The horns did not sound now, there was no need. They could measure their time in the rising and falling of the wave of bodies sweeping over the dunes towards them.
Half a legion stood ready to receive them. Hemmed in at the banks of the river, amongst the trees and brush, five cohorts of infantry stood shoulder-to-shoulder and stared down the oncoming horde. Banners were held high, shields bearing the silver tower at the ready.
They may have been bait, but the elite of the first legion waited proud and resolute.
His legion.
Khafra stood, perhaps foolishly, at the forefront of his own line. All around him were seasoned veterans, as prepared for battle as anyone could ever be. Bedecked in heavy scale armour and holding scale-shaped shields, every single one of them was armed for any foe; blades to slash, maces to bludgeon and spears to pierce. As the enemy advanced, his chest swelled with pride. There was a flicker of fear, but Khafra quashed it; a fully massed legion was a mighty thing, and his legion more so than any other. If anything could hold back this tide, it was the Nerkain First.
A wordless shout rang out, followed by a single, thunderous stamp as shields locked and spears came down.
The whoops and shouts of the foe filled the air, but they did not barrel head-first into the prepared lines. They marched in a semblance of order, rolling forward to the collective beat of pounding drums.
Their cavalry emerged to the fore, dragging themselves from the face of the horde by the gathering pace of their steeds. They were not without form or coherence. Something within that mass was martialling them into a wedge, aimed straight at their heart.
Another shout. Every muscle clenched, every jaw set as they braced for the charge…and it began to rain.
Arrows, javelins, spears and axes. Loosed, thrown or simply hurled with all the strength they could muster. A man, three down the line from Khafra took an arrow to his eye. Before he was even dead the soldier behind him pulled his soon-to-be corpse to the ground, taking his place in the line. Another, at Khafra’s left, took an axe to the shoulder, eliciting only a grunt of pain as his armour held and the blow glanced wide.
All around him this story played out a hundred times, a thousand. Discipline held. Armour held. The line held. In the final moments time began to slow to a crawl, the horses barrelling headlong into the wall of outstretched spears seeming to move in slow motion.
Then came the clash.
A massive smack of flesh and steel; Saszrukai shouted and hissed, horses whinnied, blood spilled, and all became death. Spears thrust, swords swung, axes whirled. Orders would mean little now. The slaves had wedged themselves into their line and the din of battle was far too overwhelming, all Khafra could do was fight, fight and hope his men held true.
He threw a man off his horse with a thrust of his spear, but was shunted back as an axe slammed into his shield and stuck fast. He stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, taking eyes, piercing limbs and puncturing organs. Shuffling forward inch by bloody inch, he provided his own mote of might into the line’s squeeze of the cavalry wedged into their formation.
Their momentum robbed, the cavalry stalled, as the legionaries pressed in on all sides.
They refused to simply give in and die, finding joints and eye sockets in the encroaching wall of steel-clad legionaries. The dirt was stained red as lizard and horse alike were cut apart.
They began an attempt to pull out, slaves shouting to one another in a foreign tongue for retreat. All the while their horses began to panic and jostle, each attempting to squeeze its way out as the legionaries inched in closer.
Khafra aimed low, snarling and hissing as he deliberately agitated the horses further by slicing tendon and muscle. The panic increased as horses thrashed in a futile effort to free themselves from the crush.
A pair of legionaries locked into place in front of Khafra, sealing him out of the fight, but it was all but over by then. It had been barely half a minute from clash to ejection, and their line had held with what was, given the circumstances, minimal casualties.
The meagre survivors of the enemy’s cavalry collapsed backward, towards the advancing mob of slaves. Although they had just watched their cavalry be slaughtered, they seemed emboldened to charge forward. Underneath the din of battle, Khafra swore he heard the crack of whips.
There was no sign of the snake, but it was time to show the first card in his hand.
Khafra snatched the smaller of a pair of horns hung from his belt, raising it to his lips as he moved back to the front of the line. The legionaries parted to let him through, slight nudges, grunts and hisses from the soldier behind alerting each legionary in front to move. The wail of the horn resounded across the sand-blasted plain before them, rolling over the pounding charge of the slaves.
The line locked shields once more at the horn’s call, as a wave of flesh and scale poured towards them, screaming and hollering. They came on heedless of their own safety, assuming their foe possessed no archers
What fools, Khafra thought.
At the signal, the entire archer compliment of the first legion announced their presence with a hail of arrows. Hidden away high on the dunes, surrounding the advancing horde on three sides, their well-drilled volleys cut the slaves down in droves.
