Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (52 page)

Eventually, as the demon ate, Gromf was able to work himself out from beneath the animal. He slowly rose to his feet and stood upon wobbly legs. Perched upon the horse, the demon raised its head and pushed its hideous face near his. The reek of the offal, the copper scent of blood, and something indefinable, assaulted Gromf’s sense of smell.

Gromf pushed the demon aside, or made to, but the effort staggered him to the side instead. It was as if he’d pushed against a boulder twice his size. So he stumbled toward the sounds of fighting in the distance now.

He saw that the south wall of the city was in ruins. A measure in either direction smashed down by the might of God’s minions and the great army Warlord had made. Though Gromf himself had fallen, or at least had lost a great deal of time, the All Clans were nearing the height of victory.

He turned back and fished through the mud, looking for his two pieces of God Stone, fearing someone might have taken them while he was unconscious. But no one had. No one knew of them. All those who knew had died in the great arena. All but Gromf and Kazuk-Hal-Mandik, and the old shaman had died in the first moments of summoning. So there was only Gromf now. He found the stones right where he expected they would be. He picked them out, wiped them off, then gripped them triumphantly in his fists. There was still time to help.

He made his way to the wall, passing through the blocks of its falling as if through the aftermath of an avalanche. Inside the city, smoking ruins were everywhere, the jagged lines of burnt timbers thrusting like blackened limbs reaching to the skies, pleading uselessly for aid that would not come. Fires crackled and popped as he walked onward, regaining his equilibrium a little more with each new step. From time to time, he would follow the line of those reaching timbers as they pointed skyward, directing his gaze up into the clouds. He scanned all around in the air above the city for signs of the huge red lights, the beams sent by the children of the new god. But they flashed no more.

He smiled, knowing that his god, the true God, had defeated the new one. That was good, and Gromf was happy in his heart. Gaining strength from this, he increased his speed, trotting up the ruins of the street in hopes of rejoining the fight. The fires burned darker, blacker and thicker the farther into the city he went. He knew that Warlord would be pressing for the golden queen’s palace, for that was where victory would be. That was the seat of power upon which Warlord would sit.

Faster and faster he went, and even at near full speed, he had to run for some time, tracing the progress of the fight by the smoke and the trail of bodies everywhere. He had never realized how huge the human city was, and for a moment, even in this moment of humanity’s obvious downfall, he found himself wondering if such a people could be killed. But it quickly passed, and on he ran.

He dodged around smoking hulks of dead demons, waded through swamps of gore, great lakes of innards flowing from wide areas of death where human, orc and demon corpses lay jumbled together like some vile stew. He sloshed through it without hesitation or rise of bile, sometimes deeper than his knees. Bones snapped under his feet. Skulls rolled like loose rocks unseen in the riverbed. Occasionally some broken human moaned. Humans whined like younglings when they died.

He passed through several such sites, low places of mire. Other areas had perhaps less gore but far greater devastation. He crossed broad intersections in which he beheld the complete obliteration of what must once have been places of great pride for the golden queen, and increasingly so the farther on he went. The buildings that burned as he pressed through the city grew larger in their ruin, more spectacular in their collapse. Grand columns toppled and smashed here and there, demolished statues of humans carved in careful likenesses, their weak faces and fragile limbs hewn ironically of stone. Gromf laughed at these, spat on the careful polish of the white marble pieces lying all about, lying there dull and dust covered, a cracked and empty glory slowly being buried in the soot of all that smoke. As it should be.

The sound of fighting was louder now. He heard thunder cracks and knew that lightning was coming down. Lots of lightning. The shouts of humans fighting sounded like swarming bees to him in the distance, the noise of thousands of beating wings. He heard the roars of demons echoing from buildings beyond as well, buildings that had yet to be pulled down and burned. It was the song of the battle, and it cheered him. It raised his spirits and helped reduce his shame for having fallen as easily as he had. There was still time for glory. He would fight again.

Running at top speed now, he raced down the human city’s streets. The fighting seemed to have cut a great wedge into the city, and it was easy to find where the brunt of the fighting was, as the wreckage drove him right to it now.

He came upon a vast city square, a broad flat space which was lined all around with buildings that climbed high into the air, each rising in tiers of stone stacked one upon the next like flat rocks, but unbelievably large, wide flat squares piling up toward the clouds, making it easy for humans to climb the steep slopes to the fanciful human structures at the top of each. Most of these were made of the shiny white stone he’d seen in other statuary as he’d come into the city, though one was made of darker stone. It was the largest of the buildings. A blocky colossus that dominated the square at the farthest end. The mountain of its construction had at the top such an immense assemblage of columns Gromf could not fathom the reason for such a thing. They’d made a forest of fluted stone, for what purpose? To prove to someone that they could? Stupid and vain humans.

However, it was a structure that must represent the seat of some power, for atop its steps were hordes of humans in robes the color of rust. Lightning forked out from these humans like the fury of a god, and it licked around the man-made mountain and burst orcs like stomped-on fruit.

Demons threatened them on all sides, however, and only one lightning bolt in ten gave trouble to the crawling black death that came at them. The humans fought these with weapons of steel, and Gromf was surprised at the efficiency. But he knew it would only be a matter of time before that great structure was overrun and destroyed. All those columns would come down, toppled in the demise of human arrogance.

He looked past it to the palace in the distance, its taunting spires reaching so unfathomably high. That too would fall, although perhaps not physically. Gromf thought it would be good to keep. Warlord could look out upon his lands from that great height and see all that he had conquered today.

Gromf had to find Warlord. He had to return to his side, show him that Gromf survived. That Gromf still made war for the All Clans. That he still fought for God.

He ran past the scene in search of him. The demons would take the square, even if all the orcs aiding them were turned to stew, the same as they had been in so many other parts of the city. They died in the glorious cause, and their deaths were welcome.

