He strode forward on cloven hooves, muscles rippling beneath skin the hue of glowing embers. A pair of lengthy sable horns emerged from his head, soaring upward like tongues of dark flame. He reached out a massive hand and cupped the succubus's delicate chin in it. With a finger that ended in a wicked black claw, he gently caressed her porcelain cheek, leaving behind a rosy, blushing line where he traced.
"Well done, Damathana. Well done. When you presented this plan to me, I was unsure of its wisdom. Now I see that everything you promised was correct. The Basileans, cursed be they for all time, are haughty and blind to the dangers into which they are marching. We shall make them pay for their arrogance. Let this day go well for us, and you will have pride of place at my side. No one will be above you, save me."
“My lord, my love,” she whispered. Damathana did her best to hide the full extent of the joy his words had kindled in her heart. It would not do to allow him to see how much he had thrilled her. Yet it was a grand honor indeed! She would be the consort of a great champion! At his side, she too would be exalted in ranks of the hordes of the Abyss.
Together, they left the small clearing that Zelgarag had turned into an impromptu court. They found the lesser Abyssal troops waiting for them in the tight spaces between the ancient trees. Damathana sneered inwardly but kept her face an impassive mask that hid her disgust. These things were an unlovely bunch, no more than dregs spewed from the Abyss. She saw towering amongst them a handful of guards. These were the hard core of Zelgarag's army and would fight beside him in the coming battle. All others were contemptible and would have been beneath her notice had she not needed to hurl them at the Basileans within the coming hour. Most were common Abyssal footsoldiers, vicious and bloodthirsty. She also glimpsed gargoyles, gray of skin and yellow-fanged. There were mortals too, wretched men who had pledged their souls to darkness in exchange for a glimpse of the truth and glory of the Abyss. They were little more than parasites now, hungering ravenously for the soulfire of the living. Beside them huddled herds of even worse degenerates; the larvae, mind-addled mortals whose only role would be to assault the Basileans in wave after expendable wave. They would make up in numbers what they lacked in skill. Around them stood glowering torturers, cruel pitchforks in hand, ready to drive the damned men to their doom.
Damathana wished that Zelgarag had been granted better troops, but his superiors had looked askance at the plan, especially because it had come from her, a mere succubus. The Abyssal swarms were engaged up and down the line at the edge of Galahir, locked in combat with the denizens of the wood. Only when Zelgarag had pledged his unholy soul to them as a guarantee that he would annihilate the Basilean army did they relent, and then only grudgingly. To Zelgarag, they had given the equivalent of a full regiment comprised of their lesser troops to do with what he might, or forfeit his soul to their tender mercies.
Her plan had to work! The Basileans were blundering about in the deep woods with scarcely a care for their security. It had been easy to hide from their scouts, few in number that they were. None amongst the people of the Golden Horn seemed to worry in the slightest that an army of the Abyss was forming amongst the trees just out of their sight.
Perhaps it would be for the best that they had come with such a small force. To evade the watchful eyes of the Lady's subjects, Zelgarag's host had set out only when a major assault by the rest of the Abyssals was underway. They had used the distraction to race into the forest, unpursued by the wretched beings of Galahir, while their attention was riveted on the monstrosities that threatened to overwhelm the borders of their home.
“Arise, loyal army of the Dark Masters!” Zelgarag cried, his ink-black eyes blazing with unholy fury. “It is time that the people of the Abyss take what is rightfully theirs! It is time that we take our place in the World Above, and right the wrongs done to us in bygone ages.” Zelgarag paused and cast his eyes toward the scum that fawned around him, feigning sympathy. “Many are those here who have been driven out unjustly from their homes in the sunlit lands.”
Zelgarag was enough of a diplomat, Damathana noted, fighting back an urge to smirk, that he left out that they had all richly deserved their ostracism for whatever myriad crimes they had committed as they pledged their souls to darkness. Some were cannibals, some violators of the dead, almost all were criminals of one abhorrent sort or another.
