Beyond the Bulwarks Page 44

  “We’ll have to let this play out, then.” It wasn’t clear whether Varya was speaking to Anzo or her Thothan compatriots.

  “You said the danger would come when the slaughter was greatest, Varya,” Anzo pressed. “It would be then when He would have his opportunity—”

  Varya snatched Anzo’s arm up in a grip so preternaturally strong it could not possibly be all her own. “It’s all right. We know, Anzo. That’s why we’re here. That’s why I’m here.”

  “What about your Master Ossys?”

  “He is with the Emperor, protecting him.”

  “And who’ll protect you?”

  Her weary smile ached with its beauty, fragile as a dandelion before a rising gale. “I think you know the answer to that.”

  He started to open his mouth with a sarcastic retort, but held up at the earnest look in her eyes. Realization lit his mind.

  “I will.”

  She nodded slowly. “I’m counting on you, Anzo Severnus.”

  Enu jostled Anzo’s shoulder. “Why do I get the feeling we won’t be in reserve for long?”

  Anzo offered the Kharzulan a forced smile.

  “Great.” Enu shook his head. “And here they come.”

  OO-RAH-CRASH! OO-RAH-CRASH! OO-RAH-CRASH!

  Varya gave Anzo’s arm a final shake. “Look for me...no matter what happens...”

  He gripped her hand in his own. “Always.”

  OO-RAH-CRASH! OO-RAH-CRASH! OO-RAH-CRASH!

  She nodded one more time, broke the contact, and turned her mount about, headed back to the other wizards. Together, they rode back to join the main cavalry line.

  Anzo watched her the whole time, until racket from the field finally drew his gaze.

  The Vhurrian host lurched into the torn, trampled fields. Nobles and their finely-apportioned retinues formed the leading edge, shields locked, weapons held high as they roared their bloodlust and urged their followers on. Behind them, the common warriors slogged in murky, haphazard fashion, some glittering in confiscated Legion gear, others clad in rags and caked mud. At the rear, the blocks of cavalry cantered in apparent nonchalance, the Arriaks beginning to separate and drift out onto the barbarians’ right flank.

  “That, at least, seems to make sense,” Anzo said to Enu. “Retreat always starts from the rear. Their cavalry is corralling them forward.” His gaze slid to the embankments left behind. A pall of smoke rose sluggishly over them, blackness bunching with tendrils of gory red. He could still make out shrieks, see the bob of white-hooded heads over the top and their cruelly-curved short swords rising and falling.

  His guts pinched. When the slaughter is greatest...

  The Legion outriders lunged at the approaching host, got to within two dozen paces before wheeling and loosing spats of archery. A few rode in closer to fling javelins and then fall back, chased by storms of spears, throwing axes, and arrows. Horns blatted and the Arriaks flowed from the rear, up along the flank, spread into a loose line that drove the outriders into retreat, a few cut from the saddles by recurved bow fire. The pale wastelanders wheeled and intermixed, in turn, as the Imperial foot skirmishers unleashing their own spoiling shots to cover the withdrawing outriders. The Arriaks faded back in a leisurely trot to the rear of the Vhurrian host. The skirmishers did the same, called to the main line by clarion calls.

  Further calls echoed along the Imperial front. Anzo saw archers at the rear of the infantry draw bows. Then arrow clouds darkened the sky in a long rise and fall towards the Vhurrs. The barbarian mass cringed as one. Then the terrible rash of death boiled through them, despite shields held overhead. The nobles at the front slowed, bunching together. The commons behind them writhed and fell, whole patches dropped to the muck to squirm out their lifeblood.

  The advance ground down, then halted completely as the Imperial artillery scythed through it. Firepots scrawled from the walls of Terminus. Ballista bolts and solid shot whipped over the heads of the Legions to rip and rend the barbarian front. The mass of men, numbering more than many Aurridian towns, quivered and thrashed, straddled by fire and flying destruction.

  Smoke from the embankments to the rear drifted over the host, despite a breeze beating up from the south, tinged crimson more than black now. Stench of blood and hot, slippery death hit Anzo in face. A terrible chorus of war horns and the resumed thunder of Vhurrian drums smote the air, the ground, shook the barbarian force into motion again.

