The Godlost Land (34 page)

The thrall was partly successful. The fury didn't sink her huge poisoned fangs into the soldier's neck. But the vipers on her head were another matter. They writhed and hissed, and every so often they lashed out, biting the man on his shoulders, back and the arms while he screamed in pain. In fact they bit anything they could reach. And everywhere they struck their little fangs raised great pustules. Pustules the size of duck eggs that were one of the tell tale signs of a fury attack.

The other people in the room winced as they saw them and tried to look away, not wanting to see them. That didn't please Terellion. They were weak. Too weak to really call themselves soldiers Terellion thought. But they were all that he had been able to hire. And he needed all of them. And he couldn't allow any of them to run away in fear. To give in to cowardice. Not when he had wars to fight. But then he knew that others were not like him. That they didn't have his strength of purpose. The will to do what needed to be done. Very few even recognised their weakness. They thought they were strong. In fact it was only the fury beside him who recognised that true strength within him.

But he didn't lambaste them for their weakness. As long as they stood there and watched even through averted eyes they would learn the lesson. They would witness the price of cowardice. In truth they already knew it. Everyone knew what was coming. The blisters would go black in a few hours. After that the skin would rot and fall off within a day, leaving gaping wounds of poisoned flesh behind. The man might survive, depending on how many times he got bitten and whether he got good care from the healers, but the scars would never go away and the pain would last a life time.

But he wasn't going to survive. The longer it went on, the more times he got bitten, the less chance he had.

Moments later the sounds coming from the man told Terellion that he was done. That the man had given his seed to the fury, and for a moment he thought he would actually survive to bed the next one. But the fury knew it too and she was angry about it. Furious. It was then that she finally broke free of her master's control. She bit him, sinking her huge fangs deep into his neck muscles and filled him with her venom.

The man screamed and stiffened, his neck and shoulder instantly swelling up. Blood started pouring down from the wound. The man tried to let out a scream, the pain and terror releasing him a little from Terellion's control. But after the first strangled noise all that came out of his mouth was an agonised gurgle.

Then the man stopped moving, his body completely rigid on top of her, though unfortunately for him he wasn't dead. Even with the massive dose of venom she'd given him, his death would take time. Perhaps only a few more minutes. But those minutes would be the worst few minutes any man could ever know.

Little by little the skin around his neck and shoulder blackened. The swelling grew in size until at some point the man no longer had either a neck or a shoulder. He just had a massive black swelling that enveloped them both. The man's breathing grew loud and laboured. The sound of wood scraping back and forth over stone. If the soldiers had turned him over Terellion knew, the man's face would also be black, his eyes and tongue with it. The signs of the fury's poison were always obvious. But the true pain came from the muscle contractions the venom caused, and even as he lay there dying, Terellion could see that every muscle in the man's body was rigid. He could no longer have screamed even if he wanted to.

But they didn't turn him over. Instead they left him there to die on top of her, while the fury hissed her displeasure at everyone. She was unhappy with what had happened and Terellion found that pleasing. He just couldn't wait until he had his immortality and could bed one or two of them himself. No. Make that one or two hundred. He would
not
limit himself.

Finally the man's suffering ended. The huge pustule on his back abruptly burst, spraying dark red ichor everywhere and causing the soldiers to gasp in horror. But it was the soldiers' reactions that upset Terellion.

They were trained soldiers! Mercenaries! They took coin to kill people! His coin! And they reacted to a little blood being spilled? That offended him. Terellion began to wonder if he had to get some better men. Real men. Ones who had actual spines.

Finally heard the man's last gurgle and watched him collapse completely and Terellion knew it was over. He also knew that many of the soldiers were still looking away. Wanting to look anywhere but at the dead man. And that wasn't good enough.

“Look at him!”

Terellion might have a body that was failing him in so many ways, but he could still bellow when he wanted to. He could still make himself heard. And he wanted to be heard. He wanted them to know his anger.

“This man was a coward. He ran away. He betrayed us all. He betrayed me. And now he's finally died the death he deserved.” He waved imperiously at the other soldiers. That was their cue to drag the dead man off the fury.

Naturally they pulled him away by his feet, not wanting to go anywhere near the fury's head or the gore covering him, and when he came free he collapsed to the floor, hitting it like a sack of flour. He hit with an almost liquid sound that told everyone that the flesh was already dissolving. A number of the soldiers flinched and again looked away when they heard it despite his commands. Many were looking pale. It was galling!

After that the soldiers dragged him away – still by his feet – leaving a trail of blackened gore behind on the nice clean stone tiles. Terellion didn't mind the mess though. He was enjoying himself far too much, apart from the annoyance of seeing his soldiers' weakness. And even as he enjoyed the spectacle he was wondering if his experiment would work. If the mating would yield results in time. The guards already knew to keep these three furies aside in the pens underneath his royal chambers after this was over. They knew he wanted to study them. Just to see if in the next few months any of them started showing the signs of conception.

