The Last Protector (16 page)

Wallace and Stuart nodded, so Scrornuck somewhat nervously drew Ol’ Red and extended the great blade. Grasping the weapon's slightly warm, purring grip made him feel more comfortable and confident. He took a step back, away from the others, and whipped the sword through a series of formal moves, slicing low-hanging limbs off trees, curving the blade back over his head, splitting it into multiple blades. Wallace and Stuart applauded politely, though they looked less than impressed.

After breakfast, Wallace and Stuart engaged in a lengthy conversation with the Stranger while Scrornuck shoved the gear into his backpack and performed the folding, pleating and belting needed to turn his plaid blanket into a proper kilt. He felt a bit left out, but gave the matter little thought, focusing his attention on the gold coins in his sporran and the chance to rescue a beautiful woman.

A short walk brought them out of the woods, and Scrornuck saw in the east a range of mountains, taller than any he'd seen, deep purple, capped with white. The Stranger pointed to the tallest mountain, a near-perfect cone with a thin plume of smoke drifting from its summit. “Our destination."

They climbed into a wagon drawn by two horses, and as the Stranger drove, the two other warriors told Scrornuck a bit about what they would encounter atop the mountain. “The thing that's up there—folks say it can't be killed.” Wallace suppressed a slight shudder. “You wound the thing, it just heals instantly, like nothing happened."

"Don't forget the blood,” Stuart said. “If even a drop of it gets into you, it's just a matter of time—a few weeks, a month at the outside. Then you die—or you'll wish you had."

Wallace shrugged. “I think that's just a rumor. After all, nobody's actually survived a fight with this thing!"

"Well, I'm taking no chances.” Stuart held up a white coverall. “Full hazmat suit, complete with helmet and respirator.” Scrornuck wasn't sure what a “hazmat suit” was, but he got the general idea that the coverall was supposed to provide protection from the monster's blood. “And to kill it, explosive projectiles.” Stuart pulled a large black weapon from beneath his seat, raised it to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. Scrornuck jumped as the weapon roared, flame leaped from its tip, and a tree they had just passed exploded into splinters. “I'm gonna blow the damned thing apart from a distance."

Wallace shook his head. “That won't kill it.” He produced a device that looked like a smaller version of Stuart's weapon. Hoses connected the weapon to a pair of metal cylinders on a backpack harness. He took pulled the trigger, and a stream of fire shot from the weapon, incinerating another tree alongside the road. “Let the thing try to heal—nothing living can survive this heat."

Scrornuck watched the burning tree disappear and wondered—compared to the weapons Stuart and Wallace had brought, what could his sword do?

They camped near the snowline, building a big fire that did little to relieve the cold and damp. Wallace produced some excellent liquor, Stuart got out a guitar, Scrornuck assembled his bagpipes, and the three freelance heroes took turns singing songs of their homelands until well into the wee hours.

Scrornuck slept badly, kept awake by strange noises. Something rumbled on the mountaintop, and the clouds reflected a dull red glow. The wolves howled, and at one point the mountainside echoed with a ghastly shriek that made the hairs on his neck stand up.

Come morning, Scrornuck made breakfast. As he cleaned up, he overheard the whispered conversation between the Stranger and the other two warriors. “Is It still there?” Wallace asked.

The Stranger nodded.

"How's Ranger Deanne holding out?"

"As well as can be expected. A little hungry, but so far It hasn't found a way to get to her. She'll be happy to see us."

"What's with the highlander?” Stuart whispered, glancing surreptitiously in Scrornuck's direction. “Bait?"

The Stranger smiled a thin smile. “You may be surprised."

The party reached its destination around midday. The tower that stood at the center of the small, snow-covered meadow was something less than the great castles described by travelers—only two stories high, plain, made of drab gray stone. Scrapes and claw-marks covered its lower story and its stout oak door. Something big and powerful had tried very hard to get in.

A woman peered from a small second-story window, the “Ranger Deanne” that Wallace and Stuart had mentioned. She was not what he expected—at least twice his age, rather ordinary-looking, and in his opinion she could stand to lose a few pounds. Moreover, she hardly looked like she needed rescuing—when they arrived she shouted a cheery “hello” to the Stranger, and casually strolled out to join them.

