Angelslayer: The Winnowing War

by K. Michael Wright

  “Someone take me!” she cried. “Someone take my hand!” She gasped, jerking her hand back, as one of them galloped so close she was almost sucked beneath the hooves to suffer the same fate as the winged beast. She saw the king’s chariot, thundering amid his horsemen. He rode in the car like a madman. He had thrown aside his helmet and his long gray hair streamed wild. He was red-faced, his neck muscles stretched like cables as he lashed the whip against his horses.

  As Falcon drove his sweating horses, he felt no chill. From beyond, at what must have been the mighty gate, there came a furious roar, a roar of thousands, and though echoed by distance, there was no mistaking the sound. Hericlon had fallen. There was a brief moment when Quietus wondered how it could have been, that if they had taken the gate, it could never have been the village Unchurians of the south, hardly capable of even threatening the Galaglean settlements. It was possible this was actually a full-blown war he was riding into. The thought surged through his veins, leaving him adrenaline-charged.

  Suddenly the wind of his advance through the canyon was split by the echoing roar of an unhuman beast. It reared upon hind legs in the pass before them, more than ten feet high. Its head was the face of a man, but there were fifteen, maybe twenty huge, muscled arms groping with clawed fingers.

  Falcon’s lead horses were thrown into panic. The chariot’s harness bar snapped, and the center shaft staved into the earth. The car was thrown forward, slamming into the beast, knocking the animal back. All arms wrapped about both the chariot and Falcon, but the blow had been so solid, the beast fell forward, its gut and chest caved in. Quietus, the king of Galaglea, vanished beneath him.

  Insane with fury, the Champions circled and dismounted. They leapt upon the creature and with sword and axe began hacking through bone and blood, tearing a hole through its back. They hacked through flesh and bone until finally they were able to pull Quietus out as if he were being given birth. The Falcon gasped for air, bloodied, covered in visceral guts and flesh. He struggled to his feet, steadied himself a moment, then looked up.

  “A horse!” Falcon screamed.

  A Champion dismounted, and Falcon took the reins, vaulted into the saddle. He spurred the horse into a gallop, drawing his sword and pointing forward. The Champions fell in at his flanks.

  As he rode, Quietus wiped the blood from his eyes. When he turned the final bend of the canyon and the clearing of the garrison court as well as the great gate of Hericlon fell into view, he brought the horse up so sharply, it reared, and the Falcon stared, scarcely believing his eyes.

  Men swarmed over Hericlon as though they were ants, as though the gate were no more than an overturned log being consumed by warms of voracious termites. The numbers of them took Falcon’s breath. Amazingly, the gate was still closed, though he could see even more of them behind it. In fact, an army waited beyond the gate, trapped behind its thick, oraculum bars. The creatures pouring over the walls were of all shapes and size; they were like rivers of bare white flesh. Falcon twisted the reins and held his sword high.

  “Champions!” he cried, then bolted forward, lifting his bloodied sword high. His Champions fanned out beside him in a phalanx. Dull, black iron tips of their lances lowered. They came like a wall of missiles. As they closed, those filling the passageway did not turn in defense, they had no shields to raise, no swords or spears, they were all of the last generation Failures of an angel, and seeing the Falcon charging, they were thrown into panic. Those that found the room to do so fled.

  The Champions had passed and Satrina was running. She ran past the carnage of blood and body parts and dead horses. But then she spotted something. It was in the stomach of a huge, horrid creature with seemingly an endless supply of arms. It hung from a shred of skin in the back, near the area of its heart. The hilt was black ivory and about it were intertwined silver serpents. It was Rhywder’s short sword. “No!” she screamed.

  She leapt atop the bloodied flesh and wrenched the sword free just as Marcian and the Second Century came about the corner. Marcian halted a moment, for it seemed this girl had brought down this huge creature, pulling a sword out of the heart from behind. She did not look a warrior, and though the creature had been hacked to pieces, the killing blow was obviously hers. It seemed impossible. When she spotted him, the girl did not ask permission; she leapt from the creature’s flesh onto the back of Marcian’s horse.

