The Heart of Hell
Page 25
“It will not be long now, my lady. Abaddon approaches.”
“Are we ready for him?”
“The gates are sealed; the summoning pits are ablaze; the Acheron’s channels have been dug; the forges are finally cooling. We are as ready as we ever will be, my lady.”
“Then let Abaddon come. Let that god, that thing, throw his army at our walls. Let the great river, let the streets of Adamantinarx, fill with the bodies of his minions. We will resist to our last demon and soul. And maybe, just maybe, we will prevail.”
* * *
The city rose in the distance, its spires and domes veiled by the pallid haze that hung over the accursed Acheron. It was a prize he had coveted since the Heretic had fomented his revolution, and already Adramalik could feel his blood rushing in anticipation of the slaughter to come.
He was experiencing a euphoria he had never imagined before. With the Salamandrines gone and with his elevated role in the eyes of the Abaddim and despite Abaddon’s anger, he wanted for nothing. He had all the carnal pleasures he could demand, all the spoils the ravaging Horde had left behind, and all of the exotic meats to fill his belly. Only the sweet, imagined taste of total revenge upon his fellow demons was missing. And there just over the horizon was the wellspring of that anticipated draught.
He had shucked the trappings of civilization and rode naked upon his terrible steed. Gone were his cloak, armor, and satchels. This simplicity of purpose pleased him. He now felt himself a thing of pure primal rage.
The Abaddim squatted around him, awaiting the order to advance. Their acrid scent filled his nostrils and their incessant chitterings filled his ears, and as irritating as he found both sensations, he wished he had had an army as powerful as this when he was confronting Sargatanas. In many ways he had—these were, after all, demons transformed. But oh, what that transformation had wrought. I actually feel proud leading them on the field. But, even as a smile creased his face as that thought formed, he remembered the four Knights whom he had betrayed and the smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Beleneth, Rahab, Vulryx, and Chammon. Once allies, now powerful enemies. Eventually he would have to deal with them. Perhaps, one by one, on the field of battle, perhaps by less obvious means. He still knew things they had never dreamt.
From behind him, a massive signal of black lightning seared through the sky and, as one, the Abaddim rose. The bolt hung in the air unnaturally and suddenly broke apart into a million black motes that descended upon the Abaddim below. Each mote found an upturned forehead and ignited a dark flame atop the creature’s skull.
It begins!
Adramalik tugged excitedly on the reins of his Abyssal, which pivoted uneasily with pent-up energy. It bellowed and the ground shook.
The Abaddim surged forward. And Adramalik roared at the sky.
* * *
Lilith’s breath caught in her throat. The dark line of the distant Abaddim suddenly grew even darker with the black fires of Abaddon. She watched as they moved like an oozing wave of tar dipping into the creases in the terrain and cresting the low hills. She watched as the blanket of creatures grew in size until it spanned the entire horizon. And she saw five tiny, fiery sigils, equidistantly spaced, and knew those marked the generals’ positions. Rumor suggested that at least one of them was a demon. Who is it? What demon would make such an alliance?
“Araamah, fetch my sword.”
The Sister turned on a heel and departed.
Eligor sent a massive command glyph skyward. It passed through the low clouds and then split apart into a dozen different glyphs, which, in turn, descended into disparate wards of the city.
“My lady, I must be off.”
She took his hand and looked up, into his eyes. “Fly high and strike true, my dear friend.”
The demon’s eyes were fixed on the horizon.
“I will do my best. Fortune now rests on our guile. Stay safe.” He turned to look at her. “He would be so proud of you, Lilith.”
He took a moment gathering himself, then spread his wings and rose into the air. Lilith watched him ascend on slow, powerful wingbeats and then purposefully dart away. She swallowed hard, knowing that she might never see him alive again.
Lilith’s gaze returned to the dark tide of Abaddim as it drew closer to the Acheron. The distance was great and it seemed to take forever and she found herself agitated. Odd how impatient I am to get on with the fight. Our world may be at an end and I’m eager to bring it to a close?
