Chapter 40 Venim
I should have known it would come to this.
I suppose, perhaps, that I did, just not quite like this. I would have preferred to deal with this little insurrection under other circumstances, circumstances that wouldn’t leave the human female so exposed, so imperiled, but the universe rarely gives one a choice in such matters.
And Ul… Ul never does.
My men—if I can even still call them mine—stand arrayed around the upper rim of the crater, surrounding us completely.
They are armed, one and all, some with spears and battle-notched scimitars, others with blunt clubs and warhammers, yet others with crossbows.
None of those weapons are pointed in my direction as of yet, but the threat is palpable, like static in the air.
“What are you fools doing?” I growl. “Who is watching the prisoners?”
It is the Vesk who answers. The one who attempted to rape the human inside the old abandoned mine. His nose has long since stopped bleeding, but the bridge is still crooked from where I struck him with the flat of my sword.
“Only prisoner we’re worried about,” he says, “is that one right there.”
He is talking, of course, about Jean. The little human female is still lying on her back in front of me, spread and trembling. Earlier, I threatened to punish any male who looked upon her body. As far as I’m concerned, that threat still stands.
I rise from my knees and quickly step out of my breeches, which are pushed down around my ankles.
It’s easier than trying to pull them up.
Despite the danger I now find myself in, my erection shows no signs of abating.
The female’s scent is too strong. It courses through my bloodstream like a drug, fueling urges other than mere lust. Urges to protect. Urges to kill.
I do not draw my glazeblade just yet. I give the men one final chance to atone.
“Leave,” I tell them. “Go back to the thrumwings.”
This time, it’s a different inmate who answers. A big, bearded Thruk with fire in his eyes and a spear in his hands.
“We’re not going anywhere, boss. We mean to have that little female, whether you like it or not. We mean to share her.” He grins. “We’ll let ya watch if y’want.”
The insolence is more than I can bear.
I draw my blade.
“If it’s the female you want, you’ll have to come through me to get her.”
The three crossbowmen fire. If they were trained better, I would be a dead man.
As it stands, however, their shots are out of sync just enough for me to block them.
Three looping swings of my sword; three iron-tipped quarrels are sent spinning harmlessly away.
One of them even catches one of my opponents in the leg. He howls in pain.
The others charge, pouring down the bowl of the crater with a mingled roar.
I just hope the human has the good sense to stay put.
The spearmen are the first to be dealt with. A sidestep. A spin. A quick deflection with my blade. Two of them run each other through with their lances. The third, I deal with more directly. A horizontal slash, and his head flies off in a geyser of bright yellow blood.
Too easy.
The glazeblade is alive in my hands, as much a part of me as my pounding heart and burning lungs. It traces lemniscate patterns, parrying and striking in one clean motion, blocking an inferior steel blade one moment, removing the hand that wields it the next.
There are advantages to fighting without armor. Better speed and mobility. My attackers don’t stand a chance.
One of them comes at me bellowing, swinging an iron warhammer in a great arcing blow intended to stave in my skull. I duck out of the way and counter with a kick to the chest that splinters his ribs and leaves him choking on his own blood.
Beneath me, the human female screams. Fortunately, it is a scream of fear, not pain. I can tell. If she were bleeding, I would be able to taste it.
Another fighter charges. It is the Vesk.
His eyes are filled with revenge, and his hands are filled with a pair of nasty-looking matched blades.
He swings in a double strike. I perform a krothar-vel-zhun, a rudimentary technique.
Block, spin, slash, severing both forearms. Then I follow up with thren-ka-veth, the death stroke.
Murky green blood is still spewing from his stumps when my glazeblade plunges through his chest, piercing his heart.
Below, the human female has stopped her screaming. She is curled like a fetus in the womb, shivering in fear. Her skin is spattered with the blood of the men I have slain.
There are not many of them left.
Up on the rim of the crater, the crossbowmen are reloading. Even I’m not fast enough to run and kill them one by one. I’ll have to deal with them at range.
I crouch and tuck my fingers into the mouth of my right boot, grabbing for the trio of throwing knives I keep hidden there.
I only feel two.
My heart twitches briefly in my chest. One of my knives is missing. Where could it have gone? No time to think about that now. In a fight, thinking means hesitation, and hesitation means death.
I draw the two knives that I do have and whip them at two of the crossbowmen on the rim of the crater. Both blades find their targets. Both fighters go down.
The third crossbowman has finished reloading.
He shoots.
I block the quarrel with a sweep of my glazeblade. Then I fling the sword in his direction. The weapon turns twice in the air, edge winking in the filthy light before the blade skewers him through his armored thorax, and he tumbles backward with a scream.
There is but one man left now. One lone opponent in the makeshift arena of the crater.
I can see in his eyes that he wants to run, but he knows how futile that would be, so he lunges instead, swinging his studded wooden club for all he’s worth.
I dodge it easily and catch him from behind.
A quick teth-ra-xel neck snap puts an end to him, and the fight.
The crater goes quiet. The only sound is the hushed voice of the wind breathing over the rim.
The air is afire with the scent of blood.
It smells good.
On the ground beside me, the human female unfurls her trembling body. I realize that she has been hugging her little broken android protectively, but now she sets it aside and stares up at me with fear in her eyes.
I can only imagine how I look to her right now, bare and panting, sleeved to the shoulders in the blood of my enemies, blood of a dozen different hues. It runs down my arms in a rainbow of violence. It drips and pools at my feet.
Her eyes dip briefly to my lower body, and her pupils dilate slightly when she sees the stiff thing slanting upward from my pelvis.
I am still hard.
It is not that I am aroused by death and violence in general. I am not a madman, after all. However, there are certain forms of violence which can induce sexual arousal in a Znthian male. Protecting a mate, for example. Defending her from other males. Winning her in a competition of blood.
Is that how I view the little human female now?
As my mate?
My cock certainly seems to think so. And when I flick my tongue out to catch the female’s scent, I realize I’m not the only one who is aroused here.
Both our bodies are leaking now, oozing fluids intended to facilitate the commingling of our genitals and our genes.
There is no question about what is meant to happen next.
Or maybe there is.
As usual, Ul has other things in mind.
The female’s eyes shift, then widen. She is not looking at me anymore. She is looking past me at the edge of the crater. She opens her mouth to shout, but her body has already warned me with a burst of fear-scent, the olfactory equivalent of a gasp.
“Venim! Behind you!”
I am already fully turned before she gets the last word out. One of the crossbowmen is not dead. He has gotten back on his feet and reloaded. His weapon is aimed directly at my chest.
With my glazeblade gone, I will not be able to block the shot. I could dodge, but then the quarrel would hit the human instead. I cannot allow that to happen.
This is it, then. Very well. I can think of worse ways to perish.
THUK!
The crossbowman suddenly goes rigid. His body pitches forward, and he fires his quarrel harmlessly into the ground in front of him.
He tumbles down the inner curve of the crater and comes to rest a few veks away, face down.
Something is embedded in the nape of his neck.
Something narrow and sharp. It catches the light like a shard of milky-blue glass.
It would seem I have found my missing knife. That just leaves one question.
Who threw it?