David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

Archai rose from the water like fishflies hatching. They clambered up the escarpment directly in front of them, regardless of the slope. Occasionally the bank gave way; the ones who’d pulled it down tumbled into their fellows, then rose and crawled upward again.

They brushed past Garric and his companions with no more regard than a creek has for the men wading in it. Their limbs were slick and cold, like marble statues touched in the evening.

There were hundreds of the chitinous warriors already. Garric supposed more would appear for so long as Metron continued his chant and sacrifices.

The wizard thrust his lips out and gave a fluting call. Archai gripped Garric, three of them before him and more from behind where he couldn’t see them. He heard Thalemos shout and Vascay curse.

Garric tried to pull away. The scores of cold fingers held him firmly. He tried to force his way forward, over the cliff in the hope that gravity would tug him free. All he managed to do was to cut his shoulder by shoving it into an Archa’s raised forearm.

Relaxing, Garric looked at his companions. Vascay stood with no expression, his head turned back toward Metron. His arms were pinioned, but he still held his remaining javelin. Though the chieftain seemed relaxed, Garric knew that if the Archai relaxed their grip on him for an instant, his javelin would skewer the wizard’s throat.

Thalemos was spread-eagled, his feet held off the ground and his arms straight out from his side. His face was set in aristocratic resignation, but a muscle at the back of his jaw pulsed.

Metron resumed his chanting. His athame thrust, then tore. The ivory edge wasn’t sharp enough to cut, but the point could pierce a vole’s body and a quick twist of the blade let out the little creatures’ blood and entrails in a gush.

Wizardlight blazed again. Another wave of Archai emerged from the sea.

The leading ranks of lizardmen spread sideways as they approached the Archai. The insect monsters were individually shorter and slighter than most men, but the reptiles were shorter yet. They had bronze helmets and swords, however, and a few of them carried small wicker shields covered with scaly leather.

The two lines made savage contact. The bronze swords were sharper than the Archai’s fanged forearms, but the insects could parry with one arm and hack with the other.

Lizardmen and Archai both continued to chop at their opponents when horribly wounded, their limbs severed or coils of their intestines cascading around their ankles. Even after falling they twitched and tried still to strike. More Archai came from the sea; but the column of lizardmen continued to pour through the distant notch in the hills.

The Intercessor hung in a chair suspended between a pair of reptilian quadrupeds like nothing Garric had ever seen before. The beasts had small heads, long necks, and even longer tails. Each of them was many times the size of the biggest ox in the borough.

Echeon held a long staff of amethyst or purple glass. He chanted, stroking his staff through the air in time with his words of power. The lines of his face had a eunuch’s softness, but the features underneath were identical to those of the Intercessor Echeus, whose wizardry had flung Garric’s soul forward to this time.

Metron squeezed the corpse of the last vole in his left hand, then tossed it aside. He trilled another order. Garric expected the Archai holding him to react. Instead, a group of warriors seized Ademos, who’d been kneeling in prayer ever since he realized he was trapped between the Archai and their reptilian opponents.

Ademos mewled and flailed like a newborn baby as the Archai dragged him toward the wizard. Vascay said in an expressionless voice, “All those times I thought of cutting the little weasel’s throat myself but didn’t…Maybe I didn’t do him a favor after all, eh?”

He chuckled, but it sounded like a death rattle.

Metron gripped Ademos by the hair and twisted the bandit’s head back. Garric looked down. He’d seen worse, but it wasn’t something he wanted to watch. Ademos’ scream became a bubbling gurgle.

Crimson radiance flooded the plain, penetrating stone and sky alike. For an instant all sound ceased. Garric hung in transparent red light, staring into the bowels of the earth where he saw buried treasures and the bones of creatures more ancient than man. Just at the edge of Garric’s vision was a moving thing: alive but not of this world. Its jaws slowly devoured the rock in which it swam.

The flash passed, and the images it had shown became dreams rather than memories in Garric’s mind. Their reality was specious, the sort of truth into which wizards delved by blood magic.

The sea boiled with Archai, climbing onto the shore for as far as Garric could see to right and left. Once the Archai had ruled the world. Their civilization and race had perished in the distant past, but Metron had the skill to recall the dead in numbers limited only by his power.

The wizard swayed; his efforts had drained him as white as the bloodless corpse of Ademos in the grip of four Archai. They tossed the bandit onto the litter of lesser bodies, all dead in the service of Metron’s wizardry.

The lizardmen had been pressing close against the diminishing rank of Archai. Now they gave back again as insectile warriors clambered over the cliff edge beyond both flanks of the Intercessor’s troops.

Echeon lowered his staff with a dazed expression. He hooted an order. The beasts carrying his chair had been cropping mouthfuls of grass from among the tombs as they waited. Their heads rose; they gave startled whuffs , circled in clumsy unison, and moved twenty paces back from the battle line.

Metron stood swaying with his head bowed, his left hand over his eyes, and his right pointing the athame at the ground. The line of fresh warriors marched by him, mincing on their spindly legs like automatons. They hurled themselves into the lizardmen, driving them back in an orgy of mutual slaughter.

More lizardmen trailed down from the hills, their bronze equipment glinting. Garric didn’t know if the Intercessor had an infinite number of troops, but the total of those on or approaching the field was great enough to overwhelm Metron’s present forces before long.

Metron raised his head. He pointed his bloody athame at a spiky shrub and spoke a word unheard in the chaos. A spark of scarlet lightning snapped from the ivory, blasting the shrub apart.

The wizard stuffed his athame under his sash, then bent and lifted one of the stems. The base burned with an oily yellow flame.

Holding up the torch, Metron walked toward Garric and his companions; he was wobbling with exhaustion. His left hand made a gesture toward the Archai, who let go of their prisoners. The former guards strutted toward the battle line. The fight was already turning back in favor of the Intercessor’s forces.

Vascay shrugged, loosening his shoulder muscles. Garric put a hand on the older man’s arm, and said, “No, Vascay. There’s still a chance.”

He grinned; the excitement made him cheerful. “Though I’m not sure what it is,” he added.

“Is there?” Vascay said, but he didn’t put his javelin through Metron’s throat.

Lord Thalemos looked at his former advisor with an expression more of amazement than loathing, though loathing as well. He turned his back in a deliberate snub, which the wizard was far too tired to notice.

“Come on,” Garric said, leading the way down and across the slope. “At least it’ll be harder for them to get at us if we’re down in the tunnels.”

Half-trotting, half-skidding, he reached the mouth of the catacombs. The sea had carved the soft rock back to a burial niche; a coffin of polished granite tilted out over the curling water. There was nothing among the eddies below except boulders. The last of the Archai were already fighting on the field above.