by John Daulton
Only the golden queen and her most ferocious guardians remained outside the gates, the last to fall back, the sharp barb of a scorpion running for its hole. The wicked elf was with her, of course, and a handful of horsemen, long deprived of their mounts. There also had appeared beside her an infernal wizard who turned everything to stone, and completing her deadly entourage were three of the sky god’s humans in their ogre-sized armor suits. This group closed together, side by side, as the last human soldiers made their way through the gates. They bought time for the retreat, falling back step by step as the might of Warlord and his army squeezed them against those last remaining walls, the blood of her people running like pus from the festering wound their race had become.
The song of Warlord’s battle with the golden queen would be sung forever, for on and on it had gone for nearly the entire day. And still they fought now. The human’s left arm hung limply at times, evidence of a crushing swipe of Warlord’s axe that had caved in her armor there. She still had use of it, but Gromf had seen it dangle more often than not. She would not last long, now that the slaves that healed her had just run back through the gates. Warlord would finally finish her, if he was quick and got her before she too ran and hid.
Gromf had long since stopped hoping that God would make short work of her. He’d briefly wondered if perhaps God could not, for it seemed that he had his opportunities, but Gromf realized that God needed Warlord to have the respect of the All Clans. It would not do for Warlord to ask God to help kill the golden queen.
But God also did not kill the elf. And the elf made Warlord’s fight difficult. And Gromf was having an impossible time killing it as well. He could not understand God.
Even now, as Gromf loosed another wave of ice lances, the elf avoided them. Gromf sent ten of them, each thick as logs and three paces long. He sent them all in a scatter, drawing on the mana given him by the God Stones in his hands. He sent those ten and then ten more after, right behind, staggered in such a way that the elf might not so easily vanish to avoid them all. He waited a breath and then sent another wave even after those. But the elf sensed it somehow, it seemed to know, and it vanished and was gone anyway.
It ran at Gromf then, hurling those foul knives it used. Gromf could not dodge them in time, but God slapped the knives away. Again. As he had at least twenty other times this hour. God tried to slap the elf away again, as he had done outside the city walls once early in the day, but the elf vanished before the blow came upon it. Only once since that first time had God even touched the awful thing. It seemed nearly impervious to God’s wrath, and even when struck, it took no injuries. How could that be?
God shouted demonic obscenities at Gromf constantly. “Kill the elf,” God thundered down at him, his rage growing as the battle had progressed. “Kill it. That is what I made you for.”
But Gromf could not kill the awful thing. It vanished when it should stand and fight. It could not be crushed. He could not burn it with his fire. The elf would not die.
And so they fought. Gromf sending his fire and his ice. Keeping the elf away from Warlord, but unable to finish it.
And the humans killed everything. These last were an awesome lot. The golden queen’s fury seemed to spill into them and give them strength. The lances of her warriors bit like demon’s teeth in their hands, the magic cast upon them flashing in strange unheard-of ways. Orcs and demons died in piles, the effluence of all that blood and gore oozing and sloshing with every step.
The humans of the new god sprayed their nasty death spray everywhere, the light of those short fires from their arms shone, and then holes opened in orc faces and demon carapaces, and more gore came forth. The magicians on the walls were helping protect them now, and the ice lances Gromf and his companions sent melted in the fires of that defense.
Two more of the human warriors went down, as there was not enough magic to protect them from crossbow fire. They were trying to get through the gate, but two demons had got in between.
Now they were cut off.
Warlord struck the golden queen with a swing of such force that she flew back against one of the palace’s two massive gates. The clank of her armor against it resounded like a gong. Thousands of orcs shouted all at once, cheering Warlord on.
The spitting fire from one of the sky god’s humans ripped into Warlord’s armor then, the tink, tink, tink of the impact marking the path of holes that drew a line up his breastplate. He staggered back a step with the impact of each of them, driven back out of reach, unable to strike the killing blow on the golden queen.
The sound of a thousand humans, perhaps far more, rose up then to cheer her. She was back on her feet then, and once more squared off for the fight. She did not charge back at Warlord, though. She knew better now.
Gromf sent ice lances into the group of them, but the horsemen batted them away with the flats of their blades. The stupid human horsemen. Gromf hated them. He sent a long spear of ice at the magician that remained, a soft target he should be. That one stood at the far left of their formation and had no sword. He would not bat it away. But he saw it coming, Gromf watched his dark eyes widen as he realized what was on its way. The ice lance flew straight for his heart.
It shattered against solid stone. The infernal human kept turning himself to stone. Could none of these last puny weaklings die? Gromf shouted his rage even as the human became flesh again and set himself to fending off one of the demons blocking the gate.
The elf had retrieved its knives, Gromf knew, and he had to guard Warlord’s back. He washed the area behind his mighty leader with a narrow band of flames, hoping to flush out the sneaking elf.
Sure enough, the elf appeared once more, its black leather armor smoking after the fire passed.
It flung another dagger at Gromf, lightning fast, then it vanished again. Gromf knew it was coming at him now. Like it always did.