“You have been outcast from your birthlands,” the demonic champion continued, “unwanted by the societies into which you were born and set adrift. But now you have found a new people, and together, we will take back your homes, repaying in blood tenfold, a hundredfold, no, a thousandfold, all of the hurts that were done to you!”
The repulsive idiots were cheering, or what passed for cheering among their decayed kind. Their roars sounded like the snorts of pigs crossed with screams issuing from the throats of brutes.
“Even now does an army of the hateful Basileans march through this wood, careless of their flanks. They have no idea, none at all, that we are waiting for them in these trees, ready to pounce on them when they are least ready. Now that time has come my friends. This is why you have been driven so hard, that we might reach this spot, unseen by the mewling forest folk, so that we might fall upon the slaves of the Elohi without anyone seeing us as we made our way here. We have found them. They trudge unsuspectingly through a tree-choked gorge, slow and ripe for the slaughter. We have them just where we want them.”
There came another guttural cheer from the throng, and Zelgarag exulted in their approval, though they were hardly more than enthusiastic animal grunts and squeals. His eyes had grown bright, as if lit by the inner forge fire of a smithy in Hell. “They have become like a snake, stretched and thin, and like a snake they are all but blind. Let us, together, cut the snake into pieces!”
More roars now, and the Abyssal host seemed to pulse and quiver with anxious anticipation. Zelgarag raised his clawed hands higher and higher, encouraging their cheers, until they reached a frenzied crescendo. All at once, he let his hands fall, and the throng of the damned ceased its cheering.
“See now how it begins to rain? The Masters smile upon us! The rain will muffle the sound of our approach and hide us from the eyes of our enemies. Bring me the heads of the men of the Golden Horn! A bright gold coin for every one taken! Go now! Go now! Spill the blood of the enemies of your kindly Masters! Rip their hearts from their breasts and feast upon their eyes! Go now!”
Zelgarag signaled, and the officers of the Abyssal rabble goaded their charges away toward the Basilean army that they knew lay in the distance. Thousands of hate-filled hearts were filled with a hideous glee as they marched, scampered, ambled, waddled, or ran ahead, in search of a reckoning with the humans who represented all that they most loathed. Blood they smelled, blood they would soon taste.
With eyes that did not blink, Damathana watched them go. Many, most, perhaps even all, would fall. They would not be missed.
*****
“Did you hear that?” Dillen asked. “It sounded like. . . I don’t know what. Roars? Cheers?”
“You are just hearing things,” Stevven Orroy said. “These woods are getting to you. Playing with your mind.”
“Yes,” agreed young Arkbald Nell. “Just some forest creatures doing forest creature things. Pay them no heed.”
Dillen was quiet for a time, but he was not mollified. He had heard something, hadn’t he? Perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him. He’d never liked the woods, and he had been uneasy ever since he had entered Galahir. He wondered if he was susceptible to some disquiet of the mind, in which trauma reaching back into his childhood might have made him inordinately uneasy in the tree-shrouded darkness. A gray gloom had settled upon the twilit wood of the early morning. It was no wonder, Dillen struggled to convince himself, that he was uneasy. He felt a slight chill in the air and shivered. Then it started to rain.
“We are too sure of ourselves,” Dillen said after a time. “We don’t know these woods, and we failed
to obtain a guide through them as we should have.”
“Not needed,” Stevven countered. “Or else the dictator would have requested one from the Lady.”
“I would not be surprised if he did not bother to ask,” Dillen said. The two younger men had been off delivering messages, and thus not present, when Andorset had browbeat Brothers Tebald and Bartolomo into accepting his decision to bivouac where they had last night. It had not resulted in disaster, as Dillen had feared, but today was a new day. He explained his misgivings to his fellow messengers.
“Come now,” Stevven said. “The dictator has more experience of war that almost any other man in Basilea. He knows what he is about. If he did not, then he would not have been appointed to lead this host. Such decisions are not made lightly. All three of our fathers cast their votes in his favor, did they not? Knowing that their own sons would be marching with this army, they would never have voted to place Andorset in command of it unless they had the utmost confidence in him.”
