Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [84]
It vanished as the borboressb rose straight up into the air, did a complete head-over-hoof flip, and landed hard on its back. It lay stunned and unmoving.
In place of the carving stood a tall, erect figure limned in pale white flame. Its statuesque shape barely blurred by a coil of tight-fitting crimson and brown fabric, it carried a shield of mastodon hide in one hand and a slim wooden club in the other. The club was thickly studded with the three-sided thorns of the pyre bush. In all his life Ehomba had never seen a pyre bush. It was a part of Naumkib lore, more legend than shrub. But he recognized the thorns instantly, from the tales he had been told as a child. Mirhanja had never seen a pyre bush either, but she could describe one in detail to Daki and Nelecha while reciting bedtime stories. Any Naumkib mother knew what a pyre bush looked like, even if she had never seen one herself.
Momentarily startled, the angry borboressbs turned to confront the intruder in their midst. Two sliced viciously with the scythe-swords they carried. The blows glanced harmlessly off the shield of the new apparition. Swinging the club, it struck the nearest borboressb on one shoulder. Instantly, flames engulfed the horrid creature as fire exploded from its arm. Wailing wildly, it raced away up the street, trailing flame and smoke.
Two more borboressbs jumped the figure. One fell flopping to the pavement, its neck broken by a swinging blow from the edge of the shield. The other caught the tip of the club in its mouth. For a second its eyes grew wide. Then its head exploded in a ball of flame. Gathering themselves, the rest of the enraged aberrations prepared to attack the club-wielding shape simultaneously.
Their coordinated assault was disrupted by the ferocious black mass that landed in their midst. Emitting a ground-shaking roar, Ahlitah sent one borboressb flying with a single swipe of one huge paw. An instant later, it bit off the head of a second.
Seeing their chance, Ehomba and Simna rushed the grenks. Repeated blows from their weapons sliced away huge chunks of quivering, jellylike flesh without halting the creatures’ progress. They had no bones and, for all the two furiously flailing men could tell, no blood and no nervous systems. A tentacle-tongue lashed around Simna’s sword arm, only to be severed by a downward stroke of the herdsman’s blade. The amputated organ lay coiling and writhing on the ground like a worm driven to the surface by a heavy downpour.
Hewing and hacking methodically and without pause, they reduced the trio of obstinate but sluggish grenks to tremulous heaps of coagulated muck that littered the street and sidewalk. Even then, individual lumps of legless tissue tried to hump and slime their way in the travelers’ direction.
Having sent the remaining borboressbs fleeing, some with scorched tails and burned limbs and with the raging Ahlitah in literally hot pursuit, the phantasm that had issued from the figurine turned its attention to the looming shade of the vohwn. The incorporeal specter twisted and coiled itself around the new arrival, encircling it with its own ghostly corpus. The faceless perversion began to contract, tightening its own self securely about the figure.
Undaunted, the tall newcomer swung the club lightly but firmly. A pair of pyre thorns made contact with the constricting miasma. An expression of uncertainty, a surprised moan, emanated from the spiraling vohwn. With a soft, empyreal hiss, it saw itself sucked up by the thorns, until only a last wisp of noxious vapor remained to show where it had once writhed. Wetting two fingers by touching them to its lips, the figure reached down and pinched the final bit of vohwn out of existence. A single last, sharp hiss marked its ultimate passing.
Covered in loose lumps of quivering, gelatinous grenk and breathing hard, Ehomba and Simna turned to face the tall, lithe figure that had emerged from the shards of the herdsman’s petite carving. Holding firmly to shield and club, it came slowly toward them. Devoid