“Yes,” Sirakov said. “I believe you are correct. I will put out the general order that all platoons will report to the plateau. The announcement might as well be there as anywhere.”
The commander sent messengers to each of his officers and let the chain of command trickle the message down to the platoon level. Kate went to the Black barracks, where the Infirium were gathered.
“It’s happening,” she told them. “We are mustering our forces for the battle. Everyone but the wall guards should report to the gate immediately. We’ll go, but first, we need to make some modifications to the spectral peeps. Those with them, come with me. Those without, please report to the plateau. I’ll join you shortly.”
Kate helped the others with glasses to put the lenses into their death masks. Wilfred came along, saying he wanted to stay with Kate and the others if possible, even though he didn’t have a death mask to put his lenses into.
It took surprisingly little time to perform the task, and soon Kate and the others were at the gate with the rest of the Black. Soon after, Pello Sirakov got up on the main officers’ platform and raised his hands to quiet down those gathered in front of him.
Sirakov was an older man, having been in the Order for forty years. He was of middling height and average build. The one distinguishing feature was his bushy moustache, which swayed as he spoke. His speech carried a slight accent of Vonamyth, but it was a voice accustomed to command. The crowd would have no trouble hearing and understanding the man.
He cleared his throat as the last traces of conversation in the crowd trailed off.
“Soldiers of the Order of the Fire. It is a dark day, a dangerous day, a day for the histories. And it has barely begun.
“Early this morning, Berart de Maligny, the Supreme Commander of the Order of the Fire, passed from the mortal realm.”
Exclamations of grief sounded from the crowd. The supreme commander was loved and respected, at least until recently.
Sirakov continued, “He was murdered by our enemies.” This was greeted with gasps and whispered questions.
“Those enemies, of course, are demons. They have been manipulating the Order, even myself and the secretary general here. They have been affecting the minds of the entire command structure, and they have been doing so also with most of you.
“Most, I say, but not all. The one group, as a whole, that has maintained their honor and dedication to the mission of the Order is the Black Command. While the council has made change after change that would not have been reasonable to those not under compulsion from the demons, the Black has tried to combat this scheme.
“As you recall, this resulted in the Black being disbanded, their commander being discharged from the Order and sent away. Yet still they did not relent.
“This is no time for a lengthy speech. I want each of you to know that this morning, two of the greatest heroes of the Black not only organized a defense of the large firestones in the fortress as the demons and their co-conspirators tried to destroy them, but they revealed the plot that has almost succeeded in ending the Order for good.
“We have reinstated the Black and put one of those heroes, Kate Courtenay, in command.
“Field Marshal Antoni Sena and the general of the First Regiment, Yael Stone, were both shapeshifter demons in disguise. Our operations marshal, Emelye Koler, was a willing accomplice to their plans. The demons died this morning, at the hands of our two Black heroes. Koler is in the brig awaiting trial.
“In addition, the council chambers held no less than five demons who were invisible to the eye. These also were slain by the Black. The bodies of these, as well as the shapeshifters, have been mounted in front of the Command Center for you to see, as they became visible once dead. But that is not the entire story.
“Royce Walton, general of the Second Regiment, was killed in the battle this morning in the council chambers, leaving only myself and the secretary general alive of the seven council members. We have been struck a mighty blow.
“But the darkest news is that today is a day foretold in demon prophecy to destroy all of the human race. We are gathered here, the entire Order of the Fire, to meet the demon hordes. We are, as ever, the only and last hope of all humankind. We must stand here, together. We must prevail. If we do not, there is no one else.
“You have trained for this and you have been equipped for this. May you fight for the honor of the Order of the Fire and for all human life. When this day is done, either the demons—or the Order itself—will have been destroyed. Prepare yourselves for the fight of your lives.”
A cheer rose up from the crowd, some Reds lifting their swords in the air while others banged their shields with their hilts.
Kate felt energized, anticipating the upcoming battle. Standing on one of the officer platforms and surveying the mass of red-garbed soldiers with the squads of blue-robed support personnel, she couldn’t help but to be awed.
“Well,” Koren said, the lenses of his peeps glinting eerily through the eye holes of his mask, “now that we’ve done the hard part, the rest will be easy, right?”
“Of course,” Kate said, a tiny smile tugging at her mouth.
35
After waiting for more than an hour, Pello Sirakov had his officers return to a more normal method of guarding the gate. The old normal. A third of the Red remained at the gate, standing more attentively than Kate had seen for some while. The other two-thirds were sent to eat and remain on call for when the bell rang.
Kate did the same thing with the Black. She left five at the gate, and the rest returned to the Black barracks with her. There was no reason for the entire Order to stand for what could be hours.
In the back of Kate’s mind, though, was what might happen if the attack never came. What if they were wrong about the kellmanach xurki and it wasn’t going to happen that day, or at all? What if they had translated it incorrectly? She didn’t want to think about it. In the end, it was better to be prepared for an attack that didn’t come than the reverse.
