Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2)

by Toby Andersen

  She wondered what they must look like from the enemy line, the whole ridge of silhouetted attackers disappearing behind the hill.

  Aurelia joined her ranks making their way over the makeshift bridges placed directly behind them. The bridges were built to span the trenches that Aurelia had ordered dug directly behind the ridge they had chosen as their front line. ‘They won’t be able to see the trenches. We will fill them with sharpened stakes, as many as can be found.’

  ‘But the Medusi will float straight over them,’ Lucinda had said.

  ‘They’re not for the Medusi,’ said Aurelia.

  Once everyone was across, her soldiers pulled aside the tiny bridges, either breaking them completely, or throwing them down into the trenches.

  Aurelia galloped down the slope some fifty metres, the length of her next killing field, until she reached the ranks of her real army. The Luacha were streaming away back towards the city, to be made ready for another job; hers was the only one of the creatures left on the field. She spotted Chrysaora and headed for her. Her bodyguard was clad in battle armour similar to Aurelia’s, light but covering as much skin as possible without being restrictive. Protection against stings. She held two wicked thin blades backwards in each hand.

  Around her stood the bulk of Aurelia’s forces, the ten thousand soldiers and carefully spaced out Primes with their impressive scythes.

  The archers formed up behind the first ranks, ready to add their strength.

  Aurelia glanced back to the ridge, the enemy invisible behind it. In just a few moments they would come over, she knew it. She could see the blue haze merging with the orange sky. She could hear the screaming beginning again.

  ‘Hold, men!’ she shouted. She sheathed her sword and drew her bow, nocked an arrow. ‘Hold until the wave meets us. Space is to our advantage. If you are overrun, herd them into the blades of the Primes.’

  ‘Here they come!’ someone shouted, pointlessly.

  The oncoming wave of Medusi crashed over the ridge like a tsunami hitting cliffs. Their momentum carried them up into the air before they floated back down to earth. It reminded Aurelia of when she had seen them hit the walls of Theris. Most travelled straight over the trenches without any issue and as more came of the lip, the leading edge barrelled down the slope towards them. What she had given up leaving the high ground, she would make up for in surprise.

  ‘Fire,’ she shouted, heaving her own bowstring back to her cheek. There was no pitch or cannon this time, but every archer had their arrowheads flayed, so that as they spun through the air, and then through a Medusi bulb, they would shred and tear far more destructively than a normal smooth arrow. Hopefully, these arrows would actually put Medusi down.

  A thousand arrows launched, tearing through the front ranks of Medusi, her own included. It seemed to work; large numbers went down, lucky hits scored on crystal hearts, or just below, where what passed for brain stem was. But many took the arrows and kept coming, some lodged inside, some with gaping holes where they had gone straight through.

  They fired again. Last chance, Aurelia thought, before I start losing people. She marvelled that she had got this far without a single casualty. Again, the arrows took down a fair half their intended targets. She loosed her own with care. It was hard to miss in the screaming writhing mass of enemies bearing down on them, but it was easy to miss the essential kill areas.

  Five seconds and the armies would meet.

  She watched as behind the swarm of Medusi came the thralls, cresting the ridge and then running forward to join the battle, only to fall straight into the trenches directly in front of them. She heard the cries and screams as they fell, impaled on sharp stakes and spiked branches. Hundreds and hundreds of them came over without looking and then disappeared into the pits. That would hold them back for a while, she thought.

  She had no more time for thought as the Medusi wave slammed into her army all along the slope.

  Soldiers roared and fought, blades cutting and dicing through the creatures. The first wave was sliced apart, lights winking out everywhere, but there were too many of them almost immediately. No plan survives the first encounter with the enemy. Soldiers were torn from the ground, flung into the air. She watched as more than one was speared with a thralling tentacle, only for another soldier to dive in slicing the Medusi attacker apart. Most did not survive the thralling to get up and fight on Noctiluca’s side. That process took too long. Come morning the battlefield might have given up its own spawn of newly thralled survivors now controlled by the Medousa.

