Each one boasted an impressive collection of wounds: arrow holes, gaping cuts, bruises so dark as to stain even their purple flesh, and a collection of skulls flattened, pulverized, and a few that could only be described as artistically tenderized. The expressions they wore in death were unreadable, what with their faces smashed in and all, but none suggested that they had gone without a fight.
Shen work.
Granted, he didn’t know much of the Shen. Not nearly enough to know their handiwork, anyway. But there were few options as to who would go to the trouble of stringing up dead netherlings. Besides, to admit that he didn’t know the Shen would have been to admit that Lenk was at least partially right.
That thought made him sick where corpses could not.
Some were old, desiccated, flesh torn off to expose bone. Some were newer, littered with fresh bruises and scabbing wounds. And some, he noticed as a flash of red and black caught his eye, were even fresher.
Their blood poured not in streams, but in a cloud that blossomed at the top of the tether holding her swaying in the air like a red dandelion. Fish darted in and out of the cloud of red, dark shapes on dark fins, glassy eyes reflecting nothing as they seized pieces of purple meat in their jaws, shook fiercely and swallowed them whole before swimming back for another bite. At least a dozen sharks, heedless of biting iron, flesh, or bone, feasted.
Being made of the kind of meat that probably wouldn’t go down as gently as the dead kind, the sharks had as much interest in Gariath as he had in them. He glanced down the road, toward the distant mountain. If the Shen were anywhere, they would be there. Why else would they bother to string up so many meaty warnings?
But he didn’t take another step forward.
He couldn’t very well with someone following him.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said with a sigh. “I can smell you. I’ve smelled you since I got here. I smelled you back on Teji.”
His eyes swept the horizon, the jagged coral canopies and wafting kelp reaches revealed nothing but thick air and empty sky.
“I don’t know exactly where you are. The air’s too thick to smell that. But you might as well come out.”
He threw out his hands to either side, gesturing to the vast road cutting a smooth stone path through the coral.
“It’s too open for an ambush. You can’t sneak up on me. So just find whatever courage you have and-”
He stopped suddenly. Somehow, having one’s head smashed from behind made talking harder.
He staggered forward, straining not to collapse as his eyes rolled in his sockets and his brains rattled in his skull. He flailed blindly, trying to ward off his attacker, wherever it might have been. His vision still swimming, he found footing enough to whirl about and face his foe.
And his foe, all seven green feet of him, stared back.
Another pointy-eared human, he recognized. A pointy-eared green human. A pointy-eared green human with hands for feet and what appeared to be a cock’s crest for hair.
There had to be a shorter word for it. What had the other pointy-eared human called it? Greenshict? She had carried their scent, too.
This one was taller, tense, ready to spill blood instead of teary emotions. The greenshict’s bones were long, muscles tight beneath green skin, dark eyes positively weeping scorn as he narrowed them upon Gariath.
He liked this one better already.
At least until he looked down to his foe’s hand and saw, clenched in slender fingers, a short, stout piece of wood.
“A stick?” The fury choked his voice like phlegm. “You came to kill me with a stick?”
The shict snarled, baring four sharp teeth. Gariath roared, baring two dozen of his own. The stones quaked beneath his feet, the sky shivered at his howl as he charged.
“I WAS EATEN TODAY AND YOU BROUGHT A STICK?”
He lashed out, claws seeking green flesh and finding nothing as the greenshict took a long, fluid step backward. He flipped the stick effortlessly from one hand to the other, brought it up over his head, brought it down upon Gariath’s.
It cracked against his skull, shook brain against bone. But this was no cowardly blow from behind. This was honest pain. Gariath could bite back honest pain. He grunted, snapped his neck and caught the stick between his horns to tear it from the greenshict’s grasp.
The stick flew in one direction, his fist in the other. It sought, caught, crushed a green face beneath red knuckles in a dark crimson eruption. Bones popped, sinuses erupted, blood spattered. A body flew, crashed, skidded across the stones, leaving a dark smear upon the road.
Therapeutic, Gariath thought, even as the blood sizzled against his flesh. It hurt. But he couldn’t very well let the greenshict know that.
“I AM RHEGA!”
Yelling hurt, too. Possibly because his teeth still rattled in their gums. A trail of blood wept from his brow, spilling into his eye. The greenshict had drawn blood-with a stick.
Impressive, he thought. Also annoying. He snorted; that hurt. Just annoying.
The greenshict did not so much leap as flow from his back to his feet like a liquid. He ebbed, shifting into a stance-hands up, ears perked, waist bent-with such ease as to suggest that he had simply sprung from the womb ready to fight.
Suggestions weren’t enough for Gariath. He needed more tangible things: stone beneath his feet, blood on his hands, horns in the air, and a roar in his maw as he fell to all fours and charged.
And again, the greenshict flowed. He broke like water on a rock, slithering over Gariath, sparing only a touch for the dragonman as he leapt delicately over him and landed behind him. Gariath skidded to a halt, whirled about and found his opponent standing.
And just standing.
He didn’t scramble for his stick. He didn’t move to attack. He just stood there.
“Hit back,” Gariath snarled as he rushed the greenshict once more. “Then I hit you. Then you fall down and I splash around in your entrails.” His claw followed his voice, twice as bloodthirsty. “Don’t you know how this works?”
The greenshict had no respect for Gariath’s instruction or his blows, leaping away, ducking under, stepping away from each blow. He never struck back, never made a noise, never did anything but move.
Slowly, steadily, to the floating corpses.
The next blow came and the greenshict flew instead of flowed. He leapt away and up, hands and feet finding a tether and scrambling up. Hand over foot over foot over hand, he leapt to the fresh netherling corpse and entangled himself amongst its limbs, staring down at Gariath.
Impassively.
Mocking him.
“Good,” he grunted, reaching out and seizing the tether. “Fine.” He jerked down on it. “I’ll come to you.”
Hand over hand, claw over claw, he pulled, drawing his prey and the corpse he perched upon ever closer.
One more hard pull brought him within reach and Gariath seized the opportunity. His claws were hungry and lashed out, seeking green flesh. That green flesh flew again, however, leaping from the corpse. The flesh his claws found was purple and wrapped around a thick jugular.
That promptly exploded in a soft cloud of blood.
Engulfed in the crimson haze, he roared. His mouth filled with a foul coppery taste. His nostrils flared, drank in the stench of stale life. No sign of the greenshict, no scent of the greenshict. Annoying.
But merely annoying.
At least, until the shark.
He saw the teeth only a moment before he felt them as they sank into the flesh of his bicep. He had seen worse: steel, glass, wood. That was small comfort when this particular foe was hungry, persistent. Its slender gray body jerked violently, trying to tear off a stubborn chunk.