by William King
The smell of burning assaulted Kormak’s nostrils. He scented alchemical fire and heard the weird eerie screeching noises of spiders being burned alive. There was another flash of light, bright as the Sun, and more howls of terror and pain. He guessed that one of the Order’s artificers had managed to get one of the Solari machines working.
There was nothing for it but for him to throw himself completely into the sea of battle. He strode across the field killing anything that got in his way, shouting for men to rally to him. So deadly was he and so confident that, where he passed, scared men rallied and tired men felt their courage renewed.
Some of those who faced him now were not elves or spiders. They were humans garbed in the leather jerkins and doe-skin britches of the lost inhabitants of the Settlements. There was a strange madness in their eyes and a terrifying hatred. They threw themselves into combat with no fear for their lives and seemingly no desire other than to slay the Weaver’s enemies.
Kormak smashed through them, severing limbs, chopping off heads and cleaving men in twain with his ancient runic blade. He saw others fight on against more normal weapons even after they had been chopped half to pieces. Once a man he would have sworn was dead rose to strike at him. Whether his wounds had simply looked worse than they were or whether the power of the Shadow was animating his form, it was hard to tell.
He wished that he had some idea of what was going on, some overview of the battle but he had no idea whether his side was winning or losing. All he knew was that all around him men and beasts and things that were neither were locked in a terrible struggle. He tried to locate the banners of his Order flying above the battle but somehow he had lost all sense of direction or they had moved from their previous position.
In the distance he saw one of the massive battle spiders looming over the conflict. It held a squirming man in its enormous mandibles and then, with what looked like the gentlest of squeezes, chopped his body in two.
A roaring sound came from somewhere off to his left and when he looked over in that direction he saw an enormous blazing fire elemental. He guessed that in that direction lay the magicians of the Order and he began to cut his way towards them. Protecting those wizards was probably the best thing that he could manage other than finding Weaver and killing her. That would have been his first choice but after the initial conflict he had not caught sight of her.
An arrow flickered past him, missing him by the breadth of a hair. It was pure luck that saved him. If he had been a fraction of a stride further forward it would have taken him through the neck.
He glanced to his right and he saw Grogan, taking a bead on him again. Kormak threw himself forward and downwards, stabbing at a nearby elf. An arrow flickered through the air where he had been. When he looked around to locate Grogan, there was no sign of him. The tide of battle had carried him away. It looked like his old friend had not the slightest compunction about killing him. Kormak was glad. He would feel no guilt if he had to put Grogan down.
He kept slashing his way forward, cutting elves down from the side and from behind as often as he faced them in open combat. He did not care how he did the killing. In this sort of carnage there was no such thing as honourable combat. He knew the minions of the Shadow would show him no mercy either.
Ahead of him, a battle-spider moved through the crowd. A man’s impaled body was stuck on one of its dagger-like limbs. He shrieked every time the great arachnid moved, rising into the air, limbs flailing with each step. At least he was keeping the monster off-balance as it advanced towards the Order’s formation.
One of the artificers on the great Solari war-engine was trying frantically to bring it to bear. A green-tipped poison spear emerged from the chaos and took him in the throat. He lolled dead in the command saddle of the engine, held in place by thick leather straps. His brothers frantically tried to get him free. In the heat of the moment, none of them had the sense to slash the leather bindings with a blade.
Kormak sprang forward with redoubled fury, taking the head off an elf and severing the left arm of another. One turned to face him and Kormak sliced his spear in two as he attempted to parry and then split his head in half with the force of the blow. Blood splattered, slivers of brain slid down the elf’s shoulder.
