by A J Dalton
‘Who’s next?’ bellowed Incarnus, but she barely heard him. Everything seemed so far away.
***
A morning star clanged against the Scourge’s shield, bit in and almost wrenched the shield off his arm. Instead of pulling back as his instinct prompted, he slammed his shield forwards against his opponent. The knight toppled off his mount and hit the ground on his back. Air whooshed out of his lungs. The Scourge squeezed with his knees and his might destrier walked forwards to plant a hoof in the middle of the knight’s chest.
‘No!’ the man gasped as the horse brought its terrible weight to bear and crushed him.
The Scourge leaned down and grabbed a spear sticking out of the ground nearby and raised it just in time to plunge it deep into the chest of a charger that thundered towards him. The front legs of the charger buckled under it and the rider was catapulted out of his saddle and on top of the Scourge. The weight and momentum of the other man bore them over the back of the saddle and they plunged towards the ground.
Panic and adrenaline gave the Scourge an instant of inhuman strength so that he twisted them in the air and landed atop the other. Despite his moment of advantage, the Guardian was without a weapon; while the knight had a triangular knife chained to his wrist that he was just in the process of jerking into his palm. The Scourge attempted to clamp down on the knight’s wrist, but missed the grip. The knight smiled evilly from beneath his half-helm, sure that he was seconds away from slitting the Guardian’s throat. His expression suddenly changed to one of horror as the Scourge bared his teeth and sank them into the man’s neck. He shook his head like a dog trying to break the neck of a rabbit.
The knife jabbed into the top of the Scourge’s arm, but the links of his chainmail deflected the point. He bit again and ripped flesh away. Blood suddenly spurted everywhere and drenched the Guardian’s face. He knew he’d swallowed some of it. He spat but could not get rid of the taste. Then his stomach knotted and lurched. He vomited into the knight’s slackening, uncaring face.
Shaking, the Scourge got to his feet and leaned against his loyal horse, which had stayed nearby to protect him from others with its body. Breathing hard, he hauled himself back into his saddle and pulled his spare blade from underneath it. He was fortunate, because he was suddenly in a place of stillness while the battle raged around him.
Where were all the mercenaries? Had they swept on past him? He looked all around. Curse them! They’d pulled back, not wanting to see their hides too cheaply. Such men rarely got caught up in the fervour of battle. Not for them were the reckless, heroic deeds of storybooks. However, it was such men that tended to survive to see the next battle.
Not having much choice, the Scourge turned his horse round and rode away from the enemy. He’d see if he could organise the men of Holter’s Cross for another charge. He prayed that they were not about to be caught flat-footed by a Memnosian counter-charge.
***
‘Balthagar! Brother!’ came the delighted challenge. ‘Good to see you again, although you look a bit the worse for wear. Don’t worry, I’ll lay you to rest properly and then His Majesty can raise you as good as new. It’ll be just like old times.’
Saltar peered out of his one good eye at the Memnosian challenger. He thought he recognised the cocky warrior who swung his arms to limber them up and then bent to left and right to stretch his middle. Saltar had not met the man in the time since Mordius had raised him, he was sure of that, but still he recognised the arrogant tilt to the man’s chin, the cruel smile, the well-oiled hair. Flashbacks from previous lives assailed him, from when he had fought side by side with this man, this man who called him brother.
‘Vidius.’
‘Ahh! So you do remember me. It is fit that you understand who it is who kills you this time round, for it means you might understand why it must be so. But if you can understand that, how can it be that you have chosen to betray us, Balthagar? Are you so ungrateful? Our father, the King, has done everything for us. Is this how you repay him?’
‘He will destroy us all,’ Saltar replied flatly. ‘He has always treated us as mere playthings. That is no life.’
‘On the contrary, my confused brother. It is life and so much more! You and I are among the fortunate few who have been gifted with immortality by our generous father. He has renewed us times beyond counting.’