  “Go!” she shouted. “Go, run!”

  Marcian motioned and they thundered onward.

  As the garrison fell into view, just as Falcon had done, Marcian paused, turning his horse sideways, dancing a moment, as he stared at the impossible. The Falcon had driven a massive wedge into a virtual wall of flesh and now in close quarters, they were slaying with axe and sword.

  Marcian’s second, an able warrior named Riuel, pulled up at his side.

  “Goddess bless us,” Riuel muttered, “I have never seen such a sight.”

  “It appears we are about to engage heaven’s miscarriage!” Marcian cried. “Those are not warriors; they are mostly the last generation of an angel, Failures.”

  “So it appears, my lord,” Riuel said. He turned in his saddle and lifted his sword as a mark. “Second Century! Prepare to engage!”

  Marcian locked his cheek guards in place. He slipped his hand through a buckler.

  “Hold tight, woman,” he said, having no idea who she could be. He leaned forward, drawing his sword, and whispered his horse speed, kicking his heels into its sides. The cavalry of the Second Century Galagleans spread out to either side. They lifted their lances, anchoring them into the saddle sheaths at their horse’s flanks, and lowered the heavy iron tips as they closed for the kill. One hundred mounted Galagleans were about to slam into the madness swirling at the bottom of the gate.

  The mass of flesh, the seventh generation of the angel, finally began to group at the commands of their officers and rushed the left flank of the Champions, only to find they were being closed on by hundreds of horsemen and even more lances. Screaming, they ran in all directions, and most were slain with lances through their backs.

  Marcian’s horse drove into the thick of them, and once his lance lodged through a huge creature whose head had no neck, he drew his sword and began to slay from side to side. He cleaved flesh like the gathering of a harvest. None of them fought back. It seemed madness; it was madness. He severed a spine with a clean sweep. The flesh seemed soft, too easily cut—they had no armor, no shields. Behind him, the girl had come to her knees in the saddle, gripping his back plate with one hand as she stabbed at the creatures using a fine, Daathan short sword. She screamed, as fevered as any warrior, but she was no Daath. When his mount reared as it slammed into a wall of massed flesh, Marcian turned in the saddle, barely catching her before she went over the flanks.

  Marcian found he had broken off from the others and waded in deep. With twenty horses and the girl, he found himself pressed against the miscreants and turned to see they closed off his rear. They had grown more capable as he neared the gate. Some were armored, and were turning to attack, armed with axe and spear. They were being closed on from all sides.

  “Dismount!” Marcian cried.

  The horsemen dropped from their mounts and angled swords, using their horses as protection. They drew inward, forming a tight circle, shields out, swords to the side. Marcian threw the girl behind him where she crouched in their center, her short sword, which had slain beasts, angled and bloody.

  These were giants, fourth, fifth generation, fairly capable fighters. The game had suddenly shifted. As the giants pressed past the horses, stepping over corpses beneath them, Marcian and his Galagleans fought them back. Though they were seven and ten feet tall, they were not trained warriors. They fought poorly; their only strength was their numbers. For every one killed, two more would appear. To his left, Riuel fought in stance, efficiently slaying anything that drew near, as were Marcian’s other men. Amazing, enough had swarmed the passage that the horsemen behind Marcian we
re now wading through flesh like cutting through jungle to reach him. One of his men grunted, taking a pike through his side. Its tip was barbed and caught in him in the gut, but there were so many he was then jerked back into them and beheaded. They roared as if scoring a victory. One giant wearing a misshapen bronze chest plate as if he had been given a poor man’s armor, tore off the Galaglean’s blue cloak and waved it for the others to see that the Galagleans could be killed, even by these, the lessers.

