In the Company of Ogres (40 page)
“Just be careful, Frank.”
He smiled down at her. “I was wondering, Archmajor. I don’t know if you’d be interested or not, but do you want to maybe get a drink after all this is over?”
The charge of the swarm drowned out her reply. In one instant the air was thick with demons, an unholy fog of screams and claws and blades. The horde came in many forms. Small imps more annoying than dangerous. Great warriors astride monstrous mounts. Some were armed with swords or whips or spears. Others were armed only with their gnashing teeth and slashing talons. But every demon, in all their infinite variety, shared one thing in common with Ogre Company.
They were spoiling for this fight.
Frank and Regina fought side by side. The ogre swung his club in wide, sweeping arcs that swatted demons from the air. Regina’s spear slashed with brutal efficiency, slicing down scores of opponents. Within moments, the formidable pair stood on a small hill of dead demons. A fat underworld warrior jumped on Frank’s shoulder and bit into his flesh. The jagged fangs drew blood, and Frank couldn’t reach up to dislodge the beast. Regina speared it. The demon fell away, taking her spear with it.
It was far too loud to hear anything except the roar of battle. Frank nodded appreciatively to Regina. She drew her sword, nodded back. And before turning to face a new wave of attackers, she did something he’d never seen her do: she smiled.
He’d seen her smile before. But not like that. Not at him. Like maybe it meant something.
Regina neatly beheaded three demons with one stroke. She continued the motion effortlessly to stab a fourth stealing up behind her. Screaming, she hurled herself fearlessly into another cluster. They could’ve torn her to bits, except it was the last thing they were expecting. Before they could gather their wits, she’d already killed them. The blood of demons, a vibrant paint of deep reds, thick yellows, chunky greens, and shiny purples, stained her beautiful armor and even more beautiful face.
It was then that Frank knew he loved her.
A pair of demons, foolishly thinking the smitten ogre had dropped his guard, found themselves crushed beneath his club. A winged enemy swooped in to strike Regina from behind. Frank seized its wings, plucked it from the air, and squeezed its skull until three of its four eyes burst. Regina nodded to him. And it was his turn to smile.
A giant beast, like an ape made of equal parts mud and discarded fish guts, lumbered forward as its rider prodded it with a trident. Regina and Frank raised their weapons and, screaming as one, charged.
The skirmish raged throughout Copper Citadel. Elmer battled with suicidal abandon against a gang of flaming gremlins. He would’ve been scorched to ash save for Ulga’s quick thinking. She conjured a personal stormcloud over his head. It poured torrential rains, but even a wet treefolk wasn’t completely fireproof. Most of his leaves smoldered, and bits of him smoked.
Ulga threw bolt after bolt of conjured lightning, blasting demons into blackened corpses. One or two bolts went astray and killed a few of her fellows. But friendly fire was to be expected in a battle of this chaotic nature, and most of the soldiers were either elves or goblins, generally considered expendable.
Sally’s fiery nature was ineffective against most of the enemy host, and she relied instead on claws, teeth, and sword. But whenever an ice demon presented itself, she’d melt it with a fireball. Steaming puddles covered the ground around her before the frosty creatures learned to steer clear of her.
A half dozen of the company’s strongest ogres encircled Miriam, compelled to protect her. She couldn’t control the effect, couldn’t switch off her innate siren’s aura. She wanted to soak her sword in demon blood, but few demons were able to get within her reach. She had to settle for unleashing her enchanted song in tightly knotted notes that disintegrated enemies in small bunches.
Seamus had strained his shapeshifting abilities to their maximum. He’d become a huge lumbering minotaur, three times the size of an ogre. He swept his fists from side to side, batting aside his foes. He crushed others beneath his hooves and gored them with his horns. Swords and spears pierced his flesh, and green goblin blood dripped from the wounds. But he kept charging.
