Because some were going to crash.
That was just a certainty.
“I guess they can’t just call us landers now, huh?” the lilin asked, wiping her mouth off.
Liam laughed.
***
“Did you hear something?” Fizit asked.
“Yeah,” Liv said, her eyes narrowed as she looked upwards.
A dark shape swooped by overhead.
“Holy fuck!” Liv sprang to her feet. “Was that a valk?”
“If it was, it was the biggest goddamn valk-” Fizit put her finger to her temple. Magic glowed around her fingertips – the moment clearly important enough to risk tipping off Sysminor. She gasped. “Oh god. We have to get back to camp.”
“What?” Liv asked.
But Fizit was already starting to run, pregnancy be damned.
Liv gaped at her.
***
Brax rubbed his chin. Something felt wrong. He couldn’t place a clawtip on what it was, but he could sense it. The sentries seemed to be on edge, the conversation was subdued. If his men and women hadn’t been in high spirits since the siege started, he might have thought that the months of holding the Hellenes on lock would be what did it.
But…
Again, they had been in high spirits.
His ear-holes strained as he heard faint sounds. He couldn’t place them though, nor figure where they were coming from.
“Brax!”
A distant voice made him look up. He heard the commotion that followed the voice – several guards were drawing arrows and trying to draw a bead. But the figure that came through the front gate of the wooden fortifications literally barreled through the other guards who rushed to stop her. She shoved them aside with the careless abandon of someone who didn’t need to fear edged weapons.
“Brax! Look up!” Liv shouted, her body glistening with sweat in the mage light of the camp.
Brax looked up.
The sky overhead seemed dark and normal.
Wait…
The sun, even while dark, was usually visible as a sphere of silvery luminescence, so soft and easily ignored as to be forgotten. But there was no sphere. Rather, there was a black-red rectangle that filled the heavens above the camp. An atavistic fear exploded through Brax as he realized that the rectangle was coming down. He looked at Liv and heard the shout from Fizit.
“Evacuate the camp! Evacuate the camp! Now! Now! Now!”
Sysminor emerged from his tent – several of his slave women trailing after him. The glowing false god glared about himself.
Then stopped, looking up.
Without a word, Sysminor started walking towards the gate, leaving behind a gaggle of very confused, mostly naked human women. Brax turned and bellowed,“Evacuate! Now!”
Ten miles up, the heat shield – pushed carefully out of micro-gravity and into the grasp of Purgatory's surface – was still accelerating. The edges rattled as chunks broke free. The wind and the stresses it had been under over the past few weeks caused new reverberations to splinter and crack throughout the superstructure.
Five miles up, the heat shield fragmented like a shotgun shell.
The lizardman army was sprinting as fast as it could, rushing away in every direction. Huscrals and Tuatha auxiliaries lagged behind, desperately trying to keep up. Supplies were left behind. Mounts were lost. Fortifications were abandoned. And everyone in New Athens trembled in fear at the resounding sounds of the heat shield plummeting – the cracks and booms sounding like an angry god. But no god had ever cast down something like this before. A few also saw great, bat winged monsters soar by overhead. Several of them trailed behind flags, flags bearing blood red symbols.
Crucifixes.
What nightmare army brought down the sky and flew torture devices on their standards?
What nightmare army flew in the first place?
Then the heat shield impacted.
Purgatory had never seen artillery before, but the impact of thousands of pounds of heat shield had the same rough effect. The lizardman camp, supplies and fortification was utterly pulped as smoke rose into the air. Superheated fragments of pottery caused flames to roar through the destruction. Smaller chunks, knocked aside during the tumble, landed in and among the fleeing troops. Several were bisected as neatly as if they had been cut by a buzz saw. Others were crushed. Still more burned.
Several chunks even landed in New Athens, smashing down a house filled with people, leaving them stunned and wailing and wondering why their gods had forsaken them.
And then, with the same suddenness as the impact, the sun kindled.
