Still, Erik hesitated. He glanced at Von Gherens. The Prussian knight seemed unconscious. Erik could see enough of his face through the visor to see that there was still a face there. Whereas Etten—
He looked through the visor of the knight below him. Through that visor he could see nothing but . . . burnt flesh. Like a piece of meat charred in a fire.
Still, he hesitated. “And then what? Do the same for Von Gherens? And then what? Cut our own throats?”
Lopez shook his head wearily. “I cannot fight this monster in salamander form. If Pierre were still with us—or, better yet, Dottore Marina—”
Again, he shook his head. “I can hold it at bay, for a time, but not combat it directly. You will have to do it, Erik—you and Manfred.”
Manfred had said nothing, but he had apparently been following the discussion. “Fat chance of that, Lopez! What Erik and I know about magic wouldn’t fill half a manuscript page. And all of it would be gibberish.”
Lopez’s laugh was more of a crow’s caw than anything else. “Have no fear of that! I cannot fight the thing, but I can transform it into something which you can fight. But I warn you—it will be monstrous.”
Erik’s hands tightened on the sword hilt. “Something flesh and blood, you mean?”
“Heh. In a manner of speaking, yes. A particularly horrid form of it, you understand.”
“Flesh and blood is flesh and blood,” growled Manfred. He hefted the sword higher. “And steel is steel. Do it.”
The last two words were spoken by a prince, and no one could mistake it. Erik hissed his own agreement, and Lopez bowed his head for a moment.
When the Basque’s head came back up, however, there was not a trace of obeisance in his face. His was the face of a man born to command himself.
“Obey me, then. Erik, kill Etten. Manfred, stand back from Von Gherens.”
Erik hesitated no longer. Using the hilt to drive the sword, he plunged the blade through the gaps in the armor into Etten’s throat. Then, twisted it to open the wound before withdrawing the sword. Arterial blood fountained, for a moment. Not long. That wound would have killed an elephant.
He stepped back. Manfred had already done the same. Von Gherens began to writhe again as smoke, again, began to rise through his visor.
Lopez shouted something—again, in that odd language which Erik had thought was Greek but now suspected was something else entirely—and held the crucifix high. What seemed like a clap of thunder struck the world all around. Erik flinched; so did Manfred.
Von Gherens screamed and arched his back. A stream of black something spewed out of his gaping mouth and spilled onto the ground several yards away.
Another clap of thunder; a wave of darkness.
Then, for the first time since the battle had begun, Erik felt all traces of magic vanish. The sunlight was clean again, with no obscuring darkness. He felt enormous relief pouring through him and took a deep breath.
And . . . deeply regretted it. The stench was worse than ever.
But at least now the source of the stench was clear and obvious. On the spot where the black something had spilled, a monster rose on its haunches.
It was huge; half again Manfred’s size. Somewhere in its misshapen and hideous form Erik could detect the remnants of something which had once been human—or close to it. Mostly in the upper face, which still had a recognizable aspect. The one eye possessed by the monster—the other was scarred over, as if the eye had been torn out sometime long ago—was quite human in appearance. Bright blue; piercingly blue. The eyebrows were as blond as Erik’s own.
The rest . . .
The lower face protruded in apelike jaws; though they bore a closer resemblance to those of an eel than those of an ape when the monster bared its teeth and roared its fury. A thick tongue writhed purple behind teeth that were not even remotely mammalian. They reminded Erik of shark’s teeth more than anything else.
Everything about the monster had that bizarre, horrible half-and-half quality. The hind legs were those of a land animal of some kind. A giant wolf’s, perhaps—except the skin was naked, almost scaly. The arched heavy spine was also that of a mammal, with a straggly mane that resembled human hair more than animal fur. But the heavy tail was purely reptilian.