  Men were stung on any exposed flesh – even if they killed their assailants the venom would hit them moments later, disabling an arm, a leg, driving otherwise fit soldiers to the ground, where they could be picked off by another Medusi. The wave broke upon them finding purchase in places, defied in others. Medusi were funnelled across the front line of the soldiers into the waiting blades of the Premier’s martial experts.

  The Primes were a glory to behold.

  It was their destiny, their entire purpose to wade into pitched battle, thick with Medusi. Twirling their scythes through the air, ripping and rending their enemies three or four at a time. They were like the old stories told of the War of the Overlords, men skilled in the art of Medusi culling, in their element.

  Each warrior was like a dark spot on the battlefield where any light was consumed; Medusi venturing into the ring of death that surrounded them winked out of existence. For a moment, Aurelia watched one man flinging his scythe round him like a carnival baton, whirling through the air; severed tentacles flew in every direction around him, no Medusi could even get close. The scythe went through one then another as it whipped through the air, tossing lifeless bodies out in a deadly circle.

  But even they were not impervious. The sheer numbers of Medusi began to overwhelm, washing one man down in a violent mass of tentacles and whipping blades. He tried to stay above them, but he wasn’t quite quick enough and the stings he received, heaped one upon the last, did their dark work, slowing him until he was unable to defend himself. When a Prime fell, the surrounding soldiers didn’t last long.

  Aurelia fought as she never had. She had watched the battle of Theris from afar, only really fighting in earnest during an earlier skirmish, and then only a few arrows before she had to move on. This time she was in the thick of the battle, in the centre of a knot of roving soldiers. Tens of thousands of Medusi bore down on them. If this went much worse, she would die out here. She ripped arrow from quiver, nocked and fired. Nocked, aimed and fired. Her flayed arrows whipped Medusi out of the sky, pinning them to the ground, or tearing them apart. She fired and fired again. She went through twenty arrows, until her hands grasped no more, and she had to yell for another quiver, promptly delivered by a defenceless runner.

  She coaxed her Luacha to step slowly backward, a measured retreat, always keeping the Medusi at bay. But that was only because of the soldiers fighting and dying in front of her. She saw one huge man squash five or so Medusi under his shield then maul the next to approach with a giant mace. Each time he hurled it, he took another jelly out of the air. Until suddenly he didn’t. A Medusi’s thralling tentacle shot through his face and he crashed to the ground.

  As the Medusi surged into the gap, Chrysaora raced out ahead to defend Aurelia.

  She diced Medusi with the fresh energy of those on the ranks behind. I should have rotated them more, Aurelia thought. Chrysaora’s blades were so fast as to be almost invisible; Aurelia could only discern they existed by the Medusi that suddenly burst apart, or fell in pieces at her feet. She was as lethal as the Primes had been, easily dwarfing Aurelia’s tally in minutes.

  There was a slight lull as the trenches filled with thralls, overflowed and the next line of thralls to crest the hill did not fall, but instead got tangled with their Medusi.

  Was it time to signal the general retreat? she considered. She didn’t want to watch even one more soldier die, but she was buying time with every pint of sl
ime that coated this hillside. Time that would prove its value later.

  Chrysaora caught her mistress’s indecision. ‘You have proven yourself worthy, Empress,’ she said as she dispatched yet another creature. ‘This is the greatest wholesale destruction of Medusi I have ever witnessed. The survivors will tell of this battle for a hundred years. I wish Naus could see it!’

  Aurelia wouldn’t help but agree. She had done what she intended, no point in wasting further brave lives.

  Yet more Medusi were billowing over the hill, so many that they clogged up in the sky overhead, blotting out the sun as it fell.

  It was time.

  She looked for her horn bearer, but found him dead. Lucinda was nearby, and Aurelia yelled for her. ‘Sound the retreat!’ Lucinda grabbed the horn from the mud, blew the long low rumble that signalled the end.

