She knew, then, that these were truly demons. No natural creature on the Meat of the Clam could do that.
She saw the death-stroke coming. But now she was off-balance from missing her own strike. She could not avoid the blow. She could only make a last, futile attempt to twist aside.
The stinger plunged straight into her left eye. Deep, deep, deep. Bringing an agony so great it left her paralyzed, as well as half-blind.
Dimly, she realized her last twist had avoided the brain-strike. But now she was doomed. She watched helplessly as the demon champion took a new stinger from another demon. Watched as it flickered slowly toward her, the stinger held in strike position. She was even, now, finally able to analyze the strange motion of its peds.
Like sticks, tied end to end. They don’t really flicker, they jerk back and forth where the knots would be.
Suddenly her vision was occulted. A small body was swarming onto her maimed head, whistling with fear and anguish.
Dhowifa.
“Go away,” she whispered. “Hide, my love. There’s nothing you can do but save yourself.”
But Dhowifa, normally more clever and shrewd than any truemale Nukurren had ever met, was now utterly lost in a truemale spasm of emotional frenzy. He clutched at her head, desperately trying to pull the terrible stinger from her eye.
It was a hopeless task for his puny strength. But, for some unknown reason, his arrival had caused the demonlord to pull back. The stinger in its stick-tentacle drooped. There was a rapid exchange of sounds between the demonlord and the others. Then, the demonlord advanced again, its stinger held at the ready.
It’s going to kill us both, Nukurren realized with despair. Oh, Dhowifa, you fool.
“Go—please!”
A huge shape stepped between Nukurren and the demonlord.
One of the hunnakaku, she realized, even before she heard the hoot.
The concentration necessary to interpret the hunnakaku was beyond her. She was afloat in a sea of pain.
She heard hoots answered by other, strange hoots. The latter, she dimly realized, came from the demons. But she could only concentrate on one thought.
I will not die with these horrible stingers in my flesh.
Gently detaching Dwowifa, she gripped the stinger in her eye. She inhaled deeply. Then, drawing on every reserve of strength and courage, she drew the stinger forth. She whistled from the pain, but never hesitated.
She cast the stinger aside. It rolled toward a demon. The monster stared at the weapon, then at her. It did not move. None of the demons were moving, she realized. The hunnakaku was now standing to one side, silent.
She reached back and gripped the stinger protruding from the left side of her mantle. Again, she exerted her great strength. The pain this time was not as intense, but after she drew out the weapon she felt a great weakness wash over her.
She fought the weakness aside, barely. She reached back and grasped the last stinger. Again, a heave. But now her strength failed her. She could barely see out of the eye left to her. The weariness and the agony were overwhelming.
She felt a touch on her palp. Strange, eerie touch. She twisted slightly and looked back. The demonlord was next to her side, staring at her with its strange little eyes. Dawn was now fully upon them, and there was enough light to see clearly. Much of the demon’s body was covered with armor, and most of the rest was cloaked in hides. And there was something very strange, she realized, about the armor on its head. But she could see uncovered stretches of the monster’s skin. Black as night. Implacable.
The touch again. She realized that it was the demonlord. The monster pulled her palps from the stinger. There was something bizarre about the shape of its palps, but she was too dazed to make sense of it.
It’s very strong, she thought vaguely. But I think, if I were unwounded, not as strong as I.
She was unable to resist. She let her tentacles fall. The demonlord seized the stinger and placed one of its peds on her mantle, next to the wound. A sudden jerk, the sharp pressure of its tiny ped on her body, and the stinger was out.