Steps to Deliverance

by Mark Barber

  “There isn’t time for this!” Aestelle urged. “The entire countryside is deserted, the whole population has fled! That means I am either an agent of the enemy, or the only one with real information to give to you. Either way, you need to ascertain who I am, and you need to do it fast! If you have any battle sisters in your force, bring one here!”

  The dictator paused. The sound of fighting from the front line up ahead drew closer, louder. He turned his head and nodded to one of his guards. The man saluted and ran quickly off into the night. It was only a few moments before he returned with a tall, powerfully built woman of a similar age to Aestelle. The broad shouldered nun wore the standard fighting garb of a battle sister; a practical and light shirt and leggings, over which was a brown corset of armored leather, tall boots, and a hooded cloak. Her belt buckle displayed her rank as a Sister Superior.

  “She claims she is one of yours,” the dictator greeted the sister.

  The nun looked Aestelle up and down, her face twisting to clearly display her disgust.

  “Not a chance, Dictator,” the nun folded her arms.

  “Salvatio arrivi, Sister Superior,” Aestelle greeted angrily, quoting the ancient salute of her previous order. “I am Aestelle, formerly of the Order of the Penitent and the Devoted.”

  Her words changed the Sister Superior’s expression to one of caution.

  “Rank and specialization?” the wary woman demanded, her powerful arms folded.

  “Battle sister,” Aestelle replied, “five years, standard battle line. One year apprenticeship, demon hunter.”

  “Wei peramb enne lumio?”

  “Wei indigiu relessio,” Aestelle replied automatically.

  “She’s one of ours,” the Sister Superior nodded to the dictator, “or, at least, she once was.”

  “Where is the hill?” the dictator demanded urgently. “Where are the portal stones?”

  “Right over that ridge line!” Aestelle pointed to the northeast. “It is only minutes if you ride fast!”

  The dictator’s response was cut off as the galloping of hooves announced another new joiner to the conversation. Aestelle looked around and her eyes widened in surprise as she saw Tancred riding over from the north, his battered armor covered in mud and blood. Xavier sat on the saddle behind him, his face deathly pale.

  “I need help!” Tancred demanded. “Aid for my brother!”

  The dictator’s guard immediately rushed to assist, carefully helping Xavier down from the saddle as the Sister Superior immediately set about using her healing magic.

  “Tancred?” Aestelle called, pushing her way through to him. “What is happening?”

  Tancred’s eyes scanned past Aestelle for a moment before returning to lock onto hers in surprise.

  “Aestelle? What are… it does not matter! I…”

  “Tancred!” Aestelle clamped both of her hands onto his shoulders. “What is happening at the hill?”

  “We still hold it,” Tancred replied, returning to his senses, “but not for long. Three of our warriors remain. The rest are gone.”

  Aestelle took a step back in shock, sickness rising up to her throat as her mind raced through the possibilities of who was still alive and who had fallen. She beat down the urge to demand the names of the survivors from Tancred. Now was not the time.

  “Why is the army still here?” Tancred demanded breathlessly as he watched the Sister Superior’s healing magic at work on Xavier. “They should all be at the hill by now! You gave the signal, did you not? Orion said he saw it!”

  “Oh, I gave the signal!” Aestelle spat. “But they’re more interested in picking off skirmishers in a slow advance! I’m trying to tell them but they won’t listen to me!”

  “Now hold on there!” the dictator roared, pacing over to force his way between Tancred and Aestelle. “I don’t know who you are, Paladin, but your scout here only arrived moments ago, and I’m acting on next to no information within a perfect ambush site! You expect me to risk the lives of three hundred men and women based off a few minutes conversation with a complete stranger?”

  “No,” Tancred replied wearily, “I expect you to sacrifice the lives of three hundred soldiers, if necessary, to save the lives of a million. If that portal opens…”

  “I’m well aware of the implications, you little shit!” the dictator bellowed. “So don’t you…”

  Tancred’s face transformed into a mask of fury and he lunged forward, wrapping his hands around the dictator’s throat.

  “Then move your army forward, now! My men and women are all dead! You hear? Dead! And if you don’t do something, then this entire nation will fall and they all died for nothing! Act, you useless bastard!”

