Extraordinary Zoology Part 12

"What do we do?" he asked. The wurm was nearly parallel to them now, advancing into the center of the village.

"The spars would have worked," said Pendrake, "if we had more of them, and seasoned troops who could swallow terror like so much cold stew." He looked at the fallen spars and the scattering trollkin. "But we can't pin it anymore. We need to figure out how to hurt it."

A gunshot sounded from behind Lynus, to his right.

Edrea looked through the smoke along the sights of her rifle. There were definitely gaps in the armor plating, but she'd missed. Her round had spalled against the gorgandur's scales.

"When it extends, the flesh beneath the armor is exposed," she shouted over the rumbling. "I haven't figured out the timing yet!"

"Don't bother," said Pendrake as he loosed an arrow against the beast's flank. It bounced from the gorgandur's carapace like a pebble thrown against a cliff face. The great wurm rolled, slamming into a stone home. Dust shook from among the stones, but the house stood.

"They overlap in a constant direction," Lynus said. "You'll need to shoot between them, from behind."

Edrea nodded. Lynus was right. She reloaded by feel, her eyes tracking the gorgandur as it rippled through the village.

A female trollkin, barefoot, with an axe in hand and an old shield strapped to her back, charged the beast's flank.

"I doubt anything vital lies an arrow's length in," said Pendrake.

"War cleaver can reach vital," Kinik said.

Edrea was pleased to see the ogrun had collected her wits, even if her recovered courage was ill-placed.

Horgash rode up on Greta. "I'd curse, but I don't think invoking The Wurm amid our current company is wise," he said.

Pendrake drew his sword, that ancient Orgoth blade that always stayed sharp. Sharp enough to cut . . .

"Lynus, Edrea . . . make sure to update the gorgandur entry in the next edition. Get Kinik admitted to the university. Horgash, you get these three and everybody from this side of the village through the Tharn."

"Professor," Edrea began. "Youa""

"Won't live forever? No, I won't." He pointed at the gorgandur's flank, where the axe-wielding female currently hacked away, chipping flecks of scale. "That monster is going to feast on trollkin who don't know well enough to flee."

"Muthgar Preymaker didn't know well enough to flee," said Lynus.

"Well, maybe we didn't get his whole story," Pendrake said. "Now go! Punch a hole for us, and I'll either be along shortly with rest of the evacuating kriel, or I won't."

Pendrake slung a satchel over his shoulder, adjusted his grip on his sword, and ran farther into the village, moving parallel to the wurm. Edrea watched him go. She remembered Lynus saying, just three hours ago, that he'd follow Pendrake anywhere in Immoren. He'd spoken for both of them in that moment, but here they were, not following.

"He told us not to follow him," said Lynus, as if reading her mind. "I still meant what I said."

"I know," she answered.

"Enough tears!" said Horgash with an ugly yell. "Edrea, cast that seeing-spell and find us the holes in the Tharn lines."

Edrea spun vossyl liumyn, closed her eyesa"which were tearless, she had half a mind to say to Horgasha"and when she opened them, the waning afternoon light and long shadows gave way to crisp details in grey.

The tree line, three hundred paces away, was spotted with amber outlines. Edrea concentrated and focused.

"There must be four dozen bloodtrackers there." She turned a full circle. "I can't say where they're thinnest, but they're thickest in the copse of trees on that knoll."

"Then we know where not to run," said Horgash.

"No!" said Lynus. "We know exactly where to run." He pointed at the knoll. "If somebody is controlling this beast, they're right there, surrounded by bodyguards while casting beast magic, or Wurm-will, or some such."

"That's not an escape, that's an a.s.sault."

"And a fell caller doesn't run from a fight," Lynus said. "You're a warrior, a leader of warriors."

"I used to be."

"You can't sing, and you can't shout, but these trollkin can still hear you. Lead them! Get us onto that knoll, and we will save this village."

Edrea was stirred by Lynus' speech. Chronicler indeed.

"They are going to rain spears and arrows on us before we're halfway there," Horgash said.

"Then we need thicker skin," said Edrea, weaving fheyissa, the fortress sigils, with both hands. She clenched a fist and swept the resulting ring of runes into a girdle about her waist.

"Stay within about eight paces," she said.

"How many does skin-spell work on?" asked Kinik.

Edrea thought about that and reached into the weave to test it. "As many of my friends who stay within about eight paces."

Horgash began shouting in Molgur-Trul. Edrea winced. It sounded like he was hurting himself.

"We take the fight to the hill! I need axes and shields at my side! Warriors of the kriel, to me!"

Were there any warriors here? Edrea had watched with despair as the spar-bearers fell and fled. The kriel was in disarray, and the wurm wrought a winding path of destruction through it.

But several older trollkin came running, battered shields and ancient axes in hand.

"Grindar requires Gelfas' aid!" Horgash shouted.

Edrea thought she recognized the two names from Trollkin history.

"But in this tale," Horgash continued, "Gelfas has no full-bloods, no warbeasts at his side. He does not need them, because he marches with the Grey Champions!"