The foe baulked at their sudden losses, their momentum draining as slaves began stumbling over the dead as they fell. They slowed, splitting their army into pieces to chase off every threat at once. They had the numbers to do it, swarming up the dunes without halting their charge toward the front line.
The archers were not without their defenders, however. All of the remaining heavy infantry from the legion thumped forth and formed a bulwark before them, creating islands of spear, bow and steel against the oncoming tide.
“Spears!” Khafra screamed at the top of his lungs. As one, the front-line reared back, before letting fly their spears in another brutal volley. Slaves were pierced, impaled and skewered, collapsing in bloody heaps.
Without offering a moment of pause, the legionaries of the first slammed shield-first into the scattered line, swords whirling. They drove in deep with the momentum of their charge, wedging themselves into the slave horde…yet eventually all halted together as their momentum was exhausted. Surrounded, every drive into the enemy’s lines t resulted in a fight for their own survival against a mob of screaming, hissing and clawing slaves.
Khafra was in one such wedge, buried in the thickest of the fighting. A crooked spear with a piece of flint as its tip grazed across his helm, and he took off the arm holding it with an upward arc of his blade. A crudely forged sword came down, thudding off his shield as he swiped low, maiming the wielder he couldn’t even see. Just when he was hoping for a breather in the onslaught, a dagger appeared from nowhere, jutting under his shield and into his stomach. The blade stuck fast in his torso, but the armour held, and Khafra lashed out with a bone-cracking swipe of his shield in return.
Breathing came sharp and whistling as he flexed his torso to force the dagger free. Every emotion was gone. All thought was focussed on the fighting, on seeing the next swing coming and countering before it killed him. Battle was sensory overload in the extreme, but Khafra used that tsunami of sensation to crush anything else within him and hone his mind to a razor's edge.
The man next to him lost his head to a two-handed axe swing, spraying blood in a wide arc as Khafra crouched in low and sliced the killer from groin to shoulder. He backstepped from a second axe, which grazed his chest and sent blood-spattered links from his scale-mail across the sand. Another legionary swooped in to his rescue, slicing a lethal chunk from the slave’s head.
The greater battle melted away into a messy life-or-death rhythm, a chaotic tableau where nothing mattered but blocking the next lethal swing. He could barely comprehend what was going on. Weapons loomed from a mass of grasping limbs and scaled bodies, and he struck at them relentlessly. Holding on to life until their line could push far enough forward to relieve them was all they could do.
But the line wasn’t pushing forward. Swamped by sheer numbers, they were barely holding. The slaves were showing a drive beyond what he had expected, Cleonar’s fears had been well founded.
He headbutted a slave who got too close, the teeth of his helm scratching out scales and drawing blood. An axe came toward his shoulder, but he sidestepped so it only glanced off his armoured side. He ripped open their throat with a quick swipe before they could raise the weapon again.
Another axe came down, and Khafra had just sidestepped into it.
It thudded into his shoulder with a wet squelch before he could raise his shield, forcing him down to one knee. He swiped out with his khopesh, feeling the weapon tear though flesh and muscle. The axe tore from his shoulder with a spattering of blood and a hiss of pain. Khafra shoved himself up and backwards from his attacker, into the relative safety of his fellow legionaries as blood ran down his armour.
There was no sign of the snake, but they had to commit now.
Grabbing loosely at the second horn hung from his belt, it slipped from the grasp of his blood-slick hand. It disappeared from sight amongst the trudging boots of the legionaries around him, and Khafra’s breath caught in his chest. He quickly pushed and shoved after the glimpse of polished ivory, finding the horn a few steps away.
He went down to one knee, dropping his khopesh to lift it with his other hand and blew the horn as hard as he could. The note was lower than the previous one, a deeper, bass tone that echoed and rolled out in waves, transforming into a wavering wail as his voice faltered.
***
Up on the high dunes at the rear flank of the battle, Shadrak slapped Cleonar on the shoulder with a grin when they heard the horn. “No snake. Let’s get in there and make a mess.”
Cleonar snarled at the mercenary, uncomfortable with his overly-fraternal nature. “You should be manning your ballistae, mercenary. Let the real soldiers do the fighting and you stay out of it.”
Shadrak began to laugh, loud and bellowing as he pulled a cruel-bladed axe from his belt. “Oh no, no, no. You’ve made it a challenge now!” He began to stalk forward, weighing the axe in his right hand as he hefted up a curved hook in his left. “Misa!” he called, grinning ear to ear. “I give you the bolt throwers. The snake’s either dead or fictional, so just point it at the mass and let loose! Shouldn’t be hard even with your aim!”