She watched the oncoming Horde in fascination for some time and then shifted her gaze down to the swarming city below. Legions of highly trained malpirgim, eager to wield their flaming javelins, were rushing down the Rule and the other wide avenues to mount the seven great gates and the walls. Overhead, Wings composed of hundreds of demons of Eligor’s Flying Guard, new scythes brandished, climbed and dove, their fine training and discipline evident in their tight formations. She saw them all eventually settle into their ready positions, great cube-like formations of hovering demons forming a partial half dome over the city’s waterfront. She could even hear the formations closest to the palace spiritedly reciting their war chants.
Souls tasked with domicile-to-domicile fighting were carrying weapons of every description, lining the streets and clambering up onto the lower rooftops.
A glyph bearing Halphas’ signature blazed from the palace, separated, and headed down toward the river. There Lilith could just see it rise and then drop quickly into the flagstones at the foot of the wall. Moments later, activated by unseen sluices, the mighty Acheron, diverted by Halphas, began to flood beneath the wall and into the geometric channels cut into city streets. Soon a vast network of pale waters was etched into the dark streets adjacent to the walls far below. The pale pattern, which to Lilith’s eyes looked to form ancient and arcane symbols, did not reach too far into the city, but Lilith could see how it might impede the invaders. But for how long? And it would undoubtedly affect the defenders, as well.
Footsteps behind her made Lilith turn and she saw Araamah and Put Satanachia approaching. Araamah held out the oversized sword and Lilith slung its baldric over her head and cinched it in place. She immediately felt a surge of confidence and power. Was Sargatanas’ spirit lurking somewhere in that blade? As frivolous as it was, she smiled inwardly at the thought.
“Finally! I thought they were going to sit out there forever,” Satanachia said, grinning. Gone was the troubling shadow that she had seen darkening his demeanor since she had returned to Adamantinarx. In its place was the demon’s old confidence and bravado. And she was grateful for it.
The Proconsul looked every bit the commander of Adamantinarx’s legions. He had invoked his Panoply of Spines—armor that flared spikes aggressively and protectively when in combat—and while the armor was dormant before battle on the palace plaza, Lilith still found its cloud-gray and nacreous surface captivating. He carried a light lance with a blade at each end, each of which glittered with tiny coruscating glyphs. He could not help but notice her staring at it.
“Would you prefer this weapon to the one you carry, Lilith?” Satanachia smirked. He already knew the answer.
“I think not. Too light for me. I need something with some heft to it. Some real killing power behind it.” As if Lukiftias weighed much, she thought.
Satanachia grinned, studied the oncoming Horde.
“Where shall we begin?”
“I and my Sisters will be heading down to the Seventh Gate. It fronts the river fully. May I suggest you remain up here? We cannot have both Proconsuls in the field at the same time. And the palace needs to remain in our hands. If I grow weary I will return and you can take my place.”
“You had better grow weary! I cannot have rumors circulating that I was not willing to lend a sword arm to this.”
“Fair enough,” she said lightly.
Lilith nodded to him and then turned to the waiting Sisters. Each was already saluting her, bent swords vertical against their noses.
* * *
It was impossible for Adramalik to not keep looking toward the other generals’ floating sigils as he closed on the Acheron. Perhaps it was the early effect of the mist that affected his thinking, permeating him with a sense of sad foreboding. Or maybe it simply was his own paranoia. Either way, the prospect of his former Knights converging upon him sapped some of the exhilaration from the moment and he found himself swearing, even as he looked with relish upon the distant city.
The Acheron was, in his opinion, the biggest challenge the Abaddim would face. A noxious barrier, to be sure. The pervasive sobbing he heard coming from the river underscored his unease. He was confident that, once on dry land, his forces would annihilate any opposition, but this cursed river was a very real obstacle. Had its threat taken the form of rushing sulfuric liquid like the Styx, its danger would have been obvious. Not any more easily negotiated but obvious. The Acheron, in contrast, was slow flowing, languorous. Deceptive. Its danger was hidden and insidious—the danger of complete and profound and immobilizing mournfulness.
