Demontech: Onslaught

by David Sherman

  ONSLAUGHT

  Book One of

  DEMONTECH

  David Sherman

  A Del Rey® Book

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  First Interlude

  Part 2

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Second Interlude

  Part 3

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Third Interlude

  Part 4

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Fourth Interlude

  Part 5

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Author’s Note

  Other Books by David Sherman

  Copyright

  To Carrie and the AllieCat

  PROLOGUE

  “You have until the midnight bell’s toll, Lord Lackland.” The voice of the Grand Vizier of the archipelago nation of Jokapcul cracked like a whip in sharp contrast to the deep wrinkles in his face and the withered skin of his hands.

  The Dark Prince looked down the length of his royal nose at the bent old man who dared call him by that hated sobriquet. “I do not need till the bell’s toll, old man.”

  “We shall see.” The ancient vizier’s voice again cracked like a whip, but on the first words; on the last, it cracked like an old man’s. He eased about slowly, maintaining fragile balance so as not to threaten equally fragile bones with a fall, and shuffled out of the sacred circle to where magicians and kamazai stood in solemn watch. He sat in the lone chair. The High Shoton’s headsman stood behind the vizier’s left shoulder and turned the head of his axe just enough to reflect torchlight onto the Dark Prince’s face.

  Ignoring the light that sparked in his eyes, the Dark Prince lifted his face to the dome of the evening sky and slowly raised his hands until his arms were parallel to the ground. He began to chant in a deep voice; slow, guttural sounds in a language so ancient and arcane few of the assembled magicians and kamazai had ever heard it.

  Away from the sacred circle and its attendant magicians and kamazai, tiny creatures watched from the protection of bushes. Curious, they listened to the words he intoned. One, who understood the words no better than did the humans surrounding the chanter, rested his chin on the shoulder of one who did understand them. “Wazzim zayyim?”

  The one who understood shrugged his free shoulder. “Zhimm’s wanttin,” he said briefly, not wanting to miss a word of the chant.

  “Wazzim wanttin?”

  “Kinollitch.”

  “Kinollitch whatch?”

  “Woour.” The one who understood the chanter’s words shrugged his shoulder to dislodge the other’s chin. The questions were becoming distracting enough for him to miss something.

  The one who asked settled back on his haunches and considered for a long moment. Why did the man in the black robe want knowledge of war? What did he propose to do with it? Well, the creature knew a way to find out. Abruptly, he rose on bandy legs and leaned forward to knuckle the ground. He scampered off to where a dozing jinnlette softly ruffled fallen leaves.

  In a moment the jinnlette was awake and spinning rapidly enough to scatter the leaves. It swept up the curious knuckle-walker and sped away with him. Midnight was nigh by the time they returned.

  In the circle, the Dark Prince still stood chanting, his quivering arms still parallel to the ground. His voice no longer intoned, it croaked through his sore throat. The effort of holding his arms up brought deep lines to his face and tightened the cords of his neck so they stood out in sharp relief. Around the circle, the magicians and kamazai tiredly shifted stiff muscles and joints, anxious for the midnight bell’s toll to bring an end to the farce. The vizier dozed in his chair. The headsman once more tested the sharpness of his axe with his thumb.

  The jinnlette summoned others of its kind. They whistled to his side through the trees and bushes. The knuckle-walker told them what he wanted. The jinnlettes whistled agreement to the grand joke and began spinning in unison. They spun until they raised a cloud of dirt and leaves and dust the width of the sacred circle and three times the height of a human. They advanced.

  The magicians and kamazai stirred and looked in the direction of the approaching whirlwind. The Grand Vizier started awake and looked. The headsman turned his head toward the sound. Everyone looked up, but the sky was cloudless and no wind rustled through the trees around the circle. Only from the one direction was there the sound of wind, and that sound was moving their way. Such a wind could only be magical. The magicians and kamazai on the wind’s side of the circle sidled out of its way; none ran, none showed the fear all felt. Only the Dark Prince seemed not to notice.

  The spinning cloud moved into the flickering torchlight, its progress slow and stately, without veering from a path that took it directly across the sacred circle. When it passed, the Dark Prince lay crumpled on the ground, his voice stilled. Before him rose a neat stack of tomes.

  The Grand Vizier stood on wobbly legs. Immediately, a magician supported him on his right and a kamazai on his left as he tottered into the circle. They stopped within reach of the stack of tomes.

  The Grand Vizier commanded with a hand signal, and a magician ran to check the Dark Prince. In response to another sign, the magician supporting him bent and lifted one of the tomes for the vizier to examine.

  The tome’s cover was the white of milk just beginning to go bad. It was flexible, like parchment, but it wasn’t the texture of kidskin. It was adorned with indecipherable script, and an eagle bearing a shield was spread inside a circle. The vizier waved a hand and the magician opened the book at random. Another random opening, and another. The assisting magician lifted each tome in turn and showed its cover and contents to the vizier. All were filled with the same indecipherable script as the covers. But the pictures! Never had the vizier seen pictures of such clarity. The Dark Prince was stirring under the ministrations of the magician.

