Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [172]
For a moment the tattooed cannibals stood there confronting him. The silvery light emphasized the whiteness of his skin. No doubt they saw him as some kind of phantom, the chief source of their plan’s failure. With deliberate movements, they began to close in on him, watched by the creature they had created through their barbaric blood sacrifice.
Elric grinned.
Reaching for the great broadsword at his hip, he drew it from its scabbard. So finely balanced was the black blade, he could hold it easily in one hand, almost like a rapier. The sword murmured and whispered in his grasp and he felt a sudden rush of energy suffuse him. A thrill of ecstasy that others might feel in love-making.
Then he began his work.
Elric’s eyes blazed with red, unholy light, reflecting the flickering runes which ran up and down his blade. He swung Stormbringer first one way and then another, as if to display its power. His lips twisted in crazy delight as he stepped towards the savages, now standing between him and the creature they had raised. His chest rose and fell with deep, strong breaths. He knew a pleasure he had all but forgotten. And, as that familiar black radiance poured from the blade and its song rose and fell in a melody that to him at least was beautiful, he remembered why the Black Sword had been so hard to put aside. Why his addiction had taken so long to conquer. “Aaaah!” Again he swung the blade, but this time it was not in display.
“Arioch! Arioch! Lord of the Seven Darks! Arioch! Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!” This time the black, strangely wrought metal sliced into flesh and bone. Heads sprang from necks like so many weeds in a hay field. Arms flew into the foliage. Legs buckled and torsos were hacked in half. Terrified savages tried to flee, but were now trapped between Elric and the Black Anemonë, drunk on the smell of ruined flesh. It was down on the jungle floor, sucking the blood which pumped from the remains of their bodies. It clucked and yelped with dreadful glee. A few men managed to scuttle past the monster they had brought into being, only to be snared by its prescient tendrils.
Elric yelled his mockery at the creature. “Come, Black Flower! Come to me. My blood is thin, but it is yours if you can take it!”
The noibuluscus paused, staring from its strange head, around which great, spiked leaves curled like a living crown. It bent, reaching out its long branches towards this laughing, white-faced, puny little thing of flesh and thin blood which challenged it and which, perhaps, it sensed as the agent of its own frustration.
Voicing the ancient battle-yells of his ancestors, Elric ran at the Black Anemonë. “Arioch! My lord Arioch! Blood and souls for thee and thine! I present thee with this sacrifice!” The life-force of all those he had killed seared through his veins, filling him with preternatural energy, with a wonderful lust he had almost forgotten, but always craved.
The tendril hands reached out to seize him. Elric dodged them, hacking at legs like two trunks standing across the path above him. The hands curled down to try to grasp him. A weird shriek escaped the monster as the black blade slashed at the writhing fingers, sending them flying into the undergrowth.
“Arioch! Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!” The albino’s features were contorted in unhuman delight.
And from somewhere in the darkness came a low, mocking chuckle, as if Elric’s patron demon had always known that he and the sword would feed again.
At last the black flower was down, but still the arms whipped and thrust and grasped for the albino. Still the Black Sword sang. Monstrous branches transformed themselves into snakes, coiling around his body, his arms, his legs. But too much energy now pulsed through him. He easily broke free, the blade rising and falling, rising and falling, like a woodsman’s axe in the forest. Suddenly, he was tireless. With every blow the albino’s energy increased, while the plant weakened. The head darted at Elric, the cluster of long, tough leaves spearing