Sword of the Gods - Bruce R. Cordell [3]
He sat up. The light was pre-dawn dim, but bright enough to see he hadn’t been lying on a bedroll; it was a marble altar, thick with inscribed runes.
Uh-oh. Finding oneself spread out on an altar without the least memory of how one had arrived upon it rarely ended up being good news.
“Hey!” he yelped, pulling his leg toward his chest. Something had bitten him!
A squat, blubbery creature crouched alongside the stone platform, grinning at him with a nest of tiny fangs, its eyes solid masses of scarlet crystal. Its flesh was sickly, like unbaked dough, and red crystal scales and spikes crusted its upper shoulders.
He recoiled, rolling off the opposite side of the altar. He landed on hands and knees, jarring his wrists. A moment later he was on his feet with the altar between him and the creature.
He almost fell again; his legs were like deadweights. His vision narrowed, as if threatening to pinch off. He caught himself on the altar’s edge, saving himself from flopping face first back into the dirt. His legs were asleep; he could barely feel them.
His attacker held a severed human foot in one hand, gnawed bone clearly visible. His gaze jerked down to check the status of his own feet. Still attached … but why wasn’t he wearing boots? A more thorough and somewhat chilly realization shuddered through him.
“Where are my clothes?” he asked the thing weakly, fear and confusion fighting for dominance.
The thing grinned wider, its lips smeared red and its yellowed teeth crusted with gore. It tossed away the severed limb and looked at him speculatively.
He stamped experimentally, holding himself up with his arms on the cold altar. His legs went from numb to a fire of pins and needles.
The creature watched him a few moments more as if wondering what kind of dance he was doing. Then it launched itself, coming right up over the altar like a dog hurdling a low fence.
Muscle memory betrayed him; his smooth and unthinking motion to draw the great sword sheathed on his back was ruined by the fact he didn’t have a sword on his back. He was naked.
Then it was on him, and despite its small size, it bore him to the ground. In rapid succession it tried to bite out his throat, disembowel him, and sever the undefended femoral arteries that ran up his inner thigh. He jerked, shifted, and elbowed just enough each time to avoid each bite and slash, trading each attack for a lesser nip or gouge. But if he didn’t slow down its momentum, and give something back soon, it was going to overwhelm him—
With a desperate spasm, he gathered his legs to his chest, then released a tremendous straight kick.
His heels caught the creature across the jaw. It squealed as it flipped off and away.
At the apex of its trajectory, it almost seemed like time slowed. An illusion he supposed, but he took advantage of the interlude to scrabble to his feet, and steal a glance around.
Granite obelisks encircled the altar at a distance of about ten paces, forming a crude ring. People lay around the periphery of the ring, unmoving in a scatter of dropped weapons, silent and … dead.
Time snapped back to its regular breakneck pace. The creature traced the end of its arc, landed hard, then bounced onto its feet, apparently no worse for wear. It growled as it raised one hand to paw at its mouth, looking for all the world as if it were feeling for a sore tooth.
Good, he thought, I hurt it a little after all. It didn’t immediately rush him again anyway.
Which gave him enough time to snatch a long sword lying in the dirt near a corpse’s limp hand. The blade showed brownish streaks of corrosion and the hilt was mildewed, but the balance was acceptable. The damp weight of it in his hand was the first good thing that had happened to him since he’d opened his eyes.
He pointed it so that the tip lined up with the creature’s chest.
He said, “What’s going on here? In the name of Light and Shadow, what are you?”
The thing growled like a dog struck with foaming sickness, and charged.
He grinned despite