Page 54 of Paladin's Hope
“Don’t come near me once it’s dead,” he grated, his voice sounding strange in his own ears. “Not until I talk to you first.”
The scorpion turned its blunt, eyeless head toward him. It seemed to be moving slowly, almost as if whatever powered it was running down.
It’s been a few thousand years. Nothing lasts forever.
He had just formulated that thought when the blade sliced at him, missing him by half an inch.
The tide engulfed him, whispering instructions. Galen embraced it. He had done the best he could for his companions. Now it was time to do what he was made to do.
Everything slowed. The scorpion was still terribly fast but he was faster. It was so easy to step to one side as the blade struck at him, to dive forward, past the machine, into the room of bones.
He picked up a large piece of ivory, not quite the size of his lost sword, and swung around. The machine had turned and come after him. It struck at him again, and this time one of the feelers whipped out to slash at his ankles, forcing him to divide his attention. He put both feet together and jumped over it, like a child skipping rope, and blocked the bladed tail with his makeshift ivory club.
The force of the blow almost sent him to his knees. He stumbled but the tide caught him and carried him, even though he had to drop the club from fingers gone numb and smarting. The feeler whipped back the other way and caught his calf, a line of heat telling him that he was bleeding. No matter. Pain was the tide’s problem, not his.
Don’t block. It’s too strong to block. Dodge. Dodge and look for a weakness.
He dove to his right and kept going, snatching up another piece of ivory. The machine spun and then it, too, almost stumbled, as the missing legs on that side failed to keep up.
Take out the remaining legs and it won’t be able to move.
He smashed the club down on one of those legs. They looked delicate, but they were surprisingly strong. The club bounced off, but in the moment of the swing, when everything was so slow, Galen saw that the broken legs were dangling useless from the joints. The whip-feeler was coming up again and the blade was coming down so it seemed like a good idea not to be in the middle. He dodged right again and it stumbled again on the turn, so this time he cracked the club down directly onto the joint, just as it was taking the scorpion’s weight.
The whole machine staggered and it swung the blade wildly at Galen’s face in a sideways slash. The tide flung him down in a sprawl across the scorpion’s back, and that was not a good place to be, so he kept rolling and went off the far side, striking at the legs on that side as he went. The angle was wrong, but the machine had apparently learned that if it allowed the human with the club to strike at its legs, bad things happened. It snatched those legs tightly under its body and came crashing down on that side, practically on top of him. Galen’s bruised knee hit the ground and it hurt dreadfully but that didn’t matter because the tide only rose higher in response to the pain. The blade came at him, as did the whip, and he could only avoid one this time. Another hot line burned across his left arm, almost at the shoulder, although compared to his knee, it was insignificant.
He regained his footing at the same time it did, and tried to circle behind the scorpion. The range on the blade is all forward. If I can get behind it, maybe it won’t be able to strike as easily.
If it had been a real scorpion, this likely would have worked. Galen brought the club down on another leg joint, felt the machine shudder, and had a moment of triumph, before the entire tail simply swiveled around on a joint at the base and cut at him.
And now I’m dodging the blade and it has a lot more reach because it’s not going over the body. Lovely.
He tried to dodge to the side again, but the machine had learned this trick and the blade came down in another sideways slash, forcing him back. A clockwork bone turned under his feet and he fell backward and landed on his bruised ribs.
The battle-tide blunted pain but could do nothing about loss of breath. Galen suddenly couldn’t get air in his lungs and that was very bad, that was probably terminally bad, and the machine limped toward him, backward, lifting the blade high overhead and Galen tried to let out a yell of defiance that came out as a gasp and then an apple hit the scorpion in a bad leg joint and it collapsed reflexively again to try to protect its legs.
This time it couldn’t quite get up. The part of Galen that was still Galen doubted that the apple was the cause, so much as the pile of bone gears that it had dropped its bodyweight on. The part that had surrendered to the tide noted that there was another party armed with possibly lethal projectiles and he would have to deal with that once he’d finished off the scorpion.
The scorpion heaved itself up again, and then began to rise. It had one working leg on the right side. It flipped its body upright vertically, standing on the good leg and the matching leg from the left side, inelegantly bipedal.
It looked absurd, the thick body and lashing tail-blade balanced on two slender points. His first thought was that there was no way that it could possibly walk around like that.
His second thought was to remember the narrowness of the spaces in the room with interlocking blades. To get past that, it would have had to assume a posture like this.
He got to his feet. His lungs didn’t want to work, but they weren’t given a choice in the matter. He could hear his own breath wheezing in his ears.
The scorpion lumbered at him, rocking from side to side. Galen dodged, or tried, but the scorpion pivoted on one leg like a swivel, barely slowing at all. The feeler wrapped itself around a narrow piece of ivory and struck at him with it, missing his kneecap by inches and slamming heavily into his thigh.
Someone yelled his name. An enemy, probably, but Galen didn’t have time to worry about that. He stayed on his feet, even though he was going to have a bruise the size of a dinner plate. The legs, whispered the tide. It’s only got two left. Take out one more leg and it can’t walk. One more leg and it’s done.
Arguably Galen also only had two legs left, but the tide didn’t concern itself with such things. He grabbed the ivory club that the feeler was holding and yanked, hard.
The feeler was strong enough to hold onto it, but not to keep its balance. It lurched toward him and Galen kicked out hard at the near leg. His knee throbbed like a broken star as it connected.
The machine collapsed again, trying to protect its leg, but this time the trick worked against it. It lost its balance and went over. Galen leaped out of the way as it crashed down full length.
The underside looked exactly the same as the upper. Maybe it could reverse direction just as easily—or could have if it had more than two thin legs remaining. It began trying to right itself again, but this time Galen was not having it. As soon as it put its tail down to push itself upright, he snatched up another bone club and brought it down on the last leg, then flung himself free.
The scorpion began to flail wildly. Its tail struck at air, the feeler lashing back and forth, but it could not reach him and it could no longer stand on its own. Galen watched the machine’s ratcheting motions, waiting for an opening, then stepped in and slammed the club onto the thinnest part of the tail, just behind the blade. The shock of impact numbed his arm but he heard something crack that didn’t seem to be his bones so he hit it again and then again, forehand and backhand, over and over, no longer thinking, nothing but a hand on a weapon, again and again and again and again…