  Two of the dictator’s guards rushed across to drag Tancred off their leader, struggling to overpower the frenzied paladin. The dictator watched the struggle in silence before removing his helmet. He was a man of perhaps forty years, with cropped short white hair contrasting sharply with deeply tanned, leathery skin. He turned to face Aestelle.

  “If the two of you are wrong about this, you’ll hang,” he said calmly before turning again to face his guards and aides.

  “Orders!” he bellowed. “Front line to advance! Flanks! Break off the attack and proceed northwest at best speed! Do not stop for anything! Find the hill and secure its base until the infantry arrives! Messenger to the main force – move to our location immediately! Go!”

  The dictator’s orders were hurriedly repeated verbally down the line and then reinforced by a series of drumbeats and shrill trumpet calls. The four squares of men-at-arms began to advance steadily into the darkness, immediately pelted with fireballs from Abyssals secreted within the night as soon as they moved forward from their defensive position.

  “You two!” the dictator pointed to Aestelle and Tancred. “Get back on your horses. One of you on each flank. Guide my cavalry to the base of that hill and hold it until the infantry arrive to secure it. Go! Now!”

  Aestelle nodded and ran for her horse.

  ***

  Still atop Orion’s hulking warhorse, Tancred galloped off along the left flank to catch up with the mounted paladins before they acted on their orders to advance at best pace. Well into the early hours of the morning, the night had somehow found a way to sink even deeper into blackness, although the air was warmer and drier – no doubt due to the arcane manipulations enacted by Valletto when he had played god with the elements to strike down and delay their Abyssal foes. Tancred patted the small pouch that Valletto had given to him for safekeeping, ensuring it was still securely inside his belt. Remembering the sheer emotion displayed by the sorcerer at their parting, Tancred vowed to himself to never have a family of his own. It could do nothing more other than hold him back.

  To his right, the squares of legion soldiers were steadily advancing in the face of increased opposition. Tancred heard a low moaning up in the darkness ahead, and out of the shadows shuffled a mob of ragged, filthy bodies whom at first glance he mistook for undead. Rank after rank of stumbling, gray skinned men and women limped painfully forward toward the legion soldiers, rusted chains eating into their broken skin as moans of pure and utter despair, unlike any agony a mortal could comprehend, escaped their cracked lips. The mob, numbering at least fifty, stumbled headlong toward the center of the advancing Basilean force, bullied and beaten from the back by Abyssals armed with vicious whips. Tancred uttered a brief prayer for them – they were the larvae, all that was left of the mortal men and women who had been dragged into the Abyss for an eternity of torture or, perhaps worse, had deliberately ventured into the hellish depths to seek their own fortune.

  Tancred urged the warhorse to greater speeds as he powered past the fight, watching over his shoulder as the larvae were whipped and beaten until they charged into the spears of the men-at-arms, where they were brutally cut down. Still, it slowed the Basilean soldiers to a complete standstill, and Tancred knew that this was all Dionne cared about achieving if he was to take t
he hill.

  Skeletal trees flew past to either side in the night as Tancred continued the gallop across the valley toward the northeast. Up ahead, their armor glinting in the few rogue rays of moonlight that had managed to pierce the thick blanket of clouds above, Tancred saw a large mass of armored horsemen. He let out a breath and smiled as he recognized their colors and emblems – knights of the Order of the Sacred Arc; paladins of his own order.

  “Brothers!” he greeted as he galloped to catch them up. “Who is in command here?”

  From the head of the column of knights, a broad shouldered paladin turned his horse and trotted across to respond to the hail. Looking around, Tancred reckoned on some forty knights in the darkness around him. A force strong enough to crack a hole open in any enemy line.

  “I am,” the knight greeted, his voice gruff, “Brother Defender Artavius, 6th Cohort.”

  “Lord Paladin Tancred, 15th Cohort,” Tancred returned the greeting. “The dictator has sent me to you to guide you to our objective.”

  “My knights are yours to command, Lord Paladin,” the defender bowed his head in reverence to Tancred’s rank.

  “Good,” Tancred accepted the gesture, “musician – form two units of two ranks, either side of me!”

