At last she pulled away from him, playfully slapping his chest.
“Enough of that,” she said. “Now go be a diplomat before you’re forced to be a killer.”
‘Walk with me,’ Ahaesarus had said, though that appeared to be a misnomer. The angel flew overhead, slowly keeping pace with Harruq, who crossed Hemman Field on foot. For him to be so low, and the angelic leader so high, felt a little too on the nose for Harruq’s tastes.
Still, the walk gave him a chance to observe his opponents. Closest were the rows and rows of undead. They stood perfectly still, waiting for orders from their master. The sight gave Harruq a shiver. Armies of undead were tied to many of his memories, none of them good.
Behind the thousands of undead readied the smaller number of human soldiers. Harruq could only see bits and pieces of their formations, plus a few of their scattered banners, but he doubted any were eager for battle. Dozens of deserters had arrived at their camp overnight, seeking safety from their lords and pledging their swords to Gregory and his angels. If it ever appeared that Azariah would lose, he firmly believed those human lines would retreat, if not throw down their arms and surrender. In fact, much of Ahaesarus’s strategy involved destroying the undead and the fallen angels in the hopes of stealing those human soldiers for their own ranks.
Last, and most frightening of all, were the hundreds of fallen circling the skies with their black wings. Harruq was glad they were not his primary foe. The thought of facing them tightened his already sour stomach. If all went as planned, Ahaesarus and the Eschaton spellcasters would handle that facet of their opponent’s army.
As Harruq and Ahaesarus approached the center of the clearing, so too did a pair of fallen. Azariah and Judarius, as expected. A momentary spike of panic flicked across Harruq’s heart at meeting them again. He clenched his fists, brushing aside his fear. He’d fought a god. Two bastard fallen angels meant nothing next to that.
Ahaesarus drifted to the ground and crossed his arms over his chest. Harruq halted beside him. Together they waited for the opposing party.
“I shall handle all negotiations,” the angel said. “Not that I anticipate there to be many.”
“If I’m to keep my mouth shut, then why am I here?”
“I never said to keep your mouth shut,” Ahaesarus said, and he flashed a rare smile. “I said leave negotiations to me. You may threaten and insult as you wish. For whatever the reason, Azariah seems particularly frightened of you, so do your best to unnerve him.”
The fallen brothers landed. Judarius glared openly, his fingers tapping the hilt of his enormous two-handed mace. Azariah at least pretended at diplomacy. He dipped his head in respect as his wings fluttered behind him.
“We need no introduction, but I, King Azariah the Wise, ruler of Paradise, greet you nonetheless. I see you were spared Ashhur’s judgment.” He flashed his jagged teeth. “We were not so lucky.”
“Ashhur above, what happened to you, my friends, my kin?” Ahaesarus asked, and he looked genuinely disturbed by the sight of them.
He’s never seen them, Harruq realized. He wasn’t there.
When Ashhur used the mouth of a stranger to order the angels to fall, Ahaesarus was to the north, racing in vain to save the lives of those defending the Castle of the Yellow Rose. He’d not encountered any of Azariah’s wretched, and there was no denying his shock at the sight. A crown of bone sprouted from Azariah’s forehead, composed of what seemed to be interlocked horns connected to his skull. His feathers were dark as the night, his flesh a sickly gray, reminiscent of rot and decay. Eyes that once were as green and vibrant as a forest and speckled with gold were now dull, gray orbs spiderwebbed with angry red veins. His fingernails were black. His lips bled. His smile was rotten.
“We were abandoned by a god whom we faithfully served for hundreds of years,” Azariah said. “But we have not abandoned Ashhur, nor the teachings he granted us when we walked Paradise as Wardens. It is not too late, Ahaesarus. I come to you now, before the clash of blades, to offer you a chance to surrender.”
“Surrender?” Ahaesarus asked. “To one so clearly despised by my god?”
“Do not be deluded,” Azariah insisted. “Your numbers pale compared to ours.”
“The only person deluded about whose ass is about to get kicked is you,” Harruq said. “We outsmarted you once, and it’s gonna happen twice.”
