Dance of Battle: A Dark Fantasy (Shedim Rebellion Book 4)

by Burke Fitzpatrick

  Silas stood beside Tyrus, explaining the pulleys and counterweights of the parallel cars. He was very proud of the thing, but Tyrus just saw a death trap.

  “Is there no other way to go lower?”

  Silas said, “I assure you it is very safe.”

  “It’s not the gears that worry me. If we are caught down there and need to withdraw, this thing is too slow.”

  Tyrus didn’t understand all the weird ways dwarves used weights and stones to fight the tribes, but he saw the dangers of the lift right away. They would spend several hours lowering a few hundred warriors into the depths, so fighting on the other side would be like a battle with an ocean or a river at his back. Once they went down, they were committed.

  Things would become brutal on the other side.

  “Marah, this is the point of no return,” Tyrus said. “If we have to run, this thing is going to get us all killed.”

  “We won’t have to.”

  “You can’t know that. If the battle turns against us, we are fighting to the end.”

  Marah’s voice was cruel. “So be it.”

  Tyrus turned to Silas. “There is no other way down?”

  “We would spend months traveling to a dozen cities. Imagine circling all of Argoria to reach Shinar instead of following a straight path.” Silas raised his hands, asking for patience. “I understand your objection, which is why the wardens scout the way. Once we reach another city, there are passages to the rest of the warrens. This need not be a one-way trip.”

  “Unless the shedim have already taken the next city.”

  “We’ve had no word of such a thing.”

  They both turned to Marah.

  She seemed distracted but said, “The breach is between the cities. They burrowed through passageways.”

  Silas asked Tyrus, “Did you not travel into the Deep once before?”

  “We weren’t fighting our way through the Ward.”

  With that, Tyrus agreed to take Marah on the lift. The wardens worked the crank box with their massive forearms, and Tyrus struggled to blank his mind. With each clack of the gears, he imagined the mechanism breaking and the entire carriage plummeting into the darkness. He thought of it like a well, and only after spending an interminable time in the carriage did he realize how wrong he was. The shaft went on longer than anything he could imagine. He thought of a tower stairwell at first then Shinar’s massive walls, then he began thinking of Paltiel’s oaks or a waterfall. He had nothing to compare to the endless hole they were lowering themselves into.

  At the bottom of the shaft, while they waited for the rest of their companions, Tyrus drew steel and placed Marah on the ground. Either the trip in the carriage had put him on edge, or he sensed the age of the tunnels they had entered. His nerves tingled, and he felt trapped.

  “Marah, I need to know why you are chasing Gorba Tull.”

  “I’m not. He’s just in the way.”

  “Of what?”

  “Everyone is keeping secrets from me. I need to know who I am.”

  “There must be someone else who can help you with that.”

  Marah shook her head.

  Tyrus asked, “Why not?”

  “Ithuriel, the dragon, the other voices… They tease me. They act like they know me. I want answers.”

  “And they are down here?”

  “Kennet is close. I need him.”

  “The Kennet?”

  “His echo is very old and faint, but he’s down here. The closer we get, the better I can hear him.”

  “That means he died down here, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. But he didn’t have you.”

  Tyrus swallowed his shock. If she thought he could protect them from the overlords of the Nine Hells, she was sadly mistaken. The one time he and Azmon had ventured into the Nine Hells, Azmon’s runes and Tyrus’s steel had kept the lesser creatures away. He was no match for a demon like Gorba Tull.

  “Marah, I’m not—”

  “I know.”

  “Then why?”

  “Kennet didn’t know them the way you do. And he wasn’t as strong as I am.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  Tyrus scanned the darkness again, his grip tightening and relaxing on the hilt of his knife. He itched to fight something real, because as far as he could tell, all the nasty things were invisible. Marah spoke to creatures he would never see, and she chased things he could never kill. She was just like her father, starting fights Tyrus couldn’t hope to win.

