Out in the darkness, Storm slid alongside the inn until he reached the well of blackness that separated it from the saddlery next door. Ducking into the blackness, he closed his human eye and concentrated hard on the other. The polymer clad steel lid closed with a soft tink and the mechanical eye hummed faintly, cycling through its modes. When he’d finished, he opened the human eye and mentally followed suit with the mechanical. The steel lid rotated up, followed by a few seconds of dizziness as he adjusted. The sapphire light was gone. All vision was now in passive, light-gathering mode and he could see the world with reasonable clarity.
The station was quiet, nothing moving anywhere. Koli had been right; even the rats had gone to ground. He slid backward along the inn wall, and then across the small gap to the rear of the saddlery.
Three buildings later, he turned a corner and was looking out into the street. Quietly now, concentrating on being invisible, he edged out alongside the porch of a wainwright’s. Up and down the street, all was calm. Nothing moved, nothing looked out of place. He could still see the front of the Pizzle, and it too was quiet, so he hadn’t missed them.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he maneuvered farther into the depths of the tree-shrouded station, senses straining, falling deeper and deeper into full combat mode, closer and closer to that place where his body and mind parted company. Once there, he’d race ahead setting the targets and methods, his body would follow along and do what it had been trained to do.
He had no idea which stable of the three or four available that Koli had used, but he was coming up on one now. No movement there either. Beyond the stable, however, in the darker shadows beneath its walls, he got his first glimmer of movement. Three... four... five... where was the K’trin’al? He faded back to the nearest wall and became a part of it, quelling all movement save for his eyes, willing himself to invisibility.
The ogres were moving almost as quietly as he’d been — impressive for creatures so large. He already knew from the corporal’s fight that they were fast. They were leapfrogging along the shadow of the stable wall, making astonishing use of what little cover there was. All were armed with heavy axes in addition to their natural weapons of tooth and claw. Even at nearly four to one odds, the people at the inn were in for a very hard time of it.
He let them pass. He was here for a specific purpose, and it didn’t involve ogres. Where was the K’trin’al? A shuffling so faint it might have been an echo of a long forgotten breeze. Not across the street! This side. It had been paralleling the ogres. Moving only his eyes, The Tairn looked down the wall he was pressed against. A hulking form was moving toward him. It hadn’t seen him yet, but, if it kept its present course, it would be bumping into him. He couldn’t get the full focus of the eye onto it without moving his head, and that would alert the creature. All he could get was a peripheral impression, distorted and grainy. It wasn’t K’trin’al! Too bulky by half, and the face was more ram than spider. Both good and bad. Good in that he probably needn’t worry about the K’trin’al intelligence or training, but bad in that the kill zone he’d shown the trooper at the inn would be unlikely to work.
The point was fast becoming moot. It would be on top of him in two breaths.
The greel watched the green idiots pull ahead, unable to call out without compromising the stalk. The eldest would hear of their incompetence. Nor could it move faster and catch up. Something was about. It could scent a strange being — a man/not man, somewhere close by. But it couldn’t see anything. Forgetting the greens, the greel slowed further, eyes straining to find the creature. Perfectly adapted to the night, the greel’s eyes beheld the street as though on a cloudy day. But that vision contrasted with the information conveyed by flaring nostrils. It came to a smooth halt, head raised, nose held high and questing. Something there. It could taste the scent, but the wall was empty. The greel reached forward...
He’d been seen! Storm erupted from his passive stance, leaping toward the monster with the corporal’s sword before him, trying for the upward, disemboweling thrust.
The greel leapt backward as a man sprang from nothingness an arm’s reach before it, sword already reaching for its vitals. It threw its lower pair of arms into the path of the onrushing blade, sparks striking from steel vambraces. At the same time, the great axe held in its upper arms arced over its head to cleave the impossible attacker in twain.
The monster was too quick. Storm felt the sword thrust diverted even as he caught the glimmer of the downward arcing axe. The sword out of play, he couldn’t parry. Instead, he followed the deflected strike inward, twisting his body to the side as he turned the lunge into a flying leap. He smacked into the beast’s legs as he passed, feeling it lurch and the axe shave suede from the rear of his vest.
The leap ended in a roll, muddied by the monster’s scrabbling attempts to catch at his legs with its lower arms.
Rolling out of the fall well behind the rapidly turning monster, he tucked an elbow and threw himself to the side, causing the next axe stroke to miss by a healthier margin. Then he was on his feet in the open, the monster still struggling to pull its axe blade clear of the splintered boards of someone’s porch and wondering how it had missed something so slow as a man twice in a row. Palming one of the throwing knives, Storm bore in with the sword, attacking from the beast’s off side.
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It released the axe handle with both left arms, parrying his first series of rapid attacks, more sparks flying. But he was moving behind it, closing, closing.
Struggling to keep the sword from its guts, fighting the urge to release the weapon and lower its head to attack with its great, curved horns, the monster couldn’t put full force to the effort of freeing the axe and its other two hands.