He thought there was hope. The furies were at least partly human. And there were three of them and a dozen men. And if it didn't work this time there were always more men who needed execution. Maybe some prisoners too. Dryads from the war perhaps. And soon, if Tyche would finally favour him with her fortune, it would be his turn.

Terellion was already preparing for that wonderful day. He had kept Varrious' pet back from the hunt for the wild eyed barbarian. She was the most lovely of her sisters and so he had let another take her place with White Tail.

“Did you enjoy that my dear?”

He asked the fury beside him as she lay there, not expecting an answer. But he had enough of an answer in the fact that she was calm. Lying there, enjoying his attentions, as if what had happened was completely normal. Better than normal. It was what should be. What she was waiting for.

“You'll enjoy me more. I promise you that.” When it was finally his chance the world would not see him cringe! He would not turn away or run! He would embrace his destiny with joy! He would take her with the utmost ardour. Many times. And if she had been able to speak she would be begging him for more. As all sluts did. But then, he had always known that he was not like others. He had always been destined for greatness. He was a god in waiting, not some sad mortal in hiding. Not a cowardly soldier like the last man had been.

That was why the man had died he knew. The fury had sensed the weakness in him. She'd known the fear in him. The man had been unworthy of her. And she would not be ridden by an unworthy rider.

Eventually Terellion noticed that the room had become silent. Very silent. For a moment he wondered why. Why were the soldiers all standing around saying nothing and simply staring at him? Why did they seem to be accusing him of something?

And then he realised. They wanted more. It had only just begun. There were another eleven men to be tried.

“Inadequate. A coward to the end.” Terellion gave his verdict to the soldiers while he fondled the fury beside him.

“Bring out the next prisoner!” Terellion clapped his hands together with excitement as he gave the command and eagerly waited for the spectacle to unfold all over again. His heart was racing a little and his lips were dry as they hadn't been in far too long. By all the gods this was entertainment! A spectacle worthy of a king. It was too bad he didn't see the same enjoyment in the faces of the soldiers. Instead he saw only horror and disbelief. But then they weren't real men. Anyone could wear a uniform and carry a weapon. But it took a true man to dominate another.

And therein lay part of the reason his people were losing against the High Priestess and the dryads. They simply weren't real men. They weren't willing to truly commit themselves to the fight. In front of him now was the proof of their failures. If they weren't willing to watch while another performed what was the most basic of a man's functions then what were they? Children? Women?

It was that very weakness that had let the High Priestess hold the Rainbow Mountains for so long. She should have been dead long ago. But all his war masters had insisted that the army he sent to crush her and her worthless people had to be big. Fifty thousand at least. And it had taken far too long to amass an army of that size. Midland Heights would fall to her because of that. And because the accursed demon king had been so miserly with his beasts. It was almost as if Xin didn't have any more. Though really he knew the worthless creature was simply trying to drive a higher price for them. He wanted more lives.

Terellion would still win. His army now marching on the Rainbow Mountains would crush the pestilent High Priestess and her people. But it would take too long. It would cost too much. And it would continue to distract him from what truly mattered. Attaining immortality.

And now he knew looking around the throne room that he needed a new army. One composed of real men.
These miserable wretches would fail him if he let them. But he didn't have any others. He didn't have the coin to pay them. So these worms would have to do their jobs. Which meant he would have to motivate them with more of these matings. They had to learn the price of failure.

Really, he thought staring at the soldiers in disappointment, they should be thanking him. Those who were lucky enough to be able to give their seed. Those who watched too. This was what life was all about.

Chapter Twenty Four

Midland Heights crumbled more quickly than Erislee could ever have expected. Much more quickly. But then she was not an experienced soldier or tactician and all the advice she'd been given had talked about days or weeks of bombardment before the enemy would come out and face them – not eight hours. She gathered the war masters were just as surprised. But then they like her also had no true understanding of what life must have been like inside the huge walled city since the siege had begun or how desperate the inhabitants must have become. And that was the largest part of the reason the city fell. The thing that brought on the enemy's attack. It had little to do with their bombardment. Those inside the city simply had to get away from the chimera one way or another. And sending them out as battle fodder was one way to do that.

It was one thing to say that the people had surely been starving, and another thing entirely to understand what that truly meant. Especially in a city filled with unnatural, ravenous creatures. Still, she'd known it must have been bad. For weeks and months the people had been escaping. Jumping over the walls, tunnelling under them. Doing anything at all that they could to escape the beasts. And all of them were telling the same tale when they were stopped by their soldiers. They were fleeing not just because they were hungry or feared an attack, but because the chimera were hungry. Because if the people were starving so too were the beasts, and the beasts had plenty of food available to them walking around the city on two legs.

