An arc of flame swept past the palace ramparts. One of the golden eagles sped toward the statue of Gammir as it thundered across the plaza, pulping the bones of Sydathians beneath its feet, punishing the earth with strikes of its godly spear. As eyeless ones flooded over the palace gate, Tong looked back at the plaza. Gammir’s statue turned its ruby eyes toward the burning eagle. The bird fell like a comet against his black crown with a fresh burst of flame. The great spear splintered and crumbled, showering black dust across the plaza and nearby rooftops.
For one brief second a golden aura limned the mighty idol, and it seemed carved of precious metal instead of sable stone. It groaned and belched thunder, then collapsed into an immense heap of smoking ash. Its great ruby eyes fell steaming through the dusty vapors to crash somewhere on the far side of the plaza.
The screams of slaves drew Tong’s attention back to the palace gate. A terrible brightness stung his eyes from above. A white panther tall as a stallion stood upon the arch above the gate, breathing a gout of pale flames across the Sydathians. Their bodies withered and fell from the wall like charred sides of beef, crashing and steaming at the feet of the rebels.
The panther roared a deafening challenge. It vomited a fresh blast of white flames, burning the last of the climbing ones from the gate.
Ianthe the Claw had come to defend her citadel.
Tong stared into the beast’s open maw, past the ivory fangs, into the dark void from which the white flames would pour again any second.
This is how his rebellion would end.
Scoured from the earth by Ianthe’s flaming ire.
A piercing screech penetrated his deafness, as the second golden eagle burst from rising smoke and struck the panther with tremendous force. Its flaming wings spread wide over the mighty cat as talons and beak dug into feline flesh. The panther threw its head back in agony, and white flames spurted skyward. Eagle and panther clashed atop the wall as a fresh wave of Sydathians climbed the gate. There was no stopping these eyeless warriors who feared neither flame nor death.
An oversized jungle bat flapped now about the barbed tower at the center of the black palace. The first golden eagle raced from its victory in the slaving plaza, trailing a line of golden flames. When these two beings collided above the city, a third sunburst split the leaden sky. A mass of whirling orange flames obscured their aerial duel.
Atop the palace gate, the white panther caught its avian foe’s wing in powerful jaws and twisted back. Now the burning eagle was Iardu in his gleaming orange robe. The beast held his right arm clamped between its fangs. Its black diamond eyes blazed with triumph.
Panther and sorcerer fell backwards into the courtyard beyond the gate. Chromatic light erupted, glinting on the skins of the Sydathians surmounting the gate.
Thunder and lightning flared beyond the black iron portals. Tong stood ready with sabre and knife. Any moment his eyeless brothers would fling open the gate. His freed men waited, eager to storm the halls of luxury and privilege. Eager to bring the empire of Gammir and Ianthe crashing down.
“Open the gate!” Tolgur shouted, but he need not have bothered.
The gates swung open at the hands of the eyeless ones. A courtyard of grand garden walks, sparkling fountains, and fruiting arbors now stood ablaze with flames of a dozen colors. The charred skeletons of Sydathians lay strewn among the fires. Beyond the burning trees and terraced hedges stood the palace proper; yet between its portico and the stumbling slaves stood a pale Giantess with clawed hands and raging eyes.
Leathery black pinions twitched upon her back, where the bones of her spine protruded like a row of thorns. She clutched Iardu’s limp form by the silvery hair of his head, her fangs sunk deep into his neck. She suckled at his opened throat, guzzling vital fluid. The sorcerer’s robe was torn to shreds, and his frail body hung in bloody tatters, white bones protruding from ruptured flesh. The blue flame no longer danced on his chest. A dark stain had replaced it.
Ianthe raised her white-maned head, spilling crimson from lips and chin. Iardu’s lifeblood sparkled on her throat and breasts. Her eyes, shards of onyx gleaming with dark splendor, turned to the mob of Men and Sydathians.
Tong stood foremost in their midst, the Prince of Slaves come to meet his mistress. Her gaze fell upon him, as if he alone had burst through her gate.
She dropped Iardu’s lifeless body to the ground, where it lay twisted and ragged.
