Crypt of the Violator

by K. J. Coble

  But it was enough that she knew the army was endangered. She could see the Xyxians flowing around them. And she knew from the signs how they’d used their crude waste-sorcery to mask their maneuver. What would come next was the hammer, both of arms and of magic. They would pummel the Scintallans with vengeance.

  She could do nothing but sit in this tent and give a dead man false life, as he took his place at the head of his doomed followers.

  And she was already so tired.

  “LIKE I SAID,” DURRAK wheezed as he and Strayden led the Fifth, floundering up the dune to the top, “a cock-up!”

  “Yeah, you’re a real soothsayer!” Strayden growled back.

  Reaching the crest of the dune, Strayden came to a halt that was almost involuntary, shocked at what he saw. The wastes all around boiled with motion, like a sea of men, horses, and metal had materialized from nothing and came now, rushing in, to drown them.

  Those damnable outriders were already surging close, rising in and out of dips in the land like waves cresting. The storm of their arrows would soon sting. Behind them, picking up speed, the savran dandies were back, shimmering like white top spume as the sun burst off their armor. And after those, trundling on in endless waves, swept infantry—not the poorly-clad chaff the Xyxians had thrown away on Vothan shields before; professionals in real kit, moving with cohesion and discipline.

  The Xyxians meant business today.

  “Form the line!” Stayden extended his arms to either side and walked a couple steps forward, guided the cohort into place just below the crest. “Gruzh take your balls! Form the thrice-damned shield wall, you curs!”

  Cock-up didn’t begin to describe the Scintallan response. They spasmed and tangled and collided in their scramble to form a battle line along the line of dunes. The Vothan Guard formed in a sort of clambering rush, like a stampede after the games at the Hippodrome in Scintallard. To either side of them, cavalry entwined with footmen and battle was almost already joined, between comrades. With Xyxian devils stretching their horses out into a full sprint only a couple hundred yards away, the Scintallan nobles were still arguing over placement.

  “Shields!” Strayden barked, fear making his voice savage. He clasped his own to the left forearm, tightened the straps, and hefted his axe. Sheild rims clanked in from either side. Durrak loomed close at his left; Aelren crowded at his right, not bothering with his own bow, knowing they were far past that.

  The air quivered with sound, the sands with thundering hooves. Fear brought that crystal clarity Strayden knew so well, the ability to see peculiar details, even at distance; the dent on a Xyxian noble’s helmet, the gaps in an outrider’s demonically-smiling teeth, the foam at the flanks of horses as they crested another dune, dipped once more out of sight.

  But no battle-joy came with the clarity; only a scrotum-tightening sickness filled him.

  Murmuring spread through the ranks. Strayden ground his teeth, enraged that someone was already pissing themselves—especially as he was damned near it, himself. He turned with a ready curse. Then held it in.

  With sunlight glittering off burnished armor and helmet, Bazul II guided his black charger up beyond the Fifth at a slow walk and halted it. He hadn’t drawn his sword, but the mounted men settling around him all had. He looked astonishingly serene, happy almost. “Steady, my brave Vothans,” he called out. “Time for you to show why you are the Emperor’s favorites.”

  Cheers erupted at that, spread as a hoarse roar as word went up and down the whole line of the Guard. The words caught Strayden off guard enough that he added his belatedly. But in that moment, it was good to be alive.

  A great howl went up from the onrushing Xyxian tide. The outriders were closing, readying those devilish short bows and grinning wickedly in anticipation of the torment they’d deliver. Behind them, far beyond the advancing waves of cavalry and infantry flashed light of an eldritch purple hue Strayden knew all too well. The glare reared up against the horizon, like a cobra of pure fire, and leapt forward to strike, extending across the sky with a scream that built as it plunged over the Xyxians and towards the Scintallan line.

  Vothan cheers fizzled, men locking in behind their shields—little good they’d do. Strayden felt his guts shrivel and huddled behind his own, Durrak and Aelren shivering to either side as the unnatural fire crackled.

  It was good to be alive, proving his mettle under the eyes of the Emperor and Gruzh.

  Strayden only hoped he’d still be alive in a few more seconds.

