by Curtis, Greg
At first of course, nothing seemed to happen. There was a slight breeze slowly building up behind their army heading into the pass, but nothing more. Nothing to raise the enemy's suspicions. It wasn't the attack the enemy were preparing for. It was no magical assault full of storms and lightning. It was just a gentle breeze. No one would see it for the true weapon it was.
But little by little the wizards added to their breeze, making it a tiny bit faster and more powerful, and perhaps half an hour later she could see for herself the effect it was having. The breeze was picking up the dust from the pass and sweeping it through and on to the soldiers in their encampment on the far side. And the dust was a serious nuisance. It blinded everyone in the pass and beyond. It stung the soldiers' eyes and made them turn away from the pass. Likewise the chimera and the thralls too looked uncomfortable as they sat crouched in their overlooks, and one or two of the beasts took missteps and fell to their deaths. It wasn't the intention but it was still a good sight to see. In the end every one of the enemy that died here was one less that they would have to fight later.
And no one yet realised this was even an attack. After all it was just a breeze and a bit of dust. They'd probably had to deal with them before. In fact they were so familiar with the problem that they didn't even try to use their wizards to stop the wind. Erislee hadn't expected them to. Because while the wizards and the soldiers were suffering they knew the thralls and their beasts in the pass itself were suffering worse. Why help your enemy?
She gave them a good hour to get used to the conditions before she set about the next part of the plan, and sent in the hounds. Though in this case the hounds were giant cats with wings who despite their size were very good at remaining unnoticed when they wanted to be. And they were especially good at it when their prey was hunkered down, shielding their eyes from the dust and concentrating only on what was in front of them – the pass filled with their enemies. They never saw the griffins coming. They never even thought to look up into the dust filled, yellow sky. They never looked behind them.
The first the soldiers and wizards knew of them was when eight hundred griffins suddenly descended on them, striking without warning, and always having a very specific target in mind – the wizards. They should have known better than to wear such gaudy outfits.
After that it was mayhem. There were wizards screaming and flying through the air, before their bloody bodies were dropped to the ground. Soldiers too were killed – there were simply more griffins than there were wizards. And the sound as the griffins roared was like thunder.
The response was completely predictable. The soldiers panicked. They couldn't see the griffins, only hear them and see the bodies falling all around them. They couldn't fight them when they were in the air – a few drew bows but without being able to see anything clearly they were loosing their arrows blindly. All they knew was that the enemy was behind them. And so they ran. Ten thousand soldiers jumped over their defensive fortifications and ran like frightened sheep. Away from the griffins and straight towards the pass and within range of the thralls and their bows.
It was a costly mistake for them as with the wind behind them the thralls could clearly see the soldiers running toward them. They started loosing their arrows at the panicking soldiers, and soon the men were falling like wheat fields being scythed.
Within a minute she would have guessed two or three thousand soldiers were dead, and the rest were panicking and running in all directions. Those who ran to either side of the pass as they fled were the luckiest. They couldn't be reached by the thralls' arrows and the griffins had a specific task to do which was to drive the army into the pass from behind. However, most didn't think about running left or right when they could hear the enemy right behind them. And they didn't realise as they scrambled over the arrow filled bodies of their fallen comrades that they were running head first into their enemy's clutches. They just ran forward into the pass, almost completely blinded by the dust coming at them but their ears filled with the roar of the griffins behind them.
Then the thralls sent in the harpies, and three or four hundred of them began unleashing their particular brand of death among them. It didn't take much. A strike here, a scratch their and soon soldiers were falling to the ground, dying of their diseased wounds. And unlike the arrows, the harpies could fly around corners. They could chase down those who had taken shelter to the sides of the pass and of course they did. They were hunters after all.
Five minutes later it was over. She had no idea how many had survived the attack, probably less than half at a guess. But she knew the survivors were no threat to them. They would be running, scattering to the sides, being hunted by the winged monsters. And though many still had weapons, there were no wizards among them. There were no wizards among the thralls either. Which left the field of battle completely open to their magic.
“Next phase!”
Erislee gave the command even as she brought the griffins back. Their eyes were naturally resistant to dust, but against what was coming it wouldn't be enough. Not nearly enough. Not when hundreds of wizards were about to unleash the fury of the underworld on the enemy.
It began with the wizards of the sky of course. They were the ones who could act at the greatest range. And soon the dust laden wind had become a gale, forcing them all to take cover. While the thralls could deal with that in their rocky perches and overlooks by covering their eyes and keeping low to the ground, the harpies weren't so lucky. Being so light they weren't strong fliers in high winds and so found themselves tossed around like leaves in a storm. Those who were only just returning from attacking the soldiers smashed into the sides of the cliffs and bounced off them, broken and screeching in confusion. Most of them were blown completely out of the pass.
