"Mr Hawkins?" Ryker heard Eve's surprised gasp behind him.

"Mum!" squeaked from the background at that moment, so that the overwhelmed mother immediately turned her attention to her sobbing offspring and tried to soothe him from the sidelines.

'Hawkins?' Ray repeated the name in his head, rummaging through his memories. Still, it took him a moment to connect the name with the crazy hermit and hunter Riona had told him about a few times. Until now, he hadn't attached much importance to it. Many people in Silvershore were weird when you looked at it from a townie's point of view. Hawkins sometimes supplied the cottage with meat and wood, and before him, he had probably sometimes taken on minor repairs.

Meanwhile, earth and pebbles fell into the hole. Hands tried in quick, frantic, and restless movements to hold on to the edge and escape the crumbling rim.

Huge fawn-colored eyes stared back at Ray from an angular face. The dark brown hair was long and reached down to the man's shoulders. It looked unkempt and overgrown, as if the guy didn't care much about his appearance or excessive grooming. Strands of hair matted with sweat and dirt hung in the earth-smeared face, which was adorned with dark circles under the eyes

"Wa-wait!" the guy groaned and more or less straightened up. "It's not what it looks like...", the smoky, deep voice tried to defuse the situation in a rushed manner and raised his hands, which were covered in dirt and dried mud, trembling.

But every word, every movement of the stranger only made things worse.

Ryker narrowed his eyes and growled even louder as his teeth clashed painfully. The more the stranger got to his feet, the more he recognised him.

The guy was used to hard work, you could see that immediately. His shoulders were muscular, the patch pattern of his jacket stretched across his upper arms and a lumberjack shirt peeked out from underneath, almost like a cliché. He wore a cap made of coarse wool that sat askew on his head and still had a dried leaf hanging from it. A wild, uneven beard covered his angular cheeks.

But what immediately brought a blush of anger to Ryker's face was the overall picture. Every detail he remembered matched this stranger they now found here with Liam.

It was the figure he had only seen last night by the light of the torch.

"He ... he pushed me!" Ray heard the tearful words come out of the hole in a distorted sob.

What?

His eyes turned to the hole in the ground, only to fall back on the bloke like a hawk.

He heard Eve's startled gasp, and Eve's gaze also fell on the stranger. Ray had never seen Eve like this before. He knew her fear when it came to the boy, her look of affection. But what he saw on her face now was new.

"What?" the hermit's voice stumbled, startled. "That's not true, I ..."

Whatever the guy was going to say in his defence was drowned out by the roar of his heartbeat filling his ears.

He didn't think much of stories and rumours. Especially not in this town.

That's why he didn't believe in the nonsense about the "crazy hermit". But now ... the noise in his ears overrode all reason.

The worry about the boy, the adrenaline and the pain in his limbs combined to form an explosive mixture. In his mind's eye, he saw the strong figure pushing the boy into the pit.

Why should he do that, or why had he done it?

That question was irrelevant. It did not penetrate his agitated mind.

Instead, the roaring in his ears grew faster and faster, louder and louder. Just as a storm whipped up the waves of the sea, the wild roar inside him grew louder and louder.

Heat surged through his body as the fighter's blood boiled in his veins, causing the last dam holding him back to collapse like a house of matchsticks. A switch flipped inside him and everything blurred.

He saw only one thing: the hunter.

The stranger.

The madman.

The stalker.

Ryker saw his lips part in a desperate attempt to defuse the situation.

A jolt went through his body as all the fuses inside him blew.

Ryker saw red.

With a thud, the two burly bodies collided between rustling leaves and muddy earth as Ryker lunged at the hunter without thinking.

He had hurt Liam.

Nobody hurt Liam or Eve as long as HE was there!

In that moment, Ray forgot that he had also hurt the boy deeply emotionally. It fell out of his mind like a rotten apple. Only the protective instinct came to the fore as he gripped the tarnanorak by the shoulders and the fabric groaned under the pressure of his strength.

