Beyond the Hell Cliffs

by Case C. Capehart

  She was drifting in the space between dreams and reality when she heard the voice.

  “Hitomi? Kimura? Anyone?”

  “Giddix, I told you to leave any time you want to,” she replied to the high-pitched voice that called to her.

  “Is this Hitomi or Kimura? Or is it someone else? Who the hell is in charge in there?”

  “Giddix, what the fuck, man?” Hitomi groaned, pushing herself out of the half-slumber she was floating in. The Gimlet was nowhere to be found.

  “She keeps yelling at someone named Giddix. Hey, girl, who the hell is this Giddix? I’m over here, on the window seal.”

  Hitomi looked over to see a flash of green, like a glowing dot that was only there for a moment, at the bottom of the window. She crawled closer and noticed a small, bug-like creature with a bulbous lower body crouched there. Its lower half brightened and flashed the same green glow for half a moment again and then it spoke.

  “Are you Hitomi or Kimura? Indie?”

  “What the hell are you?” she asked.

  “This is but a messenger, conveying my words over a short distance.”

  “How?”

  “By using an Imp and a channeling medium… dammit, it doesn’t matter how!” the bug screeched. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “Hitomi.”

  “Good, that’s who he wanted me to speak to; you or Kimura. What is the situation inside there, Hitomi? How many of you are left?”

  “There are nine of us still alive,” she replied. “Wait, who did you say wanted you to speak to me?”

  “Grass-hair,” the bug answered.

  Hitomi felt the blood drain from her face and she felt like she might pass out. The bug continued.

  “We’re right over the ridge, to the south of the guards… close enough to see that bizarre contraption out to the side of the building you’re in. He says for all of you to hang tight inside there… we’re coming to get you.”

  Chapter 47

  “They’re still alive; all of your Helcats,” Izanami said, lifting her hand from the glowing circle on the ground and summoning her imp back to her. “The guards have killed everyone else defending the place and have had them pinned down in that building since this morning. She says they also sent for reinforcements not long ago.”

  “Well, we better stop fucking around, then,” Raegith said, turning away from the top of the ridge.

  He took a few steps down the small incline and stopped. Helkree, Brimgor, Fenra and Freya stood in front of him, waiting for his command. Behind them were two hundred armed and excited Urufen warriors from the eastern mountains. Most were from the Lupa and other neighboring clans, but there were twenty youths from the Tyrra clan, who carried no weapons. All of them stood at the ready.

  “A few of you will remain here with Izanami. You know who you are,” he said to the company. “The rest of us are going over this ridge. Nine of our comrades are holed up in a two-story shack just a small distance from here, trapped by a camp of a few hundred Rathgar from the Citadel. They need our help!”

  “Arooh! Arooh!” the Urufen chanted as they gripped their weapons and bounced in place, readying themselves for war.

  “These Rathgar Guards have never seen a force such as this!” Raegith yelled, whipping them into a frenzy. “You are a blizzard of teeth and fury; you are the terrifying beasts of the mountains! No one can stand against your madness!”

  “Arooh! Arooh! Arooh!”

  “For the pride of the Urufen! For those glorious devils that have already fallen! Leave none alive!”

  “Broosh!” Helkree roared, joined by Fenra and Freya.

  The Urufen warriors surged forward, climbing the hill and spilling over the top at full speed. Bardr approached, nodding at Brimgor as Fenra and Freya closed their eyes and started breathing deeply.

  “I haven’t really had time to get used to this,” Brimgor said to the young Tyrra clansman. “Don’t freak out if I just roll right off of you as soon as we’re in the thick of it.”

  “I won’t,” Bardr replied.

  The boy convulsed and exploded in fur, transforming into a giant wolf-like creature, just as Thorin had on the Alfhildr. With a stronger effort, Freya and Fenra went into convulsions and completed the Turning, becoming black and red furred beasts, respectively. They circled once and then dropped onto their haunches.

