by Victor Milán
The temptation was simply to wade into them, laying about with her curved blade. But she’d watched two hadrosaurs and a Triceratops brought down by nothing more than human swarms already. The horde was itself a monster, knowing nothing of pity or remorse. Only rage. And hunger. It would swallow her and all her riders at a single gulp, and not slow down.…
So she had to lead her jinetes in doing what they usually did: hit. Run. Ride back in to hit again. She knew she’d lost some of her laughing boys and girls already.
If we weren’t all lost the instant the sun rose on this horrible day.
She turned in the saddle to check her panniers. Just a single meter-long dart remained, a three-meter leather thong wound down it to impart a stabilizing spin when hurled. Time to head back to restock. There were no signs the supply wagons running dry of missiles, in any event. Melodía could only marvel at where Karyl had laid hands on them all.
She looked back around. And reined Meravellosa to a sudden stop.
She found herself facing a black cliff of sackbut. The hornface-leather barding that guarded chest and flanks, the steel chamfron on its face and segmented gorget down its throat, all gleamed the same black as its hide. The armor and shield of the rider who stared down at her past its shoulder were likewise all of black, as was the plume that nodded at the nape of the crested armet.
“Fuck,” she said.
She might have darted clear. Instead some impulse made her lean forward to pat her mare’s neck soothingly. It ran with sweat that was hot to her palm.
Leaving his lance upright in its socket by his right leg, the knight reached a black gauntlet up to open a black visor. From all that blackness gazed the sad, lost eyes of Bogardus, sunken in purplish-brown pits of flesh.
What she saw there was the darkest black of all.
“Melodía, my love,” he said.
“Don’t call me that!” she screamed. “You lost the right to call me that when you stabbed us in the back!”
He shook his head. “But you were there. Didn’t you see? Yes, I betrayed you. I betrayed everyone. Most of all myself. But at the end I fought him. You saw.”
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Yes. I did. You failed. But you did try.”
“And only when it was much, much too late. I can hear it in your eyes. Melodía—Día, will you believe me when I say I’m sorry?”
“If you were to turn now and join us, I might.”
Nervously she looked around. Nobody paid them any mind. The hordelings were preoccupied throwing themselves at the Imperial pikemen and -women, who had managed to form themselves into a circle. The other light-riders continued to pick at the Crusaders. Most kept flowing on south as mindlessly as a river.
“I would,” Bogardus said, “if only I could. I cannot. Raguel controls my actions.”
“He’s making you say that?”
“He allows me to. I can control my speech. Only that—I think it amuses Him.”
“Why is He doing this to you? Why is He doing this to us—all this cruelty and horror?”
“To punish me. To punish us.”
“Couldn’t He do it—I don’t know—more cleanly?”
“He hates us,” Bogardus said. “They all hate us, His kind—the Seven who remain. He belongs to a faction who thinks the Angels need only wipe out most of us humans for the sake of Paradise.
“They’re the merciful ones. Their rivals want to erase us all and start from a clean slate.”
That rocked her back in her saddle. “But why?”
“I don’t know. They feel it’s the Creators’ will.”
“They feel it? They don’t know? The Creators didn’t tell Raguel to unleash a Crusade?”
“No. That much I know. Apparently the Grey Angels are allowed substantial … latitude in how They discharge Their duties.”
“Wiping out the people the Creators went to so much trouble to put here—I’d call that too much latitude!”
There was a dispassionate-observer part of her, which often drew closer to the fore at times of intolerable stress, like this. Now it was amused at the way a lifelong agnostic was talking about the Creators as established facts.
Well, if Grey Angels exist … her usual self admitted.
“Now what?” she asked the sad thing that had been her lover. “What do you want of me?”
He grimaced as if in hideous pain. Apparently he had to fight to get the next words out.
“Kill me.”
He slammed the visor down.
* * *
Rob slammed his axe deep between the shoulder blades of a pallid woman trying to pull herself up Big Sally’s barding. The fighting-castle crew was preoccupied battling hordelings attacking from the far side with half-pikes and axes.
