In the brief pause before the next wave, Sunbright felt a cool hand on his scraped arm. Sysquemalyn pushed alongside him, hair bedraggled, eyes red, nose running. Over the thud of feet and the wailing of the pit fiend, she yelled, "Keep them back! You too, 'Mas, and you, elf! I think I can gate us out of here!"
"Why should we trust you?" retorted Sunbright. The wave of lemures was only a dozen feet away, and he frowned as he inspected his befouled blade's edge. It was dull from hacking through flesh and not-flesh. "You've done nothing but lie from the start!"
"That's the beauty of a crisis! You have no choice!" Despite her begrimed state, Sysquemalyn chuckled, delighting in conflict. Sunbright couldn't reconcile her with the soul-dead loser whose head he'd almost removed. She meant to say more, but suddenly pushed him forward. "Stop them!"
The hordes of lemures faded from Sunbright's vision as he beheld a new menace urged on by the screaming pit fiend. Bounding from the very feet of the monster came four or five imps or… Words failed the barbarian. They looked like armored knights, if the armor were made of dried leather, and were studded with tall spiral horns, high arching bat wings, and spikes along their arms and legs. The wings obviously were vestigial, for the fiends jumped in great bounds like manic grasshoppers. Where they landed they crushed lemures by the handful, so yellow gore marked their taloned feet.
All five had been thrown into the battle against the sole living beings in the chamber. Sunbright had time only to shout, "Greenwillow, back to back!" before they were involved in the fight of their lives.
The lemures never fell back, and more were crushed as the imps crashed upon them almost at Sunbright's feet. Two attacked immediately.
The monsters used no finesse, just brute strength in a headlong charge. Huge brown leather hands studded on the back with bony spikes opened to tear off the barbarian's head. Resisting the urge to fall back, Sunbright countered with an equally brutal assault. He'd wrapped both hands around Harvester's haft and tucked it under his right armpit. Now he lunged, straight and true, praying his hobnails didn't slip in the sea of yellow ooze upon which they battled.
Up close, the imp's face was a blank mask of leather stippled with spikes no longer than a fingernail. The eyes were blank holes, and when it opened its mouth, the black cavity showed nothing, as if the head were hollow. Sunbright intended to find out. Crowding the monster, he felt the horny hands brush his topknot and clasp shut. But he'd struck.
Harvester's widened point jammed into the beast's gaping mouth, struck leather on the far side, and split it. Cranking the pommel, grunting with the effort, the barbarian felt the hook tear as he yanked back toward his gut. Harvester's barb jerked loose, snagging on the creature's lower jaw where a lip would have been.
By now, Sunbright was taking punishment from a score of spikes. One leather-clad arm raked across his shoulder, splitting skin with jagged spikes like the teeth of a giant garfish. The other arm slammed him alongside the neck, and he had to hoick his head to the left to keep his windpipe from being shredded.
But at the same time, he twisted Harvester again and pushed, straining sideways. With the hook in the jaw acting as anchor, he scored a deep gash from the imp's slash of a mouth halfway around its neck. With a heave, he sliced its head half off.
Barging in so close he felt white bone spikes ping his chest, the barbarian shoved to drive his sword down the thing's throat, then levered the opposite way.
Like gutting a deer, he peeled the imp's head off.
Only a flap of leathery skin remained at one side of the neck, and the heavy horned head toppled down behind its shoulder. A dry stink like shorn metal welled up from within the fiend, and Sunbright wondered if that represented its spirit, if beings here had them.
Headless, blinded, the imp staggered, stepped back, piled up questing lemures against the back of its knees, and crumpled atop them.
"Sunbright, help!"
He'd almost forgotten Greenwillow guarding his back. He found her on her knees, pressed down by the sheer weight of an imp she'd skewered through the chest. The hilt of her slim sword was wedged between spikes, but the fiend simply flailed at her with horned hands like hard-swung morning stars.
"You have to tear them open!" Sunbright yelled. Unable to dive past the whirling arms, he opted to lunge. Harvester's spread tip rammed through the leather hide directly beside the shank of Greenwillow's sword. "Cut the other way!"
Veteran of a hundred battles, Greenwillow understood instinctively. Bracing with her knees, she put her slim muscles behind the bright edge of the keen blade. Sunbright plied his heavy hand-forged blade-fine quality, but no match for elven true-steel-to yank away from the elf's cut.
Neat as sawing a tree, the imp came apart in the center. The same brassy stink gushed out as its top half toppled behind its rear end. The tall horns struck sparks from the stone floor.
Yet three more imps crowded in, smashing lemures aside to kill the human and elf. Sunbright stifled a groan of exhaustion and despair. Already, his hands and arms and legs were trembling. Blood ran down his forearms and dripped to the ashy ground. More wet redness ran down his shirt from his aching neck where spikes had gouged a furrow in his shoulder. He was torn in a dozen other places, and Greenwillow, always pale, was almost as white as the bony creatures around them. Worn to the nub, they'd surely lose when these charging imps reached them.
Yet he fought on as an imp darted forward to grab him. Showing intelligence, this creature reached in low and tried to snag its target's ankle to pull it out from under him. The barbarian slammed Harvester straight down like a crowbar into the armored, studded arm. But perhaps the imp had considered that. By the ghastly red light and infernal smoke, Sunbright saw the free hand snatch at him-and found that Harvester was fetched up in the thing's other arm. The blade was suffering the same as its master, and even the hook's inside edge, usually as keen as a fish knife, had worn dull. As Sunbright tugged to rip the edge through tough leather, the studded hand closed on his calf and yanked.
The world whirled as Sunbright flipped and crashed on his back. Only his thick topknot saved his head, but he received a solid crack. And even before he could shake his head to clear it, the armored fiend jumped on him.
The barbarian's breath shot from his lungs as giant, heavy studded feet thumped his chest. He smelled a whiff of dust and musty-bear odor as his vest was crushed to him. He fought for air as the imp wrapped two leathery hands around his throat and squeezed and pulled. The thing even smelled of hot leather, like horsehide gloves hung near a fire to dry. It was a question whether he'd be choked or have his head torn off. Flailing with his right hand, he managed only to whap Harvester against the beast's thick hide. He couldn't get purchase to strike. The world went dark and spinning, and he knew his time was running out.
In a desperate burst of fury, he curled and convulsed into a ball, managing to hook a foot in the fiend's crotch. It had no genitals to break, but the toehold would do. Straining until he thought his heart and head would burst, Sunbright braced his back and kicked straight up.
He was lucky, he knew, for the imp had been overbalanced. His throat and chin suffered as the leathery hands were dragged off forcibly. Then the imp toppled onto its head, half-wedged in a crack, and Sunbright could painfully crawl away-not that there was any safety to crawl to.