Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms) (68 page)

Then we were falling and Janela was gripping my hand tighter and tighter as we fell.

We fell so far I thought we’d never stop.

I stood on a great plain ringed by mountains that belched fire into a sky spattered with dark clouds against a red sunset. Behind me gaped cave mouths and somehow I knew I’d come from them, not fallen from the sky as my mind had foolishly told me.

I wore a rough fur tunic that fell below my knees and there was a crude rope of dried vines around my waist, a dagger laboriously chipped from flint stuck in it. I carried a club that had a jagged shard of obsidian buried in it.

Around me were men and women, more than one hundred and fifty of them, dressed much like I was and armed with clubs or thrusting spears topped with flint or jagged rock. They stood in ranks, expecting battle. I recognized them — there was Pip, Otavi, Towra, Beran, all
four
Cyralian brothers and the others who’d sailed from Orissa with me. The others were the Tyrenian soldiers we’d trained, among them their generals, Emerle and Thrade — the sacrifice Ba’land had demanded. I looked about and didn’t see Prince Solaros — for some reason he hadn’t been carried into this world with us.

Quatervals stood in front of me and not far behind him in the crowd was Kele.

“They caught you,” I sorrowed. “Now Hermias will know nothing.”

“No,” Quatervals said. “We are far down the road now, not far from that haunted village.”

“Then—”

“We are, we shall be, where we are needed... when we are needed.”

Before I could ask another question the drums began. To one side of my small army danced half a dozen chanting shamans, Tobray the loudest of the chanters. To their fore was Janela, naked, her hair swirling as she danced, her arms moving in wild supplication. I felt lust and my member stiffened, then anger gripped me as the drums grew louder and across the plain the demon army moved against us... against our homes.

At their fore was the demon king I’d known as Ba’land. I screamed rage and we charged forward, running down the slopes to meet them, our bare feet not feeling the sharp rocks.

As we charged the demons also broke into a run and our armies crashed together. Then there was nothing but a melee of cutting and slashing, the demons’ talons and fangs ripping at us. I saw Otavi smash one monster’s head away and the monster keened pain through the ruins of his throat and fell, ichor pouring. Another horror, this with four arms and armed with scythe-like claws slashed, cutting Otavi’s arm off. Bellowing laughter my former stableman sprayed blood from the stump of his arm into the demon’s face, blinding him, then stove in the creature’s chest before he died.

Pip dueled with an equally small monster, bowlegged, squat like a toad; then they staggered together and went down, daggers buried in each others’ bodies.

There was a creature in front of me with the face of a tiger, but surrounded by tentacles. A long-clawed forearm whipped at me and I smashed my club into his throat, pulling it free as it went down.

It was a mass of killers and killed, a heaving, groaning throng that swayed back and forth, the rocks under our feet slippery with gore and what strange and many-colored fluids the demons had running through their body.

As I fought on, trying to stay alive, trying not to notice when I was cut here, torn there, my eyes scanned the battle, looking for Ba’land. I saw him surrounded by his demon nobles and fought my way through the mass toward him.

There were shouts from behind me to follow, to help, to bring down the demon king and I was at the point of a spearhead.

But as we forced our way forward, all changed about us. I don’t know quite how to put it but it was if direction changed at will, so suddenly I would be alone on this plain, then surrounded by my foes, then by my own forces. Now I’d be striding forward toward Ba’land, then my steps were taking me back, back toward our caves.

I shouted in rage, helpless against the spell the demon king was sending against us, and then I heard Janela’s steady chant, a long rhythm in a language I did not know, but it sent new blood and energy rushing through me and I knew how to travel in this strange world, stepping now forward, now back and then Ba’land was not ten feet in front of me, waiting, his talons scraping the rock. I started for him, then heard screams and had a moment to glance around.

The demons had swept around my comrades, almost encircling them, and there were shouts to me to fall back, we must run.

But their deaths, my death, meant nothing if I could slay Ba’land. Then he was no longer in front of me, but far, far away, standing atop a boulder, shrieking in joy.

The bloodroar and -lust left me and sense returned and I was shouting orders, as was Towra. I knew Beran lay dead on the field, although I’d not seen her fall, and at my side was Quatervals, parrying a lunge from a horned monster and driving a spear through a gap in its carapace. It hissed agony, twisted and was dead.

“Back! Back! Flee!” came the cries and so we did, not falling back as an army did, but running, broken, defeated.

Janela stood in front of me, her eyes flaming.

“We’ll turn here,” I gasped, my lungs searing.

“No,” she shouted. “We cannot fight on! Not now! Not here!”

I turned and looked back and the demoniac army was coming up the slopes toward our caves, screaming in triumph at their victory, Ba’land at their head. He was taller, stronger than before, full-fed on the deaths of my friends.

I turned, to the hells with sense, they’d not desecrate our homes, bringing my club up for a last stand, Quatervals, blood pulsing from an ignored wound beside me, my ears deaf to Janela’s pleas and...

* * * *

... We were falling, falling, endlessly...

* * * *

It was a green and beautiful pasture, gentle rain seeping down from the skies. My horse nickered impatiently, scenting the battle to come.

I wore the uniform of an old-fashioned horse soldier, such as a cavalryman of the first Lycanthian War and a friend of my father, Paphos Karima Antero, might have worn: leather helm with a strip of steel from crown to nose with steel cheekplates, steel cuirass, breeches tucked into high boots that had steel sideplates against slashes. My horse was also armored, with an eerie helm over its head and eyes and leather skirts that hung below the saddle. I was armed with a saber hung on my saddle, a dagger and a long lance that a pennon floated from, a pennon matching the small one that trailed from my helmet’s crest.

