The Spirit of Revenge (40 page)

Cain nodded at this and thought for a moment. “I have to bear it, for no one else will. I have to carry it, until we may destroy it. But yes, Isroc, that’s all it will ever be, a burden. I know not what price I must pay to keep it, but I feel it may be a great one.”

Isroc raised a brow. “Then why do you hold onto it when you know there is such a costly price to come? We need the sword, but we don’t need someone giving their life to carry it.”

Cain looked up at his friend, their dark eyes locked. “I finally have a purpose that I have not felt this entire journey. Finding this sword has pulled me from my shadow. I realize now that I can help put an end this cycle of suffering. If it means I must sacrifice everything I have to bring an end to Abaddon and his genocide, then so be it.” Joshua, overhearing their conversation, looked away from them and wiped his eye.

Isroc pounded his fist onto the causeway. He sighed angrily and closed his eyes. “Damn it, Cain! That sword is indestructible! We cannot destroy it! This is a needless war, a war we will only lose!” The surrounding soldiers looked at him with solemn eyes.

Isroc looked to each of them and turned to Cain with a whisper. “As long as Abaddon’s soul lives on inside that sword, then this war will only continue, and your sacrifices will have meant nothing!”

Cain nodded and replied, “This may be a needless war, but look where we are now.” He gestured around them. “I must fight, because in the end that is all I can do…all anyone can do. It may not be much, but it’s something.” He smiled at his friend before finishing. “Malecai…did say there was no ‘known’ way to destroy the sword.”

Isroc turned and looked out over the city walls, smiling softly. “Maybe there is a way…maybe we are the ones to finally end this all…”

T
he sun rose slowly over the east, spreading its light across the citadel of Morven. Silence ever reigned. The streets were desolate of citizens. The buildings were filled with every man, woman, and child that dare remain. Two hundred thousand armed men lined the causeways and streets below, yet not a word was spoken in the tension.

They waited for hours, silence absolute. It was surreal, a feeling none of them had ever justly felt. The fate of Tarsha rested on the sword of every man. Everything the Warriors had ever done, all of it hinged upon these next few hours. Whatever was to happen would decide their very fates.

The muted rasp of steel on stone echoed in the morning air. Soldiers polished their shields and the quiet songs of bowstrings tested sent their hushed notes across the armies.

Cain rested his bow against the wall of the causeway and shouldered his quiver. He pulled his hand from the strap and sighed anxiously. He looked around, absorbing his surroundings with the new dawn’s light.

They all stood here now because of hope. They had endured Abaddon’s genocide of humanity for over four hundred years, all in the name of some forgotten deity. They stood here now for the hope of peace, for the hope of atonement in the eyes of their creator and punisher. They longed for the peace they have never felt, and in the coming hours of battle, they may find the victory they seek.

Cain closed his eyes and felt the wind brush across his skin, feeling the breath pierce his lips. He felt something rest on his shoulder and he turned to see a small hand. Adriel looked at him; the sapphires of her eyes gazing into his own, a concerned countenance on her face. “Do not trouble yourself, Cain, it is the path you have chosen, is it not?”

He stared into her eyes for a moment, long after her words fell from his ears. “Aye…it is. But you Adriel, you stayed with us after all of this. After so much has happened, you still remain. I often try to make sense of it but I cannot.”

Her lips pursed as she thought of an answer. “I stayed for many reasons, Cain,” she replied, “yet one thing above them all showed me the value of love, of sacrifice, of a tender heart that I had forgotten long ago. It taught me to open my eyes and see. I had long closed my heart to the world, but now it is opened.” She touched his arm and smiled fondly. They broke their gaze and looked to the southeast across the fields of snow.

“They are here…” Malecai whispered. Cain turned, his mouth opened to reply when a distant noise silenced him.

A faint note rippled across the wind, stirring the soldiers of the Alliance from their thoughts. The sound repeated itself, and the city strained to hear its feeble notes. The deep thrumming continued ever louder.

“They’re here!” Ethebriel cried.

A thin line of black appeared on the horizon, slowly approaching with the notes of distant horns and beating drums.