  “Dark Prince,” the Grand Vizier said, using the preferred title. “It appears we have not been using the demons in the right way.”

  He examined the covers of the tomes again. Much of the script was different on each one, but all had three things in common. Each bore the circled spread eagle. Each had writing in the upper left quadrant that began with the strange symbols FM. At the bottom, each bore the legend: FIELD MANUAL, UNITED STATES ARMY.

  Whatever that symbolized.

  That same night, a third of a world away in the archipelago nation of Frangeria, priests of a half-dozen religions filed into an alabaster temple to observe an experiment to be conducted by a renowned philosopher—or to watch him destroy his reputation and career, which was what most of them expected. The interior of the temple shone with lamplight that reflected from its polished walls. Rows of marble benches circled the room. Brilliantly painted statues of gods and heroes stood in niches mounted higher on the walls than the head of a standing man.

  The white-robed philosopher stood calmly in front of the altar and watched the priests. His bland expression gave no indication that he saw the skepticism and disbelief that adorned most of their faces, or that he heard the disparaging words they whispered to each
other. They were fools, he knew, to believe as they did. None of their gods had ever manifested themselves, not unless one gave credence to ancient legends and myths. Ancient legends and myths had value, to be sure, but they shouldn’t be considered as history. What he was going to demonstrate to them this night was real; he’d seen it himself on his journeys to the western edge of the world.

  The last priest filed in and took his place. The High Priest of Tomarnol, the ranking personage in the assembly, sat in the place of honor, directly facing the altar. There was a muffled swishing and bumping as the rest of the priests sat. The High Priest signaled attendants, who moved to extinguish four out of the five lamps.

  “Hold!” the philosopher said, speaking for the first time. “There is no trickery here, no legerdemain. What I am going to demonstrate can be seen in clear light. Nothing need be hidden.”

  The attendants looked to the High Priest of Tomarnol, who in turn examined the philosopher speculatively for a moment before signaling them to return to their stations and leave the lamps lit.

  The philosopher bowed thanks to the High Priest, then slowly rotated as he looked at all of the priests. He seemed to look each in the eye, and many squirmed under his gaze.

  “You are holy men,” the philosopher began. “You hold with your various gods and seek their assistance. You believe not in demons save as foes of gods and man. Know you that demons are real! They are not foes of god nor man, and they can be made to do man’s bidding.”

  Tittering broke out in the temple, and cruder expressions of disbelief. The philosopher cocked his head and looked around with the slightest trace of sadness on his face.

  The High Priest angrily flipped a hand in the air, and the exclamations ceased. Again the philosopher bowed his thanks.

  “I have seen demons do man’s bidding,” the philosopher continued. “I have learned how to call and command them. Observe and you shall know.”

  He lifted his face to the dome of the temple, raised his hands till his arms were parallel to the floor, and began chanting in a language few of the assembled priests had ever heard and none knew well. Those who did know a bit of the language were so impressed at the ease with which the philosopher chanted that they never guessed the philosopher knew the language hardly better than they did.

  Curiously watching and listening to the proceedings, two smallish creatures scrunched behind the feet of a statue in one of the niches.

  “Wazzim zayyim?” one of the creatures asked.

  “Nasurre. Zhims nunchiation nawgud,” the other replied.

  They listened intently for a few more minutes, trying to work their way through the philosopher’s mangled vowels and garbled consonants.

  “Zhim whanns leadumzhib,” one of the creatures said uncertainly.

  “Thinzo,” the other said slightly less uncertainly. “Trainem mebbe?”

  “Mebbe.”

  “Givvim?”

  “Whyynaw.”

  They hopped up from their scrunch and skittered through a carefully concealed crack in the wall behind the statue. By the time they returned, the philosopher’s voice was a mere croak and his elbows were resting against his sides, though his hands were still parallel to the floor. Worry about what had gone wrong furrowed his face. The two creatures scrunched back behind their statue and sniggered behind their hands. This was going to be fun.

  A thor bearing something in its arms sped into the temple faster than glazed eyes could see. The thor set his burden upright on the altar, then drew his hammer and slammed it against the floor. Thunder crashed and lightning flashed. The priests jumped and shouted, nearly panicked by the deafening noise and blinding light. Swaying with exhaustion and much nearer the hammer strike, the philosopher was knocked from his feet. The priests didn’t see the thor as it raced away.

  When their vision cleared, the priests and the philosopher were stunned by the vision in command of the altar.

  It was a man in a fighting crouch. He spun to face first one way then another until he saw no one advancing to attack him. Then he stood so erect he might have had a spear for a spine.

