DragonKnight - Donita K. Paul [62]
He charged, passing on the left and swinging his sword through that beast’s squirming appendages. Before the creatures could react, he circled back and lopped off the outside tentacles of the other beast. He discovered he was most likely to slip when his sword first impacted the creatures. He took care to be prepared. The last thing he wanted was to go down at the feet of a quiss. Since the bold charge worked, Bardon put his knife away and made several more passes, swiftly dismembering the creatures until only a few remaining arms waved over their stiffened limbs. On the next charge, Bardon held his sword parallel to the ground and sliced one quiss in half.
As he turned to finish the last beast, his foot snagged on something. He looked down. A severed quiss tentacle wrapped around his boot. With the point of his sword, he peeled it off and hurled it across the pier. He danced out of the mass of appendages writhing in the puddles around his feet. A grunt warned him of the surviving beast’s approach. He swung his sword in the direction of the noise, missed, and on the backswing slashed the quiss’s upper body. It recoiled, and he thrust his sword through the creature’s bulbous head. It fell.
Bardon surveyed the ground around him. For the first time since the battle began, he noticed the rain had slacked off to a light shower. The corpses and dismembered appendages seeped blood into the standing water. Those tentacles severed first had ceased to writhe. The others moved sluggishly. The pavement glowed red.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, as he had been trained to do, to replenish his taxed supply of life-giving air. The swordmasters claimed the exercise purified the soul from the defilement of taking life and repaired damage done to the muscles by excessive exertion. The squire’s lungs filled with the smell of death and the acrid fumes of rapidly disintegrating quiss. His stomach lurched, and he ran for the edge of the wharf to heave.
Leaning against a thick piling, he breathed in shallow, quick gasps. He glanced around, wondering when the dockworkers would reappear. A few feet from where he recovered, another quiss grasped the pier’s deck and hauled itself up. The quiss breathed with a hiss of air taken in through wet, spongy flesh.
Bardon pushed away from the support and studied the beast. A scraping noise from behind jerked him around to face the other direction. Four more quiss climbed out of the harbor water.
You know, Wulder, I could use some help here.
“Argh!” Bardon charged the nearest quiss and thrust his sword through the beast’s middle, then dragged the blade off to the side. He ran on, and turned back to see the beast fall. He shuddered. As he’d rushed past, the quiss’s arms lashed out at him. Several had grasped at his sleeve. He wouldn’t try that again.
That was too close. Better to methodically disable the beast and then go for the heart. I know very little about the anatomy of these things. I assume the heart is in the massive chestlike area beneath the head. He kept his eyes on the blundering beasts as they stumbled a bit before getting used to standing. Bardon remained cautious, knowing their clumsiness did not make them any less deadly.
Bardon circled the small, bumbling group, seeking a plan of action. It would be a good idea to attack now before they become less awkward. One at a time. Yes, foul creatures, I prefer to battle you one at a time. Would one of you be so kind as to stagger away from the others?
One did sway, stumble, and lurch across the wharf platform to fall on the street. Bardon took advantage and attacked as the creature struggled to its feet. Three downward blows and a thrust through the chest finished it off.
Panting, Bardon turned to pick his next victim.
Oh no! Where there had been three quiss, there were now six. The original three stood solidly on their legs. The additional three still swayed unsteadily.
He heard shouts and saw a line of men pouring out of the harbormaster’s building. They ran to join the fight. Bardon