“I don’t much cotton to gunnin’ nymphs,” Hickok grunted.
“It’s either them or us. We can’t afford to go easy on them or we’ll never see the Home again.”
Standing near Elphinstone, Endora Morlock cackled and mocked them.
“You’re not so tough now, are you, boys? In a few minutes you’ll be lying on the floor, and I’ll be dancing in your blood.”
“One,” Blade said, ignoring the barbs. To think he’d once felt sorry for her!
The nonstop drumming on the door continued, mingling with the laughter and the tittering to create an insane din.
“Two,” Blade stated. If nothing else on this trip, he’d learned never to take potential enemies and circumstances at face value. Hidden motives and meanings always lurked beneath the surface, and they had to be diligently peeled off like the layers of a rotten onion to expose the putrid core within.
“Kill them, my little darlings!” Endora cried. “Show them how foolish they were to cross the Morlocks.”
“Three,” Blade barked and leaned backwards. He held the Marlin in his right hand, leveling the barrel as his friends swiftly backed up and the door crashed inward.
Serfs jammed the doorway in their eagerness to plunge their knives into the youths, beaming inanely, bloodlust animating their eyes.
The Marlin boomed, and two serfs dropped. Blade fired twice more, wishing there was some other way he could stop them, overcome with guilt.
Geronimo’s Winchester cracked five times in succession, and with each shot a pale, smirking fury fell.
“Kill them! Kill them!” Endora shrieked.
Doing their best to accommodate her, the serfs pressed inside without a spare glance at their fallen comrades. They were about to crest into the room like a tidal wave breaking on a shore when a lean youth in buckskins barred their path.
Hickok had held himself in reserve for just this moment. A lopsided grin creased his lips as he slapped leather, both Colts clearing leather in a streak of movement too fast for the eye to follow. He thumbed off two shots and bored two slugs through two atrophied brains.
The serfs concentrated their attack on the gunfighter. A male lunged with his knife extended.
Unflinching, Hickok sent a round into the male’s nose, then shifted and blasted two others. More took their place, and he gunned them down, a single shot apiece, invariably going for a head shot, firing until both revolvers were empty and a pile of corpses choked the doorway.
Over the pile came the rest of the serfs, their enthusiasm bordering on fanaticism, those in the front laughing the hardest.
Blade saw the gunfighter trying to reload, and he grabbed Hickok’s shirt and propelled him backward. Discarding the Marlin, he drew his Bowies and advanced to meet the serfs head-on. Suddenly they were swirling around him, cutting and hacking and cackling, always cackling, thoroughly enjoying themselves. He blocked and countered and stabbed, matching their madness with a frenzy of sheer desperation, becoming a tornado of whirling limbs and flashing Bowies, only dimly aware of Geronimo battling on his right, of the twin tomahawks weaving a lethal tapestry to rival his own.
Incredibly quick, the serfs fought like spitfires, prancing and lancing and thrusting and dancing, always in motion, always laughing.
Fury seized Blade, a fury at these creatures—for they could hardly be called human—who had no regard for life, their own or anyone else’s. All that mattered to them was fun, fun, fun, having a good time at the expense of everyone and everything. Work became a game. Killing became a game. Existence was a giant game presided over by an insane games master.
His flesh was pierced and gashed and nicked, but he fought on. His arms flagged and his legs complained, but he endured. The sight of so much blood and gore sickened him, but he let self-preservation take its course and took on all comers.
After a while individual foes no longer existed. In their place was a pale demon of many guises who cackled and popped up here, there and anywhere, wounding him in a score of spots, decorating his clothing with crimson streamers. He killed and killed, and still they came on.
Blade ripped a male from gut to sternum, then severed a woman’s neck with a single swipe. He deflected an overhand swing and gave a thrust to the throat in return. A knife bit into his side and he bit back. On and on the combat raged, until all of a sudden he found himself standing alone with a carpet of corpses all about him.
“We did it, pard.”
The weary voice drew Blade’s attention to the right, where Geronimo and Hickok were back to back, the Blackfoot holding gore-spattered tomahawks, the gunfighter a red-stained axe. Bodies ringed them.
There wasn’t a serf alive. They were sprawled in all manner of positions, many coated with blood, ripped and torn and cleaved. And every one, every male and every female, smiled even in death, as if they had played a monumental joke on their slayers, a joke only they comprehended.
“Dear Spirit,” Geronimo said softly, “is this what it’s really like to be a Warrior? Is this the price we’ll pay for protecting our loved ones?”
“I am a mite tuckered out,” Hickok confessed.
Blade swallowed and surveyed the slaughter. He spotted Tabitha and Selwyn a few feet to his left, dead side by side, and realized, in horror, that he must have slain them.
“Thank goodness there wasn’t any more of those rascals,” Hickok said.
“A few more minutes and we would have bit the dust.”
“I wonder if I should become a Warrior?” Geronimo asked, a question meant more for himself than his friends.
Blade looked down at the wounds he’d sustained and the blood seeping out. One knife had cut his vest right above the heart but missed the skin.
His cuts weren’t life-threatening, but they hurt terribly.
“You murdered our babies, you fiends!”
The youths turned to find Endora Morloek gazing in shock at the serfs.
“You bastards will suffer for this!” Endora raged. “I’ll torture you personally.”
“Shut your face, bimbo,” Hickok snapped, dropping the axe. He began reloading both Colts.
Endora stepped over several bodies and shook her fists at all three of them. “Why couldn’t you leave us alone? We were perfectly happy until you butted in. You barged into our castle, sat in judgment on our lives and decided we were evil, decided you had to meddle in our personal affairs.”
She trembled in her fury. “You had no right.”
Blade licked his dry lips and tasted blood on the tip of his tongue. “We had every right. Evil must be exterminated wherever it’s found.”
“Who the hell are you to say what’s evil and what isn’t?”
It was Hickok who answered. “We’re Warriors, lady.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means we know the difference between loving, decent folks and perverts who go around preyin’ on people who can’t defend themselves. It means you can have one minute to make your peace with your Master.”
Both Blade and Geronimo glanced at the gunfighter. “Don’t,” the giant said.
Endora Morloek snorted in contempt. “My Maker? There is no God, you fool. We are what we are, and that’s all there is to it.”
Hickok nodded once. “And I’m a Warrior.” His right hand swept straight out.
“No!” Blade cried, taking a stride toward him.
The weapons room thundered to the retort of another gunshot, and the lady in white sprouted a hole between her eyes, eyes that conveyed a flicker of astonishment a millisecond before she spun in a graceful pirouette and sank to the floor.
Geronimo dashed over to her and uselessly felt for a pulse. “She’s dead.”