Empire of the Saviours (Chronicles of/Cosmic Warlord 1) (63 page)

‘I can’t! I can’t!’

Release me!
it howled, fighting his control.

Jillan dodged left and right, jumped and tore through grasping hands and then burst into the Gathering Place … where still more Godsenders waited for him. They turned as one towards him.

‘Jillan, there’s no escape. No more people need die.’ The voice of the Saint came from a dozen throats.

Jillan, I can save you, save Samnir, save all these people!

‘Here!’ came a shout. Haal and several dozen others were running towards him, Den Arnesson among them. Jillan realised they were all people he’d healed of the plague, but he hadn’t done so just for them to throw their lives away buying him a few more seconds of freedom! Many of those with Haal were old and clutched an assortment of domestic tools for weapons – how long could they last against a crowd ten times their number that had a single organising intellect?

Your magic gave them the freedom to choose, Jillan. Do not now take that away from them. You freed them from the trap of their own minds. They have meaning and purpose now. Better a meaningful death than a long and meaningless existence
.

They were closer now and he saw determination in the set of Den’s jaw, conviction in the eye of his classmate Haal and even joy in the bearing of a spry grandmother who held her breadknife in a firm grip. He was moved and humbled by them. He could not let them down. He ran to them as the masses of Godsend’s population closed in.

Samnir was suddenly back at his side. ‘To the north! Where the pagans should be, if any still survive.’

Jillan and his companions surged through the Gathering Place, skirting round the Meeting House. Every dozen yards one of those at the edge of Jillan’s group was pulled down or overwhelmed, but the group as a whole managed to keep making progress. If anything, those the Saint controlled seemed to get out of their path so that they could keep moving.

‘They’re herding us! Corralling us,’ Jillan shouted in alarm as his group entered the north road and saw the relatively few defenders that still stood against the numberless army of Heroes beyond. The people of the mountains and Jillan’s small band were trapped.

The taint rose suddenly within Jillan as he beheld the giant the hated Saint had become.
You must let me strike at him before
—

‘I! See! You!’ Saint Azual mentally boomed and slavered. ‘Good of you to join us, Jillan. You’re just in time to see all your friends die. And see here! I even had your pretty Hella and her father join us. We wouldn’t want them missing out now, would we?’

‘No!’ Jillan shouted involuntarily as he saw the girl he loved held fast by a group of lewdly taunting Heroes. The Saint laughed, knowing his final victory was only moments away.

Chief Braggar roared his defiance, brandishing two smoking swords of sun-metal and almost drowning out the Saint’s own thundering tones. The mountain men rallied to the young but gods-favoured warrior.

‘Wait!’ Jillan cried despairingly.

But the brave mountain chief had no chance of hearing, and the battle rage still upon him meant he was lost to reason. Dead Heroes lay all about Braggar and he was painted with their gore. He was a terrifying apparition and an avatar of pagan vengeance. The Heroes in the first rank facing him could not help but recoil, battle-hardened though they were and despite the fact they were directed by their holy Saint.

‘For the gods!’ Chief Braggar screamed, the battle cry taken up by all his men. They rushed forward with fearless wild-eyed eagerness.

The mountain men formed the head of a spear, their Chief at the tip, Slavin and Thomas directly behind him, Torpeth, Aspin and another just behind, and then two hundred after them. The spear smashed into the wall of shields formed by the Heroes and punched straight through it.

Where Braggar stamped, the ground shook and Heroes lost their footing and heads. Where he looked, his shining eyes blinded and confused, and his enemy did not see their deaths coming. Where he breathed, the soldiers of the Empire choked and collapsed, clawing at their throats. Where he moved, the air burned and men were consumed by flames of blood. Where his spittle landed, those standing against him found their guts turned to water and their bodies paralysed by icy fear. The gods rode on his shoulders and their elemental powers were his to command.

When a rank of a dozen Heroes came for Braggar at once, Thomas would leap to protect the young warlord’s left flank, while Slavin’s willowy twisting spears would skewer those on the right. Where a Hero avoided or successfully defended against Thomas and Slavin, Torpeth would spring forward faster than the eye could follow, with an all but extra-sensory awareness of where flying weapons were and would be, and bring instant death with the slightest of touches.

