The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [33]
"Where?" Hawkril growled, as his friend raced past him. The armaragor was staring hard at where Craer had stood. The procurer had set branches whipping and dancing in his haste to be elsewhere. Those branches dipped, rose, rustled-and flew aside as the hunting beast burst forth from them, trailing a cloud of torn and shredded leaves.
"Wolf-spider," some called it for its looks, though it was neither of those things. Its many limbs moved like a spider's legs, but it had fur and a wolf's head with dripping jaws as wide as a doorway.
This one was twice as big as Sarasper when he took the longfangs-shape, and its shaggy gray shoulders were thrice as large across as Hawkril's. Bulging gray-furred muscles rippled along its back and neck as it came on in an uncannily quiet charge-for all the world as if it was drifting over the ground rather than touching it, like an arrow flying slow enough to watch, yet terrifyingly too fast to outrun.
Hawkril growled, set his feet, and held his warsword low and behind him in both hands, swinging it back and forth and humming wordlessly as he waited for the beast to charge up to where he could cleave it. Craer had spun about, panting, and was snatching out the daggers he had strapped to himself here, there, and everywhere, until he held three splayed in one hand and a fourth ready to throw in the other.
The eyes of the longfangs were cold, white points of death, not the golden blaze they should have been, and Embra was already crying a warning to Sarasper to make ready for magic as the monster stormed up the hill and hurled itself on Hawkril.
Strangely, it made no attempt to avoid his blade, but took a mighty slash that shortened two of its legs and laid open its breastbone without slowing or flinching-and bowled the armored warrior over, blade and all. Hot black blood drenched Hawkril and smoked on the moss as the long-fangs clutched him and rolled over and over, trying to bite its way through his armor.
Craer sprang after it, driving home one dagger hilt-deep and using it as a handle to reach the beast's neck, where he dung desperately, unable to reach the eye he wanted to sink his second fang into. As he dug his fingers into reeking fur and set his teeth amid a din of gnawing and roaring, he shouted aloud what he was thinking, " 'Tis as if this beast doesn't know how to be a longfangs!"
"It's… doing… well enough," Hawkril snarled from somewhere beneath it, panting under the weight that buffeted him.
Embra had murmured something over the Stone and then stepped back to watch the results.
Bone teeth shaped like giant rose-thorns jut from the joints of all but two of a longfang's limbs; those two bare forelimbs end in little snapping jaws. This longfangs was so large that its "little" limbjaws were larger than Craer's head-and one of those limbs was now reaching back past the beast's head to snap at the man clinging to the back of its neck.
Craer shrank away, wincing and stabbing at those thrusting jaws with his dagger. Growls told him that Hawkril was straining to do something below, and Sarasper darted past with blade drawn, heading for the beast's rear, but the procurer hadn't time to see more: the second limbjaws was reaching for him! The longfangs, it seemed, was at least momentarily abandoning its attempt to eat through Hawkril's armor in favor of removing the stabbing annoyance from its back.
Ducking frantically away from swooping fangs, Craer felt a burning pain and wetness as a tooth laid open his forearm, peeling back his worn leathers as if they were made of mist. He twisted away from those jaws and then saw the other limb rearing back, teeth gnashing and biting the air before diving down at him like a gleaming battering ram…
He wasn't going to be able to avoid them, he was going to be-
In the last moments before striking, those jaws gaped wide-impossibly wide. The teeth were growing, curling inwards as they lengthened with blinding speed. What was happening? What could-