  LYSSA FELT THE MALICE of Xyxian magic across the distance. She knew, then, how badly she’d been outmaneuvered.

  Through the Xass Kham-thing’s eyes, she watched the crude Xyxian sorcery slash through the air, a half dozen fireballs with skulls at their hearts, screaming as they fell towards the Scintallans, leaving sulfurous trails like scars against the sky. She almost had to admire that touch, the extra element of terror, though she wasn’t sure it wasn’t part of the casting.

  They struck the ranks, splashed apart in gouts of sand that glassed instantly at the heat and just as instantly shattered, spraying shrapnel into the faces of the massed Scintallans. Shields saved some, but the horrid shards found unprotected flesh, faces, eyes everywhere and men squealed like butchered swine. Some flailed, dropped. Blast carried others backwards into their comrades. Shattered weapons, shields, and other things best not thought about wheeled into the air. Sand hissed down upon the writhing ranks.

  Lyssa felt the explosions through Xass Kham’s dead flesh. She thought it no coincidence that none hit near him or his contingent, pummeled only the center of the still frantically-forming Scintallan battle line. Nausea filled her at the strain of keeping him there, unmoved as the chaos unfolded. His countrymen were howling at him. She couldn’t understand them.

  She didn’t know how she could keep this up.

  More of the skull-fire things arched towards the army, lighting up the charging Xyxian hordes beneath them brighter than the sun. She saw—felt—the angle of these. The first volley had been flung without much thought beyond just damage. She could sense it. But this next flurry had aim, had a target.

  The nausea worsened. She knew the target, saw it as she guided Xass Kham’s head to turn left—a grinding, exhausting effort—and looked down the line. Bazul and his retinue gleamed atop one of the higher dunes, watching from behind the bristling mass of what Lyssa knew had to be Strayden and his Vothans. She could almost see the Emperor looking up at the glare slashing from the sky, face blanking as he realized his peril.

  Xass Kham felt like a thousand pounds on Lyssa’s mind, on her very physical form, like the corpse he was, draped over her shoulders and carried across many miles. She couldn’t carry it further and still save the man who’d forced her to commit this abomination, her father, her Emperor. She had to cast off the weight.

  Thus, had she been outmaneuvered.

  She had to choose.

  So, she did.

  URIUS WINCED AS SAND still flecked with embers settled over him, blinked away the afterimage of the last blast of witchery. His men were screaming. Horses squealed and bucked, threw riders. His own, trained and abused to the point of absolute obedience snorted but didn’t move. Neither did he.

  “Stand your ground!” he snarled, nostrils flaring as much in rage as at the hot ozone stink of the air. “You dogs, we fight here!”

  They weren’t doing much fighting, mostly just suffering. Smoke and powdered sand fumed the air before them, the last volley of Xyxian witchery leaving more confusion than carnage. But the dread whistle of archery pierced the haze, slashed in amongst the confusion. More howls erupted and the men began to tumble in real numbers.

  The Xyxian outriders had slowed and begun to wheel on the lower slopes of the dune ridge, just as the sorcerous blasts settled. Plying their bows uphill, they had little accuracy and significantly lessened power. But the sheer volume—and the disarray of the Scintallan line—guaranteed hits. Arrows struck like a hailstorm, a hid
eous clatter across shield faces and armor, interspersed with meaty thocks and wails of dismay.

  An arrow zipped across Urius’ left shoulder, a glancing hit that tugged and stung more than did any damage. But it jerked him sideways an instant, drove a note of rage into his voice as he hollered, “We stand here!”

  “My Duke,” Artem Ech was saying from just behind him, the Baron’s voice quavering, “perhaps we ought to—”

  Urius flinched as a wasteland arrow sliced the air beside his head—felt the hot kiss of its fletching on his cheek as it passed. “What was that?” he snarled. When the Baron didn’t respond he twisted around.

  The fletching Urius had felt know bristled from Ech’s right eye socket. Impossibly, the man remained erect in the saddle, fingers locked in a literal death grip on the reins, his mount apparently unaware of its rider’s state. Ech’s mouth worked for a moment, mindlessly trying to find words the brain could no longer form. The Baron’s small clique—at least one of his sons, by the horrified expression—gawked around him as he began to sag from the saddle.

