The demons were bigger and stronger but Ashok was moving constantly, trying to keep one of the savage creatures in front of the other so he only had to respond to one set of attacks at a time. At least the first demon was no longer trying to escape.
He was unable to feel fear, only a cold calculation of the odds, and it wasn’t looking good. The fresh pain merely kept Ashok focused. Another claw cut a gash through his cheek. He hit them each with a dozen clean strikes, each sufficient to kill a man, but it barely slowed the demons’ onslaught.Ī claw broke mail and sliced into his left arm. Ashok slashed and danced between the limbs, painting with blood and bone shard sparks. He’d never faced such a challenge before, but the sword had, and it told him exactly what to do. They were identical in size, shape, and viciousness. The interlocked plates protected his chest, but where the hot hide brushed against his face blood came welling up through his lacerated skin.īoth of the huge creatures were on him then, clawing and snapping. Even then, a black blur of demon flesh rubbed against him. The sword warned him as well, a sudden rush of instincts and a desire for self-preservation, and Ashok threw himself aside. “Behind you!” A child pointed back the way he’d come. “Get out of here,” Ashok ordered the casteless as he pushed the demon back against the other supports.īut rather than flee, the non-people were jabbering and squealing at him in their rough, mangled dialect. At this rate, the hut was going to collapse on top of them, and it was not his place to needlessly kill the property of House Gujara. He stabbed upward, through its armpit, deep into the meat of its chest cavity.
It twisted around and swung at him, but he ducked, and the blow shattered several of the stilts instead. “You shouldn’t have come here, demon,” he said as he wrenched his sword free, spilling the demon’s dinner of partially digested villagers.
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