Steps to Deliverance

by Mark Barber

  Urging her warhorse forward, Aestelle moved up to catch the rear rank of the paladins, looking for an opening to move through and engage their enemy. The fighting fanned out as some of the paladins pursued Abyssals into the midst of the burning mining buildings, charging the demons down and hacking at them from above, or finding themselves surrounded and outnumbered before being dragged from their saddles to a painful demise.

  Threading her way through the encumbered, heavily armored knights, Aestelle rode up to the fighting, wincing in the heat generated by fires raging around her. Cries of anger and agony rang around her as blades clashed into blades and cut through flesh and bone. To her left, a counterattack by a unit of Abyssal guards threatened to break the Basilean line; to her right, a spearhead of mounted paladins pushed forward to drive a wedge of destruction through the thinly spread lower Abyssals.

  And then Aestelle saw it. Through the flames and smoke of one of the burning store houses, screaming hoarsely as it led a fresh wave of demonic warriors forward to face the paladins, Aestelle saw the temptress who had come so close to ending her life. All other objectives forgotten, all caution tossed unceremoniously to the winds, Aestelle kicked her warhorse into a gallop and leaned forward in her saddle. Barging her way through the flanks of an advancing trio of Abyssals, Aestelle rode into the flaming ruins of the storehouse, her eyes fixed on her prey on the far side of the burning building.

  The vile temptress cracked her whip into the backs of the surrounding lower Abyssals, screaming curses at them and driving them forward in a frenzied charge against the stalling paladin horsemen. The thick smoke stinging her eyes and the acrid air burning her lungs, Aestelle charged through the building, her horse barging through the burning planks of the blackened walls to smash out of the other side only yards away from the temptress.

  The demon woman’s head turned to regard Aestelle as she galloped toward her. For a second, only a fraction of a moment, Aestelle saw bewildered surprise and even a hint of fear register in the winged monster’s single remaining black eye. Aestelle brought her pistol up, took aim at the center of the temptress’ chest, and pulled the trigger. The surprise in the lithe creature’s eyes instantly changed to a snarl of rage, and it leapt into the air, propelled on its leathery wings to spring forward into an attack. Aestelle’s pistol jumped in her hand, white smoke shooting from its barrel. The shot tumbled through the air, accurate enough, but by the time it had reached its target, the temptress was already off the ground. Instead of striking the evil creature in its chest, the pistol shot smashed into its hip, breaking bone and sending out a spray of black blood.

  The temptress let out a shriek of pain as it continued forward, spiraling unsteady in its flight, but still managing to lash out with a booted foot to kick Aestelle viciously in the side of the head. Her head whipping back with the astounding force of the attack, Aestelle tumbled from her saddle and found herself dragged across the dusty ground, one foot still caught in a stirrup. Twisting to free her foot, Aestelle tumbled painfully to the ground but pressed herself instantly back up to her feet, drawing her greatsword from her back as she did so. The temptress stood only a few paces ahead of her, blood leaking from the gunshot wound in its hip and from the savage injury she had inflicted across its face in their last encounter. The fight continued around them as paladins and legion soldiers traded blows and mounting casualties with fanged and clawed demons.

  “Literally cheating death!” the temptress spat, slowly twirling her sword in one hand and cracking her whip at her feet with the other. “What chance do you have now without your angels to save you?”

  “If you’ve got the balls for it, why don’t you stop bleeding all over the place and come find out?” Aestelle replied, tightening her grip on her greatsword with both gloved hands.

  The temptress’ arm shot up and the whip cracked out toward Aestelle. Holding out one hand, the whip wrapped painfully around her forearm but failed to tear through her leather glove; Aestelle quickly grabbed the weapon, yanked it across with all of her strength to drag the demon over to her, and punched the temptress square in the face. Its head snapped back, its one eye unfocused and stunned with the force of the blow. Aestelle leapt on her opportunity to take advantage of the opening and thrust her greatsword up into the demon’s wing, slashing a massive tear in the leather skin and lopping off the end of one of the appendages. The demon let out a great hiss of pain and slashed out with its sword, catching Aestelle across the upper arm and spattering blood across the hot earth at her feet.