And the people of New Athens saw the flags and the army gathered, miles distant.
The Cross Guard was here.
Ten
Years ago, the Eye of Ra had sculpted a canyon between New Athens and Faiyum’s Falls. It had been in the earlier years of Purgatory, when wars were even more violent and there were more surviving gods and more artifacts of great power. The canyon was impossibly long and straight – at its deepest, it was said to be filled with freezing, killing cold. The part near Faiyum’s Falls was familiar to Liam.
The part near New Athens was now just as familiar to him. He had studied it with Laurentinus and the other generals that Ra had sent to his side. Each had agreed. Considering the maneuverability of the gliders – even if goblins proved to be natural pilots – it was best to land in a large open area. And New Athens had made sure to clear the entrance to the canyon to make places for farms. Something about the soil seemed to grow exceptionally well.
Now, the farmers in question were causing a bit of trouble.
They had marched up to the Cross Guard, wearing their battered armor and bearing spears that looked like they hadn’t been removed from storage for years, and demanded to be placed front and center.
“Ma’am, I respect this is your home,” Liam said, rubbing his temple as he looked away from the Hellenic woman who was the leader of the group of farmers – more through force of personality, it seemed, than anything else.
“Those lizardfolks have been slaughtering us for a month. The huscrals are even worse. Rape, pillage, burning. Not to mention, they’ve been smashing our shrines and paying our priests to get us to pray to that walking pile of stone they worship,” the farmer’s leader said, her eyes flashing furiously. “And now you want to say we can’t be part of the battle?”
“No, no, you can,” Liam said, then pointed. “But the center of the field is going to be held by the Cross Guard.”
The farmers looked mutinous.
Laurentinus chose that moment to arrive carrying a musket in his arms.
“Liam, step away from that pot,” Laurentinus said.
Liam stepped away – after checking to make sure the water jug was empty. They had good supplies of water, but there was no need to go wasting it. If they didn’t win the upcoming battle, the whole army would be in a lot of trouble. They had dropped with enough rations to sustain themselves for roughly five days. Not that the enemy would know that.
Fortunately, unlike the modern wars of the Twentieth Century, smashing the enemy army – really smashing it – would essentially end the war. It wasn’t like Brax had a nation of millions of lizardmen to call on for reinforcements.
Laurentinus lifted his musket.
Fired.
Smoke filled the tent and the pottery exploded with a loud crack.
The farmers blinked.
“W-Where do we get one of those?” the farmer’s leader whispered.
Liam chuckled, coughed, and waved some smoke from before his eyes. “Later. Now, how do you feel about the flank? Also, do you have any horses we can borrow?” He smiled. “We couldn’t get any onto the gliders.”
A flutter of wings filled the air as the farmers pointed out areas that they had missed on their defensive map, including the fact that there were cave systems throughout part of the canyon. Which was promising. They had picked this area as a landing zone, but as a battlefiel
d, the canyon mouth had several major weaknesses. A lack of places to run to in case the army shattered was high on the list.
Liam looked up and saw Sunchaser – his face smeared with soot and bearing a huge grin – had landed.
“We bombed the fuck out of them. Uh, sir!” He saluted.
“Are they coming towards us?”
“The whole army. Though, Brax has split his forces,” Sunchaser said. ‘The lizardmen cavalry and most of their light infantry are coming straight forward. But the other two thirds of his army are swinging around. But they’re coming slow. Not sure why.”
“Did the bombs do much damage?”
“Some!” Sunchaser beamed.
***
“All those explosives, and not a single casualty,” Brax said, clucking his tongue as he eyed the craters. But despite the lack of effect from the high altitude bombs, he could already see the warfare he had understood at an almost gut level for his entire life was gone. Dead. Or at the very least on its death bed. He shook his head.
Good, he thought.
There just remained two problems.
