The Godlost Land

by Curtis, Greg

  Meanwhile Erislee had to concentrate on another objective. As the trebuchets had been adjusted to fire shorter range volleys at the front lines, the back half of the battle field had been left free of their fire. And without the danger of rocks raining down on them, the griffins suddenly had a clear line of attack. Erislee sent them flying into the battle with a whispered command, praying that they would be completely victorious. There was a good chance that they would be as they were striking from above at the enemy's rear lines while the soldiers were looking ahead instead of to the skies. But there was no certainty in war.

  Five hundred griffins struck without warning and a matter of mere heartbeats later she saw more than five hundred temple soldiers give up their lives. Picked up and torn apart, their leather armour proving useless against the claws and reach of the griffins.

  Naturally the survivors panicked, caught completely by surprise as the bloody bodies of their companions crashed down among them. But then they had been crossing difficult ground, looking at their footing and at the battle ahead of them. They hadn't been checking the skies.

  Meanwhile the chimera were coming closer all the time, and as she concentrated on the griffins Erislee couldn't help but notice how near they were. Even confused and surely hurting, they were returning to the attack. It seemed that even though they had been torn apart by falling rocks, stalled by unexpected canyons and burnt alive, they had still remained true to their masters' commands. To kill them. But she had to focus on the griffins. On the forces she alone controlled. And she had to keep them attacking the soldiers.

  At her bidding the griffins wheeled around in the sky and then swooped in for another attack, and this time the soldiers were more ready for them. Some had their weapons out. Some threw themselves to the ground as they saw death swooping in. But it wasn't enough. They were disorganised and frightened. And though they didn't yet understand it, they weren't fighting a war. They were being hunted. Taken down as a stag was taken down by wolves.

  The griffins were the Goddess' hounds, and they knew how to hunt. They knew how to strike from every direction when their prey wasn't looking. And they knew how to work as a pack.

  Those soldiers who raised a weapon to the skies seeking to stop one griffin found themselves being attacked from behind by another. Those who threw themselves aside swiftly discovered that no matter which direction they took, they were diving into the jaws of another griffin. Those who ran discovered that they were too slow. And those who found the ground learned that it still wasn't low enough.

  Hundreds more went flying through the air before their broken and bloodied bodies crashed down among their comrades. And that was the turning point in their advance. That was when the soldiers suddenly broke and ran.

  It was a mistake and they should have known it. As the soldiers panicked and split and ran in different directions, they became vulnerable. To add to their woes many of those at the front of the charge were already wading through the bog. Unable to run, slow to turn as their legs were trapped by the mud, they became easy prey. The griffins tore them apart quickly.

  Of those who had been in the rear and so weren't trapped in the bog most knew only one thought – the need to run for the safety of the city. They knew that their only safety lay behind the walls, and they put everything they had into making it to them.

  But it was three hundred paces back to the walls and they were in armour. They simply didn't have the time. The griffins had finished with the others quickly and were on them before they had crossed half the distance.

  Soon they were joining their brothers in arms in the afterlife and the only truly organised part of the army was gone.

  But just as Erislee was thinking about celebrating at least a minor victory, a new enemy entered the picture. And the first she knew of it was when the smokey sky above the city started filling with clouds. But they weren't clouds. They were harpies. And they were coming for the griffins.

  That caught her by surprise. It was a tactic she hadn't expected. Neither had the war masters. But then even as she wondered what to do, she suddenly remembered why the war masters hadn't expected the harpies to come into the attack until the end. They were poor fliers. Good enough to pose a risk to anyone on the ground, especially if they had the advantage of surprise, but not good enough against a griffin.

  “Up to the stars!” Erislee gave the command and immediately watched as her beautiful allies began climbing, soaring upwards on their huge white wings, while above the city thousands of harpies were slowly flapping their way to where they had been. And long before the harpies had made the battlefield the griffins were high above them.

  Which was as it should be. It gave the griffins a significant advantage.

  “Attack from above!” The enemy had perhaps been original in bringing the harpies into the battle. And he had probably saved a thousand soldiers by doing it. She could see many of them scrambling through the gates in the walls having finally reached safety. But he was going to pay a price for that move. Harpies weren't just poor fliers, they had one terrible weakness in the air. They couldn't look up.

  They never saw the griffins as they tore through them. They never had a chance to strike back at them. And despite their terrible weapon of disease, they could do nothing. They fell from the skies in their hundreds as the griffins dived and swooped among them. And then they plummeted in their thousands.

  The entire battle took less than thirty beats of Erislee's heart, and at the end of it she knew victory had been complete. A few griffins were down, a couple had fallen from the skies, but now she knew, that when they entered the city, one of the greatest dangers they had been expecting to face would no longer be waiting for them.

