The Heart of Hell

by Wayne Barlowe

  The demons, Boudica saw, were pulling back and sending out supply caravans less frequently, guarding them when they did venture forth with larger and larger forces of foot soldiers. Which was not especially worrisome to the Salamandrines. It simply meant that K’ah had to send out runners farther afield to get more raiders. This was not a problem. There was no shortage of young warriors eager to sharpen their newly crafted swords in the rough rubble of fallen demons.

  Algol rose and fell six times more before K’ah’s intentions became clear. On the sixth rising of the star he woke her, tapping her shoulder lightly with the tip of his black sword.

  “Are you ready for something different?”

  “I am ready for more rest. That’s different, yes?”

  “Rest is for the egglings. We are grown past it. Rise, B’udik’k’ah. The clans from afar are gathering … we have dark work ahead.”

  Boudica stumbled out of her stall, her weapons and outer garments gathered hastily and hanging in disarray, as she tried to get her bearings. She clambered clumsily up and out of the camp and saw a few hundred warriors encamped a small distance from where she stood. They were silently preparing for battle. That was something very different from the garrulous warriors in her Life.

  As she stood watching them, willing the sleep from her eyes, K’ah approached, mounted and holding Andrasta’s reins. Boudica adjusted her new robes. They fit perfectly thanks to the skill of the Salamandrine who had labored over them. She slung her long sword’s baldric over her head, smiled unfathomably at K’ah—he still could not fully read her facial expressions—and climbed onto her saddle. All of her Salamandrine things, the beast’s tack, her own personal items, all seemed familiar now and somehow right. And owning things again felt good.

  A horn blew and, as one, the clans’ warriors mounted. Boudica frowned and pointed at the lowering sky. A long swathe of black clouds, pregnant with shimmering fire, slid along the horizon. K’ah nodded.

  “Tsak’ka rolled her weather bones and told me the clouds would rain fire … that they would favor us. They are gathering just as she predicted.”

  Boudica, who was still not exactly accustomed to the firestorms, simply frowned.

  “Come, we have work to do.”

  “Dark work?” Boudica ventured.

  “Indeed.”

  K’ah led the way at the head of nearly two hundred warriors. Mounted on various kinds of Abyssals—some, Boudica noted, heavily armored and powerful-looking—the large force soon stretched out in a long train as some creatures were not as fleet as others. This was, as she saw, advantageous, as the broken terrain would be nearly impassable had the war party stretched from side to side.

  “We head for the demon garrison near the Sheets of Fire, B’udik’k’ah.”

  “You’re talking about the border outpost, Char-zon? Near the Flaming Cut?”

  “The same.”

  “That, K’ah, is a very ambitious target.”

  “I am a very ambitious man.”

  Boudica stared for some time at the back of Andrasta’s head as they made their way through the ravines.

  “From what I remember hearing, that garrison is lightly manned. But, like many key outposts, it was built over a summoning pit. By design. Most of the demons stationed there are decurions. Capable of conjuring countless legionaries.”

  “Yes. We know that.”

  “You will have to be quick about it. Quick enough to penetrate their walls before they can summon large numbers of legionaries from the conjuring pits.”

  “That is our intention.”

  * * *

  The embers rained down gently, making the sparkling landscape indistinct. At first, there was little or no wind, but as the storm descended, the wind picked up and Boudica pulled her hood down, adjusting the heavy, full-face mask so that the eye slits were well placed. She cinched it tight with cords from behind. It had taken her longer than she had expected to get used to the tight, closed feeling inside that hood and mask and also to the strong musk of the Abyssal leather it was composed of. Now she quite liked the scent.

  The war party had dismounted and spread out on a rocky shelf near the outpost, its flank pocked with craters and lined with gullies. It was, Boudica noted, a perfect spot for them to gather unseen.

