The Godlost Land

by Curtis, Greg

  When the false temple had come to the five kingdoms they had started with the assassinations – but they hadn't stopped there. Once the nobles, priests, the most powerful wizards, the leaders of the armies and anyone else who might cause them any problems had been killed, they'd moved on, enforcing their rule with the utmost brutality and people had been executed for the most minor of crimes. Erislee knew that that had really just been an excuse so that their lives could feed the demon king. Many more people had simply vanished without any trace. Midland Heights like all the other cities had been decimated long before they'd arrived.

  It was a pity in a way she thought that they couldn't just stay there and watch the city fall apart by itself. It would have been safer. But that could have taken a year or more. And all the while they waited the people inside would continue to starve and the chimera would continue to break loose every so often. But the city wouldn't collapse completely until there was no more food at all. Until the last of the thirty thousand people living there had been consumed. Then the tens of thousands of chimera would come out and fight. The surviving soldiers, wizards and priests would come with them. Because they would know that to stay was to die. And those were the ones who would survive longest in a city filled with hungry beasts. The ones who could defend themselves.

  In a way she knew that by bombarding the city, they were actually saving the civilians. At least some of them. But that wasn't why they had started the bombardment. It was that they couldn't leave an enemy army behind them as they advanced throughout the rest of the five kingdoms. They could not leave an enemy there ready to attack them from behind at any time. And they couldn't leave their own soldiers there to watch over them until the city destroyed itself from within. They had always had to attack.

  So the previous day Erislee had had all the war machines and the last of their soldiers head up from Cut Valley Holding to prepare for the battle, unseen by the enemy. And at first light, with their army at full strength Erislee had given the order and the war machines had sprung into action. A hundred and some trebuchets, each standing as tall as ten men began the assault.

  The slings on the end of the chains were loaded, the chains tightened and the giant arms began swinging, flinging massive boulders so high into the air that they almost disappeared in the sky. And when they came down everyone could see the damage they did even from as far away as they were. Walls crumbled, dust and debris was blown all around. The noise of the machines was also incredible and when the boulders struck it sounded like thunder. It felt like thunder too. Thunder in the ground.

  Erislee was amazed at how loud it was standing as she was with the army. They were so far away from the city. Nearly half a league away. Only the massive size of the war machines and the skill with which the artisans had designed them allowed them to drop their stones on the city. Still, when they hit there was a massive crack as stone smashed into stone, and then a thump that ran through the ground under their feet. And when over a hundred war machines were launching at once, that became thunder. Thunder that didn't stop.

  For eight long hours stone boulders were flung into the air only to come crashing down somewhere along the city walls or beyond them in the terraces while she imagined that those inside the city did nothing except take shelter as best they could.

  The wizards were in action as well. The range was long – far too great for them to use their magic as they wanted to, especially when none of them save Dina were Circle wizards – but still they were having some effect.

  Their three wizards of fire couldn't send fireballs flying all the way across the valley. It was just too far. It would probably have been too far even for a Circle wizard. But they'd come up with a compromise and all three had created flaming longbows which launched arrows made of fire. Arrows that because they had almost no weight at all, were able to streak across the gap. And while most of them smashed harmlessly into the stone walls, enough landed on roofs and anything else that would burn that dozens of fires were burning throughout in the city. Here and there they could see flames rising from most of the lower terraces and lifting above the walls, and everywhere there was smoke. Huge clouds of thick black smoke filled the sky above the city. It even obscured the very mountains that Midland Heights was nestled in.

  The four wizards of earth they had were working with the trebuchets. Or more correctly with the stones they were flinging. They were transforming some of them from the ordinary granite and schist into glass and acid. When they hit, those special boulders did little damage to the walls. But the glass balls exploded and sent shards of razor sharp glass dripping acid flying in all directions. Anyone made of flesh and blood and standing too near was slashed and torn. Those any nearer were cut to ribbons.

  Meanwhile Dina, their only Circle wizard and one of their few wizards of sky, was raising dust storms and sending them in. Huge funnels of twisting wind and dirt, that could cross the walls and rub exposed skin from faces. Because of her, Erislee guessed that most of the enemy would have had to take shelter in whatever buildings they could find, many of which were on fire.

  For all of the morning and half the afternoon the battle had raged, and it was all one sided. The enemy did not strike back at all. But then they couldn't – not without leaving the protection of their walls. And for a time Erislee had begun to wonder if they would strike back at all. Or if they would just sit and hide waiting for the battle to cease when darkness fell and then to lick their wounds while they waited for battle to begin again in the morning. But it was madness for them to simply stay where they were. It had made some sense until the bombardment had begun. But not after that. Sooner or later they had to attack.

