Elric_ The Sleeping Sorceress - Michael Moorcock [123]
“Snake.”
“Thing,” said another voice. Elric glanced in that direction, gasped, drew his sword and felt nausea sweep through him.
Then Pigs, Snake and Thing were upon them.
Rackhir took one Pig before it could move three paces. His bow was off his back and strung and a red-fletched arrow nocked and shot, all in a second. He had time to shoot one more Pig and then drop his bow to draw his sword. Back to back he and Elric prepared to defend themselves against the demons’ attack. Snake was bad enough, with its fifteen darting heads hissing and snapping with teeth which dripped venom, but Thing kept changing its form—first an arm would emerge, then a face would appear from the shapeless, heaving flesh which shuffled implacably closer.
“Thing!” it shouted. Two swords slashed at Elric who was dealing with the last Pig and missed his stroke so that instead of running the Pig through the heart, he took him in a lung. Pig staggered backward and slumped to the ground in a pool of muck. He crawled for a moment, but then collapsed. Thing had produced a spear and Elric barely managed to deflect the cast with the flat of his sword. Now Rackhir was engaged with Snake and the two demons closed on the men, eager to make a finish of them. Half the heads of Snake lay writhing on the ground and Elric had managed to slice one hand off Thing, but the demon still seemed to have three other hands ready. It seemed to be created not from one creature but from several. Elric wondered if, through his bargaining with Arioch, this would ultimately be his fate, to be turned into a demon—a formless monster. But wasn’t he already something of a monster? Didn’t folk already mistake him for a demon?
These thoughts gave him strength. He yelled as he fought. “Elric!”
And: “Thing!” replied his adversary, also eager to assert what he regarded as the essence of his being.
Another hand flew off as Aubec’s sword bit into it. Another javelin jabbed out and was knocked aside; another sword appeared and came down on Elric’s helm with a force which dazed him and sent him reeling back against Rackhir who missed his thrust at Snake and was almost bitten by four of the heads. Elric chopped at the arm and the tentacle which held the sword and saw them part from the body but then become reabsorbed again. The nausea returned. Elric thrust his sword into the mass and the mass screamed: “Thing! Thing! Thing!” Elric thrust again and four swords and two spears waved and clashed and tried to deflect Aubec’s blade.
“Thing!”
“This is Yyrkoon’s work,” said Elric, “without a doubt. He has heard that I have followed him and seeks to stop us with his demon allies.” He gritted his teeth and spoke through them. “Unless one of these is Yyrkoon himself! Are you my cousin Yyrkoon, Thing?”
“Thing . . .” The voice was almost pathetic. The weapons waved and clashed but they no longer darted so fiercely at Elric.
“Or are you some other old, familiar friend?”
“Thing . . .”
Elric stabbed again and again into the mass. Thick, reeking blood spurted and fell upon his armour. Elric could not understand why it had become so easy to take the attack to the demon.
“Now!” shouted a voice from above Elric’s head. “Quickly!”
Elric glanced up and saw a red face, a white beard, a waving arm. “Don’t look at me you fool! Now—strike!”
And Elric put his two hands above his sword hilt and drove the blade deep into the shapeless creature which moaned and wept and said in a small whisper “Frank . . .” before it died.
Rackhir thrust at the same moment and his blade went under the remaining snake heads and plunged into the chest and thence into the heart of the youth-body and his demon died, too.
The white-haired man came clambering down from the ruined archway