There being no room to swing his blade, Vorr again thrust his sword into the creature, aiming for its head. The monster's claws slashed down into his armored shoulders as the sword's tip plunged into the 'hulk's open mouth, between its mandibles, and broke through the back of its skull. With all the strength he could muster, Vorr swung his sword aside at the same time, so the 'hulk's momentum carried it past the general and flung it away into a siege machine nearby. The sword cut its mouth open to twice its normal width. The giant beetlelike monster crashed through wooden supports and ballista bolts, rolling over and over in a tangled heap of shattered wood and rope.
Vorr jumped from the ladder and charged the umber hulk. The creature was getting to its feet again when the sword came down and split its head apart.
For a moment, Vorr had time to take in his surroundings. Dim red light spilled down from overhead glass fixtures, relics of a forgotten age. This floor was barely forty feet square, with a twenty-foot-wide square opening in the middle of the room surrounded by a low stone wall. Ballistae and catapults were positioned here, crewless but in good condition. He was on a weapons deck. He heard another scream and spotted movement across the room.
A second umber hulk looked up from the ladder hatch it had been defending, having been half-hidden by the low wall ringing the center pit. The 'hulk started upon seeing Vorr, then charged around the pit for the general. Its eyes sparkled with magical light, attempting to drive the general insane as it had doubtless just done to some scro who had subsequently fallen from the ladder to the depths below.
Vorr noted that the ballista to his left had been loaded, no doubt by the skeletons serving the false lich. He dropped his sword and grabbed the ballista's wooden frame, dragging it around and toward him so that it faced the oncoming 'hulk. Before the monster could understand what was happening, Vorr found the trigger and pulled it. The ballista fired its bolt with a loud bang as its taut rope slammed into the bowlike crosspiece.
The 'hulk stumbled as the bolt hit it and passed through it, shattering against the stone wall beyond. The beast got up with a gurgling squeal, appearing unusually slow and uncoordinated. Vorr snatched up his sword and dived around the ballista. He hewed at the umber hulk until its ichor splattered the floor and walls, and the monstrosity fell back with a curiously childlike shriek. The sword rose and fell ceaselessly, one stroke with every heartbeat, until the heat of battle rage left Vorr for a moment and he saw that the fight was long over.
An explosion boomed through the pyramid's corridors and halls. His chest heaving, Vorr suddenly looked around and saw a half-dozen troops cheering him, their numbers still pouring up from the two ladders leading to this level. One raised a long, leather-wrapped device in both hands as his comrades screamed approval, and he held it out to the general.
Vorr blinked, then he stepped forward suddenly and grasped the bulky object with a free hand. He threw down his sword and tore the leather covering free of the device.
Black steel glistened in the red lights above. Twin bolts of polished metal, wicked notches cut in their barbed heads, projected from the double-barrelled end. His troops had brought his harpoon-bombard, loaded and ready.
Vorr looked up at his troops, who stamped the stone floor, raised their black-gloved fists, waved jagged swords and axes, and called his name. Their screams and stamping grew ever louder and louder, until it became like a physical thing, like a wall of power.
Slowly, like the opening of a door into an old, familiar torture chamber, a smile came to the general's lips.
Vorr whirled, the harpoon-bombard clenched in his hands, and he leaned over the low wall to look down into the next level. Below him was the primary helm, resting atop a stone block perhaps fifteen feet across. The ancient throne there was smashed and empty. There was only one place left for the lich to hide. He looked up to the next balconylike level, and he remembered the way the Glowrings Sphere lich had raised its rotting hands in front of its face to ward off the last blows Vorr had rained down upon it.
Vorr looked around and spotted the one ladder left in the room that led upward. He ran for it, holding the bombard in one hand as he nearly leaped up the rungs. He reached the next level, which was laid out much like the last, though with no weaponry. In fact, this level contained nothing at all- except one last ladder, positioned adjacent to the walled opening in the center of the room. The general climbed away from the ladder from the weapons deck and reached the last ladder up in two strides. His free hand caught the rusted wrought iron.
"How is a blonde not like a hammership?"
The voice was an inhuman scream. It was deafening and mad. Vorr looked straight up.
A thing let go of the ladder fifteen feet over his head and leaped down at him. It had not been there a moment ago.
Vorr had just enough time to swing the harpoon-bombard up and squeeze both triggers. The weapon went off next to his right ear and eye; the explosions maimed hearing and sight with concussions and powder burns. The massive thing landed right on him anyway, its clawed hands larger than anvils and its goat-skull jaws open wide in insane laughter.
Vorr's grip was torn from the ladder by the impact, and he was knocked sprawling to the floor. For a wild second he thought the huge creature was an undead chimera or lion, but it had only one skeletal head within its great, ragged mane. Brass scales covered its hide. Demonic bat wings whipped into the air on either side of the beast. Vorr kicked up into the beast's chest and abdomen, feeling thick ribs snap and flesh tear as his metal-plated boots ground in. He couldn't bring the harpoon-bombard up to strike, as the creature held his arm pinned down with both of its own great forearms, each fully half again as large as Vorr's own. Vorr's other arm was trapped beneath the creature's mass, crushed against his chest. The monster's strength was relentless.
"How is a blonde not like a hammership?" the beast screamed again, bright purple flames dancing in its eye sockets. Vorr now saw the butt ends of the two barbed harpoons protruding from the monster's maned shoulders on opposite sides of its head. The spears had gone straight into the beast, but it had barely noticed them. Purple-black blood spurted from the wounds and spilled down its scraggly mane, dripping on Vorr's face and armored chest.
Suddenly, the monster belched a cloud of white gas from its mouth, the opaque mist blinding Vorr but doing no other harm. Twisting beneath his attacker's weight, Vorr found the leverage to free his left hand. His fingers came up beneath the monster's jaw and found its scaled throat. Vorr's fingers clenched the loose skin tightly, then he quickly raised his legs from beneath the beast and wrapped them around the beast's back, locking his heels together across its spine, just behind its great black wings. He squeezed with his legs, using every ounce of strength to crash the monster's windpipe shut at the same time.
The skull-headed beast jerked its head back and bucked, trying to leap away from the leg-lock, but could not get its footing. The goat-skull face came down abruptly, snapping at Vorr's face but missing by only a foot, held back by Vorr's left arm; it then tried to breath gas on him, but only wisps of white vapor came out. Vorr saw the creature's eyes turn from violet flames into golden ones.
The creature released its grip on Vorr's right arm with both hands, attempting to drag his other arm away from its throat. The bombard instantly came up, propelled by Vorr's right arm, and he jammed its barrel straight into the monster's nearest eye socket and pushed.
A flash of white lightning burned the air for a fraction of a second, spilling from the creature's eye and playing along the bombard barrel into the air in a dozen directions. Neatly blinded, Vorr felt nothing and realized the bolt was magical, so it could not harm him. He pushed on the bombard until something in the monster's skull broke, and the barrel was suddenly thrust out the other eye socket.