Worlds That Weren't

Now there was a slight, almost imperceptible hiss of exhaling breath, and his finger stroked the trigger.

Crack. The sound was thunder-loud, and she’d never seen the weapon fired at night. The great bottle-shaped blade of red-orange fire almost blinded her, and left her eyes smarting and watering. She looked away to get her night vision back, blinking rapidly. The foreigner who’d taught the wild men how to act together-the Russki — was staggering in a circle. At six hundred paces, Eric’s weapon had torn an arm off at the shoulder; the swamp-devils were throwing themselves flat in terror, their voices a chorus of shrieking like evil ghosts.

Crack. The distant figure fell.

“Dead as mutton,” King said. “And now, let’s go.”

Scarred chinless faces were turning their way now, the huge goblin eyes staring. The moonlight would be enough for them; legend said that they saw better by night than true men did. Sonjuh came to her feet and ran, with Slasher trotting at her heel. Behind her the sound of the others’ feet came, and behind them more of the squealing, shrieking horde. There must be hundreds of hundreds of them…

The gun roared again, and again. Below it she could hear Robre’s bow snapping; they must be discouraging the foremost pursuers. Sonjuh kept her head down and ran, the cool wet air of the riverbottom night was good for it. She blinked in surprise as the riverside came into sight, moonlight making a long rippling highway on it. There was no time to waste; she tossed her crossbow into the last of the big dugouts and dug her heels into the mud, putting her back to the wood and pushing.

Nothing happened, nothing save that stars and glimmers danced across her vision as she strained. It did give her a good look at what was going on behind. Eric came out first, panting so that she could hear him across fifty paces, turned, knelt, breaking open his weapon and reloading. Behind him Robre came, turned, drew, shot, drew, shot-incredibly graceful and swift for so large a man. Sonjuh abandoned her efforts at the canoe, scurried over the sand, grabbed the quivers of the dead swamp-devils, pitched them into the canoe, went back to shoving. Was that a slight movement, a sucking sound in the mud? Her feet churned through slickness.

“Lord o’ Sky burn you, you stupid log, move!” she shrieked in frustration; her own sweat was stinging her chewed lips like fire.

Another crack-crack as Eric fired his rifle. Two cannibals almost to spearcast of Robre pitched backwards, one with most of the top of his head disappearing in a spray of blood that looked black in the moonlight. Robre came pelting back past the Imperial, threw his bow into the canoe, bent to put his shoulder beside hers.

A spray of swamp-devils came out of the trailhead into the open, howling like wolves with every step, their tomahawks and knives glittering like cold silver fire in moonlight and starlight. Eric had slung his rifle; now he drew the revolver from his side. He stood erect, shoulder turned to his enemies, his feet at right angles to each other and his left hand tucked into the small of his back, weapon extended. It seemed a curiously formal pose…

Crack. Much lighter than the boom of the hunting rifle; more like a spiteful snap, with a dagger of red flame in the night. The foremost swamp-devil stopped as if he’d run into an invisible wall, arms flying out to right and left, weapons turning and glinting as they flew, then collapsed; the next tripped over him and never rose. The Imperial’s long arm moved, leisurely and sure, and the pistol snapped. Again and again, six times, and there were six bodies lying still or writhing on the sandy mud. The seventh came leaping over the pile of them, screeching and swinging a mace of polished rock lashed to a handle with human tendons. Eric’s sword flashed out, a clean burnished-steel blur in the moonlight, cut again backhand. The cannibal staggered, gaping at a forearm severed and spouting blood in pulsing-fountain spurts, then collapsed as his guts spilled out through his rent belly. An eighth lay silent as Slasher rose from his body, jaws wet. The Imperial turned and ran.

The canoe was moving, finally moving. King was nearly to them; Slasher soared by him, hit the ground and leapt again, flashing over the two clansfolks’ heads like a gray arrow. Dark figures moved behind King’s back, more of the swamp-devils come from their sabbat, loosing as they ran in a chorus of wolf-howls, pig-squeals, catamount screeches. Black arrows began to flicker past Sonjuh in a whispering hiss of cloven air, invisible until they were almost there; some of them went thunk into the canoe and stood quivering with a malignant hum like evil bees.