Enemy of the Gods Page 2

  Andre and his unit had laughed at the people telling those stories. Ignoring them in favor of drink and whores. And why should they have done anything differently? They hadn’t been ordered to.

  Until finally they had been ordered to.

  Seemingly without warning, at least none that Andre had received, a great troop of heavy horsemen and even heavier infantry had shown up in the small town that straddled one of the few workable passes through the great mountains making up the southern borders of the empire’s heartlands. It was there that Andre had made his home for almost a year when they arrived.

  A gathering of arms and armor that few could legitimately claim to have seen at any point in their lives. The very earth trembled beneath their iron-clad feet, moving with the rhythm of their footfalls. Uncountable tons of steel and flesh, clearly marching to war.

  He’d been roused from a sound slumber, sharing the comfort of his bed with the cheapest whore he could find for the night. Another of the built for purpose, but unmercifully ugly type that he’d come to know. That moment, when he’d opened his eyes, had signaled a change in his life more profound than anything he had experienced before or since. Far more than leaving the communal farms behind.

  The unit of constables were immediately pressed into service by a steely-eyed giant of a man. They were to augment the infantry and act as scouts.

  “What exactly are we to be looking for?” Andre had asked through the stupor of his hangover. Disbelief and anger flared across the great man’s eyes before he answered in a deep voice.

  “The Eaters, you fuckwit.” Rage seethed in his voice.

  There had been a moment of panic. Was the man joking with him? No, his eyes said the exact opposite. There was no deception to be found. The man was serious. A general of the empire was leading hundreds if not thousands of heavy cavalry and elite heavy infantry to war.

  Against The Eaters.

  They were real. They were fucking real. Andre considered trying to run. Leaving the army behind in the night, and relying on his knowledge of the surrounding terrain to keep him from the hangman’s noose.

  But that was pure fantasy.

  There was no way this army was going to lose. Andre looked at them, barely pausing as they moved through town on the march. Had such a force ever been assembled before in the history of mankind? Unlikely, he concluded as he eyed a score of heavy knights mounted on their destriers half again the height of the average man. The thick armor of their shoes chipped away noisily at the cobblestone of the street. A wall of heavy plate steel studded over with murderous spikes, advancing with ill-intent towards the mountain passes beyond. Lances honed to a razor’s edge reached out to impale anyone or anything foolish enough to stand in their way.

  A squadron of The Hammer’s Own, the emperor’s personal guard marched along behind them. Clad in black steel plate that gleamed and shone like the eyes of some great predator, and carrying a myriad of weapons that would surely be more than enough to cleave any foe to the ground and grind it to dust. A few of them bore the markings of officers and confidently barked orders to their men who obeyed without hesitation.

  A smattering of archers, ringing with the song of their mail as they marched, passed by with longbows slung over their backs. Quivers full of arrows hung next to the bows, packed with a wide variety of bodkins and poisoned heads.

  Even the laborers that followed were impressively armed. Thick armor, large swords, and shields and axes were slung next to the shovels that they would use to construct their fortifications. No doubt a maze of obstacles would grow by their hands that would guide their approaching foes into predetermined kill-zones where arrows and fire rained down on them before heavy infantry trod upon them and ground them to nothing.

  How could they possibly lose?

  Andre would perform his required duties as a scout, leading the hard men he watched advance to the fight. And then, he would fall back behind them to safety. If he ran now or abandoned the field, they would surely win their fight no matter what. And then they would find him and hang him for a deserter and a coward.

  He’d just have to sack up and do his job. No matter that he potentially faced a legendary foe led by fire-breathing demons that had supposedly crushed everything in their path as they marched across the globe, killing and eating all that stood before them.

  Andre had shuddered at that thought. They’d supposedly done just that, but they’d never faced the armies of The Hammer. He took comfort in the thought and continued to formulate a plan that would keep him safe and out of the fight.

  He’d no sooner made up his mind than the same giant of a man had issued his orders. Given no more than a scant few minutes to gather his men and equipment, Andre found himself galloping ahead of the column and into the mountain passes. There, he would find any sign of The Eaters and their intentions and then report back to command.

  It had been such a seemingly simple task, he mused as The Hammer strode before the collection of survivors and screamed as he swung his maul about him. As if battling imaginary foes. Most had seen this act before, if it indeed was an act and not simply the ravings of a lunatic. Still, more than a few flinched and children screamed in delight or terror. Women swooned and men cheered on their champion.

  Not just their champion, but their last hope.

  Andre failed to see how any could still cling to notions of victory, despite every last man here having seen The Eaters in person on the battlefield. Given the right weapon, Andre knew he could put one down for good. He might even be able to avail himself over a dozen of them at once, if luck was on his side. But he wouldn’t be facing just a dozen of them. He and what remained of the world of Grama would be outnumbered on the scale of tens of thousands to one.

  There was no conceivable way that the tide could be stemmed. There was no conceivable end other than their own deaths and consumption, rent by the fangs and claws of fiends from Hells below. If only it could be as easy as the first time he’d fought an Eater. The first time he’d killed a demon.

