by John Daulton
And, as if she had heard it herself, High Priestess Maul wrote a note in smoke above Altin’s head. “Come.” That is all it said, but Altin knew what it meant and where it came from. No one else Altin knew used that kind of spell.
Altin looked back at Orli to see if she’d seen it there, which she had. He turned to the conduit then. “Conduit, I assume you saw it too.”
The conduit nodded. “I did. Go do your thing, boy. We don’t need you or your Z.” He stood up from his ottoman and strode to the railing, rallying his people again. “Do we, mages of Citadel? Sir Altin has had enough glory on his own. It is our time now. We can kill one Hostile without him, can’t we? It’s practically a baby next to the two we’ve just sent to the great cook fire of that sun anyway. I for one will be thankful to have him gone.”
A few of them cheered half-heartedly, though most did not cheer at all, and Orli could tell the room was not happy to be losing the power of a Z. But he had to go. If the smoke script message meant what she thought it did, High Priestess Maul had learned something about the mysterious male Hostile.
Chapter 35
Gromf sent a wave of fire sweeping across the muddy furrows of the farm, now battlefield, catching a cluster of humans in it and setting their crimson capes on fire. He’d killed the magician that protected them with a spear of ice moments before, and now they had no one to put this fire out. They screamed and rolled in the wet soil, trying to extinguish the blaze, but Gromf sent another wave over them, pausing it, letting it rest in their midst like a wall of agony. The noise of their pain was barely audible over the roaring of the demons at the city wall nearby, countless thousands upon thousands of them comprising a writhing plague in the service of God.
Gromf wondered at such an endless throng, a churning mass of legs, claws, teeth and horns like a black river flowing around the city, a great mote of spidery limbs reaching and clawing against the towering obstruction, the enchantments of the humans making it impossible to climb. For now. Still, a few of them, leaping like giant ticks, would fly out of the mob and sail over the magic, or through it, into the city beyond. He had realized hours ago that the demons were too stupid to open the city gates, or perhaps simply too large to get inside the towers where the mechanisms held. Or else they didn’t care. Perhaps the anticipation pleased them. Who could know what served for pleasure in the hearts of these great and brutal things?
It wouldn’t be long now, however. Warlord would open the gates as he pleased, for the golden queen and her men had fallen back to defend a great rent in the city walls. They all had, the remainder of her forces driven all the way back to the broken expanse where they fought desperately to slow the trickle of demons making their way into the city streets. And they were failing at it. Their numbers, once nearly as large as the orc host, were now nearly all gone. Perhaps twenty thousand humans remained on the field, and that number thinned near the walls as more and more of them chased after demon invaders that got past them and ran into the human neighborhoods beyond. The golden queen’s army was nearly all destroyed, and the carnage had been sublime. The rabble defending the walls would die easily after that, pinched between orcs that Warlord would let into the city and the demons outside.
Behind him for nearly two measures in every direction lay the feast of death, the demons gorging on the dead, on all of them, their own as much as the orcs and humans lying there. Their huge shadowy forms hunched and stooped over bodies, giving the battlefield the appearance of lumpiness as far as he could see, mound upon mound of darkness, as if it were covered by ten thousand heaps of pitch. They were everywhere, and the sounds of their gluttony slunk into Gromf’s ears like wraiths, the slurps and smackings, the crunching of bone and crinkling rip of metal, all weaving audibly under and amongst the shrieks and wails of the attackers at the wall, and, occasionally, marked by the cries of some fool who had not had the sense to die before a demon came to make a meal of him. Gromf allowed himself a smile.
The remaining humans fought now to protect the slow movement that drained them back into their city, the soldiers leaking into that fearfully defended break in the wall like a stream through a rotting beaver dam. But there was still hope for personal glory in this, for the golden queen herself still fought at the front of their lines. She, in her shining armor, was there, still hacking and mangling Gromf’s allies with that brutal sword. And the wicked elf was there too. Keeping her safe. But not for long. Warlord had nearly hacked his way to them now, and soon, Gromf would be at his side. Together they could beat that awful pair, where so many others had failed.