Azariah turned to him. Harruq couldn’t help but be confused by the fallen’s expression. Was he angry? Worried? Azariah obviously tried so hard to remain passive and give away nothing, but Harruq swore he sensed fear hidden behind that bloviated aura of indignation.
“Your trick may have worked, but the sparing of your life was a paltry reward,” Azariah said. “The great betrayer is dead, denied a grave or funeral. It is the fate one such as he deserved. You will follow him, trampled on the field of battle, to die where you always belonged.”
“You offered a king and my daughter in exchange for my life,” Harruq said. “If you are so unafraid of my presence on the battlefield, you have a strange way of showing it.” He smirked. “I’ll be out there in the thick of it. If either of you have the stones, come say ‘hello’. My twin blades will be waiting. At the least, you owe me a rematch, Judarius, since you fled like a coward the last time we fought.”
Judarius took a menacing step forward before Azariah stopped him with his arm.
“Meager words,” the fallen king said. “And they shall bring forth meager returns. My forces are greater. My cause is just. Die if you must, but Paradise shall be born anew under my reign.”
“The false hope of a fallen king,” Ahaesarus said. “Farewell, strangers. I see my dearest friends died long before the sun rose this morn.”
The angel turned to fly away. Harruq waited a half-second longer, to ensure their foes planned no cowardly betrayal. Judarius and Azariah rejoined the great cloud of black wings overhead their human and undead army. No betrayal. There was no need. Why risk battling two against two if they thought their army was the greater?
No stopping it now, thought Harruq as he returned to their own forces. The long walk gave him far too much time to be alone in his own head. In some ways, the beginning of a battle was so much worse than the battle itself. Sometimes, the imagined horror was worse than the actual blood.
Only sometimes.
A signal from Ahaesarus set the combined troops to marching. Harruq halted in place and let the army sweep him up in its flow. He scanned their ranks for a specific member, and he found him right at the front, where he and his shield belonged.
“Just like old times, eh?” Jerico said when the half-orc joined his side.
“At least we’re not running for our lives like in Veldaren,” Harruq said, laughing. “They’ve got a decent chunk of undead on their side. Think you and your shield can obliterate them?”
Jerico’s confidence momentarily flickered.
“My faith, and the light of my shield, is not quite so strong as those early days,” he admitted. “I do not know.”
Harruq did his best to shrug away the man’s concern. “The faith of the young burns hotter than the elderly, mostly because it’s a whole lot easier to be stupid and eager when you’re young. Don’t start doubting yourself now, not when victory’s almost at hand.”
“Victory?” Jerico asked. He gestured to the sky full of black wings and dropped the volume of his voice by half so no one else would hear him over the rattle of armor and weaponry. “You expect us to find victory?”
“Come on now, Jerico. After fighting battles against the death prophet, the war god, the armies of orcs, undead, beast-men, assassins, demons, fallen angels, a shadow dragon, and my own crazy brother, do you really think this is the worst spot we’ve ever been in?”
That got a chuckle from the normally jovial paladin. “Not when you put it that way.”
“Damn straight. Chin up, Paladin. I expect you to save my ass when I get in over my
head, not sit back and mope about it. It’s not a good look for you.”
The pace of the march quickened. A glance overhead saw Ahaesarus’s angels gathering into tight formations of five, each cluster flying in a V-shape akin to geese migrating south during winter. The howls and squawks from the beast-men to Harruq’s left grew in intensity. His heart began to race. He looked across the empty field, to the approaching enemy. The foes he’d crush with his swords.
“I wish Lathaar was with us,” Jerico said quietly as the undead let loose a synchronized moan, meaningless air pushed out through dry throats.
“Me too, friend. Me too.”
They’d discussed the battle plan the night before. Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, Ahaesarus and his angels would engage Judarius in the skies. Tarlak, Aurelia, and Tessanna would remain just outside the battlefield, their magic countering any spells cast by Azariah and his fledgling wizards. Dieredon and Jessilynn would play the wild card, circling the air with their bows and targeting the various commanders in charge of the enemy regiments in order to sow chaos. The beast-men would form the left side of the ground engagement, the human soldiers the right. As for Harruq, he and Jerico were to be the bulwark in the center where the two sides met. Whether any of the beast-men would listen to his commands, he couldn’t guess, but he suspected it would not be necessary. They were terrifying fighters, and would know best how to kill their foes.
