Savage Scorpio Read Online Free Page B

blades and spurting blood, of screaming sleeths and zorcas, of men going down and of Fish-Heads being ridden into the turf.
    It was all a blur of action. The sword thrust and cut, parried, leaped, slicked with the greasy green ichor of the Shanks, a live brand in my hand.
    We were surrounded. The Shanks closed in. Seg’s arrows cut them down as fast as he could draw the string and let fly. Inch’s axe slashed with metronomic regularity, cutting swathes through the fishy bodies. Icy eyes glared at us, the abominable stink of fishy bodies clammied in with a foul miasma. We fought. Balass showed all the skill of the hyr kaidur, fighting with professional skill tempered now with the berserk rage of the warrior. Oby, using men’s weapons, hewed and hacked and drove down his opponents. The clangor of sword against sword beat across that pleasant grassy sward. Blood dropped upon the flowers, the red blood of Paz and the green ichor of the Fish-Heads.
    The Shanks wore bronzen armor, fashioned into fish scales. They possessed man-like bodies, but their heads were the heads of fish. Many varieties of fish, there were, I suppose. But we slew those we could and did not stop to reck the differences. In their fishy eyes no doubt we looked alike, although a Pachak and a Khibil do not look much alike, and diffs differ from apims like me. And apims differ, too, as Inch’s seven foot of height marks him out from Oby’s lithe youth.
    The crowds of stinking Fish-Heads pressed in. Our zorcas reared as we fought, struggling to find space. We were hard pressed. Swords cut and slashed. Over and over again a man would be saved in the last moment by a comrade’s blade. Our brands ran thick with green ichor. Soon our arms would tire. We were all fighting men, warriors of Kregen, men who were inured to hardship and suffering and the clangor of war.
    But humanity is frail. Muscles and blood, sinews and breath, can only sustain a man for so long. Then strength will fail and breath come hard. Then muscles will fail to bring the sword up in time, to deliver the terminal blow. And there were many Fish-Heads, over twice as many as in the Brotherhood.
    We fought magnificently.
    But we were pressed in and back. The Pachaks found a weak link in the circle and we smashed our way through. I lifted in the stirrups and waved the dripping sword.
    “To the trees!” I yelled. I took the responsibility. I ordered the retreat. I, it was, who took my men away from that death trap.
    We galloped hard for the trees and we passed the little ruin atop its hill. There were fewer of us who thus retreated than there had been who so valiantly charged.
    At the tree line we reformed. Our zorcas were tiring. We were all panting. Most of us were wounded. Blood shone red upon our armor. And, over all, the sticky green ichor clung, stinking, foul, like a vomit to revolt us all and remind us of the inevitable end.
    The dark mass of the Shanks with those evil glittering points of light from point and edge of weapons waited at the far end of the greensward slope. Banners fluttered above them, a multi-colored display that meant much to them and nothing save as targets for destruction to us. I looked at the Brotherhood, panting but determined still. We were few.
    “We will chew them up piecemeal and spit them out as one spits out gregarian pips,” I shouted. “We hit the left flank and break clean through and retire. Understood?”
    “Aye, prince. Understood.” The cries came bluffly, strong, confident despite wounds and tiredness. I shook my zorca’s reins and led out.
    We hit them like a rapier lunge, chopping off the left flank. We lost men, yes, we lost good men; but we trampled down and slew more of them than they of us.
    The Shanks — the Shkanes as Pyvorr called them — handled their tridents with superb efficiency. The wicked barbs would degut a man as neatly as a fishmonger deguts a cod. But the wicked tridents had their disadvantages. Seg deflected one with the