The Kingdoms of Evil

by Daniel Bensen

  With his musket's butt on the ground, all Kendrick had to do was plant his knee and his foot, and angle the bayonet so. Now to reach for the wheel stone amulet that hung around his neck without dropping to bayonet or taking his eyes off the battle above. Someone nearby had the same idea; the basso-profundo peal of a Blessing rebounded off the trees, and Kendrick smiled as he heard something howl in inhuman agony. Even closer-by, a spinning circle of runes shot weak spurts of flame at the trees. A gray shape leapt and a lizard-man's nearly human arms and legs hung silhouetted against the rune light, before a lucky musket ball slapped a hole into the thing's neck.

  Was that the spray of its corrupted blood Kendrick could feel on his upturned face? Were they winning? Who could tell? Kendrick tracked movements between the trees, but knew better than the fire at them. With no partner to pass him a fresh musket or reload, he would be at the mercy of anything he didn't kill with the first shot. And who knew where his re-loader was. Gerhanis had been right next to him.

  Kendrick's duty was to stay by the equipment and kill anything that got in bayonet range. Another warm splash of sound, and a Blessing ripped a goblin from a tree and broke it, shrieking, against the ground. A musket went off. Kendrick winced away from the noise, and the movement saved him.

  As Kendrick twisted his head around, he felt wind brush the hair on his temple. The breeze was lighter than a dove's wing-beat, but there was a shadow cast across him and a sudden stink like piss and rotten meat. The lizard-man's arm swung round, the claws that would have ripped his eye from his face splayed against the air.

  There was a thud as the creature's feet struck the ground, and a spring-like flex of muscles under glittering gray-green scales. The killing claws slapped against the ground, and then the lizard-man was turning, pivoting on those crooked legs, its other hand stiff with black talons. Kendrick tried to bring his bayonet to bear, but it was moving so slowly. The musket's barrel was like a tree, impossibly heavy and long and useless against the whirlwind of the monster's attack. And it knew that.

  The mouth split in a gaping smile, impossibly, hideously wide. A purple tongue flexed behind rows of jagged, fish-hook teeth. Tiny perfect scales squeezed around eyes like volcanic glass. Kendrick could see his face in those eyes. He could see his own eyes, mirroring the lizard-man, his face and the monster's alternating into diminishing infinity.

  The sword struck with the bell-like boom of a Blessing, and a powerful voice rang clear and cold. "Be gone monster! Be dust!"

  The lizard-man surged forward as the sword took it from behind. Its legs pistoned out and it tore itself loose from the blade before its face rammed into the earth. Its scream of rage rose, became a shriek, became a hiss, and passed out of the range of hearing. A shudder passed up its long, lithe body. A hand, taloned and hideously elongated, clenched, squeezed, then relaxed against the riverbed stones.

  Kendrick looked up in wonder, but the Paladin had turned back to the fight.

  "Na-o-belll!" The Paladin, Chosen one of Angel's Keep bellowed, and the god filled him with fire so holy that the warrior's very skin glowed with it. He did not move like a normal man, but pounced like a cougar, leapt like a buck, stooped from the air like a hawk. His sword sighed through the air, and sang like a temple bell when it struck flesh. The hand's-breadth of rippled steel shone in brilliant arcs as it swung through the darkness under the trees. And the monsters fell before it as wheat falls before the scythe, to slicken the pine needles with their evil blood.

  "Move on!" The Paladin cried as he cut through the monsters that surrounded them. "Move on, damn you! Hie! Down the road! Hie!"

  Kendrick used the butt of his musket to lever himself to his feet and stumbled forward. Now the Paladin's cries were joined by others: "Forward! Forward!"

  And the soldiers were moving again. Raggedly, yes, in a panic, with half the equipment abandoned behind them, but moving. The gully was becoming wider and shallower, the roots of the trees now level with their waists, then their feet. The ground was better for defense, but the Rationalist forces looked much smaller than before. Had so many soldiers been killed?

  Levanick's hand was on his shoulder. "You all right, boy?"

  Kendrick turned and grinned at the Ranger. Levanick grinned back. "Damn right. You are a Betweener." His eyes flickered through the forest around them as he rubbed the wheel-stone built into the sight of his musket. "But get inside the circle. Got to keep these corrupted machines safe, right?"

