by Mike Wild
Speaking of which, as memorable as Kali’s arrival had been, what went up had to come down, and in that respect she had little control over what happened next.
The scuttlebarge’s nose began to dip a second after it passed over the main group of soldiers and prisoners, and Kali saw she was heading directly for a ridge from which four more soldiers overlooked the rest of the group. Two of these ceased to be a problem the moment the nose of the dwarven machine slammed into them, and they departed their duties in an explosion of blood, while the third was sent fleeing in a desperate attempt to escape the spinning chunk of metal that broke away from the hull on impact. The last of the guards was the only one to offer a challenge, standing his ground with sword drawn, ready to knock Kali from her seat, but sadly he had failed to take the scuttlebarge’s continuing momentum into account. Kali yanked the controls around so that the rear end of the scuttlebarge span in a half circle, and as the soldier yelled in protest, holding his sword uselessly to block its approach, the hull slammed him off the ridge to fall screaming onto the sharp rocks below.
That particular manoeuvre brought the nose of the scuttlebarge pointing down the slope of the ridge and, taking a deep breath, Kali bucked her body to send it on its way. The machine began to slide down the slope, picking up momentum again. The juddering, bucking mass of metal with its engines whining more than ever was clearly not an object to be in the path of, and soldiers threw themselves left and right as it came, some of them not quite in time. A trail of severed, twitching limbs and screaming victims left in her wake, Kali rode the scuttlebarge across the level of the plain until it finally slewed to a halt, where she leapt out to face the remainder of the soldiers in charge of the prisoners.
They stood before her in a line, twenty or so of them with weapons drawn, sneering at what they thought was a foregone conclusion. None of them seemed eager to make the first move, however, the woman in their midst quite clearly insane. Kali played to that belief, regarding them with determined upturned eyes and a smile of invitation to come try it on. And when at last they did begin to move in on her, it was already too late, because a solid mass of metal had risen between them.
Kali smiled as the Brogmas rose on the freight elevator that Brundle, visible on a nearby rock, had activated with his faraway control. The old mechanism, he had told her, had once serviced the Thunderflux, but, since its capping, had fallen into many centuries of disuse, a situation reflected in the fact that until now it had been totally invisible, buried beneath an overgrowth of grass.
The elevator was not the only thing the faraway control activated, however, and as Brundle fiddled with it once more, the Brogmas repeated the foot stomping, weapon twirling ritual which had so impressed Kali below. ‘Impressed’ was not a word that could be used to describe the reactions of the soldiers for whom they now performed on the other hand, because clearly there was one thing more off-putting than a solid mass of metal between they and their target, and that was a moving mass of metal between they and their target. Especially one moving in their direction.
One or two of the men ran away. A few more, who might have heard barrack room tales of the rout at Martak, which only the Anointed Lord herself had survived, froze in their tracks in much the way Kali had when she’d first seen the machines. The majority, however – if only because they were perhaps more fearful of what Redigor might do to them if they did not – raised their weapons to defend themselves.
Kali admired their guts.
No, really.
The soldiers which the Brogmas proceeded to go through like a hot knife through butter were not the only ones that had to be contended with, of course, and as soon as that battle had been joined a further phalanx of Redigor’s troops poured down the slope. As if that were not enough, those soldiers who had been positioned on the ridges around the slopes roared to spur themselves on and then raced at Kali and the Brogmas from two directions, closing on them in a pincer movement.
Thankfully, Kali and the Brogmas no longer had to fight alone. Having activated his machines, Brundle himself waded in with his battleaxe, and one by one, up the top of the steps, brandishing the weapons they had acquired from the sentries, came Pim and the rest of the Grey Brigade. Pim directed a couple of his people to start releasing the prisoners from their chains, and then, with his other men behind him, raced into the furore.