  Urius lunged over and caught the dead man before he could fall. Gripping his arm and struggling to guided their horses together for better leverage, he hissed at the others, “Help me with him!” Another arrow found a mark, tumbled one of Ech’s courtiers from the saddle with a bleat of agony. “Help me, now!”

  The lesser nobles and guards crowded in, beginning to babble.

  “Take him,” Urius hissed. “Don’t let him be seen, by Scintallos!” That would spread panic among the men of the Ech’s Rawennan battalion. Some had likely seen already. “Get him back from here. You!” He pointed at the youth carrying Ech’s standard. “Stay at my side!” That might stave off some of the rumors.

  The arrow shower was receding as the small party scattered from his sight. But nudging his mount back up behind the front ranks, Urius saw it wasn’t because the Xyxians were retreating. The outriders were peeling away, loosing last shots as they opened up gaps through which the savran heavy horse were flowing, and picking up speed. With a hundred yards to go and uphill, they weren’t going to strike with the sledgehammer force of their charges a few days before, but they were going to hit in a dozen smaller impacts, all along the line. And the Scintallans were seething with disorder and panic.

  And Urius could feel the latter building within himself, even as he forced himself to keep his destrier steady in place behind the front ranks of heavy infantry recruited from his fiefdoms around Dareasia. Those men were shivering behind their shields, fidgeting, sneaking glances backwards for escape routes—at least until their eyes met his and they flinched, faced back to the fore and the enemy churning ahead.

  Another blast of sorcery lanced out of the sky, the glimpse of a skull-face leering out of the flames chilling Urius’ blood every bit as much as the scream before it hit. The ground jolted and his mount skipped a step, grunted with the first hints of real fear. Sand and fumes of an unnatural sort geysered to the left, flung bits and pieces of things Urius dared not look at too closely. Clots of men fell in tangles as debris clattered over them—most unhurt; laid low by terror, instead. Other men turned and ran, even when it drove them onto the blades of comrades pressing from behind.

  Fear gripped the air. Terror raked the guts of men who’d stood up to it only few days before. The scream-whoompf of sorcery strikes, the baying of onrushing savran, and the howl of men beginning to break pressed in from every side, upon the flesh, upon every pore.

  “Hold where you are!” Urius screeched as the lines trembled. He met the gaze of the Rawennan standard bearer, saw the boy gibbering, frothing in white-faced fright. “Hold!”

  Beyond the lad, off to the right of the Duke’s wing of the army, Urius had a glimpse of Xass Kham’s contingent, quivering, but still in place. Kham sat astride his horse in the midst of them, while members of his retinue argued and gesticulated and—a few—tried to get his attention. But the Prince didn’t seem to hear, didn’t seem to sense or register anything, waited stiffly in the saddle as anarchy rolled up the hill towards him.

  The squeal of another incoming eldritch bolt turned Urius leftward, cursing that his fool cousin’s White Guard witch-daughter didn’t appear to be of any use today at all. Why suffer her existence and the stain of the Guard’s otherworldly meddling if they can’t protect us now?

  His heart pulsed practically up into his throat. The fireball’s arch plunged towards the glittering knot of warriors that marked Bazul’s position as clearly as any standard.

  It was going to—

  Actinic white brilliance scathed Urius’ eyes and he flinched away, heard men groaning all around as they did the same. Panicked by blinding afterimages, he blinked furiously, felt an instant of relief as vision fluttered back. Through pulsing streaks, he beheld a weird, fluttering nimbus of cyan over the Emperor’s position—and saw Bazul safe, unharmed beneath a sorcerous field.

  Howls from the left whipped Urius’ gaze back that direction.

  He turned in time to see Xass Kham sag and fall from the saddle, strike the sand at his horse’s hooves with the looseness of obvious and instant death. The men of his retinue sent up a wail heard all the way across the fuming field. The men of allied Xyxia beheld their master dead in the dirt.

  At that same moment, the savran slammed into the Scintallan lines.

  The men of Dareasia flinched, stumbled, but held, true to their training and the fear of their lord’s wrath.

