War God's Will

by Matthew P Gilbert

  Ahmed’s eyes closed of their own accord at the brilliant flash that followed, and then he saw nothing at all.

  Chapter 19

  Actually

  Aiul awoke to an insistent hand shaking his shoulder. Logrus put a finger to his lips, but it was not necessary. At one time, he might have cried out, but whoever he had been before, he was no longer that fool.

  How long was I out? He couldn’t say for certain, nor exactly what had happened, but he had a good idea. This was Papa.

  Logrus sat beside him, fingering a sharp rock like a talisman, his dark eyes full of promises of mayhem, and for once, Aiul found it comforting.

  He looked about cautiously, not wanting to alert any enemies. Papa was still on his feet, looking up at the ceiling, and Ariano hovered nearby. He spied Sadrik slumped against a wall, unconscious but breathing. The Southlanders were slowly finding their feet. Aiul did not know the Nihlosian with them, but he, too, was recovering from the blast. Across the room, Caelwen, alert and dutiful as ever, seemed to be checking Rithard’s pulse. From the look on the captain’s face, Aiul presumed said pulse was found.

  The elder Meites were another matter. The blast had been centered on them, and Maklin and Maranath were both face down and not moving at all, covered in blood.

  Madness! Damnable Meite madness!

  “Papa!” he cried out. “Stop this!”

  Lothrian gave Aiul a tired look, waving his left hand dismissively as he reached for the ceiling with his right and jerked downward as if pulling on a rope. Moments later, a massive object came hurtling from the blackness overhead to land with a resounding crash in the middle of the black pool. The liquid within did not splash at all, a fact Aiul found less surprising than he might have. Once things had settled, Aiul could see that it was a large golden statue of a lion, but the head was missing. The surface was so smooth it was difficult to tell if it had been made that way, or cut after the fact.

  Aiul turned back to Logrus and met his dark stare with his own. The hunter nodded toward Lothrian and mouthed, “We must stop him.”

  Aiul nodded back, turned to the Southlanders, and gestured as best he could the swinging of a weapon. Time to fight.

  Ahmed suppressed the urge to groan as he rose. He was not sure how long he had been out, if at all, but he certainly knew the cause, and was somewhat surprised to find himself still among the living. By rights, he ought be standing before Ilaweh, explaining how he had been so easily ambushed.

  Not just me. He looked at the two old men across the way and sighed, feeling anger and grief welling within him. The one they called Maklin was clearly dead, the back of his head torn open. Maranath lay beside him, covered in blood but still breathing, if only just.

  Sandilianus growled beside him, “Fucking barbarians and sorcerers! We should never have trusted them!” Eleran, kneeling over Maranath, cast him a glare, but said nothing, and Sandilianus hung his head in chagrin.

  From the corner of his eye, Ahmed spotted movement. He turned to see Aiul the Troublemaker gesturing in fairly universal language: get ready to fight.

  Lothrian, his back to them and busy meddling with something hidden by his body, called out, “Don’t be stupid. You’re all doomed, but you can still choose an easy or hard death.”

  Sandilianus leapt to his feet and shouted, “A hard death is fine by me!” He charged at the sorcerer, teeth bared in fury.

  Lothrian turned and watched him come, an amused look on his face. As the Southlander neared striking range, Lothrian backhanded the air between them. The empty space seemed to ripple and distort, tiny rainbows visible in the warping, and the air snapped with a cracking sound, sending Sandilianus hurtling against the wall.

  “As you wish,” Lothrian sneered. “I’ll deal with you shortly, when I am finished here.” He looked about at the rest of them “Anyone else?”

  Ahmed raised a hand to calm the rest of his men as they reflexively went for their weapons. They could not win that fight, not that way. He could not help but smile to see Eleran move quickly to see to Sandilianus. The Nihlosian had become a good friend to them all, but he and Sandilianus had a special bond, even if it wasn’t the one Sandilianus would have preferred. It was stronger than that, the bond of men who had shed blood together.

  Ahmed spared a glance at Maranath, wondering if Eleran’s leaving him meant he, too, had passed. But, no, the old fellow was still breathing, occasionally twitching as if in troubled sleep. Hold on, old man. We will get to you soon.