The battle spider was ahead of him now. The great armoured legs looked surprisingly delicate supporting that bloated monstrous body. He took aim at the joint of one of the rear pair of limbs and cut right through it. A strange oily fluid spurted forth. The rear of the spider fell momentarily off-balance, giving him the chance to leap onto its thorax. His boots sank into the furry flesh but he forced himself to keep moving, even as the spider reared. He jabbed the dwarf-forged blade into the space between its eyes, driving it deep, hoping he was hitting the creature’s brain but with no idea of whether he was. It reared and spun frantically, the glow going out of its eyes. He had blinded it, or at least he hoped so.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the artificers had managed to free their colleague and bring the Solar ballista to bear. They did not seem to have noticed he was on the spider’s back. As if in a dream he saw one of his brothers pull the command lever with nightmarish slowness. He was mounted on the bucking back of the great spider, directly in the path of the destructive magical energies that were about to be unleashed.
His heart pounded wildly against his ribs. Frantically he threw himself clear of the rearing spider, tumbling towards the ground. A flash of utterly brilliant light, a blaze of enormous heat passed close by. The spider exploded under the impact leaving only half of its torso, awash with flames, still dancing behind Kormak.
He dropped amid a packed group of elves. One of them raised a spear to impale the falling Guardian. Kormak slashed it aside with his sword and landed on the shoulders of an elf, sending him dropping to the earth.
In desperation he wielded his blade two handed, clearing the area around him, chopping his way to the relative safety of the Order’s lines. The Solar ballista kept firing, blasting great holes in the enemy line until an arrow sliced through the windpipe of the new operator. He slumped back in the chair, hands still on the controls. The catapult arm swung to bear randomly.
The projectile arced out, directly at the rotting bole of Mayasha. It hit the side of the tree, and exploded. The Shadow tainted wood did not catch fire but came apart, like ash stirred with a poker.
Kormak clambered up onto the engine’s side. He had no idea how to operate the machine. The artificers had their secrets but perhaps he could get it to swivel on its mount again. It seemed some of the elves had the same idea. The wagon on which the engine rested vibrated beneath their weight as they leapt onto it. He found himself looking at a group of savage elves.
He slashed at one of the elves, sending him leaping back into the mass of howling Lost from which he had emerged. The second one sprang forward, aiming his spear directly at Kormak’s chest. With one hand Kormak knocked it aside and buried his blade in the chest of another. Heartened by his presence, the brothers pushed forward, throwing the elves around the engine back. In another moment, an artificer had slid into place in the command chair. He pulled a lever. Nothing happened.
“What happened?” Kormak shouted.
“It’s overheated somehow.”
“Is there nothing you can do about it?”
The artificer shrugged. His brass mask hid his features. “We have to wait for the engine to cool and try and get another sunstone into place.”
Kormak nodded. From his position on the wagon’s back he had a slightly better view of the field of battle. The humans were still surrounded by the Lost elves, except where in the distance companies of knights had broken through and were harrying the elves in turn. The spiders had finished dropping from above and now were caught up in the swirl of the melee.
Kormak’s allies were rallying around their banners. Here and there a few companies had managed to bring their long bows to bear and were returning fire at Weaver’s people.
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nbsp; It did not look good though. The army was surrounded by greater numbers of elves, corrupted humans and sentient spiders and the elves were making better use of their missile weapons. Poison made every hit deadly. It did not matter if it was fatal or merely paralytic. Almost every man hit was removed from combat. The brothers of the Order of the Dawn continued to hold their ground. Their heavy armour, their war-engines, their alchemists and their wizards gave them an edge. Kormak could see Graydon and the chief sorceress in conclave. The Chapter Master was shouting something and Elanora looked at first dismayed, then fearful then obedient.
He said something to the alchemists. Their masks hid their expression but their body language spoke of the same dismay as the wizards. Kormak guessed that Graydon suspected the same thing as he did, that the battle was lost unless desperate measures were taken.
The alchemists were piling their casks of chemicals up on the back of a wagon which was rolled towards the edge of the Order’s position. The wizards followed it at a discrete distance. One of the alchemists placed something in the back of the wagon, then whipped the horses forward into the enemy lines. They fell back from around it. The brother mounted on the back, dived off and tried to fight his way back to the Order’s lines but was dragged down by the elves. A moment later his severed head was being waved aloft, blood dripping from what was left of his neck.
