The behemothic cyclopta ejected a warble of loss and despair surpassing anything the smaller female had thrown in their faces. As a vengeful war-cry, it would take some surpassing. Van Reiver didn't have the men respond in kind. It would demoralise himself as much as them and things were stark enough to his reasoning.
"You." Van Reiver spun to the skirmisher standing behind Cephill. "Drop your rocks, and sprint back to the cave. Tell Carla to get Dagmar out here and throw a fucking spell. Now!" The man goggled and Van Reiver roared, "Now! Sprint, damn it!"
"Shit!" The seaman gasped, dropped his rocks, tossed his helm aside and rocketed towards the black crack that seemed impossibly far away.
"Hold fast!" Grimm bellowed from the other phalanx, hoarse voice enfeebled to Van Reiver as men geographically fidgeted. The creature half-turned as though to retrace its steps, then with a speed that belied its massive size, ripped a rocky outcrop several feet high out from the beach. With a crunching heave and a shower of displaced geology, the cyclopta twisted and hurled it towards their tiny phalanx. "Hold!" Grimm instructed, voice wavering with uncertainty.
"Scatter!" Hatch countermanded in a tremendous voice, deafening Van Reiver before the officer could overrule Grimm. Hatch had seen the danger faster, then like the ripples from a rock hurled into a pond, the men spread from the onrushing basalt block. Pacing backwards, Van Reiver saw Grimm and Hatch's spearman avoid the improvised missile, but one of Mathyss' scouts, moving backwards misread the bounce. The jagged stone pulped her long legs and smeared her head into mist before skipping sideways, bouncing twice and clipping the running skirmisher. Clamping hands around his shattered knee, the ginger-bearded seaman crumpled. The projectile continued to gouge a thick black groove into the beach, bounced into the air, and ripped a man-sized chunk from the roof of the cave entrance. It toppled to its side as fragments of headland showered the opening. Van Reiver's hopes and his stomach plunged. Fuck, he had failed, and was going to get them all killed.
44
"Up! Get the rest up!" Mathyss ordered the scout who dragged his torso clear. She nodded, and he resumed, pushing and heaving his legs and weapons free. He looked up to see where the phalanx-felling arm had gone and almost missed Merizus discarding his ankhbow and snatching up a fallen spear to step into the void. The commander saw him duck as the arm flicked out at him. Gods, it was huge! Mathyss dived, hearing the scrape of shingle as it swung past the huge human and came after him. The commander threw himself forward as branch-like fingers scoured the beach where he had been a heartbeat before. Mathyss ploughed to a halt and rolled to his side, as newly risen sailor took the vengeful backswing in a nauseating crunch of pulped flesh he felt as much as heard. Merizus stumbled, compressed to one knee in a circle of fallen men.
"Fuck that!" the immense man bellowed and rose, making a shadow over the elf. Mathyss raised himself with his arms and bunched his legs under himself as the marine jammed the butt of his spear into the beach and launched himself at the monstrous woman. Merizus cleared her arm by a hair's breadth as it hung like an ominous thunderhead. Mathyss leapt to his feet and charged after him to see the serjeant bunch his formidable arm muscles and swing the spear towards her torso.
"Everybody up. At her now!" Mathyss screamed, first in common, then elven, and fumbled for his sword. In a moment of almost perfect crystalline clarity, the elf saw Merizus draw his arm back and ram his spear between her breasts. Unlike every other blow they struck, his spear slid in effortlessly through the flesh and plunged deep into her diaphragm. Blood fountained, his massive, armoured frame tearing the jagged wound wide as her skin parted under her gaping tunic and he slid down the cleavage.
.*.*.
Harcux, to his chagrin, found himself the only man in Mathyss' phalanx in fighting proximity, as the female cyclopta hewed both phalanxes like wheat. Drawing back his spear at Mathyss' shout, he took a running leap under the raised foot as it slammed down. Heedless of the danger, he skidded to a halt, ignoring stones pounding his legs, and levered himself up. He raised the spear overhead and vented his fury in a howl, ramming it into the exposed flesh just below the ankle bone. The giantess shrieked. A strident howl, shaking every leaf from every tree within a score paces of the treeline.
Teeth bared, muscles bulging, tendons corded as the blood thundered in his head, Harcux threw his weight against the spear, driving it in further and dragging it down to widen the tear. Blood puckered from the grooves in the head of the wavy elven blade. Something grated, and the head vanished inside, throwing him right to hang under the spear on tiptoes.
