Two minutes later, Roland was flat on the ground, wheezing like a busted bagpipe, clutching his chest after having it stomped on by a dog the size of a small horse.
Around him lay six dead dogs, each dispatched in the most gruesome ways imaginable. One had a cluster of steel darts embedded in its jaw, turning its face into a pin cushion of death.
Another had half its skull blown clean off, gray matter and gooey bits splattered like a bad Jackson Pollock painting—turns out, these mutts actually had brains after all, which was kind of a surprise.
One more unlucky dog had a sword clean through its neck, head dangling like a grotesque bobblehead, while another one was foaming at the mouth, body decaying like he'd just been dipped in a vat of instant death sauce.