  Anzo eyed the sky. The crows were gathering, but there was no sign of harpies. He looked to the barbarian front, expecting to see demons or the undead, but saw nothing but an inexorable advance into doom.

  With a tumultuous scream, the Vhurrs flung themselves across the last fifty yards to the Legions. Many tripped, fell, were trampled in the stampede that churned amongst cavalry traps and caltrops strewn before the Imperial line. They poured through, hit a line of sharpened stakes the Legionnaires had planted ten yards in front of them, men skewered on the points by the press behind them. A horrendous crash spread all along the front as the Vhurrs shambled through to hurl themselves on the banded-steel and studded-leather mass of the Aurridian army. The Legion ranks rippled and bowed like sails before a hurricane, but held. All the while, arrows and artillery poured over their heads into the mob clamoring from the rear.

  When the slaughter is greatest...

  A rent formed in the center of the Imperial line, bashed open by bodies that could not possibly be living as they tumbled through. More Vhurrs surged over them, ravaging into the peeled-back flaps of the Legion, more hacking through to charge the open ground to the rear and the exposed artillery crews there. Brassy, parade-ground clarion calls pierced the cacophony and the Emperor’s Guard cohort galloped forward, smashing the breakthrough, lances plunging, sabers slashing, warhorse hooves painted red as they flailed and stomped. The Emperor’s immediate entourage cantered forward. Anzo thought he saw Arken drawing his sword.

  Commands slapped across the front of the cavalry on the left, still untouched, uninvolved. The super heavies started forward with a tremble of hooves that spoke of building momentum, the shock cavalry rattling behind, giving their comrades room to build up speed, saving their own for the follow-up. A rider wheeled at their rear, waving a banner to the still-motionless Secundus on the knoll.

  Enu drew his saber and waved it in acknowledgement. “This is it,” he said breathlessly. “All the cards are on the table. The last hand is dealt.”

  Varya and the Thothans tailed the cavalry thrust with their detachment of Guards horse. His heart punching its way up into his throat, Anzo watched helplessly as her brown-robed back receded into the distance. Twisting in the saddle to face Enu, he snarled, “Are we just to wait here?”

  Kharzulan’s lips twisted into a smile. “Watch, Severnus.”

  The cataphract cavalry glimmered like flowing gold as their gait built to a gallop. Lances lowered, wide-bladed, pennanted points sparking. Vhurrian cavalry, the Arriaks in the lead, boiled from behind the strife of the main battle and spilled across the field to meet them. Behind the super-heavies, the Imperial shock cavalry slowed and began to wheel, peeling away from their fellows and driving into a sprint oblique to their initial advance, careening into the flank of the barbarian foot. They were not the heavies’ support; they were the assault force. The galling crash of their strike into the Vhurrian right was echoed moments later by the unspeakable racket of grinding metal and squealing horseflesh as the heavies slammed into the Vhurrian riders.

  On the far left of Imperial line, the same played out, the cavalry there folding in on the barbarian left. The Vhurrs shuddered and bled in the grip of steel claws. Double envelopment: the dream of commanders and the doom of armies.

  When the slaughter is—

  Anzo’s breath locked in his throat. His gaze flew to the smoldering rear of the Vhurrs. “Oh, shit...”

  A plume of fire cut through with eye-scarring forks of energy jetted from the embankments behind the Vhurrian host. A thunderclap ripped
through the Valley a moment after the conflagration like the backhanded blow of an angry god.

  Just that, in fact.

  Anzo’s mount squalled and bucked. Enu and the rest of the Secundus struggled to still their steeds, as well. The ground rippled beneath them, kept quaking as though the world was a man gutted on a spear, floundering to get loose.

  Dust puffed and flew, gouting skyward as a crack formed in the field, the embankments sagging inward, the fissure widening, shooting southward towards the battle. Along the path of the crevasse, steam and ash billowed and men squealed. The din of melee was so great many didn’t see the cataclysm coming until the ground dropped out from under them, cast them into scalding fumes and unseen depths. The crack reached the midst of the fight, where the Vhurrs floundered still to hold the rent they’d forced in the Imperial line. Barbarian and Legionnaire alike vanished from sight.

  Sawing on the reins, slapping at his mount’s neck, Anzo finally got the bay under control. Watching the apocalypse unfold below the knoll, he wouldn’t have been able to blame the beast if it bolted again.

