Free The Defiler by Steven Savile Page A

tightening around the square until no avenue of escape remained. His heart hammered in his chest. He tried desperately to draw upon the Earth Serpent, but was answered by the sucking emptiness of the void where the Goddess ought to have been.
    They had been corralled in this direction, herded into the square.
    He lowered Ukko to the ground and grasped his axe, ready to fight.
    Beside him, the dwarf pulled out a short pig-sticker of a blade. He looked utterly terrified. Sláine had no words to comfort him.
    "Stupid bloody quest," Ukko mumbled, looking despairingly at each and every one of the blocked streets and then at the floor, hoping against hope that it might open up and swallow him before the creatures of Purgadair could. His face curled up into a bitter sneer. "Just so you know, I've got no intention of dying here, so you'd better work something out."
    They edged back, step by precious step until their backs were pressed against the mighty tree, and still the creatures poured out into the square.
    "Can you get another one of those torches lit? Maybe we can burn the tree or something?"
    "Urm, Sláine, you might want to look at this."
    Sláine twisted, trying to see where the dwarf was pointing: but all he saw was the trunk of the great tree.
    The sea of writhing black bodies parted, and through the centre walked a monstrous regiment of deformed and perverted creatures, blades drawn, feral faces hungry for blood.
    "What?"
    "I think we found him."
    It took a moment for the dwarf's words to register. When they finally did, they made no sense whatsoever. "What?"
    "The Skinless Man, I think we found him."
    Sláine risked another backwards glance, trying to see what the dwarf was going on about. This time he saw it: in the folds of the bark, the silhouette of a man's anguished face. Fingers of wood reached out of the knotted bole, clawing at the life that had been stolen from the man as he was locked within the wood.
    This was their saviour? A man trapped within a dead tree in the middle of some hellish desert?
    Sláine laughed bitterly. "You stupid bloody fool, this is what you get for listening to the Morrigan."
    "What are we supposed to do now?"
    "Die," Sláine said.
    "How about we don't?"
    Sláine thought about it for a moment, and made his choice. "Burn the damned tree down. Let's go out fighting. The music of their hunger excites me," Sláine roared, a terrible boiling anger surging through him. "I will teach them a thing or two about death."
    "Spoken like a true hero," Ukko grimaced.
     
    Ukko had no idea how long Sláine could hold the animal guard off without the riastrad , his fierce berserker warp-spasm, roaring through his veins, swelling his musculature to transform him into the juggernaut he was.
    Minutes, no more, surely. Less.
    Every instinct cried out: run! But there was nowhere to run to.
    Ukko couldn't let himself think about it.
    He needed to burn the tree: Sláine was counting on him. He wouldn't let him down - at least not deliberately.
    Shaking, fear coursing through his limbs, the scoundrel emptied his pack out across the sand, pawing through the pile of junk until he found the tin of grease. He unscrewed the lid. It was all but empty. He scooped out the last smears of grease and rubbed them into the gnarled face trapped within the bark. He looked around desperately for anything else that might burn. There was nothing.
    He fumbled with his tinder, trying to strike a light but he was shaking too much. He dropped the flint and straw and scrambled around in the sand trying to find it.
    "Crap, crap, crap, ah there it is!" His quick-bitten fingernails snagged the jagged splinter of rock.
    He looked up. There was a shadow over the sun, a black winged shape. For a moment Ukko imagined it was some hideous Other Realm winged daemon come to add insult to his injuries, the way it flitted against the burning sphere, and then it gained more solidity and definition: one of the Morrigan's birds coming out of the