Four hundred and fifty thousand Andreds marched in the formations of war, their footfalls shaking the very earth.

The Andreds stood as tall as any man, many of them mightier in size and girth. Their skin was black as coal, ebony folds drawn taught over sinew and bone. Their flesh had long since begun to rot, exposing the bone and bloody muscle beneath. Lidless eyes stared out behind thin webs of grayed hair; their pupils stained luminescent silver. Amber fangs leered from behind lipless maws and below them lay rows of human teeth, tinged with blood and rot.

From their mouths, no noise was uttered. They were forever mute, as silent as the death that once gripped them.

Over their rotten flesh were layers of tempered armor that gleamed dimly in the sunlight. They were painted black, the scarlet crests of Andred swathed along much of their armor. Beneath the plates of blackened steel were gray folds of chain mail. Spiked shields, vambraces, gauntlets and pauldrons adorned their muscled forms. In their soiled hands were massive pikes, scimitars or axes.

As the army advanced across the fields, a looming wall of Gehets followed closely behind. These were no beasts of earth; seeming from darkness they emerged. They stood fifteen feet in height and wide as the trunk of the mightiest tree.

Plates of lustrous steel covered their dark, stone-like skin. Four ebony horns adorned each grotesque face, one pair gracefully flowing up from its brow, another curving sharply down. They bore mighty axes of steel, several times the size of any man.

Their great bodies wreathed in flames. Fires bound across their flesh and spewed forth columns of rancid smoke. They walked on unharmed and unhindered, as if fed from the very fires.

The armies of Andred covered the earth before Morven for miles, an eternal black abyss that seemed to swallow all life from whence they stood. Their silence was unnerving, inhuman. They marched with utter resolve, thoughts of blood stirring in their hollow skulls. Not a sound stirred the earth save the war horns of distant Arzecs. Their dire notes echoed across the four corners of the earth, resounding and ever loathsome.

The army of the Alliance gazed out over the hordes of enemies before them; terror in their hearts. The end was upon them.

Darius drew his sword with a long rasp of steel. “Men of Tarsha!” He cried after the horns of their enemy ceased for the moment.

“This is the day your wills are tested! This is the day your hearts bleed with courage! This is a day worthy of remembrance, the day that war and peace is won! Let us meet our enemy with sword and spear, for the carrion fowl shall sing of our glory! Bleed with me on this day, bleed for your countries, bleed for the Alliance, bleed for your freedom! Stand with me men, stand and fight for our salvation!” The King of Erias thrust his sword high into the air, the two hundred thousand defenders of the Alliance following likewise. Their earsplitting battle cry rose from the city, drowning out the war horns of their enemy.

“Bows at the ready!” Darius commanded. Thousands of bows were raised into the air as arrows were notched, the rasp of wood faintly heard under the din of the enemy’s approach.

“Fire!” Darius cried as he thrust his sword forward. Thousands upon thousands of arrows were unleashed; shooting past the soldiers on the causeway as they spilled over the ramparts. The cloud of arrows descended over the enemy, suspended in flight before falling into the sea of blackness.

The steel rain crashed into the shields of their targets, reaping little damage among the masses. The Andreds marched on undeterred, and as the last arrow fell from the skies, thousands of black horned bows rose from the abyss.

Barbed arrows spit forth and blotted out the sky before they arced gracefully through the air and crashed over the city. The defenders raised their shields as death sowed hell among them. Thousands of arrows recoiled against their shields but many met their mark. Soldiers tumbled from the walls above, screaming as they fell to their deaths.

The volley ceased with a dying breath and the Alliance dared venture from behind their shields. The approaching army suddenly broke from their march, a deafening thunder rising from the tempest of their charge. They burst into a fearsome sprint, a mindless haul across the vast fields before the city. Yet, the gap between city and its ruin quickly closed.

“Slow them down!” Darius screamed, “Slow them down!” The Alliance once more aimed their bows into the onrushing army and let loose a desperate volley. Arrows pelted down into the oncoming tides. Bodies tumbled to the ground, instantly swallowed in the masses.