Arkbald grinned. “We are just thirdborn sons. Not so special.”
Dillen ignored Arkbald. He was forced to admit that Stevven’s argument was sound, insofar as it was based upon the limited information that the older messenger possessed. Dillen had not revealed what Brothers Tebald and Bartolomo had told him about the dictator the day before. For a short while, he tried to relieve his anxieties by telling himself that scions of Houses Genemer, Orroy, and Nell, would not have been entrusted to any but the finest and most careful of generals. Then the rain came down harder and his worries returned. The steady downpour began to soak through his cloak and clothing. His skin became cold, and he began to shiver, though the early autumn day was otherwise warm.
The three messengers were walking their horses alongside a deep ravine in the forest with sheer sides that rose high above their heads. To their right and below, in the middle of the cleft ran a trickling stream. Teams of engineers labored to place planks across the narrowest breaks in the ground, so that men and animals, of which the army had many, could cross. It was not hard to traverse them, once the bridges had been thrown over, but it was time-consuming, with just two or three men able to march abreast. Rather than going the long way round the forest, Andorset had thought that he might shave a day or two from his march by cutting across a portion of the wood. This had proven a vain hope. Instead, the Basileans had been slowed by at least as much time because of the density of the trees and the ruggedness of the terrain. They were late in coming to the aid of the Green Lady and they would be lucky to reach the frontline by the next morning.
Arkbald led his horse across first, followed by Stevven, with Dillen going last. Their animals were sleek and fast, as befitted the mounts of messengers. Dillen’s own steed was a chestnut stallion with a white blaze on his forehead. His father had purchased the horse for him when he had been selected to take part in the expedition. A bellicose, harsh, but unstintingly generous man, the Lord Genemer had always seen to it that Dillen wanted for nothing where war was concerned. He had been trained by the finest of Basilea’s weapon masters and riding instructors. Nor had his father neglected his equipment. The mail coat he wore was composed of a triple thickness of case-hardened, riveted links. It was proof against sword strokes and all but the most determined spear thrusts. The bright helm dangling from his saddle was a work of art, beaten into shape out of a single piece of sheet steel, and topped with a horsehair crest, dyed red and yellow, the colors of his house. The sword at his side, a blade of Solisian steel crafted by the leading weaponsmith in the Golden Horn, had cost a small fortune. If there was a better outfitted man in the whole of the army, Dillen had not encountered him.
If only such external trappings could change him inwardly. Dillen felt as if he were an actor hired to play the role of a warrior, and that the arms he bore and armor he wore were nothing more than props given to him to allow him to look the part. His father had seemed to think that once his son had gotten his first experience of battle that he would develop a taste for it. Not so. Dillen had fought goblins in a handful of skirmishes the year before, and though he had fought well on each occasion, he knew that soldiering was not the life for him.
“Ow!” Dillen scratched his forehead on a low-hanging branch and scolded himself for not paying better attention. If he had not been so occupied with pity for his own predicament, he would have noticed the branch jutting into his path.
“You okay?” Stevven inquired.
“I’m alright,” Dillen said. “A bothersome branch. Just another reason for me not to like the woods.”
“You’re bleeding a bit,” Arkbald noted, pointing to Dillen’s forehead. “You never wear your helmet. That would have prevented it.”
“Arkbald’s right,” Stevven added. “You should put it on.”
Embarrassed to have become injured by foliage - there were no medals to be earned, he was certain, for wounds obtained in such cases - Dillen unhooked his helmet from his saddlebag and undid the chinstrap. He struggled with the thing, it having become slick in the rain, and it fell from his hands, tumbling down the ravine, splashing through the stream, and then coming to rest amidst the gnarled roots of a massive oak.
“I think you’re going to need that helmet before this campaign is over,” Stevven observed. “Here, I’ll take your reins.”
