Blood and Fire

Shath rose in the dead of night, Ashari stirring beside him but not waking. The tent she traveled in was immense and hung with rich silks and golden ornaments, and he found it uncomfortable. She grunted and shifted in her sleep, moving into the warm place he had left behind. He left the pile of cushions and went out into the dark.

The camp spread out all around him, lit by thousands of fires. Realizing how vulnerable the ships were, Ashari had ordered them stripped and burned on the shore, and she and all her warriors and attendants followed as he marched inland. Together they were almost a quarter of a million people on the move, and twice as many animals. It was the greatest army Shath had ever seen or heard tell of. With Tathar’s eagles flying overhead and mounted scouts ranging far, he knew no enemy force could creep up on them unawares, and that very thought made him wary.

He drew his fur cloak around himself, took his sheathed sword from its hook and walked out into the dark. It made him feel good to have the old blade at his side again. Ancient, handed down from chief to chief, the invulnerable metal of the elder world unmarked by time, it had slain legions in its long years. It was like a friend returned to him.

No one questioned him, and he made his way to the dark, silk-draped tent where Ellai maintained her reserve and her quiet. She still rode alone, veiled against the sun and revered by the Urugan who would die to protect her.

He entered without pausing, and she was awake, always at night. She sat behind her small fire and looked at him with her vast eyes, her white wings gathered close around her form like a cloak. She stirred the coals and watched him as he seated himself. “Do you tire of sport with the last of the Shedim?” she said, somewhat mocking.

“Speak not ill of her,” he said. “She is our ally.”

“Not friend?” she asked, arching a brow.

“I cannot say that for certain yet. I have had no friends in my life, save you.” He put his iron fingers in the flame and almost believed he could feel it crawl like snakes between his knuckles. “I am restless enough.”

“You fear what you cannot see,” Ellai said, folding her small fingers together.

“Kurux would be a fool to let us come so close unless he was prepared. I do not know what he plans, and it worries me. I have scouts all around, and he could never come close without being seen, so what gambit shall he choose?” He rubbed his smoking fingers together. “A warrior I could predict, but he is a sorcerer, and so I do not know what to expect.”

“Indeed, and that is the very thing,” Ellai said. “You say that, and yet you think on him as though he were a warrior – planning an ambush or a flanking maneuver. You anticipate what you would do, and so you do not see his mind.”

“And do you?” he said. “You swore his power masked away your sight, so your visions cannot guide me.”

“It is so,” she said. “But I can gain . . . glimpses, and his power does not make either of us fools.” She shifted her wings around herself. “He sent the sea beast and the flying things without riders.”

“Yes,” Shath said. “It tells me he could not send more, and that he did not have enough riders for so many beasts.”

“Indeed, he must have known it would not stop you. He could, perhaps, hope to damage the fleet, inflict some wounds upon the army, but not stop you. He sent what he had to hand to do that, and no more. What do you see in that?” She steepled her fingers together under her chin.

“I see that he could send no more. He wanted to slow us, and to gather his strength for a greater attack to come.” He sighed. There were no answers to be found here.

“Also, see that he is not subtle.” She looked into the smoldering fire. “He could have caused more delay with less, but he sent for a monster to try and frighten you, to make you hesitate. It was meant as an arrogant display of strength.” She looked up at the rising smoke, and her dark eyes looked very, very wide. “You think of him as a war-leader, but he is not.”

“Speak your meaning,” he said, growing annoyed.

She smiled at his gruff tone. This was a game they had played often over the years. “He gathers strength, yes, but he will not try a gambit or a stratagem. He will come at you directly, meaning to face strength with strength and destroy you. Remember he defeated you once, and he will wish to show his mastery again. He will wish to stage a pitched battle, all your power against all he can summon. That will be his only stratagem.”

Shath was silent for a long moment, and then he nodded. “Yes, I can see the truth of that. He was never schooled in war, has never led men in battle or lifted a sword in his own hand. He will stretch forth his power against me, for he believes it to be greater than mine.”

“And he may be right,” she said. “He will call up all the abominations he has created in the years of his rule. He will empty his barracks and fortresses, he will send forth everything he has, and together it may well be greater than what you can hope to oppose.”