  Covered in nervous sweat, despite the chill in the early morning air, Andre had led his men. Carrying out their assigned task. Leaving the column of assorted heavy soldiers behind, they ascended into the mountains. He’d spent more than a few days in the high passes before. On multiple occasions hunting down bandits and raiders that thought they were beyond the reach of the empire’s justice.

  No stranger to these lands.

  Yet as he rose into the high passes, he found himself trembling in anticipation. In fear. The sky to the east bore an unnatural crimson hue to it. More fitting of the setting sun than the natural blue tones of the rising sun. Looking at it made him sick. Dispirited.

  As the day wore on, the sun eventually rose, bringing a more natural hue to the sky above. But the crimson stain to the east remained. The telltale signs of what he’d heard referred to as The Curse. Deeply settled across the lands taken by The Eaters. A poisonous glow that intimately clung to the earth, sinking into the flesh of Grama and feasting on it as The Eaters feasted on the flesh of men and beast alike.

  Strange sounds echoed through the high passes of the southern mountains that morning and into the day. Shrieks. Screams. Growls unlike anything the unit of constables had ever heard before, but nothing could be discerned as the cause of such. Andre’s men showed naked fear on their faces, constantly looking to him for guidance and direction of purpose. As much as he tried to not show the same, he would have only been lying to himself if had claimed to not do so. Be strong and without fear, like the elite below and behind, he’d told himself.

  Easy for them, he concluded with a sour mouth threatening to spew vomit. They’ve got their gear, and their training, and thousands of other men with the same at their back. We’re but six men against who knows what is out there.

  Despite his fear, Andre led his scouts through the narrow branches of the main passes. Seeking out the places he would attempt to pass soldiers through if he were leading an invasion through the
snow-capped peaks. With no sign of anything, he prepared to call his men back. To return to the giant that led the empire’s army as it sought out the enemy, even if empty handed. He would face the man’s wrath, but he’d be damned if he faced the near overwhelming fear he felt in this place, clawing at his gut from the inside, for another stinking minute.

  Looking skyward, he saw his first sign of the approach of the enemy. An unseasonal mass migration of birds, scattered across the sky in numbers he’d not have thought possible if he hadn’t been seeing it with his own two eyes. He blinked several times to ensure that in his fear he wasn’t simply imagining it.

  There they remained, painted across the sky in their grand multitudes. Birds of every size and shape, and more by visible by the second though he could see some falling from the sky. From sickness or exhaustion he couldn’t tell.

  “I don’t envy the boys what have to scrub the statues clean after that horde passes through,” one of the constables said, attempting humor. A smile came to Andre’s lips, but no laughter could emerge from his chest, still clenched tight with fear.

  Before the others could respond, the distant echoes of warhorns sounded. Carrying instructions and warning to the infantry. By the sound of it, the battle was about to be joined. At the fastest pace they could manage, the constables playing at scout began working back into the main passes.

  The unmistakable sounds of battle came echoing towards them, ringing from one wall of the passes to the other. Turning onto the main path that would lead them down out of the mountains and back into the safety of the empire’s army, Andre’s mount came to a stop and refused to move.

  He could hear it before saw it. And he knew in that instant, he knew that it was one of them. One of The Eaters. Despite the countless descriptions he’d heard before, they’d done nothing to prepare him for what he saw. Like his mount, Andre froze in terror.

  Some score or so of long-paces stood between him and the demon. A thing of intertwined coils of steel and raw, red flesh, each piece writhing with a life of its own. A constantly shifting array of spikes and teeth flowing over the surface of something half again the size of the largest men.

  It crouched down on its haunches, all four limbs touching the ground. Slowly its head turned towards Andre and his crew of men frozen in fear. Something flashed in its eyes. Red. Demonic. It stood, solidifying only slightly in the shape of a man.

  A wide mouth opened in a gap amidst the ever-shifting ropes of steel and flesh covering its face. Something like a grizzled hiss emerged and Andre could swear that it smiled at him.

  The mortal man’s gaze fell lower over the abomination, the movement of its arms as they flowed and lost their shape before converging into the shape of a wicked blade catching his attention. There he saw more than most might have.

  The steel skin of the thing was scorched and a hole was punched neatly into its torso. Damaged and twisted, as if some powerful wizard had struck it with a bolt of power. Or as if it had been wounded by one of the weapons of the Ancients. Something oozed from within its shifting form, slowly spreading over the wound and the burns. Blood perhaps, Andre thought. Or what passes for it among hellspawn.

  Air rippled around the thing as it began to move towards them. For the rest of his days, Andre would never know what allowed him to break the reverie of terror that held him. To stop just short of filling his pants with shit. It was as if someone else was watching through his eyes, saw the only solution to the problem, and managed to borrow his mouth just in time.

  “Kill it!” His voice rang loud and clear, echoing down the pass, as he hefted his sword and attempted to spur his mount forward. It refused to budge, seemingly glued in place.

  The Eater began to pick up speed, covering the distance between its original position and Andre’s mount in what surely could have been no more than a second or two. The beast grunted once as The Eater struck and then it fell, gutted and nearly halved in a single blow from the demon as Andre leapt from the saddle. Men and horses made sounds behind him as he approached the demon’s flank, white light creeping in from the edges of his vision and threatened to drown out the world and leave him blind.

