recovery slightly behind and to the right of where he had been struck. The pick missed its mark by inches, but that was enough. The upswing caught and tore his already tattered smock, exposing the fine mesh of steel he wore beneath it.
'Quick as a mouse,' Obmi snarled, 'but this cat's claw of mine will pin you down yet!'
Gord had to grit his teeth to stand on his wounded leg and appear unhurt. Not only was the dwarf terribly strong, but the martel's hammer head had small spikes upon it, and the blow it had delivered was very painful. Blood trickled down his leg, and this made Gord both wary and angry. 'You are not a cat, dwarf, but a rat! That little nosepicker of yours is no cat's claw — it's just your ratty little teeth!' Then, his longsword ready, Gord came slowly forward. 'This is a weapon more fitted to a cat, dungpile, and I'll let you feel it in a moment.'
Obmi edged away just as cautiously as his foe approached. He was confident of ultimate victory, especially as he saw the effects of his blow upon the dark-haired, lean human. The fellow might be small and quick, a superb swordsman possibly, but his strength and skill would prove no match for the dwarf if Obmi but took his time and used his vast store of experience to fullest advantage. The human would lunge at him soon, using the length of his arm and sword In hopes of gaining a hit that the shorter martel would be unable to reply to. But he would be unpleasantly surprised when he tried the attack, for Obmi was ready and planning a quick lunge himself. He'd move under the sword and bring the hammer head up from beneath, using it against the arm this time. Then Gord's attack came, and as the lunge began toward his chest, Obmi ducked and began his countermove.
A smaller opponent with a shorter, non-thrusting weapon has limited resources in a duel, and Gord understood this well. His lunge was a feint, in a way. He began the strike high, but as he shot his arm forth he also thrust out his right leg, which lowered his body. The point of the blade went down as it sped out, and the dwarf couldn't duck low enough to escape it. The sword went home cleanly, imbedding six inches of its bright metal in Obmi's right shoulder. Then it darted out, withdrawn in the next instant as Gord managed to back off quickly despite his painfully wounded left thigh. Naturally, the dwarfs countering strike never came off.
'Damn you, man!' Obmi snarled, his huge beard seeming to bristle in fury as he spoke. His left hand clasped over the place where the sword had struck, the dwarf backed away from his opponent, swinging the martel loosely before him with his right hand to guard his retreat.
By concentrating on not yielding to the pain, Gord was slowly bringing his leg back to the point where he could utilize it fully in acrobatic attack maneuvers. The deep wound he had inflicted on Obmi would begin to tell soon in any case, he told himself, so there was no need to hurry. He made careful thrusts that did not land, parried swipes of the martel in turn, and readied for a final series to bring the battle to a close. In preparation for this last rush, Gord drew his dagger. As he moved in, he would use the shorter blade to catch the pick, turn it, and leave the way clear for telling work with the sword.
Upon seeing this second weapon, Obmi merely snorted, grabbed the martel with both hands once again, and stood rock-still with the pick cocked above his big head. Gord's eyes widened, and he drew back a step as he noticed something shocking — no blood came from the place where he had impaled the dwarf!
'You see, do you?' Obmi laughed. Time is on My side, mouse, not yours. Even as I tell you this, the last of the harm done by your sword is healing itself magically. Lay down your weapons now, and I will give you a swift and clean death!'
As the dwarf should well have known, a swift and clean death was not part of Gord's plan for himself. In fact, he preferred no death at all, if he had anything to say about it. Instead of shrinking back or lowering his weapons, Gord burst forward in a flurry of motion, his body and his sword whirling at blurring speed. Obmi backed away only slowly, deflecting each sword strike with his hammer held before him while he waited for an opening through which to strike a killing blow. Impatience got the better of the dwarf, and he decided to end things with an overhead stroke despite two important facts: he needed a second to bring the hammer up before he could use it, and he stood a good two feet shorter than his foe.
As Obmi raised the martel over his head, Gord brought his dagger to the fore. When the hammer came back down, the long-bladed dagger rang against the latten of the pick, and the dagger's quillon caught and held the curved spike high as if it were frozen there. Obmi was strong, stronger by far than Gord, but leverage because of his greater height was in favor of the gray-eyed thief for the moment — and a moment was all he needed.