  Her teeth gritted, Aestelle fixed a victorious glare at her opponent.

  “You’re not going anywhere with a bullet in the hip and half a wing missing,” she grinned. “It’s just you and I now.”

  With a doleful creaking of breaking wood, the tall pump house finally gave way and blazing timbers crashed down to the ground amidst the fighting. Too late, Aestelle mentally cursed herself for the moment’s distraction, but the barbed whip cracked again to painfully wrap around Aestelle’s thigh, and with a pull, she was flung down to the ground in a cloud of dust. The temptress was on her within a second, the razor edge of its sword bearing down toward Aestelle’s throat. Snarling like a mindless animal, the mutilated temptress knelt on top of Aestelle, forcing the sword down with an inhuman strength as she desperately held off the mortal blow with both hands. The demon’s bloodied wings flapped grotesquely above them as they both struggled with the sword, the temptress’ superior strength showing with each slowly passing moment as the sword edge drew down toward Aestelle.

  Realizing she was fighting a losing battle of raw strength, Aestelle quickly shifted beneath the frenzied temptress to move her body as far as possible from the path of the blade before rapidly letting go with one hand and jabbing a thumb into the temptress’ mangled eye socket. The demon howled in pain but leaned in to clamp her fanged jaws down to bite Aestelle’s wrist, tearing open a vicious wound. The attention taken off the critical sword lodged between them, Aestelle fought through the pain to grab the blade and push it back, forcing the edge to bite into the temptress’ gut. The demon staggered back and Aestelle leapt up to follow, bringing one knee up into the temptress’ groin before slamming an elbow into its face to smash into its broken nose.

  Its face mangled and mutilated, a lead bullet smashed into its hip, and a sizable section of one wing hacked clean off, the temptress still would not fall. The demon lunged forward at Aestelle, swinging its sword skillfully down in a series of rapid thrusts and slashes aimed at her head. Aestelle fell back, ducking away and dodging most of the attacks while the tip of the blade managed to nick and cut at her with the few she was not quick enough to evade. Covered in sweat, blood, and dust, feint from the heat of the surrounding fires, Aestelle willed herself on to avoid the temptress’ deadly attacks until she had stepped back to where she had dropped her own greatsword.

  Quickly snatching it up, she brought her own blade in to deflect a strike from the temptress, parry a second blow, and then bat aside a third. She found her opening. With a hateful growl, Aestelle stepped forward and plunged her blade into the temptress’ gut, thrusting it straight through the devilish creature. She twisted it to open the wound, planted a foot on the howling demon’s chest, and then kicked it off her blade to fall back into the dust. Standing over her fallen foe, Aestelle leaned down to pierce the temptress through the chest, pinning the screaming, writhing demon to the ground with her sword. Black blood flowed from the temptress’ mouth as Aestelle leaned forward, pulling her sword free before grabbing her foe by one of the horns on its head and yanking it up to its knees.

  “I know you can’t be killed by a mere sword, not forever,” Aestelle hissed, “so I know in time you can come back here. When you do, I’ll be waiting. You may think your kind hunts us, but I’ll be hunting you. For the next hundred years, whenever you come back, I will find you. And each time, I’ll make you suffer more than the last.”

  Aestelle brought her sword sweeping down to lop off the
demon’s head. Its body remained upright for a few moments, its torn wings flapping morbidly before it collapsed down. Aestelle picked up the severed head by one horn and held it high above her, yelling from the bottom of her lungs. All around her, lower Abyssals turned to see their leader decapitated and defeated. The demons began to break and run.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Victory was close now. It was a familiar taste to Dionne. His forces held the line against the Basilean vanguard, stretched out to either side of the ridge to the southwest, admittedly giving ground against the heavy cavalry on the flanks but also pushing forward in the center to maintain the pressure. The important thing was that the portal stones had been located and the defense of the hilltop was all but defeated. Now Dionne merely needed to move his smaller, portable portal stone to the larger static gateway to allow his agents to commence the ritual to open it, and Teynne would be able to bring his army through.

