His gladius would be all but useless. So he reached out through Vamma, his earth fury, drawing power from the adamant bones of the old mountain beneath him. He seized a thick, heavy wooden pole, laid ready to be planted in the earth as part of the palisade.

Fidelias whirled on the nearest vord and swung the heavy pole up and down in a vertical arc, like a man wielding an axe. The length of wood must have weighed eighty pounds, but he swung it as lightly as a child would a walking stick and struck the leading vord with grisly, shattering power. Green-brown blood sprayed out everywhere, spattering Fidelias and Magnus alike.

The pole snapped in half, one end suddenly a mass of shards and splinters. Fidelias turned to the next vord and drove that end forward like a spear tip. The shock of impact lanced viciously up through his arms and shoulders, and even with Vamma’s influence to buttress him, Fidelias was knocked back from his feet as the pole shattered beneath the strain. He hit the ground hard. The stricken vord thrashed wildly, dying, with several shards of wood too large and wickedly pointed to be properly called “splinters” protruding from the back of its skull.

Then the third vord was on him.

Its teeth hit his calf, snapping down with terrifying force. He heard his leg break, but such was the power of the thing’s jaws that sensation vanished completely. Its tail lashed forward, and Fidelias struggled, his fury-enhanced strength letting him slam the vord around before it could settle a grip on him with its claws or tail, and preventing it from bracing itself firmly with all of its six claw-tipped legs. It had incredible physical power. If it was able to plant its feet, it would simply rip Fidelias’s leg off at the knee.

The vord’s long, slender tail suddenly whipped around his thigh, and Fidelias saw, in an instant of frozen horror, that hundreds of sharp, tiny ridges, like the teeth of a serrated knife, had suddenly extended along its length. The vord would simply lash its tail free, cutting the muscles of his thigh from the bone in one long spiral, like carving the meat from a ham.

Magnus let out a shriek and swept his gladius down. Though the old man’s arms were lean, they were backed by the power of his own earthcrafting, and the famous sword of the Legions severed the vord’s tail at its base.

The vord released Fidelias and whirled on Magnus with unnerving speed and precision, and the old Cursor went down under its weight.