Shath flexed his iron hand. “I have strength he does not know.”

“Yes, but you must be careful how you use it,” Ellai said. “I know what the others do not – that you cannot call again too swiftly upon the sky sword. Once you strike a blow with it, you must wait for it to grow powerful again. If you smite him too soon, you may wish for another before it is ready.” She shook back her pale hair. “Be the warmaster he is not. You know battle, you know strategy and warfare as he has never learned them. Do not make the mistake of matching strength against strength. He may be arrogant and careless. You must not be.”

o0o

Tathar flew out at first light, launching his flight of three riders from the cliffs that rose above the army below. After so many years on his own, with people who were now close as kin to him, he was once more among an army led by a great leader, and he felt both less than he had been and echoes of past glories rising up within him like memory. Once he had been a Skylord, and he was remembering what that had truly been. The others who followed him had never served any empire, and they did not understand what stirred inside him – they could not.

Today they flew ahead, leaving the massed columns behind them. He saw the riders gathering in the vanguard, the foot soldiers drawing the war machines behind them. Shath had spoken to him before dawn, telling him the great battle would come today, and he had no reason to doubt the truth of that. He had felt what all of them had felt. That sleepless, endless malevolence just beyond the horizon. Gathering, growing, readying for a single, terrible blow.

Tathar yearned for it as well as feared it. For years he had been readying himself – even if not with an awareness of it – for a confrontation with the emperor and the unclean powers he had gathered behind him. It still gnawed at his conscience that he had flown and fought and served under a tyrant who profaned the very throne with his presence. Deeds done in the name of evil stained the honor he still clung to.

The land spread out before them, scattered woodlands in among rolling hills, a sliver river snaking through the green. Looking down through the tatters of cloud, he saw small villages, the roads between them dotted with people fleeing the war that came. It pained him to see it – that people would have to flee from them, but he knew it would be safer for them away from what was to come. Kurux would not curb himself to keep from harming them, and they could not. They must fight with all the strength at their command.

He had known he would see it soon, for they were well within the borders of the old empire as he had known them, but the sight of the ancient city still took his breath from him in the slanting dawn light. It had no name, this place, for it had been abandoned since the elder days. The remnants of buildings jutted up from the thick green forest that grew all over the ruins, and he saw the metal beams choked by vines, the hard edges blurred by moss and corrosion.

The river bent here, and there was a wide swath of the city that was flooded, making for a heavy, scum-laden mere that glinted dully in the light. He knew none but outlaws or other desperate men would dwell in the ruins, for the earth there was poisoned, and even scraps of metal taken away would cause sickness and death. Unclean forms of life haunted the waterways and the dark caverns within the ancient wreckage, and the land downstream was empty of humanity, for the water killed crops and killed animals as well as men.

The land beyond the city was dark with low-lying clouds, and he narrowed his eyes, trying to see through the cover. It made him uneasy, and he lifted his lance and signaled to his outriders to fly higher in his wake and be watchful. The clouds seemed unusually heavy and dark, curling around the ruined towers and flowing through the desolate streets, drifting over the flooded lowlands.

Zakai gave an angry scream, and then he saw the movement beyond the ruined city. The very earth seemed to crawl as though it were covered in a plague of insects. He flew higher and looked down to where the clouds thinned, and there in the dawn light he saw the imperial army.

It darkened the earth as far as he could see. Thousands upon thousands of foot soldiers and riders in vast battle formations, war towers and giants marching among them. Smoke rose from a thousand engines of destruction, and in the rear he beheld no fewer than three of the sea-beasts, hundreds of winged monstrosities clinging to their sides like parasites.

Looking down, he saw that the advance guard had already begun to move into the city itself, filling the vine-choked canyons with masses of soldiers, giants wading into the waters dragging floating causeways for the passage of lesser troops. The army of the emperor was on the move, and now he could hear the low thunder of it – the tread of hundreds of thousands of feet, perhaps as many as a million. Horns blew for battle, and he saw formations of Skylords circling up from below on their venomous beasts.

