The Mantans and Sagenay fired again, and once more the arrow sank deep and the darts feathered themselves in the frightful head. Hiero was close now and he hurled his heavy, crossbarred spear into the middle of the muddy, twisting paunch. The hoarse grunting of the Were-bear again rose in an awful coughing scream as the broad spearhead drank deep. He saw a rolling, crimson eye, distended with pain and fury, turn down at him and he ducked, splashing away in the sedge and liquid mud the fury had churned up. Another arrow drove into the center of the wild orb. God, hut Sagenay was a great archer! Would the damned thing never die?
It towered up, dropping the useless club and clutching at its tormented face, to let out one last choking howl. Then it fell forward, splashing them all with a sea of water and filth, mingled with its own gore. It died. There was not even a twitch of rigor, just the vast corpse, prone in a wallow of muck and torn plant stems, while nine panting entities stood, weapons still poised, and looked at one another.
“You are an amazing shot, Per Sagenay,” Hiero said to the younger man. “And you, too, gentlemen,” he added, nodding to the Mantans. “I think that your venom slowed the brute down. It was more confused than I had been led to believe these monsters were supposed to be.”
He sent his own message of praise to the Children of the Wind, using their mental channel, and he could feel the pride in their response.
“I never got close enough,” Maluin grumbled, lowering the billhook.
“It was aimed right at you when my friends halted it, you big oaf,” Hiero said. “Another second and you would have had plenty to do. Now everyone be silent while I use mind search.”
He was none too soon! Almost at once, the expression on his face and the tenseness of his body had all the others alerted, their weapons lifted anew.
A voice he had not heard for many months beat into his brain like a hammer on an anvil. Watch out, Hiero! Another one comes fast from the north! We are following, hut beware… 1
At the same time, the Metz caught the wave of black anger and killing rate which he had noted from the monstrous brute, only half an hour before. Its mate! He spun, cursing the dying light and facing to his left. The rest of his troop whirled also, and thus the second attack did not catch them totally off their guard.
The new menace burst from the screen of brush and charged, fangs agape, down upon them. It ran on its hind legs, and the vast, lumbering strides brought it on at a pace a racing hopper might have envied. Each of the giant arms bore a mighty burden. As the ghoul-thing came, it hurled a great rock from one of them with deadly aim.
Perhaps the onset of age had begun to stiffen B’uorgh’s sinews; perhaps one of his lightning shifts, by plain bad luck, was in the wrong direction. The boulder—for it was nothing less—struck the catman chief with a sickening crunch and hurled him aside like a castoff doll, useless and discarded. M’reen’s high scream of rage and sorrow rose above the triumphant bellow of the enemy.
Once more, one of Sagenay’s bronze-tipped shafts sank home, though this time he struck an arm. The darts of the brothers Mantan hissed again; at this range, they could not miss. But their poison, so lethal to normal life, seemed to work very slowly on this alien flesh. Hiero had wrenched the spear from the corpse of his late foe and now stood erect upon the giant body itself, waiting to meet this fresh attack, trying to free his limbs of weariness in the seconds remaining before it closed. The gray light of dusk made the appearance of the demon hard to discern, and he knew that it was a creature of the shadows, the vague outline not the least of its weapons. Beside him, but lower down and braced for battle, his strong legs slightly bent, Maluin also awaited the onslaught, his fell weapon held two-handedly and cocked over his left shoulder. Then the monster was upon them, and they ceased to think.
The second rock the creature clutched was a long slab of granite; it did not hurl this, but used it like a club, as its mate had wielded the shattered tree limb. Hiero flung his spear but heard it ring on stone, even as the monster struck at him. He tried to duck, holding his shield high, but the grazing touch of the great rock swept him off his feet, left arm numbed to the shoulder, and pitched him down the side of the dead beast and into the marsh below.
Again he heard the bellow of triumph start; but as he tried to stagger erect and free his sword, he heard the awful cry rise to an impossible pitch of pain. On his feet once more, he saw what had happened.
As the second Were-bear stooped to crush Hiero’s life away, Edard Maluin had seen his chance and leaped in. The huge billhook scythed down in a terrible stroke upon the left arm of the monster. The vast, deformed hand, severed at the wrist, flew away into the haze and murk, and a gout of blackish blood spouted and spat red through the evening air.
As the titan turned on Maluin, Hiero struck at its haunch with his heavy short sword, but his aim was off, and it seemed to him the stroke was slow and feeble. He tried to recover, noting almost absently that another of Sagenay’s arrows had driven home in the gray hide. It will kill us all before it dies, a remote part of his mind decided. Half in a dream, he watched as the ghastly head, turned back to him; he saw the yellow fangs, crusted with dried foam, as the monster moved forward and down to crush the pigmy who had defied it.
He was spun aside like a top and hurled yards away on his back, the sword flying out of his grip as he went. Helpless and with his eyes full of muddy liquid, he did not see what the others saw and thus missed the final event.
A great, black beast cut through the sedges with the speed of a pike darting through waterweed. Driven by a bulk not much less than that of the Were-bear and brushing Hiero aside in the process with its shoulder, the new arrival smashed into the enemy with the precision and force of a battering ram. The last, frantic bound carried two great, razor-edged feet smack into the space between the eyes of the northern horror. As they went home, the awful cracking noise cut off the gross snarling of the monster, ending its evil life instantly.
Frantically trying to get up on his feet, brush the mud from his eyes, and rejoin the battle, Hiero became conscious of a vast foreleg on which he seemed to be leaning. As he tried to deal with this most familiar but long-absent concept, an enormous tongue swept over his face and a wave of sweet breath enveloped his head. Then he knew!
“Klootz, you miserable, slab-sided piece of worthless dog meat! What do you mean by frightening me like that?” He pounded softly on the great barrel, his eyes shut to keep the ready tears locked within. How many thousand leagues had the great beast come, to home in on him and find him in the midst of a life-or-death struggle? He blinked at length and saw the long neck turn round and down again; once more the morse’s tongue care-washed his face in a mighty swipe.
He wiped his eyes and managed to stagger away from his friend’s side and stare about hirn, Maluin leaned on his bill a few yards off, covered with mud, but seemingly otherwise undamaged. He winked at Hiero, then began to brush himself and his weapon clean as best he could, whistling softly to himself. The Mantans and Sagenay were plucking their darts and arrows from the hides of the dead terrors, cleansing them in the marsh water and restoring them tidily to their quivers. Then Hiero saw the three young catfolk gathered around something silent in the sedges and he remembered that B’uorgh was dead. He was about to go to them when suddenly a very irritated voice burst into his mind, and he halted in his tracks, so that Klootz, who was following behind, almost ran over him.
Hiero, if all that mess is cleaned up, I would appreciate your telling your friends that I am not a target for all those things they shoot. Then I will be able to come out from behind this rock. As Hiero reeled with the realization of what and whom he was hearing, the mind voice went on, somehow conveying an acid tone. Klootz didn’t do it all, you know!