Read Online The Defiler by Steven Savile - Free Book Online

thief always comes prepared, Ukko, my boy."
    He rummaged around inside the sack until he found the grease he had used to loosen the odd lock along the way. He scooped out handfuls of the oily substance and smeared it along the broken chair legs until he was happy they were coated with the stuff. Without thinking, Ukko fetched his tinderbox out of the pack and struck it over and over until it caught, igniting the oil and turning the chair leg into a blazing torch. He stuffed everything back into his pack and shouldered it, lighting the second wooden leg as he charged, screaming like a banshee possessed out of the hovel and down the street, brandishing the flaming spars like weapons.
    Ukko ran straight into the chittering and shrieking mass of insects that had swarmed over the fallen barbarian, thrusting the blazing torches into what he hoped were their faces.
    They skittered away from the fire, retreating fearfully from Ukko as he brandished the flame like a madman, slashing around in wild arcs, trying to force them back. "Come on, Sláine! Get up!" Ukko didn't dare look back, he just kept on with his wild dance, waving his arms around and jumping up and down. And then he understood why the insects feared the fire so much. One of the broken chair legs slapped into the side of one of the critters and it erupted in a violent fiery ball. The explosion threw Ukko from his feet, but he rolled and came up grinning as it set a chain reaction in motion: the insects too close to the burning insect shrieked as the gases leaking from their slathering mouths ignited and tongues of fire lashed down their throats, detonating within their guts. Faggots of charred flesh clung to the walls and smouldered on the sand. Fragments of burned-out shell steamed where they had slashed like shrapnel into the carapaces of the remaining spawn.
    "Their guts are filled with gas!" Ukko yelled triumphantly, laughing manically as he threw himself forwards again, slashing fire into the faces of the retreating insects to send them skittering away down the street. "That's it, go on! Get! Go! That'll teach you to tangle with a coward!"
    His laughter rang down the street.
     
    The sudden heat wrenched the breath from his lungs.
    Sláine tried to stand. The fires of agony burned through a thousand cuts across his body.
    He couldn't understand why they had let him live.
    The giant insects had engulfed him, pincers and claws cutting away at his flesh until he lacked the will let alone the strength to fight back, and then, as he had surrendered to the notion of death here in this hellish place, they had fled.
    Ukko stood over him, brands burning in either hand, face lit up like a demented demon, eyes burning twice as feverishly as any physical fire could.
    "That's it, go on! Get! Go! That'll teach you to tangle with a coward!" Ukko mocked, flourishing the flaming torches. Sláine wanted to laugh but couldn't because it hurt too much to even think about it. He didn't want to contemplate the mess his body must have been in back in the mortal realm. It was a miracle he was still alive.
    They had cut him badly, one slash wide enough to open his stomach. It ought to have been a mortal blow. Instead it began to fuse and knit beneath his fingers as he tried to feel out the extent of his injuries until it was nothing more than a white line running across the musculature from his groin to his belly. He tried to sit. The world swam, lurching violently beneath him.
    "You look like-" the dwarf stopped speaking as Sláine's fingers found another ragged wound and sealed it. "I thought there was no magic here... I mean... how did you?"
    "I don't know," Sláine said, and in truth he didn't. There was no thrill of the Earth Serpent surging through him, no connection with Danu or the land. He couldn't begin to explain it. Was his spirit drawing the last dregs of healing from the land his body lay on back on the fringes of Dardun? Was it an illusion, those wounds still bleeding out from