The battle, as all battles do, soon degenerated from an initial, full on clash to a series of smaller skirmishes fought across the slope of Horizon Point. With the aid of the Brogmas especially, the tide soon began to turn their way, though Kali herself had a couple of close calls. The first came when she was bashed on the back of the head by the hilt of a sword and went down, stunned. The soldier responsible stood above her and was about to swing down the weapon’s more lethal component when help arrived from an unexpected source.
Burrowing up through the ground, having made its way to the surface at last, the small sphere that Kali had released from the jack-in-the-box, shot straight up into the air before him and, taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Kali leapt up, grabbed and twisted the soldier’s swordarm, and thrust the blade into his stomach. The soldier doubled over and fell, impaling himself further, and Kali rammed the point home by booting him up the behind.
The second close call came immediately afterwards. Kali was about to salute the small sphere as it sailed away into the sky, but with her hand half in the air noticed she’d been targeted by three bowmen who had come out of nowhere. Their weapons primed, their arrows aimed directly at her heart, there was no way even she could avoid them. Then, suddenly, all three flew backwards into the air, as if they themselves had been hit in the chest by arrows, and crashed away behind a ridge into oblivion. At first Kali thought Poul Sonpear had been released from his scrambling collar and had despatched her assailants with projectiles of his own summoning, but then she saw that one of Pim’s people was still trying to free him from the restraint and there was no way he could have done what she had thought.
Strange.
Kali turned, wading back into battle, and found herself joining what was effectively an advancing line consisting of Pim and his men, Brundle, the Brogmas and herself. All of the separate skirmishes were over and all that was left was a retreating line of the survivors of Redigor’s forces. Those that put up any resistance were swiftly taken care of by the whirring blades or swinging flails of the Brogmas, and those that didn’t – or decided there and then that they really shouldn’t – began to stumble away in shock. Brundle raised his axe to behead one in front of him but Kali stayed his hand. They’d surrendered; let them live.
Unfortunately, Redigor had other ideas. Whether as a demonstration of his dissatisfaction with these men or of his last line of defence, each of them transformed before Kali’s eyes into a cloud of dust, the result of the crackling strands of energy fired from the clifftop by the Pale Lord’s shadowmages. Redigor himself stood, as he had throughout the battle, with his back to them, still engaged in whatever business he was conducting through the Hel’ss Spawn, but it was clear that a part of him was still controlling the proceedings.
Proceedings that, one way or another, were about to come to an end.
The six shadowmages stood steadfast before Kali and the advancing party. Their balled fists crackled with an energy more powerful than she had ever seen. It arced between them, across their line, forming an ever intensifying curtain of blue. It made her brain hurt.
“This could be a problem,” Brundle said.
The shadowmages flipped backwards, as if hit by arrows, disappearing over the cliff.
“Or not.”
“What the hells?” Kali said. She looked behind her for the source of the attack. Nothing.
“Does it matter?” Brundle growled. “We have the bastard now.”
“Not we,” Kali said. “He’s mine.”
Brundle was about to protest when he saw Kali’s expression. He turned and looked at the Brogmas, who were juddering o
n the spot, ready to advance.
“Stand down, girls,” the dwarf sighed. “Everybody stand down.”
Kali nodded and began to stride up the slope to Horizon Point where Redigor remained with his back to her. The higher she rose, the worse the wind became, and as her clothing slapped against her, she was forced to shout to get his attention.
“Hey, Big Ears!”
At last, Redigor did turn, and Kali saw that her description, although facetious, hadn’t been far off the mark. For what had been occupying the Pale Lord all this time was clearly the Hel’ss Spawn’s – or, more accurately, the Hel’ss – response to the sacrifices it had been offered earlier. Redigor had given it a little, and it, in turn, had given a little back. Jakub Freel didn’t resemble Jakub Freel as much any more. The Pale Lord Kali knew and loved was on his way back.
The process, however, was far from complete. No doubt pending genocide. But if her plan worked, it would be nipped in the bud right now.
“Is there a problem, Miss Hooper?” Redigor asked.