It had not escaped Saltar’s notice that Vidius had drifted closer to him while in the process of warming up. He eyed the Memnosian’s weapon warily. It consisted of a long, curved blade on the end of a heavy, metal pole. It looked for all the world like a scythe of the sort Lacrimos was often depicted carrying. It was a weapon dangerous both in terms of its reach and the ability of the circular edge to swivel around any opposing blade. Saltar was not sure how to combat such a lethal tool.
‘But at what cost, Vidius? Nearly all other life on the continent has been extinguished by that madman. Can you not see we are simply pawns in his grand scheme for the annihilation of the realm? He must be stopped. Either join me or stand aside, Vidius.’
‘It grieves me to say that I cannot do that, brother. You see, unlike you, I am true to my oath of loyalty and obedience. Unlike you…’
The scythe swirled through the air and it was only Saltar’s unnaturally quick reflexes that enabled him to duck in time and avoid being decapitated. Locks of his hair fell to the floor, the blade had come so close. Saltar rolled to his left, knowing the blade was likely to be already arcing in at where he had been standing. He had underestimated Vidius, however.
‘You were always predictable in rolling to your left, you know, brother. But then old habits die hard, I guess.’
The sharp point of the scythe pierced Saltar just above his collarbone and curved down into his chest. Vidius raised the pole above his head in order to push the crescent blade in deeper and deeper. Saltar clapped his hands to either side of the blade but could do little more than slow its entry. He felt vital organs being penetrated and torn apart. He was being gutted like a fish. Vidius couldn’t raise the pole any higher, so pushed forwards to try and unbalance Saltar and make him fall to his knees, hoping thereby to increase the pole’s relative angle of elevation. Saltar knew what Vidius was trying to do and refused to give ground. The Memnosian changed his tactics and began to move along the pole so that he could push its angle up. Saltar felt the point inside him about to come out through his stomach.
Vidius pushed the pole higher again, but this time Saltar was ready. He leaned back and jerked the pole even higher, but up and out of the Memnosian’s hands. The animee swivelled the pole left, down slightly and then violently back right to clout Vidius in the head. The King’s hero staggered like a drunk, his arms going out wide as if it was the only way in which he could keep his balance. Blood trickled from one of his ears. Saltar swivelled sharply again, and Vidius took a blow to his other temple. One of his knees momentarily touched the ground.
At that moment, one of Savantus’s animees broke free of a nearly melee and came straight for the Memnosian champion. The animee was in an advanced stage of decomposition. Its flesh dripped as a black liquor from its bones and maggots writhed within it. It bore down on Vidius and knocked him to the ground. It fell on top of him, stretched its jaws wide and clamped them across Vidius’s mouth. The Memnosian couldn’t escape the corpse’s deadly kiss and embrace and died thrashing silently.
Saltar gently extricated the scythe from his chest, easing it out through the wound between his neck and shoulder.
‘Kate!’ he said experimentally and was dismayed to hear his voice rattle and wheeze. The scythe had perforated one of his lungs, if not sliced it to ribbons.
He raised the reality-sharp weapon and set about those hemming in Young Strap. He sliced through them with invisible lines of death and the wicked, pitiless eye of a master. He quickly had his bannerman back at his side.
‘Send the signal!’ Saltar croaked.
Young Strap nodded once, fit the specially prepared arrow to
his bow and sent it spearing straight up into the sky. A long, red ribbon trailed in its wake, so that it would be visible to any watching for it on any part of the battlefield.
‘Good. The way to the left is clear. Kate has done her job well. But we must move quickly. Who knows how long the gap will remain open. The enemy is indefatigable, Young Strap. I know them. There will be no rout. They will fight until we have slaughtered every one of them, but such a slaughter would only be doing Voltar’s work for him. Come, we must run.’
‘I-I can’t!’ Young Strap stammered. His face was drawn and pale. He was clearly exhausted. He looked ten times his actual years, as if he was at the point of death.
