Lords of Destruction Read Online Free PDF Page A

claws, drawing back lips to expose fangs and teeth. Patches of scales clung to
fuming sores in arms, jaws and thighs. Fingers and toes had fallen off. Noses
had shrunken to hard black scales, ears had shriveled to bloody holes, and they
were bald.
    Gath reined the stallion to a halt and drew back warily as the creatures’
fumes swirled about him. He gagged on the stench, and the creatures, some of
them resorting to their bellies for propulsion, launched themselves at him.
    The first attacker led with his mouth wide open and quickly discovered his
mistake. Gath greeted him with his axe, and when the snakeman hit the ground,
the upper half of his mouth was lying ten feet away from the lower half.
    The axe buried itself in the meat of two more attackers, then five bodies hit
Gath. They drove him out of his saddle, bore him to the ground with hissing
squeals and buried him under snapping, swarming bodies.
    Gath rolled across the ground crashing through the pile of skeletons,
splashing in the blood-red water, ripping the bodies away. They came apart like
half-baked dough, and greenish wet fumes and blood spattered helmet and chain
mail. Fangs bit into his forearm, but broke off before doing damage. When he
fought his way back to his feet, he no longer had his axe, but held a muscular
arm by the wrist. He had pulled it out of a shoulder as easily as if it were a
cherry on a cake. He hammered his assailants with the arm until they writhed on
the ground like dying snakes, and in the process reduced the arm to a two-inch
stump.
    He threw it aside impatiently and moved for the creatures slithering on their
bellies. His eyes held the hunger of a starved man.
    He kicked at a head, removing it from its shoulders, and stepped on another.
It exploded like a melon and he slipped on the pulp, crashed into a boulder
headfirst. The rock, being made of harder stuff than the decaying demon spawn,
left him in a dazed lump on the ground. The creatures slithered around to feed
on him, and the stallion moved in among them, rearing up and stomping. The
creatures coiled and hissed under the descending hooves, then began to jerk and
fume in the throes of death.
    The stallion backed away from the carnage, and Gath rose slowly. He moved
onto the heap of skeletons, retrieved his axe from the bony rubble and stood
leaning on it. The blade glistened with bloody streaks. Behind him, a red-orange
glow filled the distant sky, tinting his black armor and matching the glow of
his eyes. The same color tinted the flowing water. It was the only movement, a
river of death.
    The axe came back into Gath’s hands, as two more figures emerged from one of
the gullies. They also wore hunter-green and had forked tongues, but stood erect
and held sword and spear in hand.
    The horned helmet lowered its horns, growling in anticipation, and the
creatures backed up a step, moving away from each other to attack from different
angles. One hesitated, digging a small leaden vial from a belt pouch, and the
other lunged for it. His partner lifted his sword in a short swing and cut off his friend’s hand.
Howling, the creature dropped to the ground with green blood spewing from the
stump of his wrist.
    Gath moved for the surviving snakeman, and he stuffed the vial back in its
pouch, sank into a crouch with his sword playing in front of him. The helmet’s
eye slits replied with spitting fire, but Gath stopped in place. His body heaved
as he once more brought the helmet under control, and the fire died in his eyes.
He deliberately dropped his axe, then leaned in, feeding the snakeman’s sword
his helmet. The creature slashed, but the blade glanced off harmlessly. Suddenly
Gath stepped inside the swing of the sword and, carefully measuring the force of
his punch, hit the snakeman flush on the side of his head.
    The creature went reeling back, leaving his sword behind, met a boulder with
his face and fell back on the ground like a drop