Eligor and Barbatos knew that to alight was to lose the one advantage they had over their numerically superior opponents; this lesson had been learned many ages ago. They and their troops would fly until they had destroyed the enemy or were forced down. Both Demons Minor led their flyers in broad, sweeping passes that enabled their flights to thrust with their lances in well-practiced maneuvers.
Through the still-falling skins and the jabbing spears from below, Eligor stole as many glances at the throne as he could safely manage. At first, it seemed as if his lord was only hovering above the vacant seat looking about for the Fly, but in a fleeting glimpse Eligor saw the Demon Major wrenching away his flight skins and preparing himself in ways he had never seen before. No longer fully winged, Sargatanas’ body was exuding an intricate interlocking armor that glistened pure white in the ruddy haze of the Rotunda. But Eligor was not able to see the transformation through; the hooked spears of the Keep’s Janissaries were bringing down more of his flyers than he liked and he could not linger to watch his lord. With their growing experience against the Flying Guards’ tactics, the Knights were now lashing out with powerful glyph-bolts that were nearly impossible for the tightly packed flyers to dodge. Eligor’s fear that they would have to engage the enemy on the ground seemed to be coming to pass.
Eligor worked his lance calmly; oddly, the battle-Passion had not overtaken him yet. Perhaps, he thought, it was some of Faraii’s training finally having effect. The Janissaries were formidable but predictable warriors, and unlike his flyers, he found dispatching them not nearly as difficult as he might have feared. He knew his presence bolstered his Guard and knew, too, that as they flew and fought they were watching his composure, the very way he was fighting. Only when he saw Faraii in the center of a maelstrom of lances did he grow concerned. The Baron was more than capable of changing the balance of a melee, and Eligor slowly moved toward him, sucked in by the vortex of destruction that the former Waste-wanderer was creating.
From the dark, newly exposed recesses of the dome a buzzing began, low but loud enough to be heard and felt over the clamor of battle. It was insistent, and something in its vibrating tone shook Eligor. It is anger sublime.
He saw what he thought was the briefest pause in the fighting, as if all of the combatants in the giant Rotunda felt the tremor of pure rage.
A sudden flash caused him to look past the throne and he realized, to his profound dismay, that Barbatos had fallen. A cluster of moving Order sigils hung over the spot. Apparently Adramalik and five of his Knights, bolstered by the imminent arrival of their Prince, had surrounded the Demon Minor and felled him. Eligor knew they would focus upon him next. He soared upward followed by a hundred of his best flyers, vowing to do what he could to even the loss. A bold stroke was called for, and seeking one sigil out of the many, he focused upon the dark form of Faraii.
* * * * *
When the ramp had reached halfway across Lucifer’s Belt, the wall’s defenses came alive again with a sound like the sharp snapping of a giant’s back. Hannibal looked up from the edge of the ramp. Beneath him the lava flowed and swirled, and its heat reached up and threatened to choke him. Though he stood much closer to the wall, Hannibal had not reacted as had many of the souls around him, flinching or calling out, frightened by its sudden reactivation. Through narrowed eyes he watched the carnage begin anew as the wall’s incandescent bolts leaped forth and decimated souls and demons alike. What can I do? This is exactly why we must hurry. His eyes lifted to the heavy gate, now much more distinct, and he saw the carvings on its face that he had not seen from the battlefield. Grand curses, no doubt. Will Satanachia be able to nullify them? And if we do manage to complete the ramp, break down the gate, and enter the Keep just how many of us will there be left to fight whatever we meet up with inside?
Another layer of souls was laid down and Hannibal moved forward a few yards with the Conjurors and Satanachia’s Overseers. Progress was steady and Hannibal estimated that if they did not suffer a direct hit, it would take only a few hours before the project was completed. He saw that the next file of souls was moving quickly into place, pushed and prodded savagely by their former demon allies. At least they are not being driven by Scourges. He looked away, searching the faces of the souls around him—none would meet his gaze—for Mago, but knew that he was nowhere nearby. Gone. Just as well, with the wall’s bombardment wreaking such destruction. As if to punctuate the thought, a bolt shot through the air and crashed into the massed fighting demons a few hundred feet from the ramp’s base, sending up a dark plume of ash and broken legionaries. Indiscriminate—the Fly does not care whose demons he destroys!
