The Paradise War (47 page)

I saw it only once. Yet each time it happened, I heard the short, splintered cries pierce the thin air. The mountains echoed with the scream long after the victim had died. There was nothing to be done. We moved on.

The mountain trail was treachery itself. Sheer, slim, dangerous, twisting unexpectedly. Ice-choked and snow-filled, torturous, winding through the naked peaks with the guile of a serpent. Now we were passing under massive slabs of stone; now clinging to a sheer face of smooth rock; laboring step-by-step up an endless incline one moment, speeding headlong down a precipitous decline the next.

Our sole consolation lay in the fact that if the journey was difficult for us—and it was agony—it was no less harsh for our pursuers. Each day we could see them: sometimes far, far behind us; sometimes near enough to hit with a well-aimed stone. Behind their black leader, they paced our every movement, never tiring, never abandoning their relentless pursuit.

I grew used to seeing them, and I no longer feared them as before. But even as I grew inured to their predatory presence, Tegid became more and more wary and fearful. Time and again, Tegid would suddenly halt in the trail and spin around quickly, as if trying to catch sight of something elusive and unseen.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, when he had done this several times without explanation. I also scanned the trail below us and the ragged line of travelers on it.

Eyes narrowed and shielded from the snow with his cupped hands, he replied, “There is something back there.”

“Wolves—as you well know,” I replied. “Or had you forgotten?”

He gave his head a sharp jerk. “Not wolves. Something else.”

“What else?”

He did not answer but kept his eyes trained on the trail for a time. Then he turned around and began walking once more. I fell into step behind him, but now I, too, felt an uncanny sensation of deepening dread. I told myself that with a determined wolf pack dogging our every step I need look no further for the source of my foreboding— it was as close as the nearest wolf. I told Tegid as much, but the bard was not so easily persuaded. He still scanned the trail at intervals, and I looked too; but we did not see anything except the flickering shapes of the wolves.

Our food supply came to its end. Firewood dwindled dangerously. It became a matter of speculation which would kill us first: starvation, the freezing cold, or wolves. For three days we staggered, weary and half-frozen, before hunger drove us to kill and eat the first of the horses. We stripped the still-warm flesh from the bones and ate it raw. The hides we scraped and gave to cover the children. Little Twrch greedily gobbled unlikely scraps of offal; I saved a bone for him to gnaw later and assigned him to the care of the young girl who, with her mother, rode my horse. The woman had lost her husband to the treachery of a mountain precipice, and in her grief was grateful for some small diversion for her child. Twrch could not have had a better keeper and companion.

Always the king led the way, walking; he would not ride. Sometimes he walked with Tegid, but more often he traveled alone. Each casualty cut him like a knife; he bore the pain of each loss as his own. Yet he could not sacrifice the living for the dead. So he led on, striding stiffly, leaning into the slope, shoulders bowed, as if bearing on his own broad back the weight of suffering his decision to flee into the mountains to Findargad had brought about. As to that decision, King Meldryn remained resolute, despite the grumbling against him. And there was no lack of that. We might have exhausted our meal grain, but we possessed the bread of dissent in perpetual supply. When the last of the grain went, people reached for those ready loaves.

Loudest in reproach was Prince Meldron. He, who should have been foremost in support, filled himself and those around him with complaint and quarrel. I know I got a bellyful of his snide mockery. “Whither now, Great King?” he would call out, whenever he stopped for a moment’s rest on the trail. “Speak, Great King! Tell us again why we must hie to Findargad.” His taunts were cowardly; Meldron knew his father would make no reply. His geas kept him under vow: the king would not speak—even to defend himself against the unjust charges of his son.

Though it shames me to admit it, much as I trusted the king, I, too, began to doubt the wisdom of his decision. Were there no graves in Sycharth? It is not easy to keep the flame of hope burning in the cold, empty heart of Sollen. The Season of Snows is not the time to make bright plans for the future. One slow foot in front of the other—that was all the future I knew. Just one more step, and then one more . . . I cared about nothing else.