The thrall priests could not control them. Not completely. Not when they were in that condition. In fact they were getting eaten by their own beasts. And the pens were not well constructed. The city had relied on the thralls to keep the creatures from trying to escape as much as the bars. But that control was failing. All it took was a momentary lapse. A pen left open. A thrall too slow to close a gate. Simple wear and tear on the bars as the creatures constantly tested them.

And then every so often they would escape. Then one or more of the leonids would run wild. They would see some two legged food walking by and would give in to their basic nature. Soon after the bodies would litter the city. Everyone's bodies. They didn't discriminate, killing, civilians, and soldiers, priests and wizards. Anyone who was close enough. Each time – and it was growing ever more frequent – there would be panic in the streets, blood and gore everywhere, and people running. There would be battle in the streets as the soldiers tried to round up the beasts, and suffered their own losses doing so.

The harpies by contrast were fewer in number but smarter. They'd killed most of their masters some time back and now no one controlled them. No one even dared go near their pens. In essence they were free. Free and hunting. They would just abduct people in snatch and grab raids and take them away to consume in private. No one ever saw them coming. But they heard the screams and saw the victims snatched away.

The cerberi and the manticores were at least still penned. And as for the minotaurs, at least they didn't eat people. But as conditions became worse the minotaurs sensed the fear and smelled the blood. They felt trapped among creatures they didn't know. And they were hungry too. They wanted  their freedom. So while at first it had just been the leonids and the harpies running wild, soon they too were doing the same. Giving in to their fear and then doing what bulls did whenever they were frightened. Stampeding. Trampling anyone in their way as they tried to escape, goring many more.

And all the while the people were becoming more certain that the false temple couldn't protect them. The priests couldn't stop their chimera from running wild. And they didn't want to be trapped within the same stone walled city as them. Nor did the soldiers. Many of them were fleeing as well.

To add to the people's fear they also knew that Alenda Goldeneyes had fled the city. They didn't know where she'd gone or when. Only that she had vanished. They also didn't know that she was dead though that wouldn't have mattered to them. Once word had spread among the soldiers that their most powerful wizard had fled, that she had vanished in the night, the fear had grown. Especially when the only other wizard they had was Maynard the Mad. A wizard of fire they could put their faith behind. A wizard who spent much of his time babbling incomprehensibly, talking to people who weren't there, summoning endless cats and occasionally just screaming for no obvious reason was another matter.

So one by one and in small groups the people had been fleeing, and Erislee's soldiers had picked them up. Those who were simply civilians they fed and sent on their way. They were alive but there was little more that could be done for them. The soldiers abandoning their posts were captured and sent off to the prison camps that were being formed. They were mercenaries and would have to answer for their crimes. But in truth the soldiers didn't seem to mind. Many seemed happy to throw down their weapons and hold out their hands for the manacles. Anything was better than remaining inside the walled city with the beasts. The only ones who wouldn't dare flee were the wizards and the thralls. And of course their beast army.

By the time the bombardment of Midland Heights had begun Erislee would have imagined that fewer than thirty thousand remained inside. Thirty thousand in a city that had once been home to more than a hundred and fifty thousand. Of course most of those others had died long before the siege had begun. Lion's Crest might have suffered the most terrible of the attacks with almost everyone there killed, but none of the other cities had done well either.

When the false temple had come to the five kingdoms they had started with the assassinations – but they hadn't stopped there. Once the nobles, priests, the most powerful wizards, the leaders of the armies and anyone else who might cause them any problems had been killed, they'd moved on, enforcing their rule with the utmost brutality and people had been executed for the most minor of crimes. Erislee knew that that had really just been an excuse so that their lives could feed the demon king. Many more people had simply vanished without any trace. Midland Heights like all the other cities had been decimated long before they'd arrived.

It was a pity in a way she thought that they couldn't just stay there and watch the city fall apart by itself. It would have been safer. But that could have taken a year or more. And all the while they waited the people inside would continue to starve and the chimera would continue to break loose every so often.  But the city wouldn't collapse completely until there was no more food at all. Until the last of the thirty thousand people living there had been consumed. Then the tens of thousands of chimera would come out and fight. The surviving soldiers, wizards and priests would come with them. Because they would know that to stay was to die. And those were the ones who would survive longest in a city filled with hungry beasts. The ones who could defend themselves.

In a way she knew that by bombarding the city, they were actually saving the civilians. At least some of them. But that wasn't why they had started the bombardment. It was that they couldn't leave an enemy army behind them as they advanced throughout the rest of the five kingdoms. They could not leave an enemy there ready to attack them from behind at any time. And they couldn't leave their own soldiers there to watch over them until the city destroyed itself from within. They had always had to attack.