  The fissure halted just shy of the Emperor and his panicking guards and began to open up, expanding to a titanic sinkhole spewing a volcanic plume of fire, incandescent loops and arches of liquefied rock, and darkness that writhed like tarry ooze draining upside down into the heavens. Shriveling heat hammered across the fields, flattening what grass and foliage remained, knocking men and horses from their feet. Units and battle lines ceased to exist, tottered on the edge of annihilation, then tumbling into it.

  Over the groan of tossing rock and dirt came a slobbering, gnashing roar.

  Gods, help us. Anzo smelled urine trickling on leather and fabric, wondered if it was his own. He has come...Arshann...

  Solid shafts of energy, quivering through a kaleidoscope of colors before settling on purple, ravaged from the Emperor’s entourage. A shimmering nimbus formed around the tight, armored group and the sinkhole crept up to but did not consume them. Surviving Imperials crowded back from the destruction, clumped behind the apparent protection.

  Purple annihilation jetted from the side of the anarchy, slicing down into the hole. Anzo could see Varya clearly, the other Thothans to her sides, hands up, flinging all their power forth. Maddeningly, the battle continued around them, unabated. The Imperial cavalry mixed and floundered, many riders flung from the saddle and carrying on the fight on foot while the white-haired Arriaks raged around them, slipping through, hacking their way closer and closer to the wizards. The Guards cavalry escorted Varya wheeled to meet them but were in disarray, wasteland sabers cleaving, waste-bred mounts sidling and launching through.

  Ripping his scimitar free, Anzo turned in the saddle to Enu. “She said I would know the time!”

  “Is the Imperial Courier Service giving the order?” Enu grinned with the madness that comes when fear is just another sensation and there is only duty left.

  Anzo returned the smile. Standing in the stirrups, he held his blade high. “Is the Secundus ready to save the world again?” Bellows and shaken weapons answered him. Gripping the reins and wheeling his scimitar over his head, Anzo howled. “Come on!”

  He spurred his mount and charged down the knoll, the Empire’s last reserve swarming behind him.

  Ash coated the ground, puffed up under hooves and trailed behind the cavalry. Men and horses weaved through the haze. Blazing hunks of rock pounded from the air, crashing to either side. Anzo’s lungs burned and he could feel his mount’s tearing breaths grate through the saddle. Purple winked through the fumes, silhouetting forms that rived and tore. He aimed for the brilliance, his only guide in a world aflame and insane.

  An Arriak crossed into Anzo’s path, saber upraised. Anzo dragged his mount to the left, ducked as the edge cleaved the air then answered with a slash that opened the barbarian’s forearm. Spurring past the wounded wastelander, Anzo heard a stunned squawk as the spears of the Secundus mowed him down. A Vhurr on foot charged Anzo with an axe. He tore back on the reins, reared the bay up. Flailing hooves smashed the barbarian’s jaw away in a splash of teeth. Anzo galloped past the man, slicing as he went, opening the man’s shoulder in a fan of gore.

  Varya and her group loomed ahead, the glare of their power picking out details as crisply as direct sunlight. They seemed almost placid, mounts unmoved, their faces creased in concentration, and their sorcery creating a blister of order in the midst of chaos. The sinkhole fell away before them, inches away. Melee roiled all around as their Guards escorts peeled back before the Arriakan onslaught.

  An Arriak leveled a lance and charged them. Anzo came up at the wastelander’s flank and slashed. The Arriak dropped the spear and tried to wheel his horse about, fumbling to get his saber free. Anzo’s scimitar found his chest first, gashing leather vest open and folding him back, his mount dragged along squealing by fingers locked in a death grip on the reins.

  Another Arriak came at him, spear parting the haze as it angled for Anzo’s neck. He slapped the point away with the flat of his scimitar but the Arriak’s aim was enough that the spear point shafted through the neck of the bay. The beast unleashed a gurgling shriek and twisted into the strike, flinging Anzo from the saddle and crashing into the Arriak, carrying them both over the entangling horses to the ground.

