Mother of Daemons

by David Hair

  ‘None taken,’ Zaar replied. ‘These are desperate times.’

  Sensini turned back to Waqar. ‘Right, here’s the situation. We’re on a natural ridge here, beneath this aqueduct that runs right up to the base of the Copperleaf walls – but there’s no gate there. You’ve got to stage a fighting retreat towards our walls, then wind west a hundred yards to the nearest gates. South of this spot is Raathaus Square, where there’s a natural embankment some twelve feet high dividing the plaza in two. That’s your next fall-back position.’

  ‘What then?’ Waqar demanded.

  Sensini gave him another of his damnably clever looks. ‘You’ll see.’ He glanced up. ‘I must brief my own men.’ He gave Waqar an ironic salute, then flashed upwards.

  Waqar turned to Tarita and suppressing his fears, told her, ‘Find whatever commanders you can and persuade them to retreat to the Copperleaf Gates. Do whatever it takes.’

  She nodded grimly, then shot into the air as Sensini had done, weaving into the roofs and out of sight. Waqar turned to Zaar. ‘Do whatever you can, Godspeaker, but get the men moving south. I’ll cover the retreat.’

  *

  A few minutes later only a single rank of archers remained, lined up beneath the aqueduct, facing the corpse-littered slopes. Sensini’s men were positioned on the aqueduct itself, and to their right, masses of Keshi soldiers were jogging towards Copperleaf, except for one hazarabam, one thousand of the most fervid Shihadis, chosen by Ali Beyrami himself, who were arrayed behind Waqar’s archers, ready to form a rearguard. The imam was at their head, exhorting them with phrases from the Kalistham.

  They have chosen to be martyrs.

  ‘At my signal,’ Waqar shouted to his archers, ‘fire every arrow, as fast as you can. Hold nothing back – nothing at all – and then we go: along the aqueduct, towards the Copperleaf walls. This is an order. Understood?’

  ‘Ai,’ the Shihadi soldiers shouted back, even though he doubted they truly did.

  Then Waqar drew on his training and forced all thought from his mind but battle, readying blade and gnosis, body and mind.

  Then with a roar, the enemy exploded from the far side of the road – possessed Shihadi soldiers this time. Perhaps Xoredh was dismayed at the losses his constructs were suffering? But it was dreadful knowing that these had once been his own men.

  ‘Fire!’ Waqar roared, and the arrows flew thick and true, ripping through the air at eye-level, spearing into the skulls of man after man, sending the first rank reeling and then the second. But the torrent was not sustainable and it faltered as the third wave charged. Above them, the Yurosi, who’d been shooting just as savagely, raised empty quivers and pointed south.

  ‘Beyrami—’ Waqar bawled, blazing a signal bolt of blue light into the sky.

  As one, his front rank poured backwards down the designated retreat lines, meeting and crossing with Beyrami’s Shihadis, who were pouring into the front rank, belting out hymns to Ahm as they came.

  Ali Beyrami led them, himself, hands raised to heaven, beseeching his god to intervene. Briefly their eyes met, then the imam dismissed Waqar with a curt nod and gave all his attention to his believers . . . and the sacrifice to come.

  Waqar turned and ran, the Yurosi archers pacing him on the aqueduct above, the remnants of his roc-riders swooping overhead. Catching his eye, the lead rider waving to him and he realised Ajniha was with them, flying rider-less. He longed to summon her down and escape all this, but he thrust the temptation aside.

  ‘ONWARDS,’ he roared, projecting his voice above the clamour. ‘FOR THE GATES—’

  *

  Seth watched from the turret of the Copperleaf gatehouse, Lukaz and his men arrayed around him. Beside him, Delton was clutching a relay-stave, sweating from the concentrated exertion of holding more than a dozen lines of communication open. The aether thrummed, the silent vibration tingling in his bones.

  ‘Dear Kore, look’t ’em all,’ Bowe gasped. ‘It’s a feckin’ Noorie river.’

  ‘Now even Bowe’s a poet,’ Vidran noted; the only one apparently unmoved by the sight.

  Below them, the thousands of men pouring into Raathaus Square were forming up atop the embankment dividing the plaza in two, creating a spear-wall facing north to where the enemy would appear.

  If they don’t hold, the enemy could sweep all the way into Copperleaf, Seth fretted.

