At Least He's Not On Fire: A Tour of the Things That Escape My Head (22 page)

The creature took a wide circle to turn back on Bramwell and Malwynn, but when it straightened itself out, it pointed the massive horns menacingly at the nearly senseless pair.
 

“Mal!” He heard his sister yell panicked from some ways away. He could feel the earth tremble with each of the Plains Walker’s steps, as if a tree trunk was being dropped into the ground by one of the legendary Mountain Spirits.
 
The pounding increased in severity as the animal came closer and picked up speed. His sister’s scream caused the juggernaut to halt and twist its strange body slightly to the side. It had heard her.

Malwynn was to his knees by then, having gotten the bow off his back. Littered on the ground all around him in the yellowing grass he saw his spilled quiver, over half the arrows broken by the collision with the ground. He saw a single arrow in arm’s reach and as quick as his bruised arm could, he drew it, and sent it flying directly between the two horns on the creature. The arrow plunged into the thick hide of the monster far smoother and deeper than Malwynn imagined it would. The skin of the beast looked grey, and was pebbled like stone. He thought it would be tough, but apparently that was not the case. As the creature flinched at the sting of the arrow, he snatched up a second arrow, and let it fly at the same area of its body.

The second arrow plunged almost as far as the first did, stopping nearly halfway in its length. He grinned in exultation as the creature flinched again. What he saw next alarmed him, and stole his moment of glory. The first arrow, sank over a hand’s depth into the creature abruptly fell off, as if all of what had penetrated the beast had been simply pushed out from within. The length of the arrow, from feathers to barren tip fell to the ground as if the arrowhead had never existed. Malwynn looked up from the impotent arrow to the creature, and saw it had started to rumble towards him again.

Flanking the creature, Umaryn had dismounted, slapping Tinder to send it away from the battle. She already had her weapon; Chael’s hammer up, and was twisting her whole body into the hardest swing she could manage, directly at the rear leg joint of the Walker. Malwynn closed his eyes as he accepted his death approaching him.

It didn’t come. Instead he heard Umaryn’s powerful grunt of the swing, and the resulting wet snap of the small metal head of the hammer impacting the joint. In his mind’s eye the strike to the knee sounded wet, like a mother slapping a pile of her children’s wet laundry, yet also much like the breaking of a green tree branch. He wondered what about the animal’s nature would make such a strange noise. He had precious time to ponder the mystery though, as the creature staggered sideways, his sister’s hammer blow clearly having damaged it. On three powerful legs instead of four, the monster spun itself in a near-perfect circle, and put the side of both of the horns directly into his sister’s torso, tossing her through the air ten feet like she was a bale of hay. She screamed in pain and fear for her entire journey through the air, and landed on her ass, flattening her back and head out powerfully against the earth. She lay still while Malwynn scrambled to find another arrow as the creature turned its attention towards his sister and Tinder, as the horse backed away in fear.

Malwynn drew the bow string and sized up where the creature was vulnerable. In a split second he noticed how the creature was favoring the knee his sister had struck. He hoped strongly that the other joints were equally vulnerable, and sent his arrow into the knee of the leg closest to where he still knelt. The arrow pierced the thick skin of the creature as easily as before, but lodged in something firm very quickly. The arrow could not pass through the joint, for there was too much bone and muscle there, but the projectile stopped in the midpoint, gumming up the tender ligaments, tendons, and stopping the leg’s functionality almost completely. Malwynn held his breath as he reached around in the grass hoping that this third arrow wouldn’t fall out harmlessly. By the time he’d found another useful arrow, the knee joint was still locked stiff from the arrow.

“Umaryn, get up, we’ve hurt it!” Malwynn said as he got to his feet. She stirred slightly, the tremendous blow having tossed her consciousness around. Malwynn circled the creature as it hobbled on two good and two bad legs. It was confused now, unsure of where the danger came. The two massive horns swung side to side threateningly, not actually in danger of harming anyone. Mal took a couple quick steps in and flung another arrow into a different leg, missing the joint but piercing through the flesh just below it. The creature jerked to the side again, and suddenly lost the strength to stand. It fell sideways onto the ground, revealing its underbelly.

Malwynn caught his breath as he saw a trench in the stomach of the beast. From what he imagined to be the chest to the crotch there was a mouth running the length of the creature. He hadn’t seen the thick skin forming into lips and prehensile feelers that must have been the creature’s enormous mouth. It was so wide and long it could have easily lowered itself onto Malwynn or Umaryn, and swallowed them whole. He looked up and saw his sister, limping over to his side, giving the immobilized creature a wide berth.

“Look at this,” Umaryn said, hefting her weapon, Chael’s hammer up. The hammer’s perfectly polished head was bent, deformed, and pockmarked as if it had been immersed in flame and acid. The weapon looked ruined. Umaryn’s eyes were filled with tears over the destruction of the weapon she’d hoped to put to good use against the people who had killed her parents. Malwynn watched as her lips trembled and her teeth clenched in anger.

“Maybe you can fix it with The Way?” Malwynn asked, feeling the pain in his stomach and chest rise and fall with his breath. He wondered if the fall from Bramwell had cracked a rib or two.

She nodded, wiping away the tears, “Maybe. How do we kill this damn thing? Where is its head? Where is its heart? Is Bramwell okay? Are you okay?”

