“Green Shadows”
In their engaging way the Star Lords hurled me headlong into rip-roaring, blood-pulsing adventure stark naked and unarmed—and, as well as adventure, into diabolical situations where I could get myself killed with spine-shattering ease. Like now.
The situation into which I tumbled was clear, simple and deadly. The Everoinye sent their phantom Blue Scorpion, all gigantic and glowing, to snatch me up from home in Esser Rarioch. They dumped me down here where squamous monsters with fangs and exceedingly sharp claws sought to rip me up for a light snack. In a gravel-floored cavern lit by pale phosphorescent fires I, Dray Prescot, of Earth and Kregen, had to be about my business with sharp promptitude.
“Be quick! Or we’re all dead!” The woman crouching against the cave wall shrieked it out. The two men with her just screamed.
On the gravel a few paces off lay a harness of plate armor. From its breaths and sights flowed a greens ichor. The cavern stank with the throat-clogging odor of rotting flesh. In the visor an Acid-Head Gimlet stuck fast. The gauzy wings of the dragonfly killer shimmering with pseudo-life reflected for a ghostly moment in the blade of the sword as it tumbled from a lax gauntlet onto the gravel.
Time only to feel a heartbeat of sorrow for the poor devil who’d worn the plate—a gloating hissing and movement against the cavern’s oppressive radiance snatched my attention. In the mouth of the tunnel ahead bulked the monstrous shape of a reptile-man, and from his green-taloned hand a second Acid-Head Gimlet flew.
The wings glimmered in the phosphorescent light. The gimlet head glistened with the acid that would melt me down to the soles of my naked feet. No time to do anything but dive forward in a desperate try for the sword fallen from the armor’s open gauntlet... My fingers touched the hilt, knocked it a handsbreadth across the floor. No time now to curse, to do anything but scrabble forward, seize the sword and flick it up in the way the Krozair Disciplines taught.
The Acid-Head Gimlet bounced against the blade, caromed off and smashed his deadly head against the rock wall.
The reptilian monster-man charged. He was not as deadly as his pets. His sword, a huge and ponderous affair, swung up as I slipped on loose gravel. The blade sliced down like a sickle of the Reapers of Men. A roll saved me so that I could hurl myself up and snout my borrowed weapon forward. The sword was a serviceable cut and thruster, a thraxter of Havilfar, so I gripped the hilt in both hands and drove straight on. The blade slid in and in. After a few moments in which I felt the sensations of a man trapped in a whirlwind, his convulsions ceased.
An old fighting man and leem-hunter does not wait around after a single combat. There would be plenty more monsters in this labyrinth and although I bore them no ill will I fully intended to do my best to keep my head on my shoulders, oh, yes, by Krun! Instantly, all a part of the same movement, I leaped away to the side, slimed blade up ready for the next one who came howling from the tunnel. This one tried to be clever and attempted to use a technique old when men fought with flint weapons.