God batted away the knife just as Gromf put up a wall of flame all around himself, a thick one, and one he blasted out in an expanding ring.
He heard the shouts and agonies of his clansmen as they were consumed in the fire. But he saw the elf caught in it too, saw it appear and glare across it at him before leaping into the air like a cougar up into a tree.
It came down after the fire had passed beneath it and vanished just as God’s arm slammed down, meant to crush it finally. A crater appeared and cobblestones exploded all around where the elf had been.
Gromf looked to where the knife had landed after God knocked it away. He knew the elf would get it again, for it only had a few knives left after fighting all day.
He saw the knife vanish, and he cast fire on the spot. He sent an ice lance right behind, so quickly cast that it was hardly more than a knife itself.
The elf appeared. Caught the frozen shaft and hurled it back at Gromf.
Gromf ducked, but the elf’s reclaimed knife was also on its way.
Gromf rolled to avoid it.
Another knife came. He could not get up in time to escape this one.
God slapped it away.
The golden queen cut Warlord’s chest plate open, the blade magically sharp and the blow aided by the rents the spitting-fire weapons of the new humans had made. But rather than dive back from her blow, Warlord stepped into it, letting his armor be cleaved clean through, opening a gash in his flesh that exposed the bones of three ribs. The wound gaped open, and the armor plating fell away, dangling from its straps like a wind charm. Warlord swung his axe down, a wide slanting arc that would split her from crown to crotch, but she managed to get her sword up in time to divert the blow, if only enough to redirect it some. It cut clean through her leg instead, mid-thigh, and she fell immediately, gushing blood in a glorious spray.
Three of her horsemen immediately leapt in front of Warlord’s next swing and knocked the killing blow away. The humans of the new god sprayed their short fire at Warlord’s exposed chest, but Gromf threw a thick sheet of ice in front of him, just in time.
The elf ran
at Gromf, snatching up the short shard of ice again.
God slapped the elf away, finally making contact again with a swipe that sent it flying far off into the still-growing mass of demons crowding in from behind. Whether it survived or not, it would not get back in time. Gromf knew that at last victory was at hand.
Only God noticed that the crystal sphere had gone.
Chapter 47
“Colonel Pewter, I see you are still alive,” came the call from Director Nakamura, though the colonel was too busy to respond immediately.
“Yeah,” he finally grunted when he could spare the breath to speak—and as he was sending a backhanded swipe into the joint of a demon’s leg. The demon buckled and fell forward, nearly knocking the colonel’s mech into the gate. If he fell, he’d block it for everyone—assuming the rest of them got a chance to get inside anyway.
“It appears your daughter may have had some success with the Hostile world,” said the director. “All the orbs have stopped moving. It’s like someone pulled the plug.”
“Well none of these assholes have stopped moving, Director,” the colonel managed through clenched teeth. He sent a spray of bullets into a cluster of the demon’s eyes as it drooped on its broken leg. He was down to nine hundred rounds. “If you’ve decided to finally pull your head out of your ass, it might not be too late for whoever is left down here.”
He heard a loud clang behind him, and he saw the War Queen bouncing off the Palace gates in his rearview video feed, a blow from that big bastard she’d been fighting since the colonel and his men found her. He’d tried to kill the hulking orc several times, but the roaring warrior had a lot of comrades watching out for him, which had made it impossible to take him out.
The Queen slid down to the ground behind him, and the great brute lunged at her again. The colonel swung his gun around and sent a quick blast at it, knowing full well that the goddamn giant with the huge arm was going to block the bullets, just as it had last time.
But it didn’t. It was dealing with the Queen’s assassin again. There was almost a rhythm to how this battle went.
Without the giant’s intervention, the bullets struck true, seven of them opening up a serrated line across the orc leader’s massive breastplate. The colonel would have finished the brute off, but the demon he’d been fighting hadn’t had the courtesy to die. It smacked him hard with a long sweeping swing of one great leg, which slammed him against the wall at least as hard as the Queen had hit the gate—and had it not been for that wall, he would have flown at least another hundred feet away.
“Colonel, we need to know where the magicians are,” the director said. “We can’t send help without them.”
“They’re on Citadel,” he said, too busy to see the hope in that right then. He punched through the dent he’d made in the demon’s face and jack-hammered out its brain.
“We need to get word to them. I’m assembling the Marines as promised.”
“Damn it,” breathed the colonel as the demon’s death spasm nearly knocked him down again. It fell over and slid on the broken stilts of its legs, wedging the colonel’s mech against the wall. “I’m kind of busy right now.”
The director actually looked anxious then, guilty even, not that the colonel had the time to look down at the monitor and see it. “Colonel, I want to help. But my hands are tied without the Prosperions.”
Colonel Pewter’s voice was strained, both in trying to bite back a snide remark about why he’d waited this long to send help and in trying to yank himself free before some demon came up behind him and ripped him in half. He achieved both, though barely, and swung his gun around to spray four orcs rushing at him with glowing spears. They erupted into dark sheets of blood.