The woman screeched. Rob wrenched the axe-head free. Something fluttered and stank at him from her shoulders as she fell.
“Sweet Maia, Mother of Mercy,” he moaned, “please tell me what she was wearing for cape and cowl was not a flayed human skin!”
* * *
Ducked low along Meravellosa’s outstretched neck, Melodía thought, That was much too close, as she raced beneath the sackbut’s fast-moving tail as it swept at a rising angle. It had come within a scale’s thickness of breaking her and her mare like a bundle of dry sticks. She was so focused on dodging Bogardus’s lance that the monster’s sudden spin almost caught her.
She rode fifteen meters straight to get well clear of the black sackbut. I never appreciated how agile a big two-legged dinosaur could be before.
Gazing up at the blank black visor she wondered how much of the man she once adored still lived behind it. And what Paradisiacal good he could possibly do her.
Bogardus’s mount pirouetted to face Melodía. From her training she knew nothing drained a human like combat. Horses too, to judge from the way Meravellosa stood panting, with legs braced wide and head hung low. She marveled that she could stay in the saddle. How the poor souls in the Imperial lines still fought on after hours of combat was more than she could fathom, though she supposed necessity had something to do with it. She struggled to keep breathing slowly and deeply, despite the way her lungs burned.
The battle raged without her. That didn’t matter. She faced the black dinosaur and its black rider alone; her jinetes were doing their duty, trying to keep their foot-bound fellows from getting swamped … as long as possible, anyway.
And that was fine. This was her fight. She’d prefer a quick death under the sackbut’s feet—or if she were truly blessed, a clean stroke of her former lover’s longsword—to the fates of the scores she’d seen beaten or mauled or bitten to death. Or disjointed like a scratcher for the pot, but still alive.
She did feel a stab of apprehension about Karyl. Is he still alive? Then wondered why she felt such concern.
Probably he did. Because as long as he lived, so did his army. So did hope … somehow.
The thought stoked that always-anger to a rising a rage blaze.
“How?” she screamed at Bogardus. “How can I kill you? I can’t cut through your armor with my sword, even if I could reach you! Help me, damn it—if there’s really anything still human in there, and it isn’t just that goat-fucker Raguel playing with me!”
He gazed at her, eyes invisible through the narrow gap in his visor.
Slamming her talwar into its sheath, Melodía grabbed the final dart from her pack. Slipping the end-loop over her right wrist she tested the feathered missile’s weight and balance.
Can I hit that eye-slit? she asked herself. She knew: she couldn’t. Her arm trembled just holding the dart. Besides, even if she hit the mark precisely, its iron tip was too wide to fit through the slit. She couldn’t throw it fast enough to punch its way inside.
“Or are you just playing with me? Using me again the way you and Violette did?”
Bogardus dropped his lance. He unstrapped his black shield and let it fall. Moving as if underwater he raised gauntleted hands. They grappled with his midni
ght helmet as if it were a living thing.
Somehow unwilling fingers fumbled the catches open. He tossed the armet away.
His hair hung damp and lifeless around his slack-skinned face. It had all gone a leaden grey, like the clouds that threatened overhead.
His features clenched in a look of agony. “He’s punishing me for my defiance,” he forced through locked jaws.
His longsword sang free of its black-enameled scabbard. A black gauntlet flourished it high.
“Defend yourself, my love!” Bogardus screamed. “I can’t do any more—”
Melodía nudged Meravellosa to gallop left at an angle that would bring her hard along the sackbut’s glistening black flank. And within easy range of its rider’s meter-long blade.
As she came level with the dinosaur’s blunt beak, Melodía threw her dart. The longsword whistled down. Then she ducked down beside Meravellosa’s neck. It rang off the peak of her cap and sliced away the horse-tail.
She hauled left hard on the reins and pressed with her heels. Meravellosa spun as if she had her own giant counter-balance tail, gathered herself like a bouncer, and shot away.
At twenty meters Melodía slowed the mare. Her poor, faithful girl was stumbling on the stumps of trampled weeds now.