“Come here, slave,” she purred. “Feed me…”
17
Vod’s Blood
Tyro ran from the shadow of the leviathan as it broke the surface of the marsh. His broadsword slashed at greedy tendrils again and again. They shot forward quick as arrows, wrapping about arm, leg, and waist. The monster had already claimed his stallion, tearing it to pieces beneath him.
Men and mounts were snatched into the shuddering darkness, where uncounted mouths devoured them. Three times the oily arms lifted Tyro like a squirming rat, and three times he hacked his way free, plunging into brackish waters.
There was no name for the terror that guarded this swamp. Nothing like it in the legends of Uurz. A living mountain of flesh born of nightmares and madness. And still it keened, a screeching, wailing incantation that might have been some dead language spilling from the mouths of rotted corpses. The sound came from somewhere above, not from the many gnashing mouths that puckered and snapped across its bulk.
Tyro’s heart pounded beneath his golden breastplate, and the filth of the swamp stained every bit of his body. He strove onward through the muck, his boots heavy as iron. His feet made wet sucking noises when he raised them from the mud. He considered abandoning his bronze shield to make himself lighter; a warning in his gut made him keep it.
The next pair of tendrils took him by the legs, lifting him so that he hung upside down. The broadsword slipped from his slimy fingers. He watched it fall blade first into a mound of upturned silt.
He bellowed an animal cry.
I will not die here.
He took the round shield in both hands and drove its sharp edge into the tentacles gripping his legs. The fishy skin split and oozed a dark pus; a dozen more times he brought the shield’s edge down upon the coils, while Uurzians hacked and shrieked and died about him. The war songs of giants filled the night, and then the blast of a war horn. At last his shield broke through the coiled flesh, and he fell once more into the muck.
Raising his sodden head, he recognized the long note that rang through the night. It was the horn of Cerrois, one of the scouts sent to spy on the barbed watchtowers.
“Khyreins!”
Climbing free of the fen waters, he scrambled across the uneven terrain and found his sword. He sprinted toward a plot of high ground as the horn sounded yet again. Men’s voices shouted with fresh urgency. Warriors fled in both directions now, toward and away from the hungry leviathan. All sense of order among the ranks was lost.
“The Khyreins! They come!”
Instead of a battle plan, there was only chaos and terror. A cluster of blue-skinned Giants stood at the base of the leviathan now, making short work of its tentacles with axe, greatsword, and mace. This was a beast meant for the mighty Udvorg, not for the small arms and tiny blades of Men.
Vireon fought among the Giants, sinking his blade deep into a fanged mouth. A normal man’s arm would have been chewed off in an instant, but Vireon’s skin was harder than any bronze corselet. He carried the Blood of Vod in his veins, all the strength and power of Giants in the body of a Man. Tyro envied the Vodson his durable nature. Vireon did not even carry a shield into battle.
Let him lead this rear assault. Let the Giants find a way to bring down the leviathan. “Forward!” shouted Tyro. “Take the towers! No quarter for the Sons of Khyrei!”
A band of determined Uurzians rushed westward with their Emperor. Directly ahead, black figures raced from the treeline brandishing pikes and sabres: the front line of the Border Legions. A volley of arrows flew from the jungle like a sw
arm of buzzing insects.
“Shields!” Tyro shouted. All those who still had such protection fell to their knees in the mire, raising their metal to take the brunt of the falling shafts. Men bellowed as the keen darts found their way to flesh between the grooves of armor and over the lips of shields.
“Advance! Advance!” He did not stop to see how many warriors followed him, or how many lingered still in the grip of the leviathan. No doubt hundreds had already died, and the slaughter that was now beginning would not end soon. The first wave of masked and armored Khyreins now stood in a patient wedge formation, letting the northerners weary themselves by trudging through the bog. A second line lingered among the roots of the great trees, ranks of archers loosing another volley.
Again Tyro’s troops kneeled beneath raised shields. Sinking into the earth provided some defense for their lower bodies, and most of the shafts were thwarted. Tyro was the first one up and running again, and the soldiers took heart from his courage. They followed him, screaming rage and bloodlust at their faceless enemies.