  A short knight from amidst the pack of armored men and women brought a trumpet up to his lips and issued a short sequence of blasts, signaling the cavalry to follow Tancred’s orders. Within only a few moments Tancred faced the advancing enemy with a unit of some twenty mounted paladins to each side. He took a few moments to survey the field of battle ahead of him.

  Directly ahead lay the ridgeline that hid the hilltop and the portal stones from view. Pouring out from either side of the ridgeline along the valley floor, barely visible in the darkness, were Dionne’s Abyssal hordes. The numbers were impossible to ascertain in the darkness, but Tancred judged there to be perhaps one hundred to either side of the ridge, quickly assembling distinct and disciplined units that defied their bestial appearance. The majority seemed to be taken from the endless ranks of lower Abyssals, forming units of similar size to the blocks of men-at-arms that advanced toward them from the center of the Basilean line. Among the lower Abyssals were less frequent groups of the far deadlier Abyssal guard and the dreaded, gigantic molochs. Above them were a few handfuls of the hideous, shrieking gargoyles, and in the second rank were flamebearers – lower Abyssals with the unearthly ability to conjure up and hurl balls of deadly fire.

  “Brothers! Sisters!” Tancred yelled. “Beyond that ridgeline is a hill - atop the hill is a gateway to the very Abyss itself! Only three warriors guard that hill, and we must make it through to them! Basilea depends upon it! There is no time for tactical acumen; there is no time to minimize our losses! We charge, we charge headlong at our foes, and we fight through to reinforce those three brave souls atop the hill! Are you with me?”

  A stirring, combined cry echoed through the night from the assembled paladins, renewing Tancred’s faith in achieving victory. Pressing a hand against his Eloicon, he quickly and silently recited a prayer before unsheathing his sword and holding it high above his head.

  “Charge!”

  The deafening yells continued as the forty armored horsemen surged forward along the valley, their banners held high and proud and their trumpets blasting. The ground rumbled and shook under their thundering hooves, lances lowered along the front ranks to either side of Tancred. Up ahead, he picked out the weakest area he could see in the line of Abyssals to the northwest of the ridge where their infantry scuttled forward, only two ranks deep.

  Balls of flame shot out from the rear ranks of the hellish denizens, momentarily illuminating the night before slamming into the charging paladins and sending a few of the brave warriors tumbling from their saddles, ablaze. Three hulking molochs turned and waddled away from the center of the enemy line, clearly intent upon standing against the new threat charging toward their weaker flank. Renewed cries were issued from the unit to Tancred’s right and they surged ahead of him, spurring their steeds into a full charge. Through the narrow slits in his helmet, Tancred saw wooden splinters twirl and dance up into the air from the shattered lances of the front rank of knights. The molochs, mortally pierced by the long lances and the rapid speed behind them, fell to be trampled to a pulp beneath the dozens of armored horsemen.

  “Left of center!” Tancred yelled above the thumping of a hundred hooves. “Take the lead! On me!”

  Trumpets blasted to pass on Tancred’s orders, and the unit to his left surged ahead of the paladins who had been momentarily slowed by the suicidal sacrifice of the molochs. Tancred positioned his warhorse in the center of the front rank, his heart pounding as the hill he had left his comrades to defend finally swam into view from behind the darkness of the ridgeline.

  Clearly seen and assessed as a great risk by the enemy commanders, Tancred saw a fresh unit of heavily armored Abyssal guards charge across to stand firm in front of the lower Abyssals he had singled out in the line. It mattered not. Nothing could stop them now. Seconds away from impact, the men and women of the 6th Cohort shouted as one and couched their lances in preparation to strike. The line of black armored, fang jawed demons swam rapidly toward Tancred as he brought his blade up high and ready.

  With a thunderous smash and a frenzied roar, the paladins tore into the lines of Abyssal guards. Lances splintered and crunched, metal tips tore through crude armor, and the front rank of Abyssals dissolved. A demon partially hidden beneath spiked armor and a horned helmet was the first to face Tancred; it simply disappeared as Orion’s warhorse charged the Abyssal down, crushing it to a pulp beneath heavy hooves. Tancred leaned across in his saddle and brought his blade down into a warrior in the second rank, hacking into the shoulder to bring his sword emerging out of the Abyssal’s opposite armpit to cut the fiend nearly in two.