Storm was very close now, harrying the monster’s free hands with the lower edge of the sword, nearly at the hilt, struggling to adjust to the wildly different techniques the solid blade required compared to his traditional spooling weapon.
He pressed with rapid, chopping parries that kept both hands occupied, but would let neither combatant attack. Then, nearly behind it, he snapped a kick at an ankle.
The monster howled as boot heel struck bone, and as the next kick came, it raised its own foot to block.
Ah, that’s what he’d been waiting for. The throwing knife left his free hand like a bullet, smacking into the creature’s instep and burrowing deep. A higher pitched howl rewarded his efforts.
Suddenly, at the edge of his consciousness, he registered the unmistakable sounds of gunshots erupting from the inn.
Leaping back, Storm moved further behind, sword working, a new sense of urgency propelling him. The temperature dropped thirty degrees.
With a ripping crack, the axe came free of the wooden planks, swinging almost parallel to the ground as the creature spun on its good foot, breath pluming in the suddenly brisk air. The man arched backward, willing himself to ignore the forces of momentum. The axe blade split the air close in his wake, shaving a button from his vest. He hit the ground already rolling, changing directions and rolling again, feeling the axe whistle along his trail like a bloodhound on the scent.
Finally, unable to either clear the axe or take his feet, Storm broke away, stretching himself and frog-hopping for the shelter of the building’s corner and the alley beyond.
Hearing the axe bite into wood just shy of his shirt tail, he came to his feet, spinning and slashing. The axe was free and the monster was snorting foam from its flaring nostrils. Even hobbling on one foot it could not doubt its victory.
On his feet and facing his adversary, Storm got his first clear look at the thing he fought. Tall it was, easily topping eight feet from toes to backward-curved obsidian horns. Naked save for a loincloth, dark fur covered it, shading from dark grey at the belly to jet at back and shoulders. Four arms sprouted from those shoulders, bulging with muscle. The eyes burned with reflected light and horrible intelligence, and black lips were pulled away from long, carnivore’s teeth. It stood upon thick, digitigrade legs ending in spatulate, ten-toed feet. Mankind —at least his branch— had never known its like.
Urged onward by the continued sound of battle behind him, Storm changed tactics. He began a darting, feinting dance, keeping just out of reach of the heavy blade, but keeping it swinging. There was blood in the dirt. Lots of blood. He darted in again, slashing high, the sword blade once more deflected by the axe. The return stroke of the axe slipped his parry and he sucked his stomach in, feeling the tug of the blade as it slashed, razorlike through vest and shirt together, drawing a fine mist of blood in its wake. His downward chop missed the blade, chunking into the wooden haft inches behind it.
Three more times, he tried the overhand slash, trading punishment for progress, and three more times, the axe was there to meet him. But the beast was slowing, the axe growing unsteady.
Another feint inward, drop back, and as the axe began its swing, he caught the hilt of the corporal’s sword in both hands, dropped to one knee, and levered it around like a foreshortened halberd. The axe was there and the sword blade broke off short. But the man’s prior attacks had done their job, and this final blow sheared through the weakened shaft. The axe head went spinning off down the street.
Overbalanced by the sudden change in its weapon’s weight, the greel spun half again farther around than it had planned, giving the man a clean shot at its back. The second throwing knife was out and singing through the air, plunging home into the base of the ridged spine.
Howling in agony, the greel completed its spin. The man was gone. Turning again, one hand scrabbling for the knife buried in its back, it searched the quiet street, breath coming in great, tearing gasps. What manner of creature had it been sent for? The man/not man was tougher than it looked, and impossibly fast.
There! A dark form rose up from the shadows well out of its reach. The greel screamed its rage, flinging the axe shaft spearlike at its enemy even as light flared.
Pistol ball and axe shaft struck almost simultaneously, and both combatants pitched backward to the ground.
The dust was still settling when Storm, blinded, disoriented, and wracked with pain, pulled himself to hands and knees. Gingerly, an unsteady hand went to his face. Not even a dent. That’s what quality, weapons grade duraloy did for cosmetics.
Unfortunately for the greel, it didn’t have a steel face. The ball had gone through an eye socket and into a skull too thick to allow it escape, where it had bounced around until it lost momentum. The greel lay full out in the street, blood and brain matter leaking from mouth and eye socket. It would be filing no report, good or otherwise, against the ogres.
Gathering himself together, wits hurtling back from the cold place before he was ready, Storm lunged into a staggering run back towards the inn. The gunshot had overwhelmed the mechanical eye’s light amplification capability and shut it down, all but blinding him. He was nearly to the front door and falling every third or fourth step when the circuit breaker in the mechanical eye cycled and he could abruptly see again. The dizziness threw him ignominiously to the dirt.
Picking himself up yet again, forcing the eye to cycle to normal mode quicker than it was designed to do, he oriented on the Pizzle. The first thing he saw upon reaching it was a pair of enormous green bodies blocking the doorway, leaking corrosive ichor down the steps. Immediately within was another.