In the afternoon hours, she switched out the Black to allow those who had been at the gate to go and eat. As was normal before all the changes were made, the Blue brought food and water to the Red on guard at the gate.
It seemed almost surreal, as if none of the last several months had even happened. Kate almost expected to wake up and find that the Guiding Council was in session and it had all just been a bad dream.
She wouldn’t, though. The nightmare hadn’t really started yet.
An hour after dark, when Kate was at the gate herself, scanning the plateau from one of the platforms, she felt a familiar thrum in her feet.
“Did you feel that?” she asked Visimar, who was standing on the ground below the platform.
“I did,” he said. He slipped the mask from the loop on his belt and fitted it to his face. The other four Black with him did the same.
Kate waited before saying anything, but her own mask found her face as she stared at the gate.
The vibrations grew stronger, and heads swiveled toward the massive doors. They didn’t ring the bell yet. Protocol said that it was not struck until the doors began to open.
It didn’t take long.
When the shaking in the ground finally stopped, it was as if the entire Order held its breath. There was no sound but the slight whistle of the wind as it rushed past them on the plateau.
Then the doors began to move. The opening widened, first just an inch, then a few, then a foot. When the first ugly demon face appeared between the doors, the soldier in charge of the bell struck it hard. The auxiliary bells followed suit, and soon the air was filled with clangs. In the near distance, roars and screeches drowned out the bells as the hordes of demons rushed to meet their foe.
For a moment, Kate could have sworn she saw astonishment in some of the demons’ misshapen faces as they caught sight of the shield wall.
“They are surprised,” Peiros said. She hadn’t even realized he was near. “I clearly heard in my mi
nd the confusion from nearly the entire front line of demons. They did not expect to be met with resistance.”
“Good,” Kate said. “I hope the bastards die in their confusion.”
The officers commanded the troops in the typical protocol. Archers loosed two flights of arrows before the demons got too close to the shield wall for arrows to do their job without risk to the Red. Then, the shield wall braced for the impact of the oncoming demon army.
The first push was always dangerous. The demons were at a full run, generating more momentum than they would later when sandwiched between the shields and the demon troops behind them. If the shield wall held on that first charge, there was a good chance they would weather further pushes.
It was the first time Kate had been on a platform during the initial charge. The energy of the area and of her anticipation made her body vibrate as she watched the demons get closer.
Fifty yards…twenty yards…ten…the crash of the demon bodies running at full speed into the shields reverberated through the ground and up into the platform on which Kate stood. The sound was a deafening, low-pitched thing, as if a bell the size of the mountain had been stuffed with cloth and struck with a giant hammer. Screams—of demons and humans—added to the cacophony.
The demons didn’t strike at the same time, so their staggered impacts caused a sort of ripple effect throughout the shield wall. Even before it happened, Kate could see that a breach was imminent.
“To the left,” she shouted to the Black below her. “The wall is about to buckle.”
Two of the men took off running toward the area, black cloaks trailing them.
Within seconds, the break came to pass. Four massive demons bashed through the shields, wreaking havoc on the exposed sides of the men trying to hold them back. The gap began to widen so quickly, Kate wasn’t sure it could ever be closed.
And then the Black were there, her brothers. They maneuvered through the ranks, appearing almost magically where the hole was forming. Kate had done the same thing several times before, but even so, it seemed supernatural to her watching eyes. Did she look like that when she charged the front line, like a snake swimming through water?
The Red fell away in front of the Black, giving them room to move. The men spun and twisted and dealt death with every movement of their bodies. In short order, the four large demons lay dead on the ground, along with half a dozen of the smaller variety. The shield wall closed, swallowing up the Black as they made their way back toward where their brothers and Kate waited.
A localized cheer went up for the two heroes and the battle resumed.
“Good work,” Kate said to them as they returned.
“It’s good to be back,” one of them commented as he bumped forearms with another of the Black.
The front line surged, fell back, and surged again. It had always amazed Kate how it looked so much like ocean waves, undulating and swaying like water at a shoreline.
The demons kept coming, and bodies fell on both sides of the line. She noticed breaches and called the Black to bottle them up several times, but in general, that shield wall seemed to be holding.
The reserves were being rotated in, and the Order was working as it should. It made Kate proud to see it. After several months of complacency and bad attitudes, it made her heart sing to see the troops functioning as they were trained to do.
Kate watched the battle, directing the Black when she saw the need for their skills. She itched to swing her own sword, stepping to the very edge of the platform and leaning until she nearly fell off.
“You can’t go out there,” Koren told her. “I know you want to, but you were put in charge of this sorry lot, and you have to do the job. That’s the thing about command: you get a little bit of authority but miss out on the fun parts.”
Kate frowned at the man. When had he gotten so cheeky?
She stepped back and continued to scan the battlefield. She blinked, not quite believing what she had just seen. Looking again, she saw the same picture.