“Yes, there’s a problem, shithead. This island’s my destiny, not yours. And I’ll not have you destroying my world just because you don’t have the sense to know when to die.”
“Brave words, Miss Hooper. But can you back them up? All by yourself?”
“Ah, well,” Kali said. “There’s the thing. Because I’m not all by myself, am I?”
Kali hoped that Redigor would interpret that as meaning Brundle and the others who waited impotently down the slope, but in actual fact that wasn’t what she meant at all. She’d gone up against Redigor before and had only survived the encounter because of Gabriella and the Engines, and in a straight confrontation she knew she had little chance now. No, what she was gambling on was what she had learned during that encounter in the Chapel of Screams, when Redigor had revealed a little of the nature of the Hel’ss. If she was right, it could not only be used to her advantage but might even, however fleetingly, bring the Hel’ss onto her side.
“Look at you, Redigor – you’re struggling to survive every second, rotting, being eaten from within. Face it. You’re coming apart at the seams.”
“I will survive long enough.”
“Really? Because you know what it is that’s eating you alive? It isn’t the fact you don’t belong in a human body, it’s the fact that the body is that of a good, brave and honest man. A strong man. One who’s been fighting you every step of the way.”
“It’s been over a year, girl. Jakub Freel is gone.”
“You want to place a bet on that?”
Kali raised her gaze, addressing Redigor no longer but the Hel’ss Spawn that loomed beyond them both like a giant cowl.
“I’m willing to bet,” she went on, “that there’s too much of Jakub Freel left in this form for your bargain with this elf to ever work. I’m willing to bet that contact with it will leave you tainted, corrupted, as rotten to the core as he is. Because that’s your destiny this time around, isn’t it? Not to eradicate the Old Races but humans? And how can you do that if you help one spark of humanity to remain alive, even in a different form?”
The Hel’ss Spawn hung there, silent.
“This hybrid... this freak isn’t part of your natural order. The elves’ time has passed and we, the humans, walk this world. Humans you have returned to destroy. Isn’t there, then, no other choice but to destroy this man?”
Redigor laughed softly. “That is very clever but aren’t you forgetting something, Miss Hooper? If the Hel’ss takes it upon itself to destroy me, then your friend dies too. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want that to happen.”
Kali’s brow creased. “You’re right. I wouldn’t. If I could help it. But I can’t help it. And neither can Jakub Freel.”
She paused. This was the only part of her plan that was utterly out of her hands, and it depended very much on how good a judge of character she was.
“Isn’t that right, Freel?”
Redigor laughed louder. “What are you trying to do? Talk to him? Do you have any idea how deeply he is suppressed? How far away I have sent him?”
“I said,” Kali reiterated. “Isn’t that right, Freel?”
“Really, Miss Hooper, this is just –”
Redigor stopped. His eyes lost focus and he staggered. He snapped a look at Kali – venomous, hateful – and then as his face twisted in an attempt to prevent it, a single word was forced out from between his lips.
“Yyyyyyeeeeesssssss.”
“Hello, Jakub,” Kali said, smiling.
“No!” Redigor protested. Despite his vast age his voice sounded like that of a petulant child. “You will remain where you are!”
“What’s the matter, elf? Is it that you just can’t understand why someone might be willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater cause? You wouldn’t, would you, seeing as how you buried yourself the last time this bastard came around. Buried yourself while the rest of your people died. You called yourself a Lord? Well, let me tell you something – a Lord is as much responsible for the welfare of his people as their rule.”
“O-ho no, girl,” Redigor spat, barely able to stand. The wind whipped at his clothing, making cracking sounds. “I know what you’re doing. Trying to distract me while your friend reasserts himself. But it won’t work. I’ve come too far, done so much, to be halted now.”
“Yeah? Well then, why don’t we ask Jakub once more. Freel, tell the man. Tell him that if it stops what’s happening here, you’re more than willing to die.”