‘I command you. This is the instant of doom or salvation. We must go now or all is lost. Trust me. Life is death and death is life. They have become the same. You fear that to push yourself any further will be to kill yourself. Trust me: you will not die. You will run through and beyond death. There is only your will left, only a matter of decision. Choose salvation, choose it now! You are my banner!’
They ran. Young Strap could not believe he had the strength to carry on. But he did. He could not believe that he managed to recover from every stumble and avoid falling flat on his face never to move again. But he did.
One of Savantus’s lieutenants fought an unnaturally large giant not far from them. Voltar’s creature was clad in plate mail, meaning that the zombies swarming around him could get little purchase on him. He effortlessly smashed them aside with arms expanded to the full extent of the genetic potential of mankind. One outsized fist clamped itself around the lieutenant’s neck and pulled him from his feet. The other fist descended like a mallet and pulped the lieutenant’s head like an over-ripe water melon. Animees all across the field of battle began to topple. Whole swathes of their seething mass collapsed.
‘Faster! The enemy will soon gather themselves.’
Young Strap couldn’t answer. His breath laboured so hard that it felt like his heart was about to explode and his lungs were going to blow his chest open. Tears trickled down his begrimed cheeks. This was the death of him.
***
‘There’s the signal!’ Constantus shouted with relief. He was a man of action and passion – he did not like this waiting around while others risked their lives. More than that, he believed in taking fate into his own hands – it did not suit him to sit twiddling his thumbs when there were weapons to be wielded and dooms to be fought. He knew he was his own worst enemy sometimes. His restless impatience meant he could not deal with times of peace or rest very well. He usually ended up drinking himself insensible. To be sure, he’d been tempted to empty his hip-flask of Stangeld brandy or pick a fight while baby-sitting Mordius, but had managed to resist that by focusing on the thought that he could soon be face-to-face with the nemesis of the crown of Accritania. In a way, he’d spent his entire life fighting to get here, warring to get close to the elusive Voltar, striving to break the grip of the evil that threatened this realm. Like many warriors, he’d always worshipped Lacrimos while still loving Shakri. This was his life. It was what he had been born for.
It was a moment of elation for him, a moment of definition, a moment of wonder, freedom and release. He felt more alive than he ever had before. It was so intense it was almost painful, but the most delicious pain his limited mortality could ever understand or experience.
‘Ready, Mordius? For now we ride! Yah!’
The General led sixty-nine of his mounted men and the necromancer out across the plain. They moved from trot, to canter, to gallop and thundered towards the lower slopes of Corinus.
Mordius clung grimly to his perch. He had never been the best of riders, and his horse had always been on the temperamental side. And he had certainly never ridden into the midst of a war before. He’d always had a romanticised view of it, he realised. He’d thought it was the organised coming together of honourable but differently-principled men, where deeds of valour and bravery were done. He had never conceived of it being anything like the chaotic nightmare now rising up around him. He had ridden into hell itself, where horrors of imagination churned and collided violently. A cacophony of pain and anguish assaulted all his senses. His sense of self all but disappeared. How could sanity and personality survive in such a place? And a phalanx of demons swept across the plain to intercept them.
‘Come on, you dogs!’ roared the monstrous General, a look of manic delight giving him the leering face of Wim, the demented god himself. Did Mordius actually ride side by side with the avatar of divine madness? All things were possible in this time and place, all horrors, all transgressions, all corruptions of the fundamental laws of universe.
Mordius had lost all sense of direction. He was thrown and tossed on the currents of meaning and non-meaning like a cork on the sea. It was becoming dark.
At the edges of the plain there was nothing but the impenetrable ink of the void. It rushed in on all sides; the nullity, nothingness, absolute absence, engulfing all in its path.
‘Vallus!’ Constantus screamed in panic as the darkness encroached all around and overtook the group of twenty Accritanians left to guard Savantus.
