by William King
Rik knew what had become of those people who had disappeared into the mine now.
That was all he had time to think about before lifting his rifle and snapping off a shot. Shooting into that tightly packed mass there was no way he could miss and he saw a man go down, knocked over by the force of the musket ball. Almost at once the man began to get up, pulling himself to his feet, despite having taken a wound that Rik would have sworn was fatal. There was no time to worry about that now. He reckoned they had time for one more shot before the fighting became up close and personal.
He rammed powder and bullet home and fired in the direction of the war-cries and half seen bodies he could see through gaps in the drifting powder smoke. Shouts and sounds of fighting from up front told him that they were attacked from that direction as well. This was no random encounter then but a carefully planned ambush.
“I hope you are ready to taste my steel, you bastards,” the Barbarian bellowed. Hastily Rik slammed his bayonet home just as a hill-man erupted from the smoke cloud in front of him. Rik smashed his bayonet into the man’s gut. It felt like he was sticking it into a wet practise dummy. Only this time instead of sawdust and straw what came out was fluid.
He withdrew the bayonet and struck again, taking the man through the throat. The man did not fall although he had already taken a number of wounds. His guts hung out from where Rik had hit him, his arm hung limply where a bullet had pierced it and still he came on. An awful stench of excrement and something else filled the air. The greenish-red light glittered in the man’s eyes as he reached out for Rik with his one good arm. Rik could see that had a claw on it.
No, not a claw, he realised as he tried to step back and away. The thing was like the head of an enormous insect grafted onto the man’s hand. Its mandibles opened and revealed glittering spider eyes and a leech’s sucker mouth within. He ducked as the mandibles clicked together above his head and aimed another blow at his opponent.
His horror intensified as he realised that it was not some amulet the undead creatures were wearing but a living entity, some unholy hybrid of spider and beetle that clutched their chest. What he had taken for the chains of the amulet were limbs buried deep into the body of the man.
He struck directly at the centre of the thing with his bayonet; his blow glanced off the carapace. He ducked away from another sweep of the thing’s claw and this time lashed out with the heavy wooden butt of his musket. It hit with a sickening crunch. Black fluid leaked from the broken carapace. He caught sight of what might have been a pulpy brain within. Another stroke brought his bayonet into the fleshy innards. The corpse man spasmed and let out an awful inhuman shriek before falling inert to the ground.
“Kill the insects on their chests!” he shouted, knowing how insane it sounded but unable to think of anything else to say.
He turned just in time to avoid the embrace of another man with one of those evil things grafted to his breast. He shuddered. He did not want that inhuman creature touching him. An image of the parasite becoming unhooked from its bearer and burying its limbs into his own flesh flickered through his mind. This time his bayonet took the thing full on and pierced it through. Again the human lips opened and an alien shriek emerged from them, and the corpse man reeled off into the gloom, thrashing perhaps with the dying agony of its rider.
Rik had no time to think about it. The Barbarian raced past, his heavy blade flashing as he cut into the hill-men’s lines. Rik followed along with Leon, Weasel and Toadface. They formed up back to back, an island in a sea of fleshly chaos as the hill-men pressed home their attack.
The sound of shots filled the air. The stench of blood and sweat and sulphur and smoke and excrement assaulted his nostrils. He smashed the butt of his rifle down on a man’s head, feeling bone give like matchwood. Scarlet blood stained his hands, some of it his own, from small cuts he did not know he had picked up.
He jabbed with his bayonet at a man racing at the Barbarian’s back. The hill-man fell without a cry. The Barbarian lopped off his head with a backward lash of his sword, but to Rik’s horror, the headless body kept moving.
“Kill the bastard things hanging on their chest!” he shouted once more and drove his bayonet forward and down through the crawling corpse’s back. He thought he felt its tip pierce something for the corpse began to lash its limbs. He twisted his weapon cruelly and the thing was still.