Before Obmi could utilize his demon-bestowed strength to fully counter the leverage, Gord brought the long blade of his sword in a sweeping blow that struck low. Its half-circle of travel before impact lent it terrible force, and the edge bit through flesh and bone despite the metal and leather that protected it. Obmi managed, somehow, to shove Gord away, for his power was that of a giant despite his small stature. But as Gord tumbled and sprawled backward from the desperate shove, so too fell the dwarf. His left leg had been severed just below the knee.
Tit for tat, rat! Will your magic grow that back?' Gord mocked. Even as he spoke, though, the young thief saw that the stump stopped bleeding almost instantly, and by the time Gord had regained his feet the pain-wracked visage of the dwarf had begun to clear. The young thief stared in amazement as Obmi scrambled back to a standing position, using his hammer to help his still-intact leg support his body — while the leg that Gord had severed seemed to grow longer by the minute.
Gord was not afraid, but quite confused. Was this Obmi some sort of troll? What if the severed leg grew into a second dwarf to fight with him? While he involuntarily considered these questions for a second or two, Gord failed to follow up on his advantage. As he hesitated, Obmi tore an ebon crystal from around his neck and hurled it at Gord. Instinctively, the young man sought to deflect the missile with his sword. The black object struck the blade and shattered, and Gord was engulfed in night.
Gord lunged and struck then at the place where his foe had been but a moment before. It was too late, of course. In the cloaking darkness, Obmi had moved elsewhere. Gord's blade stabbed grass and soil, not flesh. He could hear no sound from the dwarf, but this was not because the blackness surrounding them cloaked noise; there were noises aplenty in the air as men fought and yelled and died nearby. Unfortunately, those sounds masked any noise that the desperate dwarf might make while doing whatever he was doing. Not wishing to be taken by some other trick of Obmi's, Gord stepped backward as rapidly as he dared, feeling the ground as he did so to avoid a misstep. After ten such moves the blackness thinned, and another crabwise step carried him into sunlight.
Paying no heed to the melee around him, Gord began to circle the blot that covered the dwarf. The darkness lay on the land in a hemisphere at least thirty feet across and half as high. As he proceeded to search the perimeter, looking for Obmi if he attempted to escape, Gord's eye happened to fall upon his sword blade. The length of its metal no longer gleamed. The whole was deepest black, and the inky stain was even now spreading downward over the guard and onto the grip toward his hand. With an oath, Gord hurled the weapon from him, fearful that the sooty hue would somehow harm him. As he watched the blackness creep over his weapon, an idea came to him — a way that he could pursue and find Obmi even within the lightless dome he had conjured up…
The odor was strong. Dwarf, dwarven blood, dwarven sweat, dwarven breath too. The huge black leopard waited not an instant to attack. Little motes of light were dancing within the ebony of the blot now, but whether the darkness was somehow evaporating or some other dweomer was transforming it, only one matter was important: Obmi must be slain. The dwarf was taken completely by surprise when Gord-panther pounced upon him from the side. Somehow the broad-shouldered demi-human managed to bring his martel to bear, and the weapon inflicted a few wounds upon the sleek, black-furred cat's body. But the panther's long fangs sank deep, and its claws tore and raked the dwarf.
Then, after absorbing a particularly vicious blow, Gord-panther managed to seize Obmi's shoulder with his teeth, hold the dwarfs torso fast in his forepaws, and draw the unnatural demi-human into an inescapable embrace — an embrace of death. The rear legs of his leopard body drew up and kicked downward once, twice, thrice as the foreclaws dug deep and Gord-panther's jaws closed tighter and tighter. Obmi screamed in agony and attempted to use his magical strength to dislodge the feline attacker. The dwarf had his arms free, so he seized the great cat by its throat and tried to throttle it. Gord held his teeth fast upon Obmi's shoulder, hardened his muscular cat's throat, and continued to rake with his hind legs. Flesh tore to ribbons. The thick little fingers, fingers that had felt like steel bars sinking into his windpipe and jugular, suddenly went limp. Gord-panther relaxed the grip he had held with forepaws and jaws, but the raking of his rear claws continued on instinct. Obmi's throat rattled, and then his gutted body flew a few feet through the air, propelled by the cat's still-kicking back legs.
In a bound, Gord was atop the seemingly lifeless body. It was a limp thing, a collection of bloody rags and a mutilated, eviscerated shambles of what had been a mighty champion of Evil. That made no difference to Gord, for even in his feline killing fury one thing remained clear in his mind — the dead dwarf had two legs.
Gord-panther picked up the corpse in his jaws and shook it as a terrier shakes a rat. He used claws too,