Now even greater shadows emerged from the treeline, slinking into the marsh like Serpents. Tyro recognized them immediately as swamp lizards, at least a score of them. They scurried past the waiting Khyreins, who divided to let the beasts pass. On the back of each darting reptile sat a harnessed figure in black armor. The riders carried long lances, weapons designed for skewering enemies from the backs of their speeding mounts.
The great lizards moved faster than horses, splashing through the muck on webbed feet. The reptile riders were the first to meet the onrushing Uurzians; brave warriors died squirming on the ends of the long lances. Tyro sidestepped a killing thrust from a lancer whose scaly mount bore down upon him. Toothy jaws snapped at his head beneath its winged helm. He hammered its blunt snout with his shield.
These were the creatures that could bite Giants in half. Yet the enemy could not have many of them. Most likely they were a special detail meant for patrolling the swamps. His hopes sank when another score of lizard lancers glided into the fen from the treeline.
If he found a way to kill these beasts, the Uurzians could penetrate the jungle and take the nearest tower. Open a gateway to the red jungle and its black city. If he did not find a way, his righteous war would end tonight in this bloody quagmire. The Giants were too busy battling the leviathan; they could offer no help.
No, only a Man could do this thing.
Only an Emperor.
The masked rider thrust at him once more from atop the beast. Tyro’s sword knocked the lance aside. He leaped forward, aiming to reach the lancer with the point of his weapon, but exposed himself instead to the jaws of the reptile. It clamped down on his arm as he shoved the shield lengthwise into its maw. The edges of the shield sank into the lizard’s black gums, keeping its fangs away from his flesh. The shield quickly bent double under the power of that tremendous bite. Tyro pulled his arm free as the beast crushed the bronze disk between its jaws.
The reptile spat out his ruined shield as the lancer reached too late to unsheathe a sabre. Tyro launched himself forward and upward, clutching the saddle harness with his shield hand. He thrust the point of his broadsword at the rider’s throat. It sank deep into the exposed flesh below the visor.
Tyro climbed up the side of the bucking lizard as it writhed, trying to bite him off its own back. He took hold of the lance and kicked the dying rider from the saddle. Sitting unharnessed in the seat, gripping its leather with all the might of his beefy legs, he raised the lance high and plunged it into the back of the lizard’s wedge-shaped skull. The beast squawked and convulsed, whipping its tail hard enough to tumble Tyro into the mud.
He landed on his knees, and as the beast ran forward with the lance protruding from its tiny brain, he sank the length of his steel into its sagging white belly. Its own speed did the job for him. A mass of shiny entrails poured out of the creature, and it fell snout first into the mire.
Tyro climbed to stand upon the dead reptile’s back and shouted orders. Wild cries praised his kill, spreading word of it through the ranks. The Men of Uurz admired his savagery; they mobbed the lizards and their riders, opening the beasts’ bellies even as they died beneath fang, claw, and lance.
Glancing back at the battle of Giants and Swamp God, Tyro’s heart sank. The bodies of Udvorg lay torn and shattered about the massive creature, mingled with the viscera and pulped bodies of Men. Varda the Keen Eyes stood behind a ring of Udvorg swordsmen, casting blue flames that froze grasping tentacles and shattered them to bits. Giants died screaming in the grip of the horrid mouths spread across the demon’s bulk like palpitating sores. Tentacles wrapped Giants from head to feet whenever they could, jamming them into the fanged maws. It seemed the leviathan itself bore no wounds at all; for every tendril that axe or blade cut away, another one sprouted from the main bulk to replace it. The cries of dying Giants mingled with the growling war songs of their brothers.
Vireon climbed the monster’s side using the stubs of severed tentacles. He stood atop the hill of dark flesh with a pack of desperate Udvorg, hacking at the beast, searching for a vulnerable spot. Tyro lost sight of him. The beast sent more appendages coiling about the Giants upon its summit.
The Men of Uurz and Udurum both realized that this contest of titans was not their fight. They had taken Tyro’s lead and slogged forward to meet the advancing Khyreins, a horde of stained metal and terrified faces skirting the leviathan’s bulk to north and south. The oncoming legions stayed just out of reach of the tentacles, thanks to the quick blades of the Udvorg.