  ‘Tell me the square behind the gate’s empty,’ he breathed to Delton. ‘Tell me it’s cordoned so the Noories can’t go straight up the high road to Ringwald. Tell me our bloody archers know not to shoot.’

  ‘We’re ready,’ Delton squeaked, his eyes tightly shut. ‘I think.’

  Delton was spinning like a top as he got every officer briefed, every contingency covered. But it could still go horribly wrong. The Shihad soldiers were milling about, unwilling to go on: the open gates looked like a trap and they were frightened this was just another way to die. They needed something to push them on, even with death on their heels.

  They needed someone to believe in.

  *

  Latif, wrapped in a grey cloak and squinting against the torchlight, looked up and saw Seth turn his way and give him a Rondian salute before shaking his head in disbelief.

  He felt exactly the same way.

  ‘All right, Sanjeep,’ he called. ‘Let’s go.’

  Sanjeep patted his elephant’s head. ‘Come, my Rani: let us give our men a sultan’s welcome.’

  Ashmak conjured shields, muttering, ‘We’re going to die and go straight to the Pit.’

  Rani was trumpeting anxiously at all the fuss, but she trudged beneath the raised portcullis, narrowly avoiding scraping the howdah and crew off her back, and emerged into the square full of frightened, directionless Shihadi soldiers caught between the enemy behind them and the Copperleaf gates open before them. Many were on their knees, beseeching Ahm for salvation. The Godspeakers and officers were striding among them, trying to urge them onwards, but order was disintegrating.

  Latif stood, casting aside the grey cloak. Beneath, he was clad in the best approximation of Sultan Salim’s finery that they’d been able to pull together in an hour, mostly thanks to a madwoman called Vania who’d raided the big house she’d called the Governor’s Mansion and produced acres of fine silks. ‘He had a mistress with damned expensive taste,’ she’d told him, busy turning dresses into robes and scarves into turbans. She’d also kept patting his behind and telling him to meet her afterwards, ‘If you haven’t been torn limb from limb, darling.’ He’d been washed, had his hair and beard trimmed and styled and been given armour with pure gold melted over it like cheap gilt. It wouldn’t fool anyone who’d known Salim well.

  He prayed it wouldn’t have to.

  Then Ashmak lit a gnostic light that bloomed around Rani and as he did, a blast of trumpets from the walls made every head spin – and they saw him.

  For a moment, there was near-complete silence, an awestruck moment when the Shihadi soldiers took in the sight of a dead sultan, riding an elephant from the gates of their enemy’s fastness. Those nearest fell to their knees in shock or reverence or both; those behind stared, gasps and oaths rippling back through the frightened masses.

  Ashmak conjured a spell to amplify Latif’s voice, which rang out: ‘MY PEOPLE, I HAVE RETURNED!’

  The square was a sea of wide-open eyes and mouths, lit by the moon and the flames, hanging on his words. For a moment he was as stunned as they, but then years of training took over: he had impersonated Salim thousands of times – tens of thousands – in the past. All his life had prepared him for this moment.

  ‘MY PEOPLE, I RETURN IN THE NAME OF PEACE.’

  Peace . . .

  The word resounded through the square, eliciting both cheers and confusion – but not rejection. These men had been at war for many months now. They had experienced the visceral, harrowing maelstrom of battle and the deathly menace of winter. They missed their homes and families and the fire of holy war had burned ver
y low. They were frightened and they believed they were going to die.

  To them, I am hope . . .

  ‘BEFORE US ARE THE MINIONS OF EVIL, ENEMIES OF MANKIND, SERVANTS OF SHAITAN—’

  ‘Ai,’ many shouted, fresh from fighting constructs and black-eyed savages, ‘they come from the Pit!’

  Latif pointed behind him, to the Copperleaf Gates. ‘AND BEFORE US ARE MEN, ALIKE TO US: MEN CREATED BY AHM, AS DISMAYED BY THIS EVIL AS WE ARE. THEIR GATES ARE OPEN TO GIVE US SHELTER. WILL YOU WALK THROUGH THEM WITH ME?’

  He watched hope battle with disbelief, that an enemy could ever be a friend, and the long-held view that Yurosi were as much creatures of Shaitan as the black-eyed monsters behind them. Everything teetered in the balance . . .

