By Tooth and Claw - eARC

by Mercedes Lackey

  Arschus appraised the entrance to the pass, below them. “I imagine they will wish they hadn’t survived the coming of the New Water after they see what is waiting for them.”

  No sooner did the large warrior finish speaking than did the first Liskash rounded the bottom of the hills at the beginning of the pass. First one, then four, then forty Scaly Ones. And more kept coming. Soon the entirety of the entrance to the pass swarmed with Liskash.

  Arschus hissed. “They look like carrion-bugs.” Even at this distance, the Liskash were clearly a motley and sorry group; very few had any armor, and whatever they were wearing was mostly in tatters or ruined with filth. Despite that, they still had the numbers to be more than a credible threat. And they were hungry. It was to raid and pillage or to die, for them.

  “Soon they will be feeding carrion-bugs,” Miarrius said. “Something will, at least. Bugs will be getting a full meal today, one way or another.”

  Rrerren galloped to the center of the line to join Sartas and the others. “You worry too much, grey-hair. In fact, take a nap; I’ll take care of these interlopers.”

  Ssenna, quiet as death, moved her mount within the vision of the others. “I don’t think your jokes will be any more lethal than they already are, Rrerren.”

  “Maybe he’ll just bugger them to death.” Miarrius slipped his sword and dagger from their sheathes, eyeing the approaching Liskash. “He’s buggered damn near everything else in the clan.”

  “That will do.” Sartas did not turn to stare at his warriors, he let his tone of voice tell them that the time for joking was over. “Every arrow, every javelin, every thrust is precious and cannot be wasted. Make each one count. If you can’t kill, maim, cripple. I don’t want a single Liskash in that horde to be unmarked. Remember that we are buying time. Hurt these forsaken lizards. Make them know that the Clan of the Long Fang lives for their blood!”

  All of the warriors roared as one at that. The oncoming Liskash seemed to pause at the sound of the battlecry. It was only for a moment, though. They began to advance again; Sartas saw that their archers and those with slings had crowded to the front. Their lines weren’t nearly as well organized as it they should have been; the orderly formations had been replaced with a crush of Scaly Ones, gathered together in smaller groups behind the front rank. Ssenna was right; they don’t have a noble leading them. This is not a coherent force, this is a mob. For a moment he had a glimmering of hope. Was it possible they might survive this? Soon they were in range to start firing arrows and slinging stones, cutting off his thoughts. “Shields!”

  As one all of his fighters brought their large shields up over their heads; the shields covered most of their bodies and the front of the krelpreps. Arrows, stones, and then javelins came down in uneven volleys; the Liskash weren’t coordinating their archers at all, it seemed. The rain of projectiles slackened and finally became a drizzle. No one seemed to be hurt, beyond one unlucky krelprep that caught an arrow through the neck. They must be running out; with no way to resupply, perhaps they’re down to their last. “The stupid beasts are out of ammunition!” he roared. “Send some back!” Again as one, all of Sartas’ fighters threw a volley of javelins; only one, since they had so few to begin with. Some of those that were left without any picked up the javelins that had just moments ago been thrown at their hides. Their javelins found good purchase in the Liskash ranks; most found their marks, with the Liskash being too focused on their victims to worry about their own safety.

  Sartas dropped the large shield while swinging a lighter one from his back; the first was covered in dents and protruding arrows along with one Liskash javelin. He noticed that there was dried blood on it; the sight of what was probably Mrem blood caused his anger to burn in cold waves throughout his body. He raised his javelin into the air, then pointed it towards the Liskash. “Forward!” Tucking the butt of the javelin under his arm, he spurred his mount, sending it surging forward with a whinny in protest. His fighters roared in response, following him down the path. The Liskash were at the base of the rise where his warriors had gathered; any ground they hoped to gain would have to be taken while fighting uphill. This gave Sartas’ riders and the fighters on foot the advantage of momentum for their charge. Only a few of the Liskash raiders were able to position their shields or ready javelins for the oncoming charge; most of them were still pushing forward, too eager to be the first to kill one of the Mrem.

