Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

threw more curses, blobs of dark magic that struck their targets in the face and crawled into their eyes. Or ate them, possibly. I wasn’t watching very closely, but the first guy she’d hit wasn’t moving anymore.
    Most troops would have run away by that point, but these guys were in some kind of berserker rage. They howled in frustration, and tore into the barrier with frenzied intensity. But they didn’t seem to have a counter for Cerise’s curses, so I kept my attention on the remains of the cavalry force long enough to finish them off.
    Another few dozen explosive rounds and the ones I could see were all dead. They’d never even gotten close to us, and by then Cerise had dealt with her opponents as well.
    “We should do it like that more often,” she grinned. “It was pretty funny watching them try to get at me. I guess these guys must be those andregi the wizards were talking about.”
    I took a moment to study the bodies. I’d heard the andregi described as ape-men, but really they looked more like Neanderthals to me. Over six feet tall, which was a lot bigger than the local humans, with barrel chests and heavily muscled limbs. Their legs seemed a little shorter than normal, and of course they were so hairy you could almost call it fur. They had heavy brow ridges, big square jaws and no facial hair at all, which was an odd-looking combination. Something about the shape of their skulls was different, too. Wider than a human, with lower foreheads that had a pronounced slope to them.
    Their equipment was interesting. Elaborate leather armor that provided full-body coverage, but no shoes. Leather helmets, and long leather cloaks that looked thick enough to double as another layer of armor. Dinosaur hide, maybe? Whatever it was, the workmanship was quite good.
    They had a lot of magic about them, too. Necklaces of beads, runes sewn onto their armor, bone ear and nose piercings, all anchoring a host of weak but useful charms. Little spells of protection and enhancement, and a much stronger one that seemed to be some kind of berserker curse. No wonder they’d just kept attacking, even when it was obviously hopeless.
    The odd thing, though, was that none of them had a scrap of metal. All of their weapons were that glossy red stuff, which was heavily enchanted.
    “Guess so,” I said. “Any idea what those weapons are made of?”
    Cerise bent and poked at one thoughtfully. The enchantments had been bound to their wielders, and were starting to come apart now that they were dead. The stuff started to soften, the angular shapes of the fallen weapons slumping towards the ground.
    “Oh! I get it. They’re made of blood.”
    I blinked. “Seriously?”
    I touched an axe that was rapidly becoming a puddle. Yep, blood. Still alive until recently, too.
    “Seriously. Kind of an interesting technique, actually. They must have some big ritual where they bleed themselves to make their weapons, and then they’d have to feed them periodically. But it gives them a handy store of extra vitality, and I bet they can steal power from enemies they kill. Absorb their blood to heal themselves, maybe copy their powers, stuff like that. Good thing they didn’t know how to do much with the magic they were stealing, or I’d have had to work a lot harder to kill them.”
    “Lovely. I hate competent foes,” I complained. “Why couldn’t they just be a bunch of dumb savages with sticks and stone axes?”
    She snickered. “Aw, now what fun would it be to kill wimpy guys like that? This way we get a challenge.”
    Our investigation was interrupted then by the arrival of a squad of Conclave war golems. They were one of the big models, standing twelve feet tall and probably weighing as much as a dinosaur. They had a hunchbacked appearance, with a seat on top for their commander, and their arms ended in huge maces and axe blades instead of hands. Only a few of them had riders, but I recognized the heavily armored figure on the lead