Under the Green Star
- Автор: Картер Лин Спрэг
- Серия: Green Star Rises #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Under the Green Star». Краткое содержание книги:
At any rate, in my surly mood, I was struggling to make what answer I could to the probing questions of the High Bonze, coping as best I could with a spotty vocabulary unsuited to dealing with the higher matters of theologies, when a startling shriek of terror interrupted the meal and shattered the leafy tranquility of the idyllic scene.
It was Niamh’s voice!
Once again, the trained reflexes of my warrior’s body functioned automatically, bringing me to my feet in a lithe surge of rippling thews. Snatching my sword from its shoulder baldric, I nimbly sprang up the ascending coil of the branch, past lunching couples and trios frozen in sudden shock.
I shouldered through the screen of golden leaves to see a tableau of ultimate horror.
Niamh stood against a twig-stem the width of a sapling, luminous amber eyes dark and enormous against the pallor of her drawn visage. At her feet, cowering like a terror-stricken child, crouched the trembling highborn youth who had been her companion. He was gibbering in fright, mouth wet and working, hands futilely pawing at empty air as if to push from sight the monster that menaced them.
It was a ythid, the most fearsome carnivore of the World of the Green Star. Imagine a scarlet reptile twice the length of a full-grown tiger, with a sawtooth spine and lashing barbed tail, and you will have a picture of the thing.
With three pairs of sucker-disked claws, it clung to the up-curve of the dwindling bough. It glared down at the two helpless victims, mindless ferocity in its burning green eyes. The hooked snout snuffed the air, scarlet jaws parting to reveal a double row of fangs like curved daggers.
As I watched, the tree dragon glided toward its quarry, crouching on its six legs for the pounce.
No one else was near enough to help; my sword glittered naked in my hand: it was up to me!
Silence stretched taut to the breaking point. Steely sinews writhed and bunched in the sextuple shoulders, as the monstrous ythid gathered itself to leap upon the two.
The sword in my hand was a toy, a mere rapier with a slim blade of that strange, supple glass-clear metal the Laonese use instead of ferrous ore. Now I had cause to bitterly regret laying aside my mighty broadsword before departure, thinking it too heavy and cumbersome for the chase.
But—glittering toy or not—the sword was all I had. And it would have to do.
I hurled myself in the path of the ythid, splitting the silence with a deafening bellow!
My glass blade flashed and twinkled, slicing the air as I flicked the razory length across the hooked snout of the crouching reptile. Yellow gore spurted: the ythid recoiled with a squeal of surprise and anguish loud as a steam whistle.
I sprang to one side as it extended its long neck, snapping viciously at empty air where I had been a split second before. Whirling like a dancer, I slashed at the scarlet-mailed shoulder nearest me; again yellow blood squirted from the cut.
It gave voice to an ear-splitting screech and clawed at me, striking with blurring speed. I leaped back as hooked claws ripped open my leather tunic from throat to groin, merely grazing my flesh. Perspiration popped out on my brow; one good stroke of those keen sharp claws would disembowel me in an instant.
Fighting by pure instinct, I cut down at the extended paw, and caught it a shrewd blow at the wrist joint. Again, gore splashed from the wound-glistening, oily dragon blood, curiously yellow, like molten topaz.
Suddenly the thing reared up, using its terminal limbs to hold it secure to the curve of the bough. I swung at a scarlet forepaw—missed—drew back for another try and felt an iron grip crush my midsection!
One of the middle limbs had caught me in its grasp, hooked claws tightening like a vise.
The squalling brute jerked me off my feet and up into the air. The crushing pressure of those closing claws was driving the air from me; my face blackened; I gasped for breath.
The grinning saurian jaws swung down toward me, hideous fangs glistening wetly, eyes mad with pain and blood-lust. The foul breath of the thing blew like a hot, moist, fetid wind directly in my face. The stench of the dragon’s breath was sickening.
My lungs ached for air; my gaze dimmed in a swimming blur; as my strength ebbed, I cut again and again at the wrist that held me, hacking through sinew and tendon and tough scaly hide. Yellow gore splattered me. Death was near. I fought on.
The eyes of the ythid stared directly into mine, vast empty orbs of soulless green flame, burning with cold lust. In another second those drooling jaws would close about me with a sickening crunch, snuffing out my life. Would I die, then, go drifting down into darkness? Or would my far-wandering spirit drift Earthward down the stairways, leaving the World of the Green Star behind, lost in the star-gemmed infinity of space?
Then one glaring green lamp of an eye was extinguished!
From nowhere a black feathered arrow appeared, thrumming in the center of the ruined orb, which dissolved, leaking slow, gelatinous tears of tawny gore.
The ythid screamed, rearing at the intolerable pain!
The barbed arrow must have pierced the eye itself, probing like a flaming brand into the very brain.
The scarlet tree dragon convulsed, lashing out in its agony until the whole branch quivered.
As it convulsed in agony, the ythid opened its claws, which were slowly crushing the life out of me. The claws sprung wide—the beast dropped me. I bounced, rolled, clutched the rough bark, and clung to the branch. It whipped wildly, as the scarlet dragon threshed in the madness of its death agony.
My sight dimmed, lungs panting, gasping, as I drank deep of fresh, tangy air. Staring around, I saw my faithful Panthon at the base of the branch, lifting his bow to loose a second black feathered shaft at the flopping, squalling ythid.
It sank to the feather in the brute’s gullet as the jaws strained open for another screech. The second barbed arrow must have transfixed the dragon brain, for it convulsed as if touched by the lash of lightning.
Alas, Panthon! In your fervor to save me from the jaws of the ythid, you wrought another, no less fearful, doom!
For, as the dying brute convulsed in its death spasm, the spike-tipped tail lashed out, curling about the twig to which my beloved princess clung in a paralysis of fear.
It snapped, and she fell from the thrumming branch with one sharp, despairing cry that pierced my heart.
Exhausted, gasping breath into my starved limbs, my sword fallen from my hands, smeared from top to toe with yellow dragon gore, I was a sorry portrait of a dragon battling hero at that moment.
But I did not pause to think. I saw her fall, vanishing from sight in a twinkling, and the pang went through me, numbing my brain with calamity. One quick glimpse of her white face and wide, frightened eyes—one quick cry of despair—and the woman I loved was gone from me.
Staggering to my feet, I cried out her name. And then I hurled myself from the branch, and fell like a stone into the dim, world-deep abyss of leafy gloom—