The blade met Klang’s shield flush, and bent it back at a right angle. The scalloped edge caught Klang in the throat, and drove him stumbling backward, howling.
The Death Dealer moved in for the kill.
Klang, crouching, gagging, desperately whipped the spiked ball at the Barbarian’s feet. But Gath pinned the chain with one foot and severed the links with a blow. He picked up the ball in his fist and threw it. Klang lifted his shield instinctively, but it was shorter now. The ball caught him in the shoulder and ricocheted into the air over the crowd, and sank into howling pandemonium.
Klang discarded his shield and held his axe in two hands as he circled away from the advancing Death Dealer. The warlord’s shoulder was a red sponge, stitched with splinters of white bone at the center and crusted with scales. They were pulsing, growing over the wound to close it. Scales had also grown up the backs of his arms, and the tip of reptilian tail had appeared below the skirt of his armor.
The crowd hushed at the sight of the foul appendage and withdrew from the first two rows to stand in a crouch, openmouthed.
The combatants studied each other, wary now.
Gath’s eyes glowed red, and his heaving body had expanded. He waited, and Klang stepped in hard, took Gath’s blow with his armored chest and hammered Gath in the helmet. Seemingly content with this exchange, they repeated it, hammering each other like men in a dream. Mindlessly, they met blow with blow striking only each other’s steel. Klang’s armor began to look like a moving heap of scrap metal, and Gath reeled dizzily like a performing drunk. Blood streamed down his arms onto his hands and the axe handle flew out of his grip, leaving the horned helmet as his only defense. He lowered the horns in front of him and waited.
Klang peppered it with short jabs and slashing blows, herding the Barbarian’s staggering body around the stage. Fighting to keep his feet, Gath caught each blow with helmet and horns. Blood began to fly from the helmet’s mouth and eye holes. Klang, excited by the sight and smell, licked his lips. His tongue was black and forked.
Gath gaped, the crowd screamed, and Klang swung hard, caught the face of the helmet. The blow knocked Gath flat, but cracked the axe handle, and the weapon went spinning across the stage. Klang dove on top of Gath, and his helmet was knocked off, revealing weblike growth connecting his ears and scaled neck.
They rolled and tangled, jabbing and kicking and cursing. Klang buried fanglike teeth in Gath’s shoulder. Gath’s hands found the scaled flesh of Klang’s neck and buried his fingers deep. Klang’s eyes bulged open. His lips crawled back over his fangs, bare to the gums. His forked tongue whipped out and wrapped around a thumb. Then, with a wrenching convulsion, his limbs serpentined around Gath’s chest and legs, suddenly boneless, pulsing muscles, and his scaled tail whipped from beneath his kilt, curled around a thigh.
The crowd screamed in horror.
Gath’s mouth gaped open, straining to suck up air. Klang’s reptilelike limbs kept crushing. Tighter. A rib snapped in the Barbarian chest.
Hard scales were forming in Klang’s thick neck, resisting the Death Dealer’s fingers, and Klang snorted triumphantly. Smoke, then flames, flared from his nose and scorched the Death Dealer’s wrists. A growl of pain leapt from the helmet. The eye slits brightened and spat flames, scorching Klang’s metal and flesh. Like one huge pulsing (ire-breathing beast trying to devour itself, they held on.
The shuddering crowd backed up, leaving blotches of steaming urine on the tiers. Bunches pushed through the exit tunnels in panic.
Covered in blood and dust, Gath and Klang continued to thrash and roll in one piece. Blood poured from the eye and mouth slits of the horned helmet. It was on fire, and spilling over Klang’s scaled hands and arms, setting them ablaze. Klang hissed with pain, and scales emerged on his brow, nose and cheeks. As the flames reached his shoulders, the scales grew down over his eyes, nose and mouth, diminishing his sight and breath.
Gath’s world, seen through flaming blood, had once more turned red. But this time it was the real world. He saw horror flash across the demon warlord’s eyes, as if he had suddenly recognized the foul thing he had become. Klang howled with human torment, and the greenish-grey crusts covered his eyes, blinding him.
Their bodies ripped apart and rolled away from each other gasping, bleeding and flaming. Gath doused his flames with dirt and leapt up. Klang rose mindlessly, body aflame and jerking as a thick crust of scales formed on his back and chest to force off his confining armor. His fingers had turned to claws. Fangs descended below his jaw. His tail whipped about the ground as he groped blindly in front of him.
The tips of the helmet felt the danger riding on the air, and Gath lowered the helmet in front of him, charged like a primeval bull. Thunder roared from the horned helmet. Tongues of flame spit from the eye slits, then cracking flashes of white lightning.
Klang turned toward the sound and clawed the air blindly.
The horns of the helmet caught him in the chest, driving through his thick crust of scales like they were soft bread, impaled the reptilian warlord, and lifted him off the ground. Klang hissed and howled, his arms, legs and tail flailing wildly.
Gath threw his head back with a roar, and the warlord flew into the air. He turned over twice in midair, and landed with a moist thud in the empty front row.
The remaining crowd screamed and pushed through the tunnels to escape, trampling on its own convulsing body.
Brown John and Dirken finally fought free of the flowing crowd, raced back down the tiers, and raised their eyes to the stage. It was empty of life except for the victor.
He held center stage, erect and alert, listening. Cries echoed through Bahaara as the Barbarian Army stormed through the streets chasing the Kitzakks as they fled out the gates into the desert. His knees slowly bent, and his monstrous smoking body cocked. He lifted his axe and held it across the bloody thighs. Liquid red dripped from its cutting edge.
From within him rumbled a demonic thunder, like the blood lust of a sweeping fire. His attitude was plain. He wanted more.
Brown John cried out in despair, “We’ve lost him!”
The great helmet turned slowly toward the pair, then looked beyond them. As father and son watched stupefied, the huge body straightened. The red glow behind the eye slits began to fade. They twisted around to see what he saw.
A group of Grillard warriors were spilling into the arena led by Bone and Robin Lakehair.
Sixty-eight
On a shelf in a silent chamber deep under the noisy confusion in Bahaara’s streets stood a huge swallowtail butterfly carved from soft lead and enameled orange and black. Dang-Ling, old of eye and using both hands, plucked its heavy body from its perch and set it on a stone pedestal beneath the shelf. Slowly it began to sink into the floor.
His eyes avoided a door at the opposite side of the buried room. Heavy steel bars locked it shut. He could picture Baak, Dazi, Hatta, and Cobra’s servant waiting for him beyond that door in his hidden laboratory. But they would never see their priest again, or anyone else. He had no doubt that it was the Queen of Serpents’ fault, that her lust for the Death Dealer had been the cause for the current calamity. But what more could he have done, or what more could he do now than he was doing? He could not afford to trust anyone.
He pattered over to a side stairway and listened. Loud grating sounds came from within the surrounding walls where weighty stones began to shift and slide. A stone receded in the ceiling of his chamber releasing a stream of sand. It began to flood the room. Faint cries came from behind the locked door where the same thing was happening, then there was a heavy pounding on the door. His unfortunate servants had finally realized their fate.