“Fire the trebuchets!” Ethebriel commanded over the scream of their arrows. The hundred loaded trebuchets that lined the walls now pulled back their nets. With the force of mighty ropes, they released and fired their munitions over the city. Great boulders crashed into the onrushing army, sending thousands of bodies flying.

The Andreds rushed forward undaunted and slammed into the gate, engulfing the city in instant blackness. Andreds threw themselves into the walls, shaking the ancient stonework to its core. A ring of steel broke from the clamor below as the Andreds began thrashing the metal gates with their weapons, eager children of war awaiting their vocation.

The archers above now aimed at the surrounding tides below. Arrows cascaded down the ramparts and felled the Andreds like hapless insects. Barbed arrows disgorged themselves from the masses and dropped men from the causeways above.

Through the rain of death, the enemy’s ranks split and gradually revealed the trunk of some unearthly tree, over one hundred feet in length and several in girth, suspended above the earth by a throng of Andreds. At its head was a cap of solid steel fashioned in the form of a strange, irate beast.

The massive battering ram soon reached the city gates and its silent wielders prepared for the first strike.

The steel beast reeled back and quickly gained momentum before slamming full force into the gates. With a tremendous shudder of the doors, flames exploded from its maw, sending forth a fell cloud of smoke and sparks.

The battering ram staggered back as its wielders gathered momentum for a second strike.

“Bring it down! Bring it down!” Darius screamed. The archers atop the causeway fired volley after volley over the ram, quickly felling the defenseless Andreds. As the wielders were shot down however, more leapt forward to take their place.

The Andreds continued undisturbed by the death around them, the bodies quickly piling at their feet as they threw the ram forward for another strike. The beast slammed into the gates, and with a raucous explosion, reeled back for a third strike.

Boulders spewed forth from the bowels of Morven and crashed down on the armies below, throwing bodies into the air and grinding flesh beneath their weight in clouds of savage gore.

The hours passed as the ram’s wielders continued their attack, soon climbing a growing mountain of bodies to reach the doors. Blow after blow the doors shook, yet in the deep-seeded ballast of stone upon which they perched, they would not relent.

A powerful boom erupted from the drums of the army. Hundreds of massive bundles then ejected themselves from the masses and rocketed towards the city. The bundles descended into the city and crashed into the packed ranks of the Alliance. Soldiers were crushed under their weight, sending blood and entrails spurting across the streets. Men sailed through the air, smashed against building walls as their screams were silenced beneath the crunch of bone.

The bundles settled and the soldiers cautiously approached them. Corpses of men, women, and children lay mutilated and mangled within, limbs and heads long since severed. Trails of blood covered the streets, dead and stolid stares gone unnoticed to the fetid stench that now arose. Soldiers screamed in horror, their countrymen now being used against them in this siege to the death.

Scores of enemy war machines released their munitions. The massive boulders crashed over the causeways, throwing up debris as they slammed into walls of defenseless soldiers, sending hundreds of men plummeting to the streets below.

The fighting continued for hours and the light of day slowly slipped behind a constant veil of arrows. The sun at last surrendered its hold and night fell over the city.

Fire filled the city and sky, their light and wrath engulfing the battlefield. Flames licked up the city walls, its gate glowing red with death. Men’s cries pierced the night and bodies tumbled in endless slaughter.

Boulders continued sailing through the clouds, sowing death among both armies. One boulder met a fortunate mark and smashed into one of the gate’s statues. The statue exploded apart and its upper half broke off before falling backwards over the city.

It struck the walls, obliterating the causeways and sending thousands of men flying over the city, screaming to their deaths. With an earth-shaking explosion, debris rained down over the walls and into both armies, crushing both Andred and men alike as they sought to escape

Through the ensuing chaos, the ocean of Andreds split and ten Gehets marched towards the city. Their bodies were like ominous beacons in the night, their skin ablaze with fire. The beasts marched on vehemently towards the city, tearing through the corpses of their dead.

They soon reached the city gates and walked head-on into a volley of arrows that plinked uselessly against their armor.

They thrust their mighty axes into the now decrepit gates, the doors shuddering violently from the impact. The beasts pounded the gates as the battering ram beneath continued its relentless assault. Flaming debris fell continuously around them and the gates began to flag with every strike.