Adramalik had speculated as to whether something already dead and yet resurrected would feel anything at all. He now had his answer.
As the Abaddim drew near the river’s edge they dipped their front legs and mandibles into its pallid eddies and, immediately, Adramalik saw the effect. It was like a creeping malaise. They stopped, looked skyward, some dropping to their knees while others climbed atop them in an effort to move forward. And there, in that struggle, repeated all the way along the river’s edge, in their misery, was the answer to fording the river.
Ignoring their plight, Adramalik urged them forward, first with glyph commands and then with a ceaseless conjured cascade of burning darts, a method he had perfected to motivate unwilling demons in countless battles fought for the Fly. With his eye ever on the huge gate on the opposite shore, he goaded the Abaddim to a frenzy until they were climbing frantically atop one another in an effort to evade the harrying darts.
It took a long time. And the conjuring was exhausting. The number of Abaddim expended was incalculable. As they tried to cross they sank and, pushed down by the weight of their scrambling fellows, drowned. When enough had perished beneath the waters and their bodies had accumulated, a small distance had been gained. And so it went all the way across the wide river of sorrow. Adramalik estimated that perhaps a million of the creatures had drowned to provide the others a bridge. It was no matter—there were plenty of Abaddim to spare. He saw the other generals slowly emulate his strategy and wondered what incentive they had employed. None of his Knights had the Art to accomplish what he had done. Nonetheless, eventually six ragged and squirming bridges finally reached across the Acheron. With the completion of the bridges, the river ceased to flow.
Dammed as the Acheron now was, the crossing became easier, and Adramalik guided his steed onto the bridge. Despite the damming, the river’s lingering vapor filled his lungs and he felt the oppressive weight of remorse and sadness for the truly countless number of sins he had committed descend upon him. The shredded thing that was once a conscience ached inside him, but he knew it was an artificially induced pain. Intellectually and coldly, the demon recognized that he had enjoyed every brutal transgression.
Adramalik ground his teeth and fought the Acheron’s effects as he forged forward toward the gate. His Abyssal seemed immune and they crossed the uneven bridge easily. With the Abaddim finally landing on the outer perimeter of Adamantinarx, the siege of the hated capital could begin in earnest.
24
ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON
The chittering of the Abaddim on the opposite side of the gate was so loud that many of the demons and souls were pushing ragged plugs of hide into their earholes as they looked at one another with apprehension writ large upon their faces. Lilith had never heard such a din. And she had never before seen demon legionaries show any fear.
Overhead, the flying demons were waiting, hovering in place with steady wingbeats, scythes in hand, awaiting orders to dive. Lilith suspected they were going to let the forces build up before swooping down upon them. But even as she watched them she also saw the dark pall that floated along with the Abaddim begin to obscure her view. How would that affect Eligor’s troops?
She and the Sisters mounted the many corkscrewing stairs to the top of the massive Seventh Gate and finally, atop its wide platform, she looked down toward the wharves and warehouses and saw them being utterly destroyed and overrun. The unabated wave kept coming and she saw the Abaddim close up for the first time. The sight took her breath away. They looked more like Abyssals than anything else, but the most disturbing aspect of their appearance was the parody of a demon’s face that each bore—a face distended by immense mandibles. She found them revolting and she also found herself eager to destroy them. As she looked down at their efforts to climb the high tower she knew she would not have long to wait.
The Abaddim were, as one, single-mindedly clambering upon one another to gain the top of the wall. What they faced were thousands upon thousands of lightly armored demon malpirgim lining the length of the wall hurling fiery javelins down into their midst. As quickly as a javelin left their hands the defenders conjured another. But as many Abaddim as were destroyed, more filled the gaps and inexorably the mass of the gathering creatures rose to nearly the level of the wall’s platform.
Lilith, red eyes fixed on the enemy, slowly pulled her sword overhead from its scabbard. The Sisters around her tensed. When the first dark Abaddim reached over the parapet it was met with three blades that cleft it apart. As its limbs and mandibles fell asunder on the platform’s floor two more of the creatures surmounted the tower and then five more.