Ace and his squad of rocs soared through the darkened skies. The birds’ talons shredded demons while they slurped down others. Soon, their appetites sated, the groggy rocs ground their opponents in their beaks before spitting them out. Hundreds of clinging goblins formed a crawling, living armor on the rocs, and the demons had a hell of a time getting to the vulnerable, reptilian flesh beneath. And when they tried, three or four goblins would leap from the roc. The boarders gleefully cheered as they and their unwilling ride plunged fatally to the earth. Several of the rocs lost their pilots, yet they carried on slaughtering whatever annoyed them, mostly demons. But two rocs did start tearing into each other amid the confusion. Great winged stags soared forth, spitting fire and roaring like lions. Ace, grinning, whipped the reins and led the squad forward.
Soldier for soldier, the army of the damned was little match for Ogre Company. There were few demons large enough to tackle an ogre, and fewer still who could take the physical punishment that an ogre could withstand. Ogres battled with broken bones and shattered jaws and half their blood pouring from vicious gashes. Some would die soon. Many were mortally wounded, but simply too stubborn to die until the battle was over.
The other species held up almost as well. As a matter of pride, the orcs were determined not to fall before the last ogre, and the humans were a tenaciously difficult breed to exterminate despite their lack of any particular strength or talent. The trolls weren’t very dangerous, but anything short of beheading just slowed them down. More than one demon dashed about the battlefield with a limbless troll clamped to its throat, butt, or some other conveniently dangly bit. The goblins perished in droves, but at a rate of twenty goblins to one demon, that was a losing proposition for the underworld minions. Even the elves made a decent show of themselves. They died quickly, but demons loved the taste of elven flesh. Few demons possessed the will to keep their full attention on the fight while a flavorsome corpse lay nearby, and many a demon died with a mouthful of elf after turning its back on an opponent.
But the horde kept coming, pouring from every window and gate of the Iron Fortress. An unlimited supply of soldiers was at Rucka’s command. The fortress itself was a portal to the underworld, and whenever a demon died, its body soon dissolved as it returned there fresh and renewed and ready to rise from the bowels of the Iron Fortress to continue the relentless assault on Copper Citadel.
Rucka’s victory was inevitable. The Emperor of the Ten Thousand Hells stood in his throne room, gazing down at the endless stream of demons washing over the besieged citadel in the distance.
And he waited.
Ned hated waiting. While the battle raged noisily above, he sat there in the cellar with Martin and Lewis, Owens, and the faintly glowing speaking staff.
It seemed like he’d been waiting his whole life. Waiting to die. Waiting to not die. Waiting for his time in Brute’s Legion to end. Waiting for his fate to be decided by everyone but him. But worse than the waiting was the knowing.
He knew it was all pointless. Ogre Company was formidable. Even without proper discipline and adequate armaments, these were dangerous soldiers. It was why the Legion had been reluctant to dismiss them. And Ned could imagine them to be one of the greatest arms of the Legion. With the right leader. Too bad he wasn’t that leader. Too bad they were all about to be senselessly slaughtered. Too bad Rucka was going to wake the Mad Void. Too bad everything was going to end.
Just too bad.
Ned glanced to the trapdoor, expecting it to fly open and a tide of demons to come sweeping down and fill the cellar. They didn’t, but they would. In ten minutes. Or twenty. Or half an hour. Maybe longer. But sooner or later.
He wished he could do something.
His bad left arm tightened its grip on the speaking staff. The staff glowed brighter. Martin and Lewis said nothing, but they did take a step back. Even Owens seemed to sense something and stood a little farther away than before.
“Why are you glowing?” Ned asked.
“I’m not glowing,” replied the staff.
“Yes, you are.” Ned shook it. “Don’t you know why?”
“I’m not glowing. If there is light coming from me, then I’m not the origin of it.”
“But you’re still glowing,” said Ned. “What does that mean?”
“Must mean there’s magic running through me.”
“The Red Woman,” Ned hoped aloud. She wasn’t dead. She’d just gone off to gather her power. She was coming back with an army of gods or angels or something like that to wipe out the underworld horde.