Misa acknowledged with a thumbs up, snapping her fingers and gesturing to the gathered mercenaries with her other hand as she set to organising them. Cleonar snarled and looked to her own troops. “Legionaries! Form up and forward, with me!”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
She took to a long, loping stride down the bank, glaive in both hands and held low. Legionaries stepped in behind her, coming down the side of the dune towards the slave horde’s left flank.
This scene repeated across the battlefield. Officers shouted commands to reserves of more lightly armed and armoured legionaries, secreted away to hunt the Naga, as they pulled themselves from hiding and entered the fray.
They slammed into the fight, shouldering and stabbing their way through the slaves.
Cleonar was calm, precise and technical. A blade comes down; step back, bring the killing edge around in a tight arc to open the throat. A second turns to her; step in, bring the edge down into the shoulder and through the bone. An axe to her left; pull the glaive back, flick under the beard of the axe, pull up to disarm, pull down into the skull.
Shadrak was the exact opposite. There was no technique to him in the slightest. He was messy, chaotic, unpredictable, and took every advantage he found.
He threw out the hook, catching a slave on the shoulder and pulled hard on the rope, using his axe to tear their throat open as they stumbled forward. He kicked sand up into the face of a slave making a beeline for him, following with a uppercut from his axe. He ripped the hook free, and slammed it into the skull of a third, headbutted a fourth. Pulling the third down and behind him, he stomped the fourth in the groin to keep him down, ducking under a swinging mace, he hacked into their side, but they didn’t fall, so he hacked again, and again, and again until they stopped moving. A legionary had finished off the fourth, so he took a moment to breathe before stalking forward again.
He fought dirty, but he fought hard. He knew Cleonar would never respect him, but he was deadly enough for the task at hand.
They were making progress, hacking into the side and rear lines of the slave horde when they encountered a true obstacle. Cleonar quickly realised something was wrong because Shadrak had fallen silent.
“Sorcerer! Fucking down!” he bellowed suddenly, cursing as he threw himself to the ground just as a fist-sized bolt of un-light passed where his torso was a moment ago. The bolt was formed of utter dark, yet it left a corona of sickly purple light around her vision, accompanied by a stabbing pain behind her eyes and an ethereal wail.
The bolt drove deep into the ground, kicking up dust in all directions and showering them in sand. A second bolt whistled out of the dust, passing over Cleonar’s left shoulder by no more than a meter. Even at such a distance, it sucked the heat from her scales and seemed to make all the world’s colours wash out for a moment. Such horrible magic, it made her shudder, even though it hadn’t touched her.
But what it did to living flesh was worse.
A legionary behind her took the bolt on his shield, but it did nothing to stop it. It burst through the metal with ease, buckling and splitting it apart, and the moment it touched his scales it flowed into him. The anti-light spread like wildfire, engulfing his entire body in moments. It spilled out from every crack in his armour, every seam between his scales before it began to eat him away.
Just as quickly as he was engulfed, he was consumed. Body and soul, leaving nothing behind. No ash, no bones, not even a scrap. His equipment and clothes thudded to the ground, hollow and empty.
All the while, he screamed. His wailing continuing even after his body had ceased to be, echoing forth in undulating waves.
Bile rose in Cleonar’s throat. Her will faltered, the grip on her weapon slacked and she stumbled back. To destroy someone so utterly was unthinkable.
Fighting back the urge to vomit, she clenched her jaw, biting her tongue to bring herself back to reality. Breathing heavily and looking around, she could see those under her command were just as lost as she was, and the foe was taking advantage.
Here a legionary was pounced upon and stabbed with a dozen knives, there another had their legs swept out from under them and chest caved in. All was descending into pandemonium and chaos. A single death cascading into countless others.
She could feel the panic bubbling inside her, but she refused to let it take hold. Hands shaking, she forced it down and spun around, trying to pierce the swarm and find the thing that did this.
Another bolt whirled out, streaking through the mob and past Cleonar, but among the mass of jostling bodies, stabbing blades and whirling weapons she couldn’t see who, or what, had thrown it.
She was fending them off at arm’s length. By flicking her glaive this way and that to deflect and parry she could keep their weapons at bay, stepping back where she needed to as she tried to keep her bearings to track down this monster.
