A shout went up, even as Haral reached the outskirts of the milling crowd that had gathered in the plaza—a shout and, through it, the scream of a soul gone mad with pain.
The blue man pressed the hwalon forward, trusting to the difference the armor made in his appearance to protect him from recognition by the members of last night's searching party.
The crowd of town rabble and raider crewmen gave way before him, parting under the menace of the hwalon's claws and collar and horrid, hook-beaked head.
Sark's crews had set up an arena of sorts, with seats for their chiefs along one side. In front of the seats a crude ring was fenced in with posts and thin, resilient duraloid cable.
Within the ring, they had an Ulno—one of the grotesque, two-headed primitives that were this planetoid's dull-witted subject people.
And there, too, stood one of the scarlet coleoptera, the giant thinking beetles that were Ulna's plague.
Now, as Haral reached the front of the crowd, the coleopteron stalked forward, towards the Ulno. Hideous and deadly, it stood nearly three feet tall at the thorax. Its protuberant multi-faceted eyes glittered evilly. Mandibles clacking, the misshapen head moved from side to side in short, menacing arcs.
The crowd roared its blood-lust, its tension.
Revulsion touched Haral. But he gave the sadistic show no heed beyond it. Bleakly, he looked across the ring, to Sark himself.