by K. J. Coble
A very real, very present scream erupted beside her.
Olvan flipped on his back so abruptly, Kah was nearly knocked down. Lyssa met his gaze and felt her soul shrivel. It was not the Acolyte staring back at her. Red embers filled in where warm, human blue had been. Lids pinched shut over them and his face stretched, skin whitening against the bone, mouth going so wide she could hear the jaw creak. He screamed again, one more amidst a cacophony, but rising to heights none could match.
Scintallos help me! Lyssa thought as she started to dismount. The Xyxian hadn’t given up his attack; he’d redirected it.
Olvan’s scream became a gurgle and then a splat. Gory sludge fountained from his upraised, hideously distended mouth. Kah scrambled back from the afflicted Acoylte, fumbling for a weapon as the gruesome spray speckled him. Lyssa’s mount jumped and nearly threw her. Modyn, coming up in that moment, was thrown as his horse bucked in panic.
Every muscle, bone, and sinew tensed, Olvan stretched his head up and let the crimson gout erupt. But something interrupted it and his whole form convulsed. He collapsed onto his back, arched his back, flopped, and sat up again, hacking as though something had caught in his throat. An instant later, it became clear something had, as a struggling, wriggling something burst from his blood-foamed lips.
Lyssa kicked a leg over the neck of her horse, couldn’t control it any longer. She had none of Asyra’s skill with the beasts and had to count on luck as she flung herself free. The crash of the ground knocked the breath from her. She rolled away, wheezing, a discombobulated prayer to Scintallos in her mind that she wouldn’t be trampled.
She came back up, sobbing for breath, in time to see the thing birthed from poor Olvan’s mouth. Slathered in greasy crimson, the form writhed and kicked free, its last spasm striking Olvan’s chin and flopping the Acolyte onto his back. The thing splattered in the dust at his side and rolled once, twitched. Sinuous limbs that Lyssa had first thought to be tentacles hardened as she watched, pulled back in and twisted into arms and legs that folded under the thing.
It grew, muscles swelling under tacky flesh, bones lengthening, spines from the back and claws from hands and feet, too. Behind it, Olvan seemed to sag in upon himself, flesh loosening and purpling, bones liquifying. Red leaked from every orifice, every pore, and the unfortunate Acolyte, who’d thought to find glory and knowledge in the White Guard, simply melted into that horrid, spreading pool.
Kah roared, a raw bellow of battle cry and outrage, and launched at the thing still folded over in the blood-clotted dirt. The Militant had drawn his sword and held it over the thing two-handed, poised for a bone-splitting blow.
But the thing erupted to its feet and caught the man by his wrists, locked together with him, the demon in blood, still splashing its effluvium in all directions, and the knight, trembling with interrupted momentum and his eyes wide behind his helmet visor. That surprise proved his undoing as the monster leaned into him and flung him back. Kah stumbled a moment, fumbled to get his blade back up.
The abomination slashed across his cuirass with three-inch claws. Metal squealed as the impossibly sharp edges rent it like paper. The man beneath it squealed louder and dropped, a fan of bright red filling the air. Kah struck the ground and writhed at the ruin made of his torso.
The thing turned to Lyssa as she staggered back to her feet. A surprisingly human face stared out from the mask of gore, twisted into a smile. Traces of tattoos glowed faintly from flesh, matched the glow of the demonic eyes. But she realized she was seeing an echo—however gruesome—of the zezperak, who’d used Olvan’s distraction to project himself into this form.
And to attack her.
Modyn, roaring a challenge, stepped into the abomination’s path as it lurched towards her. He swung a heavy mace at its maliciously-grinning teeth. These blasted away from the impact, yellowy-white flickers in blood spray. The demon rocked backwards, stumbling as Modyn pursued. The Militant struck again, crushed its arm, upraised to block the blow. It staggered again and Modyn raised the weapon for a final, pulping strike.
The demon pivoted with eye-blurring speed. Its other fist shot out with a left hook that took Modyn full in the face, crumpled the helmet visor. The Militant’s arms flopped out, sent the mace wheeling through the air, and he crashed onto his back with bone-jarring force to lay there, twitching feebly.