“Oh, shit,” came Corporal Chang’s voice over the all com, and the colonel turned just in time to see him lunging forward trying to protect the Queen. That mass of green muscles with the double-sided axe had just cleaved her leg in two. The corporal tried to hose down the big brute with his Gatling gun, but a thick sheet of ice appeared before him, turning to snow as the bullets struck, the spray of lead hitting so fast and violently that it filled the area all around them with bits of ice that fell like a hail storm had briefly settled in.
“Colonel Pewter,” insisted the director. “The magicians. Let us help. Help us help.”
The colonel’s mind fought desperately to think. He was exhausted. He shot three more orcs, and cut the legs out of a demon sneaking in from above, climbing over the demon he’d just killed. What could he possibly do? Wave and shout at Citadel above? Shoot at them?
“I don’t have any way to speak to them, Director. Maybe you should have come sooner.”
It was the director’s turn to swear.
“Where is Orli? Why can’t she tell them? Is Meade dead?”
“We don’t know. I haven’t heard from either of them.”
“Well, did you tell Asad to look for her, to scan for her tablet somewhere?”
“Yes. Still no word.”
“Shit.” Then it hit him. He switched back to all com. “Levi, are you still on the wall?”
“Yes, sir,” said the commander. “I’m east of you now, I think. I got turned around in the mob pushing through the gate.”
“Levi, find a magician. Any magician. You have to get word to Citadel. Tell them to send the teleporters. The director is finally going to help.”
“It’s about goddamn time.”
“Levi, now. Before it’s too late.”
“On it, sir.”
The colonel switched back to the director, who immediately asked if it was done.
“I don’t know, Director. We’ll just have to see. But if this city goes down, if these people all die, you better hope there’s no such place as hell.”
“I think my room is booked and paid for, Colonel. I’ll order the fleet to resume fire, and we’ll send air support back in for now.”
“You do that, sir,” said the colonel, not bothering to hide the contempt beneath the words. His ammo counter flashed at him, the reading: ninety-two.
Chapter 48
Kettle found Altin by the moans echoing dully out of the dark corner of Calico Castle’s cavernous dining hall. At first she thought it was a ghost, so lost was she in the absent mood that had settled upon her as she set the long table again, set it as she always did at this time of day, preparing it for a meal that was never eaten there anymore, a custom she simply could not let go. If she stopped doing it, if she stopped assuming that Altin would come and eat, it felt like the world would stop too.
And so the first low sounds coming from the shadows gave her a fright as she stared into the gloom at the silhouetted suit of armor there, a rusting old thing that had been glorious one day long ago perhaps, but that had remained unassaulted by even her dust cloth since her third year in Tytamon’s employ.
The moan came again, a few more times, before the flutter of her heart turned from fright to alarm. She recognized that sound.
She ran as fast as her stout frame could manage, her skirts hoisted above her fleshy pink knees. When she saw the strange shape of his spacesuit, she once more recoiled, thinking something supernatural might have come, but there could be no mistaking that face, that sweet, beautiful face of the boy she’d raised since he was eleven. A face now completely covered with blood.
She fell to her knees beside him and shrieked for Nipper to come. She cradled his head in her lap as his blood poured from his mouth in a river that pooled upon her white apron.
“Altin, sweet boy, wake up. Altin speak ta me!” She shrieked for Nipper again.
One of the heavy doors swung open a crack as Nipper came in. “Ya don’t ha’ ta scream, woman, I ain’t deaf yet.” Pernie squeezed under his arm even as he was pushing open the door. She ran to where Kettle was, knowing well what the pitch of Kettle’s voice foretold.
“Tell Gimmel ta hitch a team,” Kettle shouted. “Altin is here, and he’s bleedin’ from everywhere. We got ta get him ta Lee
kant fast.”
Pernie knelt beside her and looked down into Altin’s face. She’d never seen that much blood coming from someone’s face before, at least no one that she loved.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
“I ha’ no idea, girl. Now run and fetch me some clean rags from the linen, and a kettle a’ hot water from the fire. Go and do it now.”
“I can fix him,” she said, scooting forward and reaching out to touch his face.
“Don’t ya dare,” Kettle snapped. “Don’t ya cast one thing. Ya got no idea what all that magic is about. Yer a wee lass, and ain’t no doctor yet.”
“I don’t want to be a doctor. But Master Grimswoller says I can heal.”
“Pernie, ya needs ta keep that magic in yer head now. You’ll do as I told ya, child!”
“But I can.” She reached out and touched Altin’s face. Both hands, his head held between them. She pressed her palms against his ears, holding him softly as she tried to think healthful thoughts. She knew how to find the mana now. They’d taught her quite a lot. She didn’t know any healing spells, though. At least not human ones. She only knew how to un-wilt a daffodil. But how much different could it be? It was just health after all. So she cast it, the innocence of childhood folding her love for him into it like a prayer.
Altin coughed again, violently, before Kettle could stop her. The hot spray of blood he sent forth freckled them both.
“Pernie,” Kettle shouted as she began to reach for the child’s hands. But she stopped, knowing it was too late, fearing it might only make it worse to disturb magic underway. She didn’t know which was more dangerous anymore, being a magician or being a blank.