Edrea had never heard of the Grey Champions. Horgash was improvising, spinning a new tale around an old one.

Horgash pointed across the glade at the knoll. "The enemy commander hides in those trees. We go to cut him to the ground, and the trees with him if they stand in our way!"

Edrea was startled by the full-throated, robust cheer that followed. These old trollkin, decades past their prime, were ready to live up to the legend, and write a new one.

Horgash pointed forward with his right sword and shouted, "For Grindar, for Gelfas, for Jata and the Glade!" and spurred Greta into a slow run. The trollkin formed a phalanx around and behind him. They all began to lope across the clearing.

Horgash shouted back over his shoulder at Edrea. "Keep up with us, la.s.s! I like what you do for my old hide!"

Edrea sprinted into the midst of the trollkin phalanx, slowed to catch her breath, and smiled to see Lynus at her left and Kinik at her right. Then arrows began to drop into the group, and she bent her smile into a determined grimace.

She leaned into her stride and focused on her breathing. Simultaneously maintaining vossyl liumyn and fheyissa was difficult, and doing so while running was even harder. Her pulse pounded in her ears, audible over the cacophony of a dozen pairs of feet, Greta's hoofbeats, and the rumbling progress of the gorgandur through the village to the rear.

The hail of arrows intensified around her. The Tharn archers had decided she was a threat, the spinning runes of her weave no doubt calling attention to her. Kinik, running to Edrea's right, moved closer and raised her arms. What was she doing? Edrea couldn't see through the ogrun, could only make out the clump of amber outlines on the knoll.

Kinik grunted, and her coat seemed to sprout half a dozen arrows. The ogrun faltered for half a pace, but then steadied back into her position. Edrea felt the weave flutter, the fortress of fheyissa rippling in response to the volley. It began to slip away from her. Her lungs were hot, her heart hammered in her chest, and the weave itself developed a pulse, a rhythm.

Edrea stutter-stepped, adjusting her pace to run in time to that pulse. Kinik shot her a concerned glance, and then looked back to the battlefield.

The pulse of the weave, the pounding of her heart, and the pace of her feet were all in sync. Not the unison of marching soldiers, though. This was a rhythmic counterpoint, like a drum circle, and with each bar, with each measure of contrapuntal hammering, she grew stronger. With each refrain she felt greater ease in the exertion. What had been painful cacophony was now exhilarating. Edrea reveled in power fueled by the glorious music of the weave.

But Kinik was still taking arrows on her behalf. Edrea wove again, swiftly. Alyshh rhya, occlusion and self. A third ring of runes spun into the air around her.

Lynus saw a third ring of runes appear around Edrea, and then all the runes shimmered and vanished. Edrea herself almost vanished with them. She wasn't invisiblea"not quitea"but he couldn't focus on her, as if the new magic she was spinning forced his eyes to look away.

The next volley of arrows was spread wider. The Tharn had lost Edrea and were now picking different targets. Arrows dropped amid them, and a few struck home, thumping deep into the shoulders of the trollkin, but most bounced off.

With that thought something struck Lynus in the head, so hard he could hear a crack. He put his hand up to his head, expecting to find blood and brain matter, but both seemed safely contained within his skin and skull. Thank you, Morrow, for Iosan magic, he thought. It occurred to him that this was probably horrible blasphemy to an Iosan, but there wasn't time to ask Edrea who he should thank. Besides her, of course.

Looking ahead he could now see figures on the knoll. They wore animal skins, rough leathers, and bones, including animal-skull masks and horned headdresses. Men and women, all filthy, caked with mud and blood, and armed with bows and spears.

None of them looked like Lynus imagined a beast-handling warlock might look. Or maybe all of them did.

"I've got the big one!" shouted Horgash. "I'll break the line; you break necks." He dug his heels into Greta's flanks, and the bison sprang forward, surprising Lynus with her speed.

As one, the blue-skinned, grey-quilled phalanx leaned forward and began a sprint, running faster than Lynus thought possible for aged warriors. He leaned into his own run but quickly fell behind. His sword, his armored greatcoat . . . it was all so heavy.

Edrea and Kinik kept up with the group and pulled ahead of him. Lynus sucked air and steadied his pace. He couldn't run that fast, but he wouldn't be too far behind.

Greta and Horgash entered the trees with a raspy, gurgled battle cry and a resounding crunch, followed by screams in at least three languages. Through gaps between the trees, Lynus could see that Horgash had charged the largest of the Tharn, an axe-wielding monster of a man Greta gored and flung left like a giant rag doll, knocking down several of his fellows. Horgash, meanwhile, leaned far to the right side and hacked deeply with his off-hand sword, smashing through a Tharn shield and shield arm.

Then the trollkin phalanx arrived, and the wooded knoll erupted in chaos wrought of spears, blood, axes, gore, and the limbs of both trees and men.

