Father Paval Rudenko

Lucien

He swung the axe up in the air with his powerful arms.

He had discovered where the gun was.

It was kept hidden in the woman’s bed, beside her pillow, and stored under a pile of smelly blankets.

He swung the axe again and brought it down on the logs, splitting them with the force of his powerful blow.

A Nosler M48 TGR 2010A, he reflected absently as he paused to wipe the sweat from his face and arms. As always, he had discarded the jacket, and he was bare-chested as he worked. One of the best hunting rifles, one that he had also examined a long time ago when he had been doing business with a Texan dealer.

It was a large hunting rifle that she kept clean and ready. He had seen it the day she had killed a rabbit with it. An act of mindless cruelty, he thought as he watched the old man pick up the limp body of the dead animal. But he had seen where she kept it and had later asked the old man Gustav about it when the crone had set off on one of her sojourns into the forest.

Gusta