Demon's Throne

by K D Robertson

  The Kinadain soldiers were predominantly male, Rys noted. At first, he found that curious. Magic was a great equalizer. But then he remembered that the horned Kinadain didn’t use much magic.

  Notably, the couple dozen wolfkin appeared to have a much more even split between the genders.

  The demons kept to themselves, playing games and talking loud enough for every village within thirty miles to hear them.

  Once Rys passed the inner gates, he found the Ashen and the noble demons. Alsia, Grigor, and Fara were inside the small keep.

  A bulky wolfkin stood near them, wearing a worn breastplate with faded runes and some leather armor beneath it. His eyes focused on Rys, but the wolfkin remained silent.

  “Rys,” Alsia said, smiling as he entered. “You arrived sooner than I expected.”

  “It’s early afternoon. There’s a good chance the Malus League will attack right away,” Rys said. “A smart general would wait, but they might be counting on the element of surprise. Or maybe they prepared some spells in the swamp.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s likely what they’re doing,” Fara said. “Their mages came out with the main army, then walked right back into the tree line. Taras tried to get a look at them, but they have mage-knights protecting them.”

  “Mage-knights?” Rys asked. The term was unfamiliar to him.

  “It’s what folks from Gauron call soldiers that rely on physical-enhancing armor, instead of their own magical talent,” the wolfkin said. The unspoken words, “And why didn’t you know that?” stung Rys a little.

  Alsia coughed, then introduced the wolfkin, “This is Elder Jaime. He has assisted me greatly in organizing the dains and gathering warriors to repel the Malus League.”

  Jaime bowed his head to Rys. “Duchess Alsia’s been good for my dain. The old elder worked with those stupid fools that Barul rid us of—may his soul find rest—and we finally have a chance to fix a lot of problems.” He held a hand out to Rys. “I look forward to seeing your performance in battle, King Talarys.”

  Rys took the hand. Jaime’s grip was crushing, but compared to Grigor’s it was like shaking hands with a small child.

  With a smile, Rys let the elder withdraw his reddening hand. Rys didn’t usually bother with stupid handshake games, but he gave as good as he got.

  “Hah, if you fight as well as you shake hands, I don’t think we’ll have any problems,” Jaime said with a grin, refusing to hide his hand or his defeat.

  “I’m glad that Alsia has people to support her in the dains,” Rys said.

  Jaime grunted, but the look in his eyes suggested that there might be a need for a later conversation.

  There was, after all, only one elder here. Jaime seemed to be an honest one, but that left open underlying issues within the dains.

  “What are we dealing with?” Rys asked, turning to Alsia and Grigor.

  They laid out the numbers. They were bad.

  Nearly 1500 enemy soldiers, including fifty enemy mages and a full company of mage-knights.

  “We have the fortress, and they brought less than a ten-to-one advantage,” Grigor said. “But we lack the magical capability to counter any tricks they might try.”

  “And if we sortie, they’ll make us pay for it,” Rys said. “Our only advantage is that they can’t exactly just walk by us. We’d turn half of them into ash, and they know it.”

  “Can they encircle us?” Fara asked.

  “That would be a mistake,” Rys said. “We have nearly three hundred, and they’re almost all elites, given the Kinadain have experience in the Labyrinth. If they brought 3000 soldiers, it would be a different story. But if they encircle us with their current numbers, we’d simply launch raids and cut their numbers down to size.”

  Grigor nodded. “They must use their numerical advantage as a great hammer and strike us with great force. Anything less will end poorly for them. But it means they cannot starve us out.”

  “What if they summon infernals? Or undead?” Alsia asked. “The Malus League are infamous for their… forbidden magic.” She grimaced as she realized she was saying that Rys used that same forbidden magic.

  “Let them summon infernals. More soldiers for me,” Rys said drily. Grigor chuckled. “As for necromancy, they need material for that. Did they bring wagons full of corpses?”

  “If they did, they were very well hidden,” Fara said.

  “That was a rhetorical question,” Rys said.