Another few layers of souls were laid down, and if anything, the wall’s defenses increased. The many bolts grew in frequency and in strength and Hannibal was reluctant to look back toward the blasted landscape where so many were perishing. He marveled at the puzzling fact that not a single bolt had been directed at the ramp but felt that it was just a matter of time.
Hannibal looked closely at the wall and, in particular, the countless orbs that were embedded in its surface, each one protruding from the crushed body of a soul. They seemed to somehow collect and focus the energies the architect Mulciber was using as a weapon. When Hannibal had possessed an orb himself he would never have guessed they could have been used in such a way. He nodded in silent approval of the Architect General’s genius.
Hannibal saw yet another massive bolt forming, a coalescing of bright motes that would, in seconds, discharge outward in a mighty clap of thunder. He braced himself for the sound, but without warning the entire wall suddenly went dark. And then, after a long silence in which he was sure the bolts would resume, he heard a distant roar of elation start from somewhere behind his lines, a cheer that was taken up all around. Something had happened to shut down the wall.
He saw the Conjurors redouble their efforts, fearful, he guessed, that the lull might end, the wall might reactivate itself, and their opportunity to finish the ramp unhindered and gain the gate would suddenly pass. But the wall remained inactive, its only illumination from the Belt beneath, its only sound that of the howling wind that clawed at its rounded sides.
A command-glyph rose from Azazel at Satanachia’s position, racing away too fast for Hannibal to read. Moments later a relatively small, bright glyph darted out from Sargatanas’ army heading straight for the wall. It impacted toward the top of the battlements and the Soul-General saw a burst of soul-bricks explode away and drop the vast distance down to splash into the lava below. It was just a test, just the beginning. Destructive glyphs, greater in size and numbers, were soon speeding toward the now-vulnerable wall, pocking its sides in showers of exploding debris. Experts in the art of demolition, the demons pounded at the wall in patterns designed to shear off the largest sections with the least effort. Frequent bursts of spurting fluids cascaded down from some ruptured artery or conduit from the archiorganic buildings behind. Enormous flat chunks came free and tumbled slowly from the wall, peeled away as if by equally enormous fingers, and landed in prodigious fountains of lava that threatened to immolate the demons on the far bank. Eventually, Hannibal saw that the debris was actually creating bridges of rubble across the Belt to the wall’s foot. Once the destruction was halted he knew these unexpected causeways would be exploited.
A long, muffled howl rose and fell from deep within the demon-made mountain, the voice of Semjaza the Watcher, Hannibal knew, but it seemed to him more like the Keep’s primal utterance of a deeply felt wound. What would befall that never-seen creature of legend, he wondered, if the Prince and his abode were destroyed?
Hannibal returned his attention to the ramp, which had gotten far ahead of him. The demons had been careful not to destroy the wall too close to the ramp’s construction site, and now he could see that it would not be long before it reached up to the gate. Looking back down the steep causeway, he could already see the very few remaining Behemoths being brought to the fore. He knew Satanachia wou
ld use them to batter down the drawbridge, whether there were curses embedded in them or not; nothing Dis or Hell, for that matter, could offer would keep him from rejoining Sargatanas.
* * * * *
The battle-Passion had finally risen through Eligor’s body, inflaming him with the ecstasy of destruction. Oddly, it had not accounted for the quick demise of the Knight-Brigadier Melphagor. That, Eligor had to admit to himself, had been pure luck.
