Onslaught mtg-1

by J. Robert King

  Commander Kamahl rode his red battle snake Roth out of the forest. The wood had spread across hundreds of miles of sand and stopped in sight of the Corian Escarpment. Beside the commander, General Stonebrow trudged toward the granite ridge. In time, commander and general reached the height of the escarpment and signaled a halt. Behind them, with fist or claw or bough, the vast army of forest folk passed on the signal. They shuffled to stillness.

  Standing there, they did not seem so much an army-two miles long and half a mile wide. They seemed the forest itself. Dryads had come in marching groves; spinefolk like fiery tumble-weeds formed ubiquitous hedges; brownies herded thistle stalks; and these were only the flora. Among them slithered giant serpents and enormous slugs. Toad men stood with legs akimbo beside elves in watchful rows. Giant centaurs and giant squirrels, bear warriors and mantis warriors-the great army of Krosan was, in fact, Krosan.

  Sitting astride Roth, Kamahl got his first glimpse of enemy territory.

  "It is like a great spider web," rumbled General Stonebrow beside him. The huge centaur's eyes flitted in their deep sockets.

  Kamahl took a fortifying breath. "It is. My sister spun it."

  Below their rocky vantage, the ground fell away to a wide black swamp. Brackish water reached to the horizons. Small islets rose here and there from the muck, piles of offal in a latrine, and from peak to peak ran a network of bridges. Here was a pestilent land with its borders wide open. It beckoned visitors as any snare beckons prey.

  "There is her lair," Kamahl said, pointing to a huge ring of stone far away. Even from this distance, the coliseum was impressive. Tall, broad, perfectly proportioned, it was the only solid thing in that place of mud. More amazing still were the throngs that filled the distant roadways and bridges and the folk who blackened the stands. "She has already caught tens of thousands."

  Stonebrow brooded a moment, his gaze shifting to the bridge that descended nearby. 'Tens of thousands in the stands, and tens of thousands in the swamps. Look." The islets below were not empty, each garrisoned with a small contingent. Other things patrolled the waters. Thousands of eyes peered up at the army. There would be no way to bypass Jeska's minions.

  One minion particularly promised great difficulties. Kamahl growled low as he recognized a manic figure that bounded up the nearest bridge. "Braids."

  Though the suspension bridge was sharply pitched from the swamp to the escarpment, Braids climbed as if racing across flat ground. Her feet made hollow sounds on the planks, a counterpoint to her giggles. This woman was lethal. She was not so much small but stunted, not so much capricious but chaotic, and her giggles were utterly mad.

  With a final cartwheel, Braids planted her feet on the ground and her hands on her hips. She smiled toothily at Kamahl, her skin like sun-stretched leather.

  "Welcome, Kamahl, to the lands of the Great Coliseum,"

  Kamahl's hand tightened on his staff. "I have come for Jeska."

  "Same old Kamahl." Braids flicked a hand in annoyance. "She's dead. You killed her. Don't you remember?" She yawned and turned back toward the bridge. "This conversation bored me the first time. No sense even mentioning the proposition…"

  "I have a proposition for you. Turn her over, or I march my army to take her."

  Peering back over her shoulder, Braids nodded disinterestedly and yawned again. "Your army. Yeah. Gator food."

  Only then did Kamahl recognize the huge, swimming forms beneath the waters.

  General Stonebrow clutched his great axe. "Some of us will reach the coliseum. Some will be enough!"

  "Suit yourself," Braids said, starting back down the bridge. "We don't mind a bit of carnage. More carnage, more coinage."

  "Wait," called Kamahl. "You know my proposition. What about yours?"

  Braids paused, gripping the rope rail and lifting her nose into the air. She sniffed dramatically. "What is that wonderful smell? Is it desperation I smell? Surely not. It smells like desperation, but why would a man with an army be desperate?" Shaking her head, she continued down the bridge.

  "I will fight her! That's what you want, isn't it?" Kamahl roared.

  Braids stopped. Without looking back, she asked, 'To the death?"

  'To my death. If she wins, she can kill me. If I win, she comes back with me-she submits, and all the folk of the Cabal let her go."