Seeing that was a cause to celebrate. Harpies were foul creatures in Erislee's view. The world needed to be cleansed of them. But the harpies weren't their true targets. The thralls were. They after all were the ones controlling the beasts. And they like their chimera were lying down taking shelter from the wind, no doubt thinking it must sooner or later end. But what they couldn't shelter from was lightning, and soon there were massive strikes flashing down all around them. Thunder boomed, and little by little the true danger began to unfold. The thralls began to lose control of their beasts.
Erislee still didn't completely know how they controlled them – the wizards had always said they thought it was some kind of charm, and they'd found such charms on them – but the how didn't matter. Whether it was a charm or a demon ability granted to the thralls or something else, what she did know was that panicking animals were suddenly far more difficult to control. Those controlling them needed calm. And the one thing they knew from Midland Heights was that when the beasts were hungry or panicking, the thralls lost control. When those controlling them were also panicking and their beasts were already starting to run wild, the outcome was inevitable. And once the wizards of the earth started throwing their magic into the fray and dropping small rockfalls on top of everyone, the result was inevitable.
It came suddenly. One minute there was howling and screaming as the chimera broke free of their control, and the next there was death. An orgy of violence and savagery that exploded into life and knew no bounds. Blood and body parts sprayed in all directions, screaming and howling echoed through the narrow pass, and bodies plummeted to the ground everywhere. Those of the thralls and the chimera both. And where they landed they remained, broken and bleeding. She suspected though that many of the thralls had been dead long before they'd fallen, torn apart by their own beasts as they huddled in their overlooks and perches.
Staring at the carnage unfolding in front of her Erislee felt a chill. It was a shock to see just how savage and uncontrollable the beasts were without their thrall masters. And once they panicked there was no hope of holding them back. They didn't even recognise their own kind. She watched as leonids actually began attacking other leonids, lost in a mixture of fear and blood lust. I
t was something, she hadn't seen before.
At least it was quick. Five minutes of rampant slaughter, no more. After that there simply weren't enough survivors left to fight. But that was the danger of fighting in cliff top perches and on ledges. Even if you didn't kill your opponent immediately, the chances were that you were both going to lose your footing and tumble to your doom. Which was exactly what had happened. The pass was littered with broken bodies and body parts. Thousands of them. Thousands more were scattered out in the lands just beyond them.
It was then that Erislee called off the attack. There was no purpose in continuing it any longer. Instead it was time to enter the pass themselves, and that part she left to the command of the war masters. They had a plan.
An hour later they began their advance through the pass, two hundred of their best soldiers leading the way. The men were armed with spears to kill any of the fallen that might still be alive, and longbows to kill any survivors remaining in the cliffs above. But there was precious little for them to do. Though she saw them stab maybe a few score bodies and launch perhaps as many arrows into the cliffs above, in reality the battle was over. And by the time the rest of the army followed them through, the main problem they had left to deal with was the footing. The bodies were so thick on the ground that in places they had to step on them. The horses especially didn't like that.
The pass was only five hundred paces long, more or less, but by the end of it she was impatient, waiting for the journey to end. But eventually it did and she found herself standing on the far side of the pass staring at the grasslands beyond as they slowly descended into the distance. It was then that Erislee knew that she'd taken an enormous step in her journey to retake the five kingdoms from the false temple.
It was just over a year since she had begun her journey. A year and a month maybe since Harl had rescued her from the thralls. Since then her people had freed both the Rainbow Mountains and Vardania while Northland and the Regency were both well on the way to being freed. And now here she was, standing in the Kingdom of the Lion. That was better progress than anyone could possibly have expected.
In the next few weeks ten thousand troops would be coming through from the Rainbow Mountains to reach the Kingdom of the Lion, as would the dryads from the Regency. Their task now was to meet up with them.
In the morning she decided, they would begin their march east, crossing the entire kingdom to join up with the others. And once they were united they would turn and march north through the eastern side of the kingdom until they finally reached the capitol, Lion's Crest.
The end was in sight.
Chapter Fifty Nine
The throne room was a very sombre place. The new crop of war masters were full of pessimism about what lay before them. But they were very careful not to say too much. After all they had seen what had happened to their predecessors. So now they operated by a simple creed. If they didn't have anything good to say, they said nothing. It made for a more peaceful throne room. Still, their pessimism showed. And the tactics they offered him were now only about annoying and distracting the enemy. There was no more talk of victory.
Terellion hated that. But even he knew it was too late to do anything else. He had lost too many armies. Too many soldiers and wizards.