  No time to think, now. This was the work for training, reactions, and the will to survive. Sartas was the first to meet the Liskash line; on instinct, he worked his javelin at the final moment, leveling it at the enemy. His spear found the first Liskash with a shock of contact, lodging in its mouth; he instantly withdrew it and thrust it out again before the first had even fallen; another was taken in the throat, and the one after that through its eye. The rest of his fighters were right behind him; they had formed into a wedge, the better to pierce through the massed Liskash. Those without mounts crashed through Scaly Ones that had been off-balanced by the charge; javelins and swords and axes flashed, and the ground was quickly stained with blood. The Liskash were reeling; they couldn’t have expected their foes to attack so ferociously against their superior numbers. Here they thought they had been pursuing refugees like themselves, fleeing before the New Water. They had never expected the pursued to turn and bare their fangs in defiance. Hunters often grew in fervor when a prey-beast ran in fear; so it was with these Liskash. They had not taken into account the terrain that had become the battleground. Scores of the Liskash were paying for this miscalculation with their lives and limbs.

  Even with the flow of battle on their side, there were just too many Liskash; after lopping the head off of an archer, Sartas’ mount took a javelin to its side, followed by two more javelins once it reared up with a scream of pain. He was able to leap from the krelprep and land on his feet without it toppling over on him. The beast was still kicking in its death throes when he came up, shield and javelin in hand. Several of his warriors dismounted near him; the killing resumed immediately. Arschus Mroa had eschewed a shield in favor of using both hands to wield his axe; it was suitably large to fit his gigantic frame. Swinging it back and forth, he cleared Liskash two or three at a time from around him, as if he was knocking the heads off of flowers.

  Rrerren Rras had both of his long swords out, and was whirling them while laughing raucously in between dispatching Liskash; he was graceful with each dodge and feint, every parry and slash. Two Liskash sought to attack him from front and back at the same time; deflecting the tips of their spears at the last moment, he redirected the points into the Liskash on opposite sides as they charged forward so that they impaled each other. “Careful! You slimy lizards might hurt someone with those things!”

  Ssenna was on the edge of the fighting, standing on her fallen mount; she would spot opportunities in the fighting, and loose an arrow at a Liskash; sometimes a breath before it would have delivered a killing blow, other times to take pressure off of a harried comrade. She never missed with a single arrow, always calm and methodical in her aiming and firing. For a moment, Sartas wondered if he should have allowed Mreiss to stay; with his lightning reflexes, slim build and shorter stature, he could have dashed among the fighters retrieving spent arrows for her. Well, too late now. Miarrius was doing his best to cause as much havoc as quickly as possible in Mreiss’ place. For such an old warrior, he was surprisingly spry. He rolled between the legs of one Liskash, slashing its ankles as he moved. Springing from a crouch, he skewered another through its throat, and then turned to parry a javelin-thrust with his dagger. Slashing the offending Liskash across its snout, he dashed inside of its guard, hacking off its arm first and then its head. The final Liskash that Sartas saw Miarrius kill was taken down after the warrior had tripped it and used his legs to immobilize it before disemboweling the Scaly One.

  As well as his fighters were doing, Sartas had his own hands full. For every Liskash that he cut down, there were three more to t
ake its place. He gave the head of his javelin to one of them; dying, it reached for the haft and held onto it as it fell backwards, taking the javelin out of the talonmaster’s grip. Snarling, he ducked under a sword just in time as he pulled his own blade from its sheath; he felt the tip of one of his ears trickling blood. Too close. He chopped at the Liskash that had swung at him, forcing it back. Feinting to the left, he ducked low and stabbed quickly with the short sword, catching his opponent in the chest with the tip of the blade. The Scaly One didn’t have time to hiss as it fell off of the blade, dead.

  There were already others to take its place, however. A slung stone grazed the side of Sartas’ shoulder; he whirled and dropped to a knee as two more went sailing over his head to impact with a foe behind him. He charged forward again, shouldering a Liskash in the back; it stumbled forward, impaling itself on one of his warrior’s javelins. He knew that he couldn’t stop moving; more would be crowding at his back. Sartas slashed one lizard across its legs, spinning with the cut and opening its throat with another blow as it fell to the ground.