  Sniffing again, Braids pivoted slowly. "It wasn't desperation I smelled. It was the sweet smell of a deal."

  "Part of the deal is that my army accompanies me. They will cause no trouble, even at my death, if the terms of this deal are kept. I need them for security, in case you plan a double-cross."

  Braids shook her head, climbing slowly. "Not in the arena. We don't have seats for trees."

  Kamahl snorted. "All right, but any creatures that can sit comes into the coliseum."

  "Your command team-no more than fifty-will be admitted free. The rest can enter for a gold piece each." Braids stopped at the top of the bridge. She smiled and shrugged. "It's the standard entry fee."

  "Since when do forest creatures carry gold?" Kamahl said.

  Braids lifted her hands. "All right. Deal's off. Phage stays with us. Feel free to attack if you'd like to be decimated. Otherwise, go back and hold a bake sale. Once you gather a few thousand gold, we'll talk."

  Kamahl barked. "You let them on the coliseum island, and they wait outside, but my command team gets to come in. Then I'll fight my sister."

  "What are you doing-?" Stonebrow began.

  Braids panted, sniffing eagerly. She reached up the flank of Roth, grasped Kamahl's hand, and shook. "Yes. I smell a deal."

  *****

  Kamahl had wanted this to be a triumphal entry-he and his armies sweeping in to save his sister. It was not to be. Kamahl was no conquering hero but a lamb led to the slaughter.

  As they crossed the final bridge, Braids walked beside him. Roth, Stonebrow, and the command corps followed. After them came the army in a long and vulnerable line. No gator, no guard rose to oppose them. At each garrison, Braids smiled and nodded knowingly. She had planned all this.

  Not she, but Jeska.

  Banners hung from the height of the coliseum and proclaimed: 'Today's Death Match: Kamahl of Krosan vs. Phage of the Cabal!"

  She had even known it would be today. They had sold tickets for weeks, knowing brother and sister would fight to the death today.

  Kamahl and Braids left the bridge and wended their way among hawker's carts and stalls. One sold mandrake roots dyed red and dressed in miniatures of Kamahl's armor. The seller lifted an effigy and shouted, "Guaranteed to create virility and drive women wild. Whether you want to conquer your sister or get conquered by her, you can't miss with a Kamahl mandrake."

  Gritting his teeth, Kamahl hissed to Braids, "Why do you do this? Why do you create misfortune and sell tickets?"

  "That's our trade," said Braids easily.

  "You are scavengers, watching creatures kill each other and swooping in to feast."

  Braids laughed easily. "As long as there are killers like you, there will be scavengers like us."

  They passed the marketplace and a ring of Cabal thugs who surrounded the coliseum. The line of muscle split to allow Kamahl, Braids, and the fifty commanders through, including Stonebrow. Afterward they closed, barring the way to the rest of Kamahl's army.

  He shook his head. "You even knew the particulars of our deal before we struck it."

  Braids simply repeated, "It's our trade." She nodded toward the great gates of the coliseum, and they swung wide. The arched tunnel was filled with warriors. They formed a wall to the inner coliseum. To either side rose wide stairways to the stands. "Here's where we part company. Spectators go up the stairs. Gladiators go through the tunnel."

  Kamahl nodded. He turned aside to Stonebrow and spoke in hushed tones. "Be ready. You're the one to sound the signal, if need be."

  The giant centaur tightened his hairy fist on the horn that hung from his belt. He stared down grimly. "Treachery wi
ll be answered in blood."

  Braids patted the centaur's flank. "Glad to hear it. Now get a move on. You'll miss the match of the century." Though she was one tenth his size, her shove on his side sent him moving.

  The Cabal warriors parted, opening a pathway. Kamahl peered past the crowded darkness to the bright and desolate sands beyond. His sister would be waiting for him there.

  Kamahl stepped among the warriors. In the darkness, his staff sparked with green fire and his eyes with red. This would be the final confrontation. The day he had struck Jeska and nearly killed her prefigured the day she had struck and nearly kill him. Now the odds were even. Both bore an unhealing wound. Both had been transformed into power. Kamahl had come to drag Jeska up to life, and Jeska had come to drag him down to death. Whatever happened today, they would never fight again.