  The forest-colored Rangers' cloaks alternated with the tan-and-blue Rationalist soldiers that remained spread across the wider battle-ground, forming into protective circles. Rune-light flared up around them, but so high up the mountain, the word-magic was unreliable and underpowered. More useful were the bayoneted tips of their muskets, which formed a spiked wall around each circle. And once the soldiers inside the circle unpacked their ammunition, they could begin the re-loading cycle that could fire off a musket volley every six seconds. If they got the chance to set up the cycle, and if nothing larger than lizard-men and goblins came out of the woods.

  The men in the circle around him tensed. Someone screamed beyond the circle. Then they fired. They fired all at once, and a sulfurous cloud rose from them so Kendrick could not see the hand of the man he was supposed to pass his fire-ready musket to.

  Why had they all fired at once? Where was the precise, six-second staggering of their training runs? Kendrick looked up as something like a shaggy, horizontal tree trunk swept into one of the protective circles. What had appeared to be the root bole of a felled black oak unfolded and stood, one enormous fist closed about the torso of another Rationalist officer. The ogre's bellow rolled across the battle like an avalanche, a nearly physical pain. Then the beast came at them again.

  Muskets blew puffs of fur and leaf mold from its hide, but the Rationalist fusillade did not slow the monster's other hand as it swung round and snatched up another soldier. The ogre lifted its screaming captives up, up…

  Timber crashed behind him, and Kendrick turned to see another ogre reach out toward him. He did not even have time to swing his bayonet around before canoe-sized fingers pinned his arm against his body and he was jolted upward.

  Kendrick kicked, but there was nothing under his feet any more, just rushing air, immense fingers, and what seemed like acres of bark-colored fur, rushing down as Kendrick was hoisted up. Then, the face of the ogre was before his, an island of wrinkled, tea-colored skin set into a hump of muscle and fur between the creature's shoulders. Heavy brows drew together, and furious eyes flicked across Kendrick's trapped, struggling body. A massive pointer finger uncurled, unwrapping Kendrick's shoulders and chest.

  He had a chance, now. Kendrick wrenched his right arm free from the fingers that still bound it, grabbed the chain around his neck, pulled out his spinning wheel stone amulet and…

  "Naobel!"

  Fur burst into flame. Beady eyes boiled. The ogre screamed like a derailing locomotive.

  Kendrick's stomach leapt into his throat and the world flipped over. The ogre's hand receded as Kendrick tumbled through the air. Something struck him in the small of the back and he flipped over again, somersaulting around a tree-trunk before another branch caught his leg, held him, then dropped him onto the forest floor.

  Kendrick rose. He spun. "Naobel!"

  The ogre bellowed again and thudded to its knees.

  "Naobel!" again and the skin of its face burst.

  Again! And it could no longer scream. And again and again and Kendrick stabbed it through the eye socket with his bayonet until the monster died.

  Kendrick was aware his teeth were still grinding together, and he let them. For once, he could let the anger come. The hot, destructive joy of it.

  Something screamed behind him. Kendrick unlimbered his musket and then ran as fast as he dared over the root-knobbled ground, dodging between trees, eyes scanning ahead, to the sides, above. Looking for something to kill.

  There, in the branches of an onrushing pine,
a cluster of creatures that might be raccoons, but weren't. No, they were an infestation. "Naobel!" Kendrick shouted, and his wheel-stone burst into phosphorous flame. There was a sound like the tolling of a bell, and the goblins dropped from the tree like rotted fruit. Kendrick laughed.

  The sounds of battle were growing closer, gunshots, shouts, monstrous bellows, and the ringing of Blessings. Yes, there between those trees was the edge of the stream bed. There were figures standing there, too tall and slender to be human.

  Kendrick bellowed the name of his god, and rushed forward into the embrace of the sweet madness.

  ***

  They found the Soon-to-be-Ultimate Fiend hiding behind a statue of a snarling octopus.

  "Ah, there you are, my lord," Freetrick looked up to see DeMacabre poke his head around the statue's corner. "I have found the Soon-to-be-Ultimate Fiend!" DeMacabre called to the monsters and murderers presumably arrayed just out of sight. "Come, come I say, immediately, that we may with rapture feast upon his---"

  "DeMacabre," hissed Freetrick. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  DeMacabre ratcheted his head back around. "Why, whatever does my lord mean?"