  Stunned, Anzo had a moment to realize the soil beneath him was giving way, to hear the panicked cries of horses and men. Reflexively, he pawed for a handful of grass as the very earth went fluid under him. Ramming his scimitar into a patch of dirt, he hung on to that last fragment of solid ground while everything else sank away. Something had a grip on his ankle—the Arriak, he was certain—and every muscle, every bone popped and creaked. Heat that clawed under the flesh, sought bone, savaged his armored back. Something like laughter wheezed through the air.

  Against his most primal instincts, Anzo looked over his shoulder.

  Through syrupy smoke bleeding from the wound at the heart of the sinkhole emerged something Anzo knew he’d never scrape from his memory. Tentacles that forked and split into dozens of lesser members writhed in the depths, snatching up men and beasts as they tumbled. Points capped with chitinous barbs lashed out, skewering those that struggled. There were so many bodies they couldn’t get them all and corpses piled in the darkness and were lost in fumes. Those that were ensnared were passed back to the horror at the center.

  Arshann...

  An enormous face glared from what was obvious now as a rent in the very fabric of reality. Skin the sickening gray of rot quivered. Bloodshot eyes stared to the heavens, mindless with the frenzy of slaughter—or perhaps unreadable in their terrible agelessness, the gaze of something so old, so beyond mortal ken as defy a man’s meek efforts at comprehension. A huge, lipless mouth opened, greedily accepting still-twisting morsels as they were stuffed into it, rivers of gore sliding across cheeks that split with dozens of lesser maws, each feeding. Feeding...

  Bolts of Thothan power ripped through the tendrils, struck the side of the face. The demigod grimaced, its countless limbs slashing frantically as they hurled aside victims and scrambled for a hold on the edges of the hole. The mass of Arshann, bulged, tried to force its way higher.

  Shrieking, Anzo gave his leg a furious shake and the Arriak fastened there fell away. Hand over hand, Anzo clawed his way to the top and solid ground. Reaching its tenuous safety, he rolled and lay on his back, sobbing for breath while the hellish sight replayed over and over again across the backs of his eyes.

  Through the afterimages emerged an Arriak, towering above, a spear held over hand to skewer Anzo to the soil. Zulen’s fiendish smile was unmistakable, as was his gleeful keen. “Weeeeeeasel!”

  Anzo fumbled for his scimitar, tried to reach his feet before the spear point was in his chest. He knew he had no chance.

  A Legion-bred horse crashed across Zulen’s route, the force of the charge knocking the spear from the Arriak’s fist and smashing his own mount sideways. Enu Mbawa’s sword lashed for the chie
ftain’s skull. Zulen ducked, recovered with his own saber out and meeting the Kharzulan’s assault with glittering parries. They parted, wheeled, and lunged in at one another again. Fabricae steel met wasteland-tested edge. Sparks flew. Mounts tossed, bit, kicked, and thrashed. They were twin storms, winding round each other, around a trapped Anzo, the finest horse masters of two worlds.

  Enu’s blade tasted blood first, a quick thrust around his horse’s head opening up Zulen’s shoulder. The wasteland chieftain yelped in shock as crimson coursed over rent leather. Parrying and throwing Enu slightly off balance, the Arriak broke contact rather than follow up an advantage that might turn out to be a trap. Zulen’s gaze met Anzo’s for an instant, a fierce scowl quickly flowing over fear. Enu spurred at him again and the Arriak roared something before giving his mount the spurs and launching into flight with the Kharzulan pounding after.

  The ground shuddered to a new rhythm. Turning, Anzo saw the lips of the sinkhole receding, Vayra and her Thothan comrades following its course, their blasts of energy never ceasing, gaining in intensity, in fact, as a tremendous groan throbbed up from the depths. All around the periphery, the ground seemed to reform, as though the tear in the mortal world had never happened. Behind the retreating cataclysm came the remains of the Legions, driven by horror and fright to a new energy of butchery on those Vhurrs still left standing.

  “Weasel!”

  Anzo turned slowly, gave his sword arm a last, testing shake. “I suppose I knew you’d find me.”

  Theregond strode from the smoke and screams of the rapidly-fraying battle. The armor of the Elder Tyrants hung battered and rent about his massive, bloody form. Much of his beard had been singed away and red oozed into his face from a gash where a blade had split the side of a multi-horned helm. Green eyes smoldered from the grime and gore; no sign of defeat, their fires hot and defiant, even before the dousing flood of defeat.