She settled. The crystals between her breasts spun dancing light over the room and the water as it bobbed, now beneath the fluid and now above it...
"I don't—" Dennis said. He couldn't finish the command until he turned his face toward the doorway. He was gasping for breath.
"Don't show me this either," he said in a husky voice. "Let me—"
He bent at the waist and the rush of blood to his head restored his balance. "Chester," he said, "let's go—"
A cow blatted from across the field.
Dennis straightened, looking at his companion.
"Do not undertake a duty unless you have the power to enforce it," Chester said.
"I've got the power," Dennis grunted, lifting the sword a finger's breadth in its scabbard to prove that it would slide freely. He stepped out into the sunlight.
Malbawn was dead. The odor of his decay permeated the air around him.
Therefore it wasn't Malbawn who stalked toward Dennis from the other side of the pasture.
CHAPTER 36
The cows were in restless motion. Their sidling movement away from the creature, always with their black-and-white heads twisted back to watch for surprises—was punctuated as a half dozen of the beasts suddenly decided to bolt a hundred yards in a snorting gallop.
Their eyes rolled when they saw Dennis. They bolted from him as well.
Dennis drew his sword. The grass the cows had cropped short brushed his ankles as he strode toward the yellow-gray creature. He saw Chester in the corner of his left eye, following on liquid-rippling tentacles a pace behind and a pace to the side.
The creature was advancing on all six legs. Fifty yards from Dennis it lifted itself and waved the saw-edged front and middle pairs.
"You have come to Malduanan, fool!" it croaked through its cruel beak. "Malduanan will drink your blood!"
Dennis ran the index finger of his left hand across the flat of his blade as he advanced, reminding himself of the sword's hard reality and the battle it had fought for him.
"Your brother's a stinking corpse!" he shouted. "I'll kill you too!"
His body fluttered with anticipation and fear of failure, but all the aches and reminders of his previous fight were gone.
This was what he needed. This was what would make him forget his anger at the folk of Rakastava who had sent him to die.
This is what would make him forget the touch of Aria on his body and the way he felt as he watched her take off her clothing in the mirror.
"I'll kill you!" Dennis shouted as he lunged.
Then he nearly died.
Malduanan was bigger than Malbawn. Standing on its hind legs, it was easily twice as tall as the youth. As Dennis thrust, the creature toppled forward, letting gravity move its mass faster than Dennis expected muscle power to do.
Dennis shifted back expertly, a swordsman again and not a boy randy with the thought of a naked woman more lovely than he had ever dreamed flesh could look. He blocked Malduanan's right foreleg with his sword near the guard where the metal was thickest—and still the blade notched like a furrow before the plowshare.
Malduanan's left foreleg struck from the other side. Its pincers closed over the youth's ribs hard enough to slice flesh to the bone as they gripped.
Dennis screamed and cut over his own back. Luck aided skill. The sword cracked the horny integument at the joint which permitted the pincers to move in their plates of armor.
Malduanan wheezed foul air over Dennis and jerked away, lifting the injured limb high. The single blade of the pincers sagged at an angle.
The youth staggered several paces backward. He was breathing in quick, shallow puffs because it hurt to expand his chest fully. He thought a rib must be cracked. He was bleeding all over that side of his tunic, though the tough fabric itself hadn't been cut.
Malduanan balanced his weight on the middle pair of legs, a maneuver that Malbawn had never attempted. Dennis panted, wondering whether or not he dared dart in again. He wouldn't know how much the pain handicapped him until a sudden stitch cost him his balance and he fell—
Malduanan's hind pair of legs flung a loop of silk at Dennis.
The youth started to parry it the way he would a swordstroke—but he saw the sun gleaming on beads of adhesive just in time and slashed his sword away.
The creature moved toward him on its four forward legs. Their jointed scissoring seemed leisurely, but the legs were so long that they covered the ground as fast as Dennis could back-pedal.
His heel turned. Another loop arched toward him on a glistening trailer from Malduanan's spinnerets.
"Help me, Chester!" Dennis shouted as he hunched, turning his misstep into a diving thrust. His whole body was in line with the three-foot blade of the Founder's Sword when its point sliced into the knee joint of Malduanan's right middle leg. One of Chester's curving tentacles caught the forelimb whose slashing blow would have gutted Dennis like a trout had it landed as the creature intended.