assassin cresting the top of the ridge, reloading his crossbow, while his partner, a hulking Dren nearly Adolphus’s size, flanked him with a wicked-looking spiked hammer. Dropping my mace I took a running start and dove into the bowman, knocking the weapon from his grip and sending the two of us hurtling down the embankment. We struggled as we fell, but by the time we stopped rolling I was on top, and I drove the pommel of my trench blade against his skull, till his hold on me slackened and I was able to reverse my grip and pull the edge sharp across his throat.
I caught my breath, then sprinted back up the hill. When I reached the summit, Saavedra was the only one of us still standing, and barely at that. The Dren giant had him on the outs, the Asher’s intricate style a poor match for the savagery of his opponent. Saavedra’s defenses did, however, provide sufficient distraction for me to close in and hamstring the ogre, nor did my comrade stutter when I provided him an opening, dispatching our remaining enemy with a quick thrust beneath his chin.
The two of us stood staring at each other, then Saavedra slumped to the ground and I realized he had been tagged, a pool of blood seeping through his leather armor. Flinty bastard hadn’t shown it until the combat was over. “How bad is it?” I asked.
“Bad,” he responded, with the same unreadable demeanor that had won him half the unit’s wages. I gingerly removed his armor. He winced but didn’t speak.
Saavedra was right-it was bad. The spiked end of the war hammer had penetrated his intestines. He had a chance if I could get him back to camp. I settled him up against an incline and checked on the rest of my men.
Dead-no surprises. That bolt had done for Cilliers, an inglorious end for such a valiant soldier. I wanted to bring his flamberge back to base, try and get it to his family somehow-he would have liked that, but it was heavy and I would already be half carrying Saavedra.
Milligan’s head had been caved in while I was dealing with the enemy bowman. He was never more than average close in. I was glad at least that we had taken care of the bastard with the hammer. I had always liked the friendly little runt. I had always liked both of them, truth be told.
Saavedra was praying in the dissonant tones of his foreign tongue, the most I had ever heard him speak. It was disquieting, and I wished he would stop but didn’t say anything, unwilling to begrudge a dying man the chance to get right with god.
I crouched down beside the ridge and scanned the horizon. If another patrol showed, we were fucked. I thought about grabbing Milligan’s crossbow, but it was dark and I was never any good with those things. I wished I had some black powder. I wished that jewel would start working.
Minutes passed. Saavedra continued his alien monologue. I started to wonder if a passing Dren unit hadn’t greased Carolinus and the sorcerer, leaving me waiting for a climax that wasn’t coming. Then from behind me I heard a sound for which I had no context, followed by a startled gasp from Saavedra. I turned on my heel.
A wound was forming in the air above the gem, a hole through the universe that bled strange ichor around the edge. I had seen magic before, from the playful chicanery of the Crane to the platoon-killing firepower of a battle hex, but I had never seen anything like this. The rent let loose a high-pitched whistling, almost a cry, and against myself I peered into its depths. Things strange and terrible gazed back at me, vast membranes of eyes swirling in apoplectic frenzy, gaping maws gnashing endlessly in an infinite black void, orifices pulsating erotically, tendrils coiling and uncoiling in the eternal night. The obscene whine babbled to me in a half-intelligible tongue, promising hideous gifts and demanding still more terrible sacrifices.
As abruptly as it began the noise ended, and a black goo leeched through the rift. It dripped from the entrance into reality, bringing with it a smell so foul I had to choke back vomit, a rot deeper than conception and older than stone. Gradually the slime coalesced, shadowy black robes forming around a bone-white outline. Saavedra made a sound somewhere between a shriek and a sigh and I knew he was dead. I caught a glimpse of the thing’s face, broken-glass eyes above rows and rows of sharp teeth.
Then it was gone, floating east toward the Dren line. It moved without visible signs of effort, as if propelled by a force external to its body. The stench remained.
My mind scrambled to regain footing amid the formerly rigid laws of existence. It was touch and go. The knowledge that more Dren patrols lingered in the area-and the suspicion that their sympathy for my mental state as I stood over the corpses of their comrades was likely to be limited-ultimately proved sufficient inducement to get me moving.
