed. "Cadmann, grendel coming up the Amazon. I got him, but it's bad news—"

"Terry, listen closely. Where's the corpse?"

"I hit it and it went on speed, ran in a big circle and back into the water. I can see it. It looks dead now, but it's half in and half out of the water. The tail is still... Cad, it's bleeding and it's still in the water!"

Jerry and Cadmann exchanged horrified glances. "That's it."

Cadmann screamed into the card as he ran toward the zigzag. "Omar, Rick—get that corpse out of the water now. Maybe it's not—"

Jerry, falling behind, yelled, "We should have diverted the stream—"

"Oh, great," Cadmann replied. "Tell me again, three weeks ago."

Mary Ann ran for the house, her heart thundering in her chest, the words This is it. This is it... yammering over and over in her mind.

Chapter 32

THE KEEP

I have paid my price to live with myself on terms that I will.

RUDYARD KIPLING, Epitaphs: The Refined Man

There were five grendels below Carolyn. Four were just clear of the mist; to the naked eye they were mere specks, wide apart and still separating.

"Charlie, do you know you're being followed?" From left to right, she set names on the intruders: "Ayatollah, Khadafi, Jack, Son of Sam..." Too long. "Mareta." Mareta Lupoff was the only single human being ever to set off a hydrogen bomb within a city.

Charlie was much too close: two hundred meters away, plodding along at a speed somewhat greater than the horses could manage.

The horses were holding up well, moving a little slower because they were tired. They hadn't smelled anything yet. Carolyn kept them moving, but she kept watch too.

Twenty horses in a line, linked by rope. Should she free them from the rope? Let them fight their own war?

Grendels. Creatures of mystery and fear, and the more you learned, the more terrifying they were. Those four at the fog level... three? One must have turned back. Was it Jack?

They don't cooperate. That's not what Beowulf, excuse me, Weyland, would call a flanking action. It's just grendels trying to stay away from each other. But that near one—Charlie's almost close enough to shoot, and I bet I can guess what it wants.

Carolyn had listened, she wasn't stupid, but it was hard to think of grendels as she. Picture Jack the Ripper or Muammar Khadafi as a woman: it was silly.

Those rock knobs had the look of boulders deposited by a glacier—intruders dropped on land scraped flat. That one a hundred meters ahead, twice her height: that would do.

When White Lightnin' was alongside the boulder (and the near grendel was a hundred and fifty meters downslope), she dismounted. She took all four harpoons and the harpoon gun from the saddlebags. She slapped Lightnin' to get her moving.

Lightnin' didn't move.

Patiently, with no overt sign of panic, Carolyn walked down to the end of the line (toward the grendel, toward Charlie). She shouted and slapped the trailing horse, Gorgeous George. The young stallion glared at her, but he moved. She slapped him again and, jogging ahead of him, repeated the slap on the next horse, who was already moving. The tail of the line moved; the wave moved forward; the grendel was a hundred meters distant and watching curiously. Carolyn reached the rock. The line of horses moved past her as she climbed. The grendel was seventy meters away.

Forty. Twenty. Jesus, it was on speed. The horses screamed. Carolyn smelled it herself, a whiff on the wind, bestial and chemical both. She was halfway up the rock, and the grendel had reached the horses.

She set her back solidly against the rock and lifted the gun while...

Gorgeous George reared back on his hind legs, forelegs pawing the air, prepared to stamp holes in an enemy. A black torpedo shot under the forelegs and snapped at one of George's ankles without ever slowing. George was yanked backward hard enough to snap the line that bound him. The grendel was behind the rock before Carolyn could fire. George fell downhill, tumbling, screaming, and his left hind leg was gone below the knee. Where was the grendel?

Coming up the rock behind her?

Carolyn jumped. She landed without breaking an ankle. She ran away from the rock, trying to see the rock and the horse both—

The grendel was downhill, dragging Gorgeous George. George was very much alive, screaming, thrashing. Carolyn aimed carefully and fired.

She'd have hit it. She would! Charlie must have seen something coming; she saw it shy. The harpoon exploded against George's chest. It ripped the horse wide open. The grendel looked at her for the barest particle of an instant, then dodged behind the dying horse.

The other horses were on the run. Carolyn was reloading. Wait? Watch the grendel? But the horses couldn't be left alone. She ran after them. If she scared them they'd keep running: fine, she'd catch them eventually.

But death was behind her, and she kept looking back. Where was the grendel? As fast as it moved, it could be anywhere.

The grendel was in no hurry. She was overheated, yes, but not to the point of distress. She was small, and had been on speed for less than half a minute.

The horse was not much fun. The grendel fed, trying to avoid tearing vitals for the moment; but the beast had stopped moving almost immediately.

The taste was far better than grendel meat.

Three of her siblings were in sight. They came in a line. Vectors of attraction and repulsion held them in position: fear of each other, fear of the one above them, smell of speed, mist of horse's blood in the air. Hunger was winning.

Charlie tore into the horse. She ate with some haste now. When her belly was full to the point of pain, she ripped one of the horse's hind legs loose and moved uphill, dragging it with her tail. The other grendels closed in behind.

They would eat and grow strong. Let them. Perhaps they would fight. But they would not catch up. Meanwhile nineteen animals moved upslope with their alien guard to tend them. Well and good.

Terry sighted carefully and squeezed off another shot as a second grendel poked its head up over the edge of the bluff. He caught it between the eyes: its head snapped back violently and was gone. Blood in the water. He wiped his forehead. Dammit, I did wait. It was on dry land. When I hit it, it went on speed, of course, and overheated, of course, and went back to the creek. Of course.

Omar and Rick arrived first. They looked, crazily, like some vintage comedy team: Omar the tallest man on the planet, Rick the shortest. There was nothing comical about them as they poked at the dead grendel, then clubbed its head with an ax when the tail jittered. They hauled it out of the water. Its corpse leaked blood.

Something blurred near the lip of the drop-off, and Omar spun, swinging his ax.

By luck, surely by blind luck, the ax struck the grendel in its open mouth. Its death spasm ripped the tool out of Omar's hand as it flipped back down the hill.

They ran uphill. A dark shape burst from the water behind them. Terry sighted over the top of the scope, firing by instinct. Once. Twice. The grendel leaped, turned, looked directly at Terry. It knew. It moved at blinding speed toward Snail Head. Terry fired again. The grendel continued—and ran directly into the rock. It fell and twitched. Omar and Rick were halfway to the house now, and running hard. Omar's legs were almost twice the length of Rick's, but Rick was winning the race.