4.0 - The Last Command

by Bobby Adair

  Beck sat up straight in his saddle. "I'll ride with you, General."

  Blackthorn laughed. "You'll do no good riding over this terrain. You'll as likely fall as stay in the saddle. You remain here. This is the high point. If the battle goes badly down the hill, the men up here will need a leader. Be that leader."

  Chapter 69: Melora

  Melora took a step forward. The screech of a demon in the distance gave her fear that not only had she been heard, but she was also being hunted. She'd lost William a while ago.

  She crept back in the direction she'd traveled, hoping the excessive quiet might make up for the noise she'd made earlier. But the demons were getting closer. She smelled the putrid scent on the wind, intensifying as the bloodthirsty creatures drew near. Blood racing, she took a guess at where she was going. She could only hope that William had gotten away.

  In the dim moonlight, the monoliths all looked the same, as if they were bent on tricking her. She didn't recognize any as ones she'd already passed. She held her sword tight in her fist, certain any moment she'd have to use it soon.

  Where was she?

  A footstep slapped the cement. Not a running, frightened boy, but a monster in the shadows. She swallowed and kept going, taking a turn, hoping she was choosing the right direction. One of the buildings groaned. The wind keened through cracks in the walls. Melora fought the feeling that the whole city was conspiring against her.

  She resisted the urge to scream for Bray and Ella.

  She'd only do that if she had to.

  Approaching an intersection, she passed a collapsed building. This one looked familiar. Had she taken a left? A right? The footsteps behind her multiplied as monsters sprang from the shadows. She didn't have time to stop. All she could do was choose a direction and hope she wasn't winding herself into a situation she couldn't get out of.

  A figure barreled out of a building in front of her.

  Melora cried out and swung her sword, cleaving one of the thing's arms. It shrieked as it fell. She dodged to the right, avoiding another demon, and weaved into an alley. Looking around, she was certain she'd never been here. The screeches of the demons were everywhere. The alley was narrow and restricting. A trap? She had no way to know if there was an exit on the other end.

  Had the creatures lured her here?

  She didn't think they were smart enough.

  It didn't matter. She weaved into the darkness, her heart hammering as the creatures got closer. Soon, she'd have to stop and fight. No matter how many there were, she couldn't let them take her down. Not without swinging her sword. She felt the walls around her, searching for an opening that would admit her. The walls were hopelessly solid.

  And then they weren't.

  Arms grabbed her and pulled her through a doorway. A hand stifled Melora's scream. She writhed and struggled, realizing only when she heard a human voice that she wasn't being attacked.

  "Stop fighting and follow me! Hurry!"

  The hands let her go. She followed the insistent pull of someone tugging her shirtsleeve, leading her further into a building she could hardly see. The air smelled dank and musty, home to who knew how many corpses and demons. She had no choice but to follow. The shrieking grew louder behind her.

  Footsteps stomped the pavement.

  She almost stumbled again as the person pulled her up a flight of stairs, tugging her into a room that was equally dark save a few moonbeams filtering through the ceiling. Her eyes adjusted enough to watch the person turn and shut the door, sliding objects against it and then pulling her into a huddle. They heaved thick gasps as they caught their breath, listening to the frustrated shriek of demons outside.

  "They shouldn't find us here," the strange man told her.

  "Who are you?" Melora asked.

  "My name's Ivory."

  Chapter 70: Oliver

  The demons didn't come in a wave; they poured across the grass and into the light of the fires like a squall: first a few raindrops at a time, then many, then a torrent.

  The first of them perished as they tried to climb through the trenches or circumvent them. More demons came. Some of them ran through the gaps in the defenses, brushing past the men defending, tearing loose between the lines, blindly screaming and looking for someone to bury their teeth into.

  The screams of the torrent grew close, and Oliver felt the feet of thousands of running demons through the soles of his boots. He looked up the hill and gave a thought to fleeing, but made a choice. He'd kill Winthrop in the coming chaos and take the risk that the battle would not kill him, too.

  The torrent hit.

