Sword Brother

He'd just settled into position when he heard Wencit's voice over his earphones.

"To your right, Gu

Houghton squeezed the gu

Despite all that had happened to him in the last ten or twelve hours, nothing could have prepared him for this. With the sight in thermal mode, targets were often easier to pick out of concealment, but details were usually difficult to make out. Not this time. This nightmare creature's body stood out as brightly and clearly as any thermal signature Houghton had ever seen. Its body temperature must have been almost as high as Tough Mama's engine block, yet that scarcely even registered beside its impossible size and the obscene fusion of wings, claws, pincers, mandibles, and horns. The thing had to be at least forty or fifty feet long, with a squat, armored body suspended from spiderlike legs that arched a good ten feet above its back. Bat-wings-two pairs of them, not just one-beat at the night as its serpentine head darted forward, striking at its intended prey.

It took a stu

Not that it should have mattered in the least. Huge as the horse might be, the monster's head alone must have been better than half its size.

The cavalryman and his horse were both wrapped in some sort of heat-shimmering cocoon. It obviously wasn't as ferociously hot as the creature they faced, yet in some odd way, it was actually brighter. Or clearer. More . . . concentrated, perhaps. Houghton's spi

Who the fuck does he think he is? Saint George?

The thought flicked through the Marine's brain between one heartbeat and the next, and then the lunatic charged.

Houghton's jaw dropped as that glittering sword lashed out at the mounted man's stupendous foe. The sudden eruption of light and power as it slammed into the monster's wing almost blanked the thermal image completely. The glaring steel sheared through the creature's u

The monster staggered, almost falling, then whipped around to face its puny opponents with a squall of rage, pain, and fury that half-deafened Houghton inside Tough Mama's turret.

As that unearthly, terrifying sound went through him, the Marine shook his head, like a prizefighter who'd taken one too many punches to the chin, and a sudden bolt of anger ripped through him. Anger directed at himself, at his own inaction. The sheer, appalling impossibility of what he was seeing had frozen him, turned him into a spectator, and his lips drew back from his teeth as he twisted the joystick and slewed Tough Mama's ca

"Driver, halt!" he barked. "Target, three o'clock!"

Technically, he should have identified what the target was, as well. Unfortunately, he didn't have the least damned idea what to call the thing.

"Holy shit!" Mashita had obviously caught at least a glimpse of what Houghton was seeing through his own night vision viewer. His reaction to it wasn't exactly out of the training manual, but he responded instantly to Houghton's command, and the LAV stopped. Unlike the Bradley, the LAV's ca

Now if the idiot on the horse would only get out of the-

Houghton's belly twisted with sudden nausea. It was almost like the sensation he'd experienced when Wencit snatched the LAV into this preposterous universe, yet it was different, as well. With Wencit's spell, there'd been that sense of falling even as Tough Mama had been motionless underfoot. This time, nothing around Houghton seemed to be moving, and yet it was as if two powerful hands had gripped his stomach and twisted in opposite directions. It was in enormous sense of wrongness, and then, impossibly (although his punch-drunk brain was getting rather tired of that particular label), a huge sinkhole appeared, with absolutely no warning, and a second monster swarmed up out of it . . . directly behind the mounted man.

XII

Walsharno's cry of warning snapped Bahzell's head around, turning it towards the sudden threat erupting from the ground itself sixty yards behind them.

There was no time for thought. No time to analyze what had happened. There was barely time for the hradani to begin to curse his own complacency. To realize that this time, he and Walsharno had blundered straight into the Dark's carefully crafted trap.

That this time, they were going to die.

He twisted in the saddle, fighting to get far enough around to land at least one blow, and then something thundered in the night.

The turret twitched slightly to the left.

The glowing swordsman and his horse might be between Houghton and the first monster, but the Marine had a perfect firing angle at the second one, and a corner of his mind noted that the horseman was well clear of his line of fire and outside the danger zone created by the 25-millimeter rounds' discarding sabots. The sight's reticle dropped onto the huge creature's side, between the third and fourth legs on its right side, and Ken Houghton's hand squeezed.

Tough Mama's 25-millimeter ca

It squalled . . . but it also whipped around towards Tough Mama. The detonating shells had punched relatively tiny holes through its spiny carapace before they exploded, then blown washtub-sized openings back through it as they detonated inside it and blasted wounds into the u