8 Year 1016 afe
Warlord of the Dead
THIS ONE IS coming right at us!" Ethrian shouted. "Let's get out of here!" Sahmanan ran down the stone beast's neck. Ethrian pursued her.
A flash of silver plunged out of the blue. The beast shunted it slightly. It hit his side. He responded with a great bellow of rage.
"What are they?" Sahmanan asked, rising from the beast's back.
"I don't know." Ethrian surveyed the destruction wrought among the beast's soldiers. "But they're effective. Let's get down from here before one of them gets us." He gave her a gentle shove.
He looked out across the desert. The Tervola remained standing atop their dune. They did not seem dismayed by the advance of the armies of the dead.
Ethrian and Sahmanan were almost to ground level when another shaft arrived. It plunged almost straight down, in front of the beast's nose. It released its energy in Sahmanan's pond.
Huge gouts of steam flung skyward. Chunks of stone fell out of the beast's forelegs. The paving blocks between them churned and tossed. The exit from the caverns collapsed.
Sahmanan wept for her shattered project.
"Your Great One isn't doing so hot," Ethrian observed. "They're cutting us to ribbons. Maybe I made a mistake, giving him the power to defend us. He's just wasting the armies."
"He can get more."
"Really? You think the Tervola will let us out of the desert? That's just an exploration party. What happens when they get mad? They know what's going on now. They know what they have to do. Your Great One keeps on, we'll be dead by the end of the week. Him included."
Sahmanan cocked her head. "The silver things. They've stopped."
She was right. The bombardment had ended. Ethrian examined the damage the last shaft had done. "Going to take a lot of work to clear this." He walked on round to where he could see what was happening at the dune.
Nothing was happening. The stone beast's soldiers were standing around. "What now?" Ethrian demanded.
"They're gone. He can't figure it out. They walked down the back of the dune and disappeared."
Ethrian spat in disgust. "A transfer portal. I swear, I could do better than this so-called god if... "
"Don't talk like that!"
"I'll talk any way I want. Incompetence is incompetence. I want out of this place. I won't make it if this keeps on."
The stone beast growled something about not yet being in possession of his full might. Ethrian snarled that he had misused what he had been given. The argument persisted throughout the four days it took to clear the exit from the caverns. Ethrian insisted that the beast become his slave. The beast refused.
Sahmanan usually spoke for the godling. Now she remained quiet and thoughtful. She pottered round her pool like a child trying to find all the pieces of a broken china doll.
"They're waiting in the mountains," Ethrian told the woman. "A full legion, ready for battle. I suppose your Great One will waste the rest of his manpower there."
"He doesn't take defeat lightly, Ethrian."
He glanced at her. That was the first time she had used his name. "Neither do they, friend. Neither do they. In fact, they've been defeated only once. By my grandfather, my uncles, my aunt, and the man who killed my father. They were trying to avenge that when I was captured."
As if hoping the stone beast would not hear her, Sahmanan whispered, "I believe you. I'm afraid of them. But how do we get Him to listen? It isn't like it was. He doesn't give me my share anymore. In the wars with Nahaman I did most of the fighting."
"Maybe he blames you for losing."
"But I... "
"Whose fault it was wouldn't matter. He wouldn't admit it if it were his. He's supposed to be a god. Gods are supposed to be omnipotent and infallible."
"What should we do?"
"Follow the army. Be ready to help. We'll share its fate whether we do or not. The Tervola aren't merciful."
Sahmanan nodded. "Wait here."
She went down between the stone beast's legs, bucking the flood pouring from the caverns. For a long time Ethrian watched the soldiers march out, form units, and head toward the mountains. There seemed no end to the hidden horde.
Maybe the beast needed no finesse. Maybe it could accept the ridiculous casualties indefinitely.
Sahmanan returned as the sun was setting. She led two small dragons. "They lost their riders. The Great One has no use for them."
The thought of flying startled butterflies in Ethrian's stomach. "I don't know... "
"There's nothing to fear. It's like riding a horse. Just tell it what to do. They were as intelligent as us when they were alive."
"They aren't alive now." He meant they had to be animated by the stone beast. Riding them, they were at his mercy.
He smiled suddenly. He had nothing to fear. Did he? The godlet would preserve him till it acquired everything he had to give.
"Just do what I do," Sahmanan said. "Up!" Her mount hurled itself into the air. Its wings pounded like brazen gongs. She circled a hundred feet overhead.
Ethrian took a deep breath. "Up, you devil."
The dragon's back slammed against his behind. He wobbled, held on. The ground sank away. His heart hammered. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them his mount was circling behind Sahmanan's. They were a few yards above the stone beast's head. The change in vantage made the desert look ten times more vast. "I don't think I was meant for this," he shouted.
The woman glanced over her shoulder, said something to her mount. It peeled off the circle and streaked westward.
"Follow," Ethrian croaked.
He soon got the hang of flying, and knew he would never enjoy it. The fall was too long. Sahmanan, though, seemed born for wings. While he plodded along, inexpertly enduring, she hurtled high and low, exulting in aerobatics. He became queasy just watching.
Finally, she glided as close as the monsters' wings permitted. "We're almost there." The mountains loomed ahead. Barren foothills climbed below. Her right hand thrust out. Ethrian spied a notch marked with patterned lines. The lines swelled into defensive works.
Sahmanan dropped like a stone. Her wild plunge broke only yards above the lifeless mountainside. Her dragon banked and slid off into a side canyon which expanded into what had been a broad meadow in olden times. Ethrian followed at a higher altitude, and descended only when there were no mountains to crowd him.
The one-time meadow boasted rank upon rank of undead soldiery, arrayed as they had been beneath the earth. He counted, and counted, and counted some more, and scanned the column still winding across the desert. He could not calculate the number of them.
"How many soldiers?" he asked as his feet hit the ground. He sat down immediately. His nerves were raw.
"We had a hundred-fifty thousand. All he could control, plus a margin for replacement."
"What do you mean, all he could control?"
"He can only animate so many. About a hundred thousand right outside the mountain. Out here... Well... "
"Hmm." This bore closer scrutiny. "You'd better explain. If he's got weaknesses besides stupidity... "
"The farther from the mountain, the fewer bodies he can control. Inside five miles he can handle a hundred thousand. You couldn't tell them from live soldiers, except they'd keep getting up. Out here he can't control more than fifty thousand, and those clumsily. That's why these are just standing around. He has thirty thousand up in the pass."
"And if we go to the edge of the desert?"
"Ten or fifteen thousand. At a thousand miles he couldn't animate more than four or five."
Ethrian surveyed the ranks. "How did he plan to go anywhere? He has big ideas. Looks like a penny-farthing empire to me. It'll never get out of the desert."