Grim-faced, he lifted his thunderlance and sent a bolt slashing up into the sky as he turned Zakai in a great, sweeping turn. He leaned low over the saddle and let the eagle into a shallow dive that gathered speed. He sent another bolt on high, and another. He did not care that the enemy would see it, they could not catch him in time. It was to send a signal back to the army awaiting it. To let Shath and Ashari know that the day had come, and all the power at the command of the emperor was gathered to oppose them. When the sun set on this day, the great battle of the age would have been fought, and legions of the slain would lie beneath the diamond stars.

o0o

Shath mounted his war-steed and rode out with his warriors. The Urugan chanted their war-songs and cut their arms with their own blades so the blood marked the steel. Gathered with him they were feral with the lust for battle, and each of them seemed to tremble like an arrow drawn and awaiting the moment to strike.

He looked up and saw there the small specks where Tathar flew with his war eagles. He hoped the tribe he had trained was equal to the task that was before them today. He knew they would be outnumbered by the imperial Skylords, and he had to hope they could hold them back. He had to draw the enemy out, force them to commit their forces and strike while they were extended. He longed to simply call on the war gods and charge into the teeth of his foe, but Ellai was right. He did not have that freedom. His was the wisdom of battle, and he must use it.

The enemy had drawn up in the waters of the marsh that lay before the ruined city, rank upon rank with heavy armor and keen spears. In among them were giants who loomed over their lesser brethren, carrying great hammers and mauls spiked with cruel iron points. A heavy haze of mist hung over the spires and bones of the ancient city, and he knew it was conjured, and deliberate.

He could see, in his mind, how the battle was meant to unfold. The enemy infantry were placed in an unassailable position, with water waist-deep to prevent a charge. If he sent in his mounted troops they would founder and be cut apart, and if he sent in his foot the same would happen. Once they were entangled, the Skylords would swoop down and begin decimating them with strokes of lightning. The river blocked any easy way around for his mounted warriors, so any attempt to flank the enemy position would be slow and easy to see. And also, at the limits of his senses, he felt the brush of the inhuman, monstrous brains Kurux had bred to control his soldiers and anyone else who came in range.

So his enemy hoped he would attack head-on and be bogged down in the marshy waters, caught and ground up by the foot soldiers while giants split his lines open and the dead mind took control of his men. Then, even if he managed to force his way through, the enemy had some great attack held in reserve. The sea beasts loomed behind the lines, but he did not think it was them alone. He yearned to loose the sky sword and obliterate the ruined city at a stroke, but he felt sure he must save it for the moment it was needed.

He lifted his ancient sword, the red sun glowing on the edge of the steel, and he gave the command that sent a hundred thousand Urugan savaged into motion, howling for battle. He heard another roar and looked to his left, saw Ashari riding on her towering dragon-beast, fire drooling from its jaws. She lifted her glittering lance and he saluted in answer. Now he would find if he was equal to the task he demanded for himself.

The earth shook as they thundered toward the edge of the water, and then his lines shifted behind him as his warriors formed a wedge with Shath himself at the very tip. He would not strike along a broad front against superior numbers, he would strike a single point and split their formation apart. Ashari drew aside and waited at the water’s edge, her mind reaching out to seize and battle the enemy’s unseen power. Shath’s reptilian steed plunged into the water, and he smote the enemy line like the stroke of an axe.

They held a tight formation, shield to shield, to blunt the charge, but it did not blunt his. He smashed through the ranks, scything his deathless sword down in arcs driven by his iron arm, hewing through shields and armor and flesh. He breached the first line, and the second, and then the third, his Urugan ravening after him. They forced the gap wider with steel and fury, leaving the waters red with blood in their wake.

A giant waded into them, smashing down warriors with a great hammer while hurled spears sank into its flesh. Shath rode it down, trampling soldiers that rose up in his way, and he rode under a sweep of the hammer to cut the thing across the belly, spilling out a flood of entrails. The giant fell into the water, fouling it and thrashing as it died.