  The trenches filled instantly with twisted men falling over one another. Men on the ramparts hacked with the weapons they wielded. Oliver saw one slip and fall into the trench.

  Demons fought their way through the gaps in the defenses and the chaos spread. More militiamen ran. Winthrop's blood-marked followers stood their ground. Some stayed organized in their formations, benefitting from their training in Blackthorn's drills.

  A pair of demons ran toward Winthrop and his kneeling priestesses. A handful of the women jumped to their feet and attacked. They dragged one demon into the fire. They tackled and kicked the other.

  Oliver realized he'd probably made a mistake. With so many demons coming through the first line and the battle having just begun, the chances of—

  Something hit him from behind, knocking the breath out of him as he tumbled to the ground.

  Oliver shouted through the blood pouring from the lip he'd just bitten. A demon was on him, pinning him to the ground. Oliver heard the beast's pant close to his ear, felt its hot breath on his skin. Oliver punched the beast to no effect. He couldn't stab it. He'd dropped his dagger when the beast hit him. He remembered the first beast he'd fought off and had the fleeting thought that he wouldn't be so lucky this time.

  The beast's jaws clamped onto Oliver's shoulder, and Oliver screamed.

  The thunder of hooves rumbled down the side of the hill, shaking Oliver, distracting the beast.

  Oliver reached for his small knife in its sheath.

  The beast's interest in the coming horsemen waned as quickly as it had come. It bit again at the same spot on Oliver's shoulder, grinding its teeth and trying to tear the flesh away. Oliver screamed at the pain and stabbed the knife blindly behind his head.

  The demon howled and flinched away, yanking the knife out of Oliver's hand.

  The beast fell to the side. As soon as the weight of the monster was off his back, Oliver rolled to the side and jumped to his feet.

  The monster shook its head and grabbed at the knife stuck deep into the bulbous warts around its ear.

  On the ground, glinting in the orange firelight, Oliver spotted his dagger. Oliver scooped it up, gripped the handle with all his might, and lunged at the downed beast, pushing the dagger through its throat.

  The beast collapsed, choking but not moving.

  Oliver jumped away. Blood pulsed in gushes out of the beast's wound. Oliver stood for a second, not knowing what to do next. Run? Attack? With both hands he gripped the hilt of his dagger and dove on top of the demon, driving the point through the center of its back.

  It instantly went limp.

  Oliver knew he'd stabbed the demon's heart.

  He sat there for a moment, not believing what he'd done, not believing he was alive.

  The sound of demon war all around him brought his attention back to the moment, and his thoughts raced.

  The thunder of hooves blasted away all other sounds. General Blackthorn, followed by a line of sword-wielding men with determined faces, flowed past.

  Militiamen cheered. Others screamed. Demons still howled everywhere.

  Oliver reached to pull the small knife out of the dead demon's skull, and his shoulder protested with pain. Oliver touched a hand to his shoulder and pulled it away to see no blood, none. "What?" He put his hand back, right where the pain was, but he didn't touch skin. The chainmail had become so much like
a second skin to him that he'd forgotten he was wearing it. It'd saved is life. His shoulder was going to hurt, but it wasn't shredded. Oliver sucked in a breath at the pain and pulled his knife out of the demon's head. He jumped to his feet, dagger in one hand, knife in the other.

  The cavalry had passed by, and they were cutting through the chaos leaving a wake of pale dead bodies.

  Oliver looked around for the big bonfire, for Winthrop.

  Chapter 71: Beck

  Like the first line lower on the hill's slopes, the second line of trenches and ramparts was incomplete. In the light of the fires, Beck saw men and women furiously digging, throwing dirt out of the holes while more men stomped it down on the ramparts. Other men brought wood for the fires. Blue shirts and militia men manned the fortifications or stood in front of the trenches, defending the diggers from demons that had broken through the first line.

  Of everyone in the army, only Beck, his eight guards, and the cavalry, most of whom were on the hilltop, were not actively engaged. The cavalry saw to their horses and rested. Their turn to fight would come again tomorrow when the sun was up.

