by David Weber
The creature staggered, shrieking, flailing its wings as the uranium lightning bolts drilled through its armor—and the flesh inside it— like fiery awls. It half-rose as the impacts hammered into it, but that only exposed its chest, and Houghton sent another six-shot burst hammering into the new target. The entry wounds were small; the exit wounds were enormous, and ichor exploded across the hillside. Grass hissed and shriveled under the acid spray, and the monster's shrieks of rage turned into bubbling wails of agony.
This time, it did go down, but even then, it wasn't finished. Its clawed feet scrabbled at the ground with unnatural vitality, heaving it back up, and a disbelieving Houghton put a fourth burst into the thing.
Bahzell and Walsharno didn't have time to worry about where the thing attacking the second demon had come from, because the one they'd already wounded had been waiting only for its companion's attack before coming at them again. Even as the second demon turned away, the first one came charging in again.
But it had been just as surprised as Bahzell and Walsharno. It hesitated for just an instant, as astonished by the LAV's abrupt appearance out of the heart of Wencit's glamour as the two champions had been when the spell activated behind them, and that gave them just long enough to return their attention to it.
It hurled itself forward, screaming an earsplitting war cry of pure, distilled rage, and Bahzell stood in the stirrups as Walsharno waited, waited, waited to the very last instant. The demon's fangs glistened in the blue corona of Tomanâk's light. Bahzell could see clear down the huge, wet, slimy gullet, smell the stench of its fetid breath, and still Walsharno waited. He waited until it was obviously too late . . . then sprang aside with the incredible swiftness possible only for a courser.
The demon's squall of fury changed pitch. It sounded almost querulous, as if the sudden disappearance of the prey it had been certain was as good as in its fangs was cheating somehow. But if that was the way it felt, it didn't have long to savor its disappointment.
"Tomanâk!"
The striking head, overshot its dodging target. The demon was already swinging around, arching its sinuous neck to come back in a second, sideways strike, as Bahzell brought his blue-flaming sword down in a two-hand blow driven by the full, enormous strength of his shoulders and back and all the power of his Rage.
The sword landed with the sharp, clear "CRACK!" of an ancient oak, shattering in a vise of winter ice. But this crack was loud enough to be heard even by ears stunned by the LAV's cannon fire, even through the deafening, enraged shriek of the remaining demon. Blue light glared like striking lightning, flashing back from the point of impact with a brilliance that etched the hillside, the trees, every individual blade of grass, with stark, blinding clarity, and the glittering steel sheared two-thirds of the way through a neck thicker than most men's height. Ichor spurted, shattered splinters of scale flew, and the demon's bellow died in mid-shriek, with the appalling suddenness of a slamming door.
The stupendous body slammed to the ground. Momentum carried it forward in a sliding, slithering sprawl, and Walsharno stumbled, almost falling, as the very tip of one dying wing flailed out and crashed into his shoulder. Somehow, the courser held his feet, spinning to face the hole from which the second demon had emerged . . . just as a third and fourth monster erupted from it.
Houghton's jaw did its very best to drop as that blinding blue sword came crashing down. It had taken twenty-plus direct hits from Tough Mama's Bushmaster to put down Houghton's target, and this Bahzell of Wencit's had taken one out with a single sword stroke?
But he didn't have a great deal of time to think about the impossibility of what he'd just seen, because more of the hideous creatures were swarming out of the same opening. One of them wheeled, charging back at Bahzell and his horse; the other hurled itself directly at the LAV . . . and a fourth came squirming out of the ground behind it like a maggot, with its mad, glaring eyes already fixed on Tough Mama.
Houghton hoped like hell that Wencit's friend was going to be able to handle the one headed away from the LAV, because he damned well had his hands full with the two coming his way.
The only good point—if anything about this could be called "good"—was that he didn't even have to traverse. The closer of the two monsters came straight for him, almost as if it were trying to physically climb inside the cannon's barrel, and he squeezed again. The uranium penetrators stabbed through the night like lethal meteors, and twelve of them punched their deadly way into the demon's scaly chest and then out again through its spiky carapace. The monster shrieked in agony as its legs abruptly collapsed and it hit the hillside in an avalanche of mortally wounded hatred and fury. The LAV quivered as the force of that multi-ton impact was transmitted through the ground, and the dying creature slashed with one huge, talon-armed forefoot.
