Adramalik looked around at Moloch's disagreeable chamber, thought for a moment about attempting to force the doors of the adjacent rooms, and realized the futility of it. Moloch's Arts were at least good enough to keep anyone out of them. He turned to leave and just as he reached the doorway he heard the three caged souls begin a raucous keening, clutching the bars and rattling them. Perhaps they thought he would release them. For a moment he actually toyed with the idea, relishing the anger it would elicit, but instead he closed the door, shaking his head with the pettiness of it. Or, he wondered, was it fear? For now, it did not matter; the thought of war made him open his wings, and he hurriedly dropped through the tower's darkness to tell the Order his news.
ADAMANTINARX-UPON-THE-ACHERON
"My lord, our spies have just this hour returned from Dis," Eligor said to Sargatanas upon entering the newly renovated warehouse. His lord and his bodyguard and their guides had not yet made their way through the small corridor that opened into the main stables. The pervasive salt smell of the Acheron, he noticed, was almost immediately overwhelmed, replaced by the powerful odd musk of the huge creatures he could just see in their high-walled stalls beyond. It had been no small feat getting them here. Before he had arrived, a special immense Conjuring Chamber, laced in lightning, had been constructed for Yen Wang and his Conjuror General, and it was never inactive until the dozens of his beasts had been brought forth.
Suddenly they heard loud snorts, which ended in strange, grumbling words unlike any Eligor had ever heard. Some unseen Behemoth was voicing its irritation, and soon each of them took voice, sharing their displeasure until the din in the front of the stables sent vibrations through the paved floor.
"And what have they discovered in the Fly's nest?" asked Sargatanas loudly as they walked into the open paddock. Almost as he spoke, the snorting subsided and the air was filled, instead, with the quieter sounds of the Behemoths' wheezing breathing and heavy shifting. Eligor wondered if the sound of his lord's voice had been, in some way, responsible for their sudden quiet.
"All traffic in and out of the city has been curtailed; Beelzebub wants none of what we have learned to get out. But we have been fortunate. The spies are unanimous in their reports that a great army is being summoned and gathered, and that it is marshaling just outside the walls of Dis. It is under the banner of Grand General Moloch, my lord." Eligor hoped he did not look as apprehensive as he felt.
Sargatanas did not break stride but looked gravely at his feet as he walked.
They began to pass the stalls that each held a single Behemoth, and Eligor, rather than trying to speak with his lord, examined them carefully. Each bay was constructed of elaborately carved Abyssal bone, brought on the conjured creatures' backs from the Eastern Wards and installed carefully within the foreign warehouse to make the Behemoths feel at home. Fresh slabs of yielding fatty flesh nailed to the stall sides protected them from inadvertent injury.
But as interesting as the exotic stalls were, Eligor found their inmates more so. He had found out just as much as the taciturn Yen Wang had been willing to divulge about them. In their Lives they had been great human emperors, viziers, and generals from a land known as Qin. There they had committed terrible acts upon their subjects, and so, because of their former power and ruthlessness, it had been seen fit to turn them into giant quadrupedal beasts of burden and war, at the constant disposal of their mahouts. Minus their toes and fingers, which had been removed to create flat hooflike feet, the thick-hided souls stood at least three times Sargatanas' height. Two large arms that terminated in enormous, heavy bone-hammers sprouted from their shoulders, and these, for the moment, were relaxed and resting upon the floor. Each weapon was the mass of two or three demons. Eligor's eyes took in their strange horn-crowned heads, their missing noses and upper jaws, their long, curving chinbones that served as weapon and ram, and he admitted to himself that he was eager to see them upon the battlefield. As he passed them their narrowed, suspicious eyes followed him and occasionally one would call out and laugh or mumble some indistinct utterance that the Captain was sure was an obscenity.
Sargatanas looked up occasionally but more often slowly stroked the restless bones of his jaw or pursed his hard lips in thought. Neither the foul odors of their dung and their musk nor the barks of their imagined insults seemed to affect him. Eligor knew that Sargatanas had been looking forward to visiting the stables and felt a pang that his message had been so ill timed to ruin the moment. Only when the party approached the last stall did Sargatanas look up at him.
"It would use Its greatest general to put an end to us. To this city and everything within it," the demon lord said, almost to himself. "It is sooner than I wanted; our legions have only just made camp. But that is, perhaps, the Fly's design. This battle was inevitable, Eligor. Make haste to Valefar and tell him this: He must gather our new allied Demons Major and Minor in council and have them brief their junior officers. Tell him that they must then begin the deployment of their legions immediately, as I will do with my own. And have Hannibal called back from his recruiting with whatever army he has managed to amass. The battle with Astaroth was but a skirmish compared to what we will face at the hands of Moloch and his legions."
"I understand, my lord," said Eligor grimly.
"I am finished here," Sargatanas said peremptorily to Yen Wang's guides. "Ask your lord to prepare the Behemoths for combat, as well. I may find it necessary to deploy them." Turning back to Eligor, he said, "I am returning to the palace immediately. If you need me I will be in the Conjuring Hall. There is an invocation that I must perfect."
"My lord." Eligor nodded and when he stepped out upon the street it was with a sense of urgency that he ascended to find Valefar.
The Prime Minister stood hunched over a table, his angular body backlit and red limned against the wide windows of his study. Before him lay an open coffer that had disgorged two dozen odd objects—found bits and pieces both natural and soul made—flotsam from the Wastes that the demon had collected on his last foray. Eligor knew that Valefar had a creative bent, that many of the assemblages that adorned his walls and those of his fellow demons were the product of days of consideration and labor. The pieces were deceptive in their simplicity, intentionally imperfect, even, some chided, deliberately obscure in their meaning. Eligor's chambers, like many palace dwellers', bore its own Valefar-crafted creation, which the Captain proudly showed to his visitors. It was a dark frieze composed of translucent layers of Abyssal scales and spiny plates, some of which still glowed or shone silver-black, and though Eligor readily admitted he did not understand its meaning, he did find it in some way evocative.
He crossed the chamber, noting the ever-present, ever-shifting drifts of documents, and waited patiently behind Valefar, not eager to break the demon's stream of thought. The low pulsing of the heart-clock, more felt than heard from the next room, measured the slow minutes.
"What is it, Eligor, that has your wings twitching even while you stand there?" he said finally without taking his eyes off the carefully arrayed items.
"It is war, my lord," said the demon, frowning at just how easily he was read.
Valefar shifted a bent splinter of Abyssal bone until it juxtaposed with a rippled piece of dry skin. The demon then fused them together with a word and stood back.
"Is it what Sargatanas wants?"
"So it would seem."
Valefar appeared to weigh the answer. Eligor saw him tilt his smoke-shrouded head, still apparently evaluating his work, and then with a curt nod to himself he swept aside the fragments, pushing them to the far edge of the table and clearing the surface. He turned and, without meeting Eligor's eyes, stood for a short period slowly taking in his surroundings, his smoky-silver eyes focusing on nothing in particular. He frowned and then proceeded to make his way through the organized jumble of vellums until he stood before a tall, open cabinet containing innumerable rolled manuscripts. Taking them down carefully in twos and threes, he began to empty the shelves until the bare wall was revealed behind. Once Valefar was finished, Eligor saw a nearly imperceptible line tracing a narrow, vertical rectangle almost his own height upon the age-dusted wall.