Lord Mendices was back there somewhere, commanding the legions to press forward and confront their true enemies. Tyro thanked the Four Gods for Mendices’ shrewdness in the face of carnage. The old veteran had endured great slaughters in his time.
Now the mobbing Uurzians finished the last of the great lizards, dragging the riders from their backs to die beneath a flurry of sharp blades. “Onward!” Tyro shouted as the forward ranks swelled. If the Giants had not been there to take the brunt of the Swamp God’s attack, they never would have made it this far. Yet the line of jungle and its precious solid ground loomed close now, and Tyro’s berserk cohort would be the first to take it.
He scanned the ground for a fallen shield, yet his eyes were drawn back to Vireon. Whipping tendrils lifted the King of Udurum into the moonlight above the leviathan. Tyro watched the greatsword fly from Vireon’s hands, and the Vodson screamed as he was stuffed whole into a grinding craw. Swallowed like all those before him.
Angrid the Long-Arm bellowed Vireon’s name. The Ice King hacked at the quivering mass with his great war axe, but Vireon was already lost in the creature’s deep gullet. The Giants fought more fiercely than ever, with cries of “Vireon! Vireon!” on their foaming lips.
Tyro had no time to mourn. He turned to the treeline and joined the mass of legionnaires. Now at last the Khyrein line rushed forward into the muddy shallows of the fen, eager to spill foreign blood. The first one to reach Tyro struck with a flashing sabre, nearly opening his throat. A shallow cut on his neck leaked hot blood across his corselet. Any deeper and he would have died in an instant. He had been careless, his mind occupied by Vireon’s tragic demise. No more.
His blade sang forward but the Khyrein’s shield turned it. The two blades met now with a spark. Tyro stared past the narrow slits of the fanged mask into the desperate eyes of his foe. He shouted a curse and rammed his left fist into the side of the black helmet. This threw the Khyrein off balance, and Tyro’s blade swung upward, biting deep into the man’s arm. The sabre fell and the warrior howled in pain. In the next second Tyro’s sword stabbed through his eye-slit and out the back of his skull.
Tyro took up the black shield with its painted crimson crown. He plunged into the mass of Khyreins filing out of the jungle. Impossible to say how many legions were stationed here, yet in the wake of the sprung trap he knew these towers had been fortified in expectation of the triple host’s coming. The numbe
rs of Khyrein soldiers soon matched those of the northerners, and the battle at the edge of the swamp began in earnest. There would be no more advance until thousands of black-masked soldiers lay dead.
A timeless blur of steel, bronze, blood, and bone drowned his thoughts beneath a red haze. He was a deadly wind, blowing fierce through the bodies of his enemies. A creature of instinct, a killer set loose to rend and slay. Gashes on his arms and legs spouted blood across the greaves of his armor, and somewhere in the madness his gilded helm was knocked from his head. Crimson flowed into his eyes as he shook his tangled mane.
Somewhere in the midst of the melee Tyro found a massive log and sprang atop it for a better view of the field. Instantly a mass of Uurzians surrounded him. “Defend the Emperor! Save the Sword King!” The early rays of sunlight glittered on the bloody gold of his corselet and bracers.
To one side the Khyreins filled the deep jungle glades, whole legions waiting for the order to enter the fray. Masked generals watched from the backs of stationary lizards. On the other side, the heaving bulk of the leviathan steamed in the sunlight as the swarming Giants carved tirelessly and futilely at its flesh.
Tyro saw Angrid lifted in a profusion of grasping tentacles, just as Vireon had been torn from the leviathan’s back. A blue flame engulfed the Ice King, paled by the light of the morning sun, and he burst free of the brittle flesh. Varda grabbed him by the shoulder and rushed him away from the beast as a new mass of tendrils swept toward them both.
A fresh wave of Khyreins poured from the jungle.
There is no end to them.
Tyro tried to catch his breath.
Talondra. His mind’s eye traveled across leagues of trampled earth in an instant, down into the green bosom of the Stormlands, to settle on a vision of his wife. He recalled her eyes, a deeper blue than the Udvorg witch’s flame; he remembered the heat of her body against his own. His hand lay upon her smooth belly the day before he departed Uurz. She whispered a sweet secret in his ear. She carried now his first child.
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