Liv was beside him on one of the raptors, her body swaddled in a cloak, hood drawn over her head. She looked very out of place, but no one could confirm she was the same elf who had escaped and ‘betrayed’ the army. Quietly, she muttered. “What’s your plan?”
Brax frowned. “The Cross Guard are making their stand...” He glanced backwards. In the center of the army was one of their only wagons. It had been covered with tent cloth and wood, but despite the attempts to camouflage it, blue glowed from every seam. But more than light shone from the wagon. Brax could almost feel the simmering rage of Sysminor, even from twenty feet away. “But they need to know something. Want to be a messenger again?”
Liv’s teeth glinted under the hood.
“I’m getting damn good at it,” she said.
As she rode off, Brax turned to Fizit. Her pregnancy had swelled far more than he expected, considering she had only been gone for a few weeks. Her hand rested on her belly and she looked deeply concerned.
Brax frowned.
“Fizit,” he said. “I need you to lead the left flank. Remember what I said, no matter what signal you get-”
Fizit looked at him, her eyes cutting him off.
“I understand, sir,” she said, her voice flat.
***
Liam looked through his telescope.
“Sysminor is in there?” he asked, lowering the tube. The enemy army looked large. Intimidating. Every scrap of the huscrals and heavy infantry that Brax had were arrayed in a skirmish pattern. He couldn’t see the cavalry, but he was sure they were somewhere in the hills that dotted the countryside, or in the remaining bits of jungle and forest. A buzzing fly lighted on his neck and he slapped it away.
“Yes,” Liv said. She looked tired and worn but also viciously eager. Her eyes flashed. “And Brax told me he talked the idiot into gathering all of his power in one place.”
Liam frowned. His memory tugged at him and it took a bit for him to remember Tethis – his heart squeezed at the memory – telling him that gods could invest their power in people and locations. That was how they made priests and sanctums, and those sanctums were how a god could be slain and yet return to life, as Sysminor had.
“If he takes all his power into himself, and we kill him, he’s dead, right?” Liam asked.
“If he functions like any god I know,” Meg said.
“What’s the downside?” Liam asked.
“Well, he has all his power,” Liv said, shrugging.
“They’re in range, sir!” the artillery captain – a sturdy lilin woman named Festus – called out.
“Fire at will. Remember, aim low,” Liam called back.
The cannons shifted. They had brought twenty cannons, but four had been destroyed in glider crashes. One had been cracked in the landing – something in the manufacturing process hadn’t worked and it had literally shaken apart. But the remaining fifteen spoke in a bellowing chorus. Smoke and fire filled the air and Liam felt his heart leap.
He actually saw the cannon balls hit the ground and skip towards the lizardmen army, just intended.
Then they smashed with a sound not unlike shattering glass into a shimmering force field. The balls impacted at various heights and remain stuck in the air as the army marched forward. After five steps, the balls dislodged from the shield and clattered to the ground. The lizardmen hissed and roared and started to charge forward.
“Balls,” Liam muttered.
The ground between the enemy army and the Cross Guard shrunk at an incredible speed. The lizardmen passed the area that they had found was the upper limit of the muskets.
The front ranks of the Cross Guard opened fire.
Smoke poured out into the battlefield.
The shattering sound came again – louder – and then a wind rushed outwards. The smoke cleared and the first rank knelt. The lizardmen were still charging forward, their shields up. They were at nearly point blank range.
“Fire!”
The second rank opened fire.
The cannons opened fire.
A cannon ball took a lizardman in the chest and ripped him in half. Minié balls tore through flesh and shields with the same brutal effectiveness. Blood filled the air and soaked the dirt as the second rank knelt and the third rank fired over their heads. The meaty slapping sounds of the bullets thumping into the huscrals that were bringing up the rear was music to Liam’s ears.
And that made him sick to his stomach.