  “Then you’ll be delighted to know that they’ve done that before, when they besieged Tarmouth.” Fara grimaced.

  Rys blinked. Holy shit. No wonder people hated the Malus League. Even in the Infernal Empire, working with fresh bodies had disturbed people.

  “Well, it’s good to know they’re not very good necromancers,” Rys said. “The better ones can work with spirits, often creating summons using the remains of souls in the local astral plane.”

  They quickly forged a plan to deal with the Malus League.

  The Ashen and Grigor would launch night raids against the enemy encampment, with the assistance of the Malakin. The enemy needed to sleep, but the infernals didn’t. When the League finally came, they’d be weakened and tired from days of raids.

  The remaining problem was that Rys was burning power simply by being here. There was no guarantee that the League would attack any time soon, but he needed to be close.

  Fortunately, there was an easy solution. Fort Foret was next to the mountains. That meant nearby Labyrinth entrances. The Malakin found one, and Rys retreated there. The Kinadain might wonder where he went, but he was a king. Plus, he’d teleported here by himself and had a reputation as some sort of infernal-summoning sorcerer lord. They’d invent some story to explain why they didn’t see him.

  Rys passed the time sitting in the entrance of the Labyrinth and testing what memories he could and couldn’t remember. It proved fruitless, as he simply couldn’t trigger the mental block unless something external made him think of a related topic. Or if he already knew he had forgotten something.

  Only two days pass before Taras appeared in the cave entrance. “Lord Talarys, the enemy army has begun to move.”

  “Thank you, Taras. Let Alsia know I’ll be there shortly,” Rys said, intentionally using the Malakin leader’s name.

  The two men stared at each other for several long seconds.

  Then Taras vanished without saying or doing anything.

  Rys waited. And waited.

  Nothing.

  How disappointing.

  Rys prepared himself to leave the Labyrinth again. Then he stepped over the boundary and prepared to teleport away. The drain on the castle’s power began.

  Right before he cast the teleportation spell, he saw something on the ground.

  A small slip of paper.

  He picked it up.

  In neat handwritten letters, using the local language, the word, “Tarasu,” was spelled out.

  Rys stared at it. He balled the paper up.

  “That’s not your name. It’s not even written in your language,” he whispered to himself.

  Shaking his head, Rys teleported to Fort Foret. He had a kingdom to defend. His kingdom.

  Chapter 38

  Columns of armored soldiers rushed the walls as Rys teleported in. They maintained a solid line, shields raised. Hellfire and arrows rained down on them. Dozens of soldiers vanished in the flames, and more fell as arrows punched holes in their limbs.

  All the defenders had pulled back to the inner wall, given how few there were. The outer wall lacked the enchantments to withstand a magical assault, so holding it with only several hundred soldiers would be extremely hard.

  Instead, the Ashen and Kinadain archers provided fire support from the battlements of the inner wall. Most of the demons and other soldiers remained in the inner courtyard. There were two gatehouses to defend.

  Grigor defended one. Alsia defended the other along with a small unit of elite swordsmen.

  “Rys, you�
�re here,” Fara said when Rys teleported into the keep.

  “No ladders or catapults,” he noted, looking out a window. “They’re up to something. Any sign of the mages?”

  “None. Taras and the Malakin didn’t find them in the swamp, either.” Fara scowled. “The mage-knights are here, but the mages have vanished. Maybe they fled after they cast their spells, but I doubt it.”

  “Of course, they didn’t. They’re hiding somewhere,” Rys said.

  The Malus League soldiers broke into a charge. Roars rose up from their ranks as they rushed the gates.

  Within seconds, the enemy vanished behind the cover of the outer wall. The Kinadain stopped firing, as the arc was too severe. But the Ashen didn’t stop.

  Plumes of blood red flames exploded from beneath the enemy soldiers as the Ashen switched to indirect ritual casting, instead of lobbing balls of hellfire. If they worked together, they could cast hellfire rituals similar to the one that Rys used when he attacked Harpiscon.

