“Move to intercept!”

As swiftly as they had formed up, the pixies ran off in all different directions, mostly eluding the disorganized mob that swung at them. In the confusion, they mainly hit one another. Lasset dipped under meaty arms and around thick backs, making toward the werewolf.

Picket and Nonni, his shield-sister, intercepted the beast on the garden walk, ten yards from the door. They brandished silver salad forks. The cutlery had been extracted at great personal risk from Trehinnick’s parlor by a foraging party of pixies as soon as they knew the nature of the threat. The old man hadn’t touched it since his wife had died, ten years before. He never knew any of the set was missing, but it had been necessary to remove it to make weapons to save his life. Picket stabbed up at the wolf’s throat. The tines brushed its cheek. The fur crackled and burned.

Angrily, the werewolf snapped at Picket. While it was distracted, Nonni feinted with her fork. She was quicker than the moon-touched wolf. She actually managed to get the tines tangled in the fur on the back of his paw before he snatched it away. Picket was more successful on his second try. He jabbed the wolf in the shoulder. The wolf howled in pain. Lasset was grimly satisfied. By then, he and six more pixies had caught up.

They stabbed at the beast’s suddenly exposed right side, jabbing him with butter knives. No mortal steel or iron could penetrate the cursed hide, but sacred silver laid open gaping black wounds in the hairy hide. The wolf howled again. He rose to his hind legs. Unlike a true wolf, he could fight on two legs as readily as on four. The pain inflicted by the silver distracted him….

—from the “The Battle for Trehinnick’s Garden”
by Jody Lynn Nye

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