He feinted to the right, making them back away from the whirling steel.
Immediately he darted low and fast to the left, feeling the clunk of the blade
cutting into flesh and bone. He’d hit the mutie just above the knee, parrying a
spear thrust with his left hand. The little fur-clad figure toppled sideways,
dropping its spear to the ice. The others hesitated, seeing their comrade down
and done for.
Ryan didn’t hesitate at all.
He slashed at the mutie’s exposed shoulder and neck with the panga and
simultaneously retrieved the wooden spear with his free hand. Blood jetted and
the creature screamed, the furs falling back from its face. Ryan winced at the
horror of the mutations in the dwarf’s skull. It was squashed vertically so that
the forehead rested squarely on the buried eyes. The distance between brows and
chin couldn’t have been more than three inches. There was also evidence of an
appalling skin disease that had left the face raw and weeping, with crusts of
small pustules nesting around the eyes, nose and mouth.
All of that registered in a splinter of frozen time as the machete descended,
nearly beheading the mutie in a single blow.
Ryan turned away from the twitching corpse. He tossed the spear in the air,
catching it in his right hand, and transferred the bloodied blade to his left.
The two surviving muties seemed torn between aggression and flight. Ryan solved
the dilemma for them.
Reaching behind him like an athlete throwing a javelin, he hurled the clumsy
spear with all his power at the nearest of the attackers. The sharp ivory point
pierced the sealskin belt that the mutie wore about its sagging midriff,
emerging with shreds of crimson flesh and gristle, slightly to the left of the
spine. The creature lurched back, squeaking in a tiny, feeble voice, like a
mouse with a broken leg.
Ryan saw that the mutie was done for. It had fallen on its side and was rolling
back and forth, the long shaft of the spear scraping against ice and stones.
Even in death, the mutie’s gloved hands were clasped around the wood.
The last mutie—the one with the third, residual leg—was backing away, reaching
under his furs with his left hand. Ryan watched him carefully, suspecting some
kind of blaster. But all he pulled out was a tiny whistle of bone.
Before he could raise it to his lips, bringing who knows how many
reinforcements,, Ryan hurled himself toward the little figure. The gleaming
ivory tip of the spear darted at him, but he parried with a ferocious cut of the
panga, snapping the spear in half, the point falling to the ice and skittering
away.
The mutie raised his hands to try to save himself from the death cut, but Ryan
wasn’t going to postpone the execution. Bone crunched as the steel blade smashed
through the mutie’s fur-clad right wrist, severing the hand so that it dropped
like a furry animal. Blood gushed out, warm and salty, into Ryan’s face, nearly
blinding him. But he quickly wiped his eye clear, cutting again at the blurred
figure before him.
The machete penetrated the mutie’s shoulder almost to the breast. Ryan pushed at
the creature’s face, knocking him down. Putting a boot on its throat, he jerked
the blood-slick metal clear, then jammed it through the fur hood where he
guessed the mouth should be. He heard teeth splinter and felt the shock run
clear up his arm as the tip of the panga penetrated through the back of the
mutie’s neck into the frozen earth.
For a moment he left it there, the thonged hilt sodden with fresh blood. He
straightened up, looking around to make sure no more muties were around the
entrance to the redoubt. The wind still howled and snow flurries obscured the
view. He suddenly remembered the two monstrous white bears that he’d seen a few
minutes ago and decided that it might be safer inside.
He pulled the panga clear of the dead mutie’s skull, wiped it on the creature’s
fur jacket, and slipped it back into its sheath. He saw the LAPA lying on the
stones, a dusting of snow already building up around it. With a shrug he left it