Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [50]
To my right, the canopy of forest leaves opened a bit. I glanced out over a clearing filled with mist and the electric blue glow of Nimeru. Emperor moths flitted there, big as a man’s hands held together. They looked greenish under the moon, though I knew they were crimson as the hearts of rubies in brighter light.
My glance turned upward. I heard a gasp burst from my own lips. Anchored to the tree a dozen feet over my head was a rope bridge leading off through the clearing toward the north, toward the jungle’s center. I could not see its end, but as I turned my head to follow its path the corner of my eye caught a hint of deep wedges cut in the tree for steps.
Quickly I looked down, and saw across from me in another tree a dozen of the red-eyed beasts. I didn’t know where the rest of them were, but these watched me, silent for the moment except for their panting breaths. My own wind was coming back. I gestured at them.
“Come on,” I growled.
They growled in return, their eyes deepening in savage color. Their movements grew more animated, their claws clicking together as they shifted from side to side.
“Come on!” I shouted at them, brandishing my sword.
I wanted them to attack me here. Now. Masses of red-tipped black thorns would keep them from climbing up the sides of the tree where I stood. They’d have to come at me along the flat of the branch where my boots were planted firmly. And they could not come all at once.
Then come they did, chittering, leaping, howling. I fought, sword flashing, the hilt tight in both hands. The steel blade stabbed, dipped, slashed, hacked, blocked, cleaved. Gore spattered. Flattened skulls sundered. Taloned limbs went flying. There was no time for thought, no mercy to be offered.
The battle was a whirl of fetid breath, spittle, squealing mouths sharp with teeth, stinking fur crawling with vermin, of blistering red eyes, raking claws, tearing cloth and a weaving bloody sword. I saw it all in flashes, like the way night rain is stilled by lightning. I took wounds. Felt them burn. Cuts. Scrapes. Bites. I let the pain enrage me. And I killed.
The beasts went down, falling away, shrieking, tearing their own wounds, dying. I had no count of the killed before one beast slipped beneath the blade that tore out its fellow’s throat and slammed savagely into my right side. It knocked my sword arm up and back, pinned it with a hundred and twenty pounds of raging madness.
At the same moment, a growling something jerked hard on my left boot. My foot slipped in gore and I fell heavily on my back, nearly rolling off the branch into the depths. It was the beasts themselves that held me on that limb. They had me down. They tore at me. I felt teeth gouging at my arm, screamed in hot agony as fangs ripped through cloth and flesh to grind down on bone.
Still screaming, I kicked out wildly with my free leg, my boot stomping into the face of the creature that gnashed at my other foot. Its teeth gave away; its mouth pulped. I kicked again and its hold on me broke and it went spinning off the limb into darkness, falling away with a shriek that cut off in a brutal thud of yielding muscle against unyielding tree.
The beast pinning my right arm stopped its savaging of my flesh for an instant. It glared at me, rosary-bead eyes flaming red, its mouth open over vicious yellow teeth that hung with shreds of shirt and skin. Madly it glared, and just as madly I glared back. And in that instant of time, my left hand reached to the tree, found a six inch thorn and tore it loose.
The beast hissed, fur standing up all over its body. My hand rose and hacked down, and I drove the spike of that thorn through its eye so deep that it grated against the back of the creature’s skull and snapped off. The thing spasmed only once and collapsed half across me. I shoved it off, rolled