Death's Angels

Chapter Thirty-Six

“How many down?” Sardec yelled.

“Looks like we’ve about five men dead, six so badly wounded they cannot fight, six fled and another dozen wounded but mobile. The rest have just scratches or near enough, sir,” said Sergeant Hef.

Sardec considered this information. There was nothing here from which stretchers could be made, unless perhaps they chipped away the smooth chitinous layers of the walls. And there were other considerations.

He bent down to inspect one of the hill-men’s corpses. It was already stone cold and it had an odd colour to it. Something greyish that was not blood flowed in its veins.

He looked at the Lady Asea. “What were those things?”

“Corpse riders. Symbiotes. Demon things that sucked the life from those men and then used their bodies as vessels. At least we know what happened to the people who vanished. These things drained their vitality and sent it somewhere else.”

“Let’s hope there are not any more of them. We cannot face another attack like that.”

“We must press on. We have no time to waste,” she said. “The portal is already open. The ritual nears its climax.”

Sardec came to a quick decision, prayed to Adaana it was the right one. “Leave those too wounded to move! We’ll collect them on the way back.”

There were protests when this decision was made. Nobody wanted to stay behind. Sardec did not bother to point out that the remainder of the company was marching towards a place where demons were being summoned, and almost certain doom. It would, he thought sourly, be somewhat bad for morale.

“No arguments,” he said. “Do it!”

There were no more protests.

Rik watched the Lieutenant with a grudging admiration. In the midst of their fearful surroundings, he remained calm, seemingly untouched by the miasma of fear surrounding them. His commands were obeyed despite of the men’s growing terror. Even Lady Asea seemed to watching him with something like respect in her eyes.

Rik looked at her with awe. A good dozen of the hill-men corpses had been seared black, flesh crisped and burned so badly that it had sagged from the bone. The creatures clinging to their chest had popped open as if they had exploded. Their insides looked cooked. He guessed that her wand had turned the tide of battle indeed, although he could see that one or two Foragers were down, their rifle barrels looking bent and twisted like metal pulled from a madman’s forge. Had they too been victims of the lightning? Was that why she had waited so long to unleash it?

She turned and said something to her black garbed servants. Somehow, they had managed to come through the fight unscathed even the one with the massive flask strapped to his chest.

“I’d still shag her,” said the Barbarian very quietly. This time he did not sound quite so sure.

Zarahel knew the enemy were almost upon him. That was good. In only a few moments more, Uran Ultar would be fully materialised and would need something to feed on. Around him the Ultari danced. Bertragh chanted, his face white, his eyes blank, his features moulded in the expression of a man who had lost all sanity quite some time ago.

Up ahead Sardec saw light. Not the faint phosphorescence of the walls, but something brighter and altogether more lurid, a greenish sheen reflected from the stuff coating the tunnels. It made the arching doorway ahead bright and sinister. There was a smell like cinnamon in the air now, and something worse, something old and putrid. The sound of chanting echoed all around them, amplified by the enclosing walls. The ripjacks whimpered and refused to advance. Bloody froth emerged from the corners of their mouth as if they had bit their flickering tongues. Sardec had never seen such behaviour before, save in the presence of dragons, a predator so overwhelmingly powerful that it could drive fear into the tiny ferocious minds of hunting wyrms.

“The summoning is all but complete,” said Lady Asea. “We must hurry. Once we are in you must keep me protected for as long as it takes for me to work the counter-magic.”

Sardec nodded.

“Everybody loaded?” he bellowed. “There’ll be no more chances after this.”

“Aye, sir,” came the bellowed response.

“Then in we go. Show no mercy. Kill anything you see that isn’t with us now.”

Bellowing fear-filled war-cries, they rushed towards the archway.

Rik emerged into a vast chamber at least a hundred yards across, with a domed ceiling ten yards tall at the highest point. A web of shadows filled the air of the upper part of the chamber, leaping from strange glowing jewels in the ceiling and floor, converging on the centre of an intricate phosphorescent design in the middle of the chamber. It mirrored a web of mosaic-like patterns set on the floor. In the air above the exact centre of the pattern was something that suggested a monstrous spider, a fearsome presence that radiated a terrible hunger. On the ground were two figures, one human, the other less so.