One moment the Heroes were pushed back, the next they would push forward again, like waves battering against a beach. They poured around the sides of the spearhead formed by Braggar and his close companions, only to break against Aspin and the others. The dancing mountain men continuously spun and ducked, their churning motion impossible for their disciplined enemy to organise against. The pagans plunged through the Heroes, and Chief Braggar at last came face to face with the holy representative of the Saviours.

Saint Azual watched them come, revelling in the moment. What did it matter if five Heroes died for every pagan? Each pagan death was one less avatar of a free and chaotic Geas. Life by life, step by step, drop by drop, second by second, the time and self-defining power of the Geas was coming to an end. Soon there would be none but the boy left standing, and the boy would be all that stood between Azual and the Geas. The Geas, as powerfully connected to the boy as it had become, would have no other major avatar or hiding place except the boy. It would have to give itself entirely to the boy or risk losing both of them forever. Yes, the Geas would have to give itself to Jillan, and then Azual would claim the boy and Geas for himself. His moment of ascension and godhead was at hand. There would be no other gods either – none of those whining and mewling aborted gods of earth, air, fire and water! – for he would be the one god of all life, the supreme and defining will that would then turn to challenge the cosmos. The stars would be the dust beneath his feet and other worlds would be his playthings. He would hold the cosmos in his one hand … the one hand with which he casually reached out now and crushed the head of the pagan chief, mind, vital fluids and life squeezing out between his fingers. He raised his hand and let the heady juice drip into his mouth. How sweet and intoxicating was the essence of existence, the essence of this desperate avatar of the gods. And now he understood and foresaw these people in their entirety.

With what remained of the chieftain’s body, Azual swept the ground before him, contemptuously smashing away the bothersome blacksmith and the sly snow-hair. The naked pagan priest predictably jumped over Azual’s swipe and bounded up to deliver a fatal touch to the Saint’s diaphragm. Azual’s all-seeing mind – a mind which now knew past, present and future, a mind that was the defining alpha and omega of the existence written upon the pages of this reality – had known this final moment of presumption and defiance would come. It was almost anticlimactic, quite disappointing and somewhat tiresome now that it was here. Yawning mentally, he let his divine will be known.

‘Cage!’ Captain Skathis commanded, and sun-metal blades were raised in a tight mesh around the Saint’s body.

There was no way through for Torpeth, and he had to contort madly in midair just to avoid dicing himself. The cage of deadly sun-metal pushed towards him and he back-flipped and tumbled away.

The mountain men cried out to their fallen gods as they witnessed the death of their chief and saw their greatest warriors cast down. Dismayed and despairing, they fell back, a number of them unable to disengage cleanly from the force of Heroes and quickly finding themselves unstrung. Torpeth and Aspin fought for valuable moments to allow as many as they could to escape, but had no choice but to flee themselves.

The Saint’s laughter echoed all around them. ‘See, Jillan, how many deaths you have caused with your overweening pride and refusal to kneel to another! See how you risk your beloved!’

‘Spare them and I will give myself to you!’ Jillan cried.

No! You cannot! It will be the end of all things. Free me!

The Saint smiled in satisfaction. ‘And so it was always decided. Come to me and we will end this needless suffering and destruction.’

Jillan took a wooden step forward. Samnir’s heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder. ‘You cannot think of doing this, lad! Not after everything we have already sacrificed! Not after your parents’ own sacrifice!’ Jillan shrugged himself free of the old soldier and took another step.

The ground suddenly rumbled and pillars of stone rose ahead and behind the pagans, forming walls between them and their enemies. Freda climbed out of the earth, bright gems shining magically at her neck. The mountain men fell back from her, raising their weapons, but Jillan came and gestured for them not to be alarmed. A golden youth descended through the clouds of thick smoke billowing from the inn and alighted on the wall facing the Saint.

‘Can it be? After all this time?’ Torpeth gnashed, apparently beside himself. ‘The whispering shadow? The Great Deceiver! Still the gods test me and demand final payment!’

The Peculiar looked down upon the Saint. ‘It is here I must intervene. Have you not already been warned that my claim to the boy is the greater? Do you defy your betters, little Saint? I cannot allow it.’

