David Dalglish - Wrath of Lions

By the time the transformation was finished, a wasteland as dead as the Tinderlands stretched a good mile in every direction. The newly altered grayhorns stood on their powerful two legs, rising upright to a height of twenty feet each. They formed a living wall in front of the one made of stone, standing still, their eyes locked on the horizon.

“By Karak’s hairy ballsack,” Patrick mumbled, his troubles momentarily scuttled to the back of his mind. He moved away from the outer wall, and when he turned, he noticed that Ashhur was slumped over the inner wall’s low barricade. “My Grace!” he shouted, running back up the walkway.

Ashhur groaned and collapsed when Patrick reached him.

“My Grace, why?” he asked. The deity’s skin was now so white it was nearly translucent, and it seemed to take him a great amount of effort to lift his arm and gather Patrick near.

“It was…necessary…” Ashhur said. “Protection, for my people.”

“No, it wasn’t. We need to train the people, wake them up! There are two hundred thousand people within these walls. More than enough to mount a defense of this land.”

Ashhur grabbed him by the front of his tunic, pulling him close and cutting off his words.

“No time,” the god said. He pointed over the short wall with his free hand. “They are here.”

The deity released Patrick, who whirled around and gazed over the now dead valley. To his horror, a black shadow was spreading over the distant hills, swallowing the land like a disease. Ashhur joined him, kneeling now, a bit of color returning to his cheeks.

“Oh shit,” Patrick said.

“Go,” his deity told him. “Ready my children. The hour of dying is upon us.”

After so much time, so much marching, so much fighting, so many successes and a few setbacks and failures, they had finally arrived.

The army approached from the southeast, spreading out in waves from the Gods’ Road. Karak took the lead, guiding his forces through the wide expanse of grassland nestled between tree-covered hills. Velixar trotted beside his Lord, with Lord Commander Gregorian and the large Quellan, Captain Shen, on their flanks. Behind the foursome, the rest of the army spread out in a wall of steel, leather, and flesh that seemed to stretch for a mile.

They crested the hill, the sound of thousands of marching feet swallowing all else, and Mordeina finally came into view. Velixar gawked at the sight before him. A massive wall encircled what had once been a sprawling landscape of tents, crude huts, and the manse on the hill. A collective gasp rose from the soldiers, though when he turned his head to glance at Gregorian and Shen, he saw no awe in their eyes. It took an individual of might and faith not to look on that wall with fear or uncertainty-even wonder. In all of Dezrel, even Velixar had only seen one walled city: Port Lancaster, in the far south of Neldar. While that wall had taken many years to construct, this one seemed to have popped up overnight.

“Ashhur has been busy,” Velixar said.

“As I told you he would be,” his god replied.

“I never doubted your wisdom, my Lord. But there is a difference between being told something and seeing it with one’s own eyes.”

“You seem impressed.”

“I am. It is an impressive wall.”

Gregorian chuckled humorlessly. “It is still but a wall, and any wall can be brought down.”

Karak held up his hand, and the massive force came to an abrupt halt, almost in unison. The deity then looked down at Velixar and nodded, before striding toward the walled enclosure. Velixar signaled for Shen and Gregorian to stay put, then urged his horse onward, keeping stride with his god.

When they had put a good five hundred feet between themselves and the waiting force, Karak drew to a stop. They were three-quarters of a mile away from the settlement, yet the wall was still large enough to fill their peripheral vision. It was strange. The grass was brittle and dead beneath his horse’s hooves, and the forests on either side of the valley were filled with leafless trees, their empty branches jutting out like dried bones, snapping with the slightest breeze. Velixar looked toward the wall again and saw a tall figure standing atop it, facing them. Even from such a great distance he could see the twin glow of Ashhur’s yellow eyes, the fluttering of his white robe in the wind. Velixar’s gaze then wandered down, and he noticed giant forms standing before the wall, their color a gray so deep that they almost blended in with the stone.

“My brother greets me,” said Karak.

“Yes, it seems he does. And he has also brought pets. What are those things in front of the wall? Why is the land dead?”

“Those are grayhorns, altered in the same way Ashhur altered the wolves that fell upon our camp. The earth looks the way it does because of the way the universe is balanced. One cannot improve on one creation without draining life from another.”

“I see.” Velixar began to feel edgy as he finally saw the giant beasts for what they were-horned monstrosities standing twenty feet tall on two legs. Any one of them could easily wipe out ten or more soldiers without injury, and there looked to be at least a thousand of them. He took a deep breath and clenched his fists. Closing his eyes, he pictured Karak filling him with strength, and the demon’s magic inside him expanded tenfold. He suddenly did not feel so afraid.

“Why are they not attacking?” he muttered.

The deity did not need to respond.

“Karak!” called out a booming voice that rattled Velixar’s bones. “Turn away now. Return to your lands across the river! There has been enough bloodshed, enough meaningless loss of life.”

Karak stood there, silent, looking smugly at Ashhur as the distant god stared down at them.

“We do not have to destroy each other!” continued Ashhur. “We were brought here to live in peace. Turn your soldiers around and return to Neldar! All will be forgotten.”

Still, Karak remained unmoved.

“Will you answer him?” Velixar asked.

The deity shook his head.

“The time for speaking is done,” he said, “and the time for bringing your plan to fruition is upon us.”

“But what are we to do? Charge the wall? Bring a fireball from the sky as you did to the temple in Haven?” Again, the fear of his lost journal resurfaced. “How are you to destroy your brother without assistance?”

“I do not want my brother destroyed,” Karak replied. “I want him shamed. That is why I preserved my power over this long journey. I will show my strength, and then his children will bow before me. They will acknowledge my superiority while he still breathes. It will defeat him more surely than death ever could.”

“Why bring an army with you if you plan to use your power?”

Karak stared at him disapprovingly. “My children are my power, High Prophet. Do you not understand that yet? When the wall tumbles, when our soldiers rush inside, when the blood flows… then the citizens of Paradise will understand my true might. Then, my brother will bow.”

“And what of the wall?” Velixar asked. “How will we topple it?”

Eyes fixed on the wall, Karak said, “I brought fire from the sky to destroy a temple that blasphemed my name. This wall is an even greater insult, and it will burn in a greater fire.”

With that, Karak raised his hand, pointing two fingers at the sky while chanting long-lost words of magic that not even Velixar recognized. His chanting grew louder and more intense, until his voice overrode all other noise. Velixar looked at the wall, at Ashhur still standing atop it, and somewhere beneath his god’s chanting he heard thousands of voices screaming at once, from both ahead and behind.