  The number of demons attacking the lines was small compared to the number of soldiers in the ranks. More than half of the soldiers stood behind finished fortifications. They were armed. And as Blackthorn had explained to Beck that day back in the fields inside the circle wall, they fought as a unit. The ones that were succeeding against the demons were adhering to their training. The soldiers who'd abandoned their positions and were caught in the gap between the lines, fighting demons one on one or running until they were tackled or trampled, were not faring well.

  Beck tried to guess the tide of the battle, tried to tell who was winning. The chaos on both sides of the first defensive line gave him no clue. Bodies were on the ground everywhere. People and demons ran every which way. And though the lines of soldiers were fighting the first attackers, more demons streamed out of the darkness in an unending flow of reinforcements.

  The only thing of which Beck was certain was that the first line of defenses would not be completed, certainly not before the sun came up in the morning.

  Chapter 71: Oliver

  The priestesses were in disarray, unarmed, but outnumbering and wrestling demons toward the fire. Others were dying at the hands of twisted men. Many lay sprawled on the ground, dead or bleeding. Winthrop's marked men ran past, chasing and killing demons, doing their best to keep the demons away from their leader.

  Amidst the bedlam, Winthrop was on his knees in front of the bonfire, rooted to the earth, hands stretched to the heavens, chanting god-speak.

  It would be an easy kill.

  Oliver ran around to come at Winthrop from behind. He dodged a demon and gave it a slice across the thigh. The demon stumbled.

  Uphill from the bonfire, Oliver turned and ran straight down at Winthrop from behind. No marked man or priestess was close enough to do anything to stop Oliver, even if they did notice a boy running amidst the tumult.

  Seeing Winthrop's broad back silhouetted against the bonfire, Oliver paused. He realized he didn't want to kill Winthrop anonymously. He wanted Winthrop to see who it was holding the knife to his throat. Winthrop needed to feel the ironic shift of power from abuser into the hands of the beaten boy. He wanted Winthrop to know that the wages of his sins had finally come due. He wanted Winthrop to tremble at the overpowering certainty of his coming death.

  Oliver's boots skidded on the flattened grass, but he kept his balance. He slipped beneath Winthrop's upstretched arm, came around in front of him, and tucked the point of his dagger under one of Winthrop's chins. "Look at me."

  With his eyes closed, Winthrop chanted on.

  "Look at me!" Oliver punctured skin, and a rivulet of red trickled down the blade.

  Winthrop's eyes calmly opened. His face didn't change.

  That angered Oliver. He wanted to see fear. He certainly smelled it in the form of Winthrop's piss. But Winthrop looked serene despite the blood. His hands didn't shake. His vile, chanting voice stayed strong.

  "I'm going to kill you," said Oliver, "for all you've done and all you're going to do."

  "My son," said Winthrop, "I'm so pleased. You wear the mark. You're one with your god."

  Oliver willed his arm forward, but the dagger didn't move. Guilt stopped it. Morality stopped it. Humanity stopped it. Oliver cursed. He'd dreamed of this moment, he'd prayed for it, he'd lusted for it.

  "I've loved you like a son," said Winthrop. "I've loved you as part of myself."

  "I hate you."

  "You wear the mark of blood. Your spirit will grow to love your god."

  Damn Winthrop's soothing voice. Damn his inexplicable strength. Why couldn't he whimper and beg?

  "I was like you, weak from my fears, tempted to sin, but I'm showing you the path. Embrace me, my son. Transcend the horror. Feel the love of war. Feel the power. I am a god."

  Oliver looked at his blade, still drawing blood from Winthrop's throat. Oliver couldn't bring himself to kill the Bishop.

  Winthrop laid two of his thick fingers on the blade, and the blood ran up over the fingernails and down to the knuckles. Winthrop raised his fingers to his mouth and licked the blood. He reached his bloody finger to Oliver's lips. "Take the blood. Be one with me, son."

  Oliver turned and ran.