A fine plan, but it relied heavily on their spellcasting trio to make up for inferior numbers, particularly in the air. Which made the sight of three robed members of the Council of Mages watching from one of the dotted hills quite worrisome. He’d take Aurelia over Azariah any day of the week, but those Council members? He’d heard more than enough stories from Tarlak. They were exceedingly dangerous, and could nullify their major advantage.
As if to test that theory, a trio of spells flew from the hands of the Council members. Two were enormous balls of flame, the third a chunk of stone that started out a pebble but grew as it flew until it was thrice the size of a human. Aurelia and Tarlak countered with spells of their own. Fire flew from their own hands, striking the balls of flame and detonating them harmlessly in the air. As for the boulder, a blast of lightning tore it asunder.
As magic crackled and pebbles rained harmlessly down upon the field, it seemed an unspoken understanding passed between both armies. This was it. War had come. Swords were lifted high. Shields clattered to the ready. What was a march became a charge, battle cries bellowing from the throats of soldiers.
“Side by side!” Harruq shouted as he burst into a sprint.
“Side by side!” Jerico shouted back, matching his stride with his shield leading.
The moaning of the undead may have been frightening, but that paled in comparison to the sudden cacophony unleashed by the combined races of beast-men. The shrieks from the bird-men, the howls of the wolf-men, and the yipping mockery of the hyena-men pulled Harruq back to dark memories of the fall of Veldaren.
Those inhuman sounds obviously had an effect on human soldiers sworn to fight for Azariah, for they sagged when confronted with the tide of feathers, fur, and claw. The undead, however, cared not, and such a discrepancy worked against Azariah’s army. Instead of a solid line, it was two uneven waves that crashed against the united force Ahaesarus had brought.
The undead arrived, and Harruq could no longer focus on was happening in the battle at large. The fighting corpses were hardly a new foe for him, given his insane life. He fought using the same tactics he had taught the rest of the army over the last few days, when it was clear such a battle awaited. No shallow slashes. No flesh wounds, and no thrusts meant to pierce internal organs that served no function. Every swing needed to cleave off limbs.
Hack them down. Break every bone.
Screams marked the true start of battle. The undead scraped and bit at their foes without hesitation or instinct for self-preservation. The clatter of snapping bones quickly followed. The line of undead, meant solely to focus on the beast-men, spilled over with the delayed march of the human army, granting Harruq and Jerico a chance to thin those numbers. Harruq paced himself, using methodical hits that relied on the powerful magic within Salvation and Condemnation to wreck his foes. The first minute passed, both impossibly fast and insanely slow. He lopped off a head, kicked back the still-writhing corpse, and then double-cut through another attempting to bite the face of the soldier beside him.
“Close one, eh buddy?” Harruq said, for he could see the man was an inch away from breaking down. “Fight with me, no surrender, no retreat!”
The soldier readied his sword, and Harruq made sure to cut down two more undead before they reached the man so he might gather himself.
The wave kept coming, packing in closer, closer, while behind them the opposing human army broke ranks ever further. Arrows sailed overhead. Thunder and crackling ice marked the battle of spellcasters, whose full fury he could only imagine. Howls and shrieks from the beast-men steadily grew in number. Whatever their own casualties, it sounded severe, so Harruq shifted his attention their way. His twin blades were less like a dancer and more like a lumberjack as he cut, chopped, and hacked at the stinking, rotting army forced to serve the fallen king.
He returned to Jerico’s side right as the paladin lifted his shield and shouted out the name of his god. Light shone off his shield, and already it was brighter than when the battle had begun. Over a dozen undead collapsed, their pallid flesh withering beneath the holy light like paper tossed atop hot coals, granting the duo a moment to breathe before the next line of soldiers hit. Jerico jammed an elbow into Harruq’s arm to gather his attention.
