upon the battlefield, they were gaining only slowly on Hani. For the first time in Hell, he ran, stretching his legs, stumbling a bit at first, but gaining in confidence as he raced between the columns.
* * * * *
Ten thousand lava-gray troops gathered in Sargatanas' Audience Chamber and stood at attention before the central pyramidal dais. The air was hazy with the steam that arose from the gathered army. Each Demon Minor, accompanied by his senior officers, stood beside his gaudