by Ari Marmell
Before either horse or rider could begin to respond to the sudden maneuver, War tensed both knees and straightened once more to his feet. With the flat of both hands, he lifted and threw rider and steed together. Propelled by both the Horseman’s unnatural might and their own forward momentum, they tumbled and flailed across the battlefield, fully airborne, until colliding with a deafening, bone-rending crash against the second of the three Knights of Perdition.
War ducked into a roll back the way he’d come, passing easily beneath the blade of the last of the trio, and shot upright into a fearsome leap. His skin had resumed the color and texture of flesh, and Chaoseater was again clutched in hand. He landed hard beside the entangled riders, blade readied in a two-fisted grip. Metal, demons, and mounts screamed in unison as it punched through armor, through flesh, through bone, until the tip once more rested in the sickly soil.
From his crouch, War gazed calmly up at the remaining rider, some few dozen paces distant—and though the demon’s face remained hidden behind shadow and steel, the Horseman had no difficulty reading his enemy’s fear.
The Knight’s mount reared, the bale-fire crackled, and another burst of unholy force shot across the earth. War, his ears pounding as the pain of his injuries and the surging flame of bloodlust clashed and roiled in his soul, yanked Chaoseater from the heaped corpses. He offered the champion of Hell his broadest smile as he waited for it to come.
THE SERPENTINE DEMONS WOVE complex knots in the sky as they swerved and dodged every attack the angels could hurl at them. Death had once overheard this sort of demon called a “shadowcaster,” and had initially wondered why—until he realized the damn things were blind as mushrooms. Their forked and flickering tongues tasted vibrations on the earth and in the air, and their unnatural flight made them far more maneuverable than the angels. The shadowcasters’ ability to avoid even the best-aimed halberd fire was matched only by their own unnatural precision with those balls of green flame. Against the ground-based forces or the large and ponderous duskwings, the angelic halberdiers were devastating; against the shadowcasters, more than a dozen had already fallen, crashing in heaps of singed meat and blazing feathers.
Death, however, needed no wings, and was not so readily burned.
He soared over the battlefield, standing tall on the back of an abnormally massive duskwing, almost half again as large as the one that his weight had brought down in Lilith’s laboratory. The bat-demon shrieked and gibbered, its world awash in viscous pain. Harvester, split now into two scythes, served as reins: Each tip sat snug within the bloody, mangled flesh of one of the creature’s shoulders, and the Horseman needed only the slightest tug to inform the duskwing in which way it had better turn.
After a few desperate attempts at shaking its Rider, including a maddened upside-down flutter that still hadn’t been enough to dislodge either the scythes or their wielder, it had given up the struggle and meekly obeyed.
Despite the immediacy of the carnage and bloodshed, Death couldn’t help but spend a moment circling, staring with unabashed astonishment at the wake of devastation slicing through the figures below. War, as far as his older brother could determine, had lost himself fully to the havoc of battle. Not merely the initial trio of Knights of Perdition, but two more of those hellish warriors—as well as several dozen lesser demons of various and sundry types—littered the battlefield.
Literally littered the battlefield, as not a single one of them lay in any fewer than three pieces.
Chaoseater moved so swiftly it seemed to form a solid arc. War’s cloak streamed behind him in tatters; his armor, scored and blackened, smoked visibly in the somewhat lighter haze; blood streamed from a veritable legion of wounds scattered across his body. The younger Horseman didn’t appear to care, or even to have noticed. A dull reverberation echoed from the whirling figure, and Death was stunned to realize that what he heard was nothing less than a continuous, breathless battle cry.
It was, the airborne Rider realized with a faint twinge in his gut, a damn good thing that they weren’t counting on any meticulous plans or tactics for the remainder of the struggle. War didn’t seem sentient enough anymore to follow them; and in any effort to halt him in his tracks, Death wasn’t certain that even he would come out the victor.
With a quick shake, he dragged his attentions back to his own circumstances and left War to his efforts. The massive demonic bat wouldn’t remain aloft much longer—with each flap of the wings, each jolt of the body, Harvester sawed deeper into muscles and tendons—but that was fine by Death. The creature had gotten him where he needed to be.
He hauled left until the screeching thing began to circle. He watched the airborne battles beneath him, meticulously tracking the undulations of the shadowcasters. Only when he was certain he could anticipate them, despite their erratic paths, did he act.
Death jerked both scythes free, dragging one deep across the duskwing’s spine to ensure it would not survive the coming plunge, and dropped from its back.
Even his calculations, his reflexes, weren’t quite on target, not given the preternatural awareness and constant winding of the demonic serpents. His target sensed him coming and whipped itself aside, leaving the Horseman with nothing between himself and the corrupted earth far below.
Just as he plummeted past the snickering demon, Death lashed out. Neither of the two scythes he’d carried was long enough to bridge the gap—but then, Harvester was no longer two scythes, but one of far longer haft. The shadowcaster howled, partly in bewilderment but mostly in agony, as the blade sliced across its body. Using the weapon as a hook, much as he had on the mountain spur in the Crowfather’s realm, Death swung under the creature, transforming his momentum into a backward flip so he now stood atop the snaking coils.
Not precisely the most stable footing—especially since the shadowcaster was currently in the process of splitting almost in half—but enough for the Rider’s needs. He tensed and leapt, landing on the second shadowcaster almost as he would a horse, legs clamped tight to either side. Harvester, now a pair of heavy knives, rose to strike …
When two more of the demons swooped in from the side and launched Hellfire directly at him.
Death’s left arm tensed, swinging Mortis into the path of the oncoming missiles. Searing heat licked around the edges of the shield, and the tips of his hair crisped and sizzled, but nothing more.
An instant later, Mortis howled.
Shimmering waves, something between a heat mirage and a fever dream, billowed from the Grand Abomination’s single eye. With deceptive speed, it bridged the distance between Death and yet another of the shadowcasters—the fifth and final member of this particular group.
Mortis’s howl ceased, and the demon’s began. An enormous chunk of flesh simply vanished from its body, letting blood and viscera pour, steaming, into the open air. Death couldn’t help note, as the shadowcaster fell from sight, that the size and shape of the wound perfectly matched the fanged maw of the device he wore.
And it’s nearly dead, at only a fraction of its former strength …
Death shook off his astonishment; time for that later. Instead he drove both blades home, then hurled himself from the spasming body toward the next nearest shadowcaster, still half frozen in bewilderment at its failed attack.
It had been a near thing, this demonic assault, something for which he and the angels had been woefully unprepared. Still, it looked, after a few questionable moments, as though they would once again come out on top.
Assuming nothing else unexpected happened, of course.
WHERE THE HELL—so to speak—had the demons come from this time?
Not that it actually mattered, not really. In fact, their timing couldn’t have been better. He and Belisatra hadn’t expected the Horsemen to find their constructs so swiftly; nor had they anticipated that the brothers would bring angels with them. They’d assumed their enemy would conduct the search by ground, not by air. And as such, they hadn’t been ready, hadn’t bee
n in position to launch their ambush once the constructs came under attack.
Then, almost as though they were a gift from Fate or the Creator, the demons had appeared to delay the Horsemen and the angels. And that had provided all the time they needed.
Belisatra wanted to wait; wanted to learn more about the demonic forces, figure out how they fit into ongoing events, what their presence meant for the larger plan. But no; there would be no waiting! Fire burned in his soul, hatred churned through his thoughts. He would have the blood of the Ravaiim. He would have the corpses of the Horsemen, and the first of so many angels to come. And he would have them now!
Hadrimon drew Black Mercy from the holster at his side and took, screaming, to the skies. He didn’t even look to see if the others were following; he knew they would, knew they must. It was time.
He would have them now!
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
OF COURSE,” HE MUTTERED TO HIMSELF. DEATH HAD just landed with a resounding whump, surrounded by a cloud of dust and various lengths of plummeting shadowcasters, when the first of the brass myrmidons came spinning through the ubiquitous murk. He’d heard their unique high-pitched whirring an instant earlier, had known what he’d see before the first even appeared. “This was absolutely the worst time for them to appear, so naturally it would be now. Most common substance in Creation is dramatic irony.”
Still, as he hefted Harvester and wearily surveyed the situation—or what he could see of it—he decided it might not be that bad. The constructs had moved in across their flank. That meant they were hitting the demons at the same moment as the angels, and the demons were already hitting back, taking some of the pressure off Death’s allies. And while the angels were verging on exhausted, their earlier encounter proved that they were more than a match for this particular enemy. So long as the constructs didn’t appear in numbers several times their prior efforts, they—
The Horseman shuddered, a chill such as he hadn’t felt in ages running across his normally unfeeling skin. Something cast a deep shadow over his mind, over his soul, until even the memory of warmth had faded away.
“Is that—?”
He didn’t know when War had appeared at his side, but wasn’t at all surprised to find him there. The spiritual taint of the Abomination had apparently shocked him back to his senses. The younger Horseman’s armor was scored and singed, small splotches of blood were drying on his gauntlets and his left cheek, but Death was certain that the faint uncertainty in his voice was caused by something more than the pain of his injuries.
“Yes,” Death told him. “One of them, at least, is awake.”
A single shot rang out. It was no louder than any other gun, and certainly quieter than the Redemption cannons. Yet everyone felt the report in a way unlike any other; it was a roiling in the gut, an involuntary flinch, a quick skip of the heart.
One of Azrael’s angels fell dead through the fumes, landing almost at Death’s feet. His flesh was shrunken, his skin maggot white, as though he’d been dead for some hours. His body bore no visible wounds, save for a single graze along the left wing.
“Black Mercy,” Death said. “Any wound it delivers, every wound it delivers, kills, no matter how minor.”
“Even us, brother?”
“We’re more than we were when we rode with the Nephilim, but enough to stand against that? I couldn’t begin to guess, and I’d as soon not learn the hard way.”
“Makes sense.” Another shot rang out, another angel fell, and War scowled into the fog. “He’s keeping too high. I can’t even see where he is!”
Death abruptly sprinted across the field, hurtling fallen bodies and narrow crevices without pause. War, startled and somewhat encumbered by his armor, could scarcely keep up, but the elder Horseman seemed not to notice.
“Azrael!”
The scholar, his hair limp and his eyes drooping with fatigue, spun at Death’s call.
“Need you to do something about this fog.”
“It won’t be for long,” the angel warned. “I can’t maintain the magic over an area this large. That’s why I—”
“Fine! Briefly is fine, just do it!”
Though his entire visage curled in distaste at being so addressed, Azrael raised his hands and began to chant.
The fumes swirled, drifting apart in a widening sphere. The flatlands around them were crawling with constructs; their numbers were, if not overwhelming, then at least somewhat daunting. Above, so high he was barely a speck even to Death’s keen vision, circled an angel who could only have been Hadrimon. Distant though they were, the Horsemen—and the angels, albeit to a lesser degree—could sense the presence of the Grand Abomination he wielded; a tumor in Creation.
Except … Hadrimon was maintaining his height, not diving. So why was the sensation growing stronger …?
Again Death broke into a run, and this time War and Azrael, as well as several other winged soldiers, remained at his side. The Horseman scrambled to the edge of a small rise—not much of a dune, but all that these open plains had to offer other than the various ravines—and watched the fog rapidly retreat before Azrael’s magics.
Belisatra stood revealed, clad in blocky armor, surrounded by more than a hundred of her artificial soldiers. She held before her what appeared to be a rifle made of bone, linked by a cord of hair to … something. Something that loomed, dark and heavy, even before the vapors had faded.
“Oh, no …” Death’s shoulders slumped. It was destroyed! We were so sure that one was destroyed!
“What is it?” War asked, more alarmed by his brother’s reaction than by anything he’d yet seen on the battlefield.
The response, when it came, was barely a whisper. “Earth Reaver …”
What emerged from the fog, following the tug of that hair like a hound on a leash, was a mobile platform the height of a four-story building. It crept, slow but inexorable, on four quivering crab-like legs, constructed of linked femurs and other long bones. Its upper body—if body was even an applicable word for this monstrosity—consisted of nine separate tentacles the color of rotting flesh. In fact, they were rotting flesh, for each tentacle was formed of dozens of handless arms, connected one to the next, wrist-to-shoulder. And at the end of each of these nine limbs, a shrunken, lipless mouth, constructed from jawbones and skin, blackened gums and jagged teeth.
In the center of those tentacles, looming above the rest of the grotesque device, rose an enormous obsidian mirror.
“Tell your people to fall back,” Death ordered Azrael. The words were ashes and bile in his mouth.
War spun. “What?”
“We are the greatest of the White City,” the angel proclaimed, holding himself almost rigid. “We do not—”
Death’s fist closed on the fabric of Azrael’s robe, just above the edge of his breastplate, and lifted the angel clear off his feet. “If you want any of the White City’s greatest to be alive this time tomorrow,” he spat, shaking Azrael like a child, “then run!”
His grip opened and Azrael landed with an awkward stumble. The angel’s face had gone red with fury, but War stepped between them before one or the other could act further. “I’ve never seen my brother like this,” he said. “Perhaps we should—”
A symphony of hisses, clatters, and squeals sounded from the thing Death had called Earth Reaver. The four legs halted and dug into the soil, followed by the awful tendrils. The wet sounds of chewing drifted across the plains as all nine mouths literally ate their way down into the dirt.
When Death stopped arguing and ran for cover, War and Azrael were wise enough to do the same. What they did not know, what troubled Death even as he pounded across the brittle earth, was that “cover” would do them precious little good.
Behind them, the Maker aimed her rifle at the mass of combatants still battling in the center of everything, apparently unconcerned that she was targeting more than a few of her own constructs in addition to many angels and demons. The great obsidian mirror rotated a
nd angled itself with a low grinding, tracking the smaller lens of obsidian in the barrel of the gun, so that each was always aimed at the same spot as the other.
Belisatra squeezed the trigger.
A blur passed through the ground, so fast as to be almost invisible, between the platform and the target. And when it struck, the ground exploded.
Not just any detonation, this. Not a column of fire. Not a geyser. Where the Grand Abomination spoke, there burst a full-fledged, world-shaking volcanic eruption.
Earth Reaver. The Nephilim had christened it well.
The initial blast launched enough debris to plug the sky: dust; shattered stone; the dried skin and sludgy humors of this infected realm; and tiny bits of what had once been angels, demons, and constructs—all became a cloudy film that cast the plains into early midnight. Cooked and diseased meat wafted on the air, thick enough to taste, let alone smell. Jagged rock and blazing cinders rained in vicious squalls, shattering and burning whatever they struck. The ground rippled and split, forming a whole new array of crevices and slow-moving rivers of pink-veined puss.
All of which, really, was just a precursor for what was to come.
If the initial cloud had briefly cast the region into artificial night, the spout of lava that followed was a bloody, hellish dawn. It surged from the newly made pit, engulfing everything it could catch. Most of the demons, and more than a handful of constructs, vanished into the roiling torrent. Only a few angels were caught within, but of those who managed to fly up and over the lava flow, almost half died anyway, either struck by falling debris or plummeting once their wings ignited in the rising heat.
Behind the stunted dune—poor protection indeed, but better than none at all—a heap of debris shifted, jolted from within. Dirt and sludge sluiced away, revealing the Horsemen, Azrael, and a handful of angels. In addition to the smeared filth coating them head-to-toe, most had suffered various degrees of singeing and burning, though Death had an almost comical clean spot across his face and chest roughly the size and shape of Mortis.