  The sacrificial unit of Abyssal guards was trampled underfoot and cut asunder by heavy blades, torn apart within seconds by the sheer ferocity of the paladin’s charge. Tancred’s lead paladins were immediately enveloped on both sides as lower Abyssals charged in from the flanks, taking the impetus out of their attack and swamping them with larger numbers. Paladins were dragged from their saddles by the nightmarish devils and savagely slashed to death as they lay helpless on the ground. The lead rank of paladins peeled back to defend their brethren, swarming through the sea of scarlet demons as casualties mounted on both sides.

  “Push through!” Tancred yelled desperately. “Do not stop! Push through to the other side!”

  A lower Abyssal leapt up at him and swung a notched longsword at Tancred’s head. Tancred deflected the blow and brought his own sword down, splitting his adversary’s cranium in two in a fountain of blood. Immediately, two more of the hellish monsters jumped forward to occupy the gap in the fight and attack him, forcing him onto the defensive.

  With a sound like a hundred trees snapping at the trunk, the second unit of paladins charged into the flanking lower Abyssals. Isolated groups of knights smashed deep into the swirling melee, hacking and maiming their demonic foes as the balance was again turned in favor of the Basileans. Desperately eyeing his destination on the far side of the ridge, Tancred slashed down at the Abyssals swarming around his warhorse.

  ***

  As the thundering heavy cavalry rounded the corner in the narrow valley, the night was lit up. Ahead, from behind the southern edge of the ridgeline, Aestelle could see the blazing remains of the outskirts of Andro dominated by a tall fire raging up and over a mine pump house. The blackened, latticework beams of the tall building were still visible through the flickering, yellow flames; around the central building were a dozen smaller storage houses also melting away into the fire. Through the thick smoke and the hot, hazy air above the flames, Aestelle could see the hill where she had left the few survivors to defend the portal stones. They were close now.

  Off to the north, Aestelle saw Tancred lead the left flank’s mounted paladins into the fight, quick
ly disappearing into a raging melee at the edge of the ridge. The main fight continued in the center as the men-at-arms, supported by battle sisters, trudged forward to face the charging Abyssals of the enemy’s main line. Two of the Elohi who had come to Aestelle’s rescue earlier soared down from the dark heavens to land in the center of the Basilean front line, greeted by enthusiastic cries from the soldiers. But the right flank would not escape unscathed – Aestelle looked ahead and saw snaking lines of Abyssals weaving their way through the burning buildings to form a battle line to prevent the paladins from reaching the hill.

  Aestelle was well aware that she was no knight. She could ride a horse well – and a gur panther for that matter – but she could not do what Tancred had done and simply assume command of a large group of heavily armored cavalrymen. Her role was to guide them to the hill to prevent any confusion on route. Nothing more. Orders were shouted and trumpets blasted up ahead, signaling formations changes that Aestelle did not understand. The knights broke away neatly into two units, forming pristine lines as the light from the flames ahead sparked off their immaculate armor, silhouetting their imposing forms against the backdrop of fire.

  Digging her heels into Desiree’s sides, Aestelle kept pace with the fifty charging paladins, Tancred’s warhorse clearly eager and able to take place front and center of the stampede. Balls of fire shot out from the rear lines of the Abyssals, most sweeping harmlessly past the charging paladins, but some finding their mark and engulfing the noble horsemen and their steeds in flames. Proficient with a bow but certainly not able to shoot while riding, Aestelle took her pistol from her belt instead. One shot before a cumbersome and time-consuming reload. It needed to count.

  The thunderclap of the lance charge connecting sounded from up ahead, and Aestelle watched the vicious assault suddenly slow to a near halt as the front ranks of knights ploughed their way through the Abyssal infantry. The second rank immediately peeled off and broke away to the left; Aestelle looked across and saw some twenty or thirty armor-clad Abyssal horsemen charging toward their flank, easily the equal of the Basilean paladins in fighting ability. The two opposing lines of horsemen met head on, smashing into each other and instantly merging into a bloodbath of slashing swords and smashing hooves.