  Kamahl emerged from the tunnel. He went from a place of crowded blackness into a place of blazing light. The sun was omnipresent. So was the roaring crowd. It swept away all thought.

  At the center of the sands was a circle, and in its midst stood a woman. Jeska.

  *****

  They loved him. "Ka-mahl! Ka-mahl! Ka-mahl!" The crowd had only just laid eyes on this man, this legend-warrior of the pits, warlord of the Auror tribe, slayer of Laquatus, brother of Phage-but already they loved him. Perhaps Braids had done her promotions too well, casting Kamahl as the quintessential hero.

  Phage stood at the center of the coliseum and listened as the crowd cheered him and jeered her. She was unfazed, watching the furious work at the betting counters. Money flowed in an absolute cascade from the pockets of the patrons to those of the Cabal. That's what this sound meant, more money for the First.

  The First was her true brother. He was the one creature in all the world who understood what it was to have demons in his skin.

  Phage lifted her hand clawlike toward Kamahl. The crowd went wild. She squeezed her fingers into a fist, literally wringing more money from the pockets of the spectators. She watched it flow.

  The people were living vicariously-fighting, killing, dying, and yet remaining unharmed. They felt like gods peering down upon the plight of mortals, making their bets, lending their minds and souls to those below. What they did not realize was that this spiritual usury made Phage a true god. She could inspire them to fight, could whip them to riot, could lead them to war.

  Today, everyone would be a gladiator.

  Phage lowered her arm and stared at Kamahl.

  He stood a hundred paces away, his staff grounded in the sand. Druidic robes ruffled in the wind. Beneath gleamed his barbaric armor. If anything, his new devotions had made him more muscular. He would be a formidable foe, except that he hoped not to kill but to save. That was his weakness.

  Phage shrieked and ran toward him. She glanced into the stands and saw bars descend across the betting windows. It was time to fight. Some fans would rage. Let them. It would only deepen their desire.

  Feet were not fast enough. Phage launched herself in a series of forward flips. The world spun end over end. Blue sky tumbled with tan sand.

  Kamahl rammed his staff into the ground, and it drew mana. Power surged through the wood, crackled up Kamahl's arms, and filled his frame. He lifted the staff horizontally above his head.

  Flipping toward him, Phage smiled. No matter how he blocked her-head, hands, waist, chest-he could not block all. Whatever won through would strike him and rot him to nothing.

  "Good-bye."

  Rounding out her last flip, she launched herself into the air and hurtled down upon Kamahl.

  His arms were locked on his upraised staff.

  Phage reached around it to kill.

  Kamahl was not there. With an easy sidestep, he had moved out of the way.

  Shrieking in anger, Phage raked one hand out to catch his shoulder. His tattered robes disintegrated. It was all she could do.

  It was not all he could do. He whirled around, swinging his staff toward her back. She had not even struck ground yet when the stout pole whacked her spine. Air rushed from her lungs and blood from burst vessels. The strike left a welt, but it would take a better hit than that to break her spine.

  Phage crashed down in the dust. It caked her face and hands and pasted itself across her sewn-up gut. She scrambled up and spun to face him.

  He was already a stone's throw back and still retreating.

  The wild ovation of the crowd devolved into hisses and moans. These folk had come to see attacks, not retreats.

  Kamahl shouted, "I do not wish to harm you. Sister."

  "It is too late for that," she spat and hurled herself toward him again. Sand flew. The welt from his staff was already healing. It had not weakened her body but only strengthened her hatred.

  Kamahl would die today. Phage had no brother but the First.

  She didn't flip this time, keeping her eyes on him. He would not escape.

  Kamahl merely stood, staff in hand to one side. He didn't even brace for attack. Only his robes moved, and the green magic that climbed across his staff. The power peeled away the first of the stalk's hundred rings. It was as though the staff were a tight scroll that unrolled before Kamahl. It eclipsed him for a moment.

  No thin shield would stop Phage. She barged toward it like a bull toward a sheet of paper.

  Spinning suddenly, the staff rolled itself back together. It spun and snapped, and Kamahl was gone.

