Elric_ The Sleeping Sorceress - Michael Moorcock [30]
Moonglum had already drawn both his swords and was engaging the leader. Elric pushed the frightened girl behind him and put his hand to Stormbringer’s pommel. Almost at its own volition the huge runesword sprang from its scabbard and black light poured from its blade as it began to hum its own strange battle-cry.
He heard one of the assassins gasp “Elric!” and guessed that the dandy had not made it plain whom they were to slay. He blocked the thrust of the slim longsword, turned it and chopped with a kind of delicacy at the owner’s wrist. Wrist and sword flew into the shadows and the owner staggered back screaming.
More swords now and more cold eyes glittering from the black hoods. Stormbringer sang its peculiar song—half-lament, half-victory shout. Elric’s own face was alive with battle-lust and his crimson eyes blazed from his bone-white face as he swung this way and that.
Shouts, curses, the screams of women and the groans of men, steel striking steel, boots on cobbles, the sounds of swords in flesh, of blades scraping bone. A confusion through which Elric fought, his broadsword clapped in both pale hands. He had lost sight of Moonglum and prayed that the Eastlander still stood. From time to time he glimpsed one of the girls and wondered why she had not run for safety.
Now the corpses of several hooded assassins lay upon the cobbles and the remainder were beginning to falter as Elric pressed them. They knew the power of his sword and what it did to those it struck. They had seen their comrades’ faces as their souls were drawn from them by the hellblade. With every death Elric seemed to grow stronger and the black radiance from the blade seemed to burn fiercer. And now the albino was laughing.
His laughter rang over the rooftops of Old Hrolmar and those who were abed covered their ears, believing themselves in the grip of nightmares.
“Come, friends, my blade still hungers!”
An assassin made to stand his ground and Elric swept the Black Sword up. The man raised his blade to protect his head and Elric brought the Black Sword down. It sheared through the steel and cut down through the hood, through the neck, through the breastbone. It clove the assassin completely in two and it stayed in the flesh, feasting, drawing out the last traces of the man’s dark soul. And then the rest were running.
Elric drew a deep breath, avoided looking at the man his sword had slain last, sheathed the blade and turned to look for Moonglum.
It was then that the blow came on the back of his neck. He felt nausea rise in him and tried to shake it off. He felt a prick in his wrist and through the haze he saw a figure he thought at first was Moonglum. But it was another—perhaps a woman. She was tugging at his left hand. Where did she want him to go?
His knees became weak, and he fell to the cobbles. He tried to call out, but failed. The woman was still tugging at his hand as if she sought to take him to safety. But he could not follow her. He fell on his shoulder, then on his back, glimpsed a swimming sky . . .
. . . and then the dawn was rising over the crazy spires of Old Hrolmar and he realized that several hours had passed since he had fought the assassins.
Moonglum’s face appeared. It was full of concern.
“Moonglum?”
“Thank Elwher’s gentle gods! I thought you slain by that poisoned blade.”
Elric’s head was clearing rapidly now. He rose to a sitting position. “The attacker came from behind. How . . .?”
Moonglum looked embarrassed. “I fear those girls were not all they seemed.”
Elric remembered the woman tugging at his left hand and he stretched out his fingers. “Moonglum! The Ring of Kings is gone from my hand! The Actorios has been stolen!”
The Ring of Kings had been worn by Elric’s forefathers for centuries. It had been the symbol of their power, the source of much of their supernatural strength.
Moonglum’s face clouded. “I thought I stole the girls. But they were thieves. They planned