  By the afternoon the four closest walls were crumbling, and the next four behind them showed signs of cracking. The city was little by little being destroyed around the enemy.

  Then finally, as the sun was showing half the afternoon was gone, the temple finally reacted. They'd realised that they had no choice. It was that or die slowly. Die from bombardment or die at the claws and fangs of their own creatures. The first sign was when they saw chimera pouring out of the gates in the lowest wall. Not just a few of them, but hundreds. Hundreds and then thousands. Then tens of thousands. The counter attack had finally begun.

  It was the moment of truth. The moment when they finally found out just how many soldiers and beasts were actually inside the walled city. Until then they'd only had estimates. Guesses from civilians for the most part. And they'd prepared for them as best they could. But they could be wrong.

  “They're attacking!”

  Erislee gave the warning as soon as she saw them and even pointed at the beasts. But she was slow. Others were giving the same call even before her. Quickly the trebuchets were re-targeted and their payloads changed. Solid boulders that weighed as much as three men were swapped for bundles of shot that were shovelled into the slings – fist sized blocks of stone that rained down on the approaching army.

  Oddly the rate of fire went up. It seemed that each twenty man war machine was able to be loaded more quickly with shot than with boulders. And the effect was immediate. As the smaller stones crashed down among the chimera, scores were killed and scores more injured. But the enemy was coming at them in their thousands and then their tens of thousands, and the holes they were making in their numbers looked disturbingly small. Seeing how many of the beasts were pouring out of those walls Erislee began to worry.

  Soon though the beasts reached the first of the defences they'd prepared and she knew a moment of relief. Under the cover of darkness they'd sent out their wizards of the earth to set up their own defences, and while the enemy inside the temple surely had to have known they were doing it, they hadn't known where those defences were or what form they took. They certainly hadn't guessed that the first of them were only three hundred paces out from the city wall.

  The wizards had transformed the land into a bog by diverting some underground streams, and the result was that what looked like a grassy val
ley suddenly became a foot trapping swamp under the weight of the chimera's feet. It slowed them enormously. Leonids that could run nearly twice as fast as a man were suddenly reduced to crawling and roaring their displeasure at the world. Minotaurs with their hooves sinking deep into the soft mud were even slower, wading through the mud, in some places nearly swimming. Even the cerberi were slowed.

  It wasn't meant to be a lethal trap. The bog wouldn't kill anyone. But what it did do was give the trebuchets more time to attack a slow moving target. And as the chimera waded through the mud, the stones descended on them. Hundreds were killed with each impact. It was like watching stones being thrown into a lake and seeing the ripples spreading out in all directions. Ripples of death. And as the bombardment continued she could see their broken and bloody corpses covering the mud and grass. But there were thousands more behind them. Maybe tens of thousands.

  They continued to pour out of the city gates in an endless stream, heedless of the danger, and when they reached the bog, they simply clambered over the bodies of the fallen to reach them.

  The war masters had expected that and prepared for it. But still seeing them keep coming in such large numbers set Erislee's heart racing.

  Eventually the first of the chimera made it through the bog and others behind them followed. Thousands of others. They'd had only four wizards of earth to build the defences and so the line of bog was only three hundred paces deep. But that was only to be expected. It was something that they'd planned on. And the number of corpses they left behind them was almost beyond counting. In fact she could see more bodies than open ground.

  Then as the first of the attackers came out of the mud and started racing for them again, they ran straight into the next of their defences – one they could never have prepared for. The ground gave way beneath them. The earth wizards had dug a trench with their magic. While it was only a dozen feet across, it was fifty deep – the depth only made possible by the efforts of Erislee's four earth wizards all working together. They had dug a minor chasm under the ground and the cerberi as the first to reach it had no warning. All they knew was that the thin layer of grass gave way beneath them as they ran and then they were falling. They howled as only cerberi could as they fell, but there was nothing they could do.

  In time the minotaurs and the leonids started crawling their way out of the bog and reached the trench. But then they just stood there. They were smart enough to know they couldn't cross it – save for a few who tried to jump it and fell to their deaths – but they weren't smart enough to realise they could go around it. Not without someone to command them. In the end they were animals, even if they had some of the traits of humans and it never occurred to look to the left or right as they stared at their prey in front of them. So they just stood there while ever more rocks rained down on their heads and the men at the trebuchets cheered as they worked.

  But eventually a decision was made, though not by those at the face of the trench. By those behind them. The chimera behind the beasts assembled at the edge of the trench came charging out of the bog and continued to push forward, and they didn't care about those in front of them. They didn't understand that those in front of them were standing there because they couldn't advance. They couldn't even see the trench. The only thing they knew was that their prey was in front of them. So they ran into them. In the end those in the front howling and roaring their displeasure at the trench were simply pushed into it by those behind them. And little by little the barrier was overcome by the sheer number of bodies slowly filling it up.

