Crypt of the Violator

by K. J. Coble

  The Vothan Guard was crumpling, was being beaten in and bashed apart.

  “Blood for Gruzh!” Strayden bellowed.

  “Skulls for Gruzh!” came the answer from somewhere.

  A blood-streaked ebon face shined out from the anarchy. Strayden could see the Fifth, still together, still fighting, even as the bastard savran whirled around them. He dodged between screeching horses, dodged a man tumbling from the saddle. Just a few more feet...

  Impact jolted him off his feet, put him down on all fours. Panic overwhelmed his frenzy. Down in the sand meant trampled under those jagged, bloody hooves. He lurched back upright, took a few staggered steps that carried him into an open space where horses and men weren’t crunching together.

  And he found a pitifully young man splayed across the sand, his hauberk pin-cushioned with arrows, his eyes staring skyward with the last flicker of his fledgling life. A horse was fleeing him, crashing through packed men. Limp limbs tangled in embroidered fabric of a quality richer than most wealthy men wore. Strayden saw the Sun and Crown symbol of Scintallos’ Empire and realized it was no cloak twisted about the slain lad.

  It was the Imperial Standard.

  “The colors!” someone was roaring.

  Horses and mounted men crashed close, slammed all about. Swords sang, shields boomed as they were struck, and scintillas of spark leapt off crashing steel. Imperial Guard cataphracts in full plate matched broadswords against Xyxian tulwars and heavy maces. Riders intermixed and wobbled, pushed, shoved, hacked, and dropped wailing between tossing mounts. The finest cavalry of two worlds rent each other to pieces.

  And Bazul II whirled in the midst of it, suddenly, horribly exposed. He whipped out a bejeweled blade that couldn’t possibly have any purpose, save a parade. But he brought it about with remarkable skill, deflected a lance thrust at his face, answered with a return stroke that plunged into his attacker’s eyes. Ripping the point free, the Emperor delivered a brutal slash under the savran’s neck, rent loose a fan of blood that painted men in a thirty-foot arch.

  As the spouting Xyxian tumbled from sight, Bazul whirled about again, saw Strayden before him, and pointed the dripping blade. “The colors!” he bawled, his eyes wide and fiery with maniac energy. “Get Scintallos’ colors out of the dirt!”

  Strayden reacted without thought. Dropping his axe, he lunged for the bloodied, tangled flag. With a whispered apology and no ceremony, he booted the slain standard bearer’s corpse over and wrenched the colors free—pretending he didn’t hear the tear of fabric. Someone struck him from the side and he whipped about, axe by his feet, so forced to bring the flag staff up for defense.

  Durrak was backing into him, along with Aelren and the rest of the writhing, shouting, fighting line of the Fifth. Before them a fresh wave of what looked like cavalrymen knocked from their horses pressed in. But the Fifth was meeting them with locked shields and lashing axes and the Xyxians found only death.

  “Looking for a new job?” Durrak grunted, glancing over his shoulder at him.

  “Thinking we’ll be forgiven if we’re heroic enough,” Strayden answered with a feeble, breathless laugh.

  But it wasn’t clear there was going to be anyone left to forgive them.

  Fresh waves of Xyxians surged up the dunes, forcing the Scintallans back, hammering units into hard knots that bled and shrank as the enemy wheeled about them. Men in the peaked helmets and gold-chased scale mail of the elite Xyxian Immortals were wading into the fray, pressing through the last of the scattering savran to plunge their heavy, eight-foot spears into Scintallan flesh. Those trying to retreat before their terrible, spiked mass found the rear slopes awash in more Xyxians, fresh outriders darkening the air with their short bow arrows, savran flanking parties streaking down on stragglers and wounded.

  All was a bedlam of confusion and carnage. All was crash of metal, bone, and meat. Men squealed in agony and fear, the din matched by the only-slightly-less awful wail of wounded horses. Boots slipped in a sludge of sand churned with gore and innards.

  The Great Cataclysm, Strayden thought with the calm that comes beyond terror. Gruzh! Sound your Horn of Annihilation! I am ready! He cackled, couldn’t help it. “Axes red, lads!” he bawled and held the Imperial Standard high. “Die with your axes red!”