He could hear war-cries now, and part of his combat-deranged mind tried to make sense of them.
“Die you fuckers!”
“Death or glory.”
“The Spiders! The Spiders.”
“Help! They cannot die! They cannot die!”
“Steady, lads! Steady!” The last was in the distinctive tones of Sergeant Hef. To his horror he realised that all the voices belonged to Foragers. Only occasionally did he hear the inhuman shriek that was the death cry of one of the corpse riders.
Screams of pain mingled with shouts of rage. The roar of ripjacks cut through the thunder of musket fire. Two brilliant flashes blazed across his retina. A stink of ozone and burning flesh assailed his nostrils. What the hell was that, he wondered, then realised that it was Asea’s lightning lash.
As quickly as it had started it was over. Some of the Foragers were in flight, retreating like an outgoing tide, leaving uncovered the flotsam and jetsam of battle: maimed bodies, wounded men, severed limbs, pools of blood, piles of broken flesh encased in torn cloth. All the corpse-men were dead. Here and there a spider-like thing scuttled very slowly away on long unsteady stick like limbs. Men bayoneted them or used them for pistol practise.
And Foragers were looking at each other with the wide-eyed fear-filled gaze of men surprised to find that they were still alive after passing through that maelstrom of violence.
Zarahel felt his servants die. The intruders were tougher than he had thought. No matter though. He had more servants. And nothing could stand against Uran Ultar reborn.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“How many down?” Sardec yelled.
“Looks like we’ve about five men dead, six so badly wounded they cannot fight, six fled and another dozen wounded but mobile. The rest have just scratches or near enough, sir,” said Sergeant Hef.
Sardec considered this information. There was nothing here from which stretchers could be made, unless perhaps they chipped away the smooth chitinous layers of the walls. And there were other considerations.
He bent down to inspect one of the hill-men’s corpses. It was already stone cold and it had an odd colour to it. Something greyish that was not blood flowed in its veins.
He looked at the Lady Asea. “What were those things?”
“Corpse riders. Symbiotes. Demon things that sucked the life from those men and then used their bodies as vessels. At least we know what happened to the people who vanished. These things drained their vitality and sent it somewhere else.”
“Let’s hope there are not any more of them. We cannot face another attack like that.”
“We must press on. We have no time to waste,” she said. “The portal is already open. The ritual nears its climax.”
Sardec came to a quick decision, prayed to Adaana it was the right one. “Leave those too wounded to move! We’ll collect them on the way back.”
There were protests when this decision was made. Nobody wanted to stay behind. Sardec did not bother to point out that the remainder of the company was marching towards a place where demons were being summoned, and almost certain doom. It would, he thought sourly, be somewhat bad for morale.
“No arguments,” he said. “Do it!”
There were no more protests.
Rik watched the Lieutenant with a grudging admiration. In the midst of their fearful surroundings, he remained calm, seemingly untouched by the miasma of fear surrounding them. His commands were obeyed despite of the men’s growing terror. Even Lady Asea seemed to watching him with something like respect in her eyes.
Rik looked at her with awe. A good dozen
of the hill-men corpses had been seared black, flesh crisped and burned so badly that it had sagged from the bone. The creatures clinging to their chest had popped open as if they had exploded. Their insides looked cooked. He guessed that her wand had turned the tide of battle indeed, although he could see that one or two Foragers were down, their rifle barrels looking bent and twisted like metal pulled from a madman’s forge. Had they too been victims of the lightning? Was that why she had waited so long to unleash it?
She turned and said something to her black garbed servants. Somehow, they had managed to come through the fight unscathed even the one with the massive flask strapped to his chest.
“I’d still shag her,” said the Barbarian very quietly. This time he did not sound quite so sure.
Zarahel knew the enemy were almost upon him. That was good. In only a few moments more, Uran Ultar would be fully materialised and would need something to feed on. Around him the Ultari danced. Bertragh chanted, his face white, his eyes blank, his features moulded in the expression of a man who had lost all sanity quite some time ago.