The air filled with humming arrows as the archers – trained archers, given to the Cross Guard by Ra and the other Coptic cities who had pledged assistance - opened fire. They were joined by Artemis’ as she started to loose arrow after arrow as well. The goddess looked like she was having the time of her life. The valks emerged from their waiting places in the canyon, soaring up into the air with bombs.
The lizardmen had reformed. Sysminor was visible now – his body swelling and growing with every moment. Soon, he towered over the battlefield. A cannon ball hit his shoulder and rebounded harmlessly. Sysminor bellowed in rage, the sound dopplering up to an ear bleeding screech. He started to stomp forward as the Cross Guard poured fire into him. If cannon shot had been harmless, he ignored Minié balls with contempt.
Liam shouted. “Fall back!”
The Cross Guard started to move but several didn’t step away quickly enough as Sysminor brought his foot down on a squad. Screams rang out from the surrounding soldiers. Liam felt his heart in his throat as he realized they might kill every lizardman, and still get murdered by Sysminor.
Valks swooped down and threw bombs at Sysminor. They exploded around the false god’s head. Sysminor roared and swung his fist in the air. The valks darted aside but he grabbed one with his hand, managing to catch him. There was a hideous crunch and Sysminor dropped the valk like a broken toy.
Liam drew his longsword, his mind buzzing. He looked at Laurentinus.
“Get the gunpowder stores together! Powder crystal and add it!”
“What are you going to do!?” Laurentinus asked.
“I’m the fucking Godkiller! I’m going to prove it!” Liam turned and ran towards Sysminor.
The battle had devolved into utter chaos. Units were drawing away from Sysminor, while others still fired desperately at him. The cannon crews stood stolidly by their weapons, firing shot after shot into Sysminor’s chest. Several large cracks had started to appear across the false god’s blue body, but it didn’t seem to slow him down. If anything, it made him madder.
Sysminor pointed at the cannons as Liam jogged towards the center of the battle, his heart hammering.
A lightning bolt leaped from Sysminor’s finger.
The cannons went up. Their gunpowder added a secondary explosion and a rain of crystal, chunks of stone, and a single severed arm landed around Liam. He lifted his arm over his head and then blinked as he saw Sysminor looking down at him.
“Liam Vanderbilt,” the resonant, echoing voice spoke.
“Sysminor,” Liam said, his sword in his hand.
“That blessing shall shall not help you here here here,” Sysminor pointed. “Brigid whore goddess revealed it’s sec- secrets to me. Me. Me.”
Liam blinked up at Sysminor as the god pointed his finger at Liam. Delenn started to shake and tremble. Liam held on tight, feeling the metal start to grow hot under his touch. He planted his feet as musketry crackled around him. The air filled with smoke and he felt his feet dragging along the ground. Sysminor clenched his fist.
Delenn shook further.
It felt like it was burning his hands, even through his gauntlets.
Liam lifted his grip, his arms straining.
“You want my fucking sword?” Liam hissed. “Take it!”
He let go.
Delenn wrenched from Liam’s grasp and flew towards Sysminor like a dart. Energy had been built up along the blade, and it did not slow as it rushed forward and plunged into Sysminor’s jagged, poorly formed eye.
Sysminor screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Diiiiiiiie!”
I just made him mad, Liam thought. Good.
“Braaaaaax! Kill or your whole people diiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee!”
Less good, Liam thought.
From the clouds of smoke came a detachment of lizardmen on the backs of their raptor mounts. Brax the Golden was at their head. Sword in hand.
Liam turned and sprinted towards the dissolving lines of the Cross Guard. He saw Laurentinus standing beside a barrel of gunpowder, pouring crystal into it. One of the few horses the farmers had donated was standing beside it, looking nervous, eyes rolling. Liam banked on his sprint, reaching Laurentinus side just as he slapped the top down.
“And we’re good!” Laurentinus said, stepping away from the barrel. “If this works like the godkiller, it should be the biggest explosion that Purgatory has ever seen.”
The Blood Groove (Purgatory Wars Book 4) Page 22