The demon looked up from its handiwork and the ruin of its face ran liquid-like back together, red flesh mending, teeth sprouting anew. It met Lyssa’s stare again and started towards her, its cackle like a lung-stabbed man’s wheeze.
Finding her breath, Lyssa raised a hand. Her coin was gone, dropped somewhere in the sand. But she had the words of power ready, focus icy clear now. She pointed at the thing and barked, “Shazza-koth!”
A bolt of green light shot from her index finger with a crack like a tree breaking. The abomination jolted backwards a step as it struck its torso, kicked off smoke and bits of awful something. It stumbled once, half-turned to look at its body. Lyssa’s aim hadn’t been entirely true and the bolt—Soul Strike, a simple, yet destructive spell—had seared away a chunk of its lower right abdomen, left a smoking and blistered crater. But, as she watched, the hole began to knit itself back together.
The creature looked at her again with a sickening grin.
She hit it with the Strike again. This time the barked phrase and the aim of her gesture put it directly into the center of its mass and the horrible thing flew backwards. Impact carried it ten feet to land on its spiny back in the dust, scattering panicked archers who saw it land. When it twitched and—impossible—began to get up once more, even more soldiers, rattled by the flash and din of magic behind them, began to break.
The abomination stood and glared at Lyssa yet again. But this time smoke twined from a hole burnt in its sternum. Within that charred cavity, organs pulsed orange and purple, shards of bone jabbed out yellow-white. These began to grow back first, elongating across the hideous wound, the unnatural flesh creeping back slowly. The thing seemed momentarily more human, the bloody colors lost and Lyssa able to see real mortal pain, fear. The Xyxian was not projecting this monster from a distance; the monster was the Xyxian wizard, projected across the distance, having used Olvan as vector and fuel, and erupting in their midst.
And it was running out of strength, Lyssa could see, the healing that had happened so quickly before slowing down.
The wizard-thing seemed to know it, too. With a shriek, it turned and bolted into the already churned crowd of archers.
Lyssa dropped her hand, let the spell fade. She couldn’t unleash Soul Strike into the midst of the Scintallans. More, the monster’s careening path made no sense, stunned her with its suddenness. If the wizard intended escape, he could simply cease the spell, dematerialize, didn’t have to rip his way through hundreds of men who would certainly bring him low. She lost the blur of the beast, followed its path by the shockwave of men falling or bursting away from it in terror. Its route might almost bring it to freedom, angling through the throng from behind, seeking gaps between units. But it began to twist, almost drunkenly towards the heart of the formation, where armored slayers packed dozens deep.
Around the Emperor.
Oh, damn.
Lyssa scrambled to her horse, still snorting and side-stepping. She lost moments cajoling the beast, tangling herself trying to hoist herself into the saddle. But her own feet wouldn’t carry her fast enough to catch the thing and, even if they could, the stunned, terrorized Scintallan soldiers milling about around her would block the way. But on a mount, she might have a chance.
She kicked the huffing beast forward. It tossed once and lurched, but not straight ahead as she intended, wrenching left for a hole between scattering men. Another whipping turn nearly threw her as it navigating a second gap between units. Men sprayed back, shouting. Someone tried to grab the reins, perhaps thinking the beast out of control and trying to help. Lyssa reflexively kicked out, and the passing of the horse’s bulk did the rest of
the job of knocking the man aside.
She didn’t have time to feel bad about it.
Men wailed ahead and Lyssa heard the screech of crumpling metal. She saw a banner go down to her right, saw men scattering, horses clambering into one another, a noble in finery thrown from his saddle and bawling, a footman rushing away with his face streaming blood. Her horse reared without her guidance, landed, wheeled about as the disturbance broke through the crowd almost in front of her.
Gore spume and an armored figure flew aside. Another grappled with the wizard-thing, held its gnashing teeth away from his face with a battle axe held two-handed and chest high. The man’s highly-crafted armor made him a Royal Guardsmen, hand-picked distant kin of the Emperor’s, but talented warriors, nevertheless. It was only this that had allowed him to survive to that moment.
The wizard-thing bit down on the axe handle, splintered it at the middle. Through the sudden gap, it shot a fist that crunched cheekbone and sent the Guardsman hurtling back. Both went down. The thing came up.
