David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

Winter is all but over. We should be taking stock of our bounty, not licking our wounds.

Velixar felt for each of them. This was supposed to have been their moment of glory. The two years of preparation, the long march into Paradise, and the siege of Mordeina should have ended with Ashhur beaten and his children liberated. Instead, Karak’s Army had fled back to their kingdom across the river, their once mighty force decimated by death and desertion. Velixar’s heart thrummed in his chest, seemingly loud enough to act as the drum cadence for the march ahead. He had never dealt well with failure-not when he was Jacob Eveningstar, and certainly not now, as the swallower of demons. The reality of their situation irritated him, and his anger boiled over. The smoldering landscape a few hundred yards behind them, charred and blackened by Karak as the god set fire to Paradise while they tramped through this once pristine land, did nothing to lift his spirits.

Ashhur’s raising of the dead had caught them off guard. Even days after, the images still fresh in his mind, it didn’t seem real. The scale of what Ashhur had accomplished was astonishing. So many thousands of undead, so many tons of rotting flesh, all turned against them. It was no wonder the soldiers who remained were so dismayed.

I should have known. He fingered the pendant dangling beneath his new cloak. I should have seen Ashhur’s plot the moment we stepped within Mordeina’s walls. The Beast of a Thousand Faces would have understood.

That, more than anything, formed the crux of his anger. He could point blame at Ashhur, at the Master Warden, even at the mutant Patrick DuTaureau, but this didn’t stave off the fact that he, Velixar, had been caught unaware. The best of humanity had been tricked by a naïve, peace-loving deity. “Your ego will be your downfall,” Karak had once told him. And so it had come to pass. He knew he had failed his chosen god, even if Karak did not castigate him.

A dark shadow appeared beside him, and Velixar glanced over to see the Lord Commander standing there, his fingers clenching and unclenching. His black breastplate was dented and scratched; the chainmail covering his right arm, bent and split. His good eye stared straight ahead, intent on his charges, while the milky left one seemed to glow within the nest of scars that marred his face. Malcolm’s mouth hung open, and he breathed deeply. Velixar knew the man well enough to understand that he wished to say something, but he remained silent. Malcolm Gregorian knew his place in the world. He would only speak with the High Prophet of Karak after Velixar acknowledged his presence.

“What is it, Lord Commander?” he asked.

Malcolm cleared his throat. “High Prophet, the men are hungry. We have been on the Gods’ Road for six days now. Should we not have come across our resupply wagons by now? They were due to arrive a month ago, yet still there is no sign.”

“I don’t know,” Velixar answered. This was a problem he had been pondering since long before the assault on Mordeina. No birds had arrived from Omnmount, and though supplies were supposed to have arrived every ten days, they had received no aid for nearly two full months. A part of him wondered if some blight had taken place in the staging grounds, or some of the treachery Karak had said he saw in his visions, but he quickly quashed that contemplation. There was no room in his mind for any more thoughts of failure.

“Wagons or no, we progress as we have,” he said. “We will be home soon enough either way. The snows have passed, and the days are warming. Have the men forage for nuts if it comes to that, and those strong enough should go hunting when we make camp. They will have to make do.”

“Yes, High Prophet.”

“Is that all?”

Malcolm shifted his feet. “No, High Prophet. The Quellan are restless. Chief Shen is adamant that his Ekreissar take no part in our struggles any longer.”

“He told you this?”

“Yes,” Malcolm said with a nod.

“When?”

“This morning, as I was making my rounds in the minutes before the sun rose.”

Velixar frowned. Of course they wish to depart us. The Quellan are proud. They deal with failure as horribly as I do. That they had chosen each night to make their camp far away from the human soldiers was proof enough of how they felt about the situation. That knowledge doubled his irritation over the fact that the elves had been among the first to flee Mordeina when the dead stood up and began fighting. Karak will punish them for this. If they turn against the pact they agreed to, when we storm back into Paradise and bring Ashhur to his knees, they will receive nothing in return. Their people should count themselves lucky if Karak simply lets them live.

“High Prophet,” said Malcolm, “what will we do about this?”

Velixar’s brow furrowed, and he tapped a finger against his pendant. “Where is our god now?”

Malcolm held his chin high. “I spotted mighty Karak lingering on the edge of the forest, gazing toward the Gods’ Road.”

“Very well. Go back to Shen. Tell the thickheaded oaf that the Divinity of the East demands to speak with him. If he and the Ekreissar wish to turn their backs on us, let them tell the deity himself.”

“Yes, High Prophet.”

Malcolm bowed, the massive sword Darkfall clanking in its sheath on his back, and then the man marched away. Velixar watched him until he disappeared behind a thick copse of evergreens, and a sense of longing filled him. Malcolm was a good man, a faithful man. He was one of the few who had showed no fear when the dead rose. If they’d only had a thousand Malcolms at their disposal, Mordeina would have fallen.

He grunted, adjusted his cloak, and began to walk through the bustling cluster of soldiers. Eyes rose to meet his, but they quickly turned away, wary of his presence. It was a reaction that had grown all the more prevalent since his massive displays of power. A sense of disconnection began to wash over him. I am no longer of their ilk. I am closer to the gods than to humankind. They realize this.

Karak was standing alone at the head of a long stretch of grassland when Velixar found him. The Gods’ Road lingered five hundred feet below them. The deity’s eyes were fixed on the west, gazing down the expanse of packed dirt that snaked into the horizon. Both sides of the road were blackened wasteland, where small fires still burned in the hearts of the husks of trees, the end result of Karak’s godly influence. Each sunset, while the soldiers set up camp, Karak raised his hands and instantly set the landscape ablaze. That hellish ruin stretched for as far as the eye could see behind them, culminating at the Wooden Bridge over the Corinth River, which the god had destroyed after his army crossed.

Velixar sidled up to his chosen god. Karak glanced down slightly, a frown on his lips. The deity then looked south for a moment before bringing his attention back to the smoldering western expanse.

“My Lord, we must speak,” said Velixar.

“They are coming,” Karak said, as if he hadn’t heard.

The High Prophet gazed up at his god. “Who is coming, my Lord?”

“My brother and his children. I sense him as strongly as if he were standing beside me. The dead are with him.”

Velixar was taken aback. He had expected Ashhur to remain in Mordeina and pick up the pieces after the invasion, to coddle his children as always. He’d never thought the weak-minded god would pursue them.

“Why did you not sense him before, my Lord?” he asked.

Karak’s lips twisted into a grimace. “He was not this close before. We are going too slowly. A journey that has taken us seven days he has completed in three.”