Theo closed his eyes and waited. The girallon’s breath was hot on his face. He felt the ape inhale, preparing to strike. He waited.
There was another roar, not at all like that of the girallons, and it sounded across the lake and into the thick jungle, carrying for miles. It was very loud. Theo felt the muddy bank hit him in the back and realized he’d fallen over.
When he opened his eyes, the girallon was gone. In its place, looking down at him from atop the statue, was a huge brass-scaled tiger with wings like that of a dragon and claws as sharp as knives. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the totem it was crouching on.
“Oh,” said Theo. “Hello, kitty.”
CHAPTER TEN
Vanderjack was surrounded by apes.
He was fifty feet up in the trees, his sword and dagger drawn, scratches all over his arms and legs, straddling two branches. His blades flashed about him, a whirling shield of steel that, for the time being, fended off the two mighty girallons. They roared, teeth bared, claws slashing. They had carried him up there, but they couldn’t come near him anymore.
“Gredchen!” Vanderjack shouted. “How’re you doing?”
Two trees away from Vanderjack, Gredchen was trying to wrench the gnome’s polearm from the thick bark of the banyan tree. She had clambered up into the branches to hide, spotted the weapon embedded in the tree, and latched onto it as a means of helping the sellsword fight back. How it had come to be there was not readily apparent. “Still stuck!” she called back.
One of the two girallons attacking Vanderjack lunged suddenly, taking advantage of the sellsword’s distraction. Together, man and ape fell from the branches and twenty feet down, crashing through the leaves and ending in a thick tangled net of vines. The girallon had an advantage over Vanderjack-the sellsword found himself on his back, under the ape’s massive bulk, swinging wildly in the vines. The creature pounded on Vanderjack with its fists, three of them at a time; with each blow, the sellsword felt something break.
Gredchen gave the polearm a final tug and almost lost her footing on the branches she’d been balancing on as the weapon came free. The polearm had a single narrow spearhead at the moment. Looking around for the girallons, she gasped; one of them was heading straight for her.
The ape leaped, a howling thing with teeth bared like foam-covered daggers. The baron’s aide had her weapon ready, however, and as the beast came for her, she raised it, closing her eyes against the sight. She felt the polearm twist in her hands and winced at the shock of the impact. The impossibly heavy mass of the girallon upon the spear jolted her arms and shoulders and forced her back into the tree behind her. When she opened her eyes, however, the creature was impaled through the stomach by the spear.
“A little help here!” she yelled, realizing that the girallon was not yet dead. Two of its clawed hands grasped at the shaft of the spear before it, trying to force its way backward. The other two snatched and clawed in Gredchen’s direction. She saw red in the girallon’s spittle and red in its eyes.
Meanwhile Vanderjack had kicked free of his attacker and shoved himself backward through the vines. When the girallon took a swipe at him, he fell onto another thick cluster of tendrils and creepers. “One moment,” he shouted back, burrowing in and catching his breath. “Little busy.”
Vanderjack’s girallon leaped down through the gap in the vines above to follow its prey. The sellsword slid aside and watched it fall past, coming to a stop about ten feet below him. It snarled and looked around to find the human, but Vanderjack was pulling broad leaves over himself to hide.
They seemed hopelessly outmatched. Vanderjack looked over to where he thought Gredchen’s voice was coming from and spotted one of the girallons with its back to him, a spear emerging from the matted fur. Well, he thought, she isn’t doing too badly. His expression shifted when he saw the creature pull itself off the spear and toss it aside.
“Vanderjack!” Gredchen yelled, unarmed. “Any time now!”
The sellsword wiped the sweat from his face. No ghosts to be his eyes and ears meant that he was forced throughout the whole miserable fight to do all the work himself. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, but he realized he’d grown overly dependent on them.
“Ackal’s Teeth, woman!” he called back, instantly regretting it. His girallon opponent whirled around and looked up, locking eyes with him. “Hold onto your skirts, can’t you see I’m a little busy myself at the moment!”
With a high-pitched battle cry, Vanderjack gripped Lifecleaver in both hands and leaped from the trees, straight toward the girallon below him. The ape lifted its four arms before its face, but the sellsword’s momentum propelled him heavily. Both boots struck the girallon’s broad, muscular shoulders, forcing the beast back a step. Vanderjack brought the sword down as hard as he could, inflicting a vicious wound in the girallon’s back. It screamed, arms shooting upward to dislodge the human who had brought it such pain, but Vanderjack had already let the leaping movement carry him past. Springing away, he landed a little more than a yard from Gredchen’s foe.
“We’re in big trouble,” Vanderjack called to Gredchen, over the second girallon’s shoulder.
“No kidding,” Gredchen responded.
Gredchen’s girallon spun around swiftly, knocking Vanderjack back and into the trunk of a banyan. Gredchen swore and stepped back around her own tree, roughly in the direction of where the girallon had thrown the gnome’s polearm.
The first girallon swung across to where its companion had knocked Vanderjack. The leafy canopy and thick floor beneath them all shook with the added weight; trunks bowed inward. Both girallons, bleeding and frothing at the mouth, had somehow become even more terrifying and dangerous when wounded, than they were before they’d been hurt.
Gredchen glanced around but couldn’t see the polearm anywhere. She guessed it had fallen below, somewhere in the darkness of the jungle floor. Rain began to filter through the upper canopies, making the dim light around them even greener. The girallons bellowed fiercely as they moved for a fresh attack.
Vanderjack’s vision swam red before him, filled with motes of white light and pulsing with the blood in his temples. The fingers of one hand were still wrapped around the slick grip of his sword, despite the blow from the ape. All of his training as a mercenary and soldier kept him from fumbling the weapon, but he didn’t have much strength left-a problem if the girallons carried on the way they were going. He closed his eyes, then opened them again.
The Hunter was standing there, ephemeral, translucent, the two girallons visible through his spectral body.
“Is that you, or me hallucinating?” he muttered, blood on his lips.
“Get to your feet,” the Hunter said.
“You need to jump,” said the Cavalier, materializing beside the Hunter.
“Help is coming,” said the Apothecary, appearing on the other side, blue-white at the edge of Vanderjack’s vision.
“Tell the woman,” said the Aristocrat, heard more than seen, probably behind him.
“You need to jump,” said the Philosopher, echoing the Cavalier.
Vanderjack reached out his free hand, wrapped it around a thick, ropy vine, and slowly pulled himself up. He felt as if he might black out with the effort. The girallons were advancing methodically, spending more of their time screaming and roaring at him than actually lifting a claw in his direction. They must have known he was near unconsciousness; they were playing with him.
“I’m … trying,” he said.
“Vanderjack! Get up!” he heard Gredchen call out.
“I’m … trying!” he repeated. He got to one knee and felt the tremors beneath.
“You need to jump,” said the Conjurer from off to the left or the right.
The girallons tensed, their muscles twitching, bunching up to leap at Vanderjack and tear him to pieces.