Melodía looked back. Bogardus sat motionless in the black sackbut’s saddle. His arms hung by his sides.
His dark eyes met hers. Somehow they seemed less black.
“Thank you,” he mouthed.
But no sound came from his mouth. Just blood gushing from the dart through his throat.
He fell to the ground. So did a princess’s tears.
* * *
As the three-horn went over with a crash, hot tears blurred Rob Korrigan’s eyes. It was Broke-Horn, ever ill-fated: one of their original six, brought low by nothing more than the hands and malice of a mob of creatures with scarcely more claim on humanity than the Triceratops himself.
The great beast, the four men and women of its crew, and its mahout were all Rob’s friends. To see them swarmed by these unclean things made him clench his fists on axe-haft and shield-grip in impotent fury.
Gaétan, who was closer than Rob, led a dozen house-shields to try to rescue the fallen monster’s crew. Zhubin was limping. He had a javelin-shaft broken-off in his left haunch. A true hornface, the spike-frill didn’t hold back from a fight, even hurt.
It was futile. The flesh-torrent forced the rescuers back. Not even Karyl’s transcendent genius could transcend the sheer overwhelming numbers of the Grey Angel Crusade.
We’ve worked a frightful execution today, Rob thought. Wanda’s head, his shield, and even his face dripped with blood. It itched most abominably, drying on his skin and in his beard. Much good it’s done us.
For the moment he was left alone with his weariness and sickness of heart. Behind him the Legion pikes were stalled into bristling circles. The rest of the infantry and the surviving cavalry all moved together in a clump with the trikes. They were still mostly alive; they killed so effectively that the horde now tended to steer clear of them. Raguel, it seemed, had some desire to preserve his awful engine—at least until He was done with it.
Had the horde been any natural army it would have run screaming back up the Imperial High Road … probably hours ago, from the hurting the Impies had laid on it. Rob could see occasional hints of a great commotion away off to the southeast, where he could see a handful of war-duckbills and a substantial body of cavalry carving their way through the horde toward Karyl’s band. Jaume Orange-Hair and his pretty pals, or I miss my guess, Rob thought. And what would I give to see that reunion?
He laughed aloud, causing several house-shields nearby to stare at him as if he’d bid sense farewell. Which no doubt he had—since after all, to see a reunion between Karyl and the man who had literally lanced his White River Legion in the back would require them all to live that long. Which Rob counted slightly less likely than the sun setting in the west this evening.
Vast as it was, the horde had taken vast casualties. But of course it didn’t have scores of thousands of merely human wills. It only had one single and thoroughly inhuman Will directing it. And that Will, it seemed, was still fixed on bringing down that gold and scarlet Tyrant’s-Head flag, flapping from the top of a distant hill.
Rob sighed. Little Nell reeled beneath him. Wanda felt as if she weighed as much as the dead Triceratops. His shield might have been an anvil. His muscles ached so badly he couldn’t feel what had to be a score of minor wounds—not all the blood spread so liberally across his and Nell’s persons originated in other bodies. Not that it mattered.
“Once more into the breach,” he muttered, forcing the axe to rise again by sheer force of will. Or cussedness, more like. Will’s never been me strong suit, he thought. Perversity, now.…
An eerie stillness dropped over the entire battlefield like a blanket. The Crusaders all stopped where they were and turned their heads to stare back toward the center of the horde. Rob saw a gangly man turn away heedless of Gaétan’s arming-sword swinging down at his head. It split his skull from behind.
Rob felt his own limbs go limp. It was as if something had reached inside him to drain the last of what little strength they had. His own head swiveled the same way as the Crusaders’ had. His comrades’ heads did too.
“Raguel!” he croaked, awed and terrified by the creature’s power.
Then he saw what it was the Grey Angel wanted all to witness. And gave a wordless raptor-scream of denial and fear.
Raguel of the Ice rode his king tyrant in the midst of a clear space a good fifty meters across. It traveled with him: some force compelled his servants to stay well away from their dreadful master. Not that anyone with even the slightest spark of sanity, even the most skilled and seasoned dinosaur master, would care to approach any nearer to the seven tonnes of rage and terror the Grey Angel rode.
