The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [83]
He found himself looking at something slow and gray that was plodding towards him behind two huge pincer-claws it had thrust out in front of its humped shell of a body. It looked like a crab out of water-though he'd never seen a crab the size of a small wagon before. Bodemmon Sarr sat in his saddle calmly, watching the beast come for him. Or rather, watching it march east regardless of what was in its way.
On sudden impulse he conjured a shining wall across its path. The beast neither slowed nor hastened as his spell took effect-and a hard, clear barrier sang into glowing life across the road. Force-solidified air, unbreakable without extensive spellwork, its radiance stretching from a rocky outcrop on the south side of the road to a tangle of broken boulders and old stumps flung up together when the road was made, to the north.
The land crab, or whatever it was, struck the wall with a crash-ramming it obliviously, the watching wizard thought, rather than attacking it as a foe. Those huge claws scraped and tore at the shining wall until the magic shrieked aloud-but held.
Bodemmon Sarr folded his arms across his chest and smiled just a trifle more broadly. In a moment it would either draw back to mount a charge at the wall, or turn to go along it and seek a way around… and he'd learn a little more about what he was facing. A small part of him thought it must be a conjured beast, brought from a far land by magic or twisted by spellwork from something smaller and different. The Vale just could not have held something this large for long, without his knowing of it… After all, he was Bodemmon Sarr.
The land crab turned slowly to the north and lumbered along the wall, letting one claw squeal a line along it to tell the beast that the barrier persisted. The wizard saw that it was dragging a heavy, stumpy tail as it trudged along, and awaited with quickening amusement the spectacle of its labored clamber over the tumbled rocks.
His eyebrows lifted when instead it turned at the end of the wall and strode through the heaped tangle of stones as if they were pure spell-spun illusion. A moment later, Bodemmon Sarr found himself staring into a large, dark, and furious eye as the land crab lifted a head as bald and as ugly as that of a carrion-vulture or sea turtle, and turned it to one side to regard him fixedly.
What by all the hidden whims of the Three was this creature?
Abruptly it ended its glaring at him and began to move again, turning slightly off the road, to the north-and straight at the nearest of his guards.
For a moment, as the man's helm swung towards him in a quest for his instructions, he was tempted to just let it go. And then he saw that its chosen route, thanks to the curve of the road here, would take it right into the pack-mules, the food they carried, and his cook and pleasure-wenches. He gave the guard the signal to attack.
The armsman spurred his war-mount to one side, seeking to pass by the nearest claw and lean in to put his swordtip through one of the land crab's eyes. His blade flashed out of its scabbard, his eyes never leaving the beast, and he-
Screamed in surprise and pain, as that bald head suddenly shot out with blinding speed, the corded neck extending like a lance, and bit through his swordarm.
"Gods above!" Bodemmon Sarr gasped, jaw dropping in utter amazement. Blood was spattering as arm and sword bounced amid dead leaves and hard-trampled wildflowers, and the convulsing warrior bent low over the neck of his horse, which was snorting and trembling almost as much as its injured rider.
Those jaws had pierced armor without pause or effort. The beast was moving with sudden speed now, advancing to block the flight of the armsman's horse as it turned, not having much room among the trees. One of those great claws thrust out.
It was the horse that lost a limb this time. As it went down, screaming, Bodemmon Sarr snarled three clipped words, spread his hands, and sent spell-spun arrows of purple fire sizzling through the air at the humped shell of the thing's rear.
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