Фред Сейберхэген - The First Book of Swords

The thing that limped after Nestor blew little moaning cries at him out of its absence of a face, as if it might be in agony, or perhaps in love. On the almost featureless front of its head only the dark eyes moved a little, staying locked on Nestor. The larva was advancing with its bent arms raised, both its weapons held up near its head, ready to parry a swordstroke or to swing at him again. Not only were those forearms armed with barbed hook and torture-knife, but they were in themselves as hard as bronze. Nestor had a good gauge now of that metallic-hardness; his first edged parry had nicked and dented the thing's right wrist, but no more than dented it. A human arm would almost certainly have been completely severed.

After backing up only a few steps along the rim of the roof, Nestor decided retreating was more dangerous than standing his ground would be. He was a competent swordsman, and the blade in his hand a superb weapon, even when, as now, whatever magic it might possess was in abeyance. Why then had he automatically retreated, and why did deep terror still lie in his stomach like a lump of ice? The terror must come, he realized, only from the peculiar nature of his enemy, and not from any powers that it had so far demonstrated. The movements of his foe showed speed and strength — but no more speed or strength than many human opponents might have shown. And the larva was fighting with one considerable, obvious disadvantage — though its weapons were two in number, they were no longer than its arms. If Nestor could keep his nerve and his footing, and use his own magnificent weapon as it deserved to be used, such an attacker ought not to be able to defeat him.

On the other hand, it was already plain that the larva had certain advantages as well: devilish persistence, and a horrible durability. When Nestor stood his ground and struck back, landing a hard chop on its torso, he had the sensation of having hewn into frozen mud. The gray shell cracked at the spot where the blow landed, and substance of a deeper gray began oozing out. But the larva was not disabled, and it seemed to feel nothing. It still came after Nestor, nor was it minded to seek its own safety after what the sword had begun to do to it.

Nestor feinted a high blow, and then hit his opponent in the leg. And now the limp that he had so accurately forecast became more pronounced. When Nestor experimentally retreated a step again to see what the thing would do, it followed. Its gait was now a trifle slower.

Of course it might be keeping speed in reserve, something to surprise the man with at a critical moment. But somehow Nestor doubted that. He had trouble imagining that there could be much in the way of cleverness behind that lack of face. The larva blew its whistling, forlorn whine at him, and advanced on him implacably.

He hit it again, this time in the arm, stopping its advance. This was a harder blow, with much of the swordsman's weight and strength behind the driving edge, and now one of the larva's wrists and weapons dangled from a forearm that had been almost severed for all its hardness. The cut was leaking slow gray slime instead of blood.

Nestor, gaining confidence now, made up his mind and charged the larva suddenly. He caught it with its weight on what seemed to be its weaker leg, and it went back and over the edge of the roof under the impact of a hard swordthrust that only started to pierce its tough breastplate. As it went back and over, the larva made grabbing motions, trying to seize the blade, but it lacked the hands with which to grab anything, and anyway one of its arms was almost severed, its weapon flapping like some deadly glove. Still, Nestor had one horrible moment, in which he feared that the sword was stuck so firmly into the chitinous armor that it might be pulled from his hands or else pull him after the larva as it fell. But the point tugged free when the weight of the gray body came on it fully.

No skill or magic broke that fall, and the paved court was a full seven meters down. Looking over the edge of the roof at the inert, sprawled figure after it had bounced, Nestor could see that the whole gray torso was now networked with fine cracks. More of the varied grayness that must serve the thing as life was oozing from inside.

Nestor had no more than started his first easy breath when the thing stirred. Slowly it flexed its limbs, then got back to its feet. It tilted its head back to let its eyes find its human enemy again. Then, moving deliberately, it limped back into the temple on the level below Nestor. He felt sure that it was coming after him again.

He was sweating as he stood there on the broken roof, though heavy clouds were coming over the sun. He had the feeling that he had entered the realm of nightmare. But the urgency of combat was still pumping in his veins, and before it could dissipate back into fear he made himself start looking for the stairway where the thing would logically come up if it was coming. He was going to have to finish it off.

They faced each other, Nestor at the top of a flight of halfruined, vine-grown stairs, the larva at the bottom. A monkbird screamed somewhere, still mocking the noise that they had made. With scarcely a pause, the larva started up, dragging one foot after it in its methodical limp, dripping spots of grayness from its cracked carapace. It raised the twisted little knife that was its one remaining weapon.

Nestor, watching with great alertness, saw a tiny tip of something appear like a pointed tongue just inside the larva's small round mouth. He ducked, swiftly and deeply, and heard the small hiss of the spat dart going past his head. Then Nestor leaped forward to meet his enemy halfway on the stair. He piled one swordstroke upon another, driving the thing backwards down the stairs again, and then into a stone corner where it collapsed at last.

Though it went down, Nestor kept on hacking at his foe. When both of the larva's arms had been disabled, and one leg taken off completely, he went for the torso, which at last burst like a gray boil. Nestor had to fight down the urge to retch; the smell that arose was of swamp mud and putridity.

"And no heart, by all the demons," he muttered to himself. "No heart to stop in the damned thing anywhere." Indeed, nothing that he could recognize as an internal organ of any kind was visible, only thicker and thinner grayness that varied in its consistency and hue.

Still, the broken arms of the thing kept trying to hit at Nestor's feet, or grab his legs. The attached gray leg still wanted to get the body up. Nestor, reciting all the demons' names he knew, swore that he was going to finish the horror off, and he went at it like a woodchopper, or rather a madman, abandoning skill. Some of his strokes now were so ill-aimed that the sword rang off the flagstones of the paved yard.

Taking the head completely off settled the thing at last. With that, whatever spells had given the larva the semblance of life were undone. The gray chitin of its outer surfaces immediately started to turn friable. It crumbled at a poke, and the inner grayness that ran out of it thinned out now and spread like mud and water.

Which, as Nestor could now see, what all it was.

Some huge raindrops had already begun to fall. These now multiplied in a white rush. Parts of what had been the larva were already dissolving, washing away into the ground between the paving stones.

Nestor deliberately remained for a time standing in the rain, letting it cool him. He raised his face to the leaking skies, wanting to be cleansed. The downpour grew fiercer, yet still he remained, letting it wash the sword as well. From his experience with Dragonslicer, he did not think that this blade was going to rust.

When Nestor felt tolerably clean again he went back into the temple. Just inside the doorway he leaned against the wall, dripping rainwater from his hair and clothing, watching the continuing rain and listening to it. The thing he had just destroyed with his sword was already no more than a heap of wet muck, rapidly losing all shape as it was washed back into the earth.