  Freetrick tried to draw himself up into a more imposing stance. "This!" Freetrick's furious gesture took in the cyclopean halls, the monsters skittering across the stonework, the amassed and fearsomely costumed dark nobility, and his own ridiculous and uncomfortable spiky armor. "This insanity! This freak show!"

  "Thank you, my lord. We do our best."

  Freetrick tried not to groan. His head throbbed, his shoulders were trying to unscrew themselves, and his mouth felt like most of Skrea looked. He had tried to ask for a drink, but his courtiers kept offering him their necks.

  "Come out now," DeMacabre sidled closer, lowering his voice. "There are still quite a number of people who wish to meet you."

  "Oh, yes, 'people'." Freetrick finger-quoted bitterly. "They're a bunch of striking lunatics. Who keep trying to murder me!" Freetrick closed his mouth before his voice could become any shriller.

  "Oh pshaw, my lord," said DeMacabre. "His Fiendishness Dark Lord Strakhblargle was only engaging in a joke."

  "He tried to put out my eye with a hot poker."

  "An iron staff, my lord. And he allowed my lord to duck, did he not? Come now, my lord," DeMacabre put a hand like a shaved tarantula on Freetrick's shoulder and pulled him upright. "And her Vileness the young lady Kht'driivah was only trying to seduce you."

  "I wasn't flattered." Freetrick tried to muster the energy to glare, but it was all he could do just to remain vertical. "I'm sick of this insanity. I'm sick of all this striking evil nonsense."

  There was a gasp from the people assembled beyond Skystarke and his ogres.

  DeMacabre squinted at Freetrick. "My lord is overwrought. And a stranger to these lands!" His voice rose over the swelling murmuring from the crowd, his face turned a little away from Freetrick so his words would carry. "He does not know the customs of this, the Land of the Shadow. He has yet to experience the full power of our," his teeth flashed in the lava-light, the whites around his orange eyes glistened. A taloned hand came up to grasp the air before his face, "our ancient culture!"

  There was scattered applause.

  There was nothing Freetrick wanted to do more than retire…retreat to his rooms. And maybe never come out. But cowering behind his desk would just make the assassins' jobs that much easier. "All right." He closed his eyes, trying to banish his headache. "I suppose there is a lot I need to learn about life in Skrea."

  "Indeed, my lord," DeMacabre looked over his shoulder at movement in the crowd behind him. "And, aha, here comes and excellent opportunity for a lesson."

  "What do you mean?" Freetrick said.

  DeMacabre looked puzzled. "I instructed my daughter to advise my lord about the goblin attack. Did she not---"

  Then a tiny, hairy person rocketed out of the mist at Freetrick.

  There was a shriek that dopplered from excited little girl, through tea-kettle, up into enraged bat, and then stopped abruptly with a damp smack against Freetrick's armor. Freetrick looked down. The front half of his body was in shadow.

  A wave of un-heat punched through him. Death energy.

  "Goblin attack!" Skystarke bellowed, his wet monster's face bulging out from his unpeeling human mask like a demonic potato. "O-gahs! Battle-ready!"

  Freetrick, now intensely grateful for the spikes on his armor, tried to slide the goblin shish-kebab off his chest plate and brace himself for combat at the same time. More of the little hairy monsters hurtled out of the mist, aiming mostly at him. Skystarke leapt into the air and caught one in his jaws. Another blundered into an ogre's giant paws. A third—

  Freetrick frantically brought his arms up, but this time there was no rewarding smack. The goblin swung under his arm, up and into the air.

  Freetrick looked up and saw the furry ball spin in the air, then flip over and unhinge into a five-pointed star of claws and teeth. Freetrick tried to bring his arms up and around, but suddenly he was moving in nightmare slow-motion. The goblin, too, was not falling so much as sinking, its wrinkled face inching toward him with all the sluggish menace of a tax audit.

  Freetrick's brain had sped up, but with his body still moving at normal speed. So good, he could watch the goblin peel his face off in great detail.

  Another inch through air as warm and thick as asphalt. Freetrick couldn't move through the morass fast enough to get out of its way, couldn't protect himself. But he could…push.

  Blackness blossomed in the air around him. Lightning arced across his eyes.