He felt the power of the controlling mind reaching out, trying to control him, trying to panic his men, but it was weak, and he did not know if that was his own strength refusing it, or Ashari keeping it at bay. He saw ahead of him, through the mist and smoke of battle, the great wagons drawn up in the ruined city square, and he knew the mind was there, almost within reach. When he saw it, Ashari knew it, and then she sent the awareness hurtling upward to touch the mind of Tathar waiting on high. Shath looked up and saw the flight of eagles fold their wings and dive, and then he bent himself once again to slaughter.

o0o

Tathar did not know what to expect, but then he felt a touch in his mind like a feather, and it seemed he smelled Ashari’s strange perfume, and then the knowledge of where the mind was fixed itself in his brain as though he had seen it himself. He lifted his lance and pointed downward, and then Zakai folded his wings and the rest of his riders followed as they plummeted downward, the wind screaming past them.

They punched through layers of mist, shredding the veil of smoke and cloud, hurtling downward to the earth, and then they were close enough and Zakai flared his wings and swooped upward over the iron towers of the ancient city. Tathar could not see what he sought through the mist, but he knew where it was, and he lifted his lance and struck.

A blade of blue lightning lashed down from his lance, followed by another twenty as his followers struck a moment after he did. Fire raked the street below and ravaged it, tearing up the ancient stone, flashing the water into steam, incinerating the vines and creepers that covered everything. Arcs of light snapped and danced in between the iron spars that jutted from the fallen towers, and the echoes of thunder resounded across the sky. Smoke boiled up, smelling of hot steel and seared meat.

Tathar rode through pillars of smoke and the stench of destruction, and he looked below and hoped they had struck what they aimed for. Again came the feather-touch upon his mind, and he knew the blow had struck true. He pointed his lance upward and Zakai arced up, gaining height among the columns of black smoke, and his riders followed in his wake. He looked up, and he saw the sky darken with leather wings.

#

Ashari felt the mind break and vanish as the lightning from above scoured the earth, and she hurled her own inner power outward against the enemy. Already the serried ranks of footmen and giants had begun to waver and break apart as the power that held them in thrall was taken away. She sensed confusion and fear, and she gritted her teeth and strained her mind to the limits to stoke those coals into a raging blaze.

The enemy army began to roil, and Shath still drove into it, driving himself like the point of a spear through the center of the formation, his riders howling their bloodlust as they killed and killed with axe and sword and spear. Shath himself blazed in her mind’s awareness like a fire, crowned with burning halos of ancient runes and maps of the stars. The power that flowed in him was drawn from ancient wells, and she did not understand it, but she could see it around him like an armor made of light. He killed and killed, tireless and fearless. An engine of war in flesh.

Now she shoved against the massed minds of the foe and she felt their weak wills snap and crumble, and they gave back, losing the courage that had been forced into them. Now she knew the time to strike, and she drew her awareness back into herself long enough to give the command. Her dragon roared his fury and then her army marched out, wading into the bloodied waters.

They loosed arrows in clouds that fell upon the failing enemy and reaped them down. They choked the waters with dead even before they came to grips, and when they did the foe was everywhere overcome and thrown back. Spears made a wall of bloody steel, and the front lines of the imperial army shattered. Ashari rode in the vanguard, her dragon spitting fire as she reached ahead with her mind, feeling for the threat she knew must come. Kurux would not have prepared such a trap without a deadly barb to spring – now she awaited it.

#

Shath felt the resistance before him crumble and then he was through, charging up from the water onto dry land, the wide street ahead of him scattered with fire and seared black by the scourging of the Skylords above. The great wagon that had borne the unliving mind was a shattered ruin boiling smoke, and the way lay open before him. He knew Ashari was behind him, leading her foot soldiers on the flanks to drive the enemy back as they dissolved. It was the weakness of the imperial legions. Without the power enslaving their minds to keep them under control, they broke and fled.

He rode down the fire-scarred avenue and burst into the central square, ringed in on all sides by leaning, slumped ruins, everything covered with growing vines and hanging moss. The remains of the enemy fled at his approach, and he held up his blood-dripping blade and howled his defiance at their backs. He beckoned his riders and they began to form back into their ranks, chanting their war-shouts to keep order as they gathered and readied for the second part of the attack. Now they had to push through the city and meet the second line of resistance on the far side, and he knew it would be far stronger.