Men around Harcux seemed to sense the glimmer of opportunity and scramble up to seize the urgency. Charging in on his left, Trevir flung his spear at the statuesque face overhead, missing the hanging Merizus by a hand-span.
"Fuck!" the marine snarled as the cyclopta batted the spear aside, then raised her hand, frowning as though unsure at which dangling human to grab. Harcux saw the head swivel as the brain deliberated, but had nothing to use in distraction. Brak threw himself over groaning men and lunged with his own spear. He drove the hand back before his spear snapped and sent the seaman face first into the side of the foot beside Harcux. Harcux seized the opportunity and stood on Brak's shoulder to gain height and twist the spear further. Anything to give Merizus time to escape.
Harcux glanced down at the marine and cleared his throat. "Some fuckin' help here?"
"Fuck!" Trevir repeated and skidded to them, then thrust himself at Harcux, pushing the bigger man up with frantic strength. The haft bent as they gasped and strained together, with Brak squirming underfoot. With a cringe-worthy crunch of bone and sinew, the spearhead punctured deeper into the ankle and pulled Harcux skyward. Brak rolled clear and added his brawn to the mix.
The scream torn from the giant's throat deafened everyone. She jerked her foot away, snatching the shaft from Harcux, leaving his hands stinging as he sagged back. With the weight of him and Trevir on Brak, they had no chance, and tumbled into the huge barnacle-coated sandal and toppled back across Brak.
"Gerroff!" The rage-filled voice seemed muffled and somewhere under his back. Despite their predicament, Harcux barked an inappropriate laugh and, putting a hand in the gap between Trevir's twitching legs, made to rise.
"Fuck an' a shindig!" warbled a new high-pitched voice, and Harcux's laugh was crushed silent when a boot thumped into his stomach, flattening him, just as he had Brak. Carilon blurred across Harcux's vision and bounded onto the giant foot, waving his spear in one hand. The youngster crawled towards Harcux's still embedded one, pulling at seaweed and crustaceans for traction. Harcux goggled, seeing the huge arm rise to darken the sky as Merizus hung onto his spear desperately. Harcux rolled left and dragged Trevir with him. The cyclopta swung, ripping into the beach, and sent Brak into a tumble.
Harcux had proved the creature vulnerable, and while Carilon lacked brains, stabbing a massive monster with a pointy stick was within his abilities. The big man knew the young sailor was familiar with humanoid weakness, as he was a close second to himself for brawling.
"Go on, lad, have at the fucker!" He roared.
Carilon ducked the return swipe and clambered higher, slipping and skidding. Cursing, he lurched for traction, flicking seaweed down onto Harcux, and stabbing down, the youngster halted his slide. Slick handholds poured with crimson rivulets as Harcux clawed the seaweed from his face. Grabbing the sandal, he went to follow. Leather groaned in protest as blood drizzled down into Harcux's eyes. He released his grip and pawed blood from eyes.
Breath whooping, the young sailor flung himself back, almost evaded the giant arm and would have fallen over the other side if not holding onto the embedded spear in a death grip. He fell to his knees, helmet ripped away. Harcux saw Carilon grin, and drawing back his arm, hurled his weapon into the void of her gaping kilt above him. "Hah! No muff, too tough—" he crowed, raising his arms as if in victory.
"Duck, you idiot!" Harcux shouted and clambered again after the youngster.
Snatching for his leg, he was too slow. So slow it was laughable. Harcux pressed himself tight to the barnacles at the rush of air overhead. The sky blackened as the crowing landsman cut off with a croak and splashed into the surf thirty feet distant. Shit. The big sailor groaned and moved for his spear. He caught movement from the corner of his eye and froze. A rain of blood sheeted down where he would have been. "Fuckit." He threw himself into the gap between arm and leg onto the beach below. Only then, did he hope Trevir had moved.
.*.*.
"In, in!" Mathyss ordered and grabbing at a slow-moving seaman, all but threw him at the enormous feet. "Keep her hands off him!" He jumped, getting height to look down along the beach, and saw the other creature hurl a rock over Van Reiver's men. He turned away, chest heaving at the prospect of being pincered by giants. Urgency filled him as the ground shook at the impact. Mathyss hurled another man forward and charged after him.