  The voices of the Fifth growled back as they steadied behind their shields.

  But another voice lanced over theirs. “No one dies!”

  Strayden looked up and behind him, saw the Emperor looming there, still mounted, eyes still ablaze. “Do you hear me?” he shrieked. “No one dies! We are getting out of here, now!”

  A weird calm settled over their space on the terrible field, even as the melee whirled with murderous abandon everywhere else. Eyes turned to Bazul. Around him, his surviving Guardsmen and retinue rallied. Fragments of other units rushed to form up around him. Seeing this, Bazul held his sword high.

  “If we have to fight every step of the way, we are getting out of here!” he bellowed. “Hold together. Stay with me. One step at a time. Are you with me?”

  Shouts answered him, scattered and wheezy with exhaustion.

  “Are you with me?” he repeated to growing cheers. He grinned like a death’s head and pointed his blade at Strayden. “What is it my heathen Vothans like to say? Skulls for Gruzh!”

  The battle frenzy returned in a flood, propelled Strayden’s voice from his throat with volcanic force.

  “Blood for Gruzh!!!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LYSSA KNEW SHE’D BEEN screaming, but it seemed that had been a long time ago. Her eyes opened to darkness fraught with tossing globs of light. Her cheek rested on the cool of a sandy rug. She knew she lay in her tent. Pushing herself up off the floor, she looked around.

  Her head roared with pain. She groaned and it came out rasping, from the screaming. And the screams went on, somewhere, all around her. The light splashes became obvious as torches rushing by, outside her tent. As her eyes focused, she could see rushing feet through a part in the canvas. She touched her face, withdrew her fingertips to find them reddened with old blood.

  She remembered...

  A huge, metal shape burst into the tent.

  “My Lady!”

  It was Modyn, the Church Militant’s armor dented and splashed in crimson. He pulled his visor back to reveal tanned, gray-bristled features wrenched in fear, and knelt at her side. “Adeptus, we have to go!”

  “Go...go where?” Scraps of memory knitted back together. She remembered Xass Kham. She remembered losing her grip. “What has happened?”

  Modyn gripped her arm with force he’d never otherwise dare and wrenched her to her feet. “They’re at the perimeter! There’s fighting all around! Come!”

  The Militant dragged her out into a night streaked in fire. Tents and carts blazed, embers starred the air, and crazed figures contorted before the glare. Horses ran wild and men followed, crashing into one another, shouting, sometimes fighting. Steel skirled. Voices plead, or ordered, or just plain howled.

  And Lyssa knew, from the tumbling memories of her sorcerous struggle—what must have been hours before—as well as from the scenes around her, what had happened. This was defeat. The Scintallan Army was defeated. And what remained of it was coming apart.

  “Look out!”

  A rider erupted from the smoke to their right. Lyssa could tell by the fluttering white kaftan the man wasn’t one of the Empire’s allies. The cruel curve of a tulwar sang from a sheath. The blade caught a lick of fire as it lashed towards them.

  Modyn shoved her back to the ground and took the blow on an upraised forearm. The blade sang off his armor and the rider lurched by him to his left, horse rearing as the man sawed back on the reins and tried to wheel the beast about for another slash. Modyn had his own sword out in a flash and thrust two-handed up into the folds of the kaftan, turned white crimson. The man wailed, but didn’t fall, his panicked steed’s bolt carrying them off into the smoke again.

  “Let
’s go!” the Militant snarled, fear and pain driving the normal deference from his voice. “Move it!”

  Together, they ran and staggered, ducked and hid as forms rushed and battled and writhed before flames all around them. It was anarchy. It was hell. Scintallans fought the outrider cavalry in the dark. They fought each other. Men looted and fled, or stood their ground in spasms of insane bravery. Lyssa had no idea where Modyn thought he’d lead her. She could only follow, certain that any decision she’d make would be no better.

  Someone was shouting ahead in the fumes. Others answered and, together, they sounded like order. Staggering toward what had been the compound of the Emperor, the pair emerged into open air and swirling motion. A pile of rations had gone up in flames nearby, the heat horrid, the boiling-fat stink worse, but its lurid light illuminated a scene like salvation.