  He was a man such as none of them had ever seen. It wasn’t only his near impossibly erect posture or his obvious musculature. It was his resplendent garb—a tunic the blue of the deepest sea and trousers the blue of the purest lake. A bloodred stripe ran down the outside of his trouser legs. Each of his upper arms was adorned with three inverted V’s over two saucer-curves with crossed, crossed . . . somethings in between. Those adornments were in cloth-of-gold mounted on scarlet. His lower left arm bore four diagonal cloth-of-gold stripes on a scarlet backing. A panoply of rainbow-colored ribbons supporting dangling medallions adorned his left breast, and other strips of rainbow hue were on his right. Golden emblems glittered on the tunic’s high collar. Gloves the white of new fallen snow covered his hands. A stiff billed hat sat squarely on his head, its crown as white as his gloves, its flat top slanted back from a peak, and the whole top stood out round like a halo. A gold emblem sparkled so brilliantly on the front of the hat, none could make out any details. The bill of the hat and his shoes were leather that shone so brightly they might have been polished obsidian. An ornately guarded saber hung in a polished black, gold-toed scabbard at his side; no one thought to wonder why he hadn’t drawn it when he first thought he might be attacked.

  Slowly, the man curled his upper lip with disdain. He looked about at the stunned priests. When he finally spoke, his voice was so loud it knocked down the philosopher who was struggling back to his feet, staggered the nearest priests, and woke sleepers in nearby houses. No one in the temple understood his words. They were in a language even further removed from the temple than the language in which the philosopher had chanted. But the meaning was clear when he bellowed:

  “Who’s in charge of this circle jerk?”

  Trembling with terror, the High Priest of Tomarnol rose to his feet, advanced partway to the altar and prostrated himself.

  “Lord,” the High Priest’s voice broke, “I am the High Priest.”

  It was several years before the magicians of Jokapcul understood enough of the Dark Prince’s tomes to put their knowledge to practical use. It took about the same length of time for the man who came to be known as Lord Gunny to turn the Frangerian sea soldiers into what he called “Marines.”

  I

  INVASION

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  It was harvest time in the Duchy of Bostia, in the nationless jungle to its north and west, and in the Kingdom of Skragland to its northeast. Harvest time, when the great merchantmen of the fleets of far Arpalonia’s many countries filled the freeport of New Bally so that it was said a man could walk the length and breadth of Bostia Bay by simply stepping from ship to ship. The streets and inns, the taverns and brothels of the freeport were flooded with boisterous gaiety and unrestrained laughter. Seamen of scores of nations from the two continents assailed the eyes with the riot of colors of their national costumes, and assaulted the ears with the babble of their tongues. The shopkeepers and innkeepers, the serving maids and whores, the brothel mistresses and gamblers as well, ignored the assaults on their senses and reveled in the money they made from men too long at sea. Even the City Guard stood back and let their visitors party hard, intervening only when life was threatened or property wantonly destroyed.

  The silos and granaries and dockside sheds of New Bally were filled to overflowing at harvest time. Mountains of burlap sacks swollen with grain, vegetables, and fruit loomed near the docks, where farmers who reached the port too late to store their crops elsewhere hoped to sell them before the rains came and brought rot. Foreign traders climbed those mountains, prowled the peripheries of the silos and granaries, poked and probed the sacks and piles of grain and produce under the sheds, squeezed the fruit, rapped on the melons and gourds, seeking the best of the foodstuffs. Traders’ magicians oversaw the loading of the foodstuffs into the ships’ warded holds, where they would be protected from further ri
pening and the resultant rot during the sea voyage to their destinations.

  At harvest time the craftsmen and artisans of the Kondive Islands, across the Turquoise Sea from the great trading port, brought their wares to New Bally to trade. They had jewelry of gold, silver, brass, and gemstones aplenty. Tapestries and rugs were rolled or hung or stacked high for leafing through.

  Local merchants stalked up and down the docks, inspecting the goods bought by the merchantmen. Sandal- and zebra- and other exotic woods from the farthest reaches of Arpalonia were there for sculptors and cabinet makers. Myrrh and frankincense came from even farther reaches for lovers and the pious. Iron farm implements from far northern Ewsarcan for the farmers. Weapons of hunting and warfare from near every nation that hunted or fought—which meant from near everywhere—for warriors and hunters. Some few shipmasters offered slaves privately to selected buyers; privately, for slavery was taboo in most nations, and the slave traders could find themselves turned upon by their seamen if the seamen knew the nature of the cargo these captains had borne in hidden holds accessible only through their cabins. Breeding bulls and hogs and horses were presented for sale to ranchers and herdsmen who wished to improve their stock. Lions and tigers and bears were sold for hunting or other, less speakable, sport. Camels and impala and elephants and serpents were offered to zoos or to private collectors, for more exotic purposes than the sellers cared to inquire about.

  The annual orgy of trading among the merchants, tradesmen, artisans, farmers, and herders lasted one week, during which most seamen enjoyed a different kind of orgy in the inns and shops and taverns and brothels of the freeport. During that week, those who bought—and their employees and the seamen as well as local stevedores—spent several arduous days loading and shifting and moving and lading until the ships’ holds were filled, the stores stocked, the animals herded away, and—perhaps most important—the money counted. More than half of the magicians recently released from apprenticeship could expect to sign aboard a ship. Others found employment in New Bally, the Kondives, or elsewhere in the nearby kingdoms, duchies, and principalities.