A half second of inspection confirmed that Saavedra was no longer living. He was a grim cur, but he had died like a man, and in the end I had no complaint of his conduct or character. The Ashers believe death in battle is their only path to redemption-on that account his forbidding deity had been well served.
There wasn’t time for lamentation; there rarely is. Nine men lay dead, and there would be a tenth to add to the tally if I stayed around much longer. I hooked my trench blade through my belt and headed back to check on the sorcerer.
Adelweid stood at the top of the small dune, his hands planted firmly across his hips, proud as a game bird and twice as pretty. “Did you see it? You must have-you were so near the epicenter. You have been allowed a glimpse into the realms that lie beyond ours, seen the tissue-thin walls between this world and the next separate before your very eyes. Do you realize how lucky you are?”
Slumped against a small gray boulder was Carolinus. A pair of Dren soldiers were sprawled a few feet in front of him, joining their enemy in repose. “What happened to him?” I asked, knowing I wouldn’t receive much of an answer.
Adelweid’s reverie broke momentarily. “Who-oh, my guardian. He’s dead.” The sorcerer turned flush toward me now, excitement in his voice, the closest to human I’d yet seen him. “But his sacrifice was not in vain! My mission was successful, and across this shattered plain I can feel my comrades were as well! You are doubly blessed, Lieutenant, for you are privileged to stand watch at the collapse of the Dren Commonwealth!”
When I didn’t say anything, he turned back in the general direction of his creations, watching as the occasional burst of lightning illuminated the landscape. In the distance I could see waves of the things move steadily eastward. Adelweid was right-from far out there was something ethereal and even somehow beautiful about the things. But the memory of that horrible stench, and the sound Saavedra made as his heart went out, were still fresh, and I didn’t share Adelweid’s conceit that what I had seen was anything less than an abomination before the Oathkeeper and all the Daevas.
Then the screams started-a chorus of them erupting from across the Dren line. In combat the sounds of death are mixed with those of battle, the shrieks of the wounded merging with the clash of steel and the eruption of cannon fire. But the final sounds of the Dren were undiluted by any other noise, and a thousand times more terrible for that fact. Adelweid’s smile widened.
I knelt down beside Carolinus. He had done his duty, then bled out while the sorcerer performed horrors in the darkness nearby. His trench blade lay broken at his side and his eyes were open. I closed them and took his damaged weapon in my hand. “Once you’ve summoned these things your job is finished?”
Adelweid was still staring east, at the terrible devastation his creature and its brethren were spreading, something between lust and pride on his face. “Once called, the creatures will complete their missions and then fade back to their world.” He was so engrossed in the carnage that he paid no attention as I took up a spot beside him, and scarcely more when I put Carolinus’s shattered weapon through his exquisitely tailored coat. His scream was subsumed in the sounds echoing off the Dren lines. I withdrew the blade and tossed it aside. Adelweid’s corpse rolled awkwardly down the hill.
I figured somebody was owed for Saavedra and the rest, and if I couldn’t get any higher up the chain, Adelweid would do. And I figured the world would be better off without him.
I slipped back to our lines and reported a successful mission, albeit one with a high casualty rate. The major was not concerned with our losses, neither my men nor the sorcerer. It was a big night, the eve before the final charge that would break the back of the Dren Republic, and there was much to prepare. At dawn I formed my platoon up as part of an all-out attack, the kind that should have taken us ten thousand men to pull off. But their defense was piecemeal, whole sectors of the enemy trenches containing nothing but dead men, bodies contorted horribly, the source of their demise uncertain in the full light of morning. The remaining Dren were too scattered and disheartened to muster much resistance.
That afternoon General Bors accepted the capitulation of the capital city, and the next day he received the unconditional surrender of Wilhelm van Agt, last and greatest Steadholder of the United Dren Commonwealth.
It ain’t the way they tell it on Remembrance Day, and I don’t imagine it’ll ever make the storybooks, but I