  IV

  They traveled eastward through a passageway that sloped downward. The masonry looked to be an older style than other parts of the Ward, with different-shaped stones and sharper arches in the vaulted ceilings. The way was also less traveled, with a fine layer of dirt on the stone floor. A musty smell hung in the air. Tyrus felt as though he descended into a catacomb.

  They passed through several smaller cities, which were more like military outposts, and Silas gathered small additions to the dwarven wardens who escorted them to Ros Mardua. Only a handful of wardens joined though, so their escort stayed small. They never stayed long at the outposts. Silas claimed they were waypoints, safer places to rest and resupply, before they pushed toward the big fortresses that made up the front lines of the Deep Ward.

  “Ros Mardua is one of the five great fortresses built around the Black Gate,” Silas said. “They form the hemisphere around the tribes, and the little outposts help secure routes to resupply or reinforce a city when it is under attack.”

  Tyrus asked, “Only five defenses?”

  “This is like the innermost layer of an onion,” Silas said. “Hundreds of fortresses make up the Ward, but these are the front lines. The other layers stretch all around us. The place we entered, in Argoria, was weakened. Now, we are actually under Sornum.”

  Tyrus looked at the stone ceiling, trying to imagine his home miles above his head. “This place defends Sornum?”

  “If you go deep enough, you will be under Sornum and Argoria at the same time. Well, almost. You would be the same distance from each.”

  “How can that be?”

  “The world is deeper than you know.”

  They continued through another outpost, and they were warned that the tribes had burrowed into the passageways beyond. Silas also told them that Ros Mardua was the next fortress. They ate and slept with little formality. Usually in the cities, they spent time on ceremonies to introduce Marah to the kings, but Silas said most of the kings fought at Ros Mardua. A skeleton guard remained at the outpost.

  That night—or the period allotted for rest—Tyrus stayed awake, worrying about what they would find. The legions were near, and he dreaded seeing Mulciber leading them. Such thoughts reminded him of his nightmare and the time he had fought Mulciber in the Lost Lands. The fight had been so one-sided that Tyrus was just beaten like a dog. Marah had sent Ramiel to save him, and he had been fortunate to survive.

  He knew—being so close to the Black Gate—that he wouldn’t be lucky like that again. Mulciber would drag him into the darkness. Tyrus told himself that he deserved whatever happened. He had made powerful enemies, and at some point, that would be his undoing. Logically, it made sense. Emotionally, he wanted to run away. Stubbornly, he refused to abandon Marah.

  They heard the demon tribes before they saw them. Grunts and thuds filled the long passageway, first as soft echoes then growing in timbre as the day wore on. With each step, they grew closer to an army of tribesmen. When the noises became too loud, the column prepared for battle. They readied shields and drew blades and slowed their approach.

  As they crawled down the tunnel, Tyrus kept waiting for walls to crumble and monsters to ambush them. That dread was misplaced because what they found was much worse.

  The passageway opened into a larger causeway joined by other tunnels running together into a
natural cavern, much like the dwarven cities. Well-fit stones and masonry gave way to a wide-open passage with stalactites and curved walls, but the space was filled with fresh soil and gaping burrows from the Underworld. Thousands of tribesmen filled the space.

  Tyrus saw an army of Tusken soldiers, trolls, orcs, and goblins. The grayskins wore black armor and carried cruel weapons. Many of them manned battering rams that slammed into the massive iron doors, and thousands of others tunneled into the sheets of rock around the doors. The dwarves fought through arrow slits in the steel wall with large ballistae and smaller arrows from archers. However, the worst things were the demons standing in the back with swords and whips, egging on the tribesmen.

  Tyrus spotted dozens of nine-foot-tall creatures with black skin, bat wings, and hundreds of burning faces covering their exposed flesh. They snapped their whips and snarled at the slaves, who carried handfuls of rocks away from the city.

  Silas said, “Demons.”

