David Drake - The Gods Return

"Your right!" said Rasile. Cashel turned, pivoting on the ball of his right foot. He swept the staff around with his left hand leading, stepping into the blow. The toadwas not/was/was not standing before him, goggle eyes sparking with hate. Iron-shod hickory swished through where its head had been. "Your right!" That was awkward, but you couldn't expect the other guy in a fight to do the things that made it easy for you. Cashel punched the staff again, not a clean blow but he'd learned by now that the toad wouldn't be sticking around long enough to take advantage of him being off-balance. The creature was dodging the quarterstaff, but he didn't have time to think about it.

As soon as his eyes caught movement, he vanished. Like this time. The toad's size had been, well, a consideration-Cashel didn'tworry exactly in a fight-at the start, but it wasn't willing to use its bulk and likely strength. Its blotched mass swelled out of nothing and then disappeared in a flicker, making it seem more like a cloud than an enemy. That was a dangerous way to think, so Cashel made sure he carried through on every stroke. The last spin meant he was facing the canyon wall again, yellow-red sandstone with a surface that pretended to be crumbly. The corpse, really just the hide, of the dead demon was scrunched up against the rock where he must've kicked it. Or maybe the toad had? Did it really touch the ground when it flashed in and out of the air? "Behind you!" Cashel pivoted on his left foot; it meant a hair's breadth longer of an arc but it got him planted solider and moved him a little out from the side of the canyon. Hitting rock with the back of his stroke would end this fight right quick… Liane and Rasile were where they'd been. The wizard had spilled a figure of yarrow stalks on the ground in front of her. Where had she gotten the time? Cashel swung with his right hand leading. At the same time Rasile chopped down her athame of black stone. The toadwas not/was – Red wizardlight flickered over the huge body. It was barely a color, like dust lying on the bare blade of a sword. The toad didn't vanish.

The quarterstaff banged the left side of the toad's flat head. Cashel grunted; the heel of his right hand tingled as though he'd hit a full-grown oak tree. His blow would've dented the bole of an oak tree, and it was strong enough to crunch bones in the toad's skull too. The creature staggered, throwing up arms so small that they looked silly on such a big body. Black blood dribbled from where the staff struck and also from the toad's left nostril. Cashel spun the staff sunwise, pulling the stroke just a hair so that the ferrule would miss short if the toad jumped back. It did, just like Cashel figured it would.

Instead of following through with the arc, he drove forward. His whole weight rammed the staff toward the creature like he was thrusting a spear. His leading butt cap slammed the base of the toad's broad neck, crushing bones this time too. The toad was too big for the shock to throw it down, but it wobbled back a step and another step. Its tiny arms windmilled; the hands had sharp nails and only four fingers.