All around them were a seething horde of Ultari. There were dozens of them moving around the pattern’s edge as if they too were taking part in the ritual. Every time the chant reached a crescendo, the presence above clotted and become more solid. When that happened a strange ripping sound came from the edge of the chamber, and another Ultari emerged to join the dance. Rik looked at the walls. He could see they were covered in frenziedly pulsing pods. There were things inside them, trying to get out.

“He’s wakening them. They were dormant but now they are emerging from their hibernation,” said Asea. “He’s feeding them energy and intelligence.”

Rik felt his mouth go dry. This did not look good.

The two humans caught his attention. One was Bertragh. The factor’s face was transformed by an odd mix of terror and exaltation, and his gaze was fixed on the other man’s with a look of near-religious rapture.

Man was perhaps the wrong word to describe the other, Rik thought. He was human in outline, but a shell of chitin, similar to that on some of the corpse-riders enclosed his body. The only human part visible was his face; even his head was shrouded by insect-like armour. The face was twisted by some transforming inner force so that it looked no more human than Lady Asea’s mask. The eyes glowed with the odd greenish light. The words it chanted sounded like nothing that could be torn from a human throat.

On a lectern of chitin atop an altar raised from the middle of the floor, was an open book. Rik felt utterly certain that it was one of the ones they had sold to Bertragh back in Redtower, just as he was certain the man doing the summoning was Zarahel. The figure turned and Rik felt sickness churn within him. The back of the armour looked as if it were a huge spider clutching Zarahel in its limbs. Had it spun the armour round him like a cocoon, Rik wondered?

The man-thing raised its arm and shrieked more verses of its spell. The air above him shimmered and a circle was formed through which more of the greenish light spilled; the demon god emerged. It looked superficially like the Ultari but there was something about it that suggested a monstrous centipede. It seemed to stretch back endlessly into infinity. A multitude of limbs kicked and wriggled on its side.

“This is where Uran Ultar waited like a trapdoor spider,” said Asea. She barked orders to her servants. One of them unstrapped the urn from his chest, and she began to croon the words of a spell over it.

“Too late,” Zarahel shouted, an inhuman triumph evident in his voice. “Too late, interlopers! The way is open. The Spider God returns. Bow to me! Bow to Uran Ultar and he may spare the humans. You have witnessed his rebirth. It is fitting that you live and watch him kill the Terrarchs. They will be the first of many.”

The Foragers halted, stunned. They looked at each other like men awakening from a dream. Rik wondered if they were going to obey. If he thought he could have believed Zarahel he might have considered it himself, but he did not.

While the soldiers hesitated, more of the Ultari emerged through the pods on the wall. The enormous god-beast writhed and forced his way through a portal that somehow seemed too small for him. It was as if he was coming from a much larger world, and somehow needed to shrink down, to constrict himself to enter this universe. Rik halted briefly, overcome for a moment by this hint of cosmic revelation.

Hesitation was likely to prove fatal. Rik raised his rifle, sighted on Bertragh, and opened fire. The factor fell, and as he did so, the light around the portal flickered. Obviously the merchant had been one of the poles of power for the spells.

Sardec raised his sword and brought it down. “Fire!”

The rest of the Foragers opened fire. A storm of shot erupted around the Ultari, Zarahel and the gateway. Zarahel remained upright, his chitinous external skeleton chipped away, to reveal brownish substance beneath. Some of the Ultari collapsed. Ichor flowed where balls caught weak points in the carapaces but far more of them bounced off than bit home. “Aim for the joints, men,” Sardec shouted. “They are the weak points.”

In a moment all was chaos. Men moved away from one another, trying to get distance between them in case of some sorcerous response from the demons or their master. A few remained in place, ramming balls home into their muskets. Others fixed bayonets, knowing that close combat was inevitable and wanting to be prepared. The smell of ozone warred with the stink of sorcery.

“Form up around the Lady!” Sardec shouted. “She is our only hope.”

Lady Asea’s eyes were closed as she crooned her spell. Her two servants flanked her now, long curved swords out and swinging in intricate patterns. They were loosening their muscles and preparing to fight.