Redigor’s gaze snapped around him, as if seeking some defence from what threatened him. But there was no defence from that which came from within. He doubled over, clutching himself,,and from his mouth came words once more unbidden by himself. This time they came through gritted teeth, even more forced, and all the more determined.
“Damn. Right.”
“This... will... not... happen!” Redigor screamed. He span to face the still looming cowl of the Hel’ss Spawn. “This... human has been purged. He is nothing but an echo. You cannot touch me. I am clean.”
The Hel’ss Spawn, though, had clearly decided otherwise, and as Redigor turned, it pulled back from the clifftop as if from something horribly disfigured and diseased. Redigor opened his arms to it, pleading, and over the watery roaring of the entity Kali even heard him beg. Words she never thought she would hear from the First Enemy of the Final Faith.
Please. God.
It was too late. Severed from the process, the alterations the Hel’ss Spawn had made to Freel’s body were already starting to reverse, the exotic, aquiline cut of his face, the thinning out and elongation of his limbs, the shape of his ears. And as all of these features became more human looking once more, the dark shapes that had roved his body like living tattoos returned to again consume him. Weakened, Redigor collapsed to his knees, and then onto his hands, on all fours, like a dog.
His gaze moved slowly up to meet the looming Hel’ss Spawn, his body trembling with a mix of fear and rage.
Before him, the Hel’ss Spawn rose to its full height, and both Kali and Redigor knew what was coming next.
Redigor’s whole body quaked.
“No!” he screamed. “I am Bastian Redigor of the Ur’Raney!”
Redigor’s head drooped, and his back heaved in great, wracking breaths. When, a second later, he looked up again, he spoke with a different voice.
“NO! I AM JAKUB TREMAYNE FREEL, PRINCE OF ALLANTIA. I AM HUMAN!”
Kali swallowed as the Hel’ss Spawn darted down, as quick as a snake, enveloping him and lifting him from the ground in an unbreakable embrace. As Redigor/Freel thrashed helplessly in its grip, Kali saw some discolouration as it started to leech his soul, and Redigor/Freel began to scream.
It was a scream of the damned and Kali wanted so much to turn away, but couldn’t. Freel had made the decision to sacrifice himself for the greater good and the least she could do was stay with him until the end. She steeled herself, therefore, as the Hel’ss Spawn continued
to suck at its victim, contenting herself with the knowledge it would all be over very soon.
It was, though, taking too long. Longer to consume Redigor/Freel, and in a seemingly far more agonising way, than she had witnessed with any of the Hel’ss Spawn’s earlier victims.
Something was wrong.
Kali’s first instinct was to rush in, unable to allow herself to condemn Freel to this, but then she forced herself to stop.
What, she thought, if something wasn’t wrong?
What if something was right?
That had to be it, she realised. What was causing this was exactly what she’d said. She’d called Redigor a hybrid, a freak who belonged in neither the old world or the new, and when it came down to it, that was exactly what the Hel’ss Spawn was, too. The Hel’ss had left this spawn behind during its last assault on Twilight, when it had come for the elves and the dwarves, and that imperative had somehow remained with it. In other words, it was following the natural order of things, taking Redigor’s elven soul before it started to consume that of Freel the human.
Gods, if that were true, Kali thought, she could save Freel. But she didn’t have much time. She had to time this exactly right.
There was only one question. Time what exactly right?
Kali realised that she hadn’t a clue how she was going to get Freel out of this but, as usual, that didn’t stop her. As Freel/Redigor continued to scream, the elf’s essence continuing to be absorbed, she tensed, running every kind of scenario through her mind and coming up with nothing. But again, as usual, that didn’t stop her. There was a moment – a fleeting moment – where the Hel’ss Spawn seemed to pause, perhaps sated by elf and ready to begin consuming the human, and in that moment Kali roared and ran right at it.
She grabbed Freel about the waist, tore his body from the Hel’ss Spawn and, with legs pumping, took the two of them over the edge of the cliff, into the vertiginous drop towards the sea.