Cashel gasped in another breath. He swept the quarterstaff widdershins, trying to break the toad's left knee. The creature lurched toward him so the blow rapped its thigh instead. It had legs like an ox, so nothing happened aside from pain jetting through Cashel's tingling palm. The toad's broad mouth opened, but the tongue which had speared the little demon now tumbled out like a loosely coiled rope. The tip had a spike from which trailed three hollow bones, each about the size of a finger. It twisted along the ground toward Cashel. He stamped on it-his calluses were hard as hooves-and drove the staff into the toad's face. He didn't think the blow had landed squarely and maybe it hadn't, but the toad went over on its back and started to thrash. Cashel was still standing on the tongue; he felt it squirming like a snake's body. He took a full stride back so that the barbed end wouldn't cut him if it flailed around as the creature died. He didn't figure the toad was going to suck him dry like it'd done to the little demon, but Cashel had got banged and cut often enough in his life that he avoided it if there was a cheap way to. There wasn't much thrashing, though. The toad's arms and legs quivered and kept quivering, but it wasn't in any kind of a pattern like when you took a chicken's head off and it ran around. He guessed that straight jab to the throat must've crushed its windpipe. That wasn't a good way to die; but if it was going to happen, he didn't mind it happening to this creature. He didn't look like anybody's Lord, lying there on the gritty soil and trembling. Cashel kept his eyes on the dying toad, but he wouldn't have been much of a shepherd if he hadn't felt Liane and Rasile coming over to join him. By now he figured it was safe, but he still backed a double-pace so there wasn't any chance of the toad bouncing up and grabbing the women before he could stop it. "Thanks, Rasile," he said, turning his head just a little bit to show he wasn't being disrespectful. "For holding him like that. I don't know how long I could've kept it up if he kept bobbing like he was doing." "I think longer than he could have continued attacking, warrior," Rasile said. "Tenoctris spoke of your strength. I did not doubt the judgment of so great a wizard as she, but… she did not exaggerate." The demons were showing themselves, moving a bit out from the sandstone walls or just letting their hides change to the light blue-gray color that seemed to be what they were when they weren't trying to hide. A few came closer, picking their way along like lambs who weren't sure their legs would hold them up. "You have overcome the Lord?" piped the nearest. There was two on each side of him, a little behind. Cashel wondered if they were the same ones as before. Likely, he thought, but he couldn't be sure. Sheep didn't change color the way these demons did. "Lord Cashel has killed the monster you allowed to prey upon you!" Liane said in a voice that rang from the rocks. The sulfur in this air had roughened it, but she still sounded like a queen. "Lord Cashel has freed you!" She swept her right arm back toward where the toad lay. Cashel obligingly stepped to the side so that the demons could all get a look at their Lord twitching there on the ground. "He is dead?" said the leader. "He is dead?" the four behind him said all together. It was like watching mummers playing when they came through the district. The five demons trotted toward the toad. Others were coming closer too, though they weren't running. There was a lot of them, a ten of tens at least; more than Cashel had seen when they first arrived here. He moved farther out of the way. Stretching, he perched on his right leg to examine his left instep. He'd cut himself pretty good above the callus. There'd been something sharp in the soil, a shard of quartz he supposed, that he hadn't noticed while he was moving fast. Squatting, he took out the little gourd of lanolin ointment out of his wallet and daubed it on the cut. "He is dead!" the demons shrieked. They started jumping up and down on the toad's corpse, chopping with their little sharp hooves. "He is dead-d-d!" The whole herd of them came bouncing to the spot. Cashel rose quickly and stepped between the women and the oncoming demons. Rasile had been crouching on all fours, recruiting her strength after the work she'd done. Figuring where the toad was going to be next had taken wizardry. Holding the thing for Cashel to hit, well… The toad had obviously been strong. Cashel didn't doubt that the strength went beyond the muscles under that coarse warty skin, but Rasile had held it. The demons swept past, to trample the corpse or anyway to try to. There were too many all to fit. It was like tossing meal into a pond and watching carp boil to the surface after it. "They could have done that when the wizard was alive," Liane said. Her face was hard, which wasn't the usual thing with her. "But they were afraid." "Wizard?" Cashel repeated. "Yes," Rasile said. She raised her voice a bit to be heard over the demons shrieking and hooting. "The Lord, as they called him, was a wizard. Here in the place he'd made his own, I couldn't have defeated him." The Corl let her tongue loll toward Cashel in a smile. "Tenoctris might have been powerful enough," she said, "but I think she too would've been glad of your presence, warrior." Cashel looked at the scrum again, then turned away. "I'm not sorry to've put paid to that toad," he said. "But I can't say I much like the folk he was eating, either." Rasile stood upright; she seemed to be recovered from the work she'd done. She turned toward the milling demons and called, "Teliday!" Her voice was something between a shout and a screech. Cashel didn't know what she meant by it. "Teliday!" she repeated. A demon pushed his way out of the tramping herd. Maybe he'd been trying to do that since the first time he was called; it wouldn't have been easy. He limped a little as he hopped over to Cashel and the women. There was a long double cut on his foreleg, plowed there in the brawl by the hoof of one of his friends. "Lady?" the demon said. Cashel was pretty sure he was the one who'd been doing the talking since they arrived in this brimstone-stinking hell. He didn't sound more than barely respectful now, though these folks' narrow, deerlike jaws and shrill voices meant Cashel might be misunderstanding. "We've freed your people from the wizard who preyed on you," Rasile said briskly. "Now it's time for you to give us a goat and to lead us to the tomb of the hero Gorand." The demon made a curt bow. "I will take you to the place of Gorand," he said. "Our goats are valuable. It will not be possible to give you a goat." Rasile's equivalent of a shrug was to fluff the fur on top of her shoulders. "Very well," she said. "We don't need a goat. One of you folk will do for the sacrifice." She pointed her athame at the middle of Teliday's narrow chest. "No!" the demon cried, throwing his arms up in the air. "There will be a goat provided!" "See to it," said Rasile, lowering the stone knife. Her tongue's wagging was just a smile, but from the way Teliday hobbled off he hadn't taken the expression as a friendly. Cashel cleared his throat. "Ma'am?" he said to Rasile. "I don't hold with sacrificing people. I don't like Teliday and his friends, but they're people. I think." "Yes," said Liane, and you could've cracked walnuts on her tone. "They are." "I agree, friends," the wizard said, looking from one to the other and wagging fiercer. "Warrior Cashel, could you catch a goat yourself?" Cashel thought about it, eying a trio of goats on the cliff wall not far away. They weren't used to him, and just the fact he was human would likely spook them some. He figured he could work close enough to get a halter-his sash would do-on one, though. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "It might take a while, is all." "So I believed," said Rasile. "Therefore I spoke to Teliday in a fashion that would convince him to help us of his own free will." "Oh," said Cashel, embarrassed not to have seen she was bluffing. Liane sucked her lower lip in and nodded. She still didn't look happy. Teliday minced back, leading a half-sized demon who in turn led a goat by a strand of coarsely braided vegetable fibers.