When my turn came I ignored the red eyes and went into my mercenary improvisation. I was pretty good. Snarling, stomping, scratching, demanding my payment about every third paragraph, I gave a decent show. The tension in the room dropped steadily as I got into my little fable, embellishing this part and that and all the time being sure to remain aggressive about demanding my bread up front.
I was damn good and I knew it and so did Cri and when it was over I sat down, unasked, knowing I had pulled it off.
Gor smiled, unconcerned with my breach of protocol. Instead he sat down on his throne and propped his ehin on long thin fingers with long thin shiny-black nails and said:
“So, you are Smada’s One.”
10
So I killed him.
I was up out of my seat with my sword drawn and he raised his right arm up to stop me and I blocked it with my left and grabbed his black shiny hair with those same fingers and I drove my blade through his chest and bright red gas came from his throat with his laugh and he fell dead at my feet but . . .
But it didn’t help much.
There was a flash and great booming thunderclap, the sound rocketing around the stone room. One of the guards screamed and dropped his scythe and clutched his hands around his throat and his features— his neck, his arms, his wrists, his forehead—began to swell outward, ugly, misshapen, grotesque, and he tried to scream again but his ballooning throat clogged the sound and his eyes, bugging and panicked and beseeching to all of us, started squeezing themselves out of his sockets and . . .
And there was another flash and some smoke and I heard the laughter once more and the smoke cleared and there stood Gor where the guard had been, black robe and shining red eyes, spinning that great huge scythe in his hands like a cheerleader’s baton.
I was too scared to do anything but run—either forward or back. I chose forward and as I closed the distance between us all I could think of, oddly, was that Smada and I hadn’t exhanged a word during the entire dusty ride up in that carriage, just sat there with Cri between us, swaying and bouncing and not talking and . . .
And Gor was laughing again and rushing right at me and as he laughed more red light flashed from his eyes
and more red gas from his mouth and I jumped to my right to avoid the scythe and brought my sword across in front of me to block it and there was a loud clang as the two weapons met and a burst of sparks and then I was down and rolling and then back up to my feet just as the scythe’s handle slammed me full in the left temple. I saw stars and felt the back of my head thud against the floor.
There was more laughter, but it was distant now along with the rest of the room. It was hard to focus on the black robes, hard to get my legs up under me and balanced. 1 was hurt bad and I knew it—a concussion at the very least. I was swaying as I rose and so totally out of whack that I tried to block not an actual lunge, but merely a feint from the scythe, and that took me off-balance so far I fell to my knees.
The laughter increased as the shadowy form approached and stood over me. I could only see him in spurts before my eyes would cloud over, so I was constantly blinking, and this made Gor laugh all the more.
“Die, little one!” he said and grabbed the hair on the top of my head with his left hand and swung the great scythe back with his right, swung it back high over his head, and he smiled bright red light at me and started his head-chopping motion and I stuck blindly out and clamped my left hand onto his Adam’s apple and jerked him toward me and my sword, which pierced cleanly through his lower abdomen before cracking through the spine three inches out his back.
He screamed as he fell the rest of the way forward across me and there was more red gas and a bone-numbing rush of cold air. I held on frantically, jerking the sword deeper and deeper into him and farther and farther out his other side, and he thrashed and warped above me like a burning insect for what seemed like a very long time.
Then all was still and quiet for a few seconds. I lumbered about and managed to shove his body off just as the second thunderclap shook the room.
It was the bald sweating gap-toothed drooling pig at the drum who now approached me with shining red eyes. The laughter was of a different tone coming from this creature, this repulsive naked ogre with his foul smell and round wet belly and crimped genitals swaying. His bare feet slapped wetly as he danced around me, darting in and out. I was still zonked and confused and tired and I could not understand why he didn’t just rush me and be done with it and then, when he darted in closer than before, I met that deformed gaze and saw his fear.
And I understood it all, suddenly. I understood his power. It was not power at all, but the spell of fear. It was why all shook in his presence but would not come forward to help him. He didn’t control them. He simply ruled their paralysis.
And I knew something else, instinctively. This gross body was his last. This gross body was his own.
I was still thinking this when he leaped forward and clamped his gnarled hands about my throat. We rolled over and over on that shining black floor and my own hands went up to meet his but his grip was too strong and his smell too foul—I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t seem to bring the last of my strength into my hands. He was too awful and too close and too strong, and I was losing, I knew it, sinking down as my face went red from the pressure and my throat began to collapse under those gnarled hands, and we stopped rolling with him on top and his eyes lasered red and his breath red gas and spittle and his laughter began once more.
I was going under for good when Gor screamed and let go. It took a couple of seconds before I could make out anything at all, before I could discern the beast writhing in front of me to pull the dagger from his back or the frozen figure of Cri still posed in the position from which she had delivered the stabbing. It was incredible. She was still so frightened she couldn’t move, and how she had managed to force herself forward to deliver that dagger I will never, ever, know.
Quite a woman, indeed.
The beast had finally grasped the hilt and had actually managed to drag it halfway out before I could clamber over and slam my own dagger into its chest.
Its eyes went wide and it stared at me and shrieked an ungodly sound and exploded into a nightmare burst of flesh and red gas and arctic cold and this time came not only a thunderclap, but the lightning as well, sizzling up from Gor’s forehead to ricochet insanely about the black walls of the chamber before turning bright, dazzling crimson, and then . . .
Then it was gone. I got up and grabbed hold of Cri and hugged her and she hugged me back, gasping and smiling. We stood like that for several seconds, and around us stood Gor’s people, blank-eyed and staring, awake from a coma or nightmare, and I thought: It’s over! We’ve made it! just as the great black doors to the chamber burst inward and the Dead came jamming through to feed.
I managed to get my sword loose and up but was too weak to hold it steady. Cri, beside me, was no better. Even free from the spell she was spent—that saving thrust had been all she had.
What saved us at first was the people in the chamber between us and the ghouls. If we had been closer to the door, we would’ve been eaten in the first ten seconds. But there were others there to feed upon, and the Dead did just that and the chamber was filled with a mind-melting cacophony of screams and blood and ripping black teeth. People were running wildly about, falling and shrieking and dying, and the Dead just lurched at them, outnumbering them, out-eviling them. Eating them alive.
We had managed to stumble over to the throne toward where I figured Gor’s own exit had been when the first half-dozen zombies reached us. I raised up my sword to fend one off, but my legs were wobbly and my wrists shook with fatigue, and I yelled: “Run, Cri!” and shoved her away just as a strong hand grabbed my collar from behind and threw me backward out of range of the clutching black talons.