Sword Brother

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, lobsterlike 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.

The 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 Sothoii 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.

'Tomanak! Tomanak!' 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 axe 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. 'I know the front right suspension's screwed, but I don't know about any of the other axles. And I can't see jack-you should pardon the expression-with this thing lying across my vision slots. Not to mention my hatch; I'm 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 Tomanak 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 than 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, 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.