Malwynn looked back at his new Gvorn and assessed it. The animal shouldn’t be ridden for at least a day, but it appeared to be none the worse for wear. The dead necromancer’s mount was a rugged creature. “He’ll be okay I think. Although neither he, nor you or I are in any shape to ride any more today. We need rest.”

Umaryn reached a hand around to her backside and massaged her lower back. He was right. She would fold to the pain after just a few minutes of trying to ride Tinder. “Agreed. But still, how do we kill this thing? It isn’t right to let it suffer like this.”

“Your hammer is nearly destroyed from striking it. My arrows had their tips disintegrated and were shunted straight out of its flesh. Anything metal seems to be eaten by the touch of the creature.”

Both were quiet for a bit. Umaryn’s eyes opened after a bit, full of inspiration, “Help me get a large stone from the stream. I wonder if this thing can handle being beaten by a large rock?”

In fact, the Plains Walker could not withstand being beaten with a large rock. The twins found a stone almost the size of a man’s belly on the edge of the stream. The smooth oval-shaped rock was worn from centuries of water flow, and was nearly too heavy for them to lift high. Had they been in a less damaged state it would’ve been easier, but good fortune was something that had not been in their life for several days. The twins heaved the stone onto the creature’s belly multiple times, hitting so the stone would tumble end over end and land on the ground. They were fearful of touching the beast.

A score of these blows and the Walker’s breathing stopped. They’d finally ruptured something inside it enough, and freed it from the pain of having three of its limbs ruined.

“I remember talking to Luther about these things at the forge,” Umaryn said as the two slumped to the ground, exhausted.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Luther said they were a real bane to metalworkers, but were damn good eating. I wonder how we eat this thing?” She asked.

Malwynn could hear her stomach rumble from his seat next to her, “Are you serious? You want to try and eat this thing? It destroyed a bunch of my arrows, and your hammer. How do we gut it? You have a stone knife handy?”

“That’s a great idea Mal! Hold on.” Umaryn got to her feet with as much energy and enthusiasm as she could muster, given the circumstances. She hobbled her way over to the stream and searched around for several minutes, overturning rocks and using her dagger to dig through the earth. After a good time searching, she came back, holding a rock that only resembled a knife in the loosest possible way. It was perhaps eight inches long, and about as thick as her wrist, and approximately the same sharpness. She had a grin from ear to ear.

“What. The. Hell. Is. That?” Malwynn asked her, his voice dripping with sarcasm and judgment.
 

Still grinning she held the stone up proudly to him after crossing her legs on the ground next to him, “This is our stone knife. We’re gonna keep this around I think. Could be useful down the line.”

“I think your fall might have knocked you senseless Umaryn. I think you’ve gone loony.”
 

Her grin remained for a moment, but then disappeared as she produced a smaller stone from her trouser pocket. With an intensity he’d only seen from her at the forge, she cradled the larger stone and started to hit it with the smaller stone, chipping flecks and bits of rock away, shaping it into a far more knifelike state. After ten minutes of sweat inducing work, she held her new tool aloft; a less dull rock.

“Wow. That’s not much different at all,” Malwynn said, all the sarcasm from his earlier taunts still dripping in his words.

In complete seriousness Umaryn ignored his tone, “To an artificer my brother, there couldn’t be any more difference now.” Resting the hard round stone on the ground between her legs Umaryn took the knife stone into her hands fully, and cradled it as if it were a kitten, or precious treasure. She closed her eyes and began to issue forth a chant, a steady repeating of syllables and sounds that formed no words. She caressed the length of what was supposed to be the edge of the blade on the rock as she did this, and Malwynn watched in astonishment as the stone itself seemed to melt at her touch, altering its shape to be straight, and far sharper than he could’ve imagined.

“The Way. Wow. I didn’t think an artificer could use The Way on a simple rock,” Malwynn said as she ended her chant.

“This wasn’t a simple rock anymore Mal. I spent time hewing it into a tool, rough as it was. I breathed life into it with my effort, and passion to create something out of it. I gave it a small spirit, then used the Chant of Sharpness to persuade the spirit to be a little bit sharper for us, if only for a bit.” Umaryn said softly, almost in reverence of the magic she’d just brought to bear.

“I will never understand The Way.” Malwynn shook his head.

“You don’t have to understand it right now. Right now I want you to get a fire started down near that stream, so we can cook the steaks I’m about to carve out of this thing’s ass. Destroy my damn hammer. I’ll fucking eat you.”

Malwynn got to his feet quickly, sporting his own ear to ear grin.

Umaryn discovered quite a bit about the creature when she dissected it in search of dinner. It had no ears, or eyes. How it navigated the world was lost on her. The Plains Walker’s skin was leathery, and supple, but had several strange qualities to it. It had two very different layers. The interior layer was fatty, and resinous, almost like a sheath of cartilage covering the entire body. The exterior layer was very similar to the hide of a cow, or horse, but it was free of hair. Instead, it was covered with visible pores across its entire surface. Umaryn was able to press down on the skin hard enough for the pores to ooze a viscous, almost mucus like substance. The clear fluid did nothing to the stone knife she wielded, but when the substance was placed on her lucky iron nail, the results were startling. It ate away at the metal, corroding it and turning its nature to something more akin to wax, instead of iron.

Within seconds her lucky nail had lost its shape, and was gone forever. A moment later Umaryn kicked the dead creature’s body repeatedly out of spite.