“What are you doing?” I shrieked.
The girls paid no attention to me at all. The next thing I knew, Jenny was perched on the horror’s left shoulder and was biting one of its great bat’s ears. The Ogre squealed and tried to swipe her off with a paw. But Angela was already on the other shoulder and met the paw with a swipe of the kitchen knife she’d brought with her.
The knife bounced off the Ogre’s knuckles and went sailing. A second later, so did Jenny. Angela shrieked and started biting the other ear. The paw swiped again, and off she went. Both girls wound up in a heap on one side of the grotto.
“Are you hurt?” I wailed, racing over to them. “Are you hurt?”
They bowled me over on their way back to the fray. I went sailing myself, head over heels.
By the time I untangled myself, they were back up on the Ogre’s shoulders and were resuming their ear-biting. Again, the Ogre broke off its grappling with Greyboar and started swiping at them. Ear-biting wouldn’t kill the great monster, but I guess its ears were pretty sensitive.
This time, however, Gwendolyn was up there with them. She was clad in that leather get-up that she’d always favored for what she called “real work.” Leather jacket, sleeveless leather vest, tight leather pants tucked into knee-high leather boots. It’s quite an outfit, especially filled with Gwendolyn’s Amazon figure. She could have made a fortune as a professional dominatrix.
She was straddling the creature’s great back, with her legs around its rib cage. Gwendolyn’s legs were just long enough that she’d been able to reach all the way around and lock her ankles together. If the Ogre had been inclined toward bondage and discipline, it would have been in sheer ecstasy. Even if the boots didn’t have high heels.
Alas, it wasn’t. But its swipe at Jenny was met with Gwendolyn’s cleaver this time, and that was a whole different kettle of fish. Gwendolyn could split logs with that thing. She did split a knuckle, right down to the bone.
The Ogre howled and swiped at her. Another chunk of the cleaver, then another. One of the Ogre’s talons fell off.
Hrundig and the Cat, meanwhile, were hacking at the creature’s legs with sword and lajatang, trying to hamstring the brute. They didn’t seem to be having any luck, although they’d turned the legs into a mass of green ichor.
The Ogre was staggering around the grotto now, bellowing with fury. Greyboar’s hands were still locked onto its throat, like a pit bull on a mastiff three times its size. I saw that he’d left off trying to crush the thing’s windpipe and had both his hands sunk into the sides of the Ogre’s neck, trying to close off the jugular veins. From the dazed look on the creature’s face, it looked like the project was starting to yield fruit. As they say.
As terrified as I was over Jenny and Angela’s situation, I gave up any thought of trying to haul them off the Ogre. It was clear enough from the way they were chewing on its ears that both girls had adopted the ancient motto of the midget in a brawl: You may get a meal, bigshot, but I’m damned well gonna get me a sandwich.
Besides, they weren’t in any immediate danger. I could figure out what was coming next. As stupid as it was, the Ogre must have finally realized that Greyboar was the real danger. It stopped trying to swipe at the women and grabbed Greyboar’s head in its talons. Then, gaping like the entrance to the Pit, its huge maw descended to bite off the chokester’s head.
My first dart sailed into its mouth and sunk into the soft tissue inside the maw, which should have been pink instead of that nasty, nasty blue-green dripping with saliva. Three more followed, in the blink of an eye, before the horror snapped its jaws shut. The Ogre blinked and gave me a reproachful look.
“Nasty stuff, ain’t it?” I shrieked. I shook my fist at the monster, hopping around with glee. “Try swallowing that, you—you—”
The monster belched and spit out all four darts. “Yech!” it roared. Again, that reproachful look. “You tried to poison me, you little squirt!”
The Ogre started lumbering toward me, intent on revenge. Clearly enough, it had forgotten all about everyone else. I discovered, then, a secret about poisoned darts that I’d never known. Even if you can’t actually kill something that big, you can sure as hell infuriate it.
Under other circumstances, of course, I would have been terrified out of my wits. Having a nine-and-a-half-foot-tall Ogre chasing you around a subterranean grotto will do for that. Take my word for it.
But, at the time, I was practically delirious from joy. As long as the brute was concentrating on me, it wasn’t trying to go after Jenny and Angela. Or Greyboar and Gwendolyn, for that matter.