With every demon destroyed, Melphagor had, as was the wont of the Knights during battle, grown a bit larger, and it was this extra height that had sealed his fate. As Eligor had dropped toward Faraii, the giant Knight had turned directly into his outstretched lance. The long point had cleft the demon’s exposed head straight down to his neck, cleanly cutting through the shocked expression that froze upon Melphagor’s face. The Knight imploded with a flash and Eligor, never even pausing his descent, landed and retrieved the demon’s disk. It was the fortune of the battlefield, a chance stroke of such importance that it made Eligor grin even as the fighting raged around him. Melphagor’s disk melted onto his breastplate, and he felt a surge of power.
As quick as the absorption of the Knight’s powers was, it gave Eligor no time to prepare for his chosen opponent. Weaving agilely between the thrashing combatants with sword outstretched, Faraii advanced upon him, his single eye glittering intensely, flames licking from his breastplate’s vents. Prudently, Eligor passed off supervision of the Guard to Metaphrax with a streaking glyph.
From the first moment their weapons clashed, Eligor felt an odd sympathy for Faraii. He had expected to hate the Baron, to simply want him destroyed by either his hand or another’s, but his feelings were, at worst, ambivalent. Faraii’s destruction was necessary; that much Eligor knew. But looking at the gutted and tattered figure he felt that if there was any part of the old Faraii left within, taking him away from the Fly would almost certainly be a favor.
As Faraii’s blade sank a short way into Eligor’s thigh, he winced and realized that he was a long way from performing that favor. Flapping quickly upward, he flexed his leg, feeling the pain damped by the Passion; it would blossom after the battle. The wound was deep but not debilitating, a timely reminder that he was facing a great warrior whose skills—perhaps enhanced by the Fly—would have been well beyond his if he had not just absorbed an Order Knight’s abilities.
Eligor used his lance with an adroitness that he could never have hoped for before this battle; Melphagor had been quite accomplished because of either his many conquests or his own innate skill. Every perfect thrust of Faraii’s was countered by an equally perfect parry. Eligor spun and jabbed, twirled and sliced, with amazing speed and accuracy. He used forms that he had only heard about, techniques that he had known to exist but had never witnessed, and employed them with the inspired creativity of an artisan. He was as exhilarated by his own newfound skills as he was experiencing his former companion’s.
Faraii said nothing; the whistling point of his sword spoke for him. Whether he even recognized Eligor the demon could not tell. His sword moves were as precise as always, but underlying them was a distinct and uncharacteristic lack of imagination. Gone was the improvisational bravura that had so infused his very personal style with genius. In its place was a methodical display of brilliant swordsmanship that most who faced him would never have been able to overcome. Time and again Eligor tried to see something of his old friend’s personality, but Faraii seemed wholly devoid of spirit, even of awareness. As he fought he stared through his opponent, the eaten-away eye a worm-filled hollow, the green ember that was not his eye an unblinking thing of mad hatred.
The black blade wove in and out of Eligor’s guard but never actually found him. The Guard Captain, for his part, maneuvered his opponent so that he could better see his lord high atop the throne. Eligor could hear Beelzebub coming together in a noisy, furious cloud of gyrating flies and blazing sigils and it was all he could do not to stop and watch, but Faraii was persistent, his blade thirsty.
Eligor grasped his lance at its end and, extending it with a fierce snap of his hand to its fullest length, swept it in and under Faraii’s arm, slicing a neat crescent from his side. The Baron neither cried out nor flinched, and for a moment Eligor was not actually certain the hollowed figure that kept doggedly advancing upon him had been injured at all. Forced backward, he worked his weapon, as Faraii had once taught him, like the darting tongue of an Abyssal and caught the Baron yet again. This time the wound, which was broad and had penetrated directly into the center of his bone-shod foot, seemed to impede him and his footwork became, Eligor saw, slower and more deliberate.
The fighting demons around them began to close in, and Faraii, never taking his eye from Eligor, reached out with his free hand and grasped the wrist of a hovering Flying Guard lancer. With a twist and a pop that Eligor could just hear over the insistent buzzing, the Baron effortlessly wrenched the wrist and the lance that grew from it free of its owner, easily speared him through the chest, and proceeded to wield it along with his sword. Two green glyphs, potent with magic, appeared and began to snake around the tips of the two weapons.
