David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

“No!” Ahaesarus shouted back.

“We must fight, or are you a craven as well?” sneered Judarius.

Ahaesarus grabbed his fellow Warden by his collar, pulling him close. Judarius’s eyes widened in surprise. “The time to fight will come,” Ahaesarus said, seething. “For now, follow my orders.”

Ahaesarus released him. Judarius stepped back, gripping his maul with both hands.

“Archers up,” Ahaesarus ordered. His breath hitched as the soldiers drew closer. There was no time for second thoughts. He looked down the line and saw all of his archers were in place, arrows nocked. “Loose them.” No one did anything. “I said LOOSE THEM !”

Ashhur’s children heard Ahaesarus that time, launching volley after volley at the onrushing soldiers. Many were struck, some fell, and others used the bodies of their comrades as shields as they continued their stampede. Even the remaining spellcasters could do little to stop them with their fireballs and bolts of electricity. Ashhur turned his attention away from the elves and rushed the soldiers from behind, slaying many, filling the morning air with a bloody mist, but still they came.

The archers continued to fire, but they were hurrying their aim. Many of their arrows missed their marks, even though the soldiers were only twenty feet away and closing fast. The hands holding the bows shook, and tears streamed down the archers’ faces. Finally, Ahaesarus had had enough.

“All of you, get back!” he ordered. In an instant the archers hustled from their positions, running behind the wall of men holding swords, spears, and axes. Judarius stood by Ahaesarus’s side, huffing, his gaze intense.

The first wave of soldiers hit the curved barricade guarding the bunker. They were so close now that Ahaesarus could see every crease in their foreheads, every speck of mud on their cheeks, every starburst of color in their eyes. He offered no orders to his defenders this time. As the soldiers scaled the barricade, he simply screamed and pointed his sword at them. The men holding spears rushed forward. The soldiers who jumped first were impaled on the sharp points. Judarius and others bearing blunt weapons bashed in skulls. Blood spilled. The shrieks that filled the air were deafening.

Ahaesarus heard more screaming from behind him, and when he pivoted around, he saw the countryside awash with violence for as far as he could see. Soldiers of Karak and the children of Ashhur clashed, and blood soaked the snow red. Steel against steel, man against man, the trained against the untrained. For every one soldier the brave citizens of Mordeina felled, they lost five of their own. There was slaughter on all sides of him. Finally, he swung back around, narrowly avoided being impaled by a pike, and saw Ashhur still tramping through the soldiers, his movements sluggish as men hung off him. They were rushing the god now, trying to overwhelm him with sheer numbers.

And it was working.

Ashhur collapsed to one knee, tearing soldiers off him, crushing them in his fists and hurling them away, their bodies soaring through the air like so many shattered birds. Ahaesarus’s mind went blank. If his god couldn’t help them, no one could. The soldiers closed in on Ahaesarus and his men.

No. No, no, no!

“Attack!” he shouted as he hacked away with his sword, swinging with all his might, trying to press closer to the bunker and his distressed god. But there were just too many of them. Judarius fought at his side, swinging his maul with abandon, sending soldiers careening. Blood flew into Ahaesarus’s face. Together, he and Judarius cut a path through the throng until they reached the bunker. They both leapt atop it, fighting like old, experienced warriors, killing and maiming. Ahaesarus hopped down on the other side of the bunker, only to catch a sword in his left arm. He fell back against the barricade, screaming in pain. Judarius bolted out ahead of him, shoving through the mass of steel and flesh. His every move was determined, his every swing willed by rage. The black-haired Warden shattered a soldier’s jaw, caved in another’s helm, splintered yet another’s arm. Ahaesarus swallowed his pain and drove in after him, slicing throats and severing limbs. We will make it! Ashhur, we are coming!

Only they never did. Just as Ahaesarus drove his sword through a soldier’s mouth, he caught sight of Judarius whirling around, his maul flailing, keeping dozens of men at bay, but even his power was not enough. A soldier leapt atop him from behind, jamming a dagger into Judarius’s shoulder. The Warden screamed, grabbed the man, and hurled him into his own comrades. Another swing of his maul, but it was slower now, weaker. Blades cut into his sides, a horde of attackers, and as Ahaesarus watched in horror, a glimmering length of steel pierced through one side of his throat and out the other.

“Judarius!” Ahaesarus shouted. He tried to cut his way through, but he found himself surrounded. A blade chopped at his lower leg, almost severing it at the knee, and he collapsed while above him the soldiers continued the onslaught. He was kicked and stepped on, his wards and brothers dying left and right, and though he took out as many feet as he could by blindly swinging his sword, it was no use.

He was stomped on, bombarded, until a pair of strong hands gripped the back of his damp, cold tunic and hauled him backward. At the bunker, his unseen rescuers lifted him up above the crowd, trying to get him over. It was then that a loud boom rocked the morning. Many of those standing around fell to their knees, blown back by a rush of hot wind. Ahaesarus was released, sliding down the bunker wall as black smoke billowed from Mordeina’s main gate. Thick iron rods fell from the sky. The bodies of his fellow Wardens hung limp atop the barricades that formed the murder row, bits of stone and steel jutting from their lifeless forms. Of those he had sent, he saw only one standing-Judah, who limped away, clutching his dangling right arm.

More soldiers emerged from the smoke, charging and howling seemingly without care, their swords and axes held high. Then the captains stepped forward, the horns on their great helms painted red, and they shouted as well. Those who had descended the wall stampeded across the snowy, corpse-strewn ground. Men on horseback galloped through the chasm, veering to the side and riding perpendicular to the long bunker. Ahaesarus watched them disappear into the distance before he slid fully to the ground, but he had no time to question what they were doing, not with death staring him right in the face.

The battle had changed. Lying prone amid the chaos, Ahaesarus saw flares of magic lashing the air above, constant, violent, and powerful. He couldn’t see what was happening from flat on his back, but he didn’t need to. They had lost the day. Mordeina would fall, and all of Paradise would belong to the east.

Just as Azariah had said, the tunnel leading out of Mordeina was three miles long and dumped out into a rocky, ice-covered gulch fronted by a bubbling stream. Beyond was the thick forest. By the time Patrick and his band of twenty-two brave souls re-entered bright sunlight and snuffed out their torches, the morning was growing long. Preston gestured for the Turncloaks to ride two by two, and Denton Noonan, young Barclay’s father, tried to do the same with his group of fourteen common men. Patrick looked back at the cave mouth they had just exited and shook his head. The trip had taken longer than expected.

Preston trotted up to him on his horse as they circled the lip of the gulch. “So that was. . impressive. Where are we now?”

Patrick pointed to the west, where another thick grouping of trees stood. “The sea is forty miles that way. Fifty miles north will be the Whitetail River.” He grinned. “And if we loop around this wood here, it’s another couple miles until we reach the Gods’ Road.”