Angelslayer: The Winnowing War (87 page)

Most of the Unchurian horsemen stopped and turned to watch. There was nothing more to do now but die.

Rhywder swam hard. His muscles were numbed, he felt as though he were swimming without benefit of legs and arms, but he kept at it, kept lashing the cold waters, using the current to carry him, angling for a shale and sand beach just downstream, where the canyon wall opened into a vale. In seconds the dam would sunder completely.

It seemed almost impossible to make out which direction he was swimming; the waters were muddied; pebbles and stone were hurtling through it. One grazed his side. When his boots took hold of sediment, he burst from the water at a run, sucking air into frozen lungs. His legs were numb, and he ran half-stumbling at first, until he could force rhythm. He heard the dam give way behind him. It had a sound like gods screaming. As the lake broke through, it seemed to lift into the sky in a frenzied wall of crushed limestone and blue ice water.

Rhywder saw it only from the corner of his eye, but it left him breathless—it was a sight, unlike he had known, as if heaven itself were falling. Rhywder ran full-out, sucking hard breaths, his short, muscled legs working as powerful as a horse's.

He was running for a tree, one he had chosen the night before, a huge, magnificent oak, bowled, with naked limbs and hard, knotted wood.

The roar was deafening. The ground beneath him shook, threatening to spill open. The hair on the back of Rhywder's neck bristled; he could feel the fore-winds of the oncoming torrent; he could hear the earth ripping apart.

He climbed, then caught a limb and swung himself around it, hugging tight, pressing his cheek against the strong wood, gripping with legs and arms. He closed his eyes against a last vision of terrible white froth a mile high, spreading outward, ripping whole slabs of the cliffs away. Rhywder whispered the true name of God. It was another of those times—a time to die.

At the ridgeline, where Eryian and the Daath still held, the Unchurian high-blood finally shattered through the inner shields of the King's Guard, taking Eryian by surprise. The demon had sent in his finest; sensing the moment, he had sent in slayers as deadly as any Eryian had ever had to face. They were equally matched, but the inner circle of guards were outnumbered and Eryian guessed, as weak as he still was, he would have to fight.

They were killing Eryian's prime, fired with blood, frenzied—a wedge of them, boring through to the center, toward Eryian's white horse and silvered cloak. They were splattered in blood, and continually they dropped, horses crumpling, vanishing beneath those behind—yet more coming, tall, powerful warriors, firstborn prime, fighting with such skill and alacrity that even Eryian could not help but feel impressed.

The Daathan personal guard were fighting back savagely, they had never been bested, never been breached, and their weapons were cutting through plate armor, shearing horseflesh, chests, necks, cleaving limbs, crushing skulls. It was skilled, deft, savage fighting that seemed almost a work of art as it closed on Eryian.

Eryian prepared. He drew the silver sword, tightened his thighs on the horse's flanks.

Behind Eryian's guard, the first lines of the second legion were advancing, Daath rested and prepared to slay with fury, but if the guard broke, there would be a moment of thin blood between here and there for Eryian. He did not believe he would fall this way; his faith was firm, but his logic spoke otherwise.

Archers kept a continual rain upon the Unchurians, a steady darkening of the sky that almost seemed like cloud cover, leaving strange shadows, and sounds like insects boring.

Directly before Eryian, the center was finally pierced, and open fighting broke out. Tillantus had backed his horse to block Eryian and was killing from left to right.

“My lord, you must retreat!” Tillantus screamed.

“I stand here!” Eryian screamed, his face red. “Let the sons of demons do their worst. I will not turn away!”

From the rear, Daathan axemen came forward, wading hard into horseflesh, their work quick.

Unchurians were still getting through—only Tillantus was keeping them from engaging the warlord directly. The high captain's killing was continual, unrelenting, and bodies were all about him, almost forming a wall.

“We will hold here!” Eryian screamed. “This line cannot give way before the waters come!”

An Unchurian seemed to hurl through the air for Eryian, as though launched by a catapult. Eryian used his shield to deflect him, hurling the warrior over his shoulder where he was quickly cut to pieces. Another broke past Tillantus on horseback. Eryian killed him quickly, a flicker thrust through his heart.

Eryian pulled alongside Tillantus and began to slay.

“Back, my lord, you are too weak.”

“Not weak enough,” he said, his sword a blur as each movement, each slice, was a killing thrust. The axemen of the second reached them now. They came with one purpose, to keep the warlord alive, and they hurled themselves into the fury. If their lord chose this moment to die, they would ensure the cost would be great, indeed.

Eryian ignored all pain, all thought. He slew with craft and skill, like a woodworker honing the finest furniture—it was not frenzy or fury that Eryian fought with; it was precision. The attacks seem to come from all directions. The Unchurians had found Eryian, and he was now their single target. Soon Tillantus, Eryian, and a tight core of horsed Shadow Warriors were hacking through a wall of bodies that came at them out of all madness, with screams that echoed through the coming night.

“I fear we are about to be outflanked, my lord!” shouted Tillantus.

“Rhywder will not fail; it is moments away,” answered Eryian, shearing open a neck to a smooth white cut through the spinal cord.

A captain screamed beside him, then it seemed he spat, but it was the splatter of his tongue as an arrow tore out his cheek.

An Unchurian breaking through to Eryian reared his horse and cast a heavy javelin. Eryian dropped low, hugging the horse's mane as the javelin tore through his cloak and over the flank of his horse, impaling an Daathan shieldbearer.

A second spear sank deep into the shoulder of Eryian's horse. The beast screamed, thrown sideways. Eryian tried to leap clear, but the ranks were too tight and his horse came down upon him, rolling with a grunt, legs kicking. Eryian felt his thighbone snap with a grinding crack. When the horse rolled clear, he lay for a moment paralyzed in pain, sucking for breath.

