by K. J. Coble
“And I’m with the Weasel,” Heathen growled as he materialized at Anzo’s size, giving his axe a shake to loosen globs of blood and gristle.
“Watch where you swing that thing,” Anzo said by way of reply, unwilling to show just how relieved he was to see the giant. Heathen’s grin showed that he knew, anyway.
Durrim’s party weaved in and out amongst the onrushing Faces on the slope below. Javelins thrown from horseback punched through attackers, pinned two together at a time, pinned thrashing bodies to the ground. Swords sliced hands from wrists, opened shoulders and necks and skulls in crimson gouts. But Hamrak were going down, too, dragged from their saddles, entire mounts and riders thrown into tangles of flailing hoof, flailing limb and flashing weapons.
Straedus, with an axe in his shoulder, folded over with a spear under his ribs. Endus, helmet gone and face a mask of blood, broke loose of the melee and galloped for the trees, a number of riders falling back with him. Durrim, his armor battered and leggings gashed, wheeled in a frenzy, the Sword of the Hamrak tacky to the hilt with gore. For a moment, his eyes met Anzo’s across the field.
“Back!” Anzo waved wildly. “You brave idiot, get back!”
With a bawl gone shrill over the fight, Durrim led the remnants of his retinue in a twisting escape route across the front of the Faces, hacking and gashing as they passed. Their foes swirled in their wake, momentarily dazed. But only momentarily.
“Hold, lads!” Anzo cried as the Hamrak horsemen cleared their front. “Just a little more!”
The Faces cringed as one, gave a communal screech and erupted towards the tree line. A trickle of terror went through Anzo’s core. These men wore no armor, came on bare-chested with only weapons and bucklers. A brute at their fore wore a skinned mask that still bore the tags of its former occupiers’ reddish whiskers, his chest bloody with gashes. But watching in the peculiar, adrenalized slow-motion of battle calm, Anzo picked out the details of the wounds—not wounds; sigils of unknown meaning, freshly carved into the torso. Others bore the same and the witch fog Anzo had noticed before seemed to bunch about them, steaming from the cuts, themselves.
“Berserkers,” Heathen breathed through clenched teeth, “pledged to death on the battlefield.”
“Well, they’re going to find it.” Anzo snarled. He raised his hand to the archers. “Give them a taste, lads, and don’t stop until they’re full!”
Bow strings thrummed with released tension. Arrows scythed through the oncoming Faces and kept coming. Berserkers staggered and fell, piling over one another, bodies pin-cushioned with Hamrak fletching. But still they ground on into the storm. A warrior with arrows broken off in chest and back dragged himself over slain comrades, a knife clenched in bloody teeth. Another with arrows protruding from both eyes stumbled ahead of the rest to throw an axe that didn’t make it halfway to the archers.
The huntsmen poured on the arrows with the desperation and abandon of panic, fingers gone bloody at the strings, shots wild or unaimed. But the targets before them were so tightly packed as to preclude the need for precision. Rank after rank crumpled, corpses heaping in the stomped gore-sludge, tangling the feet of those following behind. Finally, even their pledges to death failed and the berserkers crumbled and fell back.
The archers cheered, were joined by Hamrak of the shieldwall who’d witnessed the slaughter, even as they plied their own. But Anzo found he couldn’t join it, a strange cool congealing in his belly. The eerie fog billowed forward over the carnage, bunching in places where berserkers still twisted on the ground. The disembodied voices he’d heard before buzzed in his skull, maddening him to the point of shaking his head. Heathen gave him an odd look, eyes glazing with fear to match his own.
One of the archers shrieked and pointed.
A berserker spiny with arrow shafts rose to his feet. A bowman put a shaft squarely into his chest but the wound seemed to have no effect. Blood poured from the patterns carved into the man’s flesh. With a gasp of disgust, Anzo realized that the sigil was spreading across the man’s body. His flesh was peeling away, sloughing off in quivering, pinkish slabs. Bright red musculature bunched underneath. Spines emerged. The dead man transmogrified as he shed what had been a human coil and became a meaty, dog-like beast of grinning fangs and eyes blazing cyan.
