Angelslayer: The Winnowing War

by K. Michael Wright

  Now the demon offered up jungle tribes—untrained savages. His first attempt to shatter Eryian’s front had failed, but now he was simply filling in the void to keep forces coming as he prepared his next calculated assault. This was chaff to fill the gap. They were being fed to the dark arrows and spears of the Shadow Warriors of the Daath, and the dead were merely growing on the ridge where the legions of Eryian waited.

  “Light the second pylons,” Eryian said calmly. Tillantus echoed his order. More logs came from the ridge of the butte, crashing downward, spiraling flame as they gathered speed. Unchurians were crushed and skin was left burning with death screams. Eryian wondered—if he continued to slay, if he could slay for weeks, for a season of the moon, would that even matter? Azazel reveled in death with nightmare, with pomp and blood and fury.

  Winds had begun to build, and the snowfall was being whipped into blizzards of wind and stinging snow. Eryian could no longer see the far shore, or the forests of Hericlon’s vale, but he could still see the river where it came from the hills, and now it was streaked with a film of oil from Rhywder’ casks. The naphtha would reach flesh. He let it thicken.

  “Release the third barrier,” Eryian said calmly.

  The Unchurians had fought their way up nearly two-thirds of the butte; they came with savage screams, furious, struggling, but it was more difficult now—their angle was steeper, and the going more unsteady. This time, heavy-tipped lances were launched from buried torsion wires. They pummeled into the Unchurians with a sound of iron and sundered bone. Then came a second wave of javelins—then a third.

  For a breath, the Unchurians were again stopped. Bodies rolled back down to the river. The carnage there was unfathomable. How many spirits left their flesh this day, the mounds and mounds of dead, now falling, rolling back on each other until they were heaped below like felled timber.

  “Fire the river,” Eryian said quietly.

  Tillantus turned in the saddle and screamed at the archers. A new shower of fired arrows soared overhead, this time in a high arch, leaving a shadowy streak of smoke across the ground to mark their flight. The top of the butte was still white in snow; it left the Unchurian lines below stark and black and bloodstained. The arrows soared over them, then burrowed in, leaving thick streamers of smoke. The murky film of the river was waiting like dark pus.

  The Ithen roared to life, becoming a surging wall of flame, and it spread, growing, fevered. It spread outward, and when it reached the shores, it did not stop. The night before, on the far side of the river to the south, Eryian’s men had dug trenches into the forest marshes. With the Unchurian attack, the entire vale had become a heavy froth of oil and gas. The flames spread through it quickly, with the fury of a woman, upward, inhaling flesh in a wind of searing white and orange, spreading outward. Sparks began to soar, spitting at the falling snow.

  In little time, the entire valley was awash in flame, bodies squirming, screams far and long. The land was like burning skin, rippling, heaving.

  Tillantus stared, aghast. “If I were not as hardened as I am, I would be puking now, Captain, heaving out my guts. Never seen such as this. Those men, I even feel for them, what it must be like to burn with nowhere to run. I swear, in all war there has been no sight like this, nothing to compare with these pitiful souls being swallowed like ants.”

  The Unchurians on the Daathan’s side of the Ithen, just below the Shadow Warriors on the butte, were stunned. The river had now cut them off from the main armies. Most had turned to the screams of their brothers. The attack had stilled in shock. Eryian lifted his sword high, then motioned forward.

  The Shadow Warriors came over the crest of the butte with thunder, with a trembling of the Earth. The Unchurians before them were thrown into hopeless panic.

  By mid-sun, the Daath returned to high ground, weary and laden with slaughter. Stretched before them, from the butte to the forests beyond the river, hundreds of thousands of Unchurians lay crushed and charred, sundered by catapult and landslides, then hewn down by the sword. It was thick and dark, but for patches of white where the snow managed to take hold.

  Eryian was stained in sweat, blood was splattered across his breastplate, and his sword had been returned to lie across his thighs. Its silver was stained with a dark sheen of blood.

  “Perhaps this is what it feels like to be damned,” Tillantus said quietly to the commander, staring over the valley. “This much death wrought of your own hand.”

  “No,” Eryian answered. “Damned is worse.”