Ned slouched. He had to stop hoping for miracles. They weren’t coming.
All that power inside him, and he was helpless.
The veins on Ned’s bad arm throbbed. The flesh reddened and cracked. The staff itself changed to match the shade and texture so that it was indistinguishable from his hand. It glowed brighter still. And somewhere inside him, the Mad Void rumbled. The sound filled the cellar.
“Sir, are you okay?” asked Lewis.
Ned nodded, but he felt it coming. Rucka’s magic must’ve awoken the Void after all. It was just slow to rise. He swallowed it down, even as an inner voice told him to let it out. It was the only way to stop the demons, the only way to save himself and the company. If he just let it out a little, if he just opened that inner cage the smallest crack. It wouldn’t take much. The Mad Void could obliterate Rucka and his minions without a second thought.
Ned would never get it back in. It would destroy the universe.
And if he didn’t, Rucka would let it out, and the universe would be destroyed anyway.
Something pounded on the trapdoor. The ogre twins positioned themselves at the bottom of the stairs.
“You’d better hide yourselves, gentlemen,” said Martin.
“We’ll handle this,” said Lewis.
Owens drew his sword and used it to feel along the floor to stand beside the twins. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather die not hiding.”
“Glad to have you by our side, sir,” said Martin.
The trapdoor splintered inward, and shining eyes gazed inside.
Either way, Ned was going to die. Either way, the universe was dying with him. Ned was tired of waiting. He was tired of hiding. He was tired of being Ned.
The door shattered. Demons rushed in. Martin, Lewis, and Owens raised their weapons to make their final stand. The twins clubbed two demons, and the blind man managed through sheer luck to stab a third in its throat. But the rest overwhelmed them and were an instant from tearing them to pieces.
Ned held out his staff. Red bolts blasted from its tip to strike every demon in the cellar. They disintegrated in a flash, not just slain but obliterated. Wiped from reality into utter, irreversible nothingness, denied the endless return from the underworld.
“What happened?” asked Owens. “What’s going on?”
The twins didn’t answer. They saw in Never Dead Ned something they had never seen before. Something no creature in a thousand other devastated universes had ever seen and lived to tell. It wasn’t an obvious transformation. Other than his bad arm going from gangrenous to blood red and the shining staff in its hand, he still looked like Ned.
But he wasn’t Ned.
Silently, the thing that had been Never Dead Ned passed Owens and the twins without acknowledging their presence. It ascended the stairs. Demons started screaming.
Thirty-one
DEMONS COVERED THE citadel, and Frank knew this was a fight Ogre Company could not win. He’d never been one for heroic last stands. When the odds were impossible and victory unachievable, there was nothing wrong with a strategic retreat. That wasn’t a choice.
The more improbable the chances of survival, the more determined Regina became. She moved like a slaughtering whirlwind, with a broken sword in one hand and a demon’s jawbone in the other. Frank could easily envision her as the last soldier of Ogre Company standing atop a mountain of demon corpses. The battle lust seized her, and she was both horrifying and dazzling at the same time. She smiled and laughed as she killed and killed and killed until only the strongest, most fearsome demons dared engage her. The rest gave her a wide berth.
The signs of imminent defeat were everywhere. Piles of demons covered the soldiers so thickly as to smother the most stubborn warrior. Roc screams filled the sky above as strange underworld beasts finally began wounding the birds enough to knock them from the sky. Four of the great birds littered the citadel, having crushed warriors beneath their stiffening corpses. There seemed now as many demons as goblins. Perhaps more.
The company hadn’t given up quite yet. Sally and Elmer fought side by side. The wet treefolk smoldered beside the salamander. Miriam, having drained all the enchantment from her voice, now relied solely on her sword and her ability to inspire. The soldiers fighting at her command felled demons with supernatural fury. Ward fought with incredible zeal, and the vulture perched on his shoulder squawked but refused to abandon its master.
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