The claws sledgehammered into Tough Mama, raking savagely across her front right flank. She bobbed like a dinghy on a stormy sea, and Houghton's helmeted head slammed into the bulkhead-mounted radio behind him as the LAV's right front wheel was ripped completely away. It went flying through the night like a discarded hockey puck, and he heard the unearthly shriek of side armor tearing—tearing like cloth—as the talons raked over it.
Mashita shouted something over Houghton's helmet earphones, and the gunnery sergeant smelled an incredible hot-metal-and-acid stench as the monster's blood showered across the forward deck and the front of the turret.
He didn't have time to think about the inconceivable strength it had taken to rock the fourteen-ton LAV like a toy. The fourth demon was already lunging across the twitching, spasming body of its dying companion, and Houghton squeezed the trigger again just as the creature brought one foot down on Tough Mama's deck. The LAV seemed to curtsy, sinking downward on its damaged front suspension under that incredible load, and the demon's head darted forward, striking directly at the turret.
The nine-foot cannon's muzzle flamed, spewing penetrators directly into the monster's gaping maw at two hundred rounds per minute, and the top of the demon's skull literally disintegrated as the fin-stabilized darts exploded through its brain. The striking head was driven up and backwards, and the monster's bellows died in a hideous, whistling gurgle. It thundered to earth, falling directly atop its companion, and the momentum of the its charging body rammed into the LAV's glacis with enough force to whiplash Houghton and Mashita's heads painfully on their necks and drive the entire vehicle half its length backward despite its locked wheels.
* * *
Bahzell and Walsharno heard the earsplitting thunder of their mysterious ally's incredible weaponry and the shrieks and bellows of the other two demons, but they dared not let their attention stray from the one coming at them. This one was different from the others. It had even more legs, yet it was marginally smaller and faster, without wings but with two complete sets of long, lobster-like pincers. It was less cautious than the first one had been, too, as if it had decided its best chance lay in sheer speed and ferocity. Unlike the others, it attacked almost silently, saving its breath, and it reared high, keeping its head and neck out of the range of Bahzell's sword as it struck at Walsharno with those man-long pincers.
The courser leapt forward, ducking inside the sweep of the outer pincers, trumpeting his own challenge, and the second set of pincers came slashing at him like knife-sharp shears of horn. Walsharno staggered as a glancing blow opened a long, bleeding gash across his side, but Bahzell twisted at the waist, bringing his sword up in a flashing arc that impacted on the demon's forelimb from beneath. The glittering steel bit deep, half-severing the pincer, and the demon howled, slashing with all three remaining claws.
But Bahzell and Walsharno had gotten too close. They were inside the sweep of the outer pincers, and too close to the monster's chest for it to see them clearly without bringing its horned head into the reach of Bahzell's sword. It struck blindly at them, then crouched as it prepared to spring back and away from its tiny adversaries and regain fighting room.
Th
e two champions had no intention of allowing it to do anything of the sort. Despite his deep, bleeding wound, Walsharno drove straight ahead, and Bahzell leaned forward in the saddle, leaned forward over Walsharno's outstretched neck, riding at the thrust as if his massive, two-handed sword were a Sothôii cavalry saber. The demon couldn't see them . . . and as it crouched, it actually brought its own body closer to its enemies.
Bahzell's sword punched into the monster's scale-armored, massively muscled chest just at the base of its throat. Scales and flesh hissed, smoking as blue flames licked out from the penetrating steel, consuming the unnatural stuff of the demon's flesh, and its shriek of agony was deafening. It twisted away from the intolerable pain, and as it did, it wrenched sideways on the blade, ripping the wound wider and deeper with its own enormous strength.