  “When you tell this story to everyone later, as I know you’ll do,” Helkree said, throwing her leg over Freya’s back and climbing atop her. “You can’t say ‘and then Helkree rode Freya.’ It doesn’t sound right and I know you know that and I know you think it’s hilarious. It’s not hilarious and it’s not worth the pain you’ll get in return.”

  “I think it’s kind of cute, you bonding with your new Helcat like that,” Raegith laughed as he lept atop Fenra. “Helkree and Freya, buddies for life… that’s how it’s going into the history books.”

  Raegith, Helkree and Brimgor rode their Urufen beasts over the ridge and caught up to the advancing army. The members of the Tyrra clan were in front, eager to reach the surprised Rathgar. They waited until Raegith overtook the mob and moved out in front of it before Turning.

  The front lines of the Rathgar formation faltered as twenty ferocious monsters never seen before in the Greimere bore down on them. The Turned Urufen vaulted the shield-bearers in front, avoiding their pikes and crashed into the center of the formation. Fenra landed on top of a Guard, knocking him to the ground and snapping her jaws around his head. Her neck shuddered with force and the armored helmet cracked and split, crushing the man’s head inside of it.

  Helkree and Brimgor both abandoned their mounts and engaged the guards with dual tomahawks. Five years spent with the 96th Agillean were not wasted and Helkree was no longer a clumsy brawler, but a force of nature. She utilized both of her hand axes with maximum efficiency, hooking and stripping the weapons from her opponents and then dismantling them with quick and fatal strikes. She cut through guards like weeds, avoiding multiple attacks as if everyone else were in slow motion.

  Brimgor was equally terrifying and the clear origin of Helkree’s new relentless fighting style. Helkree’s moves were not a direct copy of Brimgor’s however. Where Helkree had refined the style to better suit her agility and reflexes, Brimgor’s style focused more on sheer, overwhelming force. Brimgor closed the distance on spearmen before they could strike, using powerful kicks and shoulder blocks to throw every opponent off balance and keep them from attacking. Instead of aiming his strikes around the armor, as Helkree did, he cleaved right through it.

  All around him, Urufen clawed and hacked their way through the stunned guards. The guards were used to putting down insurrections by inexperienced and ill-equipped farmers or merchants. They were accustomed to the other races turning over and showing their throats any time they were threatened with force. As soldiers of Greimere, under the Treaty, they were conditioned to be defeated once met with strong opposing force.

  Their formation held together only for the first few moments of the attack. The sudden and vicious force of Raegith’s army completely broke down their discipline and before the leaders could mount a counterattack the group was fragmenting and scattering. Turned Urufen chased down fleeing guards like prowling predators taking down prey. Some of the guards threw down their weapons in surrender, but the frenzied warriors could not be contained. All were slaughtered in that desert valley; anyone in Citadel armor.

  The battle lasted only a few minutes and the number of fallen Urufen could be counted on two hands. It was a battle as one-sided as any fought north of the Hell Cliffs. Raegith had not even dismounted. Other than kicking away a guard swinging for Fenra’s side, he had not engaged a single target. He did not need to; just being there, among his warriors was enough for that battle. As the fighting died down and the wounded guards were dealt with, cheers and clenched fists rose into the sky.

  “Grass-hair! Grass-hair! Grass-hair!”

  Fenra circled, allowing Raegith to look out
on all of his blood-soaked warriors cheering his name. Hitomi and the other Helcats were there. They had abandoned the safety of their building to come join the melee and were cheering with the crowd.

  Raegith dropped off of Fenra and pushed through the crowd to reach his Helcats. Kimura was on him instantly, jumping into him and wrapping her arms around his neck. The others crowded around him, as well, including some new faces he did not remember. Then Hitomi, her turquoise braid in complete disarray, was standing before him, holding a spear with a heavy, wide blade at the tip.

  “It was all her doing,” Kimura said, pointing at Hitomi. “Without her, we wouldn’t have lasted two days. She kept us alive for two weeks. Every time they came at us, she found a way to push them back.”