The Peculiar glanced back over his shoulder and spoke so that only the defenders would hear and be compelled: ‘Hide your eyes now, for otherwise your minds will be unhinged.’

With those words the Lord of Mayhem transformed himself into the shimmering image of whatever the Saint’s army most desired. The Peculiar heard all their thoughts and fantasies, those of the Saint foremost among them, and made himself into them. He was the ideal of female beauty and carnal lust: her sex was vulnerable and promising; her lips were sumptuous, yielding and hungry; her eyes teased, undressed and pleaded; her breasts heaved with passion, the buds of her nipples erect and yearning; her slim waist gave way to pronounced hips and a sculpted behind that thrust out urgently. A heady musk filled the air that flared nostrils, dilated pupils, bared canines and made tongues hang. Then, conquering the remaining senses of those fixated on her, the Peculiar spoke in a shifting timbre that touched, seduced, commanded and compelled: ‘Take your swords and put them to your throats. See how your Saint also finds a blade. Follow his lead and we will come together! That’s it. All of you.’

‘Friend Anupal, do you not remember your promise?’ Freda asked in anguish, almost breaking the spell.

The Peculiar blinked. ‘And you promised to trust my judgement whenever I decided there were those who had to die. Now don’t interrupt me again, dear one.’

‘No!’ Jillan shouted. ‘You cannot kill them all. You cannot avert one genocide by committing another!’

The Peculiar smiled coquettishly. ‘Oh, but I can. Now, brave Heroes and Saint, push your swords—’

‘Cursed god!’ Torpeth spat, leaping impossibly high and landing directly behind the Peculiar on the wall. ‘It was
you
who destroyed my own empire with your wiles and words. It was
you
who destroyed my army and people. It was
you
who broke the gods and gave this world to the others.’ He wrenched the helmet of sun-metal from the vision’s brow and kicked her from the wall. ‘You cannot be allowed to do it again! The Geas will never be restored through your acts – it will only be diminished further. Out, devil! Away from all living things and this world!’

The Peculiar landed below, body and form at once dislocating, and looked up aghast. ‘You! Torpeth the tyrant! Still alive. Petty Geas, what have you done!’ The Peculiar’s mask of beauty fell and there was a moment of insanity given physical form, a scratching itchiness inside the skull and a burrowing through flesh that felt like the carving Jillan had seen Ash try to sell in Saviours’ Paradise.

The Saint leapt forward. Not hesitating for an instant, he broke a glass phial of blood against the Peculiar’s dissolving teeth and jabbed a tapping tube into the god’s liquefying flesh. A single sun-bright diamond of blood was distilled at the end of the tube, which Azual greedily lapped up with his long tongue, as the rest of the Peculiar trickled away into the earth.

The Saint threw back his head and screamed to the heavens as he grew back the hand he’d lost in Hyvan’s Cross, his eyes were restored and he increased exponentially in stature. ‘I am made anew! The power of creation is mine!’ He raised the shining helmet of sun-metal, stretched it wide and lowered it over his brow. ‘Witness as I am crowned a god!’ His voice shook buildings to their foundations, toppling many, burst eardrums, rattled brains and was mentally heard the length and breadth of the Empire. Several Saviours were shaken out of the waking dream and knew a loss of self-control for the first time in their near-immortal existence.

‘That could have gone better,’ Samnir groaned from where he’d fallen. He coughed up blood.

‘Kill them all!’ the Saint demanded and used his will to force all the Heroes back to their feet.

‘You said you would spare them!’ Jillan cried out, his ears ringing so badly he thought he would pass out.

‘That was before I became divine, you wheedling child! The girl will be the first to die.’

The taint was howling and howling, making it impossible to think. The ringing, the smoke, the blood, the death, the sacrifice: it was all too much! It was an unending assault, like a battering storm, a sort of spell that had been conjured over millennia to destroy the People and the Geas. It was a spell or consciousness that had seen countless generations sacrificed to its making. It was the magic of the Saviours. He saw it now. It was so colossal it all but eclipsed this world, just as Azual’s prodigious size now cast a shadow across the whole of Godsend.