Dozens more were rising and changing behind the thing in a similar fashion.
Grondomagnus’ demons had come.
“Hold!” Anzo tried to cry but panic made his voice a squeak. A wild glance to his right showed him first a handful, then dozens of Hamrak huntsmen breaking away into the woods with bleats of terror.
The first demon met Anzo’s gaze across the steaming, torn field. Its fanged grin widened while eyes went white hot. Anzo shivered, locked in place with all the fears of a life spent ignoring them come howling back in that horrendous stare.
The creature bellowed and charged. Brutish breaths huffed out as it came on, one moment at a man’s sprint, the next coming down to all fours as it gained speed. Muscles bunched, flexed for a leap that would put it at Anzo’s throat.
Purple lightning took it in the face. For a blinding instant, bones were obvious, fluorescing. Then Anzo was flung back on his buttocks by the detonation, ears ringing, bits of meat and bone showering down into his face.
Varya reined in behind him, her mount preternaturally calm, linked to her will, it seemed. Lightning fountained from an outstretched hand, ravaging into the field and finding the abominations. Where the purplish forks touched, demons became torches. But they surged on towards her, ignoring everything else, drawn to the epicenter of the killing power. Her magic savaged them, blew them to bits or turned them to fireballs that collapsed into piles of cinder long before reaching her.
She was glorious and terrible in that instant, as Anzo and Heathen gawked at her. Her sorcery shocked all other features from the battle, thunderclaps and eye-ripping brilliance, explosions and screams of otherworldly things blasted back to their infernal source. Nothing—of this world or otherwise—could survive her attention.
The Hamrak line split to the left, behind her. Shields and pieces of armor flew, were joined by blood and screams. Shiny, red whirlwinds of spines and fang tore through the Hamrak. The demons were coming from every quarter. Hamrak warriors were an afterthought, a barrier to be trampled in the beast’s stampede to get at Varya.
One made a leap for her. Heathen’s axe cleaved it from shoulder to pelvis, opening its guts in a smoking spray. It kept flailing as the giant ripped the weapon free for another stroke. Another demon rose up behind him.
Screaming with a voice now detached from conscious thought, Anzo lunged around Heathen’s unprotected side and skewered the monster. It came up the blade at him, claws fumbling for purchase on his mail corselet. He released the sword, cast about for another weapon as the creature thrashed in the snow, found a discarded spear. The demon got back to its feet only to take the spear point down the throat. Still, it pressed the attack, fangs working about the spear shaft, even as its frenzied motions drove it further down its windpipe into its organs. It sagged finally. Anzo got a grip on Enu’s saber and ripped it free, let the unholy mass fall dead.
Varya screamed. A demon rolled in amongst her mount’s legs and swept its talons across the horse’s belly, eviscerating the brute and spilling Varya from the saddle, forks of energy still writhing wildly about her. The demon scrambled over the thrashing mare at her.
With a bellow, Heathen spun and drove his axe through its spine, cleaved it practically in half. Anzo fell in at the giant Vhurr’s side and the two formed the last perimeter around Varya. The demons snapped around them, a starved, feral pack, charging then falling back as the pair cut down one after another down. All around them the battle had lost any semblance of order, was anarchy and blood, Hamrak and Face intermixing, Orkall’s Test at its most fierce.
And then it was over.
The last of the demons joined its fellows, cleaved and piled at Anzo and Heathen’s feet
. Beyond the terrible circle of their little battle, only friends remained, Hamrak cheering, pressing forward, gone wild with the release that comes after a great trial has finished. Horns blared and shield rims rang with the clatter of weapons beaten in triumph.
The slopes below the army of the Free Cantons went black with the flood of Grondomagnus’ routing host.
Anzo rose, hadn’t realized he’d dropped to his knees in exhaustion. He scanned the chaos, found Theregond standing above the others, splashed in blood and blowing a horn till his face reddened. A strange call was answering him from beyond the lines. Tossing and shrieks of outrage boiled behind the Gevruum as a pack of riders slammed into their rear. Black clad horsemen with flowing white-blonde locks rived amongst them. Suddenly, it became clear to Anzo: the Arriaks had turned on their allies. Grondomangus may have gotten to Ardegant and his tribe, but it appeared Theregond had gotten to the riders from beyond the Wastes.