Harcux and Brak had spears going double-time. Gods, he needed three pairs of eyes. Heart racing, blood pounding, he ran through a shower of blood as Merizus dropped towards her stomach, leather-clad fingers squealing down his spear. Blood splashed in huge gouts over him and the men by her feet. How the mad marine was still up there? Mathyss couldn't guess. Kandra's bow felt sticky in his gauntlet, and the typical elven spear haft was far slicker. His nose wrinkled at the iron-rich tang, and Merizus dropped several inches as the creature arched backwards with a frustrated bellow, trying to fling off the man. For an instant, Mathyss gaped to see Merizus suspended horizontally over the shingle. Far above, the cyclopta flung her head back in a strident howl of unbridled agony, then stared with pain-wracked inhuman malevolence. Mathyss thought he had known terror through his centuries of life, but his past had nothing to compare with looking at that eye. Her eye peered down, and her left arm reached across, the huge hand spread. A trap poised to spring shut. Mathyss heard the gulp of Merizus' last breath and felt powerless, knowing he must do something. What? What could he do to save the man and maintain their delicate alliance to the bitter end?
"Jump man, save yourself!" Words, pathetic words. It should not be like this. Mathyss struggled to force himself to look, to see the heroic warrior who'd survived the Tryphon battle he had heard the humans talk about and only to die here like an errant fly.
"Oh no, you fuckin' don't, you ugly fat hag!" Merizus bubbled through thick, foetid rivulets of blood. It streamed so thickly the voice seemed disembodied. Mathyss heard his breath foam and slowly looked up. Merizus forced his feet into her shredded tunic, twisting them under her breasts. Elven boots bit against barnacles and canvas. He twisted the weapon for a better grip and thrust it deep into her as the vice-like hand clamped shut. Whimpering through the pain, Merizus yanked the spear left and right, sawing like a lumberjack. Blood-slick feet slipped as he sought to wriggle free. There was a sickening pop as the spearhead burst free in the river of arterial blood and the crimson coated marine slid between fingers and hurtled overhead. Mathyss twisted to see him crunch spread-eagled onto an area of sand.
"Archers, get her eye now!" Mathyss roared, and pointed a blood-drenched arm at the exposed face. "Move!"
Sensing the turning point, his scouts raced in to unleash a storm into the cyclopta's exposed face. She—it—staggered, left hand clutching at the gash from chest to stomach. The giantess's right arm fell limp, and darker blood dripped from her kilt. Two cloth-yard arrows slammed into the huge forehead and ricocheted, failing to penetrate the flesh on her brow. Another thwacked into her nostril and splattered snot and gore onto her tunic. The massive head snapping back as another stuck her eye, body convulsing and spasming in shock. She rocked on her heels as her enormous eye rolled back, snapping the shaft.
"Back off!" Mathyss roared, his voice cracking as he waved frantic motions. "Away, get away." The surviving men and women scrabbled away, churning the shingle, some dragging the fallen, some using spears as walking shafts. Mathyss looked about and scrambled back for Kandra's arrows, which had fallen unnoticed from the quiver. Snatching a pair, he twisted at the waist. He nocked both arrows to Kendra's bow and leapt right for a better angle. Sliding on his knees a score feet away, he drew as the head dropped onto the chest. His breathing stopped as his eyes focused on where his target would be. He paused, then loosed.
Both shafts launched true and splattered blood and viscous fluids as their hardened steel tips crunched through eyeball into brain matter. Mathyss jumped to his feet and sidestepped as the giantess and crashed face first into the shingle. The impact bounced everything living and dead a foot into the air. Water fountained from her sandal as her foot toppled to a last rest on its side. An epilogue to show how close the creature had been to safety. How much he had risked.
.*.*.
By some miracle neither Dagmar, nor Carla, nor the wounded inside the cave received as much as a scratch from the shrapnel-like shower. Irregular facets of the cave entrance and the boulder pinged and scattered around them in terrifying ricochets. It sounded worse than it appeared to the sunjammer's eyes. He exchanged a stunned look of disbelief with Carla before staring in horrid fascination as the men farther down the beach with Van Reiver picked themselves up to run back into ranks. Darkening in front of the fading sun, the giant closed in a quickening trot, a second boulder raised high.