He ran past the wide square and followed the sounds of fighting deeper in the city.

He heard the metallic whine of the warriors of the new god, for what else could those giant things be? Weapons of other humans come to aid the golden queen. He ran to that sound then, enraged by it. He wanted to find the human who had shot him in the head with that red light.

He found two of the humans in the ogre-sized armor suits. They fought together against a demon and a pair of orcs. A burst of the short fire emitted from one of the armored arms and the nearest of the orcs turned to mush. The demon bashed the other armored human and sent it flying into an artificial pond, a large thing, perfectly round, and layers of water pouring from stone troughs climbing into the air. Water spat from its top like a geyser and ran down its layers like little waterfalls, but the flying human in all its armor crashed down through it, shattering its tiers one by one with its weight until it landed with a splash. Water and bits of marble flew all around. The white-stone water tribute was destroyed, and the human did not move, its armor lying motionless just beneath the surface of the pond. Gromf saw the human’s hands press against the clear surface of its armor then, the flat white pads of its hands pounding on the transparent substance near the top of the great metal thing. It was clearly desperate. The human’s face lifted up—a male human, Gromf thought—and by its wide and frightened eyes, Gromf knew it was in trouble. He watched the human for a moment and realized its armor was filling up with water then. He watched the human drown and was satisfied.

The other human crushed the remaining orc with a backhanded swipe of an armored arm, and made sure the job was done by stomping the limp body under foot even as the demon lunged with a huge crab claw that caught the armor firmly in its grasp.

It lifted the human up and slammed it down once against the ground, while the human punched at it with its left arm. The powerful arm had a protrusion, a long iron spike that looked to Gromf like a short spear, though the human never threw it. The spike moved in and out rapidly and made an awful sound, but never flew away. The human did thrust it into the demon’s claw, though, and it drove the point into the shell with rapid vibrations and a tremendous hammering noise.

At first Gromf thought the demon’s shell would be sufficient to prevent such an attack, but it was not, and soon the human had thrust its armored limb elbow deep into the claw, breaking it apart. A moment later the human was free and the demon reeling back and roaring in outrage.

The human ran forward and punched its other arm, the fire-emitting arm, into the demon’s open mouth. Gromf heard the muted sound of its metallic fire weapon going off inside. The demon’s back opened up in a spray of yellow guts. It pitched forward, dead, its weight driving the human back.

Gromf ran forward, calling up his giant ram of ice as the human yanked its armored arm free of the dead thing. The human saw him coming and raised the fire-emitting arm. Gromf had to let the ice lance go early and smaller than he would have liked as he dove to the side, rolling behind a piece of the broken water structure lying nearby. A few of whatever it was that the short-fire weapon spewed ticked off the street nearby, sending up bursts of broken stone and dust in a line that chased Gromf as he rolled away. The unseen projectiles careened off into the distance behind him with warped and whining sounds, but that stopped right away as the human was spun around by the impact of Gromf’s ice lance.

He laughed and regained his feet, starting another lance. The human inside the armor was shouting something that Gromf couldn’t hear, but he could see it was a human female again. The humans must have sent all their women into war. Which was just as well, for there would be no men to mate with them. They might as well all die. Their time was done.

He reminded himself to stay disciplined. They had also ruled for well over a thousand years. And he could not let a woman kill him.

He sent the new ice lance at the woman in the giant suit of steel. Her mouth was still moving when it struck her and sent her flying down the street. She landed a hundred paces from where she had been, and Gromf could see the flailing of her armor as she struggled to get up.

He ran toward her, grinning. He would kill her and teach her that women were too weak to fight.

The transparent portion of the armor opened then, it popped up and swung away. The woman climbed out of it, struggling to free herself of some tangle of thin flat ropes, some of which appeared to be jammed into her skin. She wore clothing just like that of the human that had shot Gromf with the red light, the light that was like the light that came from the sky, though not nearly as thick as that.

She pulled something from a long rigid pouch strapped to her thigh, drawing it out and raising it like a weapon at him. It was too late though, for Gromf’s ice lance was already away. A small one now, at least compared to the last. Warriors threw spears as big in practice every day. But it would suffice.

It struck her through the heart and drove her back against the upraised expanse of transparent material that had come open on the armor suit. She hit that hard, and nearly crumpled, but somehow stayed upright, leaning against it, her blood running down the clear surface behind her, visible between her legs as it poured into the hollow from which she’d emerged. She looked down at the shaft of ice in her heart, her eyes wide, clutching it, then looked up at him again. She spat a spew of blood at him and then pitched forward, dead, falling back into the armor in a heap.

Victory felt good, and Gromf’s confidence continued to renew. He did not have to face God or Warlord in shame.

He ran on, looking for them both. He came across two more skirmishes and stopped both times to help his side. He shaped a wave of fire using his God Stones, and in one great splash set a hundred of the golden queen’s warriors on fire. It was joyous.

It was much the same elsewhere along the way. Finally, he heard the sound that he was looking for. The deep roar of God and the lashing thunder of his vast reach, that arm that wrought death like a granite whip. He heard the crisp retorts of the humans of the new gods too, their armor undoubtedly spitting fire at God. That Gromf could not tolerate. God had spared his life twice today. He knew he would never understand it, never know why God would preserve his weakness and failure, but he must not ever doubt again. God had a plan for him, and he would not fail it, whatever it might be.

A few minutes at full speed brought Gromf to the heart of the battle. They were perhaps a measure away from the golden queen’s palace on a broad expanse of carefully laid stones, every one of them cut into perfect rectangles and set together edge to edge. These stones ran the full distance to the palace, and from side to side nearly a quarter as wide, a tremendous level expanse made for what? Yet another monument to human arrogance.