  Erislee let her winged allies withdraw once their work was done. They'd done well, leaving behind a battlefield that resembled a bloodbath, and while a few of the soldiers might have survived the battle, they were no threat. Unfortunately there was little more they could do for the moment. Not while the war machines were still in action. Meanwhile she had to turn her attention to the front lines as the first of the chimera finally came within range of the long bows.

  There weren't many at first. Just a scattering that were quickly taken down. But little by little they started coming through in greater numbers, Soon there were hundreds of them making the charge across the last three or four hundred paces between them. But the archers were up to the task, and while the chimera might have covered fifty or a hundred paces, it just wasn't enough. Especially when the war machines were still thinning out the horde behind them.

  Erislee added the strength of her own bow to the attack, thinking that every bit helped, and for what seemed like ages the battle raged. The chimera kept charging and their numbers continued to thin. But slowly the chimera were getting closer and closer, the gap between them becoming ever smaller. Again it wasn't tactics or strategy that was helping them. It was sheer numbers.

  Erislee's heart began to race a lot more as she could see them getting nearer. Her shoulders were burning with the ache from pulling the string back again and again, and her palms were clammy. But she continued to loose her arrows at them and her aim never faltered. In the end she was a hunter and sometimes your quarry turned and attacked. A good hunter was always ready for that. Besides, even though it seemed to take two or three or even four arrows to bring down each minotaur or leonid, they were nearly four thousand archers strong.

  Still, some got through. Only a few, but every so often she heard screams that she knew came from the soldiers – her soldiers. And if she'd looked around she knew she'd see them dying. Being torn apart by the monsters of these false priests. It was a terrible thing. But that was simply the price they had to pay if they were to be free of the tyranny of the false temple. By her too if it came to that.

  And then she heard the sound she'd most dreaded hearing – silence as one by one the war machines stopped firing. She knew what that meant. The beasts were too close. The crews had had to defend themselves.
She could not blame them. But she knew it was a bad sign. The less that threw their rocks at the enemy, the more chimera survived the long run across the battlefield to attack them.

  Then the nearest of the beasts came within twenty feet of her and she knew they were in trouble. They were being overrun simply by numbers. And that seemed bitterly unfair. After all the hard work and planning they'd done to still be outmatched, that was wrong. Still there was nothing to do but fight and hope. She put an arrow in the eye of the leonid and reached for the next as she watched the beast stop in its tracks.

  From this moment on it was about survival.

  A cerberi leapt for her even as she was notching the arrow, and she very nearly screamed, shocked by the creature's impossible speed. But as fast as it was, others were faster, and a wild man with a pair of axes appeared from out of nowhere to batter it away in a spray of blood. But for him she knew she would have died. She returned the favour a couple of heartbeats later as she put an arrow in the head of a charging minotaur bearing down on them both.

  Erislee kept loosing arrows at the beasts as fast as she knew how, her aim somehow never failing her despite her fear. And her speed with the longbow was greater than she'd ever known. But deep inside as she saw the battlefield becoming more and more confused and heard the screaming of men falling, she knew they were in trouble.

  Then she discovered a new problem as she went to notch another arrow. There were no more. Her quiver was empty.

  For a few terrible heartbeats she was almost undone by that. Her arrows gone, her longbow useless? It was unthinkable. She was a huntress and that was her weapon. And somehow she had never even considered the possibility that it would happen. But then she remembered that others had. So she drew the short sword they had given her and prayed that between it and the armour it would be enough. Then the next cerberi leapt for her and there was no time to pray. She slashed at it and the sword imparted a blast of whiteness into the beast's flesh, sending it flying away.

  After that things became completely chaotic. She had no idea how the battle was going. She could hear the screams of men dying all around her and the roars of the beasts. She heard the blasts of the wizards as they took down their enemies with fire and lightning. She saw the flashes of white that were the unicorns charging into the fray, and the gold of the griffins as they waged war from above. She smelled blood. But all she could concentrate on was her own little piece of the battle. On dodging each beast as it attacked and stabbing at it as best she could with the strange little sword she had been given.

  For an eternity it seemed, that was her world. Dodge, swing, stab and pray that she didn't get hit. Just as she guessed it was everyone else's world. And somehow she managed not to get hit. But that was because others were. Men, soldiers, many of them little more than boys kept standing between her and the oncoming hoard, and they kept getting knocked down. Unicorns too were covered in blood as they fought to keep the beasts from her.

  Still they held their ground. The beasts came and they fell before them. They fell in greater numbers than them. And nothing killed her. A minotaur came close, its horns very nearly taking out her belly as it charged, but a man with a huge blade cut it in half just in front of her. Just before a leonid dragged him away in the heat of the battle.

  So she kept fighting and the chimera kept falling until eventually she looked up and realised that those still attacking her were nowhere near as many as they had been. Less and less were running for her.