The horses kept racing along, panicked. Elves jumped into the wagon to investigate. A huge explosion ripped them and the cart apart, the horse’s terrified neighing ceased in an instant. A column of brightly coloured alchemical flame rose above the battlefield. It kept burning and burning as it fed on the oil and alchemical fire contained in the urns and barrels. The wizards began to chant.
Suddenly Kormak understood what was happening and why they were afraid. They were trying to summon and control an elemental made from the blaze of alchemical fires without benefit of Elder Sign or ritual accoutrements. It was a dangerous type of magic, with nothing to constrain the summoned being. Nonetheless it was just about the only thing that might work. They had not been given enough time to work more formal sorcery. The flames gradually began to take on a humanoid outline, a towering gigantic figure that rose above the battlefield. The roar of its fires resembled awful demonic laughter. There was malice and hunger in the sound.
The entity seemed half solid, part of it made of flame and part of it from flowing liquid and after a moment Kormak understood why. The creature was composed partially of magical fire and partially of the chemicals that had gone into providing it with a form. It strode through the battlefield now, striking at the elves with long arms of fire. Its lower torso resembled a wave of glowing liquid. It flowed over anything that got in its way. Anything engulfed burned and kept burning even as the elemental passed on. The elves near it turned and fled. It pressed on through them, lashing out at anything and Kormak realised to his horror that no attempt was being made to control the creature, that the exhausted wizards were simply watching it with wide anxious eyes, hoping that it would not turn on them.
They need not have worried. The hungry elemental was heading directly for the centre of the clearing towards the rotting Stump of Mayasha. If fuel was food to the creature, and Kormak suspected it was, then the corpse of the great tree represented a banquet for the ravenous elemental. The elves did not seem to have realised what Kormak had though. They fled before it as if the great beast was coming for them personally. Weaver stood her ground before the great tree, mounted atop her great spider. She pointed her staff at the elemental and chanted a spell. The immense fiery creature wavered for a moment and then reached out for her. She dived clear as its blazing talons grasped her enormous mount. The spider writhed in the elemental’s grasp then its carapace sagged as steam emerged followed by gouts of heated fluids. The elemental raised its arms in triumph and advanced.
Horns sounded among the human lines. Lord Rhys was taking advantage of the panic to reform his force into a more conventional fighting line. Heralds raced across the battlefield, carrying orders to banner bearers. The knights, who had broken through, took one look at the oncoming elemental and charged back into the fleeing elves, disrupting them still further as they desperately tried to return to their own line and get out of the way of the oncoming monster of wildfire.
Even as some of the elves tried to rush into the forest, they were cut down by a hail of arrows. Packs of dire wolves rushed out from the shadows of the trees and sprang amid them, rending and tearing and then running away again. Kormak felt a sense of relief fill him. It looked like the Kayoga had finally shown up. None of the Lost who made it into the forest were likely to survive.
He glanced around the battlefield and saw what he was looking for. Weaver stood in the entrance to the root system of the great tree and with her were others. Kormak recognised Grogan. They were disappearing into the depths of the tree.
The Elemental reached it and embraced the bole with arms of fire. Kormak expected the flames to spread from it to the stump but something in the tree resisted the magical fires. The Elemental turned green as it attempted to consume the tainted wood, howled in fury, and then disintegrated into a shower of burning chemicals and green flickering flames.
The horns of the Army of the Morning sounded. As one the human army began to advance, slaughtering what remained of the elves and spiders that still stood against them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
KORMAK STOOD BY the great gaping hole in the side of Mayasha into which he had seen Weaver disappear. He took a deep breath of the foul rotting smell and then looked back over his shoulder. Behind him the last embers of the battle still burned. Knots of elves fought with companies of men. A group of riders approached. At their head was Baron Enderby, his face flushed with triumph. He looked drunk on blood and battle and he grinned at Kormak. All previous animosity seemed forgotten in the moment of victory. Despite himself, Kormak grinned back.