“I go where I am needed,” Jerico said, nodding toward the beast-men army to their left. While they were fearsome fighters, they wielded claws and teeth, which meant fighting at a much closer range than those with swords and spears. Against undead soldiers who felt no pain, and cared not if forced to bleed, their methods were proving ineffectual.
“You take left, I’ll take right,” Harruq said. “Meet in the middle upon victory.”
He trusted Jerico to hold true as the paladin waded into the undead army. Jerico fought amidst the beast-men, and truth be told, he seemed much more comfortable among them. Perhaps it was because he fought an undead foe, whose lifeless rotting corpses he could crush without guilt or doubt compared to human soldiers conscripted by the fallen king.
Soldiers replaced Jerico in standing at Harruq’s side. He lifted his swords high above his head so all could see their black blades and red aura. Those human soldiers forced to fight for Azariah neared, finally crossing the distance in the most heartless charge Harruq had ever seen. Breaking them would be child’s play.
“We do not cower!” he shouted. “Stand with the Godslayer, and let’s kick their asses!”
Wanting momentum on his side, he charged a half-second before the next wave hit. He lacked a shield, but his weapons might as well have been battering rams against these frightened adversaries. The human soldiers fighting for Azariah...they knew the stories. They’d heard how Harruq had fought one-on-one against the war god Thulos and emerged victorious. For every soldier that seemed eager for a chance at fame and victory, five more looked terrified to be anywhere in his vicinity. He could see it in their formations. He watched it in their movements. If they could fight anyone else, they did, turning to attack any up and down the line who weren’t Harruq himself.
And so Harruq tore through them. He punished them for their cowardice. He made them turn their attention his way. Whatever guilt he felt for killing them, he buried beneath his rage. Memories of the Night of Black Wings pushed him deeper into the crowd. Aubrienna, crying in Azariah’s arms. Qurrah, bleeding out
The battle was a bloody Abyss, the grass slick with gore, the footing uneven from all the corpses, but Harruq cared for none of it. Before him were a thousand enemies. At last, he could bring his swords to bear. He could strike at his foes instead of
marching, or fleeing, or sitting silent and helpless as his own brother died. His swords could drink. His battle lust could be sated. These human soldiers, these young men fighting for the rule of a god-king they themselves did not worship, didn’t stand a goddamn chance.
Harruq could not spare any attention toward the battle raging in the clouds, but that did not mean he was safe from it. The body of an angel fell to the earth a mere foot in front of him, broken limbs flailing, sword and armor cutting a groove into the dirt. Harruq stumbled over the corpse, blocked a chop while absorbing a second clumsy hit to his side, and then regained his footing. More bodies of angels plummeted like bloody heaps from the heavens, landing on, and felling, soldiers from both sides. Magic lit the sky in blinding flashes of lightning. Ice met fire. Translucent shields blocked beams of arcane magic. Eschaton versus the Council.
The powers wielded made Harruq’s own swords feel small and insignificant, but he dared not dwell on such matters, not when the next wave of foes came crashing in. Unlike the leaderless undead, the second line of human soldiers were led by dark paladins. Harruq charged into the fray with a singular goal.
He may not be able to sunder mountains with his swords, but at least he could bring down a few stubborn bastards of Karak.
The clear lines of battle had grown wobbly. The beast-men cared not for careful formations, and there was no way to make sense of the war in the sky. As the casualties mounted and bodies soaked the grass with blood and gore, Harruq found himself with more and more space to duel. The shift benefited him. This was the type of battle Haern had prepared him for, not one of strict formations, but of reading opponents and controlling the chaos. When Harruq charged, a trio of fellow soldiers charged with him, and he appreciated their bravery.
Together, the four of them hit the next wave of human soldiers. Alone, he doubted he could have withstood them. With the aid of allies, however, Harruq quickly cut down challengers, black blades chopping off limbs with remarkable ease. To be at the vanguard meant resistance, and though those with him fell one by one, Harruq soldiered on. He blocked blows with such force he often took the weapons out of his opponents’ hands. He slammed enchanted swords through half-hearted attempts to parry. He felt like a god on the battlefield, and the hint of Ashhur’s light shimmering amid the red glow of his swords made him wonder if there were a bit of truth to the feeling.
The King of the Fallen Page 23