As the Stranger and the woman chatted, Scrornuck wondered where the “monster” might be. Were they all going to get into the wagon, return down the mountain and collect their pay? Apparently not, for the two warriors started preparing for battle, Stuart getting into his white coverall and Wallace strapping on his fire-shooting device.

The horses picked up the scent first, sniffing the air and stamping their feet as if they wanted to get far away from there as quickly as possible. A moment later, Scrornuck got a whiff, nearly gagging on the reek of partially-digested meat, rot, swamp gas and bad liquor.

And then, with a roar, the monster appeared atop a cliff at the edge of the meadow. The beast was at least ten feet long, lizard-like in shape. Its head was easily three feet long, its jaws packed with rows of sharp teeth. Muscles writhed like snakes beneath the heavily scarred skin of its arms and legs. Horns and spikes grew from its head, shoulders, elbows and knees, from its huge, clawed hands. It bellowed again as it leaped down from the cliff and stomped toward the tower.

Wallace attacked first, spraying the creature with flaming jelly. The beast disappeared into a ball of orange fire, and Scrornuck raised his hand to shield his eyes from the surge of heat. As the fireball turned into a dark black cloud and floated into the sky, Wallace advanced. The creature writhed, screamed—and jumped, twenty feet up and thirty feet forward, coming down mere inches from Wallace. Then it was the warrior's turn to scream. The beast enfolded him in its enormous arms, studded with sharp spikes and still covered with flaming jelly, bringing its fangs just inches from his face. As the others watched helplessly, the monster squeezed, digging its razor-sharp claws into the fuel tanks strapped to Wallace's back. The tanks burst and the fuel ignited, covering both the monster and Wallace in flame. The doomed fighter screamed louder, and then, almost mercifully, the monster took his head off in a single bite.

Ranger Deanne turned away, retching violently as the monster dismembered the dead soldier, ripping the tanks from his back and chewing on arms and legs. Then, with blood, fragments of flesh, and flame still clinging to its face, it turned to its tormentors.

Stuart, encased head-to-toe in his “hazmat” suit, stepped forward, firing his weapon. The explosive charges blew chunks off the monster, making it scream in pain. But the gun was inaccurate, and more than half the shots thudded into the cliff. As his supply of ammunition ran low, Stuart moved in closer, close enough that bits of the creature's blood spattered his suit after each shot. “Looks like it's working,” the Stranger said, in a tone that left Scrornuck with the impression that he was surprised.

Stuart fired his last few shots into the monster's throat, and the series of explosions blew the creature's head clean off. Propelled by the explosions, the head tumbled end-over-end through the air and landed in the snow about twenty feet away.

A fountain of blood sprayed from the monster's severed neck, painting the snow a brilliant red and covering Stuart's protective suit, including his helmet's clear faceplate. Momentarily blinded, knowing the monster was practically on top of him, he dropped his weapon and rubbed frantically at his faceplate to restore his vision. At the same time, the monster's body, seemingly able to function without a head, staggered about blindly. Scrornuck found the scene vaguely comic.

It did not stay that way. Within a few seconds, Stuart and the monster blundered into one another. The beast lifted the warrior, shredding his hazmat suit with those awful claws. It raised him over the stump of its neck, spraying him with still more blood, and with a weary shrug, it impaled the man on the spikes growing from its back. As Stuart writhed and shrieked, the creature resumed its methodical search, its hands groping through the snow.

The monster found its head, and in a scene that Scrornuck found disturbingly reminiscent of the Knight's trick, simply set it back in place. The bleeding stopped, the skin knit together, and the creature's eyes opened. Keeping its angry red gaze fixed on Scrornuck, the beast reached behind its head and tore Stuart to pieces, throwing arms this way, legs that way, and finally pitching the head at Scrornuck's feet, as if it were some bloody challenge.

A deep, primitive cry rose in Scrornuck's throat as he drew his sword and charged this abomination, consumed by a desire to chop the beast into as many pieces as he could. Forgetting any concerns about the creature's blood, he took off its head with a single stroke. When the beast reached down for its head, Scrornuck chopped off its arms, and then its legs, and then he methodically hacked its body into smaller and smaller chunks, not stopping until the monstrosity had been reduced to pieces no larger than a man's fist, all of them still alive, wriggling as if trying to put themselves back together.

