Angelslayer: The Winnowing War (56 page)

Suddenly it all made sense. Instead of sending warriors, once the gate had been taken, the angel had poured workers over the stairways of Hericlon's causeway, hundreds, even thousands. He noticed they had torn apart the housing of the garrison to get wood. He even saw trees being carried hand over hand down the stairway that had been torn from the forested area just past the southern passages. There were enough workers here to build a city in a day. If they finished the assembly and raised the gate, there would be no turning the prime slayers of the angel, the dreaded legendary armies of Du'ldu that no man had seen or encountered in centuries, those who were called the unknowns, trained and equipped by the angel that named and crafted death itself.

Quietus had fought toward the captain's quarters and the housing and stockades. He and his Champions were surrounded by giants, holding them off—pinned back against the rock of Hericlon. He had not even looked toward the gate's machinery on the opposite side of the passage. His Champions were slaughtering, as was their trade, and no doubt the king of Galaglea was shouting on their victory, for he had not yet realized he was slaying a virtually endless supply of fodder the angel had sent against him almost as a joke.

Some riders were ignoring Marcian's commands and moving for the rescue of their king, not realizing that the caliber of their enemy was such that Quietus's Champions, some of the finest slayers in the world, could hold back all day, and into the next without losing a single armored warrior.

“Captain Riuel!” Marcian shouted.

“Sir!”

“The gate! Fight toward the gate! Send word to your captains! Everything we have against the gate assembly! If they raise the portcullis, all the armies of the south will pour through like a flood!”

“But, my lord—Quietus is surrounded!”

“Leave him; he is in no danger! Damn it, man, if they raise that portcullis the slayers of Du'ldu will pour into this chasm and then we will know what it means to be surrounded!”

Riuel himself studied what waited beyond the red metal of the gate.

“That portcullis lifts, we will all die!” Marcian said, driving in the point. “Even the legionaries will be unable to turn them back. They will come like a flood released of the abyss of Ain!”

Marcian lifted himself in the saddle and raised his sword high. “With me! All of you!” he cried. “Against the gate assembly!”

Cohorts of both the first and second commands finally turned to join Marcian. Riuel and his captains echoed the command. Marcian now turned toward the gate, driving forward, slaying in downward arcs and stabs. As the cavalry pushed them back, the Unchurian Failures and workers filling the passage were breaking into utter panic. Most were unarmed and wore no armor; there was only naked flesh but for breechclouts and cotton tunics. They began to scatter before the whispered axe and sword. But even as Marcian made his way toward the assembly, he could see the heavy iron of the portcullis shivering.

They had been working at such a pace, with endless workers, that already the chains were threaded; the cogs and winches were taking hold, the teeth were already turning. What would normally take weeks to reassemble had been rebuilt in half a day. And should they succeed, the prime of the angel's army waited to answer the slaughter of flesh that was being trampled into the garrison rock.

“Elyon's Light,” Marcian whispered, for the chain work was moaning with the strain, taking up slack as it was fed into the machinery—the portcullis could begin to rise any moment, and between his men and the platform were a mass of workers, a sheer army of them, a barrier of flesh and bone holding the back the blue cloaks of the cavalry.

“Javelin!” Marcian screamed, turning his mount and lifting his sword as a marker. A cohort of horsemen dropped from their mounts and took up their spears. Marcian leveled his sword, pointing the direction. “The winch assemblage! Stop them now!”

The Galaglean spearmen ran, hoisting javelins, marking their aim, and launching them in an arch. The heavy iron-tipped pikes of the Galaglean ripped into flesh, tore through bodies, dropping workers on all sides. One lanced the worker who was at the winch that wound the thick chain and fed it into the main gears that would raise the portcullis. He disappeared, over the platform's edge, and the portcullis slumped back to the ground.

The assemblage workers had been annihilated; they were but bodies littered, lying in their own blood, spears lancing them. But in mere moments they were soon replaced. From behind, from the stairways, from the side, they swarmed back over the gate works, lifting tools, bolting down armatures. Almost within seconds, tools were once again hammering, wrenches working, strengthening the machine.