  K’ah was hunkered down next to her. Both were hidden in a wind-carved scoop in the rocks. Apart from the falling embers, the view of the distant outpost was clear. His mask was down, the markings upon its smooth, layered surface beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Behind the four slits his eyes glittered.

  “Timing will be everything, B’udik’k’ah. We need to launch two attacks at exactly the same moment. We will attack the garrison at its gate and where they least expect it. From behind. The Rockcrawlers that we brought along … they will tear down the wall and move in to cover the lava pits. They are slow but impossible to resist. The Conjurers, those decurions, won’t be able to summon enough soldiers before we have sealed off the pits.”

  Boudica considered all of this, eyeing the outpost through the slits in her mask.

  “They are no fools, K’ah. These are not decurions-of-the-line. They are better than that. Smarter and faster. That’s why they are out here in the middle of nowhere. And, worse than that, no matter how fast your attack is, they will send a glyph back to their patron city. For help.”

  “I’m counting on it. The war has weakened them. Perhaps we can weaken them even further.”

  “A dream. A dream of regaining what you will never have. Even with the war their numbers are growing as yours are dwindling.”

  “You will not help us?”

  “You know I will. I’ve been on the losing side before. It just makes things that much more interesting.”

  K’ah made a noise that she knew to be equivalent to a laugh. She smiled inside her hood and turned, again, to the outpost.

  Reaching into his satchel, K’ah brought out a fist-sized object composed of a dozen or more smaller globes—polyps plucked from artery trees tied together. This he threw out so all the Salamandrines could see where it landed. Immediately it sparked to life, the falling embers setting it alight and causing the globes to separate and burst into flames. Any demon seeing it would have thought it to be an exploding cinder. The Salamandrines knew better. The signal caused the Rockcrawlers to move slowly forward, their heavy, armored legs seemingly impervious to the lava channels they sank into as the creatures crossed through them. Their riders hunkered down so as not to be detected should the decurions chance to look out into the Wastes.

  K’ah pulled three more grenades from his pouch, threw one, waited, and then tossed the remaining pair into the air. Rising from the shadows, the Salamandrines on foot began to run, hunched over, through the low gullies toward the front gate of the outpost. Clearly, they had practiced this maneuver.

  Boudica watched the awkward Rockcrawlers muscle their way toward the outpost, their thick belly armor shielding them from the rocks they slid over. Were it not for the sizzling winds and the cover the ember clouds lent, she was sure the creatures and their riders would have been spotted. But K’ah was a canny tactician and had picked his time for the assault perfectly.

  The heavy creatures descended into the wide ditch that surrounded the outpost and then slowly reemerged to stand on their many hind legs, freeing their massive clawed paws, waiting in the shadow of the wall. They did not have long to wait.

  An outcry could be heard and suddenly Boudica saw five large conjuring glyphs rise above the buildings. When she looked back at the Rockcrawlers they were already pulling down the substantial wall, filling the ditches with huge chunks of rubble.

  K’ah leaped out from the rocky hollow, raised his long sword, and roared to the other Salamandrines to follow. Boudica ran after him, sword in hand. His long strides soon took him farther ahead than she wanted and she soon found herself at the back of the ragged ranks of running warriors. Up ahead she saw K’ah leaping nimbly from one chunk of rubble t
o the next, crossing the ditch easily, and then clambering through the wall and into the garrison. It was only moments until, trying to keep up with the warriors, she was struggling to jump from one chunk of wall to the next. She slipped, caught herself, and carried on, grateful her mentor was not watching. She made a final leap onto the broken wall and into the chaos that was the outpost.

  She took in the entire scene of carnage rapidly, her battle-trained mind picking out the safe spots, the areas of greatest conflict. She saw the rough soul-brick towers surrounding the flagstoned courtyard, the stables for soul-steeds, the simple soldiers’ quarters, and finally the all-important summoning pits, centrally located in long, shallow depressions. The mandate to break down soul bricks did not seem to have reached this far-flung outpost.