Yet someone did.
Hornbow in hand, arrow nocked, Karyl Bogomirskiy galloped straight toward the looming horror, and the greater horror on its back.
Chapter 44
Tirán Imperial, Imperial Tyrant—Tyrannosaurus imperator. Tyrannosaurus rex’s big brother: 20 meters long, 10 tonnes. According to the histories, Manuel the Great, founder of the Empire of Nuevaropa and its ruling Torre Delgao, killed an imperial tyrant that was ravaging Nuevaropa in the wake of the High Holy War, and had its colossal skull made into the Emperor’s Fangèd Throne. Curiously for such a large and terrible creature, none have been seen anywhere on Paradise since.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
“Oh, no, my lord,” Rob moaned. “This is too mad even for you. Are you that eager to die, then? You did not have a prayer against that behemoth on your poor lost Shiraa, and it’s three times her size. How can you hope to win on that bloody-minded nag?”
The unseen grip on his volition went away. But now even Raguel would have been hard-pressed to force Rob not to watch.
The giant grey tyrant noticed that some pitiful creature had the impertinence to approach. It turned smartly about, thrust forward its face, opened an abyss, and roared through swords.
Karyl’s reply was pointed, and to the point. An arrow’s black fletching stood suddenly from the tyrant’s right eye.
Its left looked quite surprised.
The monster shuddered. Rob half fancied he could feel it quiver, through the ground and up Nell’s thick legs.
The silver-grey Tyrannosaurus reared as high as its none-too-flexible tail would let it. The colossal head lolled to one side. The monster collapsed.
Into dust. Grey dust that sparkled as it swirled away down the wind.
Raguel landed standing.
“Holy shit,” Rob said reverently to Gaétan, who had ridden his spike-frill up by Rob’s side. “There’s something you’ll not see every day.”
“Maia,” Gaétan croaked. “The Angel looks pissed!”
A moan arose from the horde. The free humans around Rob cheered lustily. A similar soun
d rose from the distant doomed ranks of the Imperials.
Rob slumped. “And then, a man on horseback can’t face a Grey Angel afoot either,” he said.
“No one’s ever fought one alone and lived,” said Gaétan. He sounded as if he were about to cry.
“Ahh, well, then,” Rob said, “if we credit the songs and fancy-stories—and what better source might there be on mythical creatures?—nobody’s fought an Angel and lived at all.”
Gaétan shot him a nasty look. “Quit being encouraging.”
Fearlessly, Asal raced toward the Grey Angel. Raguel raised his soul reaper. Karyl drew and shot again.
The Angel lowered its long grey badlands of a face down to stare at the shaft through its stomach. Then it raised its head and looked at Karyl with empty-looking sockets. It didn’t even bother plucking the arrow out.
Twenty meters from the Grey Angel, Karyl halted his mare. She snorted and tossed her mane defiantly. “Show heart like that, and I might forgive you, you evil little witch,” Rob said. “Not Nell; but she could never see that far, withal.”
For a moment that stretched into agony the two antagonists faced each other. Karyl slung his bow. Then, drawing his arming-sword, he set Asal in a slow counterclockwise walk around his two and a half meter tall opponent. Raguel stood unmoving. He didn’t stir even when Karyl rode clear behind him.
Himself must know it’s a trap, Rob thought. But seizing as near a thing to an advantage as he was liable to get, Karyl wheeled his mare and charged the Grey Angel back.
Snake-fast Raguel spun, his soul-reaper slashing a high arc. Karyl swung his sword. In a flash Rob knew his aim: to deflect the blow, then cut backhand.
But the Angel didn’t strike at Karyl. His blade swept through Asal’s neck as if though it were made of mist. Her head flew away end for end.
The mare tumbled hooves-over-spurting stump. Karyl threw himself clear. Putting a shoulder down, he rolled through the dust with all the aplomb of his horse-barbarian kinsfolk.