A sharp whistling sounded, and in a sudden gout of blood and sand a narrow line was punched through the encroaching mob. Sparing a look over her shoulder, she could see the ballistae, Shadrak’s prized bolt throwers, had finally positioned themselves and begun to hurl their oversized ordinance into the mass below them. The ache of tension fled her, and all Cleonar could feel was the invigorating pump of pure adrenaline through her system.
More thudded down now. Each bolt utterly eviscerating any unlucky enough to be in their path, leaving little more than mounds of gore behind.
With the bolts gouging deep lines through the enemy, Cleonar steeled herself to move closer, watching as gaps opened and closed for any sign of whatever infernal thing was hurling its horrific sorceries at them. What she found first was Shadrak.
Still on the ground, scrambling and thrashing like a creature possessed, the mercenary was desperately trying to climb to his feet. He was screaming and bellowing, legs kicking at knees, groins, faces and hands as he grabbed, chopped, and pulled at those around him just to stay alive. He was only a few paces deep into their semblance of a line, and Cleonar dove forward to assist.
She hacked one down with an arcing blow, but it was sloppy, splattering her with gore. She snarled and hissed, ripping her weapon free and turning it on those around her. She swiped and jabbed, holding them off for now…just one more moment.
Another ballista bolt slammed in, throwing up sand in every direction and pinning the gored remnants of two slaves to the ground., Cleonar used the panic it brought to spring forward, shoving her way to Shadrak. She sliced upward, carving open the face of a slave looming over the prone mercenary.
Shadrak immediately took advantage as he spotted Cleonar towering over him. He snapped forward, biting the nearest slave in the throat and thudding his axe into the stomach of another.
He tore open their belly and ripped out a throat with his teeth, gore raining over his form in crimson rivers. He plunged his hook into another, using their body as an anchor to drag himself up. He gulped in air as he stumbled upright, spattered from head to toe with blood, both his own and his enemies’, his eyes wide and bloodshot. He heard a scream. Another damned scream.
Those screams kindled something in him, a burning fire borne of hatred and horror. Peeking through the horde just in front of him, he saw the face of the creature responsible for this madness. It was a gaunt thing, drained of colour with scales taut to its bones. It raised its hands as another bolt crackled around its fingers, fingers stained with the same magic that it threw, slowly eating away at its own body.
Another victim screamed. Shadrak screamed with them, throwing himself back into the fray as Cleonar moved in to his side. He ignored her shouts and wild gestures, hacking and ripping at anything in his way.
Scraps of armour, strips of cloth and chips of metal marked his progress. Chunks of his flesh were hacked free from his body, and he felt an axe kiss his lower jaw, taking a sliver of bone with it. A spear ripped against his side.
But they were all too slow to stop him, he was beyond sense, beyond pain.
Cleonar was behind him, batting aside the deadliest of the blows raining down on him as best she could, but they were clattering against her own armour as well. The surviving legionaries were surging in just behind them in answer to her barked orders. All they had to do was survive.
The accursed creature throwing the magic sneered through cracked teeth as it laid eyes upon Shadrak, simply raising a finger to point as the mercenary threw himself forward.
He was intercepted, slammed into mid-air by a grey-scaled Saszrukai. They thumped to the floor and grappled with one another. Shadrak went for an open-clawed grab, but the newcomer rolled away and sprung to its feet with easy agility. Shadrak dragged himself up, teeth gritted, and face contorted into a hateful snarl.
They squared off, circling around each other, waiting for the first blow to strike.
The newcomer was clad in a sleeveless tight-fitting jacket of treated leather and straight trousers, loosely holding a single edged-blade in one hand. Its dead eyes stared impassively at Shadrak, its face too calm for the death surrounding them.
The creature’s master moved to its side, draped in fraying robes being eaten away by its own corruptive powers so quickly that Cleonar could see frayed scraps of cloth fluttering to the ground. Its sneer twisted into a cruel smile as it looked at Cleonar, snapping its cracked fingers once.
Immediately, its grey-scaled servant sprang forth, swiping high with its blade and forcing Shadrak down into a tackle, robbing the lunge of its momentum.
It brought its knee into his face, Shadrak shoving it away to keep his neck as another swipe came down. The next blow came without pause, but Shadrak had his axe up now, deflecting it away with a flick of the wrist.
While they grappled, Cleonar dove towards the smiling creature that had slaughtered her legionaries. The heretical energies it commanded began bubbling in its fingers as he chanted in low, hushed tones, stepping out of her first sweep.
His words came slowly, blood trickling from his lips as she pressed her assault. It stepped, ducked, weaved and dodged, making no effort to close the distance between them.