  Something happened then, something that he still didn’t remember. Like the night when he’d slain most of the raiders at his communal farms. When his vision had returned to him, he’d stood, battered and bloodied, over the dismembered remains of The Eater and two of his own men. The remaining two stood by his side, no better off for the fight than he was.

  As they rode down out of the passes, they’d claimed that he was trading blows with the demon at an inhuman pace before it seemed to get the better of him. Spurred on by his display of bravery, the others had broken its spell of fear and joined his assault. Just when things seemed their worst, as if the demon would best them all, Andre had surged forward in a storm of blows and sundered the monster. Hewing through the open wound in its chest and ruining his own weapon in the attack. The surviving men angrily set upon the demon as it fell and finally managed to remove its limbs, whereupon it had had the good sense to finally bleed to death.

  They were fucking heroes the other men swore, as their eyes darted back and forth, looking for any danger that might lurk in the pass ahead of them. Anything that might attempt to thwart their descent to a hero’s welcome.

  But they were no heroes. Andre knew that they were lucky to be alive. Pain surged through his wounds, bleeding beneath torn mail as he rode on a horse borrowed from a dead man. Five of them had just barely taken the thing down, two of them dead in the attempt. And they’d only been able to do so because it was wounded. Lagging behind its comrades as they marched to war.

  If one that bore a wound hard enough to kill a dozen men over again, could give them such a fight, he wondered, what might one that was uninjured do?

  Andre had received his answer soon enough.

  As they rounded the final turn into the final descent from the high passes, the battlefield, or what was left of it, could be seen. Long trenches had been dug and filled with spikes in little time. Among them a scant few of The Eaters seemed to be stuck, impaled on the spikes there but showing no more concern for that fact than a grown man would to an ant bite.

  Beyond that, a nightmare carved in flesh covered the field of battle.

  Some hundreds of the demons stomped among what little was left of the empire’s army. A few lay motionless on the field, slain in the battle. But no more than Andre could count on a single hand. Beasts that resembled nothing else so much as some terrible hybrid of war-dogs and war-hogs rooted among the great stretch of human remains, feasting on steel and flesh alike. Growing visibly larger, even at this distance, with each bite.

  At the thickest point of the carnage, a group of The Eaters knelt, looking as though in prayer. Andre watched in horror as a crimson light emerged from the ground beneath their feet, gaining in strength and slowly beginning to spread.

  Demons stalked among the wounded, delivering the coup de grace, while others turned their attentions to a group of mounted warriors in the distance, locked in battle with something that looked like a group of centaurs from legends of old. The great giant of a man who had conscripted Andre and his crew was among them. He was unmistakable in his gleaming steel shell.

  His voice carried over the distance between them, his words unintelligible, but clearly orders delivered to his men. The general’s bodyguards and elite knights all that remained after the battle. Every other man, the thousands strong army that had seemed so invincible, so invulnerable, lay dead. Being rapidly consumed where they had fallen by something that never should have left the infernal pits that spawned it.

  “Fucked,” one of the other men with Andre spoke. “We’re fucked,” he continued. “We’re fucked,” repeating himself before whimpering and then growing quiet.

  Andre was inclined to agree, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up and die. Despite the little voice gnawing at the back of his thoughts telling him that his death was inevitable. That he woul
d not see another day.

  “We’ve got to make it to the general if we want to get out of here,” Andre spoke without thought.

  “Yeah,” agreed another man. “But he’s all the way the fuck over there.” He pointed to emphasize his statement, arm trembling as he did so. “And we’re the fuck here.” He pointed to the ground beneath him. “And they’re the fuck in between us.” He pointed to The Eaters and their hounds, busy devouring the thousands of dead men below.

  “Then we’d better get going,” Andre answered as he spurred his mount into action.

  There was a blur of motion. Growling, screaming. The stench of blood and the intense weight of terror upon his chest. Things bounded towards him, their steel flesh shifting in a dizzying spiral of blades. The thought that if this horse froze like the last, he was going to die, passed through Andre’s mind.

  Behind him someone screamed in pain and terror, and someone else screamed in shock. He refused to look back, driving the horse he rode for all it was worth. He would force the animal to verge of death and beyond before he turned back.

  But he knew that eventually he would have to. The dead men behind him, he could leave them there. They were gone. But The Eaters. If this was what they were and what they could do, there would be nowhere on Grama he could go that they would not be able to find him. There was no promise of sanctuary. No illusion of safety. He would have to turn and fight them, or he would die running.

  Ahead of him, the general’s bodyguard cheered as a lance pierced the torso of an Eater, driving it to the ground and out of their path. Closer, and Andre could see a man without lance or spear falling back from the retreating column of mounted warriors. He swung a great axe that crackled with energy, swatting down Eaters that dared stray too close to him.

  His face was utter contempt. He, an unmovable stone, turning back the tides of the sea itself. His voice carried loud over the fields as he struck down another. Surely there were other men like this out there Andre thought. Men with determination and weapons forged by The Ancients, who could stand and fight against this unstoppable foe.