  Chapter 73: Beck

  It was harsh and sad, the song of men who longed for death as they wallowed in the muddy blood of their comrades. They lusted for evil and emptiness. It was a song of begging to fight, kill, and suffer. All without words that any human mind, save lunatic Winthrop, could decipher.

  Beck certainly couldn't.

  The sky was bloody red, with the rising sun over the ocean and the mountains glowing in the west. Beck watched fires rage and smoke black, burning the flesh and fat off the corpses piled on the embers. The men who'd survived, ragged men who wore the carnage of a night's war in demon land, were adding their dead to the fires.

  Where brown winter grass had covered the rolls of earth on the hill's sides, only black mud and twisted bodies remained. The number of the dead was beyond count. The carcasses of wart-covered twisted men, naked and pale, lay between the two lines of fortifications. Piles of them filled the trenches in front of the ramparts. Live ones squatted out in the field, some stood, all at a distance watching, perhaps horrified by the sight of so many deceased brothers, perhaps intimidated by the song of Winthrop's marked men, inviting the monsters to join them in giving their souls to the next world.

  Beck had watched it all from atop his horse—slaughter on a scale no man's nightmare could conjure. All night long, the demons had come in gangs of a few dozen, mobs of a hundred and hordes of a thousand. The first line of defense was a porous obstruction, sometimes absorbing the attacks, but mostly diffusing and slowing the demons. The second line held. No demon reached the top of the hill. The killing ground lay between the lines of defense, and the men of the first line had fought the entire night.

  Beck guessed about half of them had died.

  Some of the men and women defending and building the second line of fortifications had been killed, too, but Beck had no way to estimate those numbers. The two squadrons of cavalry that charged down the hill in support of the defense had probably made the difference in the victory, but few of the riders were still breathing when the sun rose out of the ocean. Dead horses were spread across the lower slopes of the hill. Their riders were indistinguishable from the other bloody corpses.

  And General Blackthorn had fallen.

  He wasn't dead. His cavalrymen had hauled him up the hill and taken him to his tent. It was explained to Beck that the General had looked more and more haggard through the course of the fighting, but had continued until he collapsed. They suspected that undiagnosed injuries from the attack he'd suffered the night before had taken their toll.

  Father Winthrop, on the other hand, had come through the night unscathed. He knelt in front of a fire piled high with logs and
burning corpses. The ground around the fire was a solid carpet of dead demons, laid there by Winthrop's marked men. Winthrop's men knelt and stood around the dead, singing and communing with the lunatic, and covering themselves in the blood of the dead before going back out to do Winthrop's work. They weren't hauling bodies to the fires. They were taking the dead demons and laying them in a growing line in front of the defenses, shoulder-to-shoulder, head to toe. Demons coming tonight were going to have to trample their dead brothers from the night before on their way to the fight.

  "Minister Beck?"

  Beck turned to his left to see Captain Swan. "Yes?"

  "What are your orders?"

  Beck smiled. It was an automatic reaction to his sudden discomfort. A cavalryman captain asking him for orders? "What do you recommend?"

  "General Blackthorn would have the cavalry ride into the plain below the hill and clear it of demons."

  "Clear it?" Beck looked at the vast expanse of grass, copses, and forests.

  "We'll prevent any of the twisted men from getting close," explained Captain Swan. "That will give the militia time to finish the fortifications, and it will give them time to rest. The cavalry will come back to the hilltop by sundown."

  Beck looked for duplicity in Captain Swan's face and wondered how much of Blackthorn's plan Captain Swan was privy to. He wondered if the cavalry was going to abandon the militia to die and ride back to Brighton. "Would it be better to leave two squadrons on the hill and defend our positions with the other two?"

  "We'll do as you order," said Captain Swan.

  "But you don't agree," said Beck. "Tell me why."

  "We lost two squadrons last night. If we keep two here, that leaves us only two to fight the demons through the day. With so many demons in the area, I fear that two might get overwhelmed and destroyed. Four squadrons working together will have a better chance of staying alive."