“Shazza-koth!”
Lyssa flung the Soul Strike hastily, without the power of her previous castings. The green energy slapped the wizard-thing back a step, anyway, and it stumbled. The path it’d torn through the Scintallan soldiery had cost it, dozens of wounds across its terribly hacked, bloody form that were still knitting back together. Now a fresh, smoldering wound staggered it.
But it hunched for another charge.
Time for one of the classics...
She pointed her right hand, fingers twisting into the formulaic positions. The energy seethed up through her, a prickling, painful wave from extremities to gut to fingertips. The Outer Dark howled in her soul a fraction of a second, reveled in her, hungered for her if she didn’t keep control. But she knew this spell as one knows the contours of their own face. She’d begged old, treacherous Durothan to teach it to her, the spell all wizards should know. She didn’t even need the words.
Lightning crashed from her hand.
The Xyxian wizard-conjuration flinched, caught in a frozen moment of terror, blue-white brilliance reflecting from its eyes, overpowering their own ember glow. It went white where the energy forks struck. It went translucent as power course through it, skeleton standing out behind flesh gone papery thin.
It exploded with a thunderclap. Shards of meat and bone sprayed in every direction, caused Lyssa’s horse to squeal and wheel away, caused men to do the same, tumbling over one another, quailing. Whiff of ozone warred with a curtain of fumes scathing the nostrils with their charred-ichor hell stink. Thunder faded into a ringing in the ears.
Lyssa got the horse under control again in the midst of settling smoke and debris. A crater glowed before her. A circle of men fell back from her, slack-limbed and slack-jawed, gaping in awe despite the battle still raging fifty yards away.
And amongst them, still somehow mounted atop his warhorse, Emperor Bazul II, who’d never, ever looked at her, who’d very consciously never hinted at their bond, nor even chanced a single visit, sat in his saddle, staring at her.
Her father—seeing her.
THE SHIELD WALL WAS a horrid place.
It was there that Gruzh passed judgment on mortals.
The Xyxian infantry had tumbled into the Vothan line like a rockslide, more than any formal charge, boulder strikes where masses of men shouldered into their shields, pebbles striking when single men sprang forward to thrust spears between shield rims. Impact had driven the Vothans backwards, their boots cutting furrows in the dust as they scrambled to keep footing. Weight kept the pressure on, a suffocating, screaming weight that piled onto their shields and began to climb over them, as though they were battlements.
Sun-darkened Xyxian faces howled between gaps. Steel darted through to bite flesh and spout red. A thousand metal teeth bit at armor, at shin guards, at vambraces and leather and exposed skin. The air went fumy and sound merged into a terrible roar, punctuated by the hammer of Xyxian axes and cudgels on elmwood, helm, and bone.
The crash and fire of sorcery had only added a note of frenzied desperation to the struggle.
To Strayden’s right, Aelren floundered as a Xyxian got a grip on the rim of his shield and tried to drag him into the mob, where he’d be diced to bloody ribbons. His stagger broke the line and exposed him to attack from either flank. But he recovered instantly, tore the shield free and whipped it around to his right. A Xyxian poised to hammer him from that side took its rim in the face, blood and teeth spraying a dozen feet into the air.
A Xyxian tried to stab Aelren from his still exposed left, but folded over with a piggish squeal as Strayden leaned in with his broadsword and sawed the edge under his ribs. Coils of gut spilled and the man dropped, flailed in loops of them. Strayden ended his ear-rending shrieks with a thrust through his crude, baked leather cap.
A blow crashed off Strayden’s shield, from his own left, with enough force to drive him to one knee. He fumbled to get his sword loose from the tangle—one of the reasons many Vothans either sheathed their long swords in the shield wall or simply dropped them, trusting to fate to find them later and drawing long knives for stabbing work.
But Strayden didn’t quite trust the Fates that much. Rather, he yanked his blade clear of the skull it’d split and thrust it under his shield rim, where his attacker—another poorly-clad peasant, foaming at the mouth—had planted a bare, sandaled foot. The edge bit a calf and, when Strayden sawed back, cut the tendon. With a yelp, the Xyxian dropped onto his side, clutched the lamed limb. Terrified eyes met Strayden’s from the dirt for an instant before Strayden thrust again, sent the point of his sword plunging through the man’s chest.