  “Hitomi sent those fuckers running with just a metal tube on a cart!” Indie exclaimed.

  “I’m going to have to hear that story later,” Raegith said, stepping toward Hitomi. “You’re okay, Hitomi?”

  The girl swallowed hard and wiped her face.

  “I am now,” she said, rushing forward into Raegith’s arms.

  Chapter 48

  Greela sat in his chamber letting the Rathgar slave girl work out the soreness in his back. It was becoming a nightly ordeal trying to get the aches to dull enough for sleep to take him. He hurt every day for the past seven years all because of the bearded Saban with the long sword. It was not just a physical pain. The Saban had known the worst way to hurt him; making him watch the Empress die and then depriving him of an honorable death.

  Greela looked at the papers on the table in the middle of the room. There were shortages in food, in man-power, in medicine and those who knew how to use it. For seven years he had kept the Citadel limping along without an Empress. He had instigated martial law as soon as the first of the refugees returned and it still stood. He had crushed Sethora of Spine when that insolent brat had come to claim the Empire. He had suppressed the attempt at usurping him by one of his Elite Guards and defended the walls from that ridiculous coalition of gangsters that had formed out in the Outposts. He had kept his people safe the entire time, but he did not know how much longer he could.

  He had almost laughed the first time he heard of the campaigns in the west. The two Lokai nobles had already fallen to a group of marauders and lost their dominions and the villages within. It did not bother him that the Lokai were fighting among each other. However, it should have bothered him that the guards stationed at these villages were being completely overwhelmed by a people that had long-since abandoned the ways of combat. He had been busy keeping the Citadel running at the time and could not have spared the men for a march on the Lokai even if he would have foreseen the problems it would later cause him.

  Too late he realized the consequences of losing the trade routes with the west. As more people flooded the Citadel, abandoning the Outposts or simply returning from whatever refuge they found in the desert, the food shortages began. Overtaxing the dominions still under his control would not work; there was only so much they could give. Despite having a fraction of the combat-ready guards he was used to, he needed to move to retake the farm lands of the west.

  Then he learned of the shanty town that had popped up in the Barren Wastes. Gimlets were banding together and organizing, pooling their scraps and salvages under the command of Beretta, the centuries-old retainer of the Emperors.

  Beretta was an enigma to him, even after all the years he spent around her. Infernals were a wild race, with untold magic power. There had not been a sighting of another Infernal in the civilized Greimere in hundreds of years, but the histories described them as demi-gods, like the dragon queen in the desert or the monsters on the other side of the eastern mountains. Beretta had been found as an infant and quickly domesticated. During all of the generations of rulers she had served, never once had she displayed power anywhere near what was described of her kind and she was forbidden from learning anything about the Infernals. Other than the remarkable ability to create flames, she was benign. Or so he thought.

  Having been charged with safeguarding the northern boy, she fled the Citadel and had never returned. That she would show up again, controlling innumerable Gimlets in the desert, shortly after some unknown force wrought havoc among the western village was troubling. When the images of the super weapon from the north entered his head, he could not rid himself of them. Beretta was the only being he had ever seen capable of magic, other than the tall, colorful folk of the north; it was possible that she could have figured out how to create a similar weapon.

  With every report from scout units he sent into the desert the Gimlet City grew. Thousands of Gimlets swarmed the area, erecting buildings and towers. They had a yard filled with metals and salvage; things no one had ever seen before were inside the city. Interrogating the Gimlets that came out of the city was useless; they told him whatever they thought he wanted to hear. More than a few confirmed that the Infernal was building something large and foreign and that she served some unseen master.

  “This is some sort of conspiracy!” he yelled at his generals. “She could be in league with the armies of the north for all we know. She… she could have summoned them here in the first place.”

  “That seems unlikely,” General Stribog replied. “But if they are building something powerful enough to bring the walls back down, we should strike immediately. What are we waiting for?”