So the previous day Erislee had had all the war machines and the last of their soldiers head up from Cut Valley Holding to prepare for the battle, unseen by the enemy. And at first light, with their army at full strength Erislee had given the order and the war machines had sprung into action. A hundred and some trebuchets, each standing as tall as ten men began the assault.

The slings on the end of the chains were loaded, the chains tightened and the giant arms began swinging, flinging massive boulders so high into the air that they almost disappeared in the sky. And when they came down everyone could see the damage they did even from as far away as they were. Walls crumbled, dust and debris was blown all around. The noise of the machines was also incredible and when the boulders struck it sounded like thunder. It felt like thunder too. Thunder in the ground.

Erislee was amazed at how loud it was standing as she was with the army. They were so far away from the city. Nearly half a league away. Only the massive size of the war machines and the skill with which the artisans had designed them allowed them to drop their stones on the city. Still, when they hit there was a massive crack as stone smashed into stone, and then a thump that ran through the ground under their feet. And when over a hundred war machines were launching at once, that became thunder. Thunder that didn't stop.

For eight long hours stone boulders were flung into the air only to come crashing down somewhere along the city walls or beyond them in the terraces while she imagined that those inside the city did nothing except take shelter as best they could.

The wizards were in action as well. The range was long – far too great for them to use their magic as they wanted to, especially when none of them save Dina were Circle wizards – but still they were having some effect.

Their three wizards of fire couldn't send fireballs flying all the way across the valley. It was just too far. It would probably have been too far even for a Circle wizard. But they'd come up with a compromise and all three had created flaming longbows which launched arrows made of fire. Arrows that because they had almost no weight at all, were able to streak across the gap. And while  most of them smashed harmlessly into the stone walls, enough landed on roofs and anything else that would burn that dozens of fires were burning throughout in the city. Here and there they could see flames rising from most of the lower terraces and lifting above the walls, and everywhere there was smoke. Huge clouds of thick black smoke filled the sky above the city. It even obscured the very mountains that Midland Heights was nestled in.

The four wizards of earth they had were working with the trebuchets. Or more correctly with the stones they were flinging. They were transforming some of them from the ordinary granite and schist into glass and acid. When they hit, those special boulders did little damage to the walls. But the glass balls exploded and sent shards of razor sharp glass dripping acid flying in all directions. Anyone made of flesh and blood and standing too near was slashed and torn. Those any nearer were cut to ribbons.

Meanwhile Dina, their only Circle wizard and one of their few wizards of sky, was raising dust storms and sending them in. Huge funnels of twisting wind and dirt, that could cross the walls and rub exposed skin from faces. Because of her, Erislee guessed that most of the enemy would have had to take shelter in whatever buildings they could find, many of which were on fire.

For all of the morning and half the afternoon the battle had raged, and it was all one sided. The enemy did not strike back at all. But then they couldn't – not without leaving the protection of their walls. And for a time Erislee had begun to wonder if they would strike back at all. Or if they would just sit and hide waiting for the battle to cease when darkness fell and then to lick their wounds while they waited for battle to begin again in the morning. But it was madness for them to simply stay where they were. It had made some sense until the bombardment had begun. But not after that. Sooner or later they had to attack.

By the afternoon the four closest walls were crumbling, and the next four behind them showed signs of cracking. The city was little by little being destroyed around the enemy.

Then finally, as the sun was showing half the afternoon was gone, the temple finally reacted. They'd realised that they had no choice. It was that or die slowly. Die from bombardment or die at the claws and fangs of their own creatures. The first sign was when they saw chimera pouring out of the gates in the lowest wall. Not just a few of them, but hundreds. Hundreds and then thousands. Then tens of thousands. The counter attack had finally begun.

It was the moment of truth. The moment when they finally found out just how many soldiers and beasts were actually inside the walled city. Until then they'd only had estimates. Guesses from civilians for the most part. And they'd prepared for them as best they could. But they could be wrong.

“They're attacking!”

Erislee gave the warning as soon as she saw them and even pointed at the beasts. But she was slow. Others were giving the same call even before her. Quickly the trebuchets were re-targeted and their payloads changed. Solid boulders that weighed as much as three men were swapped for bundles of shot that were shovelled into the slings – fist sized blocks of stone that rained down on the approaching army.

Oddly the rate of fire went up. It seemed that each twenty man war machine was able to be loaded more quickly with shot than with boulders. And the effect was immediate. As the smaller stones crashed down among the chimera, scores were killed and scores more injured. But the enemy was coming at them in their thousands and then their tens of thousands, and the holes they were making in their numbers looked disturbingly small. Seeing how many of the beasts were pouring out of those walls Erislee began to worry.