He heard thunder and looked up, saw lightning slashing in the heavy-clouded sky, and he knew Tathar was even now facing his supreme test. Tasked with keeping the enemy Skylords from striking at the ground armies, he must face overwhelming numbers with nothing but skill and courage. Shath saluted him, hoping he survived. The eagle-rider was a brave man, an honorable man despite everything.

Then the ground shook under his feet, and his steed screamed and tossed its head. The riders in his wake fought to control their animals as the tremors became more violent, and cracks raced across the ground. Ancient towers that had endured from an age of war unremembered groaned and shifted, beginning to crumble.

“Back, get back!” Shath waved his sword, sending his riders milling uncertainly back the way they had come. The earth stirred under his feet, and he knew that now the stroke of the enemy was coming. This was Kurux’s killing stroke, so long awaited. Shath gathered himself, swung down from his steed and sent it screaming away. He stood alone in the center of the ancient, poisoned city and gripped his sword in his iron hand. Let it come now, let it be as had been foretold.

o0o

Tathar led his riders into the teeth of the enemy. He saw dozens of beasts descending toward him, and on each one rode an armored warrior brandishing high a sparking lance lacing the sky with red lightning. There were forty or more, fifty, many times the force the old Skylords had commanded. That, he knew, was his great hope bound in trails of fire.

For they could not have been trained any longer than his own riders, and under the power of the emperor, with free minds broken and enslaved, that training would not have been enough. Kurux had gained a new source of mounts, and he had gathered as many lances as he could, but he was subject to the same limits as the Skylords of old – it took time to train a rider and time to master the lance, and the art of making the ancient weapons was long-lost.

He held up his lance, and his riders spread out in a pattern around him. He had spent weeks training them in a battle tactic that had been known in the old times but had not been used for centuries. The Skylords had gone too long without facing an airborne enemy, and so they had lost their skills, but Tathar had been their leader, and he had studied the histories, and now he would see them come to fruition.

The eagles fought upward, wings slashing the clouds, and he judged distance, and then he sent a forked bolt of lightning reaching out. The ends touched the tips of two other lances, and they in turn sent the power arcing to the next, and then the next, until the entire wing was covered and surrounded by a web of crackling, hissing stormfire like a net stretched between them from lance to lance.

The enemy loosed their own barrage of lightning, and the lashes of it snaked down and tangled in the web, adding to its strength until it glowed and smoked in the air and the eagle riders clung to their shivering, moaning weapons. The two masses of riders drew closer, met and then the beast riders found themselves surrounded by death, the bolts of blue fire searing away their mount’s wings, bursting their skins and shattering the overloaded lances.

Tathar gave a great shout of victory as they rose through the enemy formation and saw it scattered and plummeting to the earth below in smoldering ruin. They let loose the web of fire and he saw the tip of his lance glowing white-hot, felt the heat of it baking against his armor. He looked down, through layers of mist and smoke, and he saw the city below him, a tangle of serpentine green and iron wreckage, and then at the center of it all, he saw the earth open up.

o0o

Shath saw the earth at the center of the city plaza drop away, plunging down into a depthless hole, and then something came to fill the void. Something glistening roiled in the blackness, and then a body heaved itself into the light of the red sun. Black as the gulf behind the stars and festooned with thousands of eyes, it rose up and up like a tentacle made of night. It curled and reared like a serpent ready to strike, and then it pointed down at him and the tip of it unfolded like an obscene flower and revealed a mouth with humanlike teeth surrounded by a mass of black tendrils studded with hooks.

The earth shook when it moved, and he wondered how much of it remained below, buried in the ground like a maggot in dead flesh. It gave a roar like something screaming to be released from ten thousand years of agony, and then it struck down at him. He hurled himself aside as it gouged the earth and shattered a hole in the ancient road. It came up with a mouthful of earth and stone, grinding it all between those yellow teeth, and Shath looked up to see the Skylords scattering, leaving the sky open. He had to hope his men obeyed him and had drawn away, for now he had to strike.

He lifted took his sword in his left hand and raised his iron right fist. He clenched it and felt the blurring of unknown language through his mind. He saw the world as from high above it, turning and cut into dark and light, and here in the light there was a bright spot, and he called upon the power that had been given unto him.