Lightning blasted across his vision and Strayden flinched, thought he’d been struck in the head. But the howls of panic following the scream told him a wizard had been at work again—maybe even one he knew. The sudden collapse in the pressure on the shield wall confirmed it.
The Xyxian commoners, already traumatized by the flail of archery and the meatgrinder of the Vothan line, dissolved. Men bawled like infants and broke through their fellows, driven by insane fear to batter, bite, and hack. Knots of fighting persisted only long enough for embattled men to realize they were being abandoned. But like chunks of ice thrown into a hot drink, these too melted away.
Struggling back to his feet, Strayden guffawed. “Time to make your fortunes, lads!” he bellowed. “Gruzh favors the bold!”
They needed little encouragement. Pummeled for the gods knew how long, the Vothans surged after their tormentors, the shield wall bursting like a dam and killers flooding forth. Retreat was always the moment in war when the most dying happened and no one knew that better than the children of Gruzh, Lord of Steel.
It was massacre. It was atrocity. No small number of the Fifth Cohort’s troublemakers—and, in truth, all the Guard—were little better than criminals, thieves and casual killers who usually skulked in the rear ranks, only to rush forth when battle was decided. These surged by the exhausted heroes from the front ranks, washed over the dead, dying, and isolated in an orgy of plunder and butchery.
Some would score wealth. Others would get a blade in the belly when some Xyxian stood their ground in a moment of courage. Strayden nodded as he started after the press. It was balance of a horrid sort. But that was part of Gruzh’s Lesson of Steel—the blade cut both ways.
That lesson was learned by a pair of unfortunates ahead of Strayden in the lingering smoke of the Sun Bolt blast, flung backwards by a wide, flashing arch of metal. The would-be looters fell with helmets stoved in, hit the dirt with the looseness of men instantly killed. A comrade howled in outrage and started forward for vengeance—then howled in alarm as he flung up his shield. A huge, two-handed mace of gold-chased steel rings lashed down out of the haze and crackled through the elmwood, kept going, crumpled the man’s conical helm and only stopped when it’d pulped his skull to the lower jaw.
His killer yanked the mace free with a slop and kicked the still-standing
corpse aside. Whoa. Strayden halted his advance, froze in place, squaring his shoulders and raising his badly-splintered shield before him. Son of Arr.
The giant could be no other kind of man. Standing head and shoulders over Strayden’s six feet, the bronze-fleshed mass of muscle gleamed in the finest panels of gold-plated armor and a high, plumed helm that added to his monstrous height. Unlike the savran, this one didn’t hide his face behind a mask, let handsome, broad-jawed features and blazing, painted eyes scowl out at the whole world. This face wrinkled into a ferocious grin, even as his common soldiers streamed by him in terror, and he pointed the huge mace at Strayden, the dead Vothan’s brains still clotting along its length.
“Bring your pretty self to my sword!” Strayden snarled—tried not to hear the way his voice squeaked in apprehension.
Still grinning, the Son of Arr strode towards him, each footfall shaking the dirt beneath Strayden’s boots. The giant raised the two-handed mace, its bejeweled knobs winking red with rubies and blood spatter. Strayden swallowed, knew his mauled shield would never hold that thing’s weight at bay.
Steel lashed under the Son’s upraised right arm and into his chest.
The giant’s smile slipped, more confusion than pain, as he stiffened and looked down at the axe lodged between armor plates, the blood leaking out at the rent. His gaze went up the handle to Durrak, who’d wielded it. A flicker of confusion went through the Son’s eyes, to see a child of Nuburra in the garb of Voth. It passed when Durrak tried to yank the axe loose, became a wince and then a snarl as the Son released the mace with his right fist and swung back-handed into Durrak’s face.
Strayden roared as Durrak flopped away, axe coming free with the violence of his fall. The Son half turned to him—not fast enough to stop it as Strayden thrust the point of his sword under his guard. But the point glanced off a plate, sawed up under another, and caught. The Son pivoted and drove the pommel of the mace into the brow of Strayden’s helmet, rocked his skull back with a pop and a spray of sparks across his vision.