In hind sight the turning point had been Midland Heights when he had lost his second army; some forty thousand chimera and thousands of soldiers. That after losing the first one, the garrison stationed in the city. Two such hits had been too much. When the demon king had turned on him and sent his every thrall and beast after his soldiers throughout the rest of the five kingdoms, it had been the death blow. To add to his troubles he still had twenty thousand soldiers on the field, blocking the two remaining passes leading into Vardania.
The war masters didn't understand why he left them there. They had pleaded with him several times to bring those soldiers home. But he couldn't do that. He couldn't allow the thralls to get through and gain a significant foothold in his realm. He'd even placed another small force on the pass that the High Priestess' army had broken through just to make sure no one else followed them. The thralls still had to be contained even after the High Priestess had broken through.
Now it was simply about weakening the High Priestess and the dryads while they prepared for the coming siege. So he had his thralls sending harpies across enemy lines to launch attacks on the civilians had left behind to march on him. If his forces couldn't directly face the enemy head on having suffered so many losses, they would attack their weakest points. Their loved ones back home. So while the High Priestess and the dryads marched on him, the harpies slipped between their lines and marched on their homelands. The intention was that they kill as many civilians as they could. Women and children first. That way when the soldiers realised they were vulnerable, that their loved ones were in danger, some of them would turn back and head home to protect them.
It was a brilliant strategy. One he was very proud of. But it wasn't working so far.
But if the war masters were pessimistic, the scouts were worse when they brought him their depressing reports. Already they were reporting that the High Priestess and her poxy army had come through Roland Pass to the south west of the kingdom without suffering any casualties. No casualties at all! How could that be?
The few survivors claimed that they had first been attacked from behind and then that the thrall army had descended on them from the front. They had been caught in a trap between two armies and been unable to defend themselves. It was an excuse, and a poor one at that. He would have killed them all for their failure, save that those few hundred survivors now marching for Lion's Crest up the west side of the realm were needed to help protect the kingdom. To protect him.
The worst of it was that the scouts agreed with them. They didn't know how the High Priestess had done it, but they knew that the bodies of the fallen were theirs. Theirs and the thralls. Ten thousand of them at least. Meanwhile her army of fifty thousand at least marched on him while a second army of ten thousand at least was heading north towards them from the Rainbow Mountains. The dryads would soon be entering the realm from the south east and the north. It seemed that the gods themselves were favouring her. Meanwhile Tyche was definitely cursing him with misfortune.
He had been surprised to learn that the High Priestess was marching east to meet up with the others before marching north to Lion's Crest. He would have expected that she would simply have marched north along the western side of the realm while their allies marched north along the eastern side, intending to meet at the capitol. And for a moment when he'd heard what she was actually doing he had had hope. Hope of fleeing through the west.
But then he'd remembered the bad news. All three passes leading to the south west and Vardania were still blocked, held by the enemy. The High Priestess held Roland Pass. She'd left a small force behind just to make certain he couldn't flee through it – at least that was his assumption for it. The thralls held the other two passes. He couldn't get through any of them. While to the north and west the dryads of Pariton were in full command of Northland. He was still trapped.
For a while though he had still considered it. To abandon his city and make a break for the west, taking with him all his soldiers and leave behind the thralls and their beast armies. His thought had been that they would simply try to punch their way west through the borderlands between Vardania and Northland, and then on through Harvas Greens. But if he did that he knew it wouldn't be long before the thralls still loyal to Xin would come out of hiding and start freeing the others from his hold. If they were quick enough he could end up being pursued by them and every chimera in the city within a matter of days.
The alternative was to bring them with him. But he couldn't do that. Because bringing them out from the safety of the city to where he knew others of Xin's thralls could reach them was tantamount to committing suicide. There had already been incidents where patrols supported by thralls and chimera had found themselves unexpecte
dly in battles for survival with their own allies. To make matters worse Harvas Greens was a land of swamps and fens, marshes and bogs, and of course thick forests. There were no roads through it. The fauns didn't like roads. Which meant his army would quickly become scattered and broken up. They would soon no longer be an army. They would become a rabble. And the last thing he wanted was to be trying to battle his way through such an inhospitable land with his army in disarray while being hunted by chimera, many of whom could fly.
It was better his war masters told him, to stay where he was and weather the battle in a walled city where all his soldiers and the chimera under his control could be kept together to act as one. They could and were bringing in provisions in preparation for a siege. And they were fortifying. Rebuilding the broken parts of the walls, adding towers where they were needed. While they had plenty of soldiers. Even though many had not made it back thanks to Xin, enough had that he was sure the city was well defended. Best of all, with the city so empty of people other than their armies, they had plentiful supplies. Enough to survive years under siege. And if the High Priestess was ever foolish enough to attack she would soon find that they were more than ready for her.