  But as the men of the Shihad wavered, a warm wind flowed through the open gates, carrying the ripe smell of cooking meat, borne on a wind of some wily mage’s conjuring. It hit the soldiers like a spell. Latif saw saliva spilling from hungry mouths, eyes filling with longing.

  Then Godspeaker Zaar walked forward, shouting, ‘Long live Sultan Salim!’ He knelt, placing his forehead to the ground before Latif and Rani, calling, ‘Ahm is truly with us—’ Then he rose and strode towards the gates.

  That was enough. Men surged after him, prostrating themselves hurriedly to Latif and then spilling through the gates into Copperleaf. Those close enough reached out to stroke Rani as they passed, gazing up at Latif in awe. Some called questions of where he’d been, but Latif kept his silence, trying to preserve this delicate bubble of suspended disbelief. Sanjeep turned Rani and they walked back through the gates, leading the army through.

  The Eastern soldiers were still half-afraid that that arrows and burning oil would come down on their heads, but Godspeaker Zaar was walking calmly before them and when they poured into the space behind, they found cooking fires lining the edges of another square – and, Ahm on high, there were even some women waiting with platters heaped with steaming food.

  That, perhaps even more than the food, sealed it: would an enemy allow their womenfolk among them?

  There were also soldiers, but Latif doubted the starving men even noticed. They descended on the food in a dreamlike rapture, weeping openly as they left fire and death behind and entered a realm of succour.

  ‘To Peace,’ he shouted. ‘To the peace of Ahm and Kore.’

  He doubted anyone heard, but perhaps they would remember his words later. He signed Sanjeep to halt Rani and they let the Shihad flow around them, into the sheltering arms of their enemies. He looked back and caught the solemn, shining face of Seth Korion, gazing down from the gatehouse in wonder.

  The Eastern men were perfectly behaved, addressing the serving women as if they were queens, and many embraced the Yurosi soldiers, tears running. And the Yurosi didn’t dare put a foot or word amiss, perhaps because Seth had officers overseeing it all, but maybe they too could sense the magic of this moment.

  Latif leaned down and called to Sanjeep, ‘Take us out, now, before the spell is broken.’

  Sanjeep looked back at him, his old eyes shining with tears of joy. ‘My Rani, she is the Queen of Heaven,’ he called proudly. ‘She is the wife of Gann-Elephant and will live among the stars.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Ashmak grunted. ‘Old lunatic.’ But he was crying too.

  Then Seth Korion spoke into his mind. he asked, in Rondian.

  Latif flinched, but he’d trained with magi under Salim, and quickly recovered. ‘Ai, it’s working,’ he said aloud, knowing Seth would hear.

 

  *

  Xoredh stalked along the road running beneath the aqueduct, then with a thought rose and flew upwards and landed on the structure. The race was dry and ran all the way to the Copperleaf walls. It entered the wall halfway up, to mitigate the gap it left in the defences. In the distance, he could see soldiers retreating along it – they were Yurosi, confirming the unbelievable.

  The Yurosi are aiding Waqar . . .

  At first he’d not credited it, being caught up in the fury and exultation of killing. Having the daemon inside him during war was overpowering: it fed too much stimulus so that the glorious, blood-soaked carnage was all he could see. Strategy, tactics and decision-making had been buried beneath the need to kill kill kill, to bury his blade in an enemy’s chest, to take heads, to bite and rend, to guzzle blood and gnash upon sinew.

  I didn’t notice the ruse until too late . . .

  Ali Beyrami’s fanatics had been last to fall, in retrospect clearly a rearguard action. Xoredh had slain Beyrami himself, impaled him on a spear and held the body aloft like a banner while the old madman died. The joy of butchery had consumed his possessed men until they were all soaked in gore.

  But while they’d been so enjoyably engrossed, Waqar or whoever was leading the remnants of the Shihad, had torched the streets behind the front line, creating a barrier between his advance and their retreat. The flames had taken too many, until Cadearvo had stepped in to halt the advance.

  Which has given the remnants of the Shihad time to escape . . . into Copperleaf tier.

  It was unthinkable. Three Crusades had ingrained an implacable Eastern hatred of the West. It was inconceivable to Xoredh that common ground could be reached. It won’t last, he thought sourly, gazing up at the walls. It can’t last.