  The screams of fear and pain from the Malus League soldiers made it clear they hadn’t expected this. But they didn’t flee.

  They were up to something.

  Rys continued to watch from the top of the keep, his eyes fixed on the gate. Something was happening there. Something magical.

  Several snaps of magic reverberated through the magical plane. A moment later, the gate exploded into splinters. A dozen soldiers stood in the opening, their arms outstretched. Magical energy whirled about them.

  Mages. They had hidden themselves as ordinary soldiers. A cheap trick, but an effective one. They could be anywhere, and there was no easy way to spot them.

  Well, no easy way for ordinary people.

  Rys and Fara ran down to join Grigor in the inner courtyard.

  “Rys,” Grigor greeted. His four glowing eyes fixing on Rys.

  “The mages are dressed as ordinary soldiers. Send some demons onto the walls and tell them to spot for the Ashen and Kinadain,” Rys ordered.

  Grigor nodded. “Our soulsight. Of course.”

  Grigor bellowed orders, and a dozen demons leaped on top of the walls. They didn’t need stairs, given the relatively small height of this fortress. Rys made a note to build bigger walls in the future.

  “Soulsight?” Fara asked.

  “Demons can sense magical power with their soulsight, if you remember,” Rys explained. “They’ll be able to separate the mages from the ordinary soldiers at a glance.”

  “Damn. We should have thought of that earlier,” Fara said.

  He shrugged. “It’s not a huge loss.”

  Rumbling and crashing filled the air. The enemy advanced into the outer courtyard and were met with the traps that had been laid.

  But Rys heard precious few screams. Instead, he heard other noises. Smaller explosions. A sound like a sawmill. Shouted orders.

  Margrim let him know what had happened using mindspeak, and he frowned.

  Most of the traps had failed. The magical traps were deftly avoided by the enemy mages, which proved that the Malus League had capable ones in their army. They weren’t buffoons casting cantrips and calling themselves mages.

  The physical traps, like the log traps, had some success, but the raw power of the enemy had blown them away. The mage-knights fired magical bolts from their weapons and turned the logs into splinters. Or their enchanted armor allowed them to shrug off pit traps.

  Elder Jaime had spoken poorly of the mage-knights, but their armor seemed powerful.

  This was the power of magitech. Mass-production of magical equipment was changing the world, and Rys witnessed it here. Those mage-knights were elite warriors, simply because they had a magical suit of armor.

  Did that mean the Malus League had some sort of magitech production capability? Rys nearly drooled at the thought of taking that.

  Hellfire quickly began to rain down on the enemy, however. The enemy losses mounted up. The outer courtyard was a kill zone. Stuck between two walls and with their enemy behind a magical barrier, the Malus League soldiers were sitting ducks.

  Like before, the enemy prioritized the gates. Grigor called his noble demons to his side.

  Rys moved to Alsia’s side. The enemy had split their force. Grigor didn’t need help, and Rys needed to show the Kinadain how powerful he was.

  If anything, he felt thankful that the Malus League was powerful enough to break through both walls. It gave Rys the chance to show off.

  A pulse of magic blasted across the entire battlefield. The source was from the swamp, but from farther away from the road.

  Rys let the Malakin know about the spell’s source, as there must be mages there.

  As he returned to reality, inhuman screeches split the air. They came from the other side of the gate. More magical pulses—weaker this time—echoed from where the Malus League soldiers must be.

  A chill ran down Rys’s spine. He recognized the feel of this magic.

  “Prepare yourselves,” Rys snapped, unhooking his axe.

  The Kinadain warriors didn’t need urging. They stood in a semi-circle on the inside of the gate, weapons raised.

  Alsia stood in the center, close to Rys and Fara. The Kinadain duchess held a single longsword and wore the same spellblade uniform she had met Rys in. Her face was gritted with determination.

  The gate exploded. Rys ignored the shower of splinters and instead looked past the cloud of smoke and sawdust.

  Just as before, several mages stood on the other side.