The thing reared up again and faced him, and he felt a sudden, brutal assault upon his mind, an echo of the power that had once driven him to his knees and made him cut off his own sword hand. Now he was bowed but not broken, and he snarled as he bore up under the force that strove to snap his mind apart. He clenched his iron fist, and the thing roared at his defiance, and above it, high in the dark, a star flashed brighter.

It came down from the sky in a blaze of fire. Shath reeled away from it and threw himself down behind a buttress of fallen stone as the sky began to roar. The black worm turned from him slowly, seeming to not realize the source of the sound, and by the time it looked up it was too late for it to escape.

He heard it howl, and then the column of white fire struck with a sound like a hammer, and the world went white.

o0o

Ashari turned her dragon on the hilltop and looked back as the sky began to thunder. They had told her, but she had not quite believed it. Now she saw the power of Shath as the sky turned into fire and a white-hot bolt of death came down from above and smote the heart of the city. There was a silent flash, but then she saw the shockwave of the impact ripple over the city even as the ruins at the center were shattered into ashes. Metal boiled and the waters turned to steam, and then the sound of it reached her and flattened the grass. A thundering went on and on as she was buffeted by winds as at the heart of a storm, and red lightning reached down from the rising cloud of smoke and clawed at the earth.

When the glow died there was nothing but a glowing crater where the center of the ancient city had been, and a rising cloud of smoke and dust billowing out wider and wider the higher it rose. The Urugan cried out and beat their spears upon their shields and hid their faces from the terrible power of their god-chieftain, even as Ashari wondered how he could have survived such a cataclysm.

Still, she had work to do. She reached out her mind and gave her final command, sending her Horane riders up from their hidden place to the south to plunge into the remnants of the imperial army. There were still ranks of rider there beyond the city, hundreds of war machines, all of them ready to drive forward and attack anew, only now they would be afraid, and easy prey. She had sent her faithful riders far around to the south to cross the river, and now they would strike the final blow.

She looked up and saw the Skylords still aloft, and she sent them as well. Lightning from on high and fresh riders at the charge would scatter what remained of the Imperial armies. They had won this day, but it would not be the last battle they had to fight. Ashari tasted death on the wind, and it was good.

o0o

They found him on the third day. The night was coming, and the crated had grown cool enough for the Urugan to search it more thoroughly, and they dug through the earth seared to glass and found Shath buried beneath it, his sword still in his hand.

They pulled him from the earth and brought him to the tent where Ashari was encamped. His flesh was burned, but not as badly as she expected, and though he did not move or stir, his eyes were open, and she sensed his mind still within. She touched it, seeking a way to wake him, but she could find no purchase, no way to reach him.

It was full dark when the pale girl called Ellai came to the tent. She was wrapped in blue silks and escorted by worshipful Urugan berserkers. Her white wings moved slowly, lifting her so her feet barely seemed to touch the ground.

Ashari drew away and let her come close. She did not understand this pallid creature, but she respected that the winged one had powers she did not. Shath had traveled with her for many years, and she was close to him as a daughter. She bent down over him and put her fingers on his brow, and he took a great breath and came alive.

“Victory comes as the moment of decision approaches,” he said. “The unseen one gathers himself, but his logic is flowed, and will be overcome.” He touched Ellai. “I have wandered long out of mind and time,” he said.

“Not so long,” Ashari said. “Only three days.”

“Longer for me,” he said, sitting up. He rose, looked at the berserkers and nodded, and they went forth, howling with their gladness, carrying the word that the Iron-Handed yet lived. “I have lived through an age of the earth, watching, seeing, learning. I am more than I was.” He looked at Ashari. “We have driven him back, but the city must yet be taken. Only then will the ultimate enemy reveal itself.”

“You do not mean Kurux?” she said, though she knew what he meant. She remembered the terrible voice in the tower. The presence of something Other.

“No,” Shath said. “The emperor is but a pawn who does what he is bidden, but we shall call up the hidden one, and there shall be a great slaying.” He held up his iron hand and closed it slowly into a fist, light flickering behind his eyes, and outside the wind blew in voices like a thousand laments from a world long lost.