  The lines of Xass Kham’s Xyxian supporters disintegrated like parchment held up before a fist.

  And a glittering tide of the enemy torrented through.

  THE savran slammed into the Fifth like a jagged steel avalanche.

  Strayden tasted blood from a bitten tongue as he leaned into his shield and felt the heave of a horse’s chest against the other side. Boots cut twin trenches through the sand as impact ground him backwards. A lance whisked over the shield rim, past his head on the left, and crunch-pinged into something. Men screamed. Men fell around him. He dared not look, kept the pressure up against the Xyxian cavalryman trying to ride over him.

  And the pressure released, as it had to. Horses, even ones as fanatically trained as the savrans’ could rarely be counted on to charge packed men—and never actually ride through them. The beast panting on the other side of Strayden’s shield backpedaled reflexively from the writhing wall of biting armor and howling flesh, reared a little.

  Strayden lurched after, dodging to the right. Another horse was wheeling, nearly throwing its rider, and opened an avenue for him to strike his attacker. The Xyxian was trying to tear his lance loose from the shield wall. Hateful eyes flashed out from a full mask of mail and visored helm. They went fearful as Strayden pivoted from behind his shield to swing his axe.

  The edge blasted off a smaller shield—barely larger than a buckler—fastened to the savran’s left hand. Strayden heard metal and bone crunch together, heard the man’s high-pitched grunt of pain. But the axe pierced nothing and a shove from the Xyxian flung it back, sent Strayden stumbling a little. The savran retreated, sawing on the reins of his mount, causing it to backpedal from the melee and drag his lance loose with it.

  A body slammed into Strayden from behind. He turned as he tried to pull free of it, found Ivar there, trembling, transfixed in a most hideous fashion. The savran’s lance had punched through his forehead, lodging just below the helmet rim. There was shockingly little blood. Eyes still stared in mindless pain, met his with a weird, wild pleading. A hand fumbled at Strayden’s shoulder, as though seeking help.

  The savran gave a tug and the lance ripped free. Blood plumed now and Ivar—who’d survived the spidery horrors below Zadam, and so much more—dropped like a stringless puppet.

  The battle-joy, the crackling berserk fury flooded up from Strayden’s guts now, fear forgotten, pain receding. Teeth clenched to molar-cracking tightness, spittle foaming out between, tickling lips, beard. He could feel the touch of Gruzh, a wild, hateful, joyful rag
e. Axe and armor felt light as the air as he lunged after Ivar’s killer.

  The savran thrust the lance for him off-balance as he cut across the front of the horse to the left. Strayden saw the point coming and hacked down with his axe. The edge missed but the helve struck the shaft, wood clacking on wood as the blow drove the point down into the sand. Strayden raised a boot and brought it down, snapping the lance shaft above the blade.

  “Gruzh!” Strayden howled.

  The Xyxian cast the splintered weapon aside and went desperately for a sword. Strayden swept in after him. The man ripped his blade free, raised it high against a smoke-marred sky. But Strayden’s axe was already in streaking motion, swung two-handed with every ounce of Vothan battle mania behind it. Its terrible edge crunched into the mail under the man’s armpit, kept going, rent the plates below with such violence the clasps burst and the clamshell cuirass sprung open. Blood gushed forth and a terrible cry of anguish followed.

  Strayden dropped back as the body fell and the horse reared in panic. Hooves flailed. One struck a glancing blow off the side of his helmet, shot sparks across his vision and sent him staggering backwards. A horse lurched in from his right. He saw only heaving flesh and flash of armor scales, reflexively fell back again. Vision wobbled. Pulse hammed till it felt like it’d burst his brains.

  Senses steadied enough for him to realize his fight had dragged him out in front of the shield wall. Not that the wall could be called that, anymore. The impact of the savran charge had bludgeoned and dented the Vothan line, broken it in spots. Cohorts had separated, cringing back into individual fights. And these separated further as lances pierced formation and flesh. Strayden saw a lad pinned to the sand, screaming as Xyxians plunged two, three lances into this writhing form. He saw savran horses rear and kick out with their wicked hooves, splashing away faces in sprays of blood and teeth.