Sablesword

Viper Madness - An Elarra and Master Tilborn story. “Look out, master!” Elarra pushed Master Tilborn aside, causing the viper to miss its strike. Annoyed, it drew back and stuck again, sinking its fangs into Elarra’s ankle. Or rather above her left ankle, just where the muscles of her calf began. The viper coiled once more, rather than slithering away like a cowardly villain ought to. Elarra had only sandals and garden gloves, but Master Tilborn had a hoe. He neatly separated the viper’s head from its body, as it attempted a third strike, and that was the end of the viper. ...

With her sentence passed and confirmed, they sent Elarra Onga’s-Daughter at once to the Chamber of the Barrel. Her only guard was a goblin, a scrawny fellow who even a flighty princess could have overcome – if she were a human or elven princess. But Elarra was a goblin woman herself. Green-skinned, with big purple eyes and long mobile ears, she stood even shorter than guard-goblin Glum. Furthermore, she had her wrists bound behind her, and was nude beneath her prisoner’s poncho of undyed cloth. And then there was Master Lutz. ...

A sequel to “The Tickle Barrel” Elarra held her chin up to allow Master Tilborn to remove the leash from her collar. “Another evening spent satisfying curiosity,” he said. “At least we got a good dinner out of it. Now put your sandals into the lockbox,” he added as he coiled the leash. An unnecessary command: Elarra was already bending down to remove her sandals. Master Tilborn always made her wear them outside, to keep her feet uninjured and tender, and always made her remove them and go barefoot when indoors. ...

“Are you going back to Tom?” Marci Gotz didn’t answer her older sister at once. She closed her suitcase and applied her thumb to the thumb-locks, sealing it, before saying: “No, I’m not. I’m going to join the Hostage Corp, and neither you nor Tom will ever see me again.” Jane sputtered. Marci brushed past her sister, suitcase in hand. “Are you nuts?” Jane finally managed when Marci reached the front door of the small rented house. “Tom is infinitely better than one of those blue beasts!” ...

The three halfling women standing in the courtroom were as different as three young halfling females could possibly be. They were all short, of course, with round faces; plump, big-breasted butterballs who were only the slightest bit over half the height of human women. They were all barefoot, with hair growing from the tops of their feet as thickly as from the tops of their heads. And they were all thirty-three or older, since only halflings who had ‘come of age’ were allowed in the predominantly human city of Gilderhaven. ...

Even though she expected it, M’rerallie Clan Chumf winced when the grey metal wall suddenly appeared in front of her starfighter. She’d always found coming out of stasis to be a bit disconcerting. Earlier, she and her cousin had set on a rich prize of a freighter, and two Commonwealth starfighters had come racing in to its rescue. One of them came straight at her, his quad autoblasters hammering her shields, and she threw her starfighter into a twisting turn while dropping her shield’s threshold to an insanely low two percent. Just in time: A final burst brought her shields below the ten percent that normally triggered stasis. ...

Somewhere near Old Detroit, a program loaded into the Net: 314986970.ANGL. It was time to recapture subject 314-98-6970 for close examination and possible treatment. In what was once a suburb to the southwest of Detroit, Jackie of the Elm-Streeters poked through a pile of rubble, digging out old cookware. She was a Rat Bastard: A feral human, a mongrel with genes from five continents. In the summer heat, her clothing revealed much of her tan-brown skin, consisting as it did of salvaged cut-off shorts, a halter top to hold her more than ample breasts, and floppy sandals on her otherwise bare feet. Her black hair, cut short in what once was called a pageboy bob, had reddish highlights and framed a face with a generous mouth and dark eyes with just a hint of epicanthic fold. ...

The firmware modification Tanya wanted to perform on her Batsman 3000 Cleaning and Personal Care robot required that she attach a cable. This meant kneeling and crawling on the floor around the inert ‘bot, but it was no hardship to do so: The floor, at least in that room, was covered with a lush carpet, a pastel lavender in color and fur-like in texture. It caressed her bare legs and tiny feet as she struggled with the connection before finally managing to snap it into place. ...