  Seeing them do that, Erislee's heart started beating a little faster again. Her mouth became dry and her hands clammy. She realised that despite all their preparations the chimera still might actually overcome their well thought out defences. It wasn't through strategy. It wasn't by any sort of a tactic. It was simply by the unimaginable numbers that were overwhelming their defences one by one. It didn't matter how many fell. The enemy had the numbers and they just didn't have any fear. They had blood lust instead. For a while she could almost feel their teeth at her throat.

  But then as the next wave ran over the bodies of their fallen Erislee took a deep breath and summoned her courage. They might not have destroyed them all but the well prepared traps had taken out almost half of the enemy army while more were dying all the time as the war machines took their toll on them. And they still had more defences left. The next was fire.

  The wizards of earth had done a good job, but it was time for the wizards of fire to do theirs. And they were ready. As the chimera finally crossed the half way point of the battle field between the city and the rebel army they ran through what they probably thought was more water. But it wasn't water. It was lamp oil. Oil that had been solidified by the cold until it was nearly the thickness of lard, and prevented from sinking into the earth because it was too hard packed – the wizards of the earth had all but baked the earth beneath it to allow the many hundreds of barrels of lamp oil to be poured over the ground. As soon as the chimera started running out onto it in numbers the wizards of fire set it alight.

  The result was an inferno.

  A strip of land fifty paces deep and six hundred wide simply burst into flames that shot twenty and thirty feet into the air. Flames that burnt hotter than any others. So hot that Erislee could feel the heat even as far away as she was. And in amongst those flames she could see figures running. Inhuman shapes that howled and roared and screamed. Hundreds of them. Many of them had slipped over in the burning oil. More had lost their sense of direction and some were actually running backwards into their own lines. All of them though had lost any semblance of order. There was no control over them any more. And as they burnt they howled with pain and ran and then tore into anything nearby. They ran into the other chimera, attacking them in their frenzy, setting alight some of them and causing complete pandemonium.

  For five and then ten long minutes Erislee watched as the fire tore through the beast army, and prayed that this would be the blow that would finish them off. And all the time the mighty trebuchets kept dropping their payloads among the beasts, felling them in ever greater numbers.

  And for a while as the worst of the fire finally began clearing she could almost imagine that it had been the turning point in the battle. The terrible damage the defence had caused was quickly becoming apparent. There were blackened bodies everywhere. Black smoke was covering the entire valley, and the smell of burnt meat filled the air. Clearly it hadn't been mere hundreds that had died, but thousands. Many thousands. Better yet the surviving beasts were no longer under any sort of control. They had run completely wild. They were frantically attacking one another and running in all directions, lost in mindless savagery and pain. Few if any of them were coming their way. And all the while the crews on the war machines were working frantically, and raining rocks down on the heads of the survivors. The ones that hadn't yet reached the fire. There was no doubt that the enemy was in trouble.

  But the cheering soon stopped. While the men worked desperately, knowing that there were still too many survivors left, the remaining chimera began to run for them again. Across the blackened ground, over the bodies of the fallen, through the smoke. They knew that their prey was in front of them, and they continued to close the gap.

  Eventually command was restored, the thralls back in the city pushing all their strength into the charms that controlled the beasts, and what was left of the chimera began to reform into an army once again. By then she guessed that at least twenty thousand beasts were dead, or two thirds of the army. But that still left ten thousand charging towards them.

  Only ten thousand! Erislee's hand tightened on her bow. They were still outnumbered two to one.

  Worse still soldiers from the city had entered the fray. She wasn't sure why. But she could see at least five thousand of them slowly beginning their charge. No doubt they thought that the chimera had broken through all the defences and would have crushed the opposition by the time they reached them. They w
ould only have to mop up the remnants.

  They were out of luck.

  “Second phase!”

  She gave the order with all the strength she could muster and soon her cry was being taken up by others. Horns were blowing and the soldiers were preparing. They all knew their part. The war masters had been very insistent upon that, drilling their soldiers day and night in the plan. As quickly as they heard the call the crews on the war machines adjusted their aim, shifting the swinging bars down a notch and replacing the chains on the slings with shorter ones so that they had a shorter range.

  It took a nervous few minutes, but the men had practised the operation hundreds of times and the war machines had been designed so that they could be quickly and easily adjusted, and they were ready well before the reformed front lines of the chimera had reached them. Then when they finally started firing the beasts started falling down in scores. Meanwhile the archers had formed up in ranks beside them. That was nearly four thousand men with longbows waiting for the chimera to come into range. And every one of them Erislee guessed, was as nervous as she was.