The shadow didn’t drop with the wind-cutting grace of an acrobat. It fell like an anvil dropped from a church belfry.
Berserker Ren had not waited on the gangway. Malakor’s thumb touched the starting stud of the central spindle. Then, the giant had kicked off the upper upkeep railing with enough sheer violence to shear three wrought-iron balusters at the weld. He plummeted through thirty feet of ozone-choked air, a six-and-a-half-foot mass of soot-blackened sinew, boiled hide, and greasy rags, his four-foot butcher’s cleaver held flat against his ribs.
He struck the revolving carriage of the central gold-silver metal shuttle directly above Ren Vale’s head.
The impact was ear-splitting. The gold-silver metal carriage crumpled beneath his rag-wrapped heels, the drive chains snapping with the harsh crack of iron cables under tension. The entire upright carousel groaned, shuddering in its dark rock housings as the giant dropped onto all fours, his soot-caked fingers sinking into the soft copper plate to anchor himself.
Below him, Ren scrambled backward across the shuddering floor, his fractured right wrist cradled against his ribs, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps.
“Out of the trough, boy,” the Berserker grated. His voice didn’t sound like human speech. It was the grinding scrape of millstones turning dry against shale. He didn’t look at Ren. His bloodshot, yellow-rimmed eyes were locked entirely upon the brass-jacketed muzzle of the spindle three feet above his brow. “The meat is ready. The grease is hot.”