Lynus couldn't make sense of it. There was too much going on. Then motion caught his eye in a still part of the copse, off to the far left, well beyond the fray in the trees. There stood a heavily bearded northerner dressed in dark robesa"a Skirov, perhaps. He held aloft a curious bladed staff and was ringed by spinning, glowing runes.

"There! THE LEFT!" Lynus screamed, pointing with his sword.

Edrea dropped to one knee, whipped her rifle up to her shoulder, and fired.

The Skirov spun to his right, and a spray of blood erupted from his shoulder. But instead of dropping or clutching the arm, he shrugged, and with no flash of magic, no change to the runes spinning about him, his shoulder was healed.

At that same instant a giant, inhuman scream sounded from the village.

Perhaps, just like the farrow warlock Rorsh, this Skirov could push his own wounds onto the beast via some magical bond, Lynus thought. He shivered to think that this warlock might be impossible to kill. He wouldn't die until the gorgandur did, and the gorgandur was sixty feet of armored horror.

Unless . . .

He had no time to shout instructions. Kinik had heard Edrea's shot and turned to charge at the warlock. Edrea, still kneeling, reloaded.

Lynus wouldn't need to shout instructions. Either this warlock was effectively immortal or the magical ability to push wounds from himself onto the wurm granted Lynus, Edrea, and Kinik a narrow, treacherous path through the monster's otherwise impenetrable scales.

A gap in the armor.

Kinik lunged, her aim as true as Edrea's had been. The war cleaver tore deep into the warlock's belly and out the back and side, tearing flesh, bowel, and cloth in a single stroke that nearly cut the man in half. Then, fast as an eye-blink, his flesh was whole and Kinik's blade unbloodied. Again, a howl sounded from the village. At least, Lynus hoped it was howling. The wurm might also be reveling in its repast of defenseless trollkin, he reflected.

Kinik stopped, stunned by the magical erasure of her work. The warlock raised a rune-wrapped hand, grinned wickedly, and pointed at her. Lightning sprang into the air between them.

The single flash seared a long path in Lynus' sight, connecting Kinik's right arm, her war cleaver, and two of the nearby trollkin. The lightning was so fast Lynus didn't even see it arc from one victim to the next. There was just a flash and an afterimage spotting Lynus' vision as three of his allies fell to the ground.

He blinked away the spots and kept running. He pa.s.sed Edrea as she fired a second time, and the fact that the carbine's report didn't startle him at all testified to how bright and loud that bolt of lightning had been.

"Eight paces!" Edrea shouted from behind him.

Lynus slowed. He did not want to face this warlock without her support.

Edrea shouted something in Iosan. A bolt of blue-white fire seared past Lynus and struck the warlock squarely in the chest.

Runes pulsed around the man, and the gaps in his tattered, scorched robe revealed unblemished, unwounded flesh. Again, the great wurm howled from the village.

The warlock turned to face Lynus and Edrea and pointed at them as he'd pointed at Kinik. Another bolt of lightning seared Lynus' vision. He gasped in surprise when it didn't strike him.

Edrea gasped in pain.

Lynus' skin tingled briefly. Edrea's magic was gone from him.

"The greater threat dispatched, I can now chide you for fleeing a rare honor," the Skirov said in thickly accented Khadoran. He reached out toward the village with his right hand, his left held before him, comfortably wrapped around the haft of that wickedly bladed staff. Runes swirled around the outstretched hand, and Lynus thought he sensed power acc.u.mulating there. He stood, uncertain, and brought his sword in front of him for defense.

The point bobbled and dipped.

The warlock raised an eyebrow and waved his left hand in the direction of the melee to Lynus' right. There was an explosion, closely followed by the screams of trollkin and men. A scattering of soil rained down upon Lynus.

"The Devourer would embrace you, and yet you come here, to me? Where your death will mean nothing?"

Lynus shivered, and the point of his sword dropped farther.

"I didn't come up here to die," he said in pa.s.sable Khadoran. He tried to mean it, but his voice quavered. He let the point drop even more, exaggerating the weakness he felt.

"Alas, I am afraid youa"" and then the warlock lunged.

Lynus brought the point of his sword up, and the warlock's left arm glided along the blade. The man hissed in pain and stepped back, barely retaining his grip on his staff. Lynus swept and swung as hard as he could, burying the sword deep in the warlock's right shoulder and jarring Lynus' hands as the blade struck bone.

There was no exaggeration this time. His grip failed, and he let go of the sword. It fell free of the naked, unharmed shoulder. A howl of monstrous pain and rage rose from the village.

"Feigning weakness is effective, but only if it is, in fact, feigned, child." The Skirov adjusted his grip on the wickedly bladed staff. "But that is the last of the lessons you will learn in this life."

No rifle, no sword . . . Lynus fumbled with the sample kit at his left hip. One of the little bottles had a mild acid in it. His fingers closed on the slim handle of his scalpel, its blade barely the size of his thumb.

The warlock lunged again, and for the tiniest moment Lynus envisioned a series of cuts arranged in sequence before him, an unorthodox dissection plan for a very dangerous, quickly moving cadaver.