Chapter 74 The Very Small Tyrant

“I'd prefer not to meet that thing by running into it,” Jin said.

Nell folded the handbill.

“Then let's see you run into something smaller.”

Theo lifted the borrowed staff.

“How small?”

“Depends whether it stands up.”

They stopped at the inn for Jin's knife. He checked his phone before leaving it beside the zipped bag: plenty of time to return before Theo's seven-o'clock limit.

The north sluice was twenty minutes outside the wall. A miller met them at the footbridge, holding the two halves of a rake.

“Still under there,” he told Nell.

She looked at the broken wood.

“Did you poke it?”

“Needed to know which end was the head.”

From beneath the bridge came a furious bubbling noise.

“The conversational end,” Jin said.

The creature crawled out sideways. It was low, broad and covered in gray plates, with six jointed legs and a blunt wedge of a head. Water dripped from the corners of a mouth that seemed too wide for the rest of it.

“Ditch tyrant,” Nell said.

Theo looked at its short legs.

“Ambitious name.”

The creature spat a stone through the fence beside his head.

Theo stopped smiling.

“Earned.”

Lark took the miller back toward the footbridge. Kessa climbed the bank with an arrow laid against her bow. Nell kept the narrow path behind them clear.

“You two,” she said. “If you want it.”

Theo glanced at Jin.

Jin nodded.

The ditch tyrant lunged before either of them finished moving.

Its shovel-shaped head struck the staff. Theo's heels slid through mud. He turned with the shove, letting the shaft scrape along the plated cheek instead of trying to stop the charge.

The creature hit the bank behind him.

Clods burst into the water.

Jin walked a short line along the dry stones beside the sluice while Theo drew it back. Three strides from a flat capstone to the bank's exposed root. Recording it cleared the old Earth path.

One route.

He returned to the capstone and selected Impact Hitch.

The ditch tyrant spat at Theo again.

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Theo ducked. The stone shattered against the wall.

Jin drove forward.

His heel landed beside the root. He put the stored rush through the heel of his hand into the creature's outer shoulder plate.

The plate split.

The whole body slewed sideways.

For a moment he thought that had done it.

The creature's rear feet spread beneath the broken plates. It pushed sideways against the bank, using the mud to carry its body around rather than fighting the turn.

Jin saw the tail too late.

He couldn't put another strike through the path he'd just spent. He tried to step away on ordinary feet, but his heel found the slick edge of a stone instead of the dirt.

Then the tail caught his ankles.

He went down on his back in the shallow water.

The creature turned, broken plate grinding against the next one.

His trace was gone. His next breath came full of ditch water.

Theo's staff hit the open mouth before it could close over Jin's head.

Wood bowed.

Theo's knee bent under the weight. He shifted his grip instead of locking the elbow, letting the pressure slide toward the stronger end of the shaft. His face had gone pale, all the laughter out of it.

“Up,” Theo said.

Jin rolled beneath the shaft, caught a root and hauled himself out of the bite.

The tyrant closed its jaws.

The staff cracked along the grain.

Theo let the pressure carry him forward, one foot skimming across the wet stones. He turned past the blunt head, hands sliding apart on the shaft, and pulled the trapped end toward the creature's own front leg.

Its knee folded.

Jin came up beside the broken shoulder plate.

He drove his knife through the exposed seam.

The creature bucked.

His wrist jarred against bone. He pulled clear before the plates could close over the blade.

Theo's gaze dropped to the soft joint beneath the raised jaw.

He stepped onto the bank, brought the staff's splintered end down into it and pushed with both hands.

The tyrant's forelegs scrabbled.

Then the weight came off the shaft.

Light spread through the water. The broken staff dropped onto empty stones.

Jin coughed, spat out something he didn't want to identify and looked at Theo.

Theo was standing very still.

“How much?” Jin asked.

“One hundred and eighty.”

His voice sounded strange.

“Level Twelve.”

Jin wiped water off his face.

Theo looked down at his own hands.

“Fifty points.”

“Yes.”

“I thought the three was—”

He stopped, laughing once, then shook his head.

Nell came down the path and looked at the cracked staff.

“Both alive?”

Jin held up a dripping hand.

“Improved. More aquatic.”

She examined the split wood.

“You turned with it,” she told Theo.

He looked up.

“Not neatly.”

His fingers still trembled around the wood. Jin reached for the shaft, and Theo gave it to him without pretending he wasn't glad.

“You saw the mouth,” Jin said.

“I saw you under it.”

That was all Theo offered. Jin nodded and took the broken end out of his grip.

“You were being bitten. Neat comes later.”

Kessa lowered her bow without firing. Lark brought the miller back.

The man stared at the empty ditch.

“It's dead?”

“Terrible news for local government,” Jin said.

The miller looked at his soaked clothes.

“You went in there?”

“Brief diplomatic visit.”

Theo turned toward him, the huge private number still somewhere behind his eyes.

“I'd like to go home,” he said.

Jin's smile faded.

“Of course.”

“Before I spend these and accidentally leave through a wall.”

Jin laughed and climbed out of the water.