  Tyrus said, “These are just the foot soldiers.”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Look for their leaders.”

  Tyrus couldn’t see any of the true shedim, who looked like angels but with black wings and hideous black scars. He wondered if Gorba Tull commanded them. He knew lords had to be close. The foot soldiers answered to someone.

  The air chilled as Marah reached for sorcery. The shedim reacted as though she had rung a bell. They turned, as one, to look at her, and when they stopped snarling at the slaves, the tribes looked backward too. Thousands upon thousands of burning red eyes glared at Tyrus.

  He set Marah on the ground and drew his blades. The wardens shouted and formed a shield wall in front of Marah. The shedim screeched, and the tribes took up the battle call. The dark legions charged.

  V

  Tyrus watched the shedim charge. They towered over the smaller tribesmen and converged on Marah. She and Silas and the other sorcerers laid waste to the tribesmen with flames and lightning, but the shedim, as well as the Tusken beyond them, were shielded from the worst of it. Tyrus pushed through the dwarven line and ran at the shedim. A few of the Norsil followed, and the dwarves came after as spells exploded over their heads.

  Tyrus ran straight at the lead demon, whose long forked tongue licked its lips in anticipation of the fight, and when their blades crossed, its many eyes widened in surprise at the ferocity of Tyrus’s assault. He fought as hard as he could to keep the things from Marah. The first fell with little trouble, but the second was harder to reach because of all the tribesmen in the way.

  The center of the field became a claustrophobic mess. The press of bodies meant they pushed more than they fought. One of the demons roared its frustration and picked up a tribesman to toss the creature at the dwarves. Then it grabbed another and threw it, too. The demon waded into the press, using trolls as clubs, beating a path toward Tyrus.

  Tyrus waited until the demon closed before smashing a tribesman in the face and using its back as a launching pad to jump at the demon. They both screamed as their blades smashed together.

  Marah burned tribesmen while Silas and Nemuel guarded her. She soon ran out of targets, though, because the Tusken sorcerers defended their forces, and both sides stalemated. She listened to voices debate what she should do next. She was strong enough to break through the Tusken defense, but if she exhausted herself, she would be at the mercy of the shedim.

  You must act. You are outnumbered.

  Marah asked, But what do I do?

  Anything. Crash the ceiling. The dwarves will be swarmed if you don’t act.

  Marah’s eyesight was too poor to see much of the ceiling, but the ghosts helped direct her gaze. She saw a section that she could drop on the Tusken sorcerers and was visualizing the runes to do it when the voices screamed in terror. A cacophony of warnings reached her, but they were so jumbled that she needed a moment to understand what they were saying.

  Gorba Tull is in the tunnels below. He comes for you.

  Many voices repeated the same thing. Some taunted her and expected her to die—others screamed at her to flee. Marah cast about at all the tunnels the tribes had dug into the dwarven passageway. She wasn’t sure where Gorba was or what he would do. The voices were about to tell her when the ground shook.

  A massive tremor knocked everyone to their hands and knees. Tribesmen and dwarves alike, even Tyrus and the shedim, all stumbled about. Rocks rained from the ceiling. Booms echoed in the Deep. One of the Tusken tunnels flashed with fire, and smoke belched from its mouth.

  Marah asked, What is going on?

  Ithuriel attacked Gorba.

  A loud explosion deafened Marah. She grabbed her ears, which rang like a bell, and flinched. When she looked around, the stone floor was filled with cracks and jutted about at odd angles as though something very large had pushed it from below. More rocks fell from the ceiling, and a series of even louder explosions filled the chamber.

  Flames flashed upward from the cracks in the floor, then sections of the floor began to collapse. Silas pulled at Marah, shouting something. She only heard a high-pitched ringing. He pointed at the passageway they had come from, and Marah nodded. They tried to withdraw, but the passageway disappeared in a blur of falling rocks and an explosion of dust. She and Silas backed away, covering their faces and coughing.