"Tomanâk! Tomanâk!" Bahzell thundered his war cry, and Walsharno's whistling trumpet counterpointed his deep-throated bellow as smoldering ichor fountained across them in a stinking fan. The hradani's sword yanked free of the ghastly wound as the charging courser swept onward, and he brought it down in an ax blow that slashed the demon's remaining inner claw entirely off.
Walsharno's pounding hooves carried them clear of their monstrous foe as the no-longer-silent demon reared up, hissing and screaming in pain. It writhed, its maimed forelimbs flailing, smoking blood spouting from its wounds, and Bahzell and Walsharno used the distraction of its agony. Walsharno's forehooves dug into the smoldering hillside, plowing deep furrows through its torn and scarred turf as they braked his forward speed, and his rear feet flashed up in a piledriver blow to the demon's shoulder. Despite its size, despite its weight, the monster went down, tumbling onto its side, and Walsharno recovered his balance, leaned back to gather his weight on his hindquarters, then pivoted and brought both forehooves hammering down on the side of the creature's neck, just above the gaping wound Bahzell's sword had torn.
The demon flailed madly, throat half-severed and half-crushed. It managed to jerk its head back up, fangs slashing, but it was hurt, weakened, clumsy, and Bahzell leaned aside in Walsharno's saddle. The head darted past him, and that proved just as deadly for this demon as it had for the first one. The five-foot blade came slashing down one final time, trailing streamers and prominences of blue fire, and the demon gave one last coughing, grunting cry as the hammering steel severed its spinal column and sent it crashing to the ground in quivering ruin.
XIII
"Jack! Jack!"
"I'm okay, Boss!" Mashita's voice was shaken, but Houghton had never heard a more welcome sound in his life.
"Good." Houghton realized he was still clutching the gunner's joystick in a death grip and made his hand relax. He reengaged the electric safeties on both cannon and machine gun, then took his hand off the joystick and drew a deep breath.
"How bad is it?" he asked.
"That's kinda hard to say with a couple hundred tons of dead whatever-the-fuck-those-things-were stacked all over the deck,"" Mashita replied. "ìI know the front right suspension'ís screwed, but I don'ít know about any of the other axles. And I can'ít see Jack—you should pardon the expression—with this thing lying across my vision slots. Not to mention my hatch; I'ím gonna have to crawl back through the tunnel to get out."
"Somehow, I'm not surprised." Houghton heard a flicker of genuine humor in his own voice and gave himself a shake.
"I take it you're still okay, too, Wencit?"
"Indeed I am, Gunnery Sergeant," Wencit said. "And perhaps you're beginning to understand why I wanted the most powerful ally I could summon," he added dryly.
"From what I could see, your boy Bahzell's pretty bad damned news all by himself," Houghton said.
"Champions of Tomanâk tend to be that way. Speaking of which . . ."
The wizard, Houghton realized abruptly, never had closed the commander's hatch. He'd stayed right where he was, sticking up out of it, even as no less than three demons—and Houghton was certainly prepared to concede the applicability of the term after what had just happened—came charging straight at him. Which meant either that he was an even bigger lunatic then Houghton had thought, or else that he was an even more powerful wizard than he'd suggested. Or, more probably, both.
Now Wencit clambered up to perch on top of the turret, resting one heel nonchalantly on the outstretched forelimb of the final demon.
"So, Bahzell," Houghton heard over his helmet headphones, "fancy meeting you here!"
Bahzell's ears twitched straight up in astonishment at the familiar voice coming to him from the outlandish looking vehicle half buried in dead demons.
"You know, he can be really irritating when he turns up this way, can't he?" Walsharno observed.
"Aye, that he can. Still and all, I'm not so very tempted to be complaining about it this evening," Bahzell replied judiciously.
"There were only five of them, you know," Walsharno grumbled.
"Which would have been only about four too many of them, I'm thinking."
"All right, be that way."
"And could you be so very kind, Wencit," Bahzell said, raising his voice but speaking with exquisite courtesy, "as to be explaining to us how it is you've happened along at just this very moment this time?"
Walsharno trotted towards the vehicle, just as a second hatch opened in its roof and a stranger in a uniform which looked just as outlandish as the vehicle itself poked his head and shoulders up out of it.