“Again!” Marcian cried.

Once more workers were lanced, the spears arching over the flesh between the Galagleans and the platform, then dropping like dark rain, and once again, workers were scattered, pierced, lanced, and thrown back. The work stopped. For heartbeats. And then more and more workers leapt to the platform, now hopping over bodies and slipping in blood, but the hammering and winches began once more working, and a muscled Unchurian laid into the heavy winching beam, rotating the handle, bringing the chains taut against the portcullis. From the opposite side, a second winching handle was in operation, and now both sides were being reeled in at once.

Marcian swore under his breath.

“Take that damned assembly and hold it!” Marcian commanded.

Marcian's horsemen pressed inward, slaying Unchurian fodder, hacking through flesh and bone until the pile of bodies made it difficult for the horses to keep moving.

“Dismount and fight to the platform!” Marcian shouted.

Marcian watched as his men dropped from their horses and, lifting axe and sword, began to carve out a hole through the virtual wall of unarmored flesh as if it were some macabre woodworking project, as if the bone and flesh, the heads rolling, were chips and chunks of wood flying as the cuts were being made. He could almost hear the angel chuckling over it; in fact, he wondered if he did, if above the screams of dying and the wails of utter terror from the unarmed workers, he could not hear a chuckle; as if he were in a tavern where building laughter inevitably followed a good joke.

“Riuel,” Marcian said to his second, whose single bladed axe was working from side to side, spraying blood with each strike.

“My lord,” Riuel shouted back. His face was covered in blood such that at times he had to wipe the gloved gauntlets over his eyes to clear them.

“Make sure all commanders understand! We take the assembly!”

“Captains of Galaglea!” Riuel screamed. “Take this damned motherless machine out! Echo my command!”

Riuel lifted himself high in the saddle, raising his bloodied sword as a mark.

“All to the assembly!” Marcian heard other captains echo.

“Every warrior against the machinery!” he heard from deeper in the ranks.

Foot by foot they were closing on the high wooden platform that held the machinery.

Marcian remained on horseback as a mark for the others, slaying from side to side, but his arm was growing rubbery and weak from the constant slaughter. His shoulder was racked in pain from each downswing. He was too old for this now. Perhaps as a young man, when he had found the Tarchon Passage; but now—now he felt old and weary, engaged in utter madness.

A worker threw both hands over his face just as Marcian's blade sliced through them and cut fingers flinging outward, the blade sinking deep through the eyes in a sideways slash.

The Unchurian's body didn't fall; it just slumped back against the terrified wall of angel spawn behind him, one eyeball swinging from its nerve root. Never before had he wanted to weep to heaven to stop this, but he had no choice; he had to press onward.

“Pull them back; throw the bodies from our path!” he cried, infuriated.

Thus far, only the cavalry were pressing against the wall of flesh. Marcian heard footfalls and turned in the saddle to see the legionnaires had finally reached the garrison ground—the first thousand of Quietus's troops. They were exhausted, breathless from their pressed run up the slopes of Hericlon's vale, but no sooner did they reach the garrison ground, then mounted captains shouted them on, pointing their swords and directing them toward the platform assembly. Without a moment's rest, they continued their run. They spread out, forming into cohorts, phalanx formation, as their pike lowered. A wall of spears was now closing on the machinery of Hericlon at full run. The unarmed workers of the angel were thrown into utter, unabated panic, clawing over each other, fighting desperately to find an escape from the wall of heavy, cast-iron tips.

Yet, despite the madness, the gate continued to rise. It had enough clearance that Unchurian warriors, armored firstborn, Nephilim, were able to crawl beneath and run to the assemblage, throwing workers out of their path, leaping onto the platform edge facing the Galagleans until soon it was surrounded by a wall of shields. The shields were oblong, oraculum-plated, and all bore the coiled serpent. But these were the children of the lord of death and the serpents ready to strike, and though their eyes were set in flashing red stone, they were skeletal.