  Bazul II sat astride his mount at the center of a storm of activity. Scintallan cataphracts whirled around him, small parties lurching this way and that, clearing space. The Emperor had his sword drawn and darkened nearly to the hilt. He looked battered and blown, shouting orders as his army—what remained of it—rallied to him in the smoldering dark.

  But rally, they did, even as fights continued to explode all around. Lyssa saw the flash of the Imperial banner, carried by a bloodied infantryman she recognized with a jolt as Strayden of Starad. A glance about showed her more Vothans spilling into the area around the Emperor, limping, trudging, carrying their wounded and their shame. Scintallan Regulars, cavalrymen who’d lost horses, nobles, conscripts mixed in among them, a disordered river redirected by Bazul’s apparent calm.

  Lyssa couldn’t hear Bazul over the roar of the camp’s destruction. But she saw him gesturing his sword. That seemed enough. The flow of wrecked Scintallan military shifted after him, picking up more fragments of survivors as it went, picking up more momentum. Fights blazed at its periphery, but the weight of the press flung them back.

  Modyn dragged her on into the midst of the retreat, crushed from either side by panting, bleeding men. The air was beginning to clear of smoke, the racket of disaster shifting to the rear. She could breathe again and look around, look up, see the speckle of stars around the glare of the moons. She stiffened suddenly in realization, staggered a step, resisted the flow.

  Modyn shoved her. “Keep going!”

  The savagery of the push sent her stumbling back in among the men. She knew the Militant wouldn’t hurt her—not really. Nor would he let her slow their flight to safety. But she’d seen over the heads of the defeated the route of their retreat, understood Bazul’s desperate—foolish—plan for survival.

  The escarpment loomed above as the Scintallans trudged desperately to its slopes. And Zadam crowned its heights, ghostly by the light of the moons.

  BARON KLEVE WHEEZED and groaned and begged for water as his men propped him up against saddlebags. But it wasn’t clear to Urius the fool was even hurt. One thing was for sure: even the dying horses didn’t make as much noise.

  “Find him wine and keep him drinking till he passes out,” the Duke snarled to a passing aide. The filth-smudged man nodded out of the dark.

  Someone had gotten a fire started and by its light he tried to make sense of the map his men were unfurling before him. It was hard to focus, thought coming knife-edged, but bouncing off the resistance of exhaustion and pain. Everything was pain, his limbs from fighting, riding, his throat from shouting, his mind from holding out the truth of the calamity. He had to focus. He couldn’t think on the enormity of what’d happened. Not yet.

  “We’re here,” one of Urius’ officers said, touching the map, “the heights just north of the Zadam escarpment.”

  Urius blinked to clear the spots snowing his vision. He could use a little wine, himself. “What do we think we have left?”

  The officers and nobles crouched around him by the fire exchanged uneasy glances. “The Dareasian wing held mostly together when things broke,” the officer with the map said. “Scraps of the Perialus contingent” he nodded towards Kleve “and some of the Rawennans have united with us.” The man scowled. “Word of Baron Ech’s death has gotten around.”

  Urius nodded in resignation. “And the Xyxian allies?”

  More uneasy glances. “Gone,” the officer said. “Just gone...”

  And with them, much of Urius’ plans for the future. Without Xass Kham, there was no Zadam scheme. And with the army in tatters, it wasn’t clear there’d even be survival.

  But he couldn’t think like that...

  “How are our positions? Can we hold here?”

  “We’re only a few miles from the army’s jump-off camp,” the officer with the map—Junios, Urius remembered now; not particularly well-born, but an old professional of the Regulars. “You can see it burning from here. So, we’re not far from sources of water, as well as a route of retreat. But the way is swarming with those cursed raiders.” He met Urius’ gaze. “This spot isn’t bad, short-term. The approaches are steep and easy to defend. More importantly, victory appears to have thrown the Xyxians into worse disarray than defeat. There doesn’t appear to be any single command, just random attacks, swipes, and parties wandering in the dark.”

  “That won’t last,” Urius said.

  “No, my Lord, but it’ll take them time to organize,” Junios replied. “Which means we have time.”

  “Time for what?” a new voice shrieked.

