The humped thing straightened onto two of its six legs. Its eyes were faceted red glints. The remainder of the body was gray and yellowish and fish-belly white.
The creature was alive and half again as tall as Dennis. Its jointed legs had spikes and knife-sharp edges of chitin. They glittered as the creature flexed them with scissoring clicks.
“It’s time and past time,” the creature said, “that Conall remembered that he owes more than beef to feed Malbawn.”
CHAPTER 30
Dennis drew his sword. His whole body was trembling.
Malbawn’s voice was deep and breathy; the plates of its beak flexed sideways as it spoke.
“Run, Chester,” the youth whispered.
All Dennis could remember was the corpse of the Wizard Serdic lurching toward him as it drew the sharpened pole from its body. Dennis had run then, and he wanted to run now—
But there was no escape from nightmare.
He would face Malbawn with his star-metal sword; face the creature striding through the grass on saw-edged limbs, nine feet tall and armored in chitin. The inexorable certainty of the corpse had taught Dennis never to run from fear.
It was only intellectually that he could grasp the fact that Malbawn would kill him. He knew that, but he’d never been killed before and the concept had no emotional reality.
The creature paused when its human quarry didn’t flee as expected. Malbawn’s head was a flat triangle with the beak on its forward point and the fiery eyes behind to either side. The four raised limbs moved slowly, like the claws of crabs fencing in the water.
They had triple-bladed pincers: a pair of long claws folding in opposition to a single spike.
“My sword’s star-metal!” Dennis shouted in sudden bravado. He moved the blade slightly in its on-guard position so that the sunlight ran across the well-honed edge. “I’ll hack you to bits!”
Malbawn gave a cackling laugh. It dropped its middle pair of legs to the ground and rushed Dennis.
Dennis cut at the creature’s head without any attempt at subtlety. A yellow-gray forearm blocked the sword with a ringing crash.
Dennis shifted back. His right palm quivered with the shock of impact. There was a notch in the blade of the Founder’s Sword. Malbawn’s forearm feinted toward him, uninjured.
Dennis circled slowly, keeping his sword at mid-chest. The creature lifted onto its hind legs, waving the other limbs slowly. They spanned three yards or more from tip to clawed tip. It was like fencing practice for Dennis, but instead of one of his father’s retainers he was facing a creature that—
Malbawn dropped into a four-legged charge again.
Icy and prepared, Dennis thrust with the precision of light glancing from the facets of a crystal. He was using his speed and skill instead of just his strength. Despite Malbawn’s attempt to parry, the point of the Founder’s Sword clanged into the center of the creature’s chest.
The steel slid away without marking the chitinous plastron. Malbawn’s wide-spread arms closed like the spring-loaded jaws of a trap.
Dennis ducked, but he was off-balance and the saw-toothed limbs slammed toward him from either side. One of them raked the back of his head and left shoulder.
An acrid odor hung over Malbawn, making Dennis gag as he grappled with the huge creature. The beak dipped toward him as the two middle legs lifted off the ground. Their pincers flared.
Dennis flung himself backwards, pushing with his left hand against the limb that had struck him. He expected the spiked arm to resist like a tree trunk or a cliffside, too massively powerful to notice Dennis’ merely human efforts. But the youth’s arm was stronger than that of the monster he fought, for all the other’s size and horrid looks…
Malbawn gave a gurgle of frustration. It lurched forward again without first rising onto its hind legs.
Dennis breathed through his open mouth. The left side of his head felt cold as his blood evaporated in the open air. He supposed his ear had been torn off. He couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything but cold and the searingly hot air he drew into his lungs.
There was another bright nick in his swordblade where a set of Malbawn’s pincers had closed on it.
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