The captain was gone. Constantus’s face went still. Every animee on the field froze in its tracks.
‘What do we do?’ Mordius asked in a shaky voice.
The day had gone from bright morning to dusk in a matter of minutes. The world was disappearing. All that remained was a circle of sky and plain centred on Corinus, and that circle was contracting rapidly, like the iris of a dying god’s eye.
Constantus blinked.
‘What do we do?’ Mordius cried hysterically.
‘We… we keep our nerve, that’s what we do!’ the General commanded. ‘On me!’ he bellowed to his men and spurred his flagging horse to greater speed. The enemy had slowed. Many of them pulled up in confusion as they realised the eternal chasm surrounded them, the light was hardly more than diaphanous vapour and a majority of Saltar’s army was now immobile.
***
‘Just hold on!’ Kate panted, though whom she addressed wasn’t clear. Maybe she spoke o herself, or mankind, or Shakri’s realm.
Her horse’s neck was stretched forward and low as it strained to escape the emptiness that roared behind it.
The small figure of the god Aa scrabbled for purchase on her shoulder. He stretched a hand out to try and entangle it in her hair but then he was gone, ripped from his perch by a fetid wind.
‘Aa!’ she cried, distraught, trying to pick him out against the murk.
‘Forget him!’ Incarnus boomed. ‘This is not a time for the god of new beginnings. The end is upon us. Pray that he’ll be born again some day.’
‘He was my friend!’ she pleaded, hot tears burning down her face.
‘There is naught but a small disc of this reality left. Would you lose what little time there is to self-indulgent, petulant musings upon your childhood?’
How she hated Incarnus sometimes, but then that was exactly the reaction he always sought to provoke. He was exactly the right god from the pantheon to be with her right now. He channelled her fears, loss and energies into a desire for vengeance, a desire to find a target for her righteous rage. He made her a weapon for the gods.
‘Kate!’ came a shout and she turned to see the King’s Scourge leading his remaining mercenaries across the field to join her. The two streams of cavalry became one and a rampaging torrent. Nothing could stand before them, even the mightiest of Voltar’s mutated followers.
‘Constantus is not far behind. And there are Saltar and Young Strap ahead of us. Follow me to Trajan’s house!’ the Scourge said with a gesture of his head towards one of the few houses that stood outside the walls of Corinus.’
***
Saltar’s command group arrived at Trajan’s doorstep within minutes of each other. Kate was the only one who attempted a smile of greeting, but it quickly disappeared as she beheld Saltar’s grievous wounds. He couldn’t keep his head straight with
his neck gaping so widely.
The old man opened his door without them having to knock or shout. It seemed he’d been expecting them. He had a pipe clenched between his teeth, and took a draw on it before nodding to the Scourge.
‘Good day to you, Guardian,’ he drawled, for all the world as if he was passing the time of day with a neighbour. A small boy with quick eyes peeked out from around the frame of the door.
‘General, you will hold the line here as agreed,’ Saltar gurgled.
The Accritanian saluted smartly, pulled his horse round and rode away to marshal the mercenaries without a backward glance.
‘Incarnus, go with him!’ Kate whispered. The heavy visor which was all there was to be seen of the divine revenger’s face tilted sideways in silent question. ‘There is more havoc to be wrought at the General’s side than there is where I am going.’ The grill of the divine engine hinged up and down in a solemn nod. The supernatural juggernaut manoeuvred round and lumbered away to stand at the brave Accritanian’s right hand. They would hold the Memnosians back long enough for Saltar’s group to get well into the catacombs under the city. Beyond that, there would be nothing they could do to hold back the darkness.
‘Nights seem to be drawing in faster and faster,’ Trajan observed. ‘The days have become so short that I doubt we’ll see another. Still, nice of you to come calling, Guardian, and to bring your friends. I had feared you’d left it too late. I hope you will be able to find your way home again, at such an hour when it has fallen so dark that a hand cannot be seen in front of the face.