It was over.
“What’s happening?” Varya rasped. She was on her side, clutching her ribs.
Anzo knelt beside her, released his sword, the fingers roaring with pain at having their death clutch undone. “Where does it hurt?”
“I’ll be all right,” she replied. “Tell me what you see.”
Anzo waved a shaking arm to Heathen. “Stay with her, kid.”
“I know.” He put a hand on her head, stroked her hair and offered her a hint of comforting smile belied by the gore smeared across his face.
“I’ve seen men after a battle.” Anzo gripped Heathen’s arm. “Stay with her.”
“I know, Anzo.”
“You idiots, I said I’ll be all right!” She levered herself upright with a grimace. “But tell me what is happening!”
Anzo stood and inhaled, looked across the terrible wreck of the field. The air tasted of blood, effluvium and hell. He winced and spat. A fragile smile followed.
“Victory. That’s what’s happening.”
Chapter Fourteen
Aftermath
The sun’s agonized descent into dusk was lost on the survivors and victors, huddling amongst the woods behind the hilltop. Encroaching darkness hid some of the day’s cost, took some of Death’s all-encompassing chill from the fore as ale flowed freely and mournful song challenged approaching night. But even among the muffling trees dread was not far, the racket of crows gorging themselves on the battlefield forcing men to raise their voices to be heard.
Theregond had called council to truly gauge the price of victory. Chieftains, their retinues, and men the losses of the day had made leaders, all clenched close about the King’s fire as he listened to the tales and the long, bloody lists of the slain.
Anzo, Heathen and Varya waited outside the inner circle. Varya had permitted Anzo to bind her ribs and wobbled now in the cool, damp dark with barely suppressed pain, her features drawn, lips pinched, but her haunted gaze the worst. Anzo and Heathen had wounds to match and saw to each other’s bandages, but neither took their eyes off the Initiate, frightened by her lack of words, her lack of inflection. Something had gone out of her.
“So, nothing?” Theregond was saying.
Orlek of the Codir stood before him, leathers and tunic torn and bloodied, a bandage about his mane of jet. “There were too many, even broken as they were. And our horses were blown from the fight.” He gripped his sword and threw up his chin. “We will resume the pursuit with dawn.”
“He’s gone, then.” Theregond nudged the fire with a stick. “Damn him! Damn that slippery He-Witch.”
“There are only so many places he can go.” Durrim paused to grimace as a kinsman tightened a blood-stained wrap around his bicep. “With this defeat, his reputation is in tatters. Grondomagnus will find his own Faces turning on him.”
Theregond shook his head, scowling. “This was our best chance at him until spring. By then he will have recovered some of his power, at least. We will have to dig him out like a tic.”
Durrim reached over to the King and clapped him on the knee. “We have victory. For now, isn’t that enough?”
“But the cost...” Theregond looked toward a clump of Thrungi nobles. “Reisdack?”
The oldest of the nobles stood and his features and reddish-blonde whiskers made him a relative of the Thrungi chieftain, perhaps even a brother. “Orkall will have made a place for him at His Table. He has gone to Him in blood and glory.”
“The brave fool.” Theregond grimaced and looked into the fire. “Tell me when the time has come to consign him to the pyre. I will be there.”
The Thrungi lifted their fists as one in the sign of respect. But there were already hints of division amongst them, Anzo noted—knew Theregond would see, as well. Reisdack had held his folk together through personality and threat; without him, the squabbling of succession would commence.
Theregond pondered the fire for a long time. Finally, when the gathered leaders began to shift uncomfortably with the silence, he roused himself to stand and regard them all with a fiery grin. “The price of the thing aside, we have victory, as our young friend has said—” he nudged Durrim “—and that is no small thing. Friends, the gods paled before your might today!”
Cheers, weary but full of pride, rattled the clearing.