But our dress while familiar in period was unlike anything I’ve ever seen, the cuirass worked with strange designs in unusual colors and the pennon above of no city I knew.

Beside me rode Janela, dressed much as I was but armed with a more slender sword. Flanking her were my captains, Towra, Beran, Kele and Quatervals.

Waiting impatiently, their horses sometimes dancing in eagerness, were the rest of my soldiers, Orissan and Tyrenian.

We were half-hidden by trees, looking down from this pasture at rolling meadows. Far across them the demon army was marching forward stolidly, moving in two great wings. Their cavalry was a ghastly array of demons mounted on strange beasts and other demons.

Closer to my right was the rest of our forces, infantry in two divisions, reinforced by war elephants and hunting cats.

Trumpets blared and drums thundered as the two armies closed on each other.

“This time we’ll have ’em,” Quatervals murmured.

Janela reached out her hand and I held it, without taking my eyes from the battlefield below, waiting for our moment.

“I love you,” she whispered and her words were heard by no one but me. Then she began a chant, almost as soft:

“You see nothing

You see naught

Naught but trees

Naught but grass

Nothing here is of hurt

Nothing here is of harm

Your foe waits

There

You need not look

You need not see.”

I chanced a glance at her and she grinned and shrugged: “Even folk medicine might help fog Ba’land’s eyes... even for a single moment.”

The two armies met below us — arrows reaching out to begin the battle and then the spear- and swordsmen clashed and the killing began once more.

I heard a mutter from Kele about now being the time but paid no attention, watching closely as first one side then the other held the advantage. I grinned as I saw — just as I ordered — our left wing retreat as if they were being beaten back. Back and back and I heard the demon shrieks of mastery, they’d broken us.

Now was the moment and I drew my sword rose high in my stirrups and shouted the charge. My cavalry stormed down from the heights full on the demons’ right flank.

I have never been a soldier but somehow the commands were known to me and fell easily from my lips:

“At the walk.... forward!”

“At the trot...”

“Couch... lances!”

More than one hundred and fifty steel fingers dropped down, each one promising death.

“At the gallop... CHARGE!”

They did not see us, did not sense us until we smashed into their flank, our long spears smashing into their ranks and screams and howls of pain and surprise shattered the heavens. I left my lance buried in the body of a two-headed fanged beast with scales and oozing slime, pulled my saber and we hewed on.

My mount shrilled agony and reared, pouring blood where a demon had slipped through and slashed its throat and I kicked free from the stirrups and slid back and away as my horse fell, kicking, crushing the monster that had slain it. I heard shouts: “Th’ Lord’s down... Lord Antero’s down...” and then Janela was beside me and I pulled myself up on the back of her steed and we plunged deeper into the throng, cutting, slashing, forcing our way to the center of the demon army to where Ba’land’s banners rose.

We were surrounded by the demons, some frantic to kill us, others equally eager to escape our bloody blades. But the press kept us alive — there wasn’t room enough for our enemies to close and destroy us and we kept moving, always moving, always closer to Ba’land.

He rose above me, now wearing the silks of a dandy under his half-armor. He was armed with a shortspear and dagger. He was no more than a dozen feet away, his standard-bearer beside him — an awful creature I could not bear to look at for longer than an instant.

Ba’land lunged at Janela and she ducked aside as I flung myself off her horse at him. Spearthrust... brushed away by my slashing saber, his dagger plunging at me and I knocked it aside, dancing away and cutting at him, blade whipping across his side, below his armor, and he howled and his blood — an awful black and green slime — gushed.

Ba’land bellowed and stumbled back and I slashed at his color-bearer, missed him, but slashed the halberd that carried the demon’s standard in half. Before the monster could recover it I had it in my free hand, held high and the demons screamed rage and fear.

Janela shouted and I turned and saw a demon had pulled himself up on her horse and had her throat in his claws, strangling, and her hand blurred back and forward, steel-toothed dagger burying itself in the monster and he fell away.

Ba’land was a few feet from me, waiting my attack, but as I advanced a swirl of battlers came between us and I lost him.

Janela was beside me and then others. I wiped blood from my eyes that ran down from a wound across my forehead and had a single instant to look about.

Around me were the surviving members of my band, no more than thirty men and women, all of them wounded. The demons boiled about us, shouting in glee that they had me trapped.

The rest of my army was far, far away, fighting desperately forward to rescue me.

Quatervals somehow had picked up my lance and buried its butt deep in the earth. The blood-soaked pennon atop it with the houseflag of the Anteros snapped in the wind. He grinned at me:

“Now they’ll have somethin’ to aim for.”

There was a phalanx of my war-elephants ripping through the mass not fifty yards distant from us but far, too far, as the demons charged forward once more, their blades singing our deathsongs.

But this time, I thought, this time I’d hurt Ba’land sore, perhaps a deathwound, and we’d hurt his army sore. If I died now, it mattered little if he went down with me.

I cut down a four-armed demon with a sword in each hand but little skill to use them, pivoted aside from a thrust and...

* * * *

We were falling, falling...

* * * *

Our ships rolled mightily as the swells bore in from the east so none of us, not the most experienced seaman, could stand alone. But none of us had mind for that, for we’d pinned the demon fleet against a long bank that crossed from horizon to horizon and we held the weather gauge thanks to Janela’s magic.

Their ships were huge and consisted of three types. The first and most impressive were great hulks that were almost round, low single-deckers were towed by smaller galleys. On these ships the demons had their war engines mounted and their soldiers waited in ranks, ready to board any vessel that came within reach. The other type was also large, tall three masters that towered far over our craft. They also had catapults, trebuchets and other engines on their decks. They wallowed mightily but showed little signs of being otherwise troubled by the building storm we had sent down on them nor were they aware they were being blown to certain doom on the banks unless they broke through us.