David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

“Children,” he muttered.

“Karak left behind those he thought either too old or too young to fight,” Preston said.

“How many?”

“Seventy.”

Seventy men, killed in less than ten minutes. It was a horrific thought, and one that threatened to make him pitch the wine still sitting in his stomach all over the ground.

“Karak turned children into monsters,” Patrick whispered. “We’re no different. Joff is fourteen.”

“As the books say, war makes monsters of all of us,” said Preston. “We do what we must do to survive, and that is all. It’s something we all must accept at some point.”

“This used to be Paradise,” Patrick said, his mind in a daze. “It used to be beautiful. Now it’s just like me.”

“Patrick, don’t say such things. You don’t know-”

“Shut it, old man,” Patrick snapped. “You don’t get to tell me how to feel.”

Preston put his hands up and backed away. In the background, the battle raging within Mordeina’s walls rose in volume. Patrick’s anger began to churn once more. He peered over his hump at the grayed soldier.

“Go get the tindersticks,” he said, his voice low and grave. “Set fire to every wagon.”

“Hurry,” Preston shouted to the others. “If we’re quick, we can be back to the cave in no time.”

“No,” Patrick said, grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him around to face him. “We’re not running. There’s a battle raging, and we’ll go galloping in head first.”

Preston’s hard, pale eyes stared into his.

“And if Karak has won before we reach the melee?” he asked.

Patrick felt his blood run cold, but this was something he would not budge on, was something he knew was right.

“We charge, even then. Even unto death. If we’re going to die, we’ll die as good men protecting the innocent. Not as monsters. Never monsters, not ever again.”

KARAK, FACE ME!” Ashhur had said.

Velixar let the memory of the western god’s challenge wash over him. There had been so much anger in those words, and he swore there was a hint of fear as well. He glanced up and saw Karak smiling as he stood before the gate cut into Mordeina’s inner wall, his glowing eyes lighting the dim, cramped space. Behind him was the pile of rubble from Velixar’s previous failed attempt to overrun the settlement, and behind that was the ironlike trunk of Celestia’s tree. All around were the broken bodies of the dead and dying, those who had plummeted from the top of the wall during the invasion. Half were men from Paradise; the rest, soldiers of Karak.

So many reminders of my failures on the day of our greatest victory .

From within the settlement came the clang of steel, the shouts of the aggressors, and the shrieks of the dying. Velixar glanced behind him, where Lord Commander Gregorian stood by the hole the soldiers had battered into the weakened stone of the outer wall, and then stared up at his god. He took a knee before him.

“My Lord, we are beyond your brother’s protection. Allow me the privilege of opening the final gate.”

Karak put a hand on his shoulder.

“Do it,” he said.

Velixar stood and approached the gate, strangely aware of the many eyes watching him from just outside the fissure behind him. Beyond the gate, the slaughter had commenced. His fingers touched the pendant around his neck, feeling its warmth, then found the iron bars, eight inches thick and unbendable. Velixar smiled. That which cannot bend will easily be broken.

He swiveled his head slightly and looked at the Lord Commander. Malcolm had his arms crossed over his chest, his milky left eye seemingly glowing through the slit in his great helm.

“Best keep your men back,” Velixar said. The faithful man nodded to him and held his arms out. The eager soldiers gathered behind retreated from the opening.

“Hold nothing back, High Prophet,” said Karak from behind him. “This is the hour of our victory.”

Velixar squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. He thought back on the words of the demon whose power he now possessed. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he created a temporal rift within him, expanding his soul outward and inward at the same time. His essence became a shimmering sphere filled with magma swirling at its center. He imagined all of the cosmos, everything connected, and his pendant became a funnel, stretching out into the stars, seeking the heart of the sun that burned above him.

That sun was Karak. Those flames were his might.

For you, my Lord. All for you.

Velixar siphoned the power into himself.

He felt the energy flow. His nerves tingled, and his hairs stood on end. There was a tightening sensation as his flesh began to stretch with the hugeness of the power he had absorbed, threatening to burst his entire being. The soul is limitless. It is the mind that restricts us. He pictured his body as water, flowing free and formless, and allowed the essence of his god to infuse every particle of his being. Soon, in the world behind his eyelids, he had grown nearly as large as the world itself and just as mighty. He felt close to bursting.

Do not push it too far. Not yet. Keep yourself restrained.

He opened his eyes.

The world seemed to warp in his vision, pulsating with vivid colors. With his body tingling, he raised his hands and fanned his fingers, looking on in awe as shadows flowed around them. He opened his mouth, and words of magic sprung forth, raucous and potent.

Dark lightning leapt from his hands. A deafening explosion followed as the gate-and a good five feet of the wall bordering it-blasted inward. Smoke billowed and purplish fires blazed that no water could quell. Screams sounded from the other side, filled with terror and pain. Velixar looked behind him at Karak.

The god seemed pleased. Velixar’s heart soared.

“Go forth,” Karak said. “Prepare Paradise for my coming.”

“Lord Commander!” Velixar bellowed when the thick smoke dissipated. “Send in your men!”

He stepped to the side as Malcolm led the soldiers through the gaps in both walls. The constant drumming of their feet and clank of their armor was music to Velixar’s ears. It seemed to take an age for all four thousand to pass through. Only when the horsemen entered, their chargers huffing and snorting in the lingering smoke, did he enter as well, leaving Karak alone in the chasm.

“All this will be yours,” Karak told him, his thundering voice confident. “All you must do. . is seize it.”

Excitement simmered through Velixar’s core, and he hastened his steps. Lionsbane, impotent next to the power at his disposal, swung on his hip. The place he entered was awash with blood, death, and confusion. The twin barricades that had once turned the causeway that stretched out from the gate into a thin culvert- murder row , as Patrick DuTaureau’s mind had dubbed it-were obliterated, lying in smoking piles of debris on either side of him. Corpses, both human and Warden, covered the ground, their bodies twisted and ruined. More than one had the remains of the gate’s iron bars protruding from him. Velixar stepped off the causeway, and all around him were small pockets of fighting. The heat from his energy and the blast had melted the snow, leaving muddy earth beneath his feet.

No matter where he looked, he saw bloodshed. Karak’s soldiers pressed onward, the Lord Commander forming his massive regiment into a brutal column that sawed through the settlement’s defenders. Off to the side, Aerland Shen, the Ekreissar Chief, was storming through ranks of opponents, cutting them down with his dual black swords. Screams filled the air. Though they now had steel weapons at their disposal, the people of Paradise had little training and were poorly armored. Men and women fell like blades of grass beneath a swinging scythe. Velixar lifted his eyes and saw the squat, bulky form of Manse DuTaureau sitting on its hill, surrounded by a massive throng of people, tiny as ants in the distance. So many of them. They will be stomped just as easily.