  What did that mean?

  For the longest time Erislee didn't understand that. She didn't understand anything really as she kept looking for beasts to kill. But in time as she kept looking for them and they kept not coming, she understood. They weren't coming. They were dead.

  Little by little she began to look around her. To see more of the battlefield than her own little piece of it. And to realise that the fighting was coming to an end. But more than that, it was the end they had worked for. The beasts had been killed.

  The bodies of the fallen covered the grass all around her. In places they were actually piled two and three high on it. And as she looked she could see them covering the ground all the way back to the city walls half a league away. And nearly all of them were chimera.

  The enemy had been defeated.

  Others realised that too. Not immediately. Not when many of them were still fighting. The battle line was four hundred paces wide and peace hadn't come to all of it. But in time she heard them as they started cheering. They knew the battle was won. It was just a matter of time now. The pain in her shoulder from having pulled back on the string was terrible. Her arms ached as never before from having swung the sword. Sweat was running down her face and getting into her eyes. Her heart was racing and her breathing was ragged. But she too was ecstatic. They had almost won. The hunt was going to be successful.

  And yet, even as she stood there and thought about screaming her victory to the heavens, she couldn't help but wonder how it had come to this. So close. Though she thought she could see most of her army still standing, she knew that the numbers they had lost didn't truly represent how close it had been. They had prepared. They had used every tactic and strategy they could think of. They had massed the largest army they could. They had created huge defences which had taken out two thirds of the chimera attacking. And yet still they had barely won through. And this was only one city in one kingdom – the smallest of the five. From here on out the battles would only become tougher. And when they had to face Lion's Crest? The gods alone knew how hard that would be.

  Finally though, when the last enemy was down and her sword was back in its scabbard, Erislee's thoughts turned in another direction. The coming day. The false temple's army was defeated. However many soldiers they had left in the city couldn't be enough to put up any meaningful resistance. The harpies were gone too. And that left only the wizards to really cause them problems. But there were still walls to level. Enemies to destroy. And somewhere inside that fortress city there was still a Circle wizard lying in wait. A wizard they had to track down and kill.

  Soon – in the morning perhaps, once they had buried their dead and tended to their wounded – they would have to go in. And inside the city, the few soldiers and chimera still remaining would be more dangerous. They could strike from seclusion and bring their people down. Each one of the enemy could probably account for three or four of them before he fell if he was clever. The question was; how many were left? Had the enemy committed everyone they had to the charge? Or had they kept a lot back just in case?

  As joyous as this victory felt, she realised that this first battle had only been the start.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  They entered Midland Heights the following day. It was a slow and careful advance following another round of bombardment. It was the only way they could do it. The war masters had said as much and Erislee had agreed with them. They had been too badly weakened the previous day.

  Eight hundred of Erislee's men were dead. And just as many were badly injured. That was nearly a quarter of their entire army unable to fight, while many more were walking wounded. And it didn't help to know that they'd killed at least forty thousand chimera according to the war master's best estimates. It didn't make her feel any better about their own losses. Every life was precious. And a million chimera dead for the loss of one man was still not a trade she would have taken had she any choice.

  But at least they had won and now they had to push that victory through to the end. They had to send Maynard to Tartarus. So they had begun their painfully slow advance into the city. They had bombarded the first half dozen terraces intensely, breaking down not just the walls but the buildings as well so that they deprived the enemy, however many of them survived, of cover. It also had the effect of forcing them back to the higher terraces and trapping them there while their own numbers were slowly improved by reinforcements.

  It was a cold and calculated plan. But Erislee was beginning to realise that war wa
s cold and calculated. At least if you wanted to win. And they had to win.

  She disagreed with the war masters on one matter though. They wanted her to stand back and send others in. She was never going to do that though. Despite having come close to death the previous day, she was determined to stand with the others. This was her fight as well as theirs. And their lives were no less valuable to them than her life was to her. They would stand together and if it came to it they would fall together.

  So she had entered the city with the soldiers once the bombardment had stopped, and then together they had started hunting down the enemy. There weren't a lot. Not on the first two terraces anyway. The soldiers had obviously retreated once the bombardment had begun. And those that remained were mostly either wounded and seeking medical attention or had had enough of fighting and just wanted to live. They had taken a lot of prisoners on those first couple of terraces. More than she had expected.

  The third terrace looked exactly like the two before it she thought as she scoured it with the others. Lots of broken stone walls and buildings, burnt out roofs, debris and rubble everywhere. There were also a large number of bodies. She hadn't realised until they'd entered the city just how many had been killed by the barrage. But it was a lot. And while many of them were chimera and soldiers, a lot weren't. Many were civilians. The people who ran the city. Who carried the water and cleaned the floors. Who served at the tables and sewed the clothes. And who had died with their oppressors.