CHAPTER 30
Dennis drew his sword. His whole body was trembling.
Malbawn's voice was deep and breathy; the plates of its beak flexed sideways as it spoke.
"Run, Chester," the youth whispered.
All Dennis could remember was the corpse of the Wizard Serdic lurching toward him as it drew the sharpened pole from its body. Dennis had run then, and he wanted to run now—
But there was no escape from nightmare.
He would face Malbawn with his star-metal sword; face the creature striding through the grass on saw-edged limbs, nine feet tall and armored in chitin. The inexorable certainty of the corpse had taught Dennis never to run from fear.
It was only intellectually that he could grasp the fact that Malbawn would kill him. He knew that, but he'd never been killed before and the concept had no emotional reality.
The creature paused when its human quarry didn't flee as expected. Malbawn's head was a flat triangle with the beak on its forward point and the fiery eyes behind to either side. The four raised limbs moved slowly, like the claws of crabs fencing in the water.
They had triple-bladed pincers: a pair of long claws folding in opposition to a single spike.
"My sword's star-metal!" Dennis shouted in sudden bravado. He moved the blade slightly in its on-guard position so that the sunlight ran across the well-honed edge. "I'll hack you to bits!"
Malbawn gave a cackling laugh. It dropped its middle pair of legs to the ground and rushed Dennis.
Dennis cut at the creature's head without any attempt at subtlety. A yellow-gray forearm blocked the sword with a ringing crash.
Dennis shifted back. His right palm quivered with the shock of impact. There was a notch in the blade of the Founder's Sword. Malbawn's forearm feinted toward him, uninjured.
Dennis circled slowly, keeping his sword at mid-chest. The creature lifted onto its hind legs, waving the other limbs slowly. They spanned three yards or more from tip to clawed tip. It was like fencing practice for Dennis, but instead of one of his father's retainers he was facing a creature that—
Malbawn dropped into a four-legged charge again.
Icy and prepared, Dennis thrust with the precision of light glancing from the facets of a crystal. He was using his speed and skill instead of just his strength. Despite Malbawn's attempt to parry, the point of the Founder's Sword clanged into the center of the creature's chest.
The steel slid away without marking the chitinous plastron. Malbawn's wide-spread arms closed like the spring-loaded jaws of a trap.
Dennis ducked, but he was off-balance and the saw-toothed limbs slammed toward him from either side. One of them raked the back of his head and left shoulder.
An acrid odor hung over Malbawn, making Dennis gag as he grappled with the huge creature. The beak dipped toward him as the two middle legs lifted off the ground. Their pincers flared.
Dennis flung himself backwards, pushing with his left hand against the limb that had struck him. He expected the spiked arm to resist like a tree trunk or a cliffside, too massively powerful to notice Dennis' merely human efforts. But the youth's arm was stronger than that of the monster he fought, for all the other's size and horrid looks...
Malbawn gave a gurgle of frustration. It lurched forward again without first rising onto its hind legs.
Dennis breathed through his open mouth. The left side of his head felt cold as his blood evaporated in the open air. He supposed his ear had been torn off. He couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything but cold and the searingly hot air he drew into his lungs.
There was another bright nick in his swordblade where a set of Malbawn's pincers had closed on it.
Malbawn lumbered only a few steps toward Dennis as the youth back-pedaled. The creature didn't seem able to move quickly. It paused and waved its right foreleg. The sharp chitin was streaked with Dennis' blood.
Dennis thrust, handling the Founder's Sword as if it were a fencing foil. His body made a smooth, straight line from his left foot to the point crushing into the joint of Malbawn's bloody foreleg.
Dennis knew the blade had gone home even before the creature screamed. He could feel his metal grate into the soft tissue between plates of armor. Malbawn rushed forward, but its own movement completed the work of destruction. The pincers thrashed convulsively; then the whole forelimb flopped, held to the body only by a scrap of the gristly connective tissue that permitted Malbawn's joints to bend.
Malbawn's remaining foreleg swiped at Dennis. Instead of dodging back as he had done before, the youth ducked and let the muscles of his back absorb the blow as he thrust at the lowest joint—ankle joint—of the creature's right hind leg.
The spiked arm struck Dennis like a falling tree, driving out his breath in a grunt of pain. He'd underestimated how much it would hurt.
The middle legs reached for his torso as the forelimb squeezed him against the yellow-gray plastron. He chopped his sword pommel at the joint of the limb holding him—felt it crunch and felt Malbawn release him as the hind leg his point had severed gave way.
Greenish fluid oozed from Malbawn's damaged joints. The grass was spattered with it; so were Dennis' hands and clothing. The creature staggered onto its three good legs. Its beak opened and closed, but the only sound it made were clicks and a soft hissing.
"I'll hack you to bits!" Dennis heard himself repeat in a hoarse, horrible voice.
Malbawn tried to sidle away. It lowered its left foreleg to the ground so that the middle limb on that side could take a step backwards. The damaged joint collapsed under the weight. Dennis moved in, thrusting between the chitinous ridges of the creature's neck and torso.
Malbawn threw all its mass forward, lurching at Dennis like the rolling boulder he had at first thought it. The left forelimb swung at him, its last segment hanging loose like the end of a flail. It struck him across the side of the head, turning his whole universe into heat and bright, roaring pulses...