The thing hurled itself at Hrafn again.
Its six thin legs struck the ground with repulsive speed, each step driving into the road and kicking little stones behind it. His arm was still throbbing from the first impact, taking the weight of that creature at that speed had not been little, and the cracked ground beneath his boots still showed it, small web-shaped fissures opened by the shock.
Even so, it was coming again. Hrafn saw the charge coming in that strange time the blessing granted him. The fallen one's movements stretched just enough for him to choose badly in time, instead of being crushed with no choice at all.
He swung the mace and struck the creature in the mouth. The blow went in from the side, teeth broke with the sound of stone snapping and flew together with dark saliva. The head was torn from its line of attack, the neck twisting at a wrong angle for an instant before the body followed.
Spinning the mace that way had been a miserable exercise in the first weeks of training. At the beginning, the weight had always seemed a little cleverer than he was. He had come to think the weapon would make a fool of him forever, but his body had changed. Each day the blessing sank deeper into his flesh, saturating muscle and bone. And along with the strength came the ability to twist perception, until handling the weapon began to seem unfairly good, at least to others.
The swing came out fast and heavy, dragging wind with it, and everything the head of the weapon touched seemed to yield. The crawler rolled across the ground, but it did not stay down. Its six legs bent at unnatural angles, too thin to support the body and yet still capable of setting it back on its feet in a single jolt, as if its skeleton obeyed laws worse than those of the rest of the world.
It had barely regained its balance when it took a spear on either side of the body. "Hold it!" shouted the warriors' leader. The woman advanced with the order her great axe came in from the side, and Hrafn could even see her muscles tighten with the effort. The blade tore away a good piece of the creature's flesh, but did not bite as deep as it should have. The thick pelt and hard hide stopped part of the force.
The beast answered at once, It tore free with abrupt violence, snapping one of the spears in the process and nearly taking with it the hand of the warrior holding it. The man cursed and let go of the shaft at the last instant, then the crawler twisted in some strange way, far too fast, and launched itself with jaws spread wide toward that same warrior.
But Hrafn was already coming down from above. Before the creature could close its jaws, he brought the mace down again, this time from overhead. Three of the six blades on the weapon's head struck and sank into the flesh with a muffled sound. The weight of the blow sent the rest of the body crashing to the ground with an impact that ran up Hrafn's legs, from knee to shoulder, all the way to his teeth.
The others did not waste the opening. No one stopped to speak, there was only action and spears drove in again while the beast still thrashed, the blows forcing the body to the ground. The contact dragged a hiss out of the creature, then came the smell, rotten flesh burning on the salt.
Hrafn raised the mace and struck the creature's head again. Then again and again. His arm was already beginning to grow heavy, but he kept going. The warriors drove in more spears, pushing, pinning and tearing. The crawler writhed, dug its legs into the ground, twisted its torso from side to side, trying to free itself.
Hrafn struck once more but he was already tired. For a moment he almost lost his grip on the handle, the head of the weapon was already smeared in black, oily with blood and crushed flesh.
The men and women around him were starting to lose breath as well. One of them was breathing through his mouth, out of control, another kept his spear buried in the thing with trembling shoulders. The leader of the warriors stepped back half a pace to recover her footing and her breath.
The creature noticed, as some sort of sick intelligence was hiding behind that flesh, enough calculation to endure pain and wait. The crawler had endured the blows because it knew it would not die at once, it was too large. It waited until Hrafn's arm lost a little of its speed. Only then did it plant all six legs into the ground.
The beast tore its own weight from the earth with such abrupt violence that one of the embedded spears ripped deeper on the way out. Its mouth opened before Hrafn like a living wound. The smell was filthy, the sight was worse. Inside, there seemed to be nothing but teeth. Teeth as far as the eye could see, large as daggers, jammed against one another in an absurd number, as if the creature had been built by hunger and then finished in haste.
He thought of swinging the mace, but there would not be time. He tried to raise his arm, but it was coming up far too heavy.
Idiot.