"As to that," Wencit said, "the person you want to be thanking is Gunnery Sergeant Houghton here. He and Private Mashita were kind enough to give me a ride."
"And just how was it you . . . inveigled them into anything as daft as that? Did you ride up to them out of a snow flurry in a swamp?"
"I've only used that particular technique once, I'll have you know," Wencit said in dignified tones. "In this case, I simply mentioned to them that I had a friend—two friends, actually—who were about to get themselves into trouble all over again. Once I'd explained, they decided they didn't have anything better to do tonight."
"Did they now?" Walsharno reached the vehicle and halted. Sitting in the saddle, Bahzell was taller than the ungainly-looking thing, and he reached his right hand towards Houghton.
"I'm thinking as how no one in his right mind would be after volunteering for something like this," he said. "Still and all, it's grateful I am. And impressed."
Bahzell's voice was the deepest one Kenneth Houghton had ever heard. It seemed to roll up from his toenails and then rumble around inside that vast chest of his until it reached critical mass and came spilling out with the power of James Earl Jones on steroids.
That was Houghton's first thought. Then he noticed Bahzell's tufted, fox-like ears, thrusting up through the special openings in his helmet.
Nope, still not in Kansas, Toto, he told himself wryly.
"I probably wouldn't have volunteered if I'd really realized what we were getting into," he heard himself saying aloud as he reached out to take the proffered had. "And I imagine I'm even more impressed with you than you are with me." He shook his head. "You may think I'm out of my mind, but I know you are! At least I had an LAV and not just a sword!"
"Ah, well, as to that, I'd a bit more than ?ëjust a sword' working for me." Bahzell's grin showed white, strong teeth.
"That's true enough," Wencit said. "On the other hand, if you too can tear yourselves away from your mutual admiration society, there are still some rather unpleasant people in the neighborhood."
"Aye, so there are." Bahzell nodded. "In fact, I've the oddest notion, given what's just been happening here, as how those unpleasant folk have been putting themselves to quite an effort so as to invite Walsharno and me to their little get-together. You wouldn't be knowing anything about that, would you, Wencit?"
"I believe I told you—once, at least—that I'm a wizard and wizards are supposed to know things."
* * *
"So much for your demons!" Garsalt snarled.
"My demons?" Cherdah
n glared back at the balding wizard.
The priest and his three wizard "allies" sat in luxuriously comfortable chairs around a long, glassy-smooth table of stone. The stone walls were covered with tapestries—less horrifying, thankfully, than the mosaics of the main tunnel, although still gruesome enough to affect most people's appetites—and wall sconces less brilliant than the tunnel's overhead spheres spread gentle illumination through the sumptuously furnished chamber The dinner dishes had been removed before Bahzell arrived, and they'd been sipping wine and watching the images Garsalt's scrying spells had projected into the head-sized gramerhain crystal hovering in midair above the table with celebratory anticipation. But those images hadn't shown them what they'd hoped for, and now their wine glasses sat ignored on the table while he and Cherdahn locked fiery eyes with one another.
"The Scorpion's servants did exactly what they were supposed to do," Sharnâ 's priest half-spat. "And, forgive me if I seem a little confused, but I was under the impression that you knew where Wencit was. Apparently, I was mistaken, wasn't I? And did you simply forget to mention that . . . that . . . whatever that thing out there is?"
"Of course not! But if you'd done what —"
"Enough, Garsalt!" Tremala snapped, and both men (assuming the term "man" was still applicable to Cherdahn) turned to glare at her, instead of each other.
"No," she continued, once she was certain she had their attention, "the demons didn't succeed. That certainly wasn't Cherdahn's fault, however, Garsalt. Nor was it ours. We opened the portal exactly as planned, and without Wencit's arrival, the Bloody Hand and his horse would both be dead now and the demons who'd survived their encounter with him would be waiting for Wencit, when he came blundering in too late to save the Bloody Hand. So yes, Cherdahn, we should have told you where he was. Unfortunately, we did. The last time Garsalt and I checked, Wencit was still at least ten leagues from here."