Ironhelm - Douglas Niles [102]
Then she had recognized the stranger, Halloran, and it slowly occurred to her that he was saving her. But why? Wasn't he the servant of these monsters, like all of his companions? She looked at him wistfully, numbed by the brutality of his kind.
She had felt a thrill of admiration for him as he lifted the spear, desperately fighting the monster. It seemed sad that he would die here, now, with her. Surely no man could stand before the rush of the hellish two-headed monster.
But he broke the monster's body!
Erix gasped in astonishment as Hal's blow tore the top half of the creature away, smashing it to earth. The beast's torso twitched on the ground, but her blood chilled at the sight of its great body lumbering on. The beast looked even more like a deer now that its human part had been ripped away.
Too, it seemed to lose some of its terrible nature. She saw it pause to nibble on the trampled grass among the bloody bodies it had, moments earlier, slain.
Her astonishment was compounded when Halloran barked a command at the small monster and the creature obeyed! It, too, did not look nearly so fierce when it responded to the man's command.
Halloran still dashed around in agitation, followed by the small monster. Now she saw him seize the long knife and start toward the lower half of the greater monster. She understood now: Each half must be killed separately.
But the man did not strike the beast. Instead, he seemed to speak to it. Nor did the monster attack or flee the man, instead standing docilely while Halloran stroked it.
Then Halloran joined the beast! She watched him replace the torso he had torn away. The recreated monster wheeled toward Erix and lumbered in her direction again. But the sensations came too quickly now, and her lively mind was overwhelmed.
By the time Halloran reached her she had collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.
/ see a coyote, speaking to me very slowly. I cannot understand him, but he stands over the body of a man. A buzzard, dark with dried Wood, lands before me and greets me very politely. He calls me "Most Excellent and Enlightened Lord Poshtli," and I am pleased.
The body between coyote and vulture stirs, struggling to speak. The man is dead, has been long dead, yet he sits up and talks to me. I see that it is my uncle, the Revered Counselor Nahecona.
The coyote, hungry, plucks at an arm of the corpse. It is always hungry. The buzzard pecks at a cheek. My uncle helps them; he pulls pieces of his body away and feeds the scavengers, an arm to the coyote, an ear and an eye to the buzzard.
Then the body of my uncle changes.
Poshtli blinked at the short, bald figure that squatted before him. Slowly the Eagle Knight looked around from the stone bed where he lay, seeing that he was in a cave of some kind. Yellow sandstone walls reflected in golden hues the light of a small fire.
"You speak with the gods. Feathered Man," said the fellow sitting beside him. "Will you speak with me now?"
Poshtli studied the strange speaker, for he had never seen anyone like him. Short and powerful, with bowed legs and broad shoulders, he was a misshapen man. His head was bald, but his face was covered with a whiskered profusion of hair that descended across his belly. The fellow's skin was sun-bronzed, dried like old leather but not as dark as Poshtli's. The stranger stood, and the Eagle Knight saw that he was perhaps four feet tail.
"Who are you?" asked Poshtli, discovering that his tongue felt like an old sandal.
"Eh? I'm Luskag, chief of Sunhome. Funny you should ask that. I've been wondering the same thing about you."
Poshtli's mind cleared. He remembered tales, dismissed as fantastic legend, of the Hairy Men of the Desert, dwarflike people who lived far from any human settlement, past a supposedly uncrossable waste of desert.
"I am Poshtli, of Nexal," he explained, sitting up with difficulty. "I owe