  Finally, the inevitable happened; they started dying. One warrior fell, followed by another; javelins and swords and claws from the mob came in unending waves. Even with all of their ferocity and bravery, Sartas’ warriors could not fight in such a melee forever. Sartas had just cut a Liskash from stem to stern when he noticed that Rrerren had suddenly stopped laughing; whirling around to where he last saw the warrior, his heart dropped. Rrerren was standing with a sword through his back and out his chest, a confused look on his face. Then he spun on a heel, decapitating the Liskash that had run him through. Sartas sprinted through the fighting, dodging Liskash and Mrem alike to reach Rrerren’s side just as he fell to his knees.

  “Already?” He sputtered, trying to grin as he was coughing up too much blood. “I’ve only killed twenty more Scaly Ones than Arschus has. I can’t let—” The light left Rrerren Rras’ eyes in that moment, and he went slack in Sartas’ grip, still smiling. Sartas came up from the ground roaring, baring his fangs and looking at the surrounding Liskash with unadulterated murder in his eyes. He surged forward, blocking a javelin with his sword; he collapsed the throat of the javelin-wielder with the edge of his shield. The Scaly One doubled over, unable to breathe; Sartas swung his sword with all of his might, cleaving off the enemy’s head and shoulder with a single blow. The other foes all backed away from him, none of them wanting to be the next to face his wrath.

  Sartas took a step towards them, intending to find a new victim for his fury. He stopped suddenly, feeling as confused as Rrerren had looked. He couldn’t move his left leg. Looking down, he saw that there was a javelin going through the meat of his thigh, still quivering. The Liskash around him saw the opening, and came for him; he was put on the defensive, swatting away swords and javelins while not being able to maneuver at all. Soon, they would swarm him, and that would be the end. He could see that more of his warriors were failing and dying; in twos or threes or alone, they killed and were cut down in turn.

  Just when it looked like the onslaught was going to overwhelm him, Sartas saw that some of the others were coming for him. Ssenna and Miarrius, fighting as a pair, with Arschus carving a path through the Liskash from a different direction. The throng of Liskash separating them from the talonmaster was too strong; every time they pushed forward, they were driven back just as quickly. He tried to call out to them, to tell them to leave him and fight for themselves. It was no use, however; the din of battle drowned out every word he said more thoroughly than the New Water had drowned the valley.

  Arschus disappeared behind a wall of Liskash. He had several arrows and javelins sticking out from his hide, but he did not stop; whenever the Liskash came at him, he cut them down with swings of his axe. He eventually slowed, however, until he progressed no further; the last Sartas saw of him, before the Liskash got between them, he was splitting one of the Scaly Ones in half while throttling another to death with his left hand.

  Miarrius and Ssenna had been stopped by the mob of Liskash between them and Sartas as well. They were fighting back to back; Ssenna was cradling her left arm while stabbing Liskash with one of their own javelins. Miarrius was bleeding from a dozen wounds, but that didn’t seem to have slowed his assault. A slung stone struck his hand, causing him to drop his dagger; with that hole in his defense, three Liskash swords bit into the flesh of his chest. Miarrius killed two of them, rending the throat of the second one with only his claws before he finally fell to the ground. Ssenna finished off the third Liskash, standing over Miarrius’ body. The Liskash pressed in with spears; from the sound of things, Sartas knew that she did not die alone.

  The wounded talonmaster hissed at the Liskash around him. We all go together here. He was committed to make his friends’ sacrifice worth it, and to match it. He gathered his strength, willing himself past the pain from his wounds. Sartas snapped the haft of the javelin that had pierced his thigh to free himself, then leapt into the air off of his good leg. Driving the splintered wood down, he lodged it into the eye socket of a Liskash, sending the scaly horror down gurgling.

  Another opponent came swept in from Sartas’ left, narrowly missing the talonmaster with a poorly aimed bash from his shield. Sartas struck the Liskash on the temple with the pommel of his sword, spinning it in his hands to turn the point downwards before stabbing the Liskash in its back from above. Just as the spray of its blood washed over his face, he felt his body shake. An arrow had slipped past his arms and through his armor, lodging in the side of his gut. Sartas stumbled backwards, barely managing to wrench his sword loose before he lost his balance completely.