On the day we finally came in sight of Findargad—an immense, many-towered fortress, a magnificent stony crown on an enormous granite head lifted high on the shoulders of Cethness—we also caught sight of our true pursuers at last. I say that it was day, but the sky was dark as dusk and the snow swirled around our frozen faces. I saw Tegid stop abruptly and whirl round, as if to catch a thief creeping behind him. I had seen him do this countless times. But this time, I saw his mouth writhe and his dark eyes widen in alarm.

I hurried to his side. “What is it, brother?”

He did not answer but slowly raised the oaken staff in his hand and pointed behind us on the trail. I turned to look where he was looking. I saw what he saw. My heart seized in my chest; it felt as if a giant hand had thrust down my throat to clench my stomach and squeeze my bowels in a steely grip.

“What . . . ?” I gasped.

Tegid remained rigid and silent beside me.

There is no describing what I saw. Words were never meant to serve such a purpose. For lumbering into view was an enormous, yellow, splay-footed abomination dragging a tremendous blubbery gut between its obscenely bowed legs; its splotched, ravaged hide sprouted scraggly tufts of black bristles, and its narrow eyes burned with dull-witted malignance. The thing’s mouth gaped froglike, toothless, and slick, and its long tongue lolled, drooling spittle and green putrid matter; its long arms, wasted thin, dangled; its crabbed hands clutched, tearing at the rocks and flinging them as it scrambled frantically over the rough terrain.

Behind this squat monstrosity surged a swarming legion of grotesques. Scores of insanely freakish creatures! Hundreds! Each one as repulsive as the next. I saw skeletal members thrusting, bloated torsos squirming, lurid faces leering, frenzied feet rushing toward us at frightful speed. I marveled at their pace, for the deep snow did not seem to slow them at all. Long-limbed or short, fat-bodied or slat-ribbed and thin, huge and hideous or small and abhorrent, they skittered across the snow, racing toward us in a vile, vomitous mass.

They rushed upon us, driven by a gale blast of hate. Their shocking appearance was only part of their paralyzing power—I could feel malice streaming out from them, a potent poison, blighting all it touched. They drove the wolves before them, lashing them to rage. Over the snow, fast and sure as death they came—wolves and demons. Who could stand against such a formidable onslaught?

“It is the Host of the Pit,” said Tegid, his words a murmured understatement. “The Coranyid.”

It was the Demon Horde of Uffern, whose coming Tegid had silently anticipated for many days. Demons they were, and ghastly beyond belief. Yet to say that I saw the vile Coranyid is tantamount to saying nothing. To look upon them was to behold the face of wickedness and strong evil. I saw abhorrence embodied, malevolence incarnate, putrescence clothed in mouldering flesh. I saw the death beyond death.

My hands grew weak; the strength left my legs. The will to flee deserted me. I wanted only to sink to the ground and cover myself with my cloak. This, of course, is what the demons desired. They hoped to stop us before we reached the king’s stronghold—though why they had waited so long, when they might have taken us at any time since leaving Sycharth, I cannot say.

I glanced quickly over my shoulder to Findargad towering above, estimating the distance. “The fortress is too far. We will never make it.”

“We must,” Tegid spat. “If we can reach Dun na Porth, we have a chance.”

We hastened to the king. Meldryn did not seem dismayed, or even much surprised, by the news. He turned his tired eyes toward the mountain pass, then raised the signal horn to his lips. An instant later a shrill blast cut the chill wind with the sharp note of alarm. Even as the first warning echoed and reechoed among the cold rock crags, people instinctively responded. Other warning blasts were sounded down the line, and within the space of three heartbeats everyone was running, staggering, slipping, sliding, floundering through the snow toward the protection of the fortress above.

The pass that Tegid had indicated was just ahead: Dun na Porth, Gate of the Fortress—a steep-sided notch through which the trail passed before rising to the aerie whereon Meldryn Mawr’s mountain stronghold perched. I entertained scant hope that we could reach the sheltering walls. Indeed, as the people hurried by, struggling in haste, Tegid—at the king’s command—summoned the warriors to arms.

I threw off the cloth wrap protecting my sword and strapped the chill metal to my hip. Wrapping stiff fingers around the cold shaft of my spear, I ran down the trail to join the other warriors at the rear, pausing only to lift to their feet those who stumbled and to set them on their way.