Up ahead Sardec saw light. Not the faint phosphorescence of the walls, but something brighter and altogether more lurid, a greenish sheen reflected from the stuff coating the tunnels. It made the arching doorway ahead bright and sinister. There was a smell like cinnamon in the air now, and something worse, something old and putrid. The sound of chanting echoed all around them, amplified by the enclosing walls. The ripjacks whimpered and refused to advance. Bloody froth emerged from the corners of their mouth as if they had bit their flickering tongues. Sardec had never seen such behaviour before, save in the presence of dragons, a predator so overwhelmingly powerful that it could drive fear into the tiny ferocious minds of hunting wyrms.
“The summoning is all but complete,” said Lady Asea. “We must hurry. Once we are in you must keep me protected for as long as it takes for me to work the counter-magic.”
Sardec nodded.
“Everybody loaded?” he bellowed. “There’ll be no more chances after this.”
“Aye, sir,” came the bellowed response.
“Then in we go. Show no mercy. Kill anything you see that isn’t with us now.”
Bellowing fear-filled war-cries, they rushed towards the archway.
Rik emerged into a vast chamber at least a hundred yards across, with a domed ceiling ten yards tall at the highest point. A web of shadows filled the air of the upper part of the chamber, leaping from strange glowing jewels in the ceiling and floor, converging on the centre of an intricate phosphorescent design in the middle of the chamber. It mirrored a web of mosaic-like patterns set on the floor. In the air above the exact centre of the pattern was something that suggested a monstrous spider, a fearsome presence that radiated a terrible hunger. On the ground were two figures, one human, the other less so.
All around them were a seething horde of Ultari. There were dozens of them moving around the pattern’s edge as if they too were taking part in the ritual. Every time the chant reached a crescendo, the presence above clotted and become more solid. When that happened a strange ripping sound came from the edge of the chamber, and another Ultari emerged to join the dance. Rik looked at the walls. He could see they were covered in frenziedly pulsing pods. There were things inside them, trying to get out.
“He’s wakening them. They were dormant but now they are emerging from their hibernation,” said Asea. “He’s feeding them energy and intelligence.”
Rik felt his mouth go dry. This did not look good.
The two humans caught his attention. One was Bertragh. The factor’s face was transformed by an odd mix of terror and exaltation, and his gaze was fixed on the other man’s with a look of near-religious rapture.
Man was perhaps the wrong word to describe the other, Rik thought. He was human in outline, but a shell of chitin, similar to that on some of the corpse-riders enclosed his body. The only human part visible was his face; even his head was shrouded by insect-like armour. The face was twisted by some transforming inner force so that it looked no more human than Lady Asea’s mask. The eyes glowed with the odd greenish light. The words it chanted sounded like nothing that could be torn from a human throat.
On a lectern of chitin atop an altar raised from the middle of the floor, was an open book. Rik felt utterly certain that it was one of the ones they had sold to Bertragh back in Redtower, just as he was certain the man doing the summoning was Zarahel. The figure turned and Rik felt sickness churn within him. The back of the armour looked as if it were a huge spider clutching Zarahel in its limbs. Had it spun the armour round him like a cocoon, Rik wondered?
The man-thing raised its arm and shrieked more verses of its spell. The air above him shimmered and a circle was formed through which more of the greenish light spilled; the demon god emerged. It looked superficially like the Ultari but there was something about it that suggested a monstrous centipede. It seemed to stretch back endlessly into infinity. A multitude of limbs kicked and wriggled on its side.
“This is where Uran Ultar waited like a trapdoor spider,” said Asea. She barked orders to her servants. One of them unstrapped the urn from his chest, and she began to croon the words of a spell over it.
