‘Bitch!’
Grinning broadly, the hunter passed the spear to the bow-armed woman and reached to her belt, a wide strap decorated with lumps of leather that had been sewn onto its surface, pulling a short skinning knife with a broad blade from its sheath and motioning her comrades forward while she sized up her victim. Arabus laughed incredulously, forcing a note of bravado into his voice.
‘Trying to work out where to start, are you? I’d send the three of you to meet your gods if I didn’t have this arrow through-’
She slapped him, hard enough to put stars in his vision for a moment, and her companions pounced while he was still part stunned, taking an arm apiece and pinning his legs with their own while she knelt between them, his vulnerability filling the scout with sudden dread that death was far from the worst thing he faced. Smiling at him smugly, the hunter reached out and gripped the arrow, snapping off the iron head and then pulling its length from the wound while Arabus grunted at the renewed pain, and while the wound bled freely she tore off his leggings to reveal his naked lower body, putting the skinning knife’s wide point against the entry wound.
‘No, don’t …’
She smirked, pushing her hand forward to sink the blade into the hole, broadening it from one finger’s width to three in an instant and tearing another, longer, teeth-gritted snarl of pain from the tracker, who stared in horror at the wooden handle apparently sprouting from his calf. After a moment the woman reached forward and tore the knife free, putting it to her nose and sniffing at the blood that coated the blade with a sigh of pleasure. Leaning forward, she took his penis between her thumb and forefinger, looking up at him and shaking her head in mock sympathy, waggling the flaccid member and saying something to the women restraining him which had them both laughing, their faces hard as they stared down at the helpless man. She spoke to him again, tapping a finger to one of the belt decorations before pointing to his penis with a savage grin, then put the bloody knife’s edge to the organ’s root and stretched out the terrified scout’s member as if to make the act of severing it easier to achieve while Arabus stared at her aghast, the pain in his leg all but forgotten as he lost control of his bladder. Dropping his penis with a shout of disgust, she slapped his testicles hard enough to wrench a scream of pain from him, allowing one to fall from her hand as she pulled the other clear of his body, staring at it for a moment and then back at the terrified scout, baring her teeth in a rictus of hate as she sliced through his scrotum and cut away the testicle with a single savage swipe of her knife.
Somewhere in the derelict fortress a man screamed in agony, the full-throated howl too lost in pain to even know that he was giving voice to it, and the dog paused for an instant at the sound, cocking an ear at the shriek. Summoning all of his strength, Marcus dropped the spear and clenched his unbitten hand into a fist, smashing it into the animal’s jaw hard enough to cut the knuckles on its teeth. With a snarl of rage Monstrum darted his head forward and sank his teeth into the bicep of the arm that was attacking him, stiffening the Roman’s body with the pain as the dog worried at the muscle with its powerful jaw. Searching across the stone floor for the hilt of his sword with the other hand, ignoring the pain of the damage the animal had inflicted on it a moment before, he found the thief’s cloak beneath his fingers. Thrusting the hand into the garment’s folds with a desperate lunge, his fingers found the lip of the heavy gold bowl still hidden in the pocket. Pulling it free he swung his arm to smash the heavy dish into Monstrum’s temple with a thud. The dog yelped in surprise and released its grip on his other arm, shaking its head in surprise at the crunching impact. Raising the bowl again the Roman repeated the blow with fresh purpose, turning it in his hand to bring the rim’s heavy edge down on the same point of the beast’s skull he had struck a moment before, and with as much force as his damaged hand would allow. The animal’s skull broke with an audible click, and, as it tottered astride him, Marcus swung the improvised weapon a third time, feeling the rim sink into the dog’s shattered temple as he hammered it home in the same spot. Rolling off his body, the dog staggered disjointedly to its feet, allowing the Roman to regain his own footing. Snatching up the spear he punched it through the beast’s side, feeling a moment of resistance before the wicked iron head burst through the dog’s ribcage and found its heart. Monstrum let out a final baying howl of pain and died, slumping onto the stone floor with its eyes rolled up to show only the whites.
Hearing a footstep in the outer room he stamped on the dead dog’s chest and tore the spear free, spinning to face his next attacker, as she charged into the room with a scream of rage, running onto the spear with a gasp of amazed agony. Pivoting to one side, and using the last of his strength to lift the wounded woman off her feet, he heaved her body across the room and down into the gaping hole of the inner sanctum’s floor safe, tearing the spear’s blade free as she crashed down into the four-foot-deep pit and lay still, her feet and ankles protruding from the hard stone box into which she had been pitched. Her right boot twitched and was still, but as Marcus gathered his wits a movement in the corner of his eye made him spin back to face the door, levelling the spear to confront the next of his attackers. As he lunged forward with the weapon, aiming for the shadowy figure’s chest, his opponent smashed the weary attack aside with a sword stroke that tore the iron head from its shaft. Stepping back into the inner chamber the Roman picked up his sword, bellowing a challenge at the hunter lurking on the other side of the empty stone doorway.
‘Come on then! Come and finish me off!’
As Arabus screamed in anguish and agony, and before his torturer could move from her position crouched between his legs from where she was gloating at his despair with the severed organ held high, a ghostly shadow flickered in his peripheral vision. A heavy footstep behind her creased his torturer’s face into the beginnings of a frown, but as she started to turn her head to look behind her it was suddenly, horrifically smashed into a grotesque shape by an impact that flung her corpse sideways from his body. Lugos stepped back from his first victim, looping the hammer high over his head in a blur of iron before smashing its beak down onto the foot of one of the hunters restraining Arabus, pulping flesh and bone into a shapeless mess that arched her body in a silent scream of disbelief and outrage.
The last of them jumped away from their erstwhile victim scrabbling for her knife while the huge Briton raised the hammer again, her voice almost lost in the sudden piercing scream as the woman whose foot had been smashed was hit by a wave of unimaginable pain.
‘No …’
Lugos had turned the iron handle in his hand as he raised it again and spun through a full turn to strike with a horizontal blow, and it was the rough-bladed crescent of metal on the hammer’s reverse that punched through her ineffectually raised hands and into her face, taking the top of her head off as easily as cutting into a boiled egg. Arabus flinched as her half-decapitated body bounced off the wall behind him and fell full length at the Briton’s feet, grimacing at the burning pain in his crotch as Lugos knelt beside him, ignoring the crippled woman’s continuous hoarse screaming.
‘You lucky. Still got cock and one ball. Here …’