Torment and Terror by Craig Halloran Read Free Book Online Page B

them.”
    Moments ago, Boon had blown up the sandcastle’s mirrored weapons. The old wizard had plummeted into the battle.
    Billip had been fighting through the hordes, trying to find him. That was when it happened. Underlings drifted out of from behind the castle’s walls and started unleashing mystic missiles, lightning, and other weapons. Billip had a smoking hole in his leg to show for it. “I need a wall! A wall now!”
    Striders circled around the pair of archers. The fierce bug fighters stabbed into every underling that surged at their wall. The strange four-armed men’s spears struck like snakes. Eyes, hearts, and bellies were gouged.
    Billip nocked an arrow, raised up his bow, took aim on the closest floating underling, and let loose.
    Twang!
    The arrow whizzed through the air and smote the underling mage clean in the chest.
    Feathered shaft protruding from him, the underling spiraled downward, slowly and tortuously.
    The jung, hardy black bearded men, jumped up at the first opportunity. They yanked the underling from the sky and chopped him up into bits.
    Billip loosed another shaft of death. This one dotted an underling’s forehead. Still, more underlings kept coming. “Nikkel! Are you going to take a shot or not?”
    “I can’t load up as fast as you,” Nikkel said. Bolt-thrower hugged his cheek, and his eye was squeezed closed. “Just wait for it.”
    Billip followed the young man’s aim.
    Clatch-zip!
    The bolt ripped through the sky. It lanced through one underling’s neck and stuck in the throat of another. Both of the shocked underlings choked on their black blood and started to drift into the horde bellow their feet.
    The jung caught hold of them and finished them off.
    “It’s two to two!” Nikkel said with a smile. He started reloading. “You won’t get a better quality shot than that.”
    “You’re just like your father,” Billip said. He filled his string with two arrows. “But I’m the master of quality and quantity!”
    Twang! Twang!
    The arrows sailed straight for a sapphire-eyed underling mage. They bounced off an invisible barrier.
    “Son of a Bish! I hate it when they do that.”
    Nikkel lifted up his crossbow. “Don’t worry, I can handle it.”
    Lightning blasted from the underling’s fingers. It ripped through the striders one after the other and forked off into the chest and belly of Billip and Nikkel.
    “Argh!” Billip fell to the ground. His chest was smoking, and pain shot like thousands of hot needles through his body. Mind addled, he stared at his broken bow string. While he was starting to his knees, a strider fell on top of him, dead.
    The air all around him was erupting. Screams of pain and chitters of delight filled the air. The ground shook. A shadow fell. Something big and nasty had emerged from the dirt.
    ***
    His name was Tarcot, a strider. A warrior. Four arms. Four spears. His hands were filled with death. Every time an underling showed its chittering face, he filled it with pointy metal. “Hauk! Hauk!” he said, time and again. It was his battle cry. He squared up on another underling.
    This one held a pair of one-handed crossbows and pointed the deadly bolts at him. The black fiend offered a nasty smile and fired. Two small bolts rocketed toward Tarcot’s chest.
    The strider flattened on the ground. “Hauk!” A bolt lodged itself between the meat and bone of his shoulder. “Hauk!” He ripped it out, rose to his feet, and charged the underling. His uncanny long legs covered the distance in two strides.
    The underling fighter went for his sword.
    “Hauk!” Four spear tips struck at once, skewering from chest to back. Tarcot hoisted the underling like a stuck pig high in the air and screamed. “Hauk!”
    More striders returned the word in kind. “Hauk!”
    Black blood dripping down his spears, Tarcot slung the underling corpse aside. His eyes searched for the next foe.
    The ground shook beneath him.
    Nearby, an enormous beast erupted from the