tense with the old, familiar signal of impending danger. A tension which increased as he heard the faint rasp of shifting grains.
Sand moving when there was no wind!
He lunged forward, rising, his hand dropping, lifting with the weight of the knife as he turned to face horror.
It was big, looming against the sky, a thing of spined limbs and oozing palps, of mandilbles which snapped with the rattle of castanets, of eyes which glowed like jewels mounted in short, bristling hair. An insect, armored and armed with glistening plates of chitin, multi-eyed, multi-limbed. A thing three times the size of a man which reared from the sand in a rain of black granules to scuttle toward its prey.
Dumarest sprang to one side and felt his boot slip in the sand so that, thrown off balance, he swung beneath the sweep of a claw to fall, to roll desperately as serrated edges tore at the sand to leave long, ugly furrows. A moment in which the thing heaved itself totally from the black grains to rear in monstrous silhouette against the flame-shot sky, to turn as it fell, to land and lunge forward in one flickering movement.
Dumarest rose, diving to one side, blade lifted to ward off the slash of a spined limb, steel biting into chitin to release a gush of yellow ichor, to thrust at the membrane of a joint, to dig and twist and leave the thing with a crippled limb.
A minor wound which it ignored as, poised, it stood watching.
A thing which lurked beneath the sand, waiting for unguessable hours for prey to alert it to the possibility of food and moisture. Stimulated by his scent, the meat he carried, the fluid his skin contained.
And against it Dumarest had nothing but his knife. It wasn't enough and he'd known it from the first. The creature was too big, the blade too short to penetrate to a vital organ. The eyes he could attack but they were many and even if totally blinded the thing could trace him by scent. The limbs could be crippled but, again, there were too many. To destroy them all would be to leave it a helpless mass writhing in the sand but to do it would require speed and skill as well as judgment and luck. Too much luck.
But he had to try.
Stooping he snatched up sand in his left hand and darted forward as he threw it at the eyes of the creature. Even as the grains left his hand he lunged to the attack, knife a shimmer as he struck, slashed, twisted at joints and softer portions. A moment in which he seemed to be winning then again the thing reared, revealing an underside blotched and mottled with tufted hairs, legs scrabbling as it twisted, falling to smash against him, one leg numbing his arm with a blow which tore the knife from his fingers and sent it spinning to clash against the rock.
As the limb returned for another blow Dumarest caught it in both hands, threw his weight against it, strained until chitin yielded and the broken appendage flopped in streams of sickly yellow. A minor victory and possibly his last. Stars exploded in his skull as a living club slammed against his head and the twitch of the broken limb he held flung him up and away to land heavily in the sand.
To lie and die.
To rise and run and die.
To overcome his weakness, the dizziness, the stench of the insect, to return to the battle, to do what he could against impossible odds and, because they were impossible, to die.
Always it came to that.
Bare-handed he was helpless and even if he still had the knife the end would have been the same. He needed a laser, a heavy-duty weapon which would burn holes in the thing like a red hot wire in butter. A military-type Mark IV Ellman such as he had used before.
And, suddenly, he had it.
Dumarest rose as the thing charged, the gun cradled in his arms, finger closing on the release as a serrated claw moved to cut him in half. A claw which smoked and jerked and turned on the end of its limb to fall in a shower of yellow as the red guide-beam traced a searing path over the natural armor. A ruby finger which lifted to turn jeweled eyes into patches of char. To send destruction in a swath between the gaping mandibles. To fry the soft inner tissues. To reach the main ganglion and caress it and turn it into ash with the heat of its passion.
To kill!
Dumarest lowered the gun as the creature fell, feeling the weight of it in his hands as thin limbs scrabbled at the sand, the creature threshing in reflex action, black grains rising to fall with whispering rustles. Rustles which were repeated on all sides. Mounting into a hideous chittering as the plain boiled with ferocious life.
The dead thing had not been alone.
Dumarest flung himself against the rock as they came scuttling toward him. A mass of insect-like things grotesquely huge, some like mutated spiders, others with the claws and stings of scorpions, more like racing ants, all objects of potential death.
Some met the ruby guide-beam of the laser and fell to be torn apart by others. Others, crippled, lurched away, fighting off those who would feed on their still-living flesh. The rest, uninjured, advanced like running horses over the sand. An endless stream of them which covered the area with shifting patterns of red and scarlet; the sky reflected in the sea of glistening chitin.
Against them the gun was useless.
Dumarest turned, fired, turned and fired again, turned and fired in a circle which ringed him with a mound of dead and smouldering flesh but still they came on filling the air with the rasp of their passage; the harsh clatter of mandibles the chittering of joints and antennae and lifted stings, the scrape of hooked and reaching feet.
One laser-he needed an army!
And, suddenly, he had it.
Men were all around him, grim figures in battle armor, tough mercenaries wearing familiar colors. They dropped into position and built a barrier of crossfire in which nothing living could survive. Darting flashes of laser beams weaving a tapestry of brilliance against the sky. A web of destructive energies directed with the skill of long training. Against such a barrage men would have retreated but the creatures on the plain were not men. With insensate ferocity they continued the attack.
And the red of human blood joined the yellow of spilled ichor.
A man screamed as a claw closed around his waist, lifting him high, closing to let him fall in two parts joined by a shower of crimson. Another tried to run and fell with twitching stumps where legs had been. A third, his face ripped from the bones of his skull, staggered, keening, hands lifted to the ghastly mask until a comrade gave him the mercy of a quick end.
Incidents which stood out among the rest but on all sides men cried out and fell and died beneath the weight of the ceaseless onslaught. Firing, Dumarest climbed on the rock, eyes narrowed as he scanned the distances, seeing yet more creatures and, among them, man-like shapes.
Figures which stood, watching, hands thrust into the wide sleeves of their robes. Robes which glowed scarlet beneath the sky. Cowls which hide the faces but, if the faces were hidden, the device marked in the breast of each robe was not.
The Cyclan-here?
Enigmatic figures which served as targets for the weapon Dumarest lifted to aim and fire. Shapes which wilted only to reappear elsewhere. And, all around, the noise and fury of combat.
Screams and chitterings and the hiss of ichor turned into steam. The near-inaudible hissing of laser fire turning airborne moisture into vapor. The grunts of men recognizing inevitability. The curses which accompanied the foreknowledge of death.
'Keep firing!' Dumarest shouted from his position on the rock. 'Maintain positions and coordinate your action. Drop and shoot upward. Keep them back.'
Back until, surely, there could be no more. Back until the air grew hot and the plain steamed with noxious vapors. Until guns ceased to fire as stored energies failed. Back until men died and lay where they had fallen with tormented faces turned to an alien sky. Until Dumarest, thrown to one side, knowing he was hit, realized he was dying.
His tunic had been ripped open and the chest beneath was a mass of blood and torn muscle, pulped tissue flecked with the white shards of shattered ribs. Breathing, he felt the rush of blood into laboring lungs and tasted its flavor. Trying to move, he sensed the shattered legs and felt agony jar his spine.
Still he tried to use the gun but now it was too heavy to lift. And his knife was gone. And the sky was
