Part 13 (1/2)
He turned to his left, presenting his right shoulder, where the blade of the staff glanced and caught in the heavy leather of his greatcoat. The shock numbed Lynus' right arm. He spun back to the right, stepping close to the warlock, and with his left hand he traced the short scalpel blade in a long, deep path: up the inside of the staff arm, along the brachial artery, across the pectoral group, and up the jugular, laying arteries wide.
The warlock screamed as blood erupted from the long, smooth cuts in two major arteries. He staggered backward, and Lynus despaired as the wounds closed.
Another roar of b.e.s.t.i.a.l anguish burst forth from below, the gorgandur echoing the warlock's own scream of agony as a.n.a.logs of opened arteries and severed muscle were instantly, magically inflicted upon it.
The roar ended abruptly, not even a quarter the length of the creature's previous screams.
The warlock's eyes went wide, the wound in his neck reappeared, and blood poured out over his scorched and shredded robe. He staggered forward as if to lunge again with the staff, but he dropped it before he could finish the movement.
The runes whipping around him winked out, and he fell forward into a heap.
Lynus stared. That was far worse than a dissection. Focus on the process. What's next? Right. He wiped his scalpel clean and sheathed it. He bent down and retrieved his sword, then picked up the staff. Behind him he heard Horgash roar in triumph, a cry taken up by several other trollkin. The surviving Tharn were fleeing into the woods.
He looked back at Edrea and Kinik. Edrea sat up, leaned to her left, and retched. No blood, so she wasn't bleeding in at least three of the dozen internal ways that could kill her.
”I think we won,” Lynus said.
Edrea nodded weakly. ”I woke up, so that was my conclusion.”
Kinik groaned, and Lynus moved to crouch beside her. Smoke rose from her right arm. Her right hand, still clutching the haft of her polearm, was blackened and ruined. It would have to come off. And that would take more than a scalpel.
”You're going to be okay, Kinik. Can you walk?”
”Walk, yes.” She looked down at her arm and groaned. ”Not carry.”
Horgash hobbled over using a tree branch as a crutch.
”Horgas.h.!.+” said Edrea. ”You're missing a foot!”
”On my way back through, one of the Tharn got in a good swing and took me off Greta. She stomped him to a pulp for his trouble.” He thumbed over his shoulder at the carnage, where Greta chuffed and paced. Five of the eight trollkin were up, picking through the battle-torn copse for trophies, or perhaps missing digits.
”It was too ragged to try reattaching it,” he said. ”I'll just need to keep well-fed this winter so I can grow a new one.” He stooped a bit, bending down to look Lynus in the eye. ”I'm claiming the rest of the expedition's bacon. With your permission, Chronicler.”
Chronicler, Lynus thought. Chronicler. If Pendrake was dead, it might fall to Lynus to write the end of this story.
”We need to get down to the village.”
Jata met Lynus and the others at the gate. They were a ragged, limping band, but Jata . . . patches of her skin were blackened, her quills were broken, and the quitari pattern cloth she wore looked as if it had been used to smother a fire.
Yet for all that, she wore a smile that threatened to split her face in two.
”You,” she said, looking at Lynus. ”You will never be able to write this tale in a way that others will believe it.” She pointed back into the village, where a man sat on a stone block that had once belonged to a house.
The man was shaped like Viktor Pendrake, but black as pitch from head to toe. A pair of young trollkin were splas.h.i.+ng buckets of water on him. The water that pooled around the man was blackened with whatever covered he, but he did not grow noticeably cleaner as Lynus approached.
”Professor?”
”Yes, Lynus. In the flesh.” Pendrake sighed, his exhalation heavy with exhaustion.
”What happened?”
”I did a very foolish thing.”
Lynus said nothing.
Pendrake drew another deep breath and continued.
”The gorgandur spit sludge only that one time. I guessed the stuff might be mostly gone. But I know mostly isn't the same as completely, so I grabbed those horse ointments, slathered them on as thick as I could, and fed myself to the wurm.”
Lynus stared, slack-jawed.
Next to him, Edrea let out a gasp. ”Professor?”
”Many large creatures swallow their prey whole, relying upon interior gastric mechanisms to manage what their teeth do not. The sludge seemed just such a mechanism, and it gave me hope that there would be no chewing.
”It was a tricky jump, but I didn't get bitten in half or crushed by those jaws. Then I was inside, and I started stabbing everything within reach. And from inside, everything is within reach.” He chuckled weakly.
Horgash laughed. ”I don't think the boy should have told you the tale of Muthgar Preymaker.”
”Indeed. Close-quarters swordplay notwithstanding, I should have ended up much as Preymaker did.”
”Lynus here,” Edrea said, putting her arm around him, ”led us in an attack on the wurm's master up on the knoll.”
”No I didn't,” Lynus protested. He felt himself blus.h.i.+ng. ”Horgash led that attack.”
”I just happened to be in front,” said Horgash.
”Edrea, you said *the wurm's master?'” Pendrake asked.
”I did.” Edrea poked Lynus and whispered, ”I missed the last bit. You tell him.”
”Right,” said Lynus. ”I . . . umm . . . okay, quick version. Northern fellow, Skirov probably, wrapped in runes. Edrea shot him twice, and Kinik almost cut him in half. His wounds kept disappearing, and the gorgandur screamed each time. I surmised he was using his bond with the creature to drive those injuries onto it.”
”Hah!” said Pendrake, slapping his knee and spattering filth. ”That explains where my exit originated.”
Lynus pondered that for a moment and shuddered at the memory of the warlock's wide-open arteries. ”I suppose that's so. He healed himself of all the wounds but the last one, which vanished, then reappeared after the wurm's death howl.”
Pendrake grinned widely, his teeth s.h.i.+ning white. ”That piece of information is going to be referred to repeatedly.” He stood and turned to one of the young trollkin. ”Give me that.” He upended the bucket over his head. It did about as much to the neutralized sludge as it might have to a thick layer of 'jack grease. He still looked like a tar-Pendrake.
”And it is the two of you I expect to repeat it. In cla.s.srooms. The university can allow me a sabbatical for a season or three, and you're perfectly capable of taking over.”
Horgash guffawed. ”The great Pendrake needs a rest?”
”Morrow help me, no!” Pendrake exclaimed. ”I need to right a great wrong! Horgash, your people were left defenseless here. Your soldiers have been interposed between my own people and the skorne, an enemy we have all been completely ignorant of for as long as any record exists.”
He sc.r.a.ped a dollop of dark filth from his hair and flicked it to the ground. ”I cannot fight that army, nor can I persuade King Leto to lend you more strength, but I can do a thing or two about the ignorance. Cygnar may again be gaining my services as a scout.”
He stepped forward, looked down at his blackened, greasy state, and pulled his a.s.sistants into a hug anyway. ”No, you may not enlist in the army. You are to take over my cla.s.ses, and get Kinik formally admitted. And in the short term, someone must oversee the transport and dissection of the first gorgandur killed in recorded history.”
”You're not coming back to Corvis with us?” Edrea asked.