  Marcian heard the main body of the cavalry coming—the screams of dying as his men were piercing through to reach him. They were the Galaglean captains of the old guard, and they had fought in hard and bitter campaigns. Such memories were not forgotten in a lifetime. They efficiently closed in with thrusting pikes and long swords, cutting a wide path through human flesh. As they reached Marcian, bodies were trampled so thick, the rock of Hericlon’s floor could barely been seen, and getting over and past slain debris was a nagging offense. The angel’s spawn were braver now, thicker, though no match for the Galaglean warriors who had reached them. The angel had taught them well, however, for they fed themselves to axe and sword, caring nothing that they were being slaughtered, making their slaughter in itself the impediment. Marcian began to feel his skin crawl from it. He had fought valiant battles, but this was madness and it seemed somehow an odd, cruel mockery of war. Even if they were misshapen, even if they were demon spawn, their faces were human, their cries were lanced with pain, and their blood was red.

  The he noticed—for the first time—the base of Hericlon’s gate. There was a hive of activity. It reminded him of a thick fur of bees swarming over their hives at work. There were hundreds all laboring at once, working on every part of the gate’s machinery, rebuilding the winch assembly of the portcullis at an unbelievable pace. Freshly cut pylons were been thrown up and a series of pulleys and cogs were cut on the spot and quickly fitted to bearings. Scraps of cut wood, chunks of discarded beams, were scattered as the assembly rose almost as if it were spellbound magick, as if it were assembling itself. Somehow they had gotten the heaving, thick chains out of the gate’s pathways that tunneled deep into the black rock and were threading them into the spokes and cogs and gears, hammering and winching them down into place. The workers were frenzied; they moved as if they were driven mad, as if invisible lashings were driving them at their tasks. They were the size of humans, but their skin was reddish in hue, their hair long and night-black. These were Unchurians, spawn of the angel, but they had not been trained as warriors. They were workers—mechanics, machinists, engineers—and they were moving at a fantastic pace, frantic—it was a frenzy of commotion and movement. Some were crawling on hands and knees over the top supporting beams, tightening the lashing.

  His men were fighting about him, continually slaying, but Marcian was searching, trying to tease out the puzzle. Where were the warriors? Where was the core of the legendary Unchurian firstborn of the vast southern desert cities, the uncounted of Du’ldu?

  He realized that someone must have utterly destroyed the winch assembly; he even saw trampled ash. It had been burnt to the ground. Someone had tried to ensure the gate would not be raised—someone who had the sense to realize what could come through it. So Marcian looked past the frenzied assembly to the gate of Hericlon, the thick bars of oraculum that was the portcullis, and there he found the prime, the Unchurian firstborn. They were waiting behind the bars, pressed against them, and deep into the passage south were endless numbers of them, enough to tear into the armies of Galaglea, enough to possibly take the legions that were now pressing up at full run from the vale.

  Suddenly it all made sense. Instead of sending warriors, once the gate had been taken, the angel had poured workers over the stairways of Hericlon’s causeway, hundreds, even thousands. He noticed they had torn apart the housing of the garrison to get wood. He even saw trees being carried hand over hand down the stairway that had been torn from the forested area just past the southern passages. There were enough workers here to build a city in a day. If they finished the assembly and raised the gate, there would be no turning the prime slayers of the angel, the dreaded legendary armies of Du’ldu that no man had seen or encountered in centuries, those who were called the unknowns, trained and equipped by the angel that named and crafted death itself.

  Quietus had fought toward the captain’s quarters and the housing and stockades. He and his Champions were surrounded by giants, holding them off—pinned back against the rock of Hericlon. He had not even looked toward the gate’s machinery on the opposite side of the passage. His Champions were slaughtering, as was their trade, and no doubt the king of Galaglea was shouting on their victory, for he had not yet realized he was slaying a virtually endless supply of fodder the angel had sent against him almost as a joke.

  Some riders were ignoring Marcian’s commands and moving for the rescue of their king, not realizing that the caliber of their enemy was such that Quietus’s Champions, some of the finest slayers in the world, could hold back all day, and into the next without losing a single armored warrior.

  “Captain Riuel!” Marcian shouted.

  “Sir!”

  “The gate! Fight toward the gate! Send word to your captains! Everything we have against the gate assembly! If they raise the portcullis, all the armies of the south will pour through like a flood!”

