The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [64]
Something that might have been a lizard and might have been part cow was trudging along a field not far below them, dragging a stumpy tail along in its wake. It was gray, and held two huge claws or pincers low beneath its outthrust head-a feature as bare and as ugly as the bald, snapping-jawed, leathernecked head of an Isle sea turtle. Its body, as large as a wagon, was humped but smooth, stretching out into thin wings that looked for all Darsar like the edges of a shell…
"Three defend!" one of the warriors swore. "It's a huge crab of the deeps, come up on land!"
"A land crab?" Mararr snapped in disbelief. "What could make a crab come this far from the sea?"
"Magic," Bloodblade snarled. "A wizard meddling with what's better left alone, as usual. Bringing it to hunt us, I'll wager."
The lumbering gray land crab came to the edge of a field, where stones turned up in ploughing had been heaped man-high to form a fence. The men on the heights, weary of running away, watched closely, in case the beast should turn along the line of stones and come closer-and to judge how agile it was by seeing it climb and clamber.
The beast neither turned nor ascended from its plodding progress upriver, but without pause or ceremony trudged forward, into the stone. In silence and without any flash of spell it stumped doggedly ahead, dragging its heavy tail. Bloodblade's men crouched in the rocks like so many statues and stared at the land crab intently as it trudged ahead, melting into the stones like a shadow, until it was completely gone.
The field beyond the fence of stones held a few cows. They were grazing, heads down, their only movements lazy flicks of their tails against buzzing flies. Bloodblade and his men watched the land crab emerge from the pile of stones, still lurching along at the same slow, deliberate pace, and cross this next field.
The nearest cow lifted its head for a moment, chewing thoughtfully-and a long gray claw shot out, closing on a bovine leg but continuing in its forward thrust. The suddenly struggling cow was hop-walked awkwardly across the grass for a few moments before the other claw reached forward to clamp on to another leg-and the cow was heaved over onto its back with a crash.
Claws closed, severing the legs within them, and the cow screamed in pain-raw, high bellows that ended abruptly when the land crab's jaws bit through its throat. Blood fountained, and the men on the heights watched the land crab feed patiently amid the red glistening thrashing. Its bites were deliberate and unhurried-but the cow was reduced to a tangle of bones in the time it might have taken a weary warrior to yawn his way through the unbuckling and kicking aside of his armor and walk away, leaving everything strewn where it had fallen, for servants to see to.
"Gods above," one of the watching warriors said roughly. "What can it be?"
"I'd say," Mararr replied slowly, as they watched the crab-beast resume its slow journey upriver, "that it's a rock crab or some other small lizard thing, twisted and made huge by the spells of wizards obeying the Risen King: a monster born of his commands, sent forth to slay all his foes."
"Is that so?" Gurkyn asked darkly. "It'll be busy for years, then."
Mirthless chuckles greeted this sally, a grim ripple of sound that died away as suddenly as it had arisen, lost in astonished gasps.
"Sargh," someone whispered, fear making his voice tremble-and another of the warriors among the rocks actually whimpered.
Coming across the field of cows from another direction was another monstrous beast. It was in a hurry, this one, surging ahead in a continuous, impatient undulation, and paying no heed to either cattle snorting and hastening out of its way or to the doggedly disappearing land crab. It was the largest snake any of the warriors had ever seen-and it glared at the Vale through golden eyes that gleamed on a dozen long-fanged heads, each at the end of its own coiling neck.
Men crouched as low to the rocks as they could as some of the heads turned to look at the heights, jaws snapping hungrily-but