  “We don’t have the man-power to assault anything right now,” another general said. “Every guard we have is working double shifts just to keep the masses inside these walls in order. If Beretta has a weapon like this; if she has any kind of defenses up within the city, we would need a sizeable force to send. We need more men!”

  “The dominions,” Greela said. “Too long they have been allowed to sit on the side, waiting to see what will happen to us. It is time they rejoin this empire… the Empire of Greimere. I’ll take them by force if I have to. Sethora’s dominion will not yield much after he wasted most of his useful men trying to take the Citadel from me, but Gamalka’s dominion should be ripe with men old enough to fight.”

  The girl hit a nerve and made Greela’s entire arm jerk. He turned and growled at her, reigning in his desire to bash her face with his fist. He had already abused too many slave girls and this one was the only one who could do any good on his tortured body. She was one of the Empress’s favorites. Tamyth was her name, he thought.

  “Forgive me, lord,” she whispered, waiting for him to settle before going back to working his muscles.

  Greela sighed and turned back, letting her start again. His thoughts went back to the threat of the super weapon that he was sure Beretta was working on in the desert. It was the only thing standing between him and reclaiming the western farm lands. There were barely a thousand reliable guards under his command and several thousand civilians. He had sent so many into the desert to destroy the city of Gimlets and their super weapon that he barely had enough to defend the Citadel with. He could arm some of the Lokai and Urufen men, but they were inferior races, unsuited for combat and just as likely to revolt as defend the city, especially after all of the examples they had forced him to make in the streets.

  Greela shook the thoughts from his mind. There was nothing more he could do this night and he needed something more than massage to fully relax. He turned away from Tamyth and looked her over.

  “Undress.”

  “Lord?” she asked, hesitantly.

  He reached out and grabbed the top of her tunic, ripping it downward and almost pulling her off of her feet. “I said undress!”

  She quickly pulled the rest of her clothes off and he yanked her into him, spinning her to the bed. She closed her eyes and steadied her breath as he took his pants off and climbed on top of her. It aggravated him that she put on such a show of bracing herself, but he was not in the mood for correcting behavior.

  Just then there was a pounding on the door. A guard on the other side announced his presence.

  “Not
now!” he yelled.

  “This can’t wait, Commander,” General Stribog said, coming in through the doors. He was unfazed by the sight before him and continued to speak without looking away. “Runners have returned from the assault force. They have confirmed the existence of the superweapon.”

  “I knew it was so!” Greela roared, throwing Tamyth from the bed and scrambling over the other side. “Pull the men from the walls! They’ll be destroyed by the weapon!”

  “Sir, we are not besieged. Our army is standing by outside of the weapon’s range. Reports suggest the city is defended by a handful of females.”

  “Females?” Greela asked, pulling his trousers up. “A weapon powerful enough to topple stone walls and a group of females hold it? What insanity is this?”

  “Insane or not, we have the reports from the field,” Stribog said. “Sir, it would sacrifice many men, but if we could defeat the ones holding this weapon...”

  “We could claim it for ourselves!” Greela bellowed. “This takes priority, Stribog. This is important. I want you to send everyone.”

  “What do you mean by everyone?” the general asked.

  “Everyone!” Greela screamed.

  Chapter 49

  The old Rathgar woman pulled the rug away from the wooden door and opened it, spilling light into the space below. Hiding them in her house, under Greela’s martial law would have gotten her flayed in the streets had she been discovered, but to her it was worth it. She had lost all three of her daughters, two of them in the past two years, executed by the guards. Her youngest daughter, the troublemaker, had died much earlier, on the night the men from the north brought down the walls of the Citadel. It was for her that she hid the dangerous group below her home, spying on the guards and waiting for the time when all but a few of them gathered and marched out the west gate, just as she was told they would.

  As she reached down into the dark cellar, she grasped hands and helped pull her youngest daughter’s only friend up into the house.