  As slow as they had seemed from afar, Boudica immediately saw that the Rockcrawlers had made remarkable time getting to the conjuring pits. Most had positioned themselves atop the bubbling lava pools, precluding any more summoned demons from emerging. There, beneath the large creatures, the legionaries would be held, quickly sizzling back into the element from which they were born for lack of the hardening exposure of the air.

  Boudica pulled her long Abyssal sword and together with her smaller sword she weighed into the fray, slashing and stabbing at those heavy legionaries who had managed to emerge before the pits had been shut down. There were a few hundred of them and the Salamandrines were challenged by a force that held a slight edge in numbers.

  The decurions, easily identified by the transverse-crested helms, were mounted on wheeling soul-steeds, controlling the waves of demons with cascades of command glyphs issuing from summoning staves as they clashed with K’ah’s warriors. Despite being conjured only moments before, they were organized and disciplined, and a few Salamandrines fell under their blades. As she joined the fight, Boudica began to realize that the decurions were the key to victory. She set her eyes on the nearest decurion and fought her way toward him.

  Created with an innate sense of duty, the decurion sent a large alarm glyph up into the sky, and she saw it flash away to its capital. Was it heading to Adamantinarx or another city? She could not tell.

  As she approached it, the decurion’s soul-steed eyed her dumbly, saliva hanging from its mouths, its enormous head, composed of dozens of souls’ heads moving from side to side to avoid being cut. It pivoted on its massive legs with more agility than Boudica had thought possible for a creature so large. The decurion hardly noticed her, so intent was he on casting his fiery glyphs into the melee. And that proved his downfall. Boudica leaped upon a low wall and then squarely onto the broad back of his steed and, with a piercing scream, thrust out with her Abyssal blade. She felt the odd bite of the sword into something that was not quite flesh, not quite stone. His body burst into a gritty cloud of debris as his head flew into the air, the look of surprise on his disintegrating face plain to Boudica. Beneath her, the riderless soul-steed spun on its heavy feet as she jumped down, narrowly missing being trampled. For the briefest of moments she looked across the tumult of battle, through the flailing swords, the frenzied combatants, and caught K’ah’s masked gaze. He nodded, clearly pleased.

  Encouraged, Boudica suddenly realized that her relatively diminutive height was an advantage. She could stalk her way through the fighting toward the decurions unseen and, when the opportunity arose, leap from the rubble piles of the destroyed demons to dispatch them just as she had the first of the officers. She set about her self-appointed task with a terrible grin and an equally terrible resolve to make as many demons as possible pay for her miserable millennia of enslavement.

  The second and third decurions fell as the first had, unsuspecting and without any opposition. The fourth decurion, however, saw her coming for him at the last moment and, glaring at her, skillfully wheeled his mount around to face her. Perhaps he had watched his brethren fall, suddenly and perplexingly, and surmised what had happened to them. Perhaps he was simply keener of sight and intuition. Boudica tried hurriedly to gain the top of a cairn of dead demons, stumbled, and regained herself only to see the decurion’s summoning stave pointed directly at her, a fiery glyph curling outward to combat her. It shot from the stave’s tip and twisted around her, its slitherings burning her through her skins.

  She tumbled from the pile of rubble and fell heavily, writhing and clawing at the incandescent ribbons as they attempted to find a way inside her. She rolled upon the flagstones and just as the huge steed lifted a front leg to crush her she saw the decurion’s head explode into powder, the blur of a sling bullet barely seen hurtling through the dark cloud. The steed reared and twisted, its foot missing her by inches, and then she felt rough, gloved hands snatch her up, lifting and carrying her through the dwindling battle, past the massive Rockcrawlers, to place her down next to a steaming summoning pit. Through the haze of pain she watched her Salamandrine rescuer pull up the ground-skin and tear away a chunk of the black matrix beneath. She looked up, dazed, knowing that had to be K’ah.