  “I’m done for.” Sartas said it for no one other than himself. He had seen enough arrow wounds to the belly to know that he didn’t have long. With no dancers to heal him, never mind the fact that he’d never get off of this battlefield, the outcome was certain. He’d bleed out. So he had better take as many of the bastards with him as he could before he no longer had the strength to move. Propping himself up on one arm, he held out his sword with the other, keeping the blade as steady as he could. “The next one of you dies. The one after him won’t be as lucky, you sons of snakes.”

  Sartas couldn’t hear any of the sounds of battle; no more swords on shields or other swords, the whack of javelin hafts meeting, the screams of the dying. Was he really the only one left?

  “SARTAS REWL!” The Liskash around him opened their ranks just enough so that he could see who had called out his name. It was Shar Enthiss. Sartas had not seen him during the fight, save for the very beginning. After that, it had been hard enough for any of them to keep track of anything besides the enemy immediately in front of them. Shar had lost all of his weapons, and his shield. His armor looked like it had been clawed and ripped away from his body, with his harness left in tatters. His fur was utterly drenched in blood, his ears were tattered, and clumps of fur around his face were torn out. Sartas could not tell how much of the blood was Shar’s and how much of it was Liskash. His doubts were dispelled in the next moment, when Shar dug both of his clawed hands into the belly of a Liskash and nearly pulled it apart. Gore splattered everywhere, but Shar did not stop for a moment. His eyes were wild, and any Liskash that came across his path met its end. With claws and fangs, anything he was able to touch he would rend to pieces.

  Shar had breached the circle of Liskash that surrounded Sartas. They all backed away from him, some trembling visibly; Shar looked like something from a terrible afterlife full of blood and rage. Upon spying the talonmaster, Shar smiled, baring yellowed teeth between red-covered lips. His smile left him just as suddenly as it had come when a javelin pierced him just below his breastbone. He looked down at the offending javelin as if it was rude to interrupt him. The Liskash that was holding the javelin tried to pull it back out, but Shar grabbed the shaft of it. The Liskash began to pull on the javelin more frantically. That’s when the young warrior pulled himself along the javelin towards the Scaly One, impaling himself
further. Shar stabbed his talons into the Liskash fighter’s arms when he was close enough, screaming, “CLAN OF THE LONG FANG!” He then sunk his teeth into the lizard’s neck, ripping out it’s throat. A look of deep satisfaction was the last thing to cross Shar Enthiss’ face before he fell to a dozen swords and javelins.

  The Liskash were gathering in closer around Sartas now. They were hissing and spitting, with swords raised. He was losing strength, fast; too much of his blood was gone. A wordless roar pierced the air; all of the Liskash around him went quiet. An opening formed in the circle; beyond it was the largest Liskash Sartas Rewl had ever seen. It was armored in patchwork bronze scales and pieces of discarded hide. Sartas’ eyes went wide at what it was holding, however; the mangled body of Arschus Mroa. The Liskash fiend dropped the corpse, licking its lips as it stalked over to Sartas. It stalked closer until it was next to him.

  The Liskash, clearly the leader of the others from the deference they showed him, pointed a single scaly claw at Sartas. “You die,” it said in broken Mrem. “We take all.” Its expression remained unchanged, but Sartas could tell it was relishing this moment. Sartas took several deep breaths, then propped himself up on an elbow. With a monumental effort, he brought himself to his feet.

  “No. We both die.” Sartas pulled the javelin from his thigh, a gout of blood spurting sluggishly from the wound; he would bleed out that much quicker because of it, but he could also move better now. The Scaly One must have understood Sartas; tilting its head back to roar, it sprinted towards him. Sartas dashed at it; he would have to have perfect timing for this to work. The Liskash swung his sword down just as Sartas knew he would. The talonmaster raised his sword to meet the blow, but held it in a loose grip. At the last moment, he pulled the sword closer so that it was the tip that made contact with the Liskash blade. The swords meet with a clang, and Sartas’ spun out of his hand into the air. As quick as a blast of lightning, he snatched the sword with his off hand, and swung it laterally; it caught the Liskash leader in the ribs, snaking under the edge of its armor. Sartas tugged on the blade to carry it through, then pulled it out. The ground trembled as the leader fell to its knees, clutching its ruined belly. With a final scream, Sartas raised his sword above his head, then brought it down with both hands through the Liskash’s spine.