Those fighting at the front withdrew and were neatly replaced by a second line of fresh warriors, so that the onslaught kept up its momentum. Their enemy floundered when faced with well-drilled strategy like this. The monsters were exhausting themselves in their relentless attack.
Losses, however, were many.
More than once Flagur saw a good friend fall, heard a death cry and chimed with it in his soul.
On the outside no weakness could be seen, even though he would have wished his fallen warriors out from underneath the carcasses of slaughtered monsters. They deserved a better resting place. Several of them he had known for countless star cycles; he had trained them himself. To watch them die like this hurt as badly as the arrow in his side. Mourning would have to wait, as always in battle.
Flagur saw that one of the armored vehicles was set sideways-on to provide cover for their advance. Flurries of arrows and spears were whizzing out over the heads of their own troops. The archers knew their stuff. Five whole rows of the enemy were felled by these missiles, and a second salvo mowed a wide path through the heaving, screaming throng.
“Onwards and forwards!” commanded Flagur, his spear aloft and the pennant cracking in the breeze, signaling the major assault.
G oda climbed up. Now she had reached a crossbar and slid along on it toward Furgas. Beneath her, Sirka and Ireheart were thumping the life out of the beasts; Rodario had a short bow and a quiver taken from one of the creatures and was loosing arrows at the foe. No matter if your aim was not very good-in this crush you would always hit a target.
Ireheart gave full vent to his battle rage. He used the madness coursing through his veins to make him insuperable in combat. The crow’s beak whirred without rest, denting helmets, shattering bones, slicing through armor and hurling the victims a good two paces through the air.
Sirka for her part was fighting like the water element, slipping into gaps and using the barb on her slim weapon to strike and the hook to fend off blows, to wrench swords out of assailants’ hands, or to thrust into unprotected flesh. She never stayed long in one position, but moved with flowing grace.
Goda had nearly reached Furgas.
He was watching her. “What do you think you are doing?” he asked. “I’m curious to see…”
Goda drew out her night star, her favorite weapon, with its three hefty spiked globes. She would have to be careful not to lose her footing if she missed her mark. She balanced cautiously, stepping out along the narrow strut, and raising her right hand.
Furgas pushed himself backwards out of range. “You won’t get me like that.” He squinted down, looking for the next reinforcing bar. “Time is on my side, dwarf. Always the most reliable of allies.” When Goda came closer still, he jumped off and dropped down, his fingers outstretched to catch the next bar.
Even though she only had one weapon with her Goda decided to contravene the first rule of combat: she hurled the night star at Furgas.
The three spiked balls hit his hands and smashed his fingers; screaming, he plunged, landing on his belly in the very setting the diamond was destined for-a central setting ringed with spikes.
“No!” He shrieked in agony, working the spikes even deeper into his flesh as he struggled. His blood flowed down over the hub and cascaded to the ground. His movements became gradually weaker. Finally his screams died away.
Goda sent a prayer of thanks to Vraccas, climbed carefully down to the central hub where Furgas’s body hung. The next problem would be to locate the stone. “How do I find it?” she called out to Ireheart.
Her dwarf mentor was whacking a monster on the paw with his crow’s beak, and ramming his own sharp helmet into its abdomen, so that black blood streamed down over his head and shoulders. “Slit him open. Top part of his belly. It’s only a little while since he swallowed it.” Hopping back to avoid a spear thrust, he sliced the head off his assailant.
Goda drew her dagger and forced the body into a sitting position, hauling it off the spikes. The hole in the magister’s chest would not be big enough so she was just placing the knife tip underneath his ribs when he opened his eyes.
“I won’t give it up,” he croaked, blood gushing out of his mouth, dripping down his chin. “I shall have my revenge.” He pushed her and she lost her balance.
She fell.
T ungdil stormed into the darkness of the chasm where light was afraid to go.
In front of him reared up a being beyond the wit of Tion to create. It would have needed gods such as Girdlegard had never known.
The kordrion was a vast tower of horror. Its wings were folded close in to its huge muscular body, for there was no space in this ravine for the mountainous creature to spread them. Four huge dog-like paws bore its stupendous weight, though the front two limbs seemed more like arms. The rest of its naked body lay in shadow.
Its neck was comparatively short and it had a head like a dragon, but festooned with horns and spikes. Behind the long bony snout glinted four gray eyes. Further back, two blue ones. It was half upright and struggling to place its claws into fissures in the rock to drag itself up.
A three-armed beast leaped shrieking toward Tungdil, long muzzle agape, with a dark red barbed tongue snaking out.
The dwarf confronted that tongue quite simply by holding up Bloodthirster, whose wicked cutting edge sliced the flesh, sending the creature whimpering back, its bleeding tongue segments recoiled into its maw.
But Tungdil followed through, cutting the monster in two from top to bottom. Then he turned Bloodthirster on the kordrion. “Get back in the abyss you crawled out of,” he commanded. “I don’t believe anything is insuperable, whether my opponents look like you or even worse.”
The creature’s blue eyes focused on him. It dropped down onto its forepaws, but this still meant that its head hovered a good ten paces above Tungdil. It opened its powerful jaws and roared at the dwarf. Each and every tooth in its head was as big as one ubariu standing on top of a second.
From behind he heard the rattle and clash of weapons and armor, and then Flagur stood at his back with his ubariu and undergroundlings. With the aid of their armored vehicles they had managed to defeat the beasts and had stopped up the entrance. The kordrion was making things easy for them now because none of the other monsters still in the ravine dared force their way past it.
“Ubar, help us now,” was Flagur’s prayer. “How can we deal with this one?”
“I can see the acrontas might be needed for a monster like this.” Tungdil experienced no fear. With Bloodthirster in his grasp he was a bundle of confidence, tenacity and cussedness. “But if we don’t make a start we’ll never know if it can be done without them.” He raced forwards, aiming for the claws which were now down on the rocky floor. “While he’s stuck in this cleft we have the advantage. Cut through the tendons-hack at anything you can reach. Sooner or later we’ll have him down!”
Flagur watched the dwarf go. “He’s not afraid at all,” he murmured admiringly as he lifted his own spear. Shaft and banner fabric were now drenched in the blood of monsters he had slain. “Onwards!” he called out, and cantered off, his breath shallow as he battled with the wound in his side.
His warriors followed him and rushed toward the kordrion with weapons held high-until they heard the infamous roar. But it was not the being in front of them that made the horrendous sound.
Flagur’s steps slackened and the blood froze in his veins. The ecstasy of battle dispersed and gave way to fear. “Tungdil! Come back! There are two of them!”
Then the kordrion opened its great muzzle and swept the warriors with a wave of white fire.