* * * * *
"Lord, I could go down there and confront him myself," Valefar ventured. Eligor saw his silvered eyes glittering with anticipation.
"It is time for the Baron to make amends," Sargatanas rumbled, shaking his head slightly. "If he and his troops can finish him, and quickly, I will fully reinstate him. Otherwise ... otherwise it will be left to us alone."
Valefar nodded.
Eligor felt a wave of relief. He was uncertain that any single Demon Major could dispatch Moloch and was not eager to see Valefar test himself. It was a thought, Eligor suspected, that had crossed his lord's mind as well. Valefar was far too valuable a friend to risk.
A violet command-glyph streaked away from Sargatanas and dove into Baron Faraii's position, not too far from them, where it was absorbed. Almost immediately Eligor saw the Baron issue the order to advance and he and his troops began to move forward.
Something deep within Eligor made him want Faraii to succeed, to regain his status so that the two of them could go back to their old ways. He sorely missed the endless tales the normally taciturn Baron had unreeled for him in their countless meetings and missed, too, entering the tales into his chronicles.
He watched Faraii's back as he and his bulky troops parted the legions and came within yards of Moloch. As they drew near Eligor even saw the flying rubble of destruction, cast into the air by the Pridzarhim, rebounding off the Baron's armor. Faraii did not duck or flinch as the debris hit him but moved like a figure in a dream, impassive and without hesitation. Despite himself, Eligor could not suppress his feelings of admiration. And then, as Baron Faraii's troops moved out in broad wings around him, with black sword in hand, he turned and faced Sargatanas.
* * * * *
By all that Lucifer stood for, the Prince will not be denied! Faraii has finally awakened! Adramalik thought. He roared in exultation, a cry picked up by a thousand legionaries around him when they, too, realized how events were unfolding.
He saw Faraii issue a green glyph that only Beelzebub could have created and watched it spread like fire to the troopers, each of whom spun on his heel in turn until a solid wall of them faced back toward the rise upon which Sargatanas and his staff stood.
Moloch, seeing this, redoubled his efforts to push forward. Some moments later, he was swinging his weapons so close to Faraii that he might have reached out a Hook-wielding hand and touched him. The Baron raised his sword-hand and with incredible deftness began to cut his way back toward Sargatanas.
Adramalik saw many things happen at once. A Demon Minor, the Flying Guard Captain Eligor, he thought, shot up into the sky and vanished into the clouds. Lord Valefar began to move hurriedly toward them, parting his legions with a steady stream of glyphs, and then, sprouting four great fanlike wings, took to the air. And an enormous glyph, unlike any Adramalik had ever seen, billowed out from the rise, soaring high over the battlefield and then moving over and behind the legions of Dis to explode into a million fragments that stabbed downward, scratching a curtain of harsh light into the dark sky, somewhere in the vicinity of the abandoned town. But why? Was Sargatanas blocking their way back if they were forced to retreat?
The Chancellor General managed to make his way closer to what he now felt was the center of the battle. In his mind, as well as the enemy's, he was sure, Moloch's fearsome presence was the fulcrum upon which the battle seemed to balance. This moment, this sudden unleashing of all of Sargatanas' troops, could only reveal his desperation; it would not be too long now before the battle was won and the Prince was rid of him. And, Adramalik hoped, the Pridzarhim as well.
Leaping over the piles of shifting rock that had once been legionaries of both sides, Adramalik clambered to within a dozen yards of the ex-god. Here, atop an ash-blown mound of rubble, Adramalik began to work at the attacking legionaries, keeping an eye always on the back of Moloch but meeting easily the ferocity of the legionaries he was felling.
Faraii, too, was busy leading his troopers deep into the heart of the enemy. No common legionary could stand before them, and the Chancellor saw that the Baron was leading them in a direct path toward the enemy field-camp. Ever the artist with a sword, he was creating yet another masterpiece of destruction by his own hand as well as with the chopping ax-hands of his troops.
In the short time that he was in close proximity, Moloch dispatched a full cohort of Bifrons' legion; only its centurion remained, and he was surviving only by his remarkable agility. But his fate was inevitable and the centurion stumbled and was swept up by one of the Hooks. Before he could be shattered, something, Adramalik saw, distracted the ex-god.
A silver-blue sigil heralded the approach of Lord Valefar, and when he stopped a yard above the ground just before Moloch the carnage in the immediate area all but ceased in anticipation of the fight to come. Adramalik hardly recognized the Prime Minister, not just for the many horns, small wings, and embers that had formed a living crown about his head but more for the terrible wrath he saw upon Valefar's face. Resting lightly in the Demon Major's hands was an unusually long sheathed sword.
The demon lord looked from side to side, taking in the half-dozen scarlet-armored Knights who flanked the ex-god. With wings rippling, Valefar pulled his sword from its sheath and in one fluid, unanswerable move lopped the heads of the Knights cleanly off. Adramalik's jaw opened in disbelief as he stared at the featherlight blue-flame sword from the Above—an ancient ialpor napta! He could not begin to imagine how it had come to be in Hell, but the sight of it sent a ripple of fear through him.
Adramalik looked at Moloch and saw that he was grinning, his eyes fixed balefully upon Valefar. As if in answer to Valefar, the ex-god tore the struggling centurion in half, treading upon his smoking remains as they fell to the ground and crumbled into rock. Moloch then squared his shoulders and held his Hooks out in a beckoning gesture of defiance, the same gesture with which he had baited Adramalik, the same purely predatory look in his glittering icy-blue eyes. Covered in black ash, panting, he appeared primal, savage.
The fires of Valefar's corona flashed for an instant and he lunged and the blue flames of his sword arced in a half-circle of violet and purple. Moloch spun to one side, but not quickly enough, and Adramalik saw the long and terrible cut the ancient sword had sliced into his upper arm. A sound like the screeching blast of a dozen fumaroles split the air as the enraged ex-god countered with a clawing combination of strokes that pushed the demon backward with their ferocity into his own troops.
The harsh sound of weapons beating upon shields arose from the legions of Dis as they watched their champion and general stalk forward. The Chancellor General had never seen him so angered. Short bolts of lightning wavered in sinuous tendrils from within his body, sheathing him in a crackling net of energy.
Valefar was quick to recover, charging forward with a powerful thrust of his wings, and again the two combatants faced each other, lashing out in great sweeping attacks. Lunging, parrying, and counterattacking, they twisted around each other, the ex-god spinning nimbly upon his wing-stalks, the Demon Major diving and dodging with a constant whirring of wing beats. Evenly matched, they circled, wary at one moment and bold at the next, each inflicting small wounds upon the other, the speed of Valefar's sword matched by that of the two flashing Hooks.