Ed Greenwood - The Halls of Stormweather

"Get back!" Tazi said.

Shamur did back slowly away from the gorgon, meanwhile giving her head a shake to clear it. It had been excruciating to relive the slaughter of Eskander and her friends, but she was back in the present now, facing a beast that might well prove as formidable as the guardian of the crypt had been, and this time, her daughter's life was at stake.

The scaly, taurine creature, a third again as tall as a man, turned about, eyeing its surroundings dubiously. Perhaps, Shamur thought, it was feeling so perplexed that it would let a pair of human women withdraw unchallenged. But then, cautiously, stealthily as they were moving, they somehow attracted the gorgon's attention. It glared directly at them, its blank crimson eyes flaring brighter. It bared its mouthful of fangs and stamped its hoof, cracking the terrazzo.

Grinning fiercely, the long sword in one hand and the throwing knife she habitually carried about her person in the other, Tazi interposed herself between the blue bull and her mother. Of course. The girl believed that of the two of them, she was the only trained combatant, and it was unquestionable that she was the only one armed.

Shamur peered about the chamber, seeking a weapon. There was an abundance of art objects that might serve to bludgeon another crazed lackey but nothing that could possibly harm a towering predator with a hide of natural scale armor.

The gorgon bellowed, lowered its head, and charged. Tazi poised herself to meet it. Hard as it was to abandon the girl to fight alone, Shamur forced herself to turn and dash down the corridor that led to the theater.

There had been guards in the Palace of Beauty before the opera commenced. Surely they-and their swords-must be somewhere on the premises still. She prayed Tazi could hold out long enough for her to find one.

Shamur peered into one chamber and alcove after another, to no avail. Until an orc emerged from a doorway immediately ahead of her.

The squat, pig-faced creature in the garish leather rags of orange and purple no more belonged in Selgaunt than had the yellow spider. Perhaps it too was a work of art come alive, or conceivably some other door or window in the Palace of Beauty now opened on one of the wilderness areas such semihuman marauders normally inhabited. In any case, Shamur didn't care where it had come from, only that it had a broadsword in its dirty-nailed, greenish hand.

Not giving it time to come on guard, Shamur sprang in close and kicked it in the crotch. She grabbed it by the front of its filthy tunic and butted it in the face. The impact hurt her own head a little, but the orc's legs buckled beneath it, its bloody snout flattened and skewed to one side, its red eyes crossed. Shamur jerked the broadsword from its grasp, then allowed the orc to drop to the floor.

As she raced back to the foyer, she couldn't help wondering if she was up to the task before her. It had been child's play to trip the befuddled fellow with the antlers, and she'd been lucky enough to catch the orc by surprise. But only a highly skilled warrior could hope to best an adversary as fearsome as a gorgon, and until this moment, she hadn't touched a sword in twenty-six years.

Yes, damn it, rusty or not, she would win! She could tell from the sounds issuing from the archway up ahead-the grunting and snorting, the clatter of hoofs, the clank of steel against the bull's armor-that Tazi was still fighting, still alive, and with the girl's welfare at hazard, failure was unthinkable.

Her skirt flapping around her legs and the slick soles of her gray dress slippers skidding on the polished floor, Shamur plunged back into the chamber. At some point during the struggle, the gorgon had knocked over the remainder of the sculpture that had given it birth-Shamur was fleetingly surprised that she hadn't heard the crash-and now the creature and Tazi were fighting amid the pieces. The girl's bodice was torn, displaying a long, bloody graze across her ribs, while the gorgon bore a pair of shallow cuts, one atop its nose and the other on its flank.

Hearing Shamur's arrival, Tazi glanced around. "No, Mother!" she panted. "Stay out of-"

The gorgon took advantage of the girl's distraction, stepped in, and tossed its head, sweeping its horns in a murderous arc. "Tazi!" Shamur screamed.

Tazi barely jerked back around in time to parry. But the impact of horn on blade sent her staggering, and the gorgon trotted after her, head held low for a thrust at her belly.

Shamur plunged forward, yelling at the top of her lungs to draw the beast's attention. Thanks be to the gods, it spun in her direction, and now all she had to worry about was preserving her own life.

The giant bull loomed over her like a mountain. She dodged its first stroke clumsily, but after that it was all right. Something woke inside her; she could feel the tempo of the gorgon's movements and anticipate what it would do next. Her hand remembered how to cut, thrust, feint, and parry, and her feet fell into the deceptive dance of advance, sidestep, and retreat. She actually managed to nick the behemoth's neck, and when it finally attempted an all-out charge to smash her down and trample her, she spun lightly out of the way and cut it again.

Tazi attacked the gorgon from the other flank. The two women worked as a team, one distracting the bull while the other slipped in an attack or retreated out of danger. Confused, grunting, its sweat and blood suffusing the air with a vile fetor, the gigantic bull pivoted back and forth. Finally it whirled, ran across the room, then turned to face its human foes once more.

"Ha!" Tazi cried. "We scared it!" The gorgon's chest swelled as it drew in a deep breath.

At the last possible instant, Shamur, who had never before encountered a gorgon, remembered the stories she'd heard about them. She dived at her daughter, tackled her, and carried her to the side.

The gorgon blew a cone of green, streaming vapor from its mouth and nostrils. The roiling fumes missed Shamur and Tazi by inches, but the unconscious man on the floor was less fortunate. When the monster's breath washed over him, his flesh turned dull gray, petrifying. In seconds, he became a lifeless figure of stone.

The gorgon bellowed and charged. The Uskevren women scrambled out of its path, leaped to their feet, and resumed fighting.

After another minute, Shamur's heart was pounding, and the breath rasped in her throat. She was tiring, beginning to slow, and no doubt, her youth notwithstanding, the same was true of Tazi. Their immense foe seemed as strong and quick as ever. They needed to dispatch it quickly, before the tide of battle turned against them.

The problem was those cursed scales, which blunted the force of every sword stroke. The creature's only vulnerable spot seemed to be its eyes, but it guarded those so well that despite repeated efforts, neither woman had managed to strike them.

Where else then? Shamur wondered as she sprang backward, narrowly evading a strike that would have plunged a horn completely through her torso. Where else can I hit it and make the blow count? Her memory conjured up the sculpture as it had looked at the beginning of the evening.

The sculptor had depicted the mounted Rauthauvyr laying his long sword across the gorgon's back. If the spot hadn't spontaneously healed over when the beast came to life, there might be a sort of groove up there, free of scales.

"Keep it busy!" she cried. Tazi did just that, assailing it so furiously that she left herself not the slightest margin for error. One slip and the gorgon would surely bury its horns in her vitals.

Shamur clamped her sword between her teeth, ran at the creature's flank, and leaped high, grabbing for the ridge of its spine as, in happier days, she'd grabbed for windowsills or dangling strands of ivy that would help her climb a wall.