  The mist over Freetrick thrummed like the skin of a drum head, and the goblin was suddenly accelerating upwards. There was a receding squall, a five-pointed hole punched into the mist above, and the monster was gone. Freetrick gaped upward, then screamed as another little monster smashed into his back, shoving him forward. There was a clattering up his back, like rat's feet across a tin roof.

  All right then. Freetrick gritted his teeth and…pulled. Claws scrabbled on his back as Freetrick pulled, twisted, then, feeling foolish, simply reversed the direction of pressure and squashed the thing.

  There was another tingling rush of death-energy.

  "Ha!" With some effort, Freetrick pumped his armored fists over his head. This was necromancy. This was power.

  Eyes crackling, Freetrick swung his head around to take in the battle around him. Skystarke was darting about like a two-legged cat, the ogres were grappling with huge, indistinct shapes in the mist, and DeMacabre. DeMacabre was just standing there. Grinning.

  "Hello, your Vileness!" He called, waving.

  "DeMacabre, you idiot, what are you…" said Freetrick in the split second before he remembered that DeMacabre called him 'my lord.' He began to turn around.

  Amorphous, black pseudopods extruded themselves from the air. Like the fingers of a giant hand, they reached out and grabbed him around the torso. They lifted.

  Another necromancer! Freetrick struggled, then concentrated, and blasted his power into the fingers that held him.

  They dissolved. He fell. He continued to fall.

  A screaming second from a crash onto the stone floor, the hand materialized again. It tossed him up into the air, disappeared, reappeared, flicking him back and forth like a hot potato. Freetrick struck out again, but the ectoplasmic fingers never stayed in the same place long enough for him to disperse them. But if he pushed down…

  The air vibrated again and Freetrick's fall stopped. All right. Necromancy! "Stop this!" Freetrick called, swinging around in the air to search for his attacker. The amorphous hand rushed at him again, and he swatted it away. "I don't want to fight you! Show yourself!" The hand returned, pressing in on his invisible defense. Freetrick pushed harder. "Show yourself, or I will—" Something went pop inside him.

  The pressure disappeared and Freetrick was falling. He tried to stop himself, but his magic had stopped working. No more death energy. The
ground was rushing up toward him like a…very much like the end of his life. Freetrick shut his eyes.

  And opened them. He was horizontal, face down, the tip of his nose just touching the warm stone of the floor. The ectoplasmic hand was back around his body, squeezing. Then lifting.

  There was a moment of dizziness. The floor swung away as if on a hinge. A dark figure rotated into view, feet first.

  Boots. Iron boots of articulated plates, like the carapace of a lobster. More plates—larger and more sharply pointed—covered the knees. Iron chains hung from the waist, stretched upward to wrap around an otherwise naked chest, heavily muscled. And then more lobstered iron, rising in thorny protrusions to frame a face…a face a hell of a lot like Freetrick's.

  "His Malevolence Feerborg, under the Maelstrom Despot of Skrea, Grasper of the Bolt, Lord of Pain, Terror under all Terrors, High Master of the Blood, and Soon-to-be Ultimate Fiend of the Kingdoms of Evil," DeMacabre oozed from the somewhere behind him.

  Black chains slid across skin as the figure before Freetrick, his captor, bent in a bow.

  "And, my lord," said DeMacabre, presumably to Freetrick, "May I present his Fiendishness the Dark Prince Feerix, the Depraved, he of the Sharpened Thumb, son of His Malevolence king Wrothborg, may the blood never dry from his hands."

  The man, Feerix, straightened. He had Freetrick's narrow face, his long slanting eyebrows. His nose even hooked in that peculiar beak-like way Freetrick had always thought was his curse alone. His brother looked into Freetrick's eyes, took a step forward, and said, "well?"

  "Uh," said Freetrick, "well, what?"

  "Well attack me!" Feerix shouted. "What are you waiting for? Our respective forces lie in readiness, arrayed for battle. I have made the opening move. So break through my bonds and attack me!"

  Oh. So this was some kind of Skrean ritual. For a moment he thought this was a real battle. Freetrick, shrugged against Feerix's spell. "I can't," he said. "I don't have any more death energy."

  "What?" For a moment, the ferocious scowl on Feerix's face dropped, and a much more genuine look of confusion replaced it. "You mean you are…defenseless?"