“Clear ground for the pikemen!” Marcian ordered.

The weary, blood-soaked cavalry pulled back from the line, pulling their horses sideways to the gaps between the openings of the phalanxes.

“For the love of Elyon,” Marcian shouted as the sweated, weary legionnaires passed at full run, “take out that motherless damned machine!”

They Galaglean phalanxes struck the flesh and fodder, obliterating them. The pikes were soon embedded so deep into flesh and bone they were abandoned. Bucklers, sword, axe, and war hammers began their work. Hundreds of Galagleans formed in squads of cohorts now closed against the few Unchurian prime that guarded the edge of the assembly platform. With the sheer weight of their charge, using the fallen bodies of workers and a ramp up to the assembly, the Galagleans finally slammed into true Unchurian warriors. The most savage fighting Marcian had ever witnessed in his day took place. The Unchurians actually, for the moment, held back ten times their number, fighting like the demons they were. These were the firstborn, the sons of the angel, many seven centuries old, and they fought like the lords of the dead that they were, killing ten, fifteen for each of them that finally dropped. Yet, as skilled as they were, the numbers against them were overwhelming.

Just before the assembly was finally and blessedly overtaken, Marcian saw a rider on a massive horse lower himself enough to squeeze between the bottom teeth. He was unlike any warrior Marcian had seen. He was far from human. His skeleton was on the outside, bloodred, hardened and polished like the finest wood. It formed red armor that sheathed his entire body. His eyes blazed like coals burning from the hardened helm that was both armor and his literal face. Horns like a bull's curled from his temples. Tips of leathered wings arched above his shoulders between slits in his bloodred cloak. He lifted a war hammer and began to slay, working his way into the Galagleans about him, killing everything in sight. In his other hand, his buckler was no less a weapon, edged so effectively it beheaded those that closed on his left with wide, swift strokes that cut through to the chine. Marcian watched, chilled, as if there had not been enough madness, as if the day had not yet had its share of insanity. In mere moments this creature had slaughtered a dozen men. But he was not moving for the machinery; he did not seem to even care of it. His objective was somewhere else, and briefly Marcian wondered what it could be.

The Galaglean legionnaires finally overwhelmed the platform. The last of the Nephilim standing surrounded the winch operators and continued on fighting in a desperate, furious struggle as the operators continued working the winches, the gate continuing, beyond all reason and sanity, to rise. Finally, a muscled axeman turned his attention to the great center gear mechanism and began hacking at its teeth, blow after blow, like a tree cutter working the forest until finally it snapped, triggering a chain reaction. The wooden teeth sheared away with a rickety sound, flinging bits of wood and debris into the air. The chain jerked some of the Unchurians hauling it upward, flinging them as the weight of the portcullis fell. Those warriors that had been squeezing beneath it were crushed into the ground, vanishing beneath the thick, heavy oraculum as its teeth sunk back into their holes.

The last of the Unchurian guardians fell, and the winch operators were hacked to pieces in furious vengeance. Marcian stared at the massive, unbelievable mounds of bodies and flesh, blood, and bone surrounding the platform on all sides as the assembly tore itself to pieces, breaking apart. Marcian closed his eyes, weary from the sight, and realized he was past his time for this. Had he not witnessed in his day enough death that now he should see such a circus of carnage that it defied imagination? His sword arm felt numbed, so worn out from killing that he just let it drop from his fingers, not caring if he ever found it again. Living through the gathering wars alone had taken his soul. Losing all he had and loved had left him for all the years of his life saddened and broken. But now this. Even more death, more slaughter, this time a carnival of it, a tavern joke, the slaying of the unarmed like the killing of so many children weeping as they were decimated by the sword and axe.

He lowered his head, weary, wondering, briefly, of the god he had prayed to all his life, seeking to answer the sorrows of his hearts. But what god was this? How was it that Elyon allowed such a travesty of all that was true and good to take place? How could He simply turn His face from such madness? Marcian felt so weary his soul was no more than dust waiting to be blown in the wind.