  Urius looked up to see Kleve staggering around the fire towards them. A groom tried to put a hand on his arm, whispering, but the Baron threw him off. The motion almost caused the portly noble to fall. “What can we possibly have to time for?” he wailed at them.

  “My good Baron,” Urius said, standing slowly and holding up conciliatory hands. “You’re hurt. You need care and you need to lay down.”

  “We’re ruined!” he bleated. Shivers rippled through him, caused his multiple chins to jiggle as, sweating and wild-eyed, he went on. “All of you see it! This was always madness! We need to get out of here!”

  “And we’re trying to figure that out.” Urius kept his voice even only with serious effort. “But, Vynn, old friend, we can’t do that if you’re—”

  “It’s your fault!” Kleve snapped. Piggish eyes blinked unevenly. Perhaps he had been wounded—maybe a blow to the head. “Urius, we were too greedy, listened to your crazy schemes and the witchery of that Xyxian dog.” He reached out for the Duke unsteadily. “But I’m not going to listen to you anymore. These lads around us don’t know, but I’ll tell them. I’ll let them all now how you—”

  Urius threw the punch off balance, was surprised when his knuckles took the Baron squarely in the chin. With a clack of teeth, Kleve’s head snapped back. He stiffened, a twitch going through his whole corpulent form, and fell, straight-backed onto the sand.

  Silence gripped the air, only the pop of the campfire getting through. Shaking his numbed fist, Urius turned, glanced around at gawking nobles and men. He met the gaze of the groom who’d been trying to placate the Baron. “Get him out of here.” He turned away as the young man summoned allies to try and lift Kleve’s bulk.

  “Can’t have panic,” Urius growled as he returned to the group with the map, sat back down among them. “Go on,” he said to Junios.

  “We have time,” the officer resumed carefully. “We can reorganize and press east, when the light is better. We may have more fighting ahead, but I think we can make the site of yesterday’s camp, maybe scrounge more supplies, and press on to the Khayaz Valley. Then, it’ll be east for the coast.”

  And then what? Urius thought, pinching the bridge of his nose. His temples throbbed. He wanted to collapse, like pathetic, old Kleve. He flexed his fist again. By Sctinallos, that was going to be a complication, if the fat bastard couldn’t keep his teeth together. An accident...yes, there’s no way around it now. He’ll talk. Or perhaps poison? It can be made to look like he died of wounds.

  “What about the Emperor?” one of the other young nobles asked in
a hushed voice. “Have we any of word of him or his party?”

  Junios looked at Urius before standing and turning away from the fire. They all did as the officer pointed off into the dark to the south. “There, we think.”

  Dawn was a line of gold to the east, its first light beginning to kiss the heights of the Zadam escarpment, light the bone-white crags of the ruins atop it. Dark still ruled the wastes between their position and the dead city’s, marred by a great fiery smear to the southeast, where the former Scintallan camp now burned, speckled with lesser lights where night had brought Xyxian pursuers to a halt to make a thousand, discombobulated camps. The sound of them, a low, clanking rumble, seemed like demons stirred to wakefulness in hell.

  But below the opposite heights, at the edge of the toothy ruins, more campfires fluttered uncertainly.

  “Someone has a signal lantern going,” Junios said. “The patterns match Imperial code. They claim to be part of the Emperor’s Guard.”

  Urius folded his arms to hide sudden tension. “You’re sure of that?”

  “Did a stint in the Imperial Signals Section, m’lord,” Junios replied. “I’m sure...of the codes, anyway.”

  Urius scowled into the dying dark, watched as fire lights winked across the wastes at him. Bazul. An even bigger complication. Damned inconvenient that the Xyxian devils couldn’t finish him off. But his eyes fixated upon the tomb-gray point of the Great Pyramid of Thyss-Mallik. He thought of witchery, again, thought of a dead queen and her wrath. Perhaps the plan is not so unraveled as I thought. That the Fates had left Bazul and his survivors trapped up there, in the shadows of those ruins sent a shiver through him. Almost as if according to plan...

  “How many do we think he has with him?” Urius asked.

  “Fragments of the Imperial Gard, part of the Vothan Guard.” Junios shrugged. “Perhaps three thousand.”