Zarahel shrieked something to the Ultari in their strange chittering tongue. They moved towards the Foragers with the clockwork precision of automatons. Return fire was sporadic now, a ragged volley from those who had their weapons ready.

Rik saw another of the Ultari go down, all of the legs on its left side ceasing to work. A ball appeared to have lodged home in a nerve cluster. He finished ramming the ball home himself and held his shot ready, not wanting to open fire until he had a clear target. Weasel knelt and fired. The Barbarian unlimbered his chopping blade and moved over to be nearer the Lady Asea.

Rik turned to see that Leon was there watching his back as always. He had a bayonet clipped onto his rifle. His face was white. Sweat beaded his brow. Rik could almost sense his terror. “Now I am really scared!” he said. His voice was barely audible.

The Ultari impacted on the first of the Foragers now. Long blade-like forward appendages lashed out. Men fell, torn apart by the monsters’ irresistible strength. Rik froze for a moment at the sight. He could not believe he had ever dared go hand to hand with one of those things.

Zarahel laughed triumphantly at this evidence of what his new pets were capable of. There was a mad quality to his mirth that suggested he was no longer quite human, that some other entity shared his body, looked out through his eyes.

Behind him Uran Ultar continued to drop from his extra-spatial lair. His lower appendages were just over Zarahel’s head now. They reached out as if to caress him.

Rik raised his rifle and snapped off a shot, hoping to put a ball through the wizard’s eye. Smoke billowed obscuring his view momentarily. When he could see it appeared his shot had ricocheted off the carapace. Zarahel was unharmed. In fact, a change was coming over him. He seemed, now more than ever, an unholy hybrid of man and spider, more demonic than human.

The Ultari line converged on Asea. Few men dared stand in their way. Those that did lived only for heartbeats before those huge scything blades tore them apart.

“This looks bad, Rik,” said Leon. Rik did not disagree. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and began to fumble through his pack for the things he had bought from Wyrm Hunter Karl.

Sardec stood beside the sorceress, blade ready to defend her. He was appalled by the fury of the Ultari. This small group could overwhelm his entire force. And more were hatching all the time.

“What shall we do?” he asked Lady Asea, before realising she could not answer, that she was too caught up in her spell. Beside her, her two black garbed servants kept up a steady stream of arrow fire. One arrow bit home, crashing into the central eye of the nearest Ultari. It reared up in agony and as it did so the second servant sent an arrow plunging into the weak spot where leg met carapace. The thing collapsed in the middle, its legs unable to bear its weight.

A look of concentration passed over Asea’s face. Out of the darkness the ripjack pack emerged like thunderbolts. They raced forward, hissing and snarling, and began to swarm over one of the demons, sinking their teeth into its carapace, snapping at legs, clambering up over the creature’s back, looking for weak spots. It was a battle of savage primordial fury. The ripjacks were almost as large and almost as strong as the Spider God’s children and they were driven by a berserk terrified fury.

The Ultari reared trying to throw them off. It lashed out with its scythes. One of the ripjacks was not quite quick enough and was impaled. The blades passed right through its body and pinned it to the ground. Sardec was awestruck. Somehow, while working her magic, she had managed to retain control of the pack with some small part of her mind. He had never heard of any sorcerer doing anything like it. For brief moments the Ultari were thrown back.

Sardec readied Moonshade, determined that this time, he would not be taken unawares by an Ultari. Already the spider things were reforming and attacking the ripjack pack. He looked at the men and saw that they were scared. This was not a place where human courage could hold. It was too deep beneath the earth, too dark, too filled with alien sorcery. Their foes were just too powerful. The leading Ultari had smashed its way through the pack. Its brethren behind it were beginning to mop up the ripjacks. It was going to be on them in a matter of seconds.

Asea screamed a final sentence in an inhuman tongue. She pulled the stopper on the flask. There was a surge of intolerable heat. A pillar of fire rose above them surging upwards towards the ceiling, swooping and spiralling around in the air, a trail of sparks falling from it. For a moment all fighting stopped. Even the spider demons appeared to consider this new portent in amazement.

Sardec prayed that nothing had gone wrong with her spell.