  Rhywder waded his horse through the waters toward the far east bank, feeling more uncomfortable as he did. He kept watching south, where the rocky shores of the river met the trees. His skin was bristling. He stationed himself next to the first catapult. He expected company. When the Unchurians downstream began to burn, they would send riders east to search.

  On the top edge of the dam, the ramparts the engineers had thrown up to block the overflow of the spillway were beginning to slip. Once in a while a sandbag would slide over the spillway to plunk into the waters below. The river was slowly rising, the current getting stronger. Rhywder leaned forward in the saddle to check the tension of a sinew. It was winched tight and seemed solid. When he drew his hand back, an arrow whunked through the center bones in whispering breath, nearly passing through, catching at the bristled feathers where it wobbled a moment. Blood spilled free, and the pain seemed to come as a dull afterthought. Rhywder cried out, jerking back. “Ahhhggg! You sons of whores!”

  Taking the reins in his teeth, he tore a buckler from his shoulder, sliding his forearm through the strap. He then took the reins and turned the horse hard against the side of the catapult. Arrows whunked into the wood bracing. He ducked as one whistled over his shoulder, nicking the edge of his cloak, and he caught a second in the face of the buckler.

  “Unchurians!” the engineer screamed from above. “Unchurians! They are shooting at you!”

  “Lord, but that man has an eagle eye,” Rhywder hissed through clenched teeth as he slid from the saddle.

  The arrows had come from above, from the ridge above the dam, and now, five riders were coming up the riverbank, their hooves splashing. Rhywder squeezed himself back against the catapult’s beam.

  “Take out those damned archers!” Rhywder shouted to the engineers above.

  “Fire across the canyon!” the engineer commanded. Arrows began to interchange.

  Rhywder took hold of one dark feather of the arrow and ripped it away in a quick jerk that sent pain sharply up his arm. “Damn!” he hissed. He then ripped the other two quickly, taking short, fast breaths. Gripping the bloodied shaft, he wrenched the arrow free of his hand and cast it aside. For a moment he leaned forward, letting blood drip into the water. He tested his fingers. They still moved.

  “Riders are coming!” the engineer shouted from above. Rhywder swore between tight teeth. “Look behind you, Captain, riders!”

  Rhywder quickly ripped a leather tassel from the saddle and used his teeth to tie off the ends, wrapping his hand. He could hear hooves splashing through river water, getting closer.

  Rhywder lifted a crossbow from the saddle, then turned and gripped a side post to climb onto the catapult platform. He lifted the crossbow and dropped a bolt into the stock. “You bastards!” he screamed. “That was my drinking hand you put a hole in!” The metal crossbar of Rhywder’s bow twanged, and a rider crumpled from the saddle. From above, an arrow thudded into the platform near the edge of Rhywder’s boot. Four riders were closing a small distance between themselves and the catapult, heavy hooves spraying the cold water. Rhywder dropped another bolt in and fired. A second rider vanished over the flanks, soundlessly.

  From the ridge above, an Unchurian archer fell with a scream. He seemed to bounce along the rocky shoreline.

  Rhywder threw the crossbow aside and unsheathed his sword. He was better at close killing anyway. From the spillway, enough water was now flowing that it broke over the edge of the icy platform in a
film, making the wood slick. Rhywder stepped forward and used the flat of his sword to block the slice of a jagged scimitar that came in a heavy arc as a rider galloped past. Rhywder started to slip. Scrambling for balance, he barely blocked the slice of an axe with his buckler, then his feet went out from under him. He slammed onto his back, losing breath, and slid.

  An Ishmian arrow whispered past Rhywder and sank deep into one Unchurian’s thigh, through the muscle, anchoring him to his own horseflesh. The Unchurian cried out, dropping his axe as his horse reared. Horse and rider careened off balance and slammed against the catapult platform, straining the mooring lines. One anchoring billet was jerked from the riverbed. Rhywder dove forward and thrust his sword deep beneath the horse’s front shoulder flank, into the heart. The beast grunted, its knees buckling. It disappeared beneath the platform, dragging the Unchurian under water.

