Free Saint Elm's Deep (The Legend of Vanx Malic) by M. R. Mathias Page B

teeth were fanged on top and bottom: the bottom two jutting up and coming back around its snout, the top two coming down as gently curving spikes. Its eyes were the size of dinner plates but looked small on its massive, rodent head. They were jaundiced, but with an ember glow in their depths. Brody saw that the beast was keeping its pink lids squinted, as if the daylight were a great discomfort.
    Its fur was gray and damp, and streaked with traces of gold, red and brown. Its forepaws were small in comparison with the rest of it, but the four shovel-like claws splayed off of each of them were as big as a man’s forearm and sharp enough to tunnel through eons’ worth of compacted glacial ice. The long, hairless tail was flicking and flitting behind it, kicking up puffs of loose snow.
    It let out a breathy roar that clouded its head in steam, then moved impossibly fast.
    Brody nearly fumbled his great-bow when the shrew spun around to face him. It raised up and lunged on its haunches, stretching its seemingly compact body out to a surprising length, like a mongoose striking a snake. Brody managed to loose an arrow at its taut midsection before its head and claws came down just three paces before him, but he hadn’t had a full draw on his bow when he’d let it fly. He doubted the shaft had gotten any sort of penetration at all. He didn’t have time to fret about it, though, for he had to turn and run to avoid the shrew’s raking claws.
    Skog lowered his long pike when the shrew landed with its body fully extended before Brody. The beast had exposed its entire profile to him. The half-breed Skmoe charged across the snow like a raging bull and thrust his barb-bladed pike deep into the shrew’s side. He twisted the shaft with a roll of his body, jumped up and violently yanked on it several times before turning and fleeing toward Chelda.
    During all of this, Xavian was stiff with fear. Only the sight of one of the small, fur-clad twins charging back from the forest brought him out of shock. He was still in a panic, and apparently forgot the powerful charm spell with which he was going to befuddle the beast. For a second, it looked to Brody like the mage was frozen, but then Xavian mastered himself and started moving toward Chelda as well.
    Anda, or maybe it was Inda, loosed an arrow on the run. Shot from the small horn bow, there was little hope of it doing real damage, but the Skmoe knew what he was doing—at least it appeared that he did.
    The arrow struck the shrew just behind the eye and probably saved Brody from being mashed to a pulp by the raging beast’s foreclaw.
    Brody leapt away, and just as soon as he felt he had cleared the range of the new attack, he wrestled another of his long, deadly shafts from the quiver over his shoulder and nocked it. When he turned and began to draw the arrow back, he was relieved to see that the creature was shifting its attention toward the approaching twin. The relief only lasted until he saw the shrew lunge for the Skmoe, though.
    “What are you waiting for, wizard?” Brody yelled over the angry, rumbling growl of the beast. “Blind it! Confuse it! Do something!”
    Xavian stopped his flight and started moving his arms about, as if to cast a spell at the shrew’s rear. To everyone’s surprise, though, the shrew’s powerful tail came around and whip-cracked him across the spine. He went tumbling toward Chelda and Skog.
    Brody turned in disgust and was amazed by what he saw. He couldn’t believe that the crazy Skmoe was charging headlong into disaster, and here came Chelda now, hop-skipping over Xavian and drawing her old sword. With the Skmoe howling like a stuck hog beside the thing, she ran right up behind the shrew, ducking its tail, and let out a mighty roar of her own.
    Brody couldn’t see what happened next, but the shrew reacted in a savage fashion, mule-kicking Chelda across the snow as if she were a straw-filled rag doll. She hit the hard-packed surface and tumbled