  “But, my lord—Quietus is surrounded!”

  “Leave him; he is in no danger! Damn it, man, if they raise that portcullis the slayers of Du’ldu will pour into this chasm and then we will know what it means to be surrounded!”

  Riuel himself studied what waited beyond the red metal of the gate.

  “That portcullis lifts, we will all die!” Marcian said, driving in the point. “Even the legionaries will be unable to turn them back. They will come like a flood released of the abyss of Ain!”

  Marcian lifted himself in the saddle and raised his sword high. “With me! All of you!” he cried. “Against the gate assembly!”

  Cohorts of both the first and second commands finally turned to join Marcian. Riuel and his captains echoed the command. Marcian now turned toward the gate, driving forward, slaying in downward arcs and stabs. As the cavalry pushed them back, the Unchurian Failures and workers filling the passage were breaking into utter panic. Most were unarmed and wore no armor; there was only naked flesh but for breechclouts and cotton tunics. They began to scatter before the whispered axe and sword. But even as Marcian made his way toward the assembly, he could see the heavy iron of the portcullis shivering.

  They had been working at such a pace, with endless workers, that already the chains were threaded; the cogs and winches were taking hold, the teeth were already turning. What would normally take weeks to reassemble had been rebuilt in half a day. And should they succeed, the prime of the angel’s army waited to answer the slaughter of flesh that was being trampled into the garrison rock.

  “Elyon’s Light,” Marcian whispered, for the chain work was moaning with the strain, taking up slack as it was fed into the machinery—the portcullis could begin to rise any moment, and between his men and the platform were a mass of workers, a sheer army of them, a barrier of flesh and bone holding the back the blue cloaks of the cavalry.

  “Javelin!” Marcian screamed, turning his mount and lifting his sword as a marker. A cohort of horsemen dropped from their mounts and took up their spears. Marcian leveled his sword, pointing the direction. “The winch assemblage! Stop them now!”

  The Galaglean spearmen ran, hoisting javelins, marking their aim, and launching them in an arch. The heavy iron-tipped pikes of the Galaglean ripped into flesh, tore through bodies, dropping workers on all sides. One lanced the worker who was at the winch that wound the thick chain and fed it into the main gears that would raise the portcullis. He disappeared, over the platform’s edge, and the portcullis slumped back to the ground.

  The assemblage workers had been annihilated; they were but bodies littered, lying in their own blood, spears la
ncing them. But in mere moments they were soon replaced. From behind, from the stairways, from the side, they swarmed back over the gate works, lifting tools, bolting down armatures. Almost within seconds, tools were once again hammering, wrenches working, strengthening the machine.

  “Again!” Marcian cried.

  Once more workers were lanced, the spears arching over the flesh between the Galagleans and the platform, then dropping like dark rain, and once again, workers were scattered, pierced, lanced, and thrown back. The work stopped. For heartbeats. And then more and more workers leapt to the platform, now hopping over bodies and slipping in blood, but the hammering and winches began once more working, and a muscled Unchurian laid into the heavy winching beam, rotating the handle, bringing the chains taut against the portcullis. From the opposite side, a second winching handle was in operation, and now both sides were being reeled in at once.

  Marcian swore under his breath.

  “Take that damned assembly and hold it!” Marcian commanded.

  Marcian’s horsemen pressed inward, slaying Unchurian fodder, hacking through flesh and bone until the pile of bodies made it difficult for the horses to keep moving.

  “Dismount and fight to the platform!” Marcian shouted.

  Marcian watched as his men dropped from their horses and, lifting axe and sword, began to carve out a hole through the virtual wall of unarmored flesh as if it were some macabre woodworking project, as if the bone and flesh, the heads rolling, were chips and chunks of wood flying as the cuts were being made. He could almost hear the angel chuckling over it; in fact, he wondered if he did, if above the screams of dying and the wails of utter terror from the unarmed workers, he could not hear a chuckle; as if he were in a tavern where building laughter inevitably followed a good joke.