Lilith firmly grasped her sword with both hands and began the business of hacking away at the onrushing Abaddim. With perfect footwork and fluid strokes and avoiding their formidable mandibles she waded in, sending a head flying, cleaving a creature from head to shoulders, chopping clear through the torso of another. Sargatanas’ drills with the very sword she now wielded were serving her well.
With quick over-the-shoulder glances, Lilith saw the Sisters weaving and darting expertly, dismembering Abaddim with abandon. Two of them were even smiling! How had Eligor gotten them to this level of proficiency so quickly? She really had to ask him, now that he was a Demon Major, exactly what his abilities were. If they survived.
The flood of Abaddim cresting the parapet did not let up. As she hacked at them she saw, down by the river’s edge, the nearest of the Abaddon’s generals’ sigil. Whoever he was, he had finally joined the fight. Elements of his sigil looked familiar, but she could not, in the frenzy of battle, place them. He drew nearer by the moment, but it would still be some time before she might be able to confront him.
The mound of dead and dying Abaddim grew beneath the feet of Lilith, and the Sisters, making the defenders’ footing slippery and difficult. The fiery missiles of the malpirgim found their marks less frequently, for the writhing of the dying creatures and the instability of the carcasses underfoot made taking aim all the more difficult. Suddenly the battle seemed to be turning against the gate’s defenders despite Lilith’s best efforts, and it seemed the gate might be overrun.
The Abaddim slowly gained access to more and more of the wall and she watched the malpirgim begin to fall to their powerful pincers. It was not long before Lilith and the Sisters, fighting valiantly, were alone atop the gate.
Suddenly Lilith heard a great chorus of battle cries and without fully understanding what she was witnessing felt the rushing of air around her. A stream of red-winged bodies flashed past and the chaos of the moment became profound. Hundreds of fl
ying demons, scythes in hand, fell upon the Abaddim around the gate, slashing and hacking, carving them up, tossing their cleft bodies from the walls and platform in the hundreds upon their fellows below. No troops could have easily withstood the hammerblow of their assault. The Abaddim were flung into the air, beaten down and back toward the shore.
The Sisters laughed as they dropped their guard and took in the whirlwind of carnage. Lilith, too, was elated. Dripping from horns to claws with black Abaddim gore, she was relieved that the demons had chosen that moment to fall upon the enemy. Smiling, she wiped her face with her sleeve.
Her relief was short-lived. The unknown general had gained much ground and was in position to rally his Abaddim by sending a terrible fountain of conjured arrows skyward. While the invocation only lasted moments, it was a murderous display of power that accounted for many fallen flyers. The flyers veered up and away and the cacophony from the Abaddim grew in its enthusiasm. The dark tide turned once again toward the city.
Lilith looked out toward the river and saw it pooling behind the bridges of drowned Abaddim. She pursed her lips, thinking about that, and then ran to the opposite side of the gate’s parapet. She glanced down to where the channels cut for the river were meant to be and to her shock she could not see them. She suddenly realized that, by damming the river, the Abaddim had inadvertently removed that impediment to their progress. And improved their chances of taking the city.
* * *
He was fairly certain who he had seen, albeit briefly and from some distance, atop the beleaguered gate. The white skins and the flashing white sword were enough. It is the Fly’s whore. His First Consort, the bitch, Lilith! What good fortune!
Even as he reached the foot of the gate, Adramalik began fashioning plans for what he would do with and to her. Nothing would be off-limits. Without the Fly looking possessively over his shoulder, he could take his time with her as he had always, secretly, desired. And he could be as creative with her as his fertile imagination allowed. Once the city was taken and properly dealt with, the palace would be his—so Abaddon had promised—and it would truly become a place worthy of his darkest ambitions. Lilith would be his plaything there, forced to await his pleasures. Abaddon would create a court for him and provide him with whatever his whims dictated. And all would be as he had, so long ago in his chambers in the Priory at Dis, envisioned.