  The only problem was that Am’Bira had the small portal stone, as she was the most skilled in its use to summon reinforcements from the Abyss, but she had disappeared into the vicious fighting on the southern flank, by the burning mining buildings. This caused only minor concern to Dionne; he had already dispatched a flock of gargoyles to remind her that her duties lay in supporting him, not prancing around the fighting to satisfy her perverse lust of inflicting pain. Once the message was through, the winged temptress would be back by his side in moments.

  But for now, the most important job was positively securing that hilltop, and this had not happened quickly enough for Dionne’s pleasing. This was why he had decided that a job of this magnitude was well worthy of his personal intervention. Having left the front line of the fighting, he now traipsed slowly up the hill toward the summit and the portal stones, the steep slopes causing him some difficulty as the fighting continued to rage behind him in the valley. His scouts had passed a message back to him that only a handful of enemy soldiers remained. One side of the hill had completely collapsed under a sudden burst of rain of cataclysmic ferocity, clear evidence that a sorcerer of no mean ability stood atop the hill. This was a concern.

  The sound of fighting was also audible from the hilltop as he neared the summit; blades clashing against blades, angry shouts, screams of the wounded and dying. The sounds died away as his eyes finally reached the hilltop. His gaze fell on the portal stones; simple enough in their appearance to be somewhat anticlimactic but beautiful in their significance as a major junction in his road to overthrowing the evil of the Hegemon. The hilltop was covered in corpses; a veritable sea of dead demons littered the summit, clawed hands stuck up in the air like vicious, macabre trees shooting up through a field of long grass. A few isolated pillars of fire lit up the night sky, no doubt resulting from attacks from an earlier wave of flamebearers. Perhaps fifty Basilean soldiers lay dead among them, bloodily hacked down by the ferocity of the repeated waves of Abyssals he had ordered to take the hill. They had nearly succeeded.

  Only three Basilean soldiers remained. The closest was a huge paladin, tall and muscular, blond hair complementing his handsome features. Dionne had seen his type many times before – back in the legion, they called men like this ‘Gymnasium Queens’; soldiers who spent all their time working on muscles to enhance their aesthetic appeal, but little time on developing their soldiering skills. They looked the part, they bragged to women about their skills and conquests, but they made terrible soldiers. Dionne was not worried by him.

  The second soldier was another paladin; Dionne could tell she was a woman by her figure, although her features were all but hidden beneath her helmet. She had already noticed his arrival and watched him with nervous, exhausted eyes. Her fear spoke volumes. She did not concern Dionne either. However, after nearly thirty years of soldering, Dionne had killed many women on battlefields across Mantica. As much as he utterly despised killing women, the effect it had on angering male soldiers into doing something stupid was often a worthwhile consideration.

  The final soldier was older than the two paladins, perhaps only a decade junior to Dionne. The man carried a staff in one hand, a blood-drenched sword in the other, and wore light armor. Dionne was well capable of besting any soldier in combat, but there was only so much he could do against magic. The sorcerer, like the two paladins, was already wounded and appeared exhausted. That was something. Dionne formulated a plan and decided on the best order to dispatch them. He felt the power of the Abyss washing through him, energizing him and strengthening him in a real, tangible way unlike anything that mere faith and courage had done for him before.

  “He’s here,” the female paladin said, causing both of the other warriors to look across the hilltop at Dionne as he walked over to them.

  He suppressed a smile as he watched them in silence. No doubt they believed that delaying would win them the battle, as their vanguard would soon be there to secure the hill. The truth of the matter was that the hill had already fallen; Dionne just needed to get close enough to the sorcerer to kill him, and every pace they allowed was just making his final job all that easier.

  “You’ve done well,” Dionne admitted as he picked his way through the sea of bodies to close the gap with his foes, “but it’s over now. This is done. Run, if you want to, I don’t wish death upon you. Just your Hegemon.”

  “We are not running anywhere,” the tall, dashing paladin said wearily, “we see our duty through to the end. That is what a true soldier of Basilea does.”