Dillen carefully picked his way down the steep slope to where his helmet had rolled. He bent over and lifted it from the mud, brushing off dirt from the brow and neckguard. He dried the inside of the bowl as best he could and lowered it onto his head. It was cold and damp.
There was an odd noise, something like a cross between a bark and a snarl. Dillen looked up to the other side of the ravine where the ground stood a little higher than the path on which the Basileans trod. He thought it might be a forest animal looking for shelter in the rain, which had grown fiercer. He climbed to the top, grabbing handholds of exposed roots to pull himself upward. As he peered over the top of the rise, his heart sank. He realized that the sounds he had heard earlier were not those of nature.
It was singing.
*****
It was Dillen’s shout that alerted the Basilean column to the destruction that rushed toward them. A horde of monsters crested the ridge, just as confused men-at-arms readied their spears and drew their swords. The guttural roar of the surging Abyssals was like a peal of thunder unexpected, and thereby all the more disconcerting. Their yell was answered by the sounding of a horn, deep and clear. It could only have come from the dictator’s own herald to signal that the general still stood, and that his men were to hold firm against the onslaught. Up and down the line of march, the Basilean soldiers formed serried ranks, as best they could manage in the broken ground, their iron discipline edging out the mordant fear that welled up inside every one of them. The first volley of missiles flung by their attackers clattered on the stones at their feet, or embedded themselves in the stout plywood shields they held. They stood like a wall, the pride of Basilea, but their numbers were few compared to the demonic tide that assailed them. Then a few javelins found their marks, where a shield had not been held high enough, or a black-fletched arrow with accursed aim found the narrow gap between helm and mail.
Dillen scrambled up the slope to where Stevven and Arkbald stood with their mounts, swords drawn and resolute gleams in their eyes. He turned and faced the oncoming creatures, wishing he had just half the courage of his companions. Then their attackers were upon them. He slashed with his sword and took off the head of a shambolic, man-shaped thing. It fountained red blood from its headless trunk, until it fell over and rolled back down the slope. Another misshapen, soul-damned man reached for his throat, a maniac grin on his face as he cackled a litany of the dark crimes he had committed. Dillen held his shield out, keeping his attacker’s gorestained hand away from him, and then stabbed with his sword. The point pierced the enemy’s ribcage, emerging from his back. Disconcertingly, the lunatic cultist did not seem to care, but he gripped the sword with bloodied f
ingers, pulling himself closer to Dillen. With mouth wide, he made to bite the young paladin, who shoved him backward with his shield. The cultist was too strong, and they wrestled now for the shield and sword, until Stevven clove the man’s head open with a swift cut of his sword.
“This isn’t much like arms drill,” Stevven deadpanned.
“We’d have been overrun already were it not for the charge uphill these things have to make!” Dillen shouted as he lopped an arm, and then a head, off of another frothing cultist. “But what’s happening elsewhere? The army is trapped in this gorge. There’s scant protection to be had, and little room in which to form a true shieldwall.”
Stevven stepped forward and landed a heavy blow, bursting the skull of a drooling spearman. “This army is doomed if we don’t summon help!”
Arkbald stood beside Dillen. “And where are we supposed to get help here in the forest? There’s no one but the birds and the beasts all around!”
Another surge of warriors of the Abyss came at them, impelled by some hideous urge to spill the blood of the struggling Basileans. With Stevven to his left, and Arkbald to his right, Dillen fought for what seemed an eternity against the black tide of hate that washed up against them. The Abyssals’ numbers seemed inexhaustible, with wave after wave running forward to claw and scrape at them. The Basileans, trained soldiers all, gave better than they got, but their number was slowly being whittled down by the inexhaustible enemy. Had this been a battle fought out in the open, where drill and discipline would have counted for more, the small Basilean host would have prevailed eventually, if not without difficulty. But in the close press of the ancient wood, there was no room in which to form into squares, nor any space in which to maneuver. There were just little knots of desperate men struggling to survive in a terrifying battle. The dictator’s horn sounded again. The general still lived.
Tales of Mantica Page 30