With the soldiers who had rushed him dying in the fire now, Gromf was free to make his way to Warlord. Warlord was struggling to get close to the human queen, for her people threw themselves at the mighty leader of the All Clans as if he were a mountain and they an angry wind. They died in great leaking heaps, but still they came. And Warlord cut them down again and again as if he were gathering thistles to make tea, the mammoth force of each swing chopping through two and three of them at a time, their bodies falling in pieces and their weakling guts spilling out into the mud.
Gromf saw a woman with a crossbow taking aim at Warlord then. He cast an ice lance that took her through the face. He had no joy in it, however, no delight in the brains that leaked out through the back of her skull, for they had only ever been filled with woman’s thoughts and no glory could he take from that.
The golden queen was the one exception, and as if she were trying to mirror the greatness of Warlord, she cut down three orcs on her own, the massive broadsword she swung nearly as long as she was tall. The bite of that weapon was furious and, though she was female like Gromf’s last victim, hers was a different heart. She fought like a great animal, and for her Gromf had grudging respect. Not to recognize the danger living upon the edge of her blade would mean certain death, just as it had for those three fools lying at her feet as he watched.
Warlord crushed in the head of another stupid human that had thrown himself in the path of the great warrior’s quest for the human queen, the butt of Warlord’s axe pulping the man and dropping him like a stillborn falling from the womb. Warlord roared his challenge at the queen, at the same moment that Gromf’s quickly conjured ice lance, so easily made with the two God Stones now, flew through the intervening space like a spear aimed perfectly at her head.
The ice lance struck her directly on the side of her helmet, and for the briefest moment Gromf thought he had stolen victory in that, but then that blue shaft he’d cast was hurtling back toward him, deflected by some cowardly human enchantment of the golden queen, and it hit him in the shoulder, driving through him and jutting out the back, right beneath the bone, a length of ice protruding nearly as long as half his arm.
Blood leaked from the wound in front and back, and Gromf knew the wound would be fatal when the ice lance melted down enough. Blood would pour too rapidly from such a hole to heal. Even with the God Stones, his medicine magic would not be fast enough for that. He would have to keep it cold. He touched it and kept the spell alive as he ran to Warlord’s side.
The vile creature that he recognized as the golden queen’s servant, the hateful elf, suddenly appeared at Warlord’s back. The slender figure held bloody knives in each hand, straight and narrow things nearly as long as short swords, and Warlord did not know the elf was there. The powerful orc was just then staving off the furious chopping onslaught of the golden queen, and his back was briefly exposed.
The reflex came before he could stop himself, and Gromf yanked the ice lance from his body and hurled it at the elf, drawing the slick, cold shaft from his flesh and sending it whistling through the air.
The elf saw the bloodied ice lance coming in its peripheral vision and leapt backwards with reflexes quicker than a dung fly’s, cart wheeling out of danger so fast it could barely be seen.
Blood puked out of the massive hole in Gromf’s shoulder. He bit back the pain and summoned another ice bolt, which he jammed through the hole again.
The agony of doing it set a swarm of dots swimming in a graying haze that came into his eyes, and for a moment, Gromf thought he’d killed himself. But gradually his vision came back, mainly by the pure force of his will.
He watched through the fog as it cleared, expecting the elf to come at him in his weakness. Which it did. The agile creature, armored in leather that rendered it as black as any of the demons were, ran at him with its two wicked daggers dripping the blood and gore of all the orcs and demons it had killed today.
Gromf conjured another ice lance and sent it on its way. The elf vanished, flickering out of view, only to reappear again when the ice lance had passed through the space where it had been, and worse, it was now two steps closer than before. Its teeth shone white behind the curl of its lips, growing brighter as Gromf’s vision returned, and Gromf wondered if there would be joy for it when it saw that Gromf was dead.