  But this time, black energy and liquid oozed from their skin and orifices. Some had burn marks or were missing chunks of their bodies. But all of them moved like normal humans and were still capable of casting spells.

  Magical energy poured out of them. Where any of them were wounded, a constant stream of prismatic light glittered in the air.

  The mages balled up more energy, preparing to cast more spells.

  Then the mage-knights charged, their screeches filling the air. Black shadows spilled out from every gap in their armor.

  Necromancy, and surprisingly good stuff at that. Rys regretted talking shit about the Malus League earlier. As foul as this magic was, it showed genuine talent.

  The mage-knights crashed into the front line of the Kinadain. To their credit, the Kinadain didn’t flinch. They saw worse during every journey into the Labyrinth.

  Mass-produced magical equipment met the hand-forged weapons of the Kinadain elites. Sparks flew. Blood pooled. More and more of the foul necromantic energy filled the air as the undead bodies of the mage-knights tried to keep fighting.

  Rys vaporized the mages with a hellfire ritual, which filled the gate with a massive plume of blood red flame. Once it passed, more undead soldiers charged through. Screeching filled the air.

  Soon, Rys heard other noises. That of the living Malus League soldiers screaming for help and terror, only to be torn apart by the undead. Magic poured across the castle, bringing back every corpse as another undead warrior, even stronger than they were when alive.

  The necromancers were converting their army into the undead, even if they hadn’t died yet. Rys doubted the Malus League soldiers knew what the mages had planned for them when they’d attacked the fort.

  The Kinadain roared with anger as they fought. Whenever one fell, another Kinadain pulled him clear. Rys heard the terror behind them, as the warriors begged not to be turned into monsters. At least one asked an Ashen to finish him, so that there wouldn’t be enough to bring him back.

  Rys tuned it out and focused on the surrounding battle.

  Alsia cut through the enemy with practiced, almost elegant motions. Her sword sliced through flesh and she blew holes in enemies with magical lances with flicks of her wrist. Fara covered her back, flinging spiritual flames that consumed the undead foes utterly.

  For his part, Rys cut the undead warriors apart while also disintegrating them with hellfire. But his thoughts were elsewhere. He needed to end this. A meat grinder against thousands of undead was
a horrific battle, even if he had the technical advantage.

  “Fara, try to disrupt the necromancy around the most powerful undead!” he shouted. “Try the mages, then the mage-knights.”

  She snapped off an affirmative, then leaped away from the battle so she could focus exclusively on disruption magic.

  The necromancers must be supplying magic to their minions. All summoning requires a power source, just like normal magic. Without it, the world would destroy the summon. That’s why infernals need a summoner—without one, they are a magical being in a non-magical world.

  The next step was to build a proper kill zone. The Kinadain fought well, but every casualty they suffered fed the necromancers.

  But the undead were weak to hellfire. Extremely weak. Hellfire converted physical matter to magical energy, so it could then be removed from the world. But undead were already mostly magical. So burning them up with hellfire was trivial.

  Rys used Margrim as an intermediary, and conferred with Grigor using mindspeak. They quickly agreed to push the undead out of the inner courtyard. Then Margrim and the Ashen would nuke as many undead at once with huge hellfire blasts.

  The constant barrage of hellfire ceased immediately as Margrim bellowed orders at his Ashen. Grigor pushed forward on the other side of the keep.

  “Alsia, we need to drive them out of the courtyard,” Rys roared. “This is the last push.”

  Despite their exhaustion and pain, the Kinadain roared in approval. Their weapons cleaved through the undead and they surged forward.

  Once the undead had been pushed outside of the gate, Rys checked with Grigor. Then he gave Margrim the okay.

  At the same time, Rys added his own hellfire to the mix.

  The outer courtyard became an inferno. The black energy of the undead vanished in a whirlwind of blood red flames as plumes of flame burst from the ground. For several long seconds, Rys heard nothing except the roar of fire and the unearthly screams of the undead.

  When the spells ended, many undead still remained. But there were few enough that they could be mopped up.

  Rys turned his attention to the necromancers.