The 9th Fortress

'Where does her body find all those tears?'

The Gorgon carried on regardless of Kat's temper, so he thumped his face like a thug against the cell bars.

'Now it can't be all that bad!' said a new voice, a man free from the confines of any cage.

'Who is there?' asked Harmony, peering as far as possible through her bars. 'Who is that?'

Presently, Sir Godwin Eddinray left the shadows and stepped into a ray of sunlight.

'You?!' choked Kat, agog. 'Can't be!'

'Can be!' the knight declared, with a royal wave and a deep indent marking his helmet.

'And who are you?' asked the French girl.

Eddinray's eyebrows immediately sprung to the top of his head as he beheld the fallen angel. 'Divine,' he mumbled, losing track of himself.

'Pardon me?' she said. 'Are you an ally to us?'

With a rattle of the head, the knight seemed to recover from his spell. 'My name is Godwin Eddinray, your ally and knight in impressed armor. I have come to your rescue, madam! Come to save the day!'

'How?' asked Kat, still flummoxed by the gaunt Englishman's appearance here.

'Thrown from the flying horse,' he said, 'I woke with concussion under a bloody tree some time later. Followed the path here and waited for my opportunity to elude security, which by the way, leaves a lot to be desired.'

'What have you there?' pried Harmony, pointing to a bulging bag in Eddinray's hand.

'My dear,' he said, smiling; 'I have used my skills to recover… what was taken.'

Eddinray parted the bag to reveal all the weapons stripped away by bogs — Kat's swords, katana and wakizashi — not to mention my short sword, special dagger, and shield with a centaur's embossed seal.

'We will need all hands to get out of here,' he added. 'Our friend Danny boy is strapped to a post outside.'

'Is he okay?' asked Harmony. 'Alive?'

'The wizard removed one of his eyes, madam. I cleaned the wound myself last night and can assure you that he is still with us.'

'One of his eyes?' she considered with horror; Kat also appeared disturbed.

'The cell keys are hanging near the door, Godwin,' Harmony said. 'Bring them to my hand at once.'

'My good woman!' he tittered. 'It is simply not safe out there for a lady. Yes I admire your courage and orientation, but I strongly suggest-' Harmony stretched through the bars, snatched a chink in Eddinray's armor then yanked the lanky man at her. 'I strongly suggest… that you fetch the keys this instant!'

Kat grinned as the knight scurried off for the keys, pausing suddenly down the corridor — recalling something. 'Kat?' he said, holding up one bare pink hand. 'Have you seen my other glove?'

***

The three black beauties paraded before me at the post, licking a shine over their lips. The immortal Scurge would arrive shortly, and there was nothing on this realm to stop it. Fear of being devoured took my mind from the agony in my eye — even the gentlest breeze was like a searing iron prodding the vacant socket — nevertheless I much preferred living with it than joining Gus in the post.

The fort fell silent all of a sudden, an eerie, ghostly hush. Scarfell and Grutas watched the scene amidst the bog formation, anticipation growing as the women came side by side, linking their little hands. Their eyes were hungry as they ogled me over, and like the wolf before, a bizarre transformation now got under-way. The fingertips began to fuse, a sensation that appeared to tickle the women with a chill; the green, the blue and the scarlet eyes rolling back in orgasmic sync until hands were nothing but lumps of connected flesh.

With a clanging of keys, Eddinray released the angel and samurai from their cages. Immediately, Kat grappled the katana from the bag and rushed to the cellblock door. There, he waited with a cross face and a mind to slaughter any prying bog. None came, so he signalled the others to join him. 'Go on ahead!' he ordered once they reached the door.

'But why?' frowned Harmony.

'Wait upstairs!' he insisted. 'Do not take a foot from the temple without me. Now go!'

Eddinray ushered Harmony out of the cellblock; and the minute Kat was alone, he returned, twirling his sword down the narrow corridor. He removed the keys from his cage lock and continued toward the bright window, and the putrid cell underneath it. There, a naked man slept in a pool of his own bile and hair. Kat unlocked that cage, and with a single, downward thrust of his katana, he put the wolf out of its misery.

19. The Lion's Den

A tentative Harmony and Eddinray watched events unfold at the temple door. 'The Scurge!' she whispered. 'Your friend has no chance. Unless…'

'Unless,' added Eddinray, sucking his teeth, 'unless we charge these brigands.

Do not let the armor fool you madam, for I am greased lightning under this mail.'

'I will be back!' she said, a brainstorm hastening her return to the bowels of the temple.

'Where is she going?' growled Kat, watching the angel run past him.

'I count at least two hundred,' mumbled Eddinray as Kat joined his side. 'Two hundred, including a monster and a sorcerer. I'll have my work cut out, that's for sure.'

The triplets continued to churn in metamorphosis, a confusion of arms here and legs there. She, or it, resembled a super-sized slug of bursting bubbles and popping puss. This blob seemed to cook from the inside, sending a vomit inducing fume around the fort until at last, a ravenous moan cried out from inside the sticky mass, and a fist broke free from the jellied coat. Transformation was complete, and the grotesque immortal emerged. There was one head with three faces smeared around it, each wearing a skewed and melted expression. The thing had only one gaping mouth, full of vampire teeth, and gooey suction cups covering her lips. The body, easily ten feet tall, was beetle like, with a shield of hardened shell over its belly. Six arms hung from her torso, and razor sharp points grew from the ends of thirty fingers. Another six lanky legs scuttled for space underneath the gut, and a tail stretched and curled to a tip behind her.

'Bravo!' cheered Scarfell, as the Scruge skewered four of his bogs like barbecue meat on her tail.

She tore at them, and then sucked the face clean off another before turning her attention to the main course: The marrow in my bones. Her dribbling mouth roared and I saw her stomach vibrate from desire — sucker lips twitching.

'Help!' I yelled, straining my wrists raw at the ropes.

With Harmony still downstairs, Kat slapped Eddinray on the arm and passed him a look the knight knew all too well; this was a message between killers, a code only another warrior could understand. Everybody in this fort now turned to a new disturbance, to the knight and samurai's full-blooded charge from the temple door. Lunacy poisoned my friends’ eyes, and inspired their cries.

'Eddinray!' I shrieked. 'Kat! Get me out! Cut me loose!'

Bog after bog ran unprepared for the determined men, who slashed their way through the first batch. Almost immediately, the army disintegrated into a rabble — some killed by Kat's sword, the rest snagged by the Scurge.

'Get me out of this!' I begged.

An incensed Scarfell observed the disarray with an eye glowing red and a thick vain ready to burst across his forehead. 'Grutas!' he fumed; 'there is your samurai! Kill him!'

Despite the disorder, a wash of black surrounded Kat and Eddinray. Bogs did not attack them one at a time, but six, seven, eight, nine and ten; and the one thing saving them from inhalation was the Scurge, who mutilated at will. Rejoicing in his own slaughter, Kat bounced and somersaulted through the hordes with unadulterated confidence and a younger man's athleticism. The frustration of the sobbing Gorgon, the two years locked in Bludgeon's cave and over two hundred more in the Waiting Plain seemed to explode from the tip of his swords.

Eddinray meanwhile beat off bogs with careless smashing of his long-sword, unscrupulous eye pokes to some