[ WP ] `` At first they came back with nothing , and then they did n't come back at all . ''

Hilary Flint smiled with all the grace of a starving wolf as he laid his sights onto the image of one of their officers. 
 
 He was hidden high up on the ridge line amid the tangled brush and broken stones. A cloak woven through with strips of cloth and local plants covered his form, his face hidden behind a veil of loose hessian. To either side of him, invisible to even his eyes were other marksmen, their own weapons aimed down at the Salamander patrol. 
 
 His target was an older warrior, his dark red hair just tinged with grey. His armor was well-made but subdued, fitting for a scouting party. The lamellar plates they favored with excellent protection against slashing weapons and spent arrows but did little against Man's firearms. Still, his tall bow and long, curving sword showed sign of hard use and the muscles hidden beneath the armor and silks proved that he used them often. Flint automatically judged him to be at least a thousand years old, likely two. He had been a warrior grown when the Roman Empire was just beginning to decline, taught through centuries of warfare and inter-house struggles. He would be the first to die. 
 
 The patrol of Salamanders numbered nine, a customary number for the Children of Fire. All were armed similarly to their leader save for one who carried a tall glaive with tapering steel blade. The colored tassels on her belt proclaimed her as the file's second in command, as did the rather gruesome scar which left her missing half her nose and her left eye. Hawkins would know to kill her. 
 
 Immediately over him, sitting on a blackberry vine was a small chickadee, its black-capped head with white splashes staring down at him with curiosity. The creatures of the forest had no knowledge of the wars of Man and Fae, their lives too short and too simple to understand the reasons why. Flint admired their ignorance. 
 
 Below, the patrol was splashing through the shallow creek, the noise of the rapid moving water camouflaging their movements. Each member of the file watched the trees in a different direction, ever cautious for a sign of their prey. A pity none of them bothered to look down... 
 
 The point-man barely had time to realize what he stepped on, the prong-tipped land mine barely registering underneath his thick hobnail boots. Most of the Pre-Arrival caches of weapons had long been used up or destroyed but enough remained to be a constant thorn in efforts of Fae to fully pacify their conquests. The results were more often than not deadly. 
 
 The point-man screamed as his foot and most of his leg vanished in a spray of metal and bloody water. The Salamander falling down shrieking and crying out for his gods and ancestors. Flint fired his rifle the same instant, the heavy wooden butt of his gun kicking like a mule into his shoulder. The veteran file-leader's jaw disappeared, bits of broken bone and teeth blinding the Salamander next to him in the eyes. He dropped like a sack of wet grain, his bow slipping from lifeless fingers and into the creek. Flint was already working the bolt of his rifle, ejecting the spent brass cartridge and shoving another round into the chamber. 
 
 The ridge line echoed with the sound of a score of rifles, the only noise being the whip-cracked of their bullets and the metal on metal of their actions being worked. A light machine gunner, hidden by a shield of woven grass opened up, the staccato bursts of his priceless weapon tearing through armor and flesh alike. 
 
 Thirty seconds later it was all over, nothing left but the cooling barrels of weapons and the fallen bodies of the dead Fae. Their blood stained the creek red, their red and bronze colored armor soaked dark in the waters. Nine lives. Thirty seconds. Still was n't enough; it would never be enough.