Prince Meldron scowled at me as I fell in with the other warriors, but he was soon too busy to begrudge me a place among his own. Once the last of the stragglers had passed by, we formed a tight wedge, blocking the trail from one side to the other. To reach our kinsmen and the king, Lord Nudd’s infernal war band would have to slay us first. I did not know whether demons could be killed, nor even if they could be fought with sword and spear. Still, if a demon could feel at all, it would feel the bite of my blade.

As the battle line formed, I found myself near the center in the second rank of warriors. We held our spears at the ready, over the shoulders of the rank before us. As Tegid and the king led the main body of our people upward into the pass, we advanced slowly back down the trail toward the onrushing enemy. At the sight of our tight-formed ranks the demons raised a weird, unearthly cry: plaintive and furious at the same time, a cry of demented wrath and torment intended to breathe despair into the most resolute will. The numbing wail assailed us on the wings of the wind, yet we stood our ground; and, as the Coranyid drew near, we welcomed them with taunts, banking our courage high with loud battle cries.

Few of the demon warriors wielded formal weapons; I saw only an occasional sword or spear gripped in clawlike fingers, and some carried fire-blackened clubs. Most came on empty-handed—but not for long. For, as they swarmed nearer, they tore rocks from the trail and from the mountainside and pelted us with stones. We were thankful indeed for the protection of our shields.

The demon battle leader sent the wolves before them. Whether the Coranyid had been using the wolves all along, or whether they had merely turned the beasts’ natural ferocity to their own purposes, I do not know. But the starving, fear-maddened animals, driven to frenzy by their inhuman masters, rushed upon us without heed. There was no sport in the killing. We met them with the points of our spears as they leapt, and they died snapping their cruel jaws at the blades that pierced them.

Behind the wolves came the main body of the Coranyid. Warriors hardened to battle, fearing neither pain nor death, trembled to see Lord Nudd’s fell war band. Truly, this was a terrible array: skull-headed, swollen-bellied, spindle-limbed loathsome deserters of the grave; misshapen monsters each and every one. Naked, malformed, half-human fiends they were, malicious servants of an even more abhorrent master. More than one man shrank from the sight, and it was not accounted to their shame.

Though I searched the teeming throng, I could not see their loathsome lord. I little doubted that he was near, however, directing the onslaught from some unseen vantage. For I felt the waves of sick dread break over me as the horrid hellspawn advanced. Instinct told me this feeling was more than the repulsion inspired by the enemy’s gruesome appearance. Lord Nudd was near. I could feel him, feel the despair and futility his presence inspired.

At the same time, I remembered the hope which Tegid and I had discovered in the ashes of Sycharth: the enemy was not omnipotent. Far from it! Nudd’s only weapons were fear and deceit. Surrender to those and he would win. Defy him and his attack would founder. He could not fight against men who did not fear. This was his weakness— though perhaps his only weakness.

The first of the Demon Horde reached us, shattering the air with their appalling shrieks. The forerank of warriors stumbled backward as the screaming battle host threw themselves headlong onto our weapons. Black bile and curdled blood gushed from their wounds and we were suddenly engulfed in a sickening stench. The stink was almost stupefying; a stomach-churning fetor that caused the gorge to rise in our throats. Strong men gagged and puked, tears streaming from their eyes. Vile as the sight and sound of the hateful creatures was, the stench was worse—overwhelming the warriors’ mettle. The foreshank faltered, sagged, and then broke, as brave men turned their backs and ran from the fight.

Within moments Meldryn’s dauntless war band was in full rout, streaming back up the trail toward the pass, with the demons and wolves in howling pursuit. Prince Meldron strove mightily to turn his men, crying, “Hold! Hold, men! Stand and fight!” But they could not hear him above the drumbeat of panic in their own hearts.

I ran too. Hemmed in on all sides, I could do nothing else, lest I be trampled in the crush. We reached the pass of Dun na Porth. I looked up at the sheer rock face of the stone gate and paused, thinking that here a few might hold the trail against many. I stopped and turned to face the oncoming flood.