Commotion from outside the circle jarred them away. Vhurrs parted to allow a pack of newcomers through. Hisses and the clank of hands going to weapons passed through the gathering as lithe, black-clad figures stepped fluidly through, pale faces haughty under whirling locks of white.
The Arriaks were a tall, fine-boned folk with whip-taut musculatures, lean from the rigors of life on the unforgiving Wastes. They moved with an economy that spoke to years of training and discipline, their accoutrements flawlessly clean, their hands never far from weapons worn with such ease as to nearly be part of them. Their leader sauntered to Theregond’s campfire with a sardonic smile on thin, arrogant lips, hair held back from an angular face by a headband of pewter, his eyes the pale, silvery blue of a polar ice flow.
Anzo’s hand snaked to his sword grip, nerves ramping back to their pre-battle tension. Varya gave him a confused glance, brows creasing further as she noticed the same reaction in Heathen. Without being able to rationalize it, Anzo feared this man with the reflexive hate that comes in discovering a spider in one’s bed sheets.
Theregond strutted around the blaze, laughing softly. “Zulen!” He swept the Arriak into a meaty-armed embrace that the other returned. They were sledge hammer and scalpel, together. Theregond spoke a phrase in a fluid tongue, unnatural interspersed between the gutturals of his native North Branch Vhurrian. The Arriak, Zulen, cackled and pulled out of the bear hug, turned and gestured to his comrades, who led a ragged line of figures forward.
Murmurs became curses and metal sang as weapons flew free of sheaths.
Ardegant and a half dozen Gevruum cringed as their foes bustled around them, rained insults and globs of spittle into their faces. They were bound together by lengths of leather rope, twisted so tight about wrists that hands purpled and dried blood crusted about the knots. All had been stripped of armor and some wobbled from wounds left untreated.
Ardegant’s right arm hung somewhat lower than the left, a huge gash in the shoulder and yellowy-white glint of shattered collarbone poking through. But the chieftain of the Gevruum managed defiance, smirking through a mask of cuts, bruises, and dried gore. When an Erevulan warrior stalked close to spit into his face, he spat back. The warrior’s sword arm shot up for the kill.
“Hold.” Theregond didn’t have to raise his voice for the word to freeze his men in place. Smiling with deceptive good humor, he strode up to the traitor, brushing the other warrior aside. “You lived after all, wretch.”
“Our positions would be opposite had you not bribed these horse-fuckers.” Ardegant glared at the Arriaks. “Cowardice won you the day.”
Theregond put up a hand to his men as howls of outrage erupted. The others calmed, he turned back, still smiling, to Ardegant. “I was to
be nailed to a tree, if I recall?”
“Undo these bonds and we’ll make another try at it!”
Theregond chortled. “I’m surprised, Ardegant. You impress me. After your treachery, I had expected a whelp’s pleas for mercy.”
“Why waste the air, giving you that which you so desire?” He thrust up his chin, though even that motion caused the color to run from his face as bone fragments grated. “I have given Orkall what He demanded of me. I have stood against one who has betrayed everything we are, for a liar’s God!”
“And Grondomangus, with his demons, was any different?" Theregond snorted.
Ardegant’s scowl twisted, words held in check by a moment of uncertainty. He flared his nostrils, the smirk returned with a wild gleam to his eyes. “At least he didn’t clothe his intentions in falsehoods!”
Theregond’s expression darkened. “Now you bore me.”
“Allow me to do more,” the traitor snarled. He glanced about at the gathering. “You are all damned. You have linked your destinies to a lie. This dog will lead you all into darkness. Others have known it.” His glare went to Durrim. “Your father knew it, but could resist no longer.”
“You know nothing of my father!” Durrim lurched forward with a hand on his sword but Theregond blocked him with an upraised arm.
“I know someone silenced him to keep the truth down,” Ardegant hissed.
“Somebody, prepare this slug a tree and some nails.” Theregond waved to one of his retainers. “His prattle will be a lot more amusing when it comes out as screams.”
“I will scream the truth to the end, then!” Ardegant struggled as a pair of Arriaks gripped him from either side. “I will tell all how you betrayed your people and your god to One who has wandered back from Hell to pollute our world.”