Before them, the inner wall’s gates shivered as the creature beyond them hammered on the wood. The defenders inched back across the courtyard, assembling on the stairs leading up to the garden colonnade.
‘Courage,’ urged Margrit, despite the fear that rose up in her gorge and nearly throttled her.
They all felt fear. They were all trembling. The difference lay in how they dealt with that.
‘Can it cross the threshold?’ asked Elia, her hands visibly shaking.
Margrit did not know. The line of sacred water snaked across the courtyard in front of them, barely a hand’s width wide. It looked so completely insubstantial – a child could have skipped across it without ever noticing it.
And yet, the temple endured while everything around had been reduced to smouldering, slime-boiling rubble. She had held her faith for her whole life, and the precepts had never failed her. The great and the good of the Empire had always looked down on the Sisters of Shallya, seeing them as matronly mystics and little more. And yet the proud Colleges of Magic were now shattered haunts of the daemonic, and the mighty Engineering School was a smoking crater.
‘The threshold will endure,’ Margrit said, trying to sound like she meant it.
The doors shuddered again, and a gurgling roar echoed out. The creature was becoming frustrated, and its maddened fury was spilling over into raw mania. The stones of the outer wall were rocked, sending trails of dust spiralling down to the earth. Another blow came in, almost snapping the main brace across the doors.
More blows came in, faster and heavier. A crack ran down the oak, splitting it into a lattice of splinters. A clawed fist punched clean through, breaking the heavy beams at last and rocking the iron hinges.
A sister screamed. Margrit turned on her. ‘No retreat!’ she shouted. ‘We stand here! We are the blessed ones, the chosen of the Earth Goddess! No creature of the Outer Dark may–’
Her words were obscured by a huge crack as the gates gave way at last. With a throaty bellow of triumph, the greater daemon smashed its way through the remains, hurling aside the severed residue and sending the ragged-ended spars spinning.
Margrit shrunk back, her defiance dying in her throat. The creature was enormous – far bigger than it had seemed when she had first caught sight of it from the walls. Surely nothing could stop it – no power of magic, no power of faith. She looked up at it as the monster swaggered and hauled itself through the gap, and its enormous shadow fell over her.
Some of her sisters vomited, overcome by the incredible stench. Temple guards dropped their blades, staring slack-jawed at the vision of hell approaching. The behemoth rolled towards them, shedding slime down its flanks as the foul rain washed it into the mire beneath.
It took all her courage, but Margrit managed a single step forward, her blade clutched in two shaking hands. She glared up at the creature of Chaos, planting her feet firmly.
‘Go back!’ she cried. ‘Take one more step, and, by the goddess, it will be your last!’
The daemon looked down at her, and laughed. Huge yellow eyes rolled with mirth, and drool the length of a man’s arm spilled from its gaping maw. Moving deliberately, with an exaggerated, mocking studiousness, it lifted a cloven hoof and placed it, heavily, over the line of sacred water.
The liquid steamed and hissed as it was defiled, and Margrit smelled rotten flesh burning. For a moment, she dared to hope that the slender barrier would be enough.
Then the daemon chortled again, and hauled itself closer, dragging its flab through the smeared puddles of water.
Margrit stood her ground, her heart thumping, her last hope gone. Sliding like oil on water, the putrid shadow of the daemon fell across her once more.
TWENTY-ONE
Ghurk galloped onward, smashing his way up the long causeway to the Palace. Resistance was crumbling now.
Atop his habitual perch, Otto urged his outsize sibling harder, cracking the heel of his scythe across Ghurk’s scaly neck.
‘No time!’ he blurted, feeling a mix of exhilaration and consternation. ‘No time at all! Smash and break! Crush and stamp!’
The battle for the West Gate had been a frustratingly slow business, with the defenders lingering at their posts far longer than they had any right to. The cannons had caused havoc with his best troops until Ethrac had finally got close enough to burst their barrels with a few choice spells. Even then, the mortals had stupidly and annoyingly remained in place for much too long. They were led by a redoubtable captain wearing white and black who had roused them to almost insane levels of bravado. Otto had been forced to kill that one himself, leaping from Ghurk’s back and going at him with his scythe. They had traded blows on the summit of the gates with green lightning crackling around them. The human had fought well, wielding his broadsword two-handed with both speed and power.
It had done him little good in the end. Otto may have looked bloated in comparison, but his muscles were infused with the raging power of the Urfather. He did not even need Ghurk to come to his aid this time, and his scythe ripped through the knight’s stomach, slicing through the breastplate as if being dipped into water.
Once that warrior was thrown down, the defenders’ resolve melted, and the resistance began to crack. The gates were broken and the biggest and best of Otto’s serried host had flowed into the walls of the city. Just as at Marienburg, the glorious blossoming of the Urfather’s pestilential delights followed them in. The place was ripe for it – half-consumed by spores and moss-growths already, it was fertile ground for Ethrac’s conjurings.
Otto clambered back onto Ghurk’s shoulders, and the onslaught continued. Columns of chanting Norscans surged up the twisting streets, torching the overhanging houses as they went. Bands of marauders broke from the main charge and rampaged through the whole district, greeted with joy by the gangs of petty daemons squatting and slavering on the eaves.
The remaining defenders were driven back, slain in swathes every time they attempted to mount a resistance. Reserves were called up, and were swept away. Lines of artillery, placed in the courtyards on the approach to the Palace, were briefly effective but soon overwhelmed.
It would have been faster if the damned horsemen had not appeared and dragged half his army away into a desperate battle outside the walls. Ghurk had wanted to turn back and take them on himself, and only Ethrac threatening to shrink his stomach to the size of a walnut had persuaded him to keep going. Combat could rage for as long they liked on the plain west of the walls, and it would still not suffice to keep them from their true goal. They would approach the inner city with diminished numbers, it was true, but they still had enough to accomplish their divine task.
Now it approached. The Palace itself reared up into the flame-streaked murk, already covered in a creeping jacket of twisting fibres. Its vast gates were cracked and thrown down, its mighty domes gaping like smashed eggshells, its immense towers burning. Daemons leapt and scampered across its long, rangy battlements, pursuing the few living defenders with commendably spiteful zeal. Lightning snapped and twisted across its shattered vistas, licking like whips along the ragged profile.
‘There it lies, o my brother!’ shouted Otto, standing up on Ghurk’s heaving shoulders. ‘You see it? There it lies!’
Even Ethrac was grinning then. He stood too, leaning on his staff. The Imperial Palace – the very heart of the mortals’ realm – lay broken before them. No invading army had ever come this far. This was the throne of the boy-god, the very heart of his foul and decadent kingdom, and they were on the cusp of it. They had slain and slain and slain until the mud-mires of the streets were the colours of spoiled wine, and this was the reward.