Too hard, dear, Jamie thinks as he ducks the swipe of a light-stick (the light-stick is also giving off that hard, savage buzz). Too hard, yer-bugger.

But the Wolf at which Molly has aimed actually rides into the rising dish. It strikes at just the point where the thing’s green hood crosses the wolf-mask it wears. There is an odd, muffled sound—chump!— and the thing falls backward off its horse with its green-gauntleted hands flying up.

Pokey and Jamie raise a wild cheer, but Molly just reaches coolly into her pouch for another dish, all of them nestled neatly in there with the blunt gripping arcs pointed up. She is pulling it out when one of the light-sticks cuts the arm off her body. She staggers, teeth peeling back from her lips in a snarl, and goes to one knee as her blouse bursts into flame. Jamie is amazed to see that she is reaching for the plate in her severed hand as it lies in the dust of the road.

The three remaining Wolves are past them. The one Molly caught with her dish lies in the dust, jerking crazily, those gauntleted hands flying up and down into the sky as if it’s trying to say, “What can you do? What can you do with these damned sodbusters?”

The other three wheel their mounts as neatly as a drill-team of cavalry soldiers and race back toward them. Molly pries the dish from her own dead fingers, then falls backward, engulfed in fire.

“Stand, Pokey!” Jamie cries hysterically as their death rushes toward them under the burning steel sky, “Stand, gods damn you!” And still that feeling of grace as he smells the charring flesh of the Doolins. This is what they should have done all along, aye, all of them, for the Wolvescan be brought down, although they’ll probably not live to tell and these will take their dead compadre with them so none will know.