He had used too much in too little time. He had forgotten again that a long time for him, when he twisted his own megin, was little time for what lay outside. He always forced that blessing too much whenever he needed it. It answered, and then it collected.
The creature was already close enough for Hrafn to see the wetness pulsing at the back of its mouth when the spear went in. It came from behind him, over his shoulder. The point pierced the throat, drove up through the inside of the head, and came out near the top of the skull. The leap veered off at once, and the creature's body passed by Hrafn with a scrape, and he felt its hot, filthy breath touch his face before it crashed to one side. The spear shaft snapped when the jaws closed with a brutal crack.
"I got it!" declared a voice.
Hrafn turned his head and saw the girl almost his age. Her face was pale beneath the dirt, and her chest rose and fell hard. There was shock in her eyes, that first shock of triumph before the body decides whether it is going to shake or vomit.
The crawler hit the ground and stayed there, its body half-twisted, still moving. It bled heavily and writhed slowly, breathing in hatred, it refused to die. The creature began to crawl slowly, miserable dragging itself forward a few inches at a time.
When the adrenaline began to ebb, Hrafn's stomach turned. During the fight, the emotion smothered almost everything unnecessary. Afterward came the rest, the smell, the blood, the awareness that the thing had been close enough to split his chest open and drink whatever lay inside.
The girl who had thrown the spear turned her face aside and vomited into the brush.
No one wanted to get too close to the creature, as it was, it would die on its own. One of the warriors stepped forward, as if considering finishing the job. The leader stopped him. "Leave it."
Hrafn breathed through his nose. His left arm burned and the shoulder protested every time he shifted the mace a few fingers to readjust the grip in his hand.
"You all right, boy?" the leader asked, out of breath.
"Yes."
She gave one short nod. "That's good," she said, pointing with her chin to the fallen thing dragging itself through the salt. "Know it?"
Hrafn watched the creature for another moment before answering. "Crawler," he said at last. "They always go far."
The woman spat on the ground. "That's right, boy. They do." Her eyes followed the trail for a moment, then returned to the beast. "But not that far."
Hrafn looked at her.
"Which means we're unlucky."
The way she said it almost drew a smile from him. "Superstition?" he asked. It was curiosity more than provocation. Of all the people with him, she seemed the last one likely to trade judgment for roadside whispers.
"Experience," the warrior corrected.
She crossed her arms. "Maybe we ought to turn back," she continued. "Warn the Hird."
Hrafn lifted his eyes to the old path winding upward between rock and brush toward the mine. The wind came from there carrying the smell of turned earth and rust. There was nothing else in the sound besides the normal noise of the world.
They had climbed that far with a delivery for Lady Alva. They had already spent coin and time and the work needed doing. That was what Hrafn thought of first, not out of heroism but because he knew that returning with half the work done and a bad story almost never filled anyone's stomach.
"No," he answered. "No one uses this old path," he said. "And it ends at a small mine. It's normal for there to be some activity."
The woman did not answer at once. She passed her tongue over a tooth, spat again, and fixed her eyes on the trail once more. "Normal," she repeated, without sounding as though she believed the word in the slightest.
Hrafn went on, feeling the weight of his own reasoning as he spoke it. "Maybe the crawler felt the movement. Maybe there's carrion nearby." Maybe, he thought, and the word seemed far too thin.
The leader sensed the same emptiness, because she gave a humorless snort. "Or maybe," she said, "we've got something worse up there, bad enough to make it run from it."
Hrafn did not answer. Silence seemed better than feigning certainty, even so, he did not go back on it.
The girl who had saved him had wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and was trying to recover some dignity beside a rock. One of the warriors was gathering up the broken spear, another was checking his nearly crushed hand. "All right, boy," the leader said at last.
She spat on the ground again before turning away. "Just don't say afterward that I didn't warn you."
He spat to the side, imitating the woman's habit without meaning to, and looked back to the trail.
"Let's get this done quickly," he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.
And, for one brief instant, as he stared at the narrow path climbing toward the mine, Hrafn had the unpleasant feeling that something up there was waiting with malice.