  He gripped the sword Tasinal had given him, drawing strength from the knowledge of what it was, and who had once wielded it. If they had any chance at all, it lay with Aiul, Logrus, and whatever they were planning. Ahmed glanced toward the pair and gave them a single, slow nod. We are allies now, it seems. I will follow your lead.

  Across the room, the wicked sorceress they called Ariano stared at the madman, her eyes narrow with suspicion. “What are you doing, Lothrian?”

  Lothrian laughed and spread his arms at her, his face growing bright and animated. “What any of you would have done, had you seen the potential!” His humor fell away as quickly as it had come. He regarded her with a cold, calculated stare. “Are you with me or not?”

  Ariano stared at him for long moments, for once, indecisive. “With you for what?”

  Lothrian’s eyebrows rose, and he smiled again. “Why, everything my dear!”

  “And the cost?”

  He grew serious again. “Everyone else.”

  Ariano stood in silence, her face unreadable, not answering. Lothrian waited a few moments, then gave her a curt nod, as if taking her silence for assent, and turned back to the lion statue in the black pool. He produced the pieces of the eye and began assembling them.

  Ahmed’s every instinct screamed for him that this was their last chance, to throw caution to the wind and charge with everything he had. But he remembered quite clearly his conversation with Maranath outside Nihlos. There would come a moment, and he would know it. I see no moment. I see only suicide now.

  Lothrian smiled as he pressed a sphere into the eye socket of Ahmed’s half of the tiny lion’s head, then held the two halves together and with a triumphant grin, applied them to the neck of the lion statue.

  His face fell as nothing happened. He tried again, tapping the pieces vigorously against the stump of the neck several times, his face lit from below by the glowing pool, turning his growing fury into something almost demonic.

  Slowly, eyes full of menace, he turned to Aiul. “Boy, you think to trick me?” he snarled.

  Logrus answered in a dull voice, “We mean to kill you.”

  Lothrian scoffed, and his humor returned. Holding the pieces of the Eye in an outstretched hand, he began to slowly turn. As he faced Ahmed, he stopped, both eyebrows rising high on his head as his mouth contorted in anger. “Where is the real piece, Southlander?”

  Of all the things the sorcerer might have asked of him, this was the one Ahmed least expected. He had no answer prepared, and stammered as he gave the only one that came to mind. “I don’t understand.”

  Ahmed could almost see flame in Lothrian’s burning blue eyes. The sorcerer clutched at the air and snatched his hand toward his chest. Ahmed felt invisible, irresistible force seize him and drag him forward, his feet skidding on the cold, damp stone. He came to a stop, arms pinned to his sides, almost nose to nose with Lothrian. The sorcerer’s scowl seemed to radiate heat like the sun. “Give it to me!”

  Ahmed heard the clatter of blades clearing scabbards, and turned his head, knowing what he would see. His men, Sandilianus at their head, were readying a charge. “Stand down!” he shouted.

  With several muttered curses, they obeyed. Ahmed turned away from their reproachful stares and looked Lothrian in the eye. “I do not know what you seek, villain. Kill me if you must. I do not fear death.”

  Lothrian’s face again quickly transformed from utter fury to wry amusement. “You seem sincere.” He tapped a finger against his cheek as
he considered. “Perhaps you really don’t know. Which means I will have to tear you apart to find it. It’s nothing personal. You seem a nice enough fellow.” He raised a hand high overhead and twisted it into a claw.

  Ilaweh, if this is how it ends, if we must fail, give me the strength to die well.

  Mei! Why won’t these fools simply realize they are beaten?

  Lothrian saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and spun in time to see the bearded, dark-skinned assassin leaping through the air at him. The man had told them his name at some point, but Lothrian hadn’t bothered to remember it. By all rights he shouldn’t even still be alive. None of them should, except the ones he wanted as witnesses to his ascension, but they refused to see the inevitable.

