God of Broken Things

Chapter 29

Dawn arrived. All the Setharii and Clansfolk warriors sat on their half-frozen arses spooning down lukewarm porridge while staring at slices of salted bacon sizzling on upturned metal shields placed above the hot embers of last night’s fires, every grumbling belly willing the salty mouth-watering meat to cook faster. Skins of ale were passed around as we toasted the fall of the Skallgrim camp. The valley echoed with the distant clang of steel and the piteous wails of the dying as tribesman butchered tribesman, not that they saw each other as any kind of kin at all of course. Forced allies were no allies at all, just enemies temporarily working towards the same goal.

As for our side, their death cries were beautiful music to many of our ears. Some found that thought macabre, even evil, but others had seen friends hacked to death by Skallgrim invaders right in front of them and took a great deal of satisfaction from our enemies gutting one other. To my mind, it was better them than us.

With the rising of the sun, word must have spread about the betrayal of the Sea Serpents, we saw smoke from other camps to the north. That was a damned good sign for us and a satisfying personal victory for me. A few whispered words into the right minds were worth far more than a hundred swords.

Storm clouds still boiled to the north and lightning flashed periodically, thunder rolling down the valley. With Abrax-Masud busy surviving the fury of the Clanholds’ great spirits, his mind-controlling magic was unavailable and it would take the Scarrabus time to regain control of their human forces.

We had no idea how many Scarrabus existed in this realm or how many of them inhabited humans of influence, but they had their work cut out for them getting all those feuding tribes to work together again after such a vicious outbreak of bloodshed. Old grudges had come to the fore and now new ones were being birthed into the world even as we sat here and admired our handiwork.

I enjoyed the results and wished to heap more on them. Our three youngest magi – Bryden, Secca and Vincent – felt conflicted: killing daemons was one thing, but humans quite another. Cormac was an older magus and as jaded about such things as I was. As for Eva, she might have been young but she had seen many a battlefield and many more deaths than all of us combined. She was a veteran and was already planning how to kill more of them.

Under Eva’s guidance Cormac returned to work growing spikes of stone in irregular patches across the valley, partly to discourage a night assault, and partly to break up and hamper any enemy charges come the morrow. Diodorus took Baldo and Andreas with him to paint the spikes with a grey paste he called the screaming death. It sounded delightful to me.

Bryden and Vincent, assisted by Nareene, combined on more exploding wards. Bryden was a skilled aeromancer and I a mere dabbler. There were better ways I could be of use. I found myself a quiet hollow to relax and open my mind, drifting through the thoughts of our army to dampen fears and where necessary induce fierce courage. We had to be ready and I had no qualms about seizing whatever advantage I could create. So many secrets dropped into my lap: scandals, murders, plots and plans, theft and unrequited love, all manipulated to make them fight harder and longer. The faces of murderers, rapists, betrayers and everything dark and disgusting were linked to the enemy, old angers and grudges ready to be resurrected and all those feelings set to come to the fore when we faced them in battle – they would not break.

The Skallgrim thought their berserkers were fierce – ha, those ignorant heathens hadn’t seen anything yet. It kept me busy and out of Eva’s way while she directed the defence preparations.

Over the course of the day, Bryden undertook a series of scouting flights over the valley to look for sign of enemy movement in the hills. He reported on the progress of their self-slaughter as it slowly petered out, one tribe or another proving themselves victorious. It finally died all together when a group of halrúna accompanied by their daemons and a powerful war-leader bearing the boar banner arrived to put all who resisted his orders to the axe.

Come nightfall we knew the enemy would resume their assault, and they had the numbers to keep it up until they exhausted us. I took the task of carefully placing a few wards at key points amidst Cormac’s forest of razor-sharp spikes. I kept half of the wards back to deal with a future assault, and I took two of the most deadly crafted by Vincent and Bryden for myself – a little backup plan if everything fell into the crapper or a fucking huge daemon got a hankering for a tasty haunch of Walker-meat. Even a ravak would be hurting after one of those wards to the face.