  Tyrus traded nasty blows with a shedim foot soldier. Large claws gored Tyrus’s face at the same time his sword thrust through the creature’s throat. His cheek felt detached, as though it was hanging from his skull, but he snarled, pulled his sword free, and scanned the battlefield for Mulciber or Gorba.

  Tyrus asked himself, Where are you?

  The cavern shook again, and more rocks came crashing down. The shards looked smaller than they were, and heavy boulders pulverized tribesmen where they smashed into the ground and bounced and rolled. A loud crack made the floor heave and knocked everyone down.

  Tyrus found his footing. For some reason, fighting in the cavern made him feel as though he was wading into the ocean. The shifting floor took his feet away from him just like a wave smashing into him. Most of the warriors scrambled about to run from the looming cave-in, but Tyrus and the shedim foot soldiers raced to fight each other.

  Once more, he checked his periphery for Mulciber. He wanted to scream, “Here I am!” but he didn’t see any leaders among the shedim.

  Another demon charged. Tyrus caught its attack on his blades, and they locked together in a contest of raw strength. That was the reason Azmon had given Tyrus all of his runes. He was built to fight such creatures, and they matched up well. In a flurry of attacks and counters, Tyrus worked his way in under the creature’s guard and disemboweled it before pivoting out from under its blade and taking its head.

  The creatures were like etched men: the easiest way to kill them was to go for the heart or head.

  Marah’s spells exploded overhead, and the dim place became a white-hot inferno. The flames imploded, leaving him blinking in the darkness again, and his ears filled with the screams of the burned.

  Tyrus ducked and sought out another opponent. He had a strong feeling that he had fought a similar battle once before, with Azmon, when they had fought to free Mulciber from his prison. Tyrus had stood between the claws and fangs while Azmon had used runes and sorcery on the worst of the creatures. Tyrus spotted another foot soldier making its way toward Marah, and he moved to intercept.

  Sections of the floor began buckling. Stone flooring collapsed in a series of snaps and thuds, and more of the filthy foot soldiers climbed up through the destruction below. A blast of heat caught Tyrus in the face, and he managed a quick glance into the section beneath them. What he saw looked like an erupting volcano. Shapes—angelic and demonic—appeared to dance among fields of magma and flowering explosions.

  Tyrus turned to see Marah lost in her spells. She gestured at the ceiling, and falling rocks bounced off an invisible barrier.
The ceiling had more cracks, and so did the floor. He saw at once that she kept them all from being crushed by a mountain of rock. Columns of flame burst through the floor, obscuring his vision, and the floor heaved again, threatening to knock him down.

  He cast about for a safe place, and the only sturdy ground was near the gates of the dwarven city, which stood hundreds of yards away past a field of enemy warriors and collapsing floors. Even the shedim worked to avoid the falling rocks and the buckling floors.

  Tyrus sprinted to Marah, picked her up, and shouted, “Charge the gates!” at what remained of their party.

  Marah worked her spells while he ducked across a hellish landscape intent on swallowing them both.

  Marah gave herself over to the ghosts of dwarven priests who helped her work runes to keep her friends alive. Her mind filled with sorcery and their voices, but her ears rang from explosions, and her eyes were so clouded by darkness and tunnel vision that she was effectively blind. The ghosts told her to create a path to the city gates and to hold the ceiling up.

  Marah could not do both, so she alternated between the two. Thus, a rainstorm of massive boulders followed them to the dwarven gates. The collapsing ceiling broke the floor, and she fought to move stones under them, to give them some purchase so the fires in the levels below didn’t swallow them whole. The one time she disengaged from that to send a shedim legionnaire to his fiery death, she almost killed everyone in the party. The ghosts screamed at her to focus on the stone song, and she begged their forgiveness.

  She whispered, I’m so tired.

  You must not yield.

  I can’t. It’s too heavy.