  “Behind you!” the shrill voice of the engineer echoed from the ridge. Rhywder turned. He spotted a dagger lifted for the throw and barely had time to leap clear. It hissed over his side and thunked into the catapult’s bracing beam. Rhywder landed on his belly with a slap. He slammed his sword into the wood to stop sliding—he hadn’t guess the wet wood would be this slick, but muck and moss were pouring from the dam, as well. Just as he got to his knees, an Unchurian tackled him. They went over the edge of the platform, Rhywder struggling to keep a sharp-edged blade from his throat. The cold water seemed to seize muscle, and for a moment they wrestled, numbed. Rhywder came out of the waist-deep water on his feet. He grabbed the Unchurian’s long hair and rammed the head into the platform edge. It seemed to crack. The Unchurian’s eyes rolled up as he slipped beneath the water.

  “The signal!” screamed the engineer. “It is the final signal! Captain, cut the torsion sinews!”

  Splinters sank into Rhywder’ palm as he clambered back onto the catapult’s platform.

  “Oh, Elyon save you, there are more riders coming, more of them! More, look!”

  Rhywder didn’t look. He really didn’t want to know, but he could hear hooves against the rock of the river’s shore, and this time they were hundreds. He wrenched his sword free and swung about, shearing the sinew. When the firearm slammed into the crossbeam, the entire platform was heaved forward, the back wheels lifting. Rhywder nearly fell, but he grasped a line of hemp and watched. The heavy catapult rock arched into the sky, spreading, and soared over the top edge of the dam, missing completely. The engineer had been right’ it was too high—now everything depended on the last two catapults.

  “Horse piss!” Rhywder hissed.

  “I told you it was too high! I told you!”

  “That bird-faced son of a bitch,” Rhywder muttered, leaping onto his horse and spurning it forward. The horse struggled in deeper water, half-leaping, half-galloping toward the second catapult. A javelin spun past him and shot though the waters, trailing a stream of bubbles.

  Once the flames died down and the cinders were still cooling, the Unchurians came for Eryian’s butte once more, this time like an ocean rushing. Eryian had darkened the sky with arrows, javelins, and catapults laden with piecemeal flint that shredded flesh, but finally, the Unchurians were able to reach the butte—there was nothing left to stop them, only Rhywder’s dam. Eryian had fired the last signal, but by then, the best of the Unchurians had begun to push through.

  The ranks of the Shadow Warriors did not give at first; they held, they slew, and bodies were thrown back. But slowly, even against the terrible, battle-hardened blows of Daathan sword and axe, the toughest of the Unchurians managed a foothold on the top of the ridge.

  For a time longer the Daath held, the sound of weapons harsh and bitter; the echoing cries of the Unchurian were the song of beasts. Horsemen reared and plunged with pikes, driving downward. Powerful hammer blows of dark axe sundered shields and men alike. Lances, buttressed by strong horses that struggled over the edge and came forward, pierced shields like chisels hammering stone. Foot warriors came with shield and buckler, sword, scimitar, axe. Flails and javelins soared into the air to plunge deep into the Daathan ranks. It was said in the days of Dawnshroud, long ago, that of the angels, it was Azazel who taught men warfare, how to fashion weapons, how to fight. The Unchurians were no mere army; they were masters of their craft, trained by the lord of death himself.

  Eryian noticed an Unchurian warrior, tall in the saddle, wielding a spiked iron ball from the end of a short, roughly hewn haft. It shattered a shield, sending splinters, then knocked the helmet from a Daath.

  “We will sunder flesh and spill your blue blood!” the Unchurian was screaming as he killed. He was highborn, and when the shaft of his morning star was shattered, he lifted an already bloodied war hammer. A heavy swipe of it tore away the shoulder of a Shadow Warrior.

  “This day, we eat your children, true bloods!” the Unchurian screamed.

  Eryian ripped a javelin from the fingers of a warrior beside him and flung it. The highborn with his quick tongue hissed, furious, as the heavy tip tore through his breastplate and crumpled him over the saddle. He joined the dead on the slope of the ridge.