All Ray could think about was that this man had physically hurt Liam, and that made the rage in his veins explode like a bomb.

All the pent-up anger and tension that had been simmering beneath his surface for too long now erupted as he wrapped the hermit's body with his.

Sky and earth merged as they rolled across the damp ground. Rocks and leaves pressed into his body through his jacket, but Ryker didn't feel it, so focused was he on the stalker. The hermit was more trained than it appeared at first glance; he kept yanking him into a new roll whenever Ray tried to pin him to the ground.

Ray realised then that his anger had made him careless. He had underestimated the man. The thought of protecting Liam released his reserves of strength and forced Hawkins into a different role.

Finally, he managed to pin the man to the ground.

Growling angrily, the hand detached itself from the rough fabric in the next heartbeat and retracted like the rubber from Liam's slingshot. The hand clenched into a fist, and before he could think, it shot back. He aimed for the hunter's head, or more precisely his temple, to put him out of action with a well-aimed blow. Hawkins didn't stand a chance ... or so he thought.

He was all the more surprised when his fist hit a forearm instead of the hard skull.

How the ...?

Had the guy trained in defence techniques?

How else could he defend himself against a goddamn soldier?

"I didn't hurt the boy!" he heard the gasp below him.

Ray hesitated.

It was only a heartbeat in which his body froze in surprise - but it was the one that robbed him of his advantage. Too late, he recognised the gap in his cover as he saw the fist hurtling towards him out of the corner of his eye. It hit him below the ribs, right in the diaphragm.

The air left his body with a gasp before another powerful blow crashed against his sternum and flung him away from his opponent like a wet sack of sand.

The world around him blurred like a distorting mirror at the fair, the colours melting away and being covered by black spots that danced before his eyes.

"Ray!" he heard Eve's startled cry through the thick veil of muffled noise in his ears.

Instinctively, he threw his arms in front of his face in anticipation of an attack.

Every muscle in his body was tense. He waited for the next blow and his nerves were already tingling with new impulses that were only set for one thing: Counterattack.

Seconds passed. His heart counted each one like a ticking metronome. But the expected blow failed to materialise.

Instead, the weight suddenly disappeared from him. Leaves whirled up, earth scattered across his face, while the spots in front of his eyes slowly became smaller and finally disappeared completely.

Ray blinked several times and pushed himself upwards. Mud oozed between his fingers, a small pebble pressed against his palm.

Ray could just see Hawkin's bear-like figure disappearing through the thicket into the forest.

'After him,' it hissed loudly in his head. 'He won't get away from you again!

The muscles in his body tried to obey the command in his head. Almost mechanically, he got to his feet and swayed as the world began to tilt ominously again.

The combination of the exertion and the events of the day had taken their toll on him. He could feel his nerves tingling. Hot and cold at the same time, a sickening sensation he had long been all too familiar with. Liam's stone was but a small thing against the vice that had plagued him for so long - but combined with Hawkin's blows, it was one drop too many in a limited vessel.

In the past, he'd taken something like this in stride. He could march for miles with the damn gear on his back. He squatted in the scorching sun, in the torrents of rain. He knew what it was like to starve, to thirst, to gorge on emergency rations.

Shit, he had rolled in the mud with others from his Bravo team and pushed each other to the limit. And now some bungler was sending him to the ground?

Grumbling, he looked in the direction in which the madman had fled.

Ray had already taken a step towards the bushes before the whimpering and sobbing, coupled with a strained groan, caused his gaze to fall back again.

Eve held on to a larger root and reached her hand into the hollow - but she lost her grip on the slippery ground with the smooth chucks she was wearing and was in danger of slipping herself.

His heart skipped a beat in his chest.

"Oh no!" he gasped and opened his eyes a little wider in shock.

He hesitated for just a moment, glancing briefly in the direction the hunter had disappeared in, then at the spectacle before his eyes, which took his breath away. "Shit!"