We are the monsters, Gabriel thought. At least, I am. Kill my page, you fucks?
Up he went, and the scythe of his thought reaped them.
In the aether, he roared.
Come, Thorn. Let’s be done with it. Come, Thorn, and die.
It was all death.
To Ash, all deaths were of equal value. It was, in fact, going much as he had envisioned, and he rode the success, smiling at the little stumbling blocks. The boglins died, storming the first wall-very satisfying. Men died, and cave trolls died, and the sweet, honey taste of the Golden Bears-they died.
The vanguard held for one assault and then melted under the onslaught of a truly talented mage, and even Ash registered dimly that he ought to be aware of this one, and then the thought slid off the hardened surface of his mind, and he was waiting, lurking, his empowerment and achievement nearing completion, the ant apotheosis he’d scryed as the key to his next victory-to a cascade of endless victory. A way around the others. The path, at least, to freedom, and perhaps even-victory.
Death. Another and another five and two more and ten.
He felt the limit pass, and he, for whom joy was beyond the void, felt a flash of something very close…
Thorn felt his dark lord’s rising elation and he rode it, even as he felt the cry for help from Cunxis and even as the flanks of his still-moving force began to lose the crest line and fall back. Almost none of his vast army was yet engaged. They poured up the third ridge like water running uphill, their once narrow front broadening organically as every creature strove with every other to reach the front.
But Ash was already there, like a lover on the edge of climax and demanding completion, his ravings pouring undiminished into the wilderness Thorn had created around the egg in his mind.
Come, Thorn, came the voice of the Dark Sun.
It was now, or never.
I come, he said. He translated-he let go the thing he’d held so long, changed his innermost process, abandoned the armoured body he’d created for the one of will and essence he preferred-there was a burst of black light…
Toby slammed his war hammer on the thing’s taloned foot. There was nothing else to do, and he had to trust to luck and good armour.
His hammer struck, and the daemon, hampered by fear of whatever was killing his mates, missed, and Toby was up-he swung again and missed wildly, and the daemon was down on one great saurian knee and flicked his axe one-handed. The blow caught Toby at the edge of a cover, and turned him-now he was bleeding under his arm.
Both cut, almost together.
Toby’s steel hammer, now powered by two hands, cut the more vertical line, covering his own head and delivering a powerful blow to his adversary-just as the captain taught. The blow struck, almost untouched-the daemon took it over the left eye.
And fell.
Toby paused for too long, incredulous. But above him on the slope, the great wardens were turning their backs and fleeing. To Toby’s left there were new movements, but they flashed in the watery sunlight-men in armour, already at the crest-some on horses.
Ser Michael had taken the crest.
Toby saw the captain, then. He stood in a guard, facing empty air. He was just a few yards short of the crest, his great spear held low.
He was alone.
And then, he was not.
Thunder cracked-everywhere, as if a thousand bolts of lightning had struck simultaneously. And a tower of black smoke, as tall as the spire of a village church and lit from within by a dark red fire that also spread like angel’s wings on either side, and rose to form a crown, or a halo.
Thorn towered over the Red Knight.
His staff came down, a direct blow in the real, and the Red Knight parried, a rising cover with the haft of the ghiavarina even as he stepped hard to the right.
To Toby’s eyes, the heads of the two weapons, entangled in the interaction, burst into white-hot flame.
In Gabriel’s consciousness, Thorn only threw the physical blow to cover his hermetical assault. It was not contemptuous, this time, and there were no theatrics. Six nested workings collapsed like an avalanche of brilliantly woven ops on his armoured form.
He played them all. In one virtuoso employment of every tool, he stood with Prudentia and unloosed every protection, amulet, and prepared defence save one, and they unrolled-sword of light to parry a bolt of darkness, the timing perfect, the counter already flowing-the net, burned, the assault on will undermined, the flood almost damned, the envelopment counter-enveloped and a second counter initiated, and the pure, white fog of ops batted away-mostly-
Absorbed.
He was hit in three places-not every counter had been perfect, but armour and runes kept it from being mortal, and he was on his feet, the spear still in his hand.
There was no thought. He cut with the spear-
Thorn covered with his staff, took a hit from the slightly delayed counter to the bolt of darkness working, and staggered, wounded.
He drew something from his waist as Gabriel’s elemental counter-envelopment engorged itself on Thorn’s first working and blew back into him. The sorcerer lost the thread of his casting and-
The Red Knight’s first formed working in the aethereal was just too slow-everything, every defence, had been pre-deployed, and now he was on his own. He was too slow-Thorn, twice wounded, managed to cast again and Gabriel’s elation was punctured as he was staggered by Thorn’s brilliant eclipse working-something gave in his side-
Thorn’s staff slammed into his arm. Armour crumpled like tin, and the bones of his forearm snapped-
Prudentia continued to spin, rolling the next working into completion awaiting only the trigger.
Pain rose like the roar of the rain and the rolling drums of thunder in the Red Knight’s side and arm, but he was above it.
In a moment-Blanche, her hand, the darkness-he abandoned his plan.
His right hand twirled the spear in a long feint, reversing his grip.
“Fiat Lux,” he cried, unleashing the working that had taken too long-
Thorn turned his massive working with a healthy respect and a massive shield-
But this time, the working had been the feint. The spear completed its turn, the grip reversed, and the Red Knight cast-with all his might-the Wyrm’s spear into Thorn’s unprotected groin.
On the other side of the ridge, Hartmut saw the intense strobes of light through the rain. To the right and behind him, the whole of Thorn’s horde was rolling, flowing, in one continuous carpet up the slope of the last ridge.
The battle-if it was indeed a battle-was less than fifteen minutes old. Even his knights flinched from the massive detonations that marked the centre point of the conflict, and the steady flow of wounded daemons did nothing to encourage him.
“Thorn!” Hartmut bellowed.
He had no answer but rain, and a triple detonation of lightning-three fast flashes that imprinted on Hartmut forever the hideous ripple that was the rising beat of a single, impossibly large wing. And around the wing-the wing as big as the centre of an army-were bones. Bones stripped in one single instant of sorcerous domination of their flesh. Daemons and Outwallers, men and beasts, knights and horses-stripped to bones in one heartbeat.