“Too late,” Zarahel shouted, an inhuman triumph evident in his voice. “Too late, interlopers! The way is open. The Spider God returns. Bow to me! Bow to Uran Ultar and he may spare the humans. You have witnessed his rebirth. It is fitting that you live and watch him kill the Terrarchs. They will be the first of many.”
The Foragers halted, stunned. They looked at each other like men awakening from a dream. Rik wondered if they were going to obey. If he thought he could have believed Zarahel he might have considered it himself, but he did not.
While the soldiers hesitated, more of the Ultari emerged through the pods on the wall. The enormous god-beast writhed and forced his way through a portal that somehow seemed too small for him. It was as if he was coming from a much larger world, and somehow needed to shrink down, to constrict himself to enter this universe. Rik halted briefly, overcome for a moment by this hint of cosmic revelation.
Hesitation was likely to prove fatal. Rik raised his rifle, sighted on Bertragh, and opened fire. The factor fell, and as he did so, the light around the portal flickered. Obviously the merchant had been one of the poles of power for the spells.
Sardec raised his sword and brought it down. “Fire!”
The rest of the Foragers opened fire. A storm of shot erupted around the Ultari, Zarahel and the gateway. Zarahel remained upright, his chitinous external skeleton chipped away, to reveal brownish substance beneath. Some of the Ultari collapsed. Ichor flowed where balls caught weak points in the carapaces but far more of them bounced off than bit home. “Aim for the joints, men,” Sardec shouted. “They are the weak points.”
In a moment all was chaos. Men moved away from one another, trying to get distance between them in case of some sorcerous response from the demons or their master. A few remained in place, ramming balls home into their muskets. Others fixed bayonets, knowing that close combat was inevitable and wanting to be prepared. The smell of ozone warred with the stink of sorcery.
“Form up around the Lady!” Sardec shouted. “She is our only hope.”
Lady Asea’s eyes were closed as she crooned her spell. Her two servants flanked her now, long curved swords out and swinging in intricate patterns. They were loosening their muscles and preparing to fight.
Zarahel shrieked something to the Ultari in their strange chittering tongue. They moved towards the Foragers with the clockwork precision of automatons. Return fire was sporadic now, a ragged volley from those who had their weapons ready.
Rik saw another of the Ultari go down, all of the legs on its left side ceasing to work. A ball appeared to have lodged home in a nerve cluster. He finished ramming the ball home himself and held his shot ready, not wanting to open fire until he had a clear target. Weasel knelt and fired. The Barbarian unlimbered his chopping blade a
nd moved over to be nearer the Lady Asea.
Rik turned to see that Leon was there watching his back as always. He had a bayonet clipped onto his rifle. His face was white. Sweat beaded his brow. Rik could almost sense his terror. “Now I am really scared!” he said. His voice was barely audible.
The Ultari impacted on the first of the Foragers now. Long blade-like forward appendages lashed out. Men fell, torn apart by the monsters’ irresistible strength. Rik froze for a moment at the sight. He could not believe he had ever dared go hand to hand with one of those things.
Zarahel laughed triumphantly at this evidence of what his new pets were capable of. There was a mad quality to his mirth that suggested he was no longer quite human, that some other entity shared his body, looked out through his eyes.
Behind him Uran Ultar continued to drop from his extra-spatial lair. His lower appendages were just over Zarahel’s head now. They reached out as if to caress him.
Rik raised his rifle and snapped off a shot, hoping to put a ball through the wizard’s eye. Smoke billowed obscuring his view momentarily. When he could see it appeared his shot had ricocheted off the carapace. Zarahel was unharmed. In fact, a change was coming over him. He seemed, now more than ever, an unholy hybrid of man and spider, more demonic than human.
The Ultari line converged on Asea. Few men dared stand in their way. Those that did lived only for heartbeats before those huge scything blades tore them apart.
“This looks bad, Rik,” said Leon. Rik did not disagree. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and began to fumble through his pack for the things he had bought from Wyrm Hunter Karl.