The demon threw back all its heads and let out a hideous, screeching laughter that echoed through stone and skin alike. Lenk resisted the urge to clutch his ears, finding solace in the grip of his sword. He eyed the stalks the heads were mounted upon; they looked flimsy at a glance, like boiled corn.
Corn cuts easy. He took his weapon in both hands, narrowed his eyes and prepared to strike.
The golden-haired head snapped forwards once more, eyes unnaturally wide, mouth agape to an extent that should not have been possible. Lenk stared, horrified, as the very air trembled at the beast.
A great bulge rose up through the fleshy stalk. The demon’s mouth stretched even wider. The remaining two heads smiled broadly as, in one great exhale, the Deepshriek screamed.
The air was robbed from him, turned into a fist that struck him squarely in the chest. His ears threatening to burst in tiny blossoms of blood, he was hurled from the outcropping to slam against the chamber’s rough-cut wall.
His sword fell from his hand, disappearing beneath the waters. He didn’t feel it, didn’t feel his heart slowly stopping, didn’t feel his body peeling off the wall to slide slowly into the waters, so numb it was.
Fear was forgotten, fury fled. The creature’s wail had robbed him of all sense and emotion; he had not the feeling left within him to know to scream before his head slipped beneath the blackness.
Through the gloom of the water, he saw it. The fish hurtled towards him like a grey arrow, skin the colour of rock, save for its bone-white underbelly and spattered maw. Three fleshy stalks crowned its forehead, snaking about in the water. Somewhere far above, he heard three laughing voices.
As he saw the fish’s white, gaping jaws and the rows of jagged teeth, he wondered absently if he would feel it when they ate his head.
Twenty-Six
A BEAUTIFUL DEATH
It wasn’t until after Gariath pulled himself up out of the water and into Irontide’s gaping wound that he felt his breath stop. Ear-frills spread, eyes wide open, he was terrified to blink for fear that he might miss a single moment of what unfurled before him.
He had begun to think he’d never see it. He had begun to think he was doomed to die a miserable, peaceful death, slipping away in his sleep or being laid low by a particularly noisome cough. He had begun to think that he would never see what all Rhega yearned to see before they left this world for the spirits.
Beautiful.
It occurred to him that others might think him morbid for describing the carnage blossoming before him in such a way. But then again, he reasoned, that was why they were stupid and dead and he was Rhega, soon to die.
Carnage, a symphony of metal and screaming, permeated the vast hall, pain and glory bled out of the gaping hole in Irontide’s hide on saltwater tides.
That he had missed the beginning of it all bothered him little. The fight was still unfolding when he arrived, a humble child well on its way to becoming a furious adult of slaughter. And Gariath could see that it grew amidst the great mass of purple and white in the centre of the vast and sprawling chamber.
That the longfaces held the advantage was obvious enough. They moved in tight, concentrated packs, bristling with their iron spikes and circular shields. Frogmen descended upon them with wailing fervour, undeterred as one after another were impaled and tossed into growing piles of humanoid litter.
But the creatures did not falter, compensating for their lack of skill and weapons with their sheer press of flesh. The passages and archways of the hall were choked with rivers of them, pouring out in ever-greater numbers to fight the violet invaders.
One of the muscular women went down, skewered by a press of five bone-tipped spears. Magnificent, Gariath thought.
A jagged throwing blade was hurled, bouncing off the stone floor to catch a charging frogman in the groin. Incredible.
A white-haired female at the centre cut down throngs like great hedges, shearing through bone with a massive blade. Beautiful.
And all through it, the shrieks of battle filled the air, striving to be heard over the din of agony.
‘Ulbecetonth!’ the frogmen screamed, rattling spears. ‘These ones shall be rewarded!’
‘Qai zhoth!’ the females roared in their guttural language, banging iron to iron. ‘Akh zekh lakh!’
‘Let all defilers know Her mercy!’ the pale creatures shrieked.