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a compact little H&K G36C, but he didn’t think he’d be using it against even a low-level Power user—complex weapons were too easy to fuck with via Wreaking, even for low-levels like him. It was a fallback in case he stumbled across hostile locals, or needed to deal with strictly human renfields and mercenaries working for the Council.
    He left it in the pack and took out the coach gun instead; the Brotherhood had a lot of experience dealing with the Power.
That
was a weapon as simple as a firearm could be, a big pistol cut down from a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun. The surface was webbed with silver thread and the parts plated with it; the clear spaces in between had pre-activated Mhabrogast glyphs in jet that gave a prickly, itchy feel through your palms, if you could sense the Wreakings. He slipped a dozen shells into the pockets of his coat and tucked the coach gun into a set of Kevlar loops sewn into the inside of his jacket on the left. The stiffening disguised the outline of the weapon a little, and his knife was across the small of his back with the worn dimpled bone hilt slightly down, where he could get his hand up under the tail of his jacket and out again in a single flick.
    He set out along the side of the road with a nasty chill wind in his face. Dust smoked off the plowed fields like pale mist, and a little rose even where they were left in the sparse native pasture; wind erosion aided by men and goats had been at work around here for a very long time. There were no trees, and it undoubtedly looked even barer in the daytime. This high up and this late in the season the night was cold enough for his breath to smoke. Snow-capped mountains were a hint of white and purple to the north and east.
    The big noisemaker approaching an eastern Anatolian village was the dogs, which were great vicious brutes fully capable of using the average wolf as a chew-toy. They were a threat to any chance traveler on foot, but they could smell the Shadowspawn blood in you and hated it unless they’d been exposed as puppies. Domesticating the dog had been one of the things that triggered the original human revolt against the Empire of Shadow; they could sense disembodied nightwalkers, too, even when they were impalpable and invisible as far as men were concerned. Three of them were circling him while the lights were still a dim glow on the other side of the hill. He stooped, picked up a couple of golf-ball-sized rocks, and sighed as he juggled them and picked targets.
    “Thing is, fellers, I
like
dogs. So this hurts me too, but not nearly as much as it’s going to hurt y’all.”
    He wound up and let the first one go just as the beast was slinking in at a sidling trot, massive head low. It hit his nose with a dull
thuwmp
sound, and there was a startled yip before it turned and ran. The other two tried to rush him from behind. He turned and threw the next rock, and the dog went over with a drumlike thump as it plowed into his ribs. The last skidded to a stop, visibly had second thoughts, and backed off growling. Harvey waited until it turned tail, plowed the last rock into its rump to discourage any other reconsiderations, sighed again as it yelpedand fled, and walked towards the outline of the stubby minaret that marked the little town’s mosque. Everything else important—the gas station, the
meyhane
tavern-cum-hotel, and the stores if any—would be fairly close to it.
    Change the mosque to a church, and it could be something in parts of Mexico or even the American Southwest. The village was a straggle of old plastered-stone or mud-brick homes, one-story and flat-roofed, and newer cinder-block structures with tin roofs, with a scattering of tired, scrubby-looking fruit trees, apples and pistachios. He could smell sheep-pens farther out. One fairly largish new building was probably the school. Harvey pulled his cloth cap down over his eyes and sidled towards the meyhane, keeping to the edge of the buildings rather