Resistance by John Birmingham Page B

chamber either. No. Those urmin squirts were held in luxury while thresh was jammed into a tube of volcanic spikestone which tore and dragged at its wounded hide almost as often as the barbs buried in the wall.
    Oh woe was thresh.
    Its many eyestalks lifted up as it contemplated this wretched situation. There was no climbing out of the pit. Even if it could, even if it were possible to scale the narrow volcanic funnel without being torn to shreds, to haul itself over the fixed circle of sharpened wulfin teeth which ringed the open mouth of the pit so far above, to crawl broken and bleeding onto the stone floor of the main chamber and evade the blades and slings and arrakh-mi bolts of the guards, the snapping, drooling jaws of the Fangr, and to somehow escape into the wider Realm . . . even if all those things were possible, they were not conceivable.
    Thresh had failed. Thresh was disgrace. Thresh was shame upon unutterable shame.
    Its place was down here in the worst of the pits, waiting for the trap to open, for the long drop into the feeding fires of dar Drakon . Or its place was dangling and shrieking at the end of hook and chain as the Inquisitor Grymm, or more likely one of his underlings, dragged thresh up out of confinement and threw it into the blood pot to bulk out the rations for the guards and their Fangr. Already thresh had heard many of the remnants of Urspite’s command go this way. Some willingly, almost enthusiastically, as if to purge the scrolls of their nest from the failure they’d dragged back from Above. And, shamefully . . . oh so shamefully . . . some had gone to their fate fighting and cursing and struggling against what would be. What could only be, for creatures which had so signally failed She of the Horde.
    Thresh grimaced and bit down on a snarl as it heaved itself into a slightly more comfortable position by way of tearing two great gouges out of its backside on the vicious prongs of a pair of Tümor bones. They seemed to have been fixed into the mortar with just such a purpose in mind. Thresh squeezed all of its eyes closed at the end of its stalks and tried to settle its deeply unsettled thinkings on a more agreeable think. It recalled the taste and texture of the man meat it had enjoyed in the Above. So much stronger and yet so much more delicate than even the ancient legends hinted at. Thresh recalled its summons to the receiving chamber of Her Majesty and the audience it had enjoyed there; honour enough for any creature of the Horde to be satisfied. Even to remember its thinkings when it led the Queen’s Vengeance through the break in the capstone – the rift that it, thresh, had discovered – even those thinkings came tinted with just enough remembrance of how significant, how very, very important thresh had felt itself.
    Until it all turned to urmin squirt, of course.
    Even now thresh did not know what went wrong. Oh, it certainly recalled all the terrible and humiliating details. The confusing lines of the human settlement, the way the village they thought they were to overrun went on and on appearing to grow ever larger the further it was from the eyestalk. The vexing way in which the calflings themselves did not immediately flee in the face of their natural predators. The deeply disturbing and impenetrable magicks they appeared to wield, not just their wizards, but all of them. Glowing amulets, beastless chariots, Drakon of steel that seemed to be leashed to their warriors . . . To human warriors. The very memory was an abomination of such mesmerising power that thresh remained too long hunched down in one spot, suddenly yelping when it realised that the pain it felt was not a memory of human fire scorching its ass, but the glowing iron grate burning a cross weave pattern into its ass right then and there.
    Thresh squealed in a most undignified fashion and gouged a couple more furrows in its hide as it struggled to quickly change position.
    Oh yes, it remembered the details. It