We prepared as best we could with such limited time and resources. Rest and recuperation would likely prove as much a boon as any devious plan we could possibly come up with.

Darkness fell swiftly, and my coterie gathered around me, grim and ready to dish out pain. With the last of the light our archers uncoiled waxed bowstrings from around their bodies to keep them from freezing and snapping, and strung their weapons. We strapped on damnable cold armour, readied weapons, took up position on the foot of the hill and began listening for the first signs of trouble. Eva had abandoned all subtlety for a massive war hammer almost as tall as she was. Its haft was thick ridged steel, and the head shaped into a spiked corvun beak. Only a knight had the inhuman strength to wield such a brutal weapon, and only such a weapon could hope to withstand a knight’s strength for long. I couldn’t wait to see it put to good use.

It wasn’t long before the enemy reached Cormac’s forest of pain. We couldn’t see their advance, but at some point a number of them must have cut themselves on stone spikes. Any muffled cry of pain quickly escalated to unearthly agonized screams that gave away their position.

Diodorus nodded in satisfaction. He appreciated a job well done. With the screams came a feeling like we were being watched from afar, a nebulous itch at the back of my head that said somebody, or something, was paying me attention and that it didn’t much like what we were doing.

In deep darkness, Eva was the only one capable of seeing the enemy creeping through the snow towards our defensive position on the hill, shredding themselves against razor-sharp stone and spikes. She leaned on her war hammer and kept up a steady narration as the enemy came onwards, relentless and grimly trampling over the fallen bodies of their own side.

An hour passed, two, and then Bryden and I both stiffened and looked up at the same time. “Flying daemons!”

Vincent threw a burning ball of flame into the night sky to reveal a swarm of them. A dozen different breeds plummeted towards us, including two-headed bone vultures, chitinous insects with razor-sharp limbs, a single large flying lizard and a bunch of flitting translucent things I could barely catch a glimpse of.

With enough warning our bows and spears were readied and Clansfolk slings set whirling. A barrage of death met the first wave. Daemons fell across the valley: eyes and carapace shattered by stones or pierced by arrows. Dead or dying. Of those that reached us, many were impaled on spear tips, claws and beaks snapping in futile attempts to kill even as they squealed their last.

Diodorus and Adalwolf took aim at the largest target, both arrows striking deep into the flying lizard’s soft belly, bringing it down with ease. The impact of its fall shook icicles free from the hillside.

Some made it through, steel and talon clashing as they went for eyes and faces. A single strange daemon made to attack me, a thing akin to the giant mantis found in the hot damp forests of The Thousand Kingdoms far to the south. Jovian and Coira leapt up to meet it, spear and sword bringing it down at my feet, crumpled and leaking fluids. I looked into its bulging green eyes and saw a measure of intelligence there, enough at least to know fear. I plunged Dissever through its armoured head, killing it instantly. It wasn’t their fault they had been ripped from their home realms by blood sorcery and forced to serve this vile bunch of bastards. I supposed the same could be said of many of the Skallgrim themselves.

The flying daemons were no match for a forewarned and heavily armoured foe. We finished them off and then turned to meet the first ragged remnants of the Skallgrim advance arriving in disorganised groups, their clothes and bodies torn and bloodied by Cormac’s traps.

A few stepped on wards and were blown to bits, body parts and blood showering those following them. And having your friend’s intestines hitting you in the face wasn’t great for morale.

It was not a fight, it was more like casual slaughter, or a drove of human cattle that kept walking headfirst right into the abattoir. If their only goal was to wear out our sword arms and chip spear tips then they were doing a great job of it. Eva didn’t even bother using her great hammer – her fists were more than enough. At first I thought them stupid, but then I began to think the Skallgrim’s plan was to blunt Cormac’s defences by sheer numbers alone, stone tips and jagged edges breaking off against armour and bone, allowing the next warrior to get a little further each time until more and more reached us without wounds. It was working, but at horrific cost. A cost they could easily afford to pay.