Then God struck it. God’s long, stony arm whipped across the field and smacked away the onrushing elf like the pesky insect that it was. Gromf saw the elf flying away, tumbling head over feet out across the field like a wet deerskin that’s been flung away. He was glad, grateful to God for intervening on his behalf, though he also saw in the next moment that the elf righted the helpless-seeming spin of its flight and vanished well before the arc of its path could bring it crashing into the midst of several demons feasting upon the heaps of gore. It reappeared directly below where it had vanished, on its feet, still clutching its knives. Running back again. It ran more quickly than any orc could. Even a mounted one.
Gromf supposed such a creature could not be killed so easily as that, not even by God.
He looked up to where God now stood, the towering figure turning its attention from the elf to smile down at him. “You must live a while longer, Gromf,” God said. He reached down and, with his shorter arm, took the ice out of Gromf’s wound. Again came the pain, and the dimness once more returned to his eyes. And then he was whole again.
He realized that it was so, even as God took the stone rods of his fingers away from Gromf’s injury. Gromf looked at himself, where the hole had been, but it was gone.
He wanted to praise God for healing him so well and so quickly, but God was staring into the sky. Gromf wondered what God might be doing now, wondered if God might be calling down some great power from above.
There came then a bright light, a red thing straight as a spear, so long it seemed as the distance between the mountains and the moon. It cut a hole through the clouds above and landed with a hiss not twenty paces from where Gromf stood, stable on his feet again. The mud in that place erupted and splashed Gromf with wetness that burned as if it had been boiling. Steam came in a blasting cloud right after it, and Gromf had to stagger back or be scalded and killed where he stood.
He ran back out of it, and then gaped as he watched the spear of light move away, marveling at God’s new and awesome display. The shaft of light cut a deep trench in the farmland for nearly forty paces and then moved into the ranks of demons on the far side of the city gates. It brutalized the monstrous bodies of the demons, paring them instantly, their black armor bursting and their guts inside spraying out like the steaming geysers of the western Daggerspines.
Gromf watched it as it cut through a swath of demons along the wall like a sharp knife through the belly of a trout. They fell in heaps and the beam of light never paused at all. He wondered why God was doing it.
Soon other beams like the first came from above. They came from different places, at different angles, burning holes in the very sky it seemed, long shafts of nearly blinding light, lancing down from above and moving around like sticks stirring a cooking pot, leaving in their wake heaps of hissing death, opened-up demons in piles oozing lakes of gore and issuing clouds of fetid smoke and steam.
He looked back at God who still looked up into the sky. “Why?” he asked the towering figure then. “Why would you bring this down upon us now, when victory is near? What have we done?”
God looked down at him and shook his vast, misshapen head. “This is made by the children of another god. A new one.”
“You said that before. What other god?”
“The god of humans from far away.”
“You slew the other gods. You can slay this one too.”
“Perhaps,” said God. “But we must hurry now.”
Gromf nodded, and he turned back to help Warlord with the golden queen. Without her elf nearby to guard her so efficiently, she was falling back now, as more and more orcs surrounded her and her remaining men. Even sorely pressed as they were, they backed toward the hole in the wall slowly, still bent on defending it to the last. Gromf gave them credit for that. But the demons fought their way toward the gap just as eagerly, and there was an endless supply of them. One of them ripped three humans apart near the edge of the broken stone wall and went skittering through the open space into the city before any more humans could close the gap.The golden queen turned and tried to cut it down as it slipped inside, but another demon confronted her. And Warlord leapt at her as well.
She went down under Warlord’s weight and the weight of the demon’s pounding limbs. They grappled together, Warlord and the golden queen, but their efforts at each other were confounded by the blind rage and blood thirst of the demon, who continued to hammer upon them both for a time, mashing and stomping with all its heavy feet. Gromf feared both might die in that.
