CHAPTER 36
The cows were in restless motion. Their sidling movement away from the creature, always with their black-and-white heads twisted back to watch for surprises—was punctuated as a half dozen of the beasts suddenly decided to bolt a hundred yards in a snorting gallop.
Their eyes rolled when they saw Dennis. They bolted from him as well.
Dennis drew his sword. The grass the cows had cropped short brushed his ankles as he strode toward the yellow-gray creature. He saw Chester in the corner of his left eye, following on liquid-rippling tentacles a pace behind and a pace to the side.
The creature was advancing on all six legs. Fifty yards from Dennis it lifted itself and waved the saw-edged front and middle pairs.
"You have come to Malduanan, fool!" it croaked through its cruel beak. "Malduanan will drink your blood!"
Dennis ran the index finger of his left hand across the flat of his blade as he advanced, reminding himself of the sword's hard reality and the battle it had fought for him.
"Your brother's a stinking corpse!" he shouted. "I'll kill you too!"
His body fluttered with anticipation and fear of failure, but all the aches and reminders of his previous fight were gone.
This was what he needed. This was what would make him forget his anger at the folk of Rakastava who had sent him to die.
This is what would make him forget the touch of Aria on his body and the way he felt as he watched her take off her clothing in the mirror.
"I'll kill you!" Dennis shouted as he lunged.
Then he nearly died.
Malduanan was bigger than Malbawn. Standing on its hind legs, it was easily twice as tall as the youth. As Dennis thrust, the creature toppled forward, letting gravity move its mass faster than Dennis expected muscle power to do.
Dennis shifted back expertly, a swordsman again and not a boy randy with the thought of a naked woman more lovely than he had ever dreamed flesh could look. He blocked Malduanan's right foreleg with his sword near the guard where the metal was thickest—and still the blade notched like a furrow before the plowshare.
Malduanan's left foreleg struck from the other side. Its pincers closed over the youth's ribs hard enough to slice flesh to the bone as they gripped.
Dennis screamed and cut over his own back. Luck aided skill. The sword cracked the horny integument at the joint which permitted the pincers to move in their plates of armor.
Malduanan wheezed foul air over Dennis and jerked away, lifting the injured limb high. The single blade of the pincers sagged at an angle.
The youth staggered several paces backward. He was breathing in quick, shallow puffs because it hurt to expand his chest fully. He thought a rib must be cracked. He was bleeding all over that side of his tunic, though the tough fabric itself hadn't been cut.
Malduanan balanced his weight on the middle pair of legs, a maneuver that Malbawn had never attempted. Dennis panted, wondering whether or not he dared dart in again. He wouldn't know how much the pain handicapped him until a sudden stitch cost him his balance and he fell—
Malduanan's hind pair of legs flung a loop of silk at Dennis.
The youth started to parry it the way he would a swordstroke—but he saw the sun gleaming on beads of adhesive just in time and slashed his sword away.
The creature moved toward him on its four forward legs. Their jointed scissoring seemed leisurely, but the legs were so long that they covered the ground as fast as Dennis could back-pedal.
His heel turned. Another loop arched toward him on a glistening trailer from Malduanan's spinnerets.
"Help me, Chester!" Dennis shouted as he hunched, turning his misstep into a diving thrust. His whole body was in line with the three-foot blade of the Founder's Sword when its point sliced into the knee joint of Malduanan's right middle leg. One of Chester's curving tentacles caught the forelimb whose slashing blow would have gutted Dennis like a trout had it landed as the creature intended.
Malduanan tried to flatten itself, but the joint with the sword sticking into it was jammed partway open. The creature's body stuck at an angle to the ground, wedged by a limb that could neither fold nor help support the creature.
Dennis rolled sideways and jerked his point free. Malduanan's damaged leg flopped loose below the wound, but the upper limb pivoted in its ball-and-socket joint with the body, as though it still carried weight. The youth curled against a pincered kick or a stab from Malduanan's beak.
Nothing hit him. As he spun to his feet he heard the clang of the creature's forelimb batting Chester through the air like a shuttlecock, swaddled in ribbons of silk.
There was a gouge thumb-knuckle deep in the metal where Dennis had parried the creature's blow with his sword. The same limb had just struck Chester squarely.
Dennis' face was white as dead bone. He stabbed. If Chester had been killed or reduced to crippled impotence for the rest of eternity because his master was a boastful fool...
He hadn't thrust for a limb joint this time. Dennis didn't know how cold a murderous rage could be—not until he saw the creature smash down at Chester for a mistake that was Dennis' own, all his own. The point glided butter-smooth over the armored collar and into Malduanan's neck.
The creature snatched itself aside.
Dennis thought he'd missed, cut only air because his sharp blade hadn't even quivered with contact—
But there was slime on a hand's breadth of the swordpoint and there was a spurt of gray-green ichor hanging in the air behind Malduanan's head as the creature lunged forward again—and stumbled.
Chester clung to both undamaged limbs on the right side, and the legs didn't scissor apart as Malduanan expected them to.
"Got him!" Dennis cried in triumph at his friend's life; but it was a warrior's cry too, and a swordsman's. He thrust, ignoring the pain in his torn side as he'd ignored if ever since he realized that he had to function normally—even if his body didn't think it could.
Malduanan's eyes were pools of glittering blood. Its beak opened as the legs on its right side forced themselves apart against Chester's metallic grip.
The sword slid through Malduanan's beak. The point jarred to a halt on the inner surface of the creature's armored braincase.
The creature's six limbs flailed in a convulsive motion swifter than anything they'd managed under conscious control. Dennis jumped back, dropping the swordhilt of necessity. He stumbled, from weakness and not because his foot had caught on a tangle of dry grass.
The left side of his garments, trousers as well as tunic, was sticky with the blood that oozed from cuts over his ribs.
The ground shook as Malduanan fell. The creature's legs beat a drum-roll that scattered dirt and grass high enough to throw a long shadow.
Dennis sat up. He had to lean on his arms to stay upright. His vision was clear, but he saw double images of everything around him.
Malduanan's armored back arched; then the creature's belly slammed the ground again and its tail lifted, spinnerets spewing out gobs of silk that fell over it and the landscape promiscuously.
The creature's whole huge body shuddered and grew still.
The doubled images in Dennis' eyes drew back together. The scene shrank down to a pool of white light.
He barely felt the ground's impact as he collapsed.