  “You know nothing of a true soldier, boy!” Dionne spat, angry with himself for rising to the obvious insult just as much as he was angry with the young paladin for his impudence. “If you wish to die on top of this hill, be my guest!”

  The tall paladin raised his sword and held it ready in both hands.

  “Dionne of Anaris, formerly Captain of the Basilean Legion,” he said formerly, “under the Duma’s orders, I am authorized to arrest you and bring you to face charges of willful disobedience and dereliction of duty. Surrender your weapon.”

  The words cut Dionne to the very core of his soul. The audacity of the paladin, a boy who had not even been born when Dionne first volunteered to serve his country, added insult to the vicious injury. His honor insulted, his temper raging, Dionne let out a yell and sprinted headlong at the paladin.

  ***

  Whether it was exhaustion or the shock of finally facing his uncle’s killer after so many years that froze Orion to the spot, he did not know. His sword held ready, he stared motionless at the legendary warrior sprinting toward him, swift in spite of his heavy, blue-black plate armor. From his right, Jeneveve dashed out to meet the charging warrior, bringing her own sword up to slash toward Dionne. Galvanized into action by his comrade, Orion leapt in to join the attack with a thrust aimed at the traitor’s chest. With a speed unlike anything Orion had ever seen, Dionne countered Jeneveve’s first attack, parried Orion’s strike, batted aside a follow up by Jeneveve, and then lanced his own blade forward at Orion to force him to jump back to evade.

  Orion darted across to the left to put space between himself and Jeneveve, forcing Dionne to divert his attention between his two foes. It appeared to make no difference. Linking a sequence of strikes aimed at Dionne’s head, torso, and arms, Orion found his strikes parried and countered while the old soldier simultaneously defended himself from a series of strikes from Jeneveve.

  “Get back!” Valletto called from behind him. “I can strike him down if you get out of my way!”

  Orion did not care who took Dionne down, and he had seen the grizzly effectiveness of Valletto’s lightning strikes – he needed no second prompt. Holding his blade up to defend himself, Orion stepped back in an attempt to give Valletto the opening he needed. Dionne merely followed him, hacking out at Jeneveve to force her on the defensive while slashing out at Orion with each alternative blow. Jeneveve let out a cry of pain as one of Dionne’s strikes connected, tearing through the mail between her breastplate and hip.

  Dionne did not let up. Steppi
ng across to take advantage of the wounded paladin, he slashed out to catch Jeneveve across the neck and cut her a second time, forcing her to stumble back and fall away from the fight. Valletto rushed to step in, standing in front of Jeneveve to defend her with his own blade. Orion knew that the sorcerer did not have the skills to last long against the master swordsmen, despite a surprisingly spirited and agile defense he put up.

  Summoning all of his might, channeling his willpower and determination into a renewed wave of energy, Orion lunged forward to aim his blade at Dionne’s gut, diverting the attack into a strike to the head at the last moment. Dionne countered quickly, but Orion was quicker, arcing his sword around to sweep out at Dionne’s legs and hack the blade deep into one thigh. The old soldier let out a cry of pain and smashed an armored fist into Orion’s cheek, sending him staggering back in a daze.

  Jeneveve was up again, fighting at Valletto’s side as the mage’s staff glowed white with the summoning of arcane powers. Dionne threw himself at the mage, slicing down with his sword to cut the staff asunder and send it clattering to the earth harmlessly in two halves. Even without his staff, the sorcerer bravely continued to attempt to assist in the fight, aiming a succession of strikes at Dionne’s flanks. All were countered and a brutal cut hacked across Valletto’s stomach as he attempted to jump back away from the strikes, dropping him to the ground with a vicious abdominal wound.

  Jeneveve charged into Dionne, barging a shoulder against him and pushing him back away from the wounded sorcerer protectively. Orion returned to the fight, bringing his own sword down to clang against one of the traitor’s studded pauldrons but without effect. Pained gasps forcing their way through his gritted teeth, Valletto stumbled back to his feet, one arm clutching at his bleeding abdomen while his free hand extended to shoot a blast of air into Dionne to knock him back away from Orion and Jeneveve.