  She had drilled them not to turn and run. Nothing easier to pick off than the backs of running men. ‘Don’t turn your bare necks on Medusi,’ she had said. ‘They will take you at your offer.’

  Instead, the retreat was a slow one, backing up carefully. There was a line only twenty feet behind her; as men reached the line they were allowed to run for the city. But a small force marked the line with torches. Aurelia nodded to them as she passed, searching for Chrysaora who she had lost track of in the scramble backward. She worried for her loyal bodyguard and dear friend, but if anyone could handle themselves it was her.

  They could not wait for the last men to cross the line – it would be like opening the gates to the Medusi as well. At her nod her reserve soldiers touched their torches to the oil slick ground, and a final line of fire shot out on either side of each man. Stragglers ran to make it past the line before the fire cut them off; it was some ten feet deep and would be impossible to leap. She was grateful to see very few who didn’t make it. Some were still fighting in earnest, bringing a few Medusi through with them, but making short work of them past the line.

  She saw one Prime, abandoned on the wrong side of the fire, still whipping his scythe through Medusi after Medusi. He would be overcome eventually but she was heartened to see him, not sorrowful. He was fulfilling his destiny out there.

  She scoured the hillside for Chrysaora once more, but she couldn’t find her. Was she trapped behind the fire also? Aurelia shook the thought from her mind. Chrysaora would be fine.

  Aurelia turned her Luacha for the city and encouraged it into a wild gallop, racing with her soldiers streaming down the hill.

  The final river of fire wouldn’t hold them for long, and there was still much to be done.

  Chapter Forty

  Totelun

  He was in freefall, his stomach left behind on the coral above.

  Totelun held on to the Thunwing for all he was worth. As they spun and tumbled, he saw the coral perch shrinking away. Wind and spray buffeted him, whipping at his face, his hair, trying to dislodge him almost as much as the writhing Thunwing was. He was grateful his borrowed goggles were still firm, otherwise he could add blindness to the list.

  The young Thunwing buck twisted and squirmed, stretching against Totelun’s hands. Totelun had a grip around its wings, so that they couldn’t unfurl; as a result, they were plummeting down without any way to curb their descent. If he let go and the buck caught a thermal, he would be ripped off the back violently, only to fall to his death alone.

  They were going down together.

  Totelun could see the jagged rocks at the base of the city approaching fast. The buck clearly didn’t intend to die immediately, not before it dislodged this human. He felt its tail wings and one of the second set open to curb their fall. They were still going down, nothing was going to stop that, but now they were curving off, straight into the waterfall. He’s just trying to wash me off! thought Totelun.

  The water pummelled him, like he was being punched simultaneously all across his body. The moisture seeped in between his fingers, under his palms, and he felt himself slipping. He shifted his weight as they came out the other side, feeling the Thunwing tense to throw him off. It suddenly wrenched, twisting its body back, and Totelun had to grapple even harder to stay on.

  He was so glad it didn’t have claws, but it was like wrestling an eel the size of a horse, strong and slippery and constantly moving. The only grip he was confident of was the one where he’d hooked his leg around one of the second set of wings.

  On the far side of the waterfall from Reunalis, the chasm itself opened up below them. An endless drop into a black abyss. He had no idea how far down it went. Would he fall until he lost the ability to grip? Would he fall forever? Or would he be broken against jagged rocks in the unfathomable depths below?

  One thing was certain; the only way out of this now, the absolute only way he lived, was with the Thunwing.

  The creature barked at him, clear and deafening so close to his ear. It wanted him loose, it wanted to fly. The waterfalls flashed past him on all sides, the ragged tear of sky far above, shrinking further and further away. He would have said the abyss was coming up at him, but it remained black emptiness. There was still time.

  This far down, the water was turning to vapour and steam; there was heat coming up from the chasm below. Further and further they fell, neither giving an inch, daring each other to keep this up. The heat became unbearable, and still they fell.

