Angelslayer: The Winnowing War (89 page)

“Sorry about this, my good friend, but I need your blood.”

Rhywder cracked the horse's skull. He grabbed his sword and quickly cut into the hide, fingers numbed; his skin looked almost blue as he worked. Finally he pulled the bloodied hide over his shoulders, then wrapped it about him and knelt, shivering in its steam until warmth began to seep into his chilled skin. He looked up. Beyond, the horizon toward the sea was stained a fire glow. It was Ishmia. They had failed; everything had failed. It looked, from here, as if Ishmia was aflame.

Weary as the Daath were, and few in number, being only two century, they braced for the promise that if the Unchurians forced a crossing this night—few as they were, with little missile launchers and barely any naphtha—it would still cost to take this dock. No matter where they fought, here, in open field, behind barriers—the Daath were going to make each engagement cost the Unchurian dearly. Other empires would have fallen by now, but no matter—Eryian's men steeled their faces against the coming onslaught as if this was just another skirmish.

Eryian watched the far southern shore. The armies of the Unchurian were moving quickly. They were going to stagger the assault, keeping the galleys and merchantmen deeper back, protected from any Daathan missiles. If it were Eryian, he would place his most savage and honed warriors in the sleeker, quicker ships, and he had no doubt that was precisely Azazel's move. If they were good enough at their craft, it would be possible to capture a foothold using the warships and their elite, then bring in the galleys and larger craft, creating a virtual bridge that would cross the isthmus.

The chemist's powders had numbed out his leg. They threatened, as well, to dull his thought, slow his decisions, but Eryian would fire his spirit past that. He burned with something, something he had never used as fuel before. Hatred. He no longer could say if he hated the choirs of heaven more than the demon he faced across the waters, but he could feel hatred burning in him. It was good fuel for killing. No wonder the frenzy of crazed warriors with nothing left to lose was so effective.

The ships launched. Behind Eryian a strong defensive line had formed. He noticed two bolt launchers and rows of longbows and crossbows. Shield-bearers were moving in just behind them, ready to step forward and absorb the first impact. It would take a degree of the moon, perhaps two, to make the isthmus crossing. The bodies and debris might slow the galleys some, but the sharp prows of the warships were designed to cut waves, and they would slice through the flotsam quickly, like minnows darting. He saw their oars rising and they launched. They were fast; they gained speed quickly.

Eryian turned to ride along the lines of defense. “Hold. Hold against the impossible; hold this night what cannot be held. Our brothers must reach the forest of the East of the Land before this army can close on their flanks.”

A volley of screams and swords beating against shields came in answer.

“I will be here; look to me. If your spirit fails, look to me, and if we fall, my brothers, I will fall with you this night.”

There was silence.

“But if we hold them back, then heaven is our shield. Let us pray and cling to that hope.”

Eryian turned to look across the bay. As he had guessed, from between the lumbering galleys and merchant ships, warships surged like birds crossing air current, gaining speed, their oars flashing. They were closing much faster than he would have guessed.

“When they reach the wharf, the wood and stanchions weakened of the floodwaters will be unsteady. Wait until then to launch your missiles.”

He glanced at the sky. Oddly clear; no broiling storm clouds. This had become a game of strategy; it was simple war the angel played now, as though he enjoyed it—throwing his honed slayers against the finest warriors the world had to offer. It was as much a game to him as it was his mission to destroy the Daath at all cost.

Eryian saw many of the warships had been fitted with fire throwers themselves. They began to launch now, high, arched, ready to plow deep into the city where they exploded in sulfur, naphtha, and splintering stone. The missiles soared over their heads and moments later the explosions could be heard. In little time, Ishmia would begin to burn.

“Come ahead,” Eryian whispered, seething with fury, “bring what you have got. These two hundred will bring down ten times your numbers.” Again, in answer, the whispering chuckle.
As if ten times two hundred would matter,
a voice played back in Eryian's head. He was listening, Azazel; he was somewhere across that bay watching the warlord, watching his eyes, his growing fury, and his answer was a soft chuckle.

They were swift, the front runners—the warships. Their prows cut through the flotsam of the isthmus like cutting through waves. The galleys, of course, were coming slow, just in case there were Daathan launchers in range. They were going to let the elite warriors in the warships take out the front lines. Most of them would be minions. For a moment Eryian wondered of the minions Azazel had created. His strongest, his firstblood, must have lost bodies over the centuries, but instead of letting them terrorize the Earth as Uttuku, he had taught his sons the craft of growing what were, though hardened as steel, plant bodies. They were almost impregnable and yet, in truth, no more than vegetables. Without minds to fight back, vegetable matter was easy flesh to manipulate and command, and should they wither or die—more could be grown. There were probably everywhere now fields of these creatures growing their armored, winged bodies. But why had the angel shed his own body? His own flesh? The flesh of an angel was said to be invincible, impregnable by even the fiercest fire. But Azazel was now only a spirit—stealing the bodies of men and making them slaves. Eryian wondered of this, because if there was an answer to it, it was a chance; it was a flaw he could use to bring the angel down. A single, fleeting weakness. It is what Cassium had meant when she said, “If we can turn him.” If his flesh could be destroyed, for a time, as a spirit he could no longer command the elements of earth, perhaps not even these uncounted numbers of Unchurian warriors who were no more than extensions of his own mind, without wills of their own, just the driving will of the angel.

