Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,91
be satiated. Elric felt the dark, supernatural energy flowing into him. He shuddered, for the stuff made every nerve tense, every muscle threaten to cramp. Savagely, he swung at one of the grasping claws and sliced it off.
The claw began to inch by its own volition towards the pulsing red pearls. The demon shouted and its teeth clashed in fury. Elric grinned and swept the claw into a corner. Then he stabbed once more.
The Asquinux whimpered, understanding its defeat as Stormbringer purred to itself, like a satisfied cat, feasting. The albino drew a deep, shuddering breath. Now the wounded Asquinux flapped about in the air just above the pearls, still struggling to fulfill the duty of its compact, knowing that the penalty of failure was worse than death. Something like a plea for mercy filled those huge blue eyes. But Elric was never merciful. The notion was alien to him and his kind.
Elric chopped off the demon’s other grasping claw. Raging, it span in the air overhead, its teeth clashing, the ichor spraying. “You are a poor wretch of a guardian,” he said, “but you are doubtless all that Addric Heed could afford.”
And when the creature turned its blue, despairing eyes upon him, the long teeth shuddering and clashing in its mouth, the red tongue flicking up and down, it said: “My weird said I could never be slain by a living mortal. But I did not know I could be killed by a dead man, nor by one as powerful as the thing dwelling in your blade.” The last of its energy throbbed out of it, pulsing through the sword, which took its due and passed the rest of the foul stuff on to its wielder. “Which is the master? You or the blade?”
The wounds from the demon’s claws had burned into him and though he now had extra energy, he was losing blood. He stumbled to the table and picked up first one heavy pearl and then another, slipping them into his shirt beneath his breastplate and tightening the laces with one hand.
It was as well that Stormbringer remained unsheathed. Next moment, the door had burst open and there stood the saturnine man from the ship with about a dozen of his fellow slave-traders. All of them were fully armed with a miscellaneous collection of weapons. They had not expected to find Elric standing, let alone observe him delivering a death blow to the still-writhing body of the guardian Asquinux.
If the doorway had not been so narrow, they would have backed off, but that was not easily done. Warily, they edged towards the albino, beginning to form a half-circle, closing in on him. He smiled at them as if in welcome, holding Stormbringer almost lazily. He was breathing heavily from his exertions but otherwise the creature’s own tainted energy still sustained him. He was vaguely aware of the blood running down inside his armour from his wounded back.
“I am glad to see you gentlemen.” The albino offered them a brief bow. “I cannot tell you how famished I have been.”
With rather less confidence than they had shown on first entering, their boots slipping in the demon’s dark, stinking blood, they began to close in.
Elric was laughing easily now, enjoying their dismay. He mocked them, feinting with his growling, insatiable blade. The men’s eyes narrowed as they pressed in. Then the albino reached out, almost elegantly, and took the head off the nearest soldier. They backed away, pushing one another aside in their panic. All they wanted to do now was escape, but Elric moved quickly so that he was between them and the dying demon. He reached behind him and drew the door as shut as possible. The severed head had rolled into the aperture and stopped the door from closing completely. From outside, a single bar of light entered the tower room. He feinted again, moving like a herdsman gathering his flock. Then, when the men were grouped together in the light, he swung the great, moaning broadsword so that its blade sliced into one, cutting him so deeply in the torso that half his body fell backwards while the other half fell forwards.
Elric yelled with battle joy as the slaver’s energy filled him. He struck again and two arms flopped in the mess made by the demon’s dying. He stabbed, drawing that man’s life-force deep into himself, and then, when only the saturnine slave-trader was left, he took his sword and slipped it delicately into the