  A tall figure lumbered out of the blazing line of houses on the opposite side of the square and came to join him. Cadearvo glowered at the banner of the Shihad hanging alongside that of Noros on the Copperleaf walls. For once, even the Lord of Rym looked perplexed.

  ‘This is unexpected,’ Cadearvo admitted. ‘But there are still tens of thousands outside the walls. We must press the attack and seek to force the gates while they stand open.’

  We’ve infected twenty thousand men over the past week and slain at least as many today, Xoredh calculated. Waqar could have no more than thirty thousand, including the baggage handlers and camp-women, left.

  ‘Yes, we must attack,’ he agreed.

  Cadearvo made a growling noise, then reached upwards as if summoning a hunting falcon. A giant winged reptile plummeted down to land beside them, spouting gouts of flame from a mouth that was large enough to eat a man whole.

  Xoredh felt his eyes bulge. ‘Is that . . . a draken?’

  Cadearvo licked his lips. ‘Ai. I am the Master’s most favoured.’ He grasped the beast’s reins. ‘I will hunt down their captains,’ he said grandly. ‘You will lead the assault down here.’

  He didn’t wait to debate but snarling to quell his unruly beast, he leaped into the saddle. The beast’s wings almost buffeted Xoredh from his feet as it flapped away. He glowered after it, angered at having to serve that abomination and absolutely burning in envy.

  Seek their captains then, he seethed. I pray they bring you down . . .

  *

  You should have run, Tarita berated herself. You don’t owe Waqar anything.

  But she’d committed herself, although she couldn’t tell if she’d been swept along by all this ‘good and evil’ nonsense or whether her heart or her yoni was leading her brain around. I don’t love him and I’ve had plenty of better sex, she told herself angrily. So why am I still here?

  She looked around Raathaus Square. The plaza was built on two levels, the drop of a dozen feet between them the natural barrier to defend. The low safety wall on top would be the new front line. Behind them reared the walls of Copperleaf and to her right was a giant aqueduct plunging down to the Lowertown Lake.

  The gates could only admit so many at a time and there were maybe as many as thirty thousand soldiers, labourers and camp-followers jammed into the killing zone. More lives would have to buy time right here to avoid slaughter at the choke-point outside the main gates.

  How does dying here help my mistress or my people? she asked herself. How does it thwart Naxius? We s
hould’ve left to find Jehana. But she was personally involved now. She couldn’t work out whether she truly wanted Waqar, but it was a good alliance – or it would be if she lived to profit from it.

  I just wish I loved him.

  She didn’t, though. Love belonged to her broken past, to Fernando Tolidi – he’d been so young, but he was a mage-noble, and she’d been just a maid, barely old enough to bleed. First love. Coupling with Fernando had been transcendent, as if they’d invented sexual pleasure for their own amusement. Nothing else had ever come close since. Losing him had poisoned everything afterwards.

  What’s love compared to something solid? Waqar’s crown is solid, and so is his gold.

  She gripped her scimitar, the gnostically forged relic salvaged from Midpoint Tower, and swore on its edge that she’d get out of this alive and somehow work it all out.

  Flames lit up the dusky skies and plumed into the stars as the moon rose. She could hear the approach of the enemy, the heavy tramp of the constructs emerging onto the lower tier of the plaza. Smoke rose behind them.

  That the enemy numbered beings like Ogre pained her even more. She smiled to think of his ugly, amiable face – then flinched as she remembered their sad, foolish parting.

  You deserve better than me, she whispered to his memory, but I’ll always be your friend.

  Then she pushed aside all thought but war, for a single shriek was echoing from thousands of throats and the black-eyed enemy was pouring towards them again.

  14

  A Foe Beyond You

  The Angels of the Last Days

  The Angels of the Last Days are grim beings made by Kore to destroy Urte, his creation. In their allotted hours each shall ravage His works. First comes War, then Plague and Famine, until Glamortha who is Death draws down the curtain on this tragedy. Mankind shall beg her protection, but she shall betray them and lay with Lucian, Lord of Hel, summoning the Daemons to Urte. As Mother of Daemons she and her dread consort shall rule over Perdition, punishing the unworthy for their sins, for all eternity. Repent, while there is time.