The warships came with oars flashing like wings, and Eryian could see mounted horsemen on their decks, waiting anxiously to leap the rails.

Fire rained from either direction. There were two or three bolt launchers with naphtha missiles in the Daathan ranks, dragged down from the ridge. They burst a number of the fast warships into flame, and even minions did not like flame. But then the bolt launchers were emptied; the missiles depleted. All that was left now would be the arrows of the bowmen, then the shields of the two hundred Daath. If nothing else, it should at least be quick. What crawled like fire beneath Eryian's skin was that he would not be allowed to face the angel once more. Even with silvered sword, with mortal weapons, that is how he wanted to die, with all his skill and might thrown at the fallen angel who once was Elyon's own chosen, the second of the three, Azazel, the lord of the choir of the Auphanim.

The clouded sky over the dark water was lit in watery streaks as the warships, hundreds of them, closed the last distance. Behind them, the few strikes the Daath were capable of had left crippled, floating pyres of orange-yellow flame.

The faster, more well built of the warships were coming in a wedge, coming like horsemen against footmen, formed in groups of threes and fives to pierce through like javelins cast, but they were not aimed for the shieldbearers. It was for the damaged wharfs they headed; the farther in they could breach the broken wood beams and planking, the more solid ground they would have for the waiting horsemen. The final surges of the oars were powerful and the rams of the prow posts lifted out of the water like sea beasts. Eryian held his horse in tight rein.

Eryian studied the warships—they had been reinforced, rebuilt; they moved faster than any Etlantians; their armor was thinner, lighter, but he was certain it was also harder to penetrate. They moved with astonishing speed, coming like a heavy wave in a spiked line toward the docks like the teeth of sharks.

“They will ram the docks almost to dry land!” Eryian shouted. “Prepare for horsemen and pikes; they are coming like cavalry!”

“My lord!” shouted one of the protectors left by Tillantus, his name, Eryian recalled, was Mammanon. “You must pull back; you are in open range of even crossbows at this distance!”

Eryian glanced at him. Death would matter little. It would end the pain, the anger, the fury. Perhaps it would not be so bad letting it come quickly. But he would lead these men to their last—he would hope for one more chance at the angel.

“Show my path, Mammanon.”

Mammanon circled his sword to his other guardsmen, twelve in all. “Pull back; pull the warlord back.”

Even as Eryian backed his horse behind the shieldbearers, surrounded by Tillantus's protectors, he watched the warships ripping toward them in perfect formation; they were going to utterly destroy the docking—drive their armor-piercing hulls deep into the broken wood to reach stable ground.

“Brace yourselves!” Eryian screamed.

The entire wharf, all along its structure, seemed to buckle. Planks were split, cast, timber snapped like bone, the heavy rams and edged prows of the ships cut deep, plowing through the broken wood like cutting into a ship broadside. They hit so hard, the Earth shook and even Eryian's horse staggered sideways.

He was right, minions, hundreds of them. Some leapt on horseback, not always successful, for the hooves broke through the weakened docking, but others leapt from warships that had plowed through all the way to the bedrock that met the waters of the isthmus. Still other minions did not bother with horses. They were not good at flight, but if necessary they could sail, their heavy wings bearing them up, and many were soaring over the front lines of the Daathan front to strike from the rear.

Soon. It would be over soon. Eryian's worst regret was that he was going to die at the hand of a minion. He would take several out, but weakened, his leg smashed, his blood already thinned, his death was imminent. It was not the death he would have chosen.

The horsemen of the highborn Unchurian hardly paused in their charge—over the railing of the low-built warship onto the ground of Ishmia, quickly forming to charge in small groups, piercing groups; phalanxes with lances anchored, they would break apart even locked shields like a knife through the ribs.

Missiles of the Daath soared nearly point-blank, dropping hundreds, thinning them considerably, but into other places, the horsemen came so swift, the Daathan lines were being smashed open, thrown into disarray, and once inside, there was open slaughter. The minions were quick, deadly slayers.

Eryian's guard forced themselves about his front, forming a shielding of their own. They would die before their warlord; it was their last duty and Eryian waited with dark eyes, his blood seething. Out across the isthmus were hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand heavy galleys and merchant ships. The Unchurians would soon be able to cross throughout the night, with nothing left to hold them back, and if they had fresh mounts and rode through the night, it was well possible they could reach the retreating Daathan legions and their civilians before the forest that was the East of the Land. If that happened, the thousands of Unchurian warriors would have open, clean, perfect killing ground.

Loch dropped over the gunwale and waded through the low tide onto the shore of Ishmia's northern bank. You could not see the city from here—there was a hill that blocked its view—but you could hear screams and you could see fire licking from the isthmus. It meant Hericlon had fallen. It meant Galaglea had been destroyed, and it meant the unwalled and almost impossible-to-defend port city of Ishmia was surely about to be slaughtered. There was a time that would have brought a terrible shock to him, a terrible blow—enough to take his breath. But Loch felt little in thinking of the slaughter, the dead and dying. It was as if something had gutted him of all feeling—he needed now only to understand what was to be done, what was next required of him by Elyon's grace.