  Had there been time to sigh in frustration, Lothrian would have indeed indulged in the pose, but as it was, he had to react too quickly. He reached up and grasped toward the flying fool, stopping him mid-hurtle. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the look of confusion and frustration on his would-be assassin’s face. “Fools! You are brave, but this is a waste of my time!” He clenched a fist and grinned as his new prisoner howled in agony.

  Why do you try to resist a god?

  Ahmed realized that, for the moment, they were all forgotten. Aiul had taken the opportunity the Elgarite’s distraction had created, and leapt into the black pool. Ahmed was uncertain what the man intended, but it would surely be momentous.

  He looked back at his men, and smiled to see Sandilianus had recovered. Ahmed tried to move his arms, but they were still tightly pinned. He caught Sandilianus’s eyes and held them a moment, then nodded, praying the man would understand his gesture: be ready.

  Sandilianus and Eleran, grim faced, nodded back.

  Ahmed offered a silent prayer for the Elgarite as well, and for a moment, he thought Ilaweh had indeed intervened. He knew well the feel of a god’s touch, the sensations of his work. It had a smell, a taste, a sound, unlike the minor magic’s of the Meites. But he quickly realized his error. The sensations were not leather and charred coal, or the ring of steel on steel, but the acrid copper of fresh blood, the reek of freshly opened guts. And the sound—

  The sound was a shriek of fury like nothing he had ever heard.

  It’s come down to this.

  Aiul knew he should feel more excited, angry perhaps, betrayed even, but in truth, what he felt was a mixture of deep grief and cool acceptance. Necessary, like Logrus always says.

  Still, it was a hard thing to do. First Lara and their unborn child, then his mother. And now Papa.

  I am just correcting my own mistake.

  Logrus wailed in misery. Aiul had no doubt that Papa intended to crush him to death, would have already save that he wanted to draw things out as a demonstration, an object lesson for others that might choose to stand against him instead of meekly going to their doom. ‘This is the way you will die if you oppose me!’ he would say. Papa had always been one for object lessons. One was supposed to simply accept it.

  No. Not me. Not anymore.

  It was a bad idea. Aiul knew it, even as he charged ahead with the plan. But anything is better than just waiting to die. Aiul raised both hands over his head and reached out to Elgar. He thought of his despair in prison, his horror at watching Lara and Kariana fighting, and, ironically, his utter loathing of the very creature he intended to revive.

  As he felt the warm embrace of Elgar’s fury, the blood flowing up him again like a cloak, he cried out in a voice that shook Torium once again, “Rise! Rise and remember!”

  Logrus’s wail stopped at once, and, to Aiul’s great satisfaction, Lothrian turned a near panicked face to him and cried out in high pitched, fearful voice, “What are you doing boy?”

  Aiul spoke back not in his own voice, but in Elgar’s: “I am Avenger.”

  As they all looked on in horror, the blackened, shattered body of the Master of Torium shuddered, then slowly rose, its undead eyes glowing with green malevolence, its razor-filled maw and sword-like claws a hundred pointed promises of painful death.

  “Playthings!” it roared, its fetid, wet breath rushing over them all, a fog of putrid, cadaverous gas. “I will rend you all!”

  As Lothrian’s focus shifted to fend off the Master, Logrus fell to the ground. He hit hard and rose quickly, nose gushing from the impact against the stone, but he barely felt anything, so great was the relief from escaping the sorcerer’s crushing grip.

  The Master charged forward with a mad shriek and snatched Lothrian up by his legs like a doll. “You will suffer this time, Monster!” it roared as it swung him like a flail against the floor.

  Lothrian hit the stones with a meaty smack, howling in pain and struggling in vain against the Master’s grip. The stone beneath him cracked from the force of the blow.

  Logrus scrabbled backward on all fours like a spider, desperately trying to avoid the Master’s stamping feet and Lothrian’s flailing body as the Master pounded his victim against the floor repeatedly.

  I must warn the others! From outside, he could already hear the thunderous cries. Aiul told them to remember!

  Rithard watched it all in vague, undefined horror. As usual, he didn’t feel it from within so much as a physical sensation. He noticed with distaste that his muscles were twitching all over his body. It was irksome in general, but the tick at his eye was far and away the most annoying. He rubbed at it as he tried to take stock of things.