“Koren, one of the assassin demons has entered the battle. It’s making its way along the edge of the field, working toward the officers.”
“I’m on it,” he said. “Watch carefully. This is going to be a show you’re not going to want to miss.”
Kate did as he asked and monitored the overall battle with one eye while keeping one on Koren as he seemed to stroll—or was it strut?—around to intercept the demon. The demon didn’t seem to realize it could be seen, and Koren was careful not to look directly at it.
Just before the creature reached the officers’ platform, Koren intercepted it, pretending like he was simply going to consult with the men above him. When he was within a few feet of the demon, he drew his sword and lopped its head off. It hadn’t even had time to defend itself, though there was ample time for the expression of shock to register on its face.
The reaction of the officers was just as pronounced when the demon body appeared before them. They jumped back, drawing their own swords, some of them cursing. Koren said something to them Kate was too far away to hear, and he made his way back to her platform, tipping his mask so it rested on top of his head like a hat. And whistling.
Yes, he was definitely strutting.
“Showoff,” she said. He smiled through his beard at her, cleaned his blade, and scabbarded it.
When there seemed to be a lull in the demons pouring from the gate, Kate thought that they may have begun to exhaust Hell’s troops. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Instead, a whole squad of demon commanders, the hulking, weapon-carrying demons, charged out of the gate and bore down on the weary shield wall.
“They’re going to need our help on this one,” Kate said, and five of the Black ran for the front lines.
36
By the time the Black arrived at the shield wall, the huge demons had already clashed with the much-smaller humans. The line had buckled in at least three places, and it threatened to collapse completely. More than a dozen of the elite demons were at the line, devastating any soldiers they found before them.
Until a moment later when the Black arrived. The five waded into battle, each seeming to be waging the war on their own. Kate knew better. She spotted the tactics they used, cooperating with each other while keeping plenty of room between them so their maneuvers would not be hampered. They cut into the demon commanders, and the creatures began to fall.
Demons, as a rule, did not assist each other. While a demon commander was a tough opponent, some of them even the match of some of the Black, fifteen of them—Kate had gotten a better count—was not really a squad of the creatures, but fifteen individual demons doing whatever they desired. They just happened to be in the same physical location.
The Black, on the other hand, lured the monsters into positions that would allow the other Black to eliminate them. Added to the close quarters, with much of the shield wall still funneling the demons so that they could not attack with more than three or four of the demon commanders at a time, this put the advantage firmly with the humans.
Three other Black followed the first five, rotating in when the others needed a break or got injured. Kate saw no serious injuries, but it did look like there were a few minor cuts. In no time, however, all but a few of the demon commanders were lying dead on the field, and the shield wall had closed up and rotated fresh Reds in to relieve those who had been fighting for some time.
Once the charge had been mitigated and the wall was whole again, the Black came back to their staging area, flowing through the sea of red cloaks as if they were intangible.
Kate smiled beneath her mask. What kind of idiot had Travada been to want to do away with these men?
After the defeat of the group of demon commanders, conventional demon attacks started again. Hundreds more grunt demons flooded from the gate with the occasional larger demon commander leading them.
So much for the demons running out of troops.
Hours passed, the Red rotating out s
o the front line didn’t get too fatigued. The plateau became an even more treacherous place with the bodies of both demons and humans piling up. The shield wall had a staggered look, because the men and women of the Order couldn’t stand on corpses and hope to maintain their footing during a charge.
“How much longer can this last?” Kate said quietly to herself.
“It will last as long as it must,” Peiros said. She hadn’t even realized he was standing next to her. He seemed to do that a lot. “It is the largest battle I have ever seen already, bigger than any I have heard of.”
“Is this how it will be, then?” she said. “A contest of attrition? Both sides will lose numbers until one finally prevails?”
Peiros tilted his head at her. “Of course. That is war.”
Kate huffed, disgusted. It was not only at the whole idea of the thing, but because she knew that. Why was she asking stupid questions?
“Perhaps you should take a break, eat something, rest,” he said. “Koren can take your place for a time. He just came back from resting himself.”
“Yes, I think that would be a wise choice. Thank you, Peiros.”
“Of course.” He put his hands together in front of him and bowed over them, then went to tell Koren.
Kate scanned the battlefield as she had done for the entire night thus far. The huge braziers set on stone columns all around the plateau lit the area almost as if it was daytime. As her eyes rolled over the scene, they were caught by something at the gate.
The demons flooding onto the plateau slowed again.
Kate knew by now that the cause wasn’t something as preferable as running low on enemies.
“Get ready,” she shouted to the Black nearby. “Something is about to happen.”
Bright orange shapes appeared from the darkness and faint, flickering light of the gate. They were low to the ground and moved quickly. The demons already fighting made an attempt to clear a path for them, but it didn’t seem that the newcomers particularly cared how they got to the humans. They bounded over ground, corpses, and live demons without seeming to care which.
Order of the Fire Box Set Page 71