“What are you looking for, Guardian?” The Baron’s voice boomed out over the battlefield, echoing inside the cavern-like interior of the tree.
“Weaver went down here,” he said. “She took the last of her people.”
“You are going after her?” Kormak nodded.
“I am going to finish this thing. I do not want that Shadow lover coming back to trouble us.”
Enderby nodded. “Let’s go then,” he said. His followers looked uneasy. They did not quite have his triumphant self-confidence. Noticing this he turned and said, “Any man too frightened to accompany me is excused.”
It was a direct challenge to their manhood and their courage. The knights squared their shoulders. Enderby turned and looked at Kormak and said, “What are we waiting for?”
Kormak shrugged and strode down into the depths. It was dark down there. The glow was not as bright as he remembered. That might have been because his eyes were accustomed to the sunlight outside but it might be for other reasons. The smell of mould and rot was getting worse as well, and somewhere down in the depths he heard the muted roar of the Mother echo through the caverns.
Enderby’s confident grin became somewhat sicklier.
“Weaver is with the Spider Mother,” Kormak said. He could not help but maliciously add, “I was considering waiting for my Order to bring up their war-engines but I was inspired by your example.”
Enderby wiped sweat from his face with a perfumed handkerchief and said, “You make me very proud,” There was a note of mocking irony in his voice that told Kormak the fat little man knew exactly what he was thinking. “I would not think of going back now.”
They pushed on down into the depths of the earth. Glowing fungi emerged from the walls of the tunnels all around them. Small translucent eggs clinging to the wall showed Kormak where the Spider Mother had passed. He did not need the trail though. He already knew where she and her mistress were going. It was a path he had followed once before and which was emblazoned forever in his memory.
They emerged into the great chamber that Kormak remember
ed. It was even bigger than he recalled, and the floor was still carpeted with bones. The Spider Mother was there, newly woven strands of webbing still holding her upright. Weaver was beside the creature, stroking its side, like a concerned knight gentling a skittish horse. All around were elves of her guard and corrupted humans. Grogan was there with his bow in his hand. Kormak pulled a sunflare from his belt-pouch and held it in his hand. It was cool in his palm.
Weaver looked up and saw him. “Guardian,” she said. “Things have changed a little since last we spoke.”
“You have broken the Law,” Kormak said. “You must pay the price.”
“I may,” she said. “But you will not live to see it. Grogan kill him.”
The ranger raised his bow. Kormak knew he would not miss at this range in this dim light. He tossed the sunflare, praying to the Holy Sun that it would not misfire. The stone hurtled through the air, glowing brighter as it flew. At the height of its arc, it flared to blinding brightness. Only Kormak had known what was coming. He shielded his eyes as he jumped to one side. Grogan’s arrow struck him and not even his dwarf forged mail could totally blunt the impact. The arrow buried itself in his side. He gritted his teeth, ignored the pain and raced forward, knowing that first he would have to deal with the Queen. He raced forward right at the head of the gigantic monster.
His blade sliced into her forehead, bursting her eyes. Even when the effects of the sunflare faded she was not going to be able to see. Kormak slashed again, severing her mandibles, smearing the blade with poison. He leapt at Grogan and drove his blade into the ranger’s chest. There was a faint sizzling sound as the blade passed through flesh and burned out the evil magic.
By now those around him were starting to be able to see again. Their eyes watered and they would be able to perceive only outlines and shadows but they at least knew he was there. Kormak aimed a blow at Weaver but the arrow in his side slowed him and the Shadow witch managed to leap aside. The extra limbs on her carapace armour spiked the walls and she raced up them, with fantastic speed. Kormak leapt among her followers slicing right and left, killing with every blow.