"Good work, Mister Saughblade,” the Stranger said. “It appears you've subdued the creature."

"It's not dead."

"No, but it'll take a while to put itself back together, and that's quite good enough for our purposes. Now here's what I want you to do."

As the Stranger calmed the horses, Scrornuck loaded the pieces of the monster, and the few remaining bits of Wallace and Stuart, into the wagon. Then, he opened Wallace's spare cylinder of flammable jelly, spread it on the bloody ground where the battle had taken place, and set it ablaze. He whispered a prayer for the fallen warriors, and climbed into the back of the wagon.

They made their way up the mountain slowly, reaching the summit shortly before sunset. The wagon rattled and bounced around an outcrop of rock, and Scrornuck found himself staring into a vision of hell. Smoke, steam, the stench of sulfur and withering heat filled the air. Far below, a crater glowed with orange fire.

When the horses would go no further, the Stranger stopped the wagon and chocked its wheels, leaving it facing away from the pit. As he unhitched the horses and led them away, he pointed to a narrow spine of rock that extended out over the fire. “Can you push the wagon off that? It's important that it go all the way into the fire."

Scrornuck nodded and got to work. There was a path of sorts, and it was mostly downhill, but it still took the better part of an hour and a half to move boulders out of the way and fill holes and ruts. Sweat ran from his forehead as he worked, stinging his eyes and blurring his vision.

At last everything was ready. He kicked away the stones chocking the wagon's wheels and wrapped his arms around its steering tongue as it started to roll backwards down the path. The wagon quickly gained speed, and he fought to keep it on the path, dragging his heels in the dirt, struggling with the tongue as it wagged side-to-side like the tail of an over-enthusiastic dog. More than once, he found himself clinging to the tongue for dear life as it swung him out over the fiery crater, only to slap him against the rocks an instant later.

At the end of the path, an instant before the wagon plunged over the cliff, Scrornuck released the tongue and sprawled face-first in the gravel at the very edge of the abyss. He watched the wagon tumble in the air, spilling its contents as it fell, smoking, then bursting into flame, finally disappearing into the fires in the heart of the mountain.

"Ugh,” Nalia said. Prompted by Jape's less-than-subtle gestures, Scrornuck had not told all the gruesome details. Nevertheless, she looked a bit green. “You burned the thing up?"

"Yep. It was the only way to get rid of it."

She giggled, not a giggle of amusement but the nervous giggle of one who was trying hard not to gag. “This is silly, but all I can think about is how bad it must have smelled."

"Actually, it smelled pretty good.” He sniffed the air, detecting the sweet aroma of steaks on the grill. “Kind of like
supper time!"
He hurried to the balcony and saw that the second-floor restaurant overlooking the pool was starting a cookout. “All right!” he cried, pulling on his boots. “I was getting hungry again!"

Jape pointed to Scrornuck's ratty shirt. “You're really going to wear that rag in public?"

"I'm following the rules."

Jape sighed. “All right—but I'm not skipping dinner if they don't let you in."

"I'll bring you a doggie bag, Fido,” Nalia said, planting a little kiss on Scrornuck's cheek.

Scrornuck was somewhat surprised when nobody in the restaurant seemed to notice his ragged shirt, let alone complain about it. A passing Guard inspected him for about two seconds while he was loading his plate at the salad bar, but then continued on his rounds without comment. In a way, he found the lack of harassment disappointing. Nevertheless, he returned to the suite to put on something more acceptable—and his armored jacket, just in case—before they set off for the Cast Quarter.

It seemed a quiet evening. Other than having to shoo away a few curious children who again tried to get a peek beneath Scrornuck's kilt, they crossed Temple Square without incident. A minor acolyte pointed, and a few pilgrims whispered to each other about the heretic who wouldn't sacrifice his splendid boots, but nobody said anything to Scrornuck's face.

"Where's the High Priest tonight?” Jape asked, glancing back at the unoccupied Temple porch.