At first light we stared in silent horror at the utter carnage all their stumbling about in the darkness had left behind. The valley floor was red ice, dirty brown snow, and carpeted with corpses. Hundreds of men were dead, some impaled on stone spikes and gently swaying in the breeze, others still feebly moaning at the head of red trails of gore smeared along the frozen earth.

With the coming of dawn the situation changed in their favour. The war-leader of the Boar Tribe arrived accompanied by a strange pack of six halrúna walking in step like they were one. They were still well out of bowshot but Vincent lobbed a hopeful ball of fire anyway. They countered and caused it to fizzle out long before reaching them.

Utilising a combined assault of fire, air and water magics their Gifted reduced the field of spikes to cracked rubble. I tried to interfere but the moment I touched the mind of one I found all six huddled behind a shared mental defence like layers of a spiked metal onion. Somehow they had found a way to join their minds together to resist me. Or more likely, Abrax-Masud had linked them with the Gift-bond, as I had once been linked to my old friend Lynas. Their Gifts might be weaker than mine, but six Gifted linked together was almost my match.

I could break them given time, but the effort would be enormous and straining. After a quick discussion of tactics, Eva decided I was best keeping my strength in reserve. At least this way I was kept fresh while their Gifted used themselves up against mere rock instead of human flesh. If we could push them into succumbing to the Worm of Magic then they would turn and ravage those closest to them.

The Skallgrim came on in a long shield wall, beating axes against wood, hide and steel. Horns blew and war drums began their ominous beat, booming faster and faster as they approached our lines under a hail of arrows and slingshot. Eva hefted her war hammer and I almost pitied the corpses about to face her.

Their war-leader and his halrúna stayed back to watch how we dealt with this first attack. Vincent and Cormac took a dreadful tithe of their warriors, blowing holes right through the shield wall, but more grim-faced Skallgrim stepped forward to link shields and take their place. Bryden and I kept ourselves fresh for bigger prey like the halrúna themselves, while Eva took charge from the front line.

The first clash began with a bang like a hammer hitting an anvil; sparks flew along with blood and corpses and shattered shields as Eva’s war hammer demolished the vanguard of their left flank. A vicious melee erupted as she waded through them. Never, ever get into hand to hand combat with a knight. Somebody should have warned them what the fearsome woman with the steel mask was capable of – and if they had heard then they still wildly underestimated her. The left flank of their shield wall immediately buckled before her fury. Axes and spears clanged ineffectively off Eva, and they appeared clumsy oafs compared to her dance of death, every movement crushing skulls or sending two or three broken men to the snow with a single brutal blow.

A horn droned thrice and the enemy began an orderly retreat. We could do little but let them go. If we broke to give chase then some might slip through our lines, and with their numbers we couldn’t afford any disruption.

While sweat-drenched wardens caught their breath, I nipped ahead and laid a few more wards, including some of my own unique creations. Cormac grew another line of stone spikes ahead of us. A scant defence but better than nothing.

The next assault came on quickly and it was a scramble to ready ourselves to meet the charge. Vincent laid down a barrage of fire.

I grinned in satisfaction as wards detonated, ripping off legs and opening holes in the charge, the disruption growing wider as my own wards broke. Men went mad and started slaughtering their allies. Despite the confusion, their shield wall was long and the enemy were many. After another vicious, exhausting melee the enemy again retreated, dragging their wounded with them.

Healers rushed to our lines to do what they could and Clansfolk boys ran past handing out fresh skins of water. The wardens in heavy armour lay down in the snow to cool themselves – battle was hot and thirsty work even in this frigid weather.

Another wave of Skallgrim charged, their fresh warriors facing ours who were cold, quickly tiring and thinning in number. I was inside the heads and hearts of our army, feeling muscles burn from swinging steel, the mounting bruises and burning wounds, and with it the rising fear that we were going to lose. The enemy sensed a moment of weakness and pushed hard.

It was going to be a long and fraught day. I took a deep breath and got to work on our tired wardens and wounded Clansfolk. It was time for me to become what I was always meant to be: a tyrant.