  Eryian could then see four minions, coming mounted, with terrible weapons, making their way toward him—the hard wood exoskeleton armor that was tougher than steel, the beings inside the harvested bodies that had lived for aeons. The warlord watched, shaken, as they cleaved their way through a line of solid locked shields. He knew they had been sent for him alone. The closer the slayers got to the warlord, the more enraged the Shadow Warriors became. The minions paid them no mind, pressing forward, but these were the King’s Guard, and the minions did not scatter them. One had to pause, as, with a scream, a warrior leapt from behind, wrenched back the neck, and sheared open the throat in a cut that reached through bone. The minion tried to keep going, but it was difficult when his head lobbed back and hung against his cloak. Though the others had kept their eyes trained on Eryian, two were finally forced to deal with the Shadow Warriors who surrounded their warlord. Never expecting to be felled by mere Daath, they were nonetheless brought down one by one. The heads of minions were flung high to land deep into the mass of Unchurians—to remind them who they faced.

  Tillantus drew his axe and wrapped a thick hand about its haft. “Captain, I believe the time has come this day to do some personal killing. I will be going in now.”

  “Stay back, Tillantus, you are the high captain; you will need to order your men.”

  “Sorry, Captain, but my axe thirsts and must be quenched.”

  Eryian would have followed, but the timing would be critical; life and death. His ribs ached with each breath, and a dull pain pulsed through his head. He had still not fully recovered from the battle in the Vale of Tears. He was weak. Too weak to chance a killing front, even though he watched his high captain wade in with fury.

  The front lines of battle were a seething frenzy, blood rich. It seemed as though two awesome beasts were boring into each other with equal fury. Eryian watched Tillantus’s wide axe shear flesh like a meat cutter in a shop.

  He glanced to the west. “Where is my water, Little Fox?” he whispered.

  Rhywder hugged the mane of his horse as it struggled forward, the stout muscles churning water that brushed the underbelly. He had chosen a high horse for high water.

  Behind him, the waters were being frothed by a century of Unchurians. They were parting water like ships coming. Their weapons glimmered; their armor seemed to swallow light. A javelin skittered across the surface near his horse’s right flank, and Rhywder veered away, cursing. He had reached the second catapult, mid-river, in the deepest current. As the horse struggled past, he leaned in the saddle and cut the sinew. Water swept in ripples over the catapult platform as its arm thudded hard into the crossbeam, so hard the back wheels were wrenched upward, pulling loose the mooring lines. A wooden anchor wedge was wrenched free and sailed past Rhywder’s cheek like a missile.

  Heavy catapult rock soared high, and loosed of the mooring, the catapult s
wung about in the current, its thick, oaken wheels rumbling. The rock struck the face of the dam, punching in holes and sending a web of cracked fissures across snaking over its face.

  Rhywder spurned the horse harder, driving for the last catapult, the one that would crumple the Ithen Dam like a barn door. Behind him, a rider had reached the second catapult. He quickly grappled up, onto the crossbeam. He leapt for the Little Fox, arms outstretched.

  Rhywder dropped tight against the horse’s neck and slid over the flank, letting the Unchurian sail over the horse’s back and vanish into cold waters, his scream cut short at high pitch.

  “Bastards, as if javelins were not enough—now they throw themselves,” Rhywder muttered, pulling himself back into the saddle. A dagger sung past his ear so close the cross handles clouted him in the side of his head. At this, he swore bitterly, clenching his teeth. There was blood in his eye. He was getting truly angry.

  The dam trembled. A gigantic slab of limestone dropped from the top edge and rode the spillway like a child. Crevices split deeper, rippling up the face where water spurted through in wide, blue sprays of icy, deep waters.

  Rhywder was nearly to the third catapult. The horse was struggling for all its worth against the current, steadily pushing forward, when suddenly it was struck by an arrow. It screamed, rearing back and Rhywder went under. He was ground into the sediment of the riverbed as the horse rolled over him. He fought his way to the surface, breath sucked into the cold. He managed to grasp the lashing line of the catapult and crawled along it, hand over hand.

  When he reached the edge, Rhywder leapt onto the platform. A javelin sliced past his leg as he spun from its path and in the same moment kept spinning, shearing the torsion sinew with both hands gripping the hilt of his short sword. He quickly sheathed the sword, turning as the heavy crossbar slammed into its beam, flinging a spray of heavy rock into the weakening face of the dam.