Jedit

Flaming hell descended on Palmyra's marketplace.

Chest-high, the creatures were part goat, part hellhound, and part dragon with twin rows of scales down their spines. They carried part of Bogardan with them, for flames licked at their nostrils. One second Johan was crawling like a half-naked crab through the dust of the marketplace, about to be torn to flinders by a raging man-tiger, and the next instant thirty-odd beasts appeared in a circle around the mage and stampeded toward anything that moved. Nor were the goat-beasts the only creatures to escape Bogardan, for a flock of long-winged bats circled and peeped and dove at folks' heads with ivory teeth seeking blood. Most fearsome were two black beasts like great apes. Tentacles whipped the air behind their shoulders, and red flame shone in mad eyes.

As dawn lit the Palmyran marketplace, panic followed on the heels of war. People ca

Johan was saved by the onslaught of the hellish beasts. Jedit Ojanen, Sister Wilemina, and Simone the Siren found the fight of their lives.

The women jumped back to back and filled their fists with steel, Wilemina with an archer's leaf-blade sword and her ornate bow, Simone with a cutlass and dagger jutting point down. Immediately they were attacked, for the beasts showed no fear of weaponry. As a pair of beasts lunged for Wilemina's legs, the oaken-armed archer rammed her blade straight into one flaming mouth and rapped her stout bow atop another beast's skull. The throat-pierced beast died in blood, but not before it leaped higher on the blade and snapped at the archer's fingers, ski

She wailed, "They're hard as Arcades's armor and hot besides! What shall we do?"

"Fight or die!" snapped Simone, busy with her own troubles. "And hope the other Seven pick up their feet!"

A flame-mouthed goat-dog jumped and snapped at Simone. The black pirate punched straight-armed with her sword to spear its nose, then chopped diagonally to cut the thing's foreleg out from under it. She scored, slashing the beast above the hock, so the blade lodged in bone, but if she expected the Bogardan denizen to whimper or cave in, she was disappointed. It ignored its wound and attacked anew. A belch of fire gushed from its nostrils and set fire to the sleeve of Simone's blue silk shirt. Mad as the place that spawned it and unmindful of pain, it clamped naming teeth on Simone's dagger blade. The pirate cursed and grunted as she beat the thing to the ground with hard sword blows. Meanwhile a dozen more beasts cavorted nearby, as eager to attack armed fighters as screaming townsfolk.

Jedit Ojanen saw no one else's plight. Closest to the fallen Johan, the tiger was swarmed by five coal-black brute-dogs. Toothed mouths brimming flame latched onto his striped tail, onto his thighs, his belly ruff, his forearm. A thousand pounds of forge-hot fury hung on the tiger's mighty frame even as sharklike teeth tore furrows in his bright orange-black hide. Yet Jedit proved just as savage and heedless of pain. A beast clinging to his right thigh, the tiger-man hammered straight down with a fist like a sledgehammer. With a sound like a tree splitting, the beast's neck broke. Only reluctantly, dying, did the goat-dog slacken its jaw. Another creature latching onto Jedit's forearm like a leech received a slash from black claws, so half its neck was shorn away. Blood sprayed from a severed throat where red froth bubbled. Even then Jedit had to dig claws into the beast's snout and pry open jaws like a steel trap. Some of his orange fur stayed lodged between the wicked incisors of the dead goat-dog.

Hung with dog flesh, Jedit half-turned and lashed out with a big clawed foot, for another creature gnawed on his thigh. The first kick, hampered as the tiger was, bounced off the beast's brisket. Crouching, snarling in berserker rage, Jedit kicked hard enough to break down a temple door. Four claws like flint spearpoints rammed into the goat-dog's belly, so blood welled onto the dust of the marketplace. Growling, Jedit kicked outward, straightening his leg with the power of a battering ram. Sinew and tendons parted, yet the Bogardan fiend refused to lose its hold on Jedit's thigh, and finally it was torn in half, hips ripped away from its spine. Jedit flicked his leg, bloody to the knee, and sent the lower half flopping to the dirt. He caught the goat-dog's head, where the flame in its eyes smoldered and flickered out, and wrenched a half-circle to pry loose the beast's jaws.

Infuriated at twin goat-dogs still chewing on his foot and tail, Jedit joined two fists, slung them in the air, and brought them whistling down while squatting to add weight to the blow. With a fearsome crunch, the skull of the beast on Jedit's foot pulped like an egg. Slinging his backside and hips, Jedit whisked the creature gnawing his tail in a swooping circle. The wretch tumbled atop its comrade, still growling furiously. The tiger raised both fists and dived like a cormorant. Missiles of flesh and bone hammered the beast's chest, ribs, and lungs into mush.

Yet the tiger wasn't spared a moment's rest, for the tentacled gorillas, fresh-bathed in the blood of i

Ungodly howls made the whole marketplace wince, but no one paid attention to the grappling man-tiger and hell-apes. From the far end of the marketplace came wild curses that smoked the air blue. Adira Strongheart had arrived to scream at townsfolk and pirates alike.

"Belay there, you skulking bottom-feeders! Drop anchor and pick up that wagon tongue! Virgil, beat that goat-thing to death, and be quick, or I'll scourge you bloody! You there! Smash those things with that jug! Don't stand gawking! Murdoch, lend a hand there, you worthless scalawag!"

With snappy orders and sparkling curses, Adira Strongheart hurled herself, her Circle of Seven, and anyone still alive into the battle of Palmyra's marketplace.

Where the market ran down both sides of the wide street, kiosks and awnings and carts had been upset, rent, chucked underfoot, and trampled. Fires springing from the Bogardan beasts burned canvas and wool awnings, nomadic robes, and more. Scattered about were saddles, bottles, melons, chickens, wooden serving bowls, and other detritus. More than a dozen townsfolk had been killed, dragged down and torn asunder by the terrible black goat-beasts, and a dozen monsters still tussled with fighters and savaged i