  Of course he had seen what happened! He was watching me throughout the whole battle.

  Like a lodestone, the tarry chunk drew off the ribbons of fire into its inky core, and, once Boudica was free, K’ah tossed the bubbling mass into the fiery pit, where it sizzled and vanished. She had no idea why it worked. She did not care—it had simply and completely stopped the pain. She sat upright, shuddering.

  “Those were made to kill Salamandrines. You are very lucky, B’udik’k’ah.”

  K’ah extended his hand.

  “My swords,” she said, breathing hard and patting his forearm in thanks.

  Another Salamandrine who had followed K’ah put them almost reverently in her hands.

  “A true warrior,” he said quietly. “A truer leader. We have all seen your quality here, B’udik’k’ah of the Blades. By T’Thunj, Lord of the Second World, we have seen the birth of a leader!”

  Looking around her, she saw small clusters of warriors dispatching the last of the conjured demons. Some turned, briefly, to look at her. The winds abated and a muffled silence descended as the Salamandrines finished their grim task. A sooty cloud of coarse black powder settled slowly over the garrison, dusting the victors in their victims’ remains.

  K’ah dropped his mask to his chest. His pale face and short beak were slick with sweat and streaked with the grit, but his four eyes were bright, wide with the post-battle zeal that Boudica had so often seen in her own warriors so long ago. He turned to his lieutenants who stood around him, exhausted but eager for orders.

  “Disperse the Rockcrawlers and the tribes who joined us. Tell them to take what they will from the outpost. We travel on our own now.”

  He looked at Boudica for approval and when she nodded the Salamandrines headed off. The sound of carved trumpets could be heard. K’ah studied her, put his hand on her shoulder.

  “I could not have imagined a soul to be so ferocious.”

  “We are a ferocious lot, K’ah.” Boudica grinned.

  K’ah clicked his beak three times. Boudica knew he had caught the irony. She had told him many times why so many humans had found themselves in Hell, that they were a destructive race filled with jealousies and self-interest and intolerance. Perhaps, she thought, she should someday tell him about the good aspects of her race. Or not. The Salamandrine might never believe her given what he had witnessed of humans. And her.

  “What now, K’ah?”

  “Now we wait to see if our message was received.”

  Boudica nodded. She was certain it would be. She was not as certain the cities would mobilize a response. The war had shifted priorities beyond what K’ah could imagine.

  “And,” K’ah added, “you have one last ritual to perform. There are dead to be eaten.”

  Boudica closed her eyes. She would have to get past this last hurdle.

  14

  THE PIT

  Ice crunched and sizzled beneath Adramalik’s careful footfalls as he edged his way slowly along the
cavern walls. The floor had fallen away and was concealed in the lower shadows far below. Faraii, incomprehensibly surefooted, managed the narrow strip of icy rock much better. Perhaps, four feet are better here than two, Adramalik thought. He would never have thought so, but the fact was that he was having trouble keeping up.

  Adramalik frowned. He heard something in the cavern far ahead, a muffled cacophony of distant raspings and rendings and, perhaps, low speech blending into one steady susurration. It was disquieting and set the demon’s nerves on edge. He clenched his teeth, trying to ignore it, but the deep sounds seemed to flow through his body.

  The creature that was now Faraii halted and turned his head toward the demon. The crown-like flames darkened his face in flickering shadows and only his eyes glittered back at the demon.

  “Do you see that tiled arch up ahead? Not the dark one—the big one lit from behind? You must pass through that one on your hands and knees. And continue on into the Presence in that manner.”

  More degrading rituals! As if kneeling before Ai Apaec was not enough! The Court of the Fly was like a dream compared to these upstart gods and their ridiculous self-aggrandizing formalities. I served the Prince of Hell and now this? Will my fall never end?

  As the pair made their way toward the archway, Adramalik had to admit to himself that he almost welcomed the notion of crawling given his constant slipping. Still, it rankled him.