The sunjammer followed Ephraim outside as the marine barked at two stretcher bearers. Ducking low, they raced to retrieve the skirmisher, rolling from side to side as he clutched his knee. Dagmar glanced at the growing collection of injured deposited inside the cave mouth. As he looked back to the beach, his eyes widened at the second rock filling his vision. It screeched over the downed man, scattering dark, blood-like earth in its wake. Dagmar back-pedalled and raised his hand, gathering his mana as both stretcher bearers dropped their burdens and scarpered into the trees.
.*.*.
"That's not fuckin' good!" Hatch shouted back to Van Reiver while pushing spearmen together and pointing his sword at the creature. Van Reiver had to agree as the elven archer and the marine with the ankhbow repositioned for another pitiful barrage. Inconveniently, they had to check their shooting because of men lumbering across their path dodging boulders. Oaths rang out in the cosmopolitan makeup of Tryphon's crew and their newfound allies as they got in each other's way.
"Back into ranks and forward, get close to the bugger. Archers to the flanks. He won't throw rocks if we engage him. In! In!" Van Reiver instructed, snatching up two rocks, weighing a pleasant couple of pounds each. He looked at his few skirmishers holding rocks. "Aim for the head. See if we can blind it!"
Seamen nodded as he called the cyclopta 'it' rather than 'he'. Within an eye blink, the distance separating them halved. As the cyclopta thundered at their tiny phalanxes, the eye flared a dark arterial red. The sand and shingle under Grimm's men in the front rank fountained with a dull crump of fire and death. Sailors tumbled from the blast, their armour smoking as the beach absorbed the blast. The shockwave felled Hatch's men. Gods, we need a miracle, Van Reiver thought as Mathyss' plan fell apart. Cephill with a few spearmen, and Van Reiver with a few men armed with rocks were all that remained of Mathyss' distraction, as the cyclopta loomed and snatched for another rock outcropping.
Van Reiver could see the other elf on the other side of Grimm cajoling, demanding greater accuracy, to shower their death on that huge iris. Each arrow and rock seemed ragged, flustered by frustration. Erratic accuracy, from men and women with their composure shaken by desperation. Like the smaller female, the male was shrewd, using one massive hand as a primitive shield between swipes. With the other, he scooped a cart-sized handful of beach and showered it in an arc—right in their faces. In an instant, all archery ceased with everyone ducking to protect their vision. Sand, rocks and stones cracked off armour and clanged off a few hurriedly raised shields in a cacophony of misery. Men cowered, their every breath a whimper, with many a prayer panted for an end.
"Charge it, get on 'im!" Hatch thundered. Van Reiver chanced a lo
ok to see his rank hurdling the fallen. He drove his phalanx in a rush. It was all he could do to give Grimm and his cursing men time to recover.
"Get up! And follow us. With me! Follow them! Throw... only... when in range!" Van Reiver wheezed, shovelling rocks and lumbered after Hatch, trying to balance the rocks in the crook of his arm but, being the useless twat he'd been on Tryphon, dropped several. He looked over his shoulder to see if Vaska had found any rope, but saw the older man crouched among scattered packs and rock fragments. "Bollocks!" He twisted his neck and glanced back at the giantess and the other fight. Men lay in heaps as a man hung from a spear on her chest. Van Reiver's hopes tumbled into fear as he ran. Sensing this was the only moment to act before their utter annihilation, he hurled his first rock. It bounced harmlessly off a collarbone as large as a tree trunk and barely missed braining the sailor beside Hatch as he jabbed. "Bollocks!" he repeated.
Bowstrings twanged, and arrows hissed, forcing the cyclopta to defend his face with a cow-sized hand and cease hurling handfuls of beach. It swiped at the air in front of the oversized face with a snarl, as long shaft after long shaft thudded into thick flesh, or pinged away in an angry buzz.
"Shit!" someone cursed.
"Slow him. We have to slow him. Throw hard! Open that face up!" Van Reiver barked. Shuffling left, Van Reiver took his remaining rock—which seemed far smaller than when he'd collected it—and hurled. Almost true, the stone spun before it clipped the giant's thumb and struck the upper lip. Blood bubbled down the boulder-like chin. The cyclopta's lip curled in contempt, revealing tombstone-like teeth, but the creature otherwise ignored the pitiful rain of rocks and arrows.
THE TRYPHON ODYSSEY (The Voyage Book 1) Page 40