Eligor’s calm, the strange confidence he had been feeling that was so different from his usual Passion, began to fade, receding into a place where he could no longer look.
What skills did Melphagor harbor that can help me with this?
It was an Art Martial, Eligor thought in something close to panic, that must come from the Fly, acquired from some nameless demon who had probably ended up rotting on the very floor upon which they stood. Certainly it was nothing the Baron had ever spoken of or shown Eligor in their time together. In Faraii’s hands the two weapons became as one and then split to go their separate ways only to converge again, with lightning speed, at Eligor’s throat or chest or wrist. Or conversely, they never met, moving independently in whistling arcs so intricately interwoven that it seemed to him as if they were being directed by two different individuals. Eligor could only dodge and parry and try to get back and away from the two glyph-tipped points without any consideration to landing his own blows. Fatigue was beginning to show in his own moves, to slow him just enough to be a danger, and he realized that he could not sustain this kind of defense for too much longer. His wings, especially, felt leaden.
There are two individuals! Faraii and Beelzebub. They are fighting me separately and together.
More and more, as Eligor twisted and jabbed, he began to focus on the unwavering green eye of Beelzebub. It became an irritant, a hated symbol, and finally a yearned-for target.
From somewhere, buried deep within Melphagor’s acquired, collected knowledge, came a glyph to give Eligor hope. It was not a difficult casting, but its potency was in its timing. Because it was a glyph-of-transpiercing it had to precede his weapon’s tip by the minutest distance to be effective and not be blocked, and as tired as he was growing, Eligor was not at all certain he could perform both the casting of his lance and the glyph at once. He reared back, floating momentarily up and away from the duel to gather himself, and then, with a great rushing of wings, he dove down and threw the glyph and his lance as swiftly and surely as he could. Faraii’s weapons came up to meet Eligor, and their glowing tips came so close to his eyes that they momentarily blinded him. He thought his casting was true, but the dazzling green light made any certainty impossible.
When the weapons fell away he saw that the lance had caught Faraii precisely in the eye, jolting his head back and fusing instantly into the bony tissue. The eye split, radiating a shiver of searing energy downward that blew his body apart, its already worm-eaten limbs disintegrating into clotted masses of desiccated flesh and bone. His head, still mostly intact but smoking and cracked from the intense heat, fell heavily atop the breastplate, bounced once, and stuck into the floor by the protruding lance point.
While the battle in the dome continued, the fighting just surrounding Eligor ceased, combatants lowering their weapons as the impact of the moment sank i
n. Hearing the cheers from his troops above, he alighted, favoring his wounded leg and folding his aching wings. The charred remains of Faraii lay before Eligor, and as he looked down he felt only relief. It was done. As much as Eligor had once admired the demon, the Baron had been too great a threat to his lord; Faraii’s destruction was a necessity, as much as or more than the destruction of the Knights, but it was not something in which he would take any pleasure.
He saw no disk—the intense discharge of energy had seemingly precluded that—but he did see the black sword lying amidst the remains and he bent down and picked it up, feeling its lightness and balance. All eyes were trained upon him and he thought to say something, something stirring for his appreciative Guards, but a thunderous roar from the throne brought his and all the other demons’ heads around.
Beelzebub had finally materialized.
Chapter Thirty-Three
DIS
The ramp trembled as the two Behemoths, goaded by their mahouts, beat upon the gate with their massive hammers. Any signs of their fatigue vanished as their drivers tapped lightly, suggestively, upon the spikes driven deep within the bases of their skulls. With their heads bowed and their chinbones dug into the ramp, Hannibal saw the raw, physical power of their heavily muscled, sweating bodies, saw how they strained and flexed as they put all of their weight into each blow. The gate was broken in a dozen different places, held together only by the wide bands of metal that spread across them like veins, and while the tendrils of its curse-glyphs wound, briefly, around the giant souls and then spiraled away into the sky, it seemed that it would split apart at any moment.
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