[Face?]
Kup stumbled back a few steps and came up beside Kraft. He steadied himself and looked closely. Peter stood at the edge of the light, with a vast, evenly dark expanse behind him, beyond the reach of the torch.
Seeing Yvonne was unharmed, William raised his torch and returned to the front of the line. Its reddish-yellow glow spread forward, nearing the distance at which the thing had appeared.
He took the Page Hammer from his belt and gripped it. Stepping half a pace back, he readied himself, then shifted aside to leave Kraft room to react.
It was an arrangement they had made in advance. As a novice, Kraft was never expected to provide much help in a direct confrontation. If anything happened, the trained core members had to react first—and they were the only ones who could.
He believed Kraft knew what had happened and would certainly react, but sweat still dampened the back of his thin shirt. The night wind sent a chill through him.
The night seemed to recede like water from the bow of a ship. The torch lit the space behind Peter, revealing the same grayish-yellow dirt road as before. Like a beach exposed by the ebbing tide, sand and stones emerged inch by inch from the darkness.
The biggest thing there was a fragment of stone. There was no broad, flat face, nor any backward-glancing watcher. His taut nerves snapped at nothing. It was like one side of a standoff suddenly lowering its guard, leaving the strength he had struggled to summon wasted on nothing.
Kup stepped forward and kicked the fragment aside. The stone, embedded only shallowly in the ground, flipped up with ease, rolled a few times along the road, then disappeared at the boundary between light and dark.
There