Then came a roaring from above and a hot blast of wind. Gromf thought the dragon he had seen earlier had returned and begun to breathe on him. He looked up and saw, briefly, something large, bulky and angular, spinning over his head. It pitched and turned as it came overhead, with strange fire shooting out of round openings on its underside, and then, like a bird that’s been shot down, it whirled awkwardly and smashed into the city wall with a loud crash and a blast from one of the large fiery openings. The heat and shock from the blast sent everyone nearby, orc, human and demon alike, tumbling away like leaves in a wind, and even Gromf, farther from the impact than others had been, rolled backward twice from the force of it. He was a moment in getting his bearings again.
The strange metallic object lay against the city wall, bent and looking broken, though he could not be sure, for he knew not what it was. It was made from a substance he’d never seen before, not quite white and not quite gray, seemingly of metal, but not in any form he knew. It had symbols painted on its side. Symbols he did not recognize. It was human writing, he thought, the two largest symbols in red: a vertical line with a shorter horizontal line at its top set beside a second vertical line with a squat circle attached near its top and jutting out to the left. Gromf stared at the symbols, searching his memory. But they did not match any of those symbols he’d seen in the human book, though he knew he hadn’t studied it very carefully. For a moment he wished Kazuk-Hal-Mandik were there to interpret the message, to read what it might tell them about the new god. But only for a moment. For as he looked on, he saw that there were beams of metal thrusting out from the twisted structure that had crashed there, bent and twisted, pushed through its metallic outer skin at strange angles like broken ribs thrusting through the dead flesh of a defeated warrior.
For a moment he feared that this was some unanticipated trick, a weapon of the new god, but the smoke and fire that came from the protruding ribs of metal convinced him that whatever it was, it was a broken thing. And as evidence of that, at the very moment he realized it, a piece of it fell away, a square section at the narrowest end of the broken thing, revealing as it fell that the object was hollow inside.
Out from this opening came first a handful of humans on horses. Gromf had never seen cavalry emerge from such a vehicle before, a thing that seemed to have fallen out of the sky. But right behind them came several of the steel-clad humans Gromf had seen at the beginning of the fight. They came out, and already their whining metallic arms were shooting the fire that was too short. From this much-closer proximity, Gromf could see that whenever the humans pointe
d the too-short fire at a demon or an orc, that demon or orc burst apart in chunks. Not so powerfully as when struck by the red lights from the sky, but still, the metallic whine coming from the fire must have emitted something else, for despite the flames never reaching the bodies of God’s forces, they fell open just the same.
Gromf watched in horror as more and more of these armored humans came out. He counted thirty-five.
He looked back to where Warlord and the golden queen had been grappling beneath the demon’s feet. Both leaders were just then struggling to their feet. The human queen shook herself and clearly had been dazed, her sword hanging limply for a moment in her hands. Gromf thought about hitting her with an ice lance but remembered what had happened with the last one. She was like the demons in that, worse even, not simply resistant but actually reflecting magic back. He would have to leave it to Warlord to strike her down.
And the great orc was in a position now to do it, too, for he saw the golden queen’s sword drooping as it was. He raised himself up out of the mud, steam rising from him, made by the heat of the blast, and quickly retrieved his axe. He roared as he started for the queen.
The humans in the strange steel armor were moving that way. Gromf worried what they might do to Warlord if they saw what he was about to do to the golden queen.
Gromf knew what he had to do. He summoned his mightiest ice bolt, made it twice as thick around as Warlord himself, and five times as long, letting the full power of the God Stones fill the object with colossal mass. He sent it hurtling at the last one in the line of the armored humans with their whining spits of fire. The ice struck the human like a landslide and carried it, armor and all, into the wall where it was crushed like a bug. Gromf laughed. The magic of the new god was not so great. And better, none of the others had seen him do it. He moved closer and repeated what he’d done, once again picking off the one at the rear of their formation. That ice beam had the same effect, and another human died.