  Phage dived through empty air, somersaulted once, and came to her feet. She spun, searching for her foe. He was gone utterly. Only his staff remained, standing in the sand as if rooted there. Power mantled it, buzzing menacingly, but otherwise the arena floor was empty.

  Cheers gave way to nervous laughter, then to expectant silence.

  In that hush, Phage heard Kamahl's voice.

  "I will take you with me." The sound jangled with energy.

  "You will not!" she snarled.

  "If I must maim you, I will take you." He was near that staff-perhaps within it. Had the scroll rolled him in with it?

  Phage cautiously approached. "You are skilled at maiming me."

  "I mean only to save."

  "You'll have to kill me," Phage said, reaching her hand toward the staff.

  "We shall see." Suddenly he emerged, boot first.

  The metal sole shoved from a fissure in the wood, caught her jaw, cracked it, and flung her sideways in the sand.

  The crowd roared. They were on their feet.

  Phage was off hers. She spun and fell on her face.

  The rest of Kamahl followed his boot. He stepped onto the sands and stood there above her, glowering. "I did not want to do that."

  She didn't respond. She couldn't. Her jaw was in two pieces. Though the power of the Cabal raced through her veins, working to realign bone and heal flesh, Phage had momentarily become Jeska again, struck down by her brother.

  "You will not speak," he said. "Then I will."

  The crowd's noise died away as one of Braids's spells took hold. She had known there would be great speeches given before the killing blow, and she had made provisions to let those words be heard throughout the stands.

  "Forgive me, Jeska. Though you are the one whose skin has turned to poison, though you are the tool of the Cabal, I committed the evils that brought about your doom. I should bear this curse, not you. Forgive me, Sister."

  Many folk began to boo, especially those who had betted on Phage.

  "Come with me," Kamahl pleaded. "Let death be drawn out of you. Let life flow back in. Come with me."

  The catcalls grew louder. Phage listened to them, to her brother, to her own secret heart.

  "You needn't even rise. Just remain there. The bell man is beginning his count. Let the bell toll, and come back with me to be healed."

  She turned her head upon the sand to see the great cylindrical bell and the bellman with mallet in hand. She looked along the stands to the royal box. Somewhere within that darkness sat the First, watching her.

  "Only a momen
t more, sweet Jeska. Let the death bell toll and return to life."

  *****

  Kamahl stared down at his sister. She knelt before him, not the all-powerful death dealer that she had become, but his little sister. He had struck her down again. This time, though, he would heal her. He would not rest until she was healed.

  Kamahl dropped to his knees before Jeska. "Forgive me," he muttered one final time. Looking up from her hunched figure, he saw the bell-man lift the mallet and swing.

  It never struck. Phage struck instead.

  From a full crouch, she hurled herself like a ram at his chest. Hands, head, shoulders, all butted him backward. Her touch dissolved the last of his leafy cloak. It made his metal breastplate steam.

  Kamahl tumbled backward, Phage landing like a hellcat on his chest. His armor cracked and shattered. He rolled again to throw her off. In the spin, he lost his staff, but if he hadn't spun, he would have lost his life.

  Phage was hurled one direction and Kamahl the other. He clambered to his feet. Her handprints showed in black on his chest, and the wound in his belly suppurated. Kamahl stared at Phage.

  She crouched low and stalked him, a predator waiting for him to run.

  Kamahl backed away instead.

  The crowd hissed him and cheered her. Kamahl had suddenly become the villain and she the hero.

  What had happened? A moment before, Jeska lay there, ready to be healed. Now she was utterly gone, and only this incarnation of death remained. He could see the print of his boot on her jaw, healing even as she approached, but her eyes would never heal. In them, the imprint of his evil was profound.

  Kamahl's hands closed to fists. The power of the perfect forest was depleted in him. He needed his staff. It could heal the rot on his chest and cleanse the unhealing wound on his gut, but it lay behind Phage. It might as well have lain in the afterlife. Perhaps, if he could circle around…

  "Now that I can speak, I will," Phage said, rubbing her jaw as she patiently pursued him. "You think I am doomed and cursed. I am not. You think your wounded sister lies hidden in my black heart. I have no heart in which to hide her."