She could not understand a word it was saying. She attempted to muster a taunt, a curse, something to address the terrible things this creature had done. All that escaped from her mouth was a roar, her anger and hatred pouring into every swing.
The slaves had formed a ring around the twin duels, out of fear or respect Cleonar did not know, nor did she care. What she did care for was that the ring was closing in, squeezing them tighter and tighter. Their advance may have only stumbled at first, but with legionaries now hemming them in from all sides they were now crumbling entirely.
Still, Cleonar had to press every advantage she had to get close enough to run the bastard through, even as the circle of bodies closed in around them. Her fear of this creature was gone, all it had done simply made her too furious. Yet, all of its reactions were dodges, backsteps and sideswipes, and she could not get close enough to put her strength to good use.
As though he was suddenly distracted, Cleonar’s blade scraped across his hide. Swiping an arc of blood with the cut, she had to halt her momentum and twist her blade around to capitalise.
Then, with a sudden burst of speed, the heretical creature dove forward, grabbing her glaive by the shaft and pushing it to the side. It countered with a savage backhand, wielding strength that should not have been possible with its skeletal frame. She slammed face-first into the dirt, the breath violently stolen from her chest.
Her vision swam, but she dragged her head up, expecting her own glaive to come down on her neck at any moment. Instead, she saw the creature’s corrupted fingers brush across the steel of her weapon, infecting the metal with its blight. Then, with a slow downward drag, it performed yet another heresy.
It sliced open the air. A neat, shimmering line appeared in the wake of the tainted steel. It tossed the weapon aside, letting it clatter to the ground as its corruption spread and steadily ate it away.
Reaching forward, its fingers twisted at unnatural angles to pull open this wound, revealing the void from perhaps which it drew its magic. A void that hurt her to look into, made her head pound and blood trickle from her eyes.
Without hesitation it stepped through, and as the weapon finally disappeared to nothing behind it, the wound it had ripped in the fabric of existence closed.
Cleonar tore her eyes away, taking heavy, shuddering breaths and blinking away the blood in her eyes. She would not forget that sight for as long as she lived; it made her skull ache and limbs twitch, her thoughts turned sluggish, like soup in her mind.
Shadrak had fared better. His blind fury had left him with a handful of deep wounds, drooling blood across his tattered clothes as he battered himself against the grey-scaled creatures defence time and again. The creature had held him off, parrying, riposting, dodging and wearing the mercenary down cut by cut. If it had taken any injuries, they were not deep enough to wound it; as no blood stained its scales or clothes. This stalemate continued until the creature landed a grievous blow on Shadrak’s shoulder, sinking the edge deep into bone and sinew after cracking scales. The blade stuck fast, wedged into the splintered bone. Shadrak screamed with pain and fury, twisting his body to drag the weapon from his foe’s grip and laying into him with his axe.
It defended itself with its arms, taking the deep hacking blows without a sound, as meat was sliced from its body in heft chunks. Still there was no blood. The flesh that fell to the ground was sickly and pale, but there was not a single drop of fluid.
Shadrak growled his frustration. The damn thing should be yowling in pain and faltering as he hacked it to pieces, but it refused to budge, or even to speak.
The creature twisted under one wide swipe, pushing in close and battering Shadrak’s ribs with a series of jabs. It slid out to the side as Shadrak tried to retort, features still blank despite being cut to the bone in so many places.
Shadrak snarled, baring his teeth and lowering himself into a crouch. As the creature dove in again, Shadrak swept out his tail, kicking a gout of sand into the creature’s face. He followed with a swipe of his hook at the creature’s ankle, ripping the leg out from under it and bringing his axe down. He caught his axe hard on the right clavicle, cracking bone and splitting scale, and then cleaved down through the meat of its right arm. The blow almost entirely removed the limb at the shoulder before sinking deep into its chest.
Still there was no blood. No cry of pain.
Gasping, Shadrak finally began to slow as he pulled his axe free from the grey meat. Pain shot through his body and aches set into his abused limbs as he raised his axe again to take its head.
The creature simply laid there, accepting defeat and staring up at him with those cold, dead eyes. With one arm now useless beside it and its energy spent, it seemed to welcome its death without a word.
Cleonar stopped him, taking hold of Shadrak’s wrist, her grip weak. “It’s just another pawn. Let’s get something out of this fight, other than suffering,” she muttered, her voice unsteady.
Shadrak held for a moment, staring at the figure sprawled before him. He nodded, lowering his axe and letting himself fall to the ground as all around them, the legionaries began to move in.
It was over.