  Aiul’s companion was running toward them, shouting, “Beware! They are hostile!” Outside, shadows stirred as hulking, vaguely man-shaped things lurched to their feet like drunkards rising from a barroom brawl and began to stagger forward.

  I should never have come. It seemed a fairly certain thing that he would die here, and if that were to be so, Rithard wanted there to be a reason. He shrugged off Caelwen’s ministrations and cast about for his medical bag. “Go. Fight,” he said. “I’ll do what I can for the rest.”

  Caelwen gave him a quick wave and drew his blade as Rithard crawled toward the downed Meites. He might have walked, but he saw no reason to draw attention to himself. If I can get them conscious, they can likely save themselves.

  He held on to that notion like a drowning man would a log, determined to do what he could for as long as he could, until the battle came to him. Caelwen and another Nihlosian Rithard did not know joined the Southlanders and Aiul’s companion and rushed to block the entrance from the new threat.

  It didn’t take long to reach his patients. Behind him the sounds of pitched battle raged. In front of him, the roars and screams of another battle played out.

  One look at Maklin was enough to know there was no help for him. His head had been dashed to a pulp against the floor, its contents scattered. Maranath was little better, his skull clearly fractured, but he clung doggedly to life, drawing slow, shuddering breaths.

  Sadrik, however, was relatively whole, save for the hideous gash on his leg that was even now pumping blood over the stone floor. Rithard spared Maranath a final glance and moved to the younger sorcerer. Hold on, old man. You’re next.

  Rithard tore a strip of cloth from Maklin’s robe and fashioned a tourniquet for Sadrik’s leg. Simple enough. Now for the dangerous part. He withdrew a vial of smelling salts from his bag, noting with detached irritation that a bottle of alcohol and several other components had been smashed in the blast.

  It was entirely possible that Sadrik had neck injuries that would be worsened, perhaps even kill him if he moved. It was also not out of the realm of possibility that an injured Meite suddenly revived might well lash out at the nearest target.

  Rithard had no idea how the battle before him would play out. The beast seemed far stronger, but the fact that Lothrian was still alive after being smashed against the floor and walls spoke well for his resilience. Ariano tried to help, hurling chunks of stone and anything else she could find at the beast, but it simply shrugged off her assault, cackling, and swung Lothrian at her like a club, knocking her flying.
/>
  This is not medically sound, Sadrik, but we need you now. He jammed the bottle under the wounded sorcerer’s nose and cringed against the myriad possibilities of disaster.

  To Rithard’s surprise, Sadrik blinked, made a disgusted face, and then looked about, confusion in his eyes. “What happened?”

  Rithard grunted. “Lothrian. He betrayed us, and Ariano is with him. Then monsters came. Everyone is killing each other. Confusing enough?”

  Sadrik glanced at the elders and raised an eyebrow. Rithard shook his head. “I’ll do what I can for Maranath. There’s nothing for Maklin. He’s gone.”

  Sadrik looked almost wistful for a moment, then his face filled with resolve, and he rose, seemingly well, and offered Rithard a wicked grin. “Thank you, my friend. I knew there was a reason I spared your life!”

  Rithard couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well, we have similar taste in women after all. Let’s see if you can eat someone else’s lunch, eh?”

  “I’ve arrived late and don’t have a score card. Who are we killing?”

  Rithard looked about at the multiple fights and sighed. Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid. “I have no idea.”

  Sadrik chuckled darkly. “I have several!”

  It took Ahmed a moment to realize he was free. Once the thing snatched Lothrian up, Ahmed had been able to move his arms, but he had been so busy gawking at the spectacle, his tongue nearly fell from his open mouth. His freedom had only just now sunk in.

  To be fair to himself, Ariano, too, had stood stunned for a moment before she could react. Her assault would have killed any normal man or beast, but the thing did not look like it could be stopped by anything short of an army.

  Of course, it couldn’t have chosen a better target. It paused a moment, leering at Ariano, then swung Lothrian against the wall again. The sorcerer cried out, but Ahmed saw no blood.