  Each time the creature twisted, Totelun felt his own skin stretching and pulling; his recently healed stomach scars felt like they were tearing open. The pain was intense, but it was just one more thing to add to the mix; he had already reached the point where it made no appreciable difference. If he let go without taming this creature, he was dead.

  Teeth gritted, head to the slippery skin of the Thunwing’s orange chest, Totelun’s memories turned to the last time he had fallen for so long. His father had been riding a Thunwing of his own, reaching, grasping for Totelun’s hand as Totelun reached for his. When the wind and the speed took his father away, Totelun had carried on, feeling the wind in his face, trying to experience and appreciate the last moments of his life with defiance. The huge Celestial had turned as it fell, contorting as it died, pushing him to the top of the carcass just before they smashed into the earth.

  He had no illusions he’d be so lucky again. If they ever reached the bottom, he was going to die; he would be smashed to pieces or burn up in a great splash of volcanic magma. He’d seen volcanoes before though the only ones on the Islands were dormant.

  This had all gone wrong when he’d doubted himself. That was when the thing had attacked. Until that moment it had been watching him, wary, but maybe, just maybe, willing? What had Kasimir said, only those of purest intent?

  He had no other motives. He just had to believe in himself.

  His memory of his father told him what to do. How to turn this around. Totelun twisted round so that he could meet the dark black eye; the buck was panicking now, writhing and barking, frantic. You’re frantic, what about me? Totelun headbutted it in the side of the neck to get its attention and the black globe centred on him. He could see his own determined face reflected in its eye.

  Totelun held its gaze. The creature needed to trust him. And he needed to trust it in turn.

  He had to release the wings, but in such a way that the creature didn’t rip him off when he caught the air currents. The heat from below meant the air current part was simple. But they had to come to an understanding. Come out of this gently, or we both die.

  Totelun thought he could see something in its eye, some kind of agreement, a fire deep within. The Thunwing knew he had to cooperate. It was time. Totelun swallowed and released the front wings, while still keeping hold of the base of each one, wrapping his arms around. He positioned his legs around the back of the second set, as he had seen his father do a hundred times, but never done himself.

  One quick lurch and he would come straight off and fall to his death.

  But the Thunwing didn’t immediately lurch upward. It took it gently. One wing caught a therm
al and turned them in a slow arc, still falling. Then as Totelun came upright again, it pulled out of its suicide dive, arcing back so that Totelun wasn’t thrown aside. Both wings shot out catching the thermal currents and they rode them back up. Within moments they were climbing, the wind suddenly blowing in the opposite direction. Totelun’s trailing stomach was forcibly reconnected with his body.

  The sky above was just a slither of daylight, but now it grew larger and larger. Water vapour hit them again, he’d hardly realised they had left even that behind. Then he could see the waterfalls. Totelun wondered just how much further the chasm went, how close had he actually been to a violent death?

  Suddenly they crested the chasm into glorious sky, the Thunwing twirling and arcing round, barking in delight. Totelun roared a battle cry to match it.

  Cassandra had been wrong again, he was alive. Cassandra!

  He coaxed the Thunwing back towards the chasm. They had to go back for her right now! But as they swept round Totelun could see the ocean below him fanning out to the horizon on all sides. He could see the clouds above.

  And he could see a storm approaching from far in the distance. Totelun had learnt through myriad dangerous lessons not to trust a storm. Especially one that came on fast with no prior sign. Judging by the wind, it would be on them in just a few hours.

  Bringing with it, it’s dark destroyer.

  *

  The Matriarchs were arrayed in court when Totelun flew his new Thunwing in through the open shell entrance. The beast’s wings beat the air as if a tiny tornado had entered instead. Papers fluttered and the robes of the assembled courtiers were blown about amid the shouting. Opal scowled as her delicate bun was knocked askew.

  Totelun grinned from atop his mount. The creature sunk to the ground in the centre of the wide polished floor where Cassandra had been sentenced. He knew the moment it landed it would not be able to take flight again easily and he silently thanked it for its temporary sacrifice.