The Unchurian hurled themselves for the kill, but with equal fury, the Daath drove them back, clearing ground about their fallen warlord.

Eryian saw the bone of his own leg torn through muscle flesh.

Warriors and captains lifted a wall of shields to protect him. The frenzy that came against them seemed inhumane, an animal fury. But the shadowy shields of the Daath held them back. Tillantus had dropped from his horse and knelt beside his warlord, breathless, his entire body, face, hand, all splattered in blood as if he had been showered in it.

“Bind my leg, Tillantus! Lash it to spear shafts!”

“Aye,” Tillantus hissed and snapped a heavy shaft across his thigh.

One of the high captains set his boot against Eryian's right thigh, gripped the leg beneath the knee, pulled it straight, then twisted it about until it looked almost normal. Eryian reeled, drunken with pain. Two swords and a broken javelin haft were laid against the skin and quickly lashed with leather strips.

“A horse!” Eryian shouted, and was lifted by his arms onto his feet, then helped into the saddle. Mounted warriors encircled him. Eryian took the reins, then swayed and lunged for the mane. He held it in fists, breathing tightly. “Lash me to the saddle!”

“Why this, my lord?” shouted Tillantus. “My people must know I have not fallen.”

A captain quickly tossed leather saddle straps over Eryian's waist, then under the horse's belly where they were lashed from either side until Eryian straightened in the saddle. He turned. Behind him, a fresh century of Daath were closing to engage. The moment of truth was past—the best and mightiest of the Unchurian had gotten close, but they had failed to take Eryian and his high captains out. The fresh shields from the rear had reached the battered King's Guard and began to drive the Unchurian back.

Eryian lifted his sword. “Hard to the ridge! Push them against the ridge!”

Eryian heard the waters, even above the roar of battle. He looked west. A mountain of water was breaking through the forest, annihilating everything, uprooting trees, churning boulders. Panic was breaking out below. Seeing what was coming, the Unchurians on the ridge fought to hold their ground, but were being pushed back. The centuries of the second legions had reached them now, fresh, waiting behind the lines for their moment.

Thousands of Unchurians were below, either crossing the river or struggling up the ridge. The waters closing on them was as high as the ridge itself; whole elder oak and tall pine tumbled in the churning currents along with boulders the size of houses.

The foothold the Unchurians had on the ridge was being lost, panic had broken out, and they were falling back, slipping over the edge of the butte.

Below—madness. They had begun to scramble, helpless. The massive wall of water closed on them like a great hand, sucking them up like ants until the river Ithen was dark with skin and purple with blood.

This day, the Daath had survived. How many times their own numbers they had slain were uncounted, but many. They had dispatched an entire kingdom of armies. And yet, Eryian knew there would be even more.

M
any of the Daath crouched along the edge of the butte, leaning against sword and spear shafts, shields cast aside. Others were dying. Some held slain brothers. Below them, filling the valley from the butte to a south shore of high ground, waters churned, heavy. As it had been in ancient times, the river was once again wide and mighty, the icy waters of the mountain spurs. For a long time the waves were dark and rolling, until there was only purple and white froth, drifting with trees and debris.

There would be time to rest. The waters would be high and strong—impossible to breach without a bridge or crossing.

Eryian rode slowly among his men. The wounded that would live were being lifted onto litters. The dying were slain and laid upon the pyres being built. Eryian was amazed to find a weary, bloodstained Tillantus standing dazed, staring over the waters.

“Look there,” he said, pointing his bloodied axe. Across the river, in the vale, Unchurians were gathered. Fires were being lit, dotting the land like stars, glittering in forest and along far hills.

“If not for you by my side, I would believe myself mad. How many more could there be? We've killed a kingdom of warriors this day!”

“It is a calculation the demon has nursed for seven hundred years. He has raised and honed these firstborn—the finest of them—since the oath of Mount Ammon. They have not aged, and they have been trained for centuries.” “Why? For what purpose?” “Our extinction.”

Tillantus glanced at him.

“Those are the Follower's words. Never guessed you for one of those Enochian tale weavers.”

“I have been one, but now I wonder.”

“Well, I will admit, this particular bastard is as powerful as anyone I have ever faced.”

“More than even I, Tillantus—possibly more cunning, as well. For aeons he has bided his time, chosen his moves, all for a single hour. This hour.”

“Then by logic our extinction is imminent. Our only possible next stand could be the forest of the East of the Land. That will slow them, give us time to reach the walls of Terith-Aire itself. If they catch us before the East of the Land, we will be sword against sword on open ground and we cannot prevail.”

“Hold to Faith's Light, Captain.”

“Never have known you to be a man of scriptures, my lord.”

“I have not known myself to be one until these last days. Faith's Light, Tillantus, when next they come, when next we stand sword to sword against ten times our number, find in the center of your heart that place where light still dwells. It is all we have left us.”

Eryian turned the reins and rode through the ranks west, toward the ports of Ishmia. It left Tillantus wondering. Eryian had never been wrong. If there was light of heaven, so be it. Though it was, admittedly, late in life for Tillantus, the aging high captain of the Daath, to be searching for that place in him where it dwelt. If these were the prophecies of Enoch unfolding, the world, in his view, had as little chance as a hare in an open field against a wolf pack. He turned and somberly started after the warlord. Odd, he thought, how the day had no taste left in him, that all the blood and flesh and bone that had been crushed of life held no taste, even little sorrow. No pity of the dead. Perhaps that was how prophecies unfolded. Elyon seemed to bear no sorrow of his loss, so why should those who suffered it? This god was not one for compassion; no one could argue that point. Perhaps He had heaven's purpose, but of sorrow for the suffering of men—none.