Traveller Read Online Free PDF

sadness.
    A noise from somewhere on the rooftops made Michael leap to his feet, his eyes scanning the buildings. The four of them turned in unison, backs to each other, protecting the body.
    “Defensive positioning,” I murmured to myself.
    Being a military history professor, my father had introduced me to more than The Art of War . I’d been fed a steady diet of books like Mao Tse-tung’s On Guerilla Warfare and General Carl von Clausewitz’s On War my whole life. I loved On War so much I’d brought it to preschool for show and tell. My teacher had not been amused.
    My father was a scholar, not a fighter, but because of him I knew about enough about soldiers to realize these boys weren’t part of any motorcycle gang. They had military training.
    Michael pulled something out of his jacket. It shone in the light of the streetlamp, a bright flash of silver.
    “A sai, ” I said under my breath, feeling a little jealous.
    Oriental weapons were my passion, right after books and chocolate. The one Michael held in his hands was a thing of beauty. Shaped like a fork with one long middle blade, it was rather ineffective as an offensive weapon, but nearly perfect for defense. They were primarily used in pairs, but Michael only had one. His other hand was balled into a tight fist.
    The other boys pulled out weapons, too. One held a short sword, a classic weapon dating back to Roman times. Another had a katana , recognizable because of its elegant curve and blood groove, the indentation on the sides of the blade that released suction and allowed the blade to slip out of the body easily. The third boy held a bearded axe, a Norse weapon designed for hacking, so powerful it could split a metal helmet in half. All combined, a pretty impressive show of weaponry for a street fight.
    Something large and dark swooped down from one of the buildings. It stood a foot taller than Michael’s six-foot frame, and as soon as its feet hit the ground, it lifted its face to the sky and roared. I sank deeper into the shadows. That thing wasn’t human, and unlike any animal I’d ever seen. It stood almost like a man, but had several rows of teeth and cruel, yellow eyes. It smelled, too, like something left outside and rotting.
    The creature had dark gray saggy skin that hung loose on its body. Long claws protruded from its front and back paws. It had a long snout and the pointy ears of a wolf, but I’d never seen a hairless wolf walking upright. And it was definitely a boy monster. Other than the obvious male appendage, it was a living, breathing gargoyle.
    The beast moved toward the body. Michael blocked it very effectively with his sai , and then used his fist to slam the monster in the snout.
    I stood watching in horrified silence as the four men fought the monster, never leaving their protective stance, working like a well-orchestrated unit. The monster seemed oblivious to their punches and the jabs of their weapons, only interested in the dead body on the ground. Wounds covered its body, gleaming with blood, but the creature didn’t care. As it lunged once again, Michael, in a blur of flashing silver, shoved his sai deep into the beast’s abdomen.
    The beast clawed at him, howling, but Michael ignored the scratches on his arms and the blood dripping from his hands. With one sudden movement, he thrust his sai upward into the beast’s chest cavity. The creature’s entire body jerked in a giant spasm, and then fell limp into Michael’s arms. He pulled out his sai, wiped it on his jeans, and shoved the carcass aside.
    “That was for our Tad,” he said, kicking it with his combat boots.
    I stood there, trying to give my mind a chance to catch up, but it wasn’t working. Michael had just performed a sort of angry evisceration on what looked like Wolfman Jack from the Friday Night Frights show I’d grown up watching on TV back home in Bowling Green. That show had scared the crap out of me on a weekly basis, but nothing had ever scared me