Eric Flint - Mother of Demons

"It's been a bad day," she said finally.

Dhowifa's mantle rippled with the chromatic complexity of which only truemales are capable. Sadness. Sympathy. Empathy. And, the undertone beneath and the sharpest accents, green love.

"I know. I watched from here."

After some silence, he spoke again.

"I have brought much misery into your life."

"Much happiness, also."

An intricate wave of pastel humor washed over him. "True. True. But still, I wish-"

"Wish what?" demanded Nurukken. "That we hadn't fallen in love?"

"No-never that! But-"

"The world is the way it is, Dhowifa. Why should you complain? Isn't that the heart of your dukuna? "

Dhowifa's arms coiled in a manner suggesting respectful disagreement leavened by good feeling. Not for the first time, Nukurren was struck by the truemale's incredible delicacy of expression.

"Not exactly," he demurred. "The concept of dukuna has a more impersonal philosophical thrust. It's not really-"

"Enough!" barked Nukurren. But the good humor was obvious on her mantle. And, glowing ever brighter, the white of passion.

"You're insatiable," complained Dhowifa. But his own mantle rippled ivory, and there was no reluctance in the way the tiny truemale came toward her, his arms extended.

As he climbed into her mantle cavity, his tentacles gripping her head firmly while he extended his arms deep inside, Nurukken whistled her pleasure at his touch.

Yes, she thought, you have brought me anguish, Dhowifa. But I wouldn't give you up for anything. Joy of my life. My love, who had none.

His arms found what they were seeking. Pleasure turned into ecstasy, and forgetfulness of all pain.

The demons attacked at dawn.

Nukurren was awakened by a shrill hoot of fear and alarm. With a veteran's instinct, she was instantly awake and scrambling for her weapons. She hesitated for a moment at the thought of donning her ganahide armor, but decided she didn't have time.

"Wait here!" she said to Dhowifa, who was stirring to life in his cushions.

She rushed through the hide flaps of the yurt and onto the ground beyond. There, she crouched for a moment in battle stance, fork and flail ready, to gain her bearings.

What she saw, in the faint light of the dawn, was at first more confusing that anything else.

What are those-things?

They were like nothing she had ever seen. Very tall and slender, like reeds. They moved with blinding speed, in a strange, jerky motion that she found hard to follow.

Before she could register anything else, she saw one of the demons spring toward a caravan guard. The guard was crouched, holding up her fork and flail in trembling palps, whistling with terror. In a movement faster than anything Nukurren had ever seen, the demon thrust forth some sort of huge stinger. As the stinger hurtled at the guard, Nukurren saw a brief gleam from its tip.

Metal! But what kind of metal shines gray?

The stinger plunged deeply into the camp guard's head, right between the eyes and into the brain. The guard died instantly, without a sound.

The demon planted a- a ped? wondered Nukurren; was that long and skinny thing a ped? -onto the dead guard's head and wrenched the stinger loose with its two tentacles.

Except they're not tentacles. They're like sticks tied together. And that stinger's a weapon of some kind.

That last thought restored her courage. They might be demons, but if they needed weapons they had to be vulnerable. Somehow.

She had no more time for thought. From the corner of her eye she caught a flickering motion. Then the gleam of a weapon coming straight toward her.

She was totally unprepared for a straight-thrusting weapon. No gukuy could deliver such a blow. But she instantly raised the shield protecting her palp on the crossbar of the fork, in the reflex of a fighter fending off blowpipe darts.

The weapon glanced off the shield and drove along her mantle, gashing a long but shallow wound. Nukurren ignored the pain. Her mantle was already criss-crossed with battle scars, and no mantle-wound was serious so long as the mantle itself wasn't penetrated. But she found time to regret the absence of her armor.

Nukurren whipped her flail around and struck a terrible blow on the lower portion of the demon's ped. The flail-tips did not penetrate. There was some sort of armor there. But she heard a strange cracking noise, and the demon collapsed to the ground, wailing horribly.

She drew back her flail for the death-stroke, but turned away. Her duty was elsewhere. The demon seemed incapacitated, and she was responsible for the safety of the caravan master.

She raced toward Kjakukun's yurt. On the way, she caught glimpses of the chaos around her. The guards and slavers were no longer attempting to fight. They were fleeing every which way in utter terror. But the demons which swarmed everywhere moved much faster than gukuy. Right before her, she watched as a fleeing slaver was overtaken by two demons. Pitilessly, the monsters drove their weapons into the slaver's peds, pinning it to the ground. A third demon flickered around to the front of the shrieking slaver, and drove its weapon straight into her brain.

How do they do that? wondered Nukurren. She recognized the utterly deadly nature of the blow. No part of a gukuy's body was more vulnerable than the soft spot between the eyes, behind which the brain lay unprotected. But the very nature of a gukuy's tentacles made such a direct blow impossible. The dart from a blowpipe could strike there, but very few pipers could drive a dart hard enough to penetrate through the flesh into the brain. Eyes were a piper's target.

She heard a loud hooting from the cages holding the hunnakaku.

Are the demons slaughtering the pitiful things?

But when she risked a glance, she saw that the demons were smashing the locks of the cage. They were releasing the sub-gukuy! And now she recognized that the hoots carried no trace of fear.

Just ahead of her was Kjakukun's yurt. She was almost there. She saw the caravan master step out through the hides, carrying a flail.

Get back inside, you idiot! I can't protect you out here!

It was too late. From somewhere, a demon flickered into view. It drew back the stinger in one of its strange tentacles, and then jerked it forward in a blur. Astonished, Nukurren watched the stinger fly through the air, like a gigantic dart from a blowpipe. It struck Kjakukun right between the eyes. The caravan master was dead before her body could fall.

More than anything else she had seen, in that dawn of terror and chaos, the sight of the flying stinger shocked Nukurren. Except for blowpipes, gukuy almost never used missile weapons. Some of the primitive tribes to the far southwest used slings. The Anshac had experimented with the awkward devices, before concluding they were well-nigh useless. To be sure, the stones struck with considerable impact. But gukuy could withstand a great deal in the way of blunt impacts, and no gukuy had the tentacular dexterity to use the slings with accuracy. Even the southwestern primitives used them rarely.

Despair washed over her. How can you fight such terrible creatures?

But she had no time to dwell on it. A demon was racing toward her. Knowing what to expect, she twisted to one side to avoid the brain-thrust. The stinger drove into the front of her mantle. The wound was harmless; hardly even painful. Nowhere on the mantle of a gukuy was the tissue tougher and thicker than on the edge of the cowl.

She lashed upward with her fork, striking the demon's tentacle. Again, that strange cracking sound. The demon ululated.

Full of fury and triumph, Nukurren whipped her flail around at the monster's upper torso. The blow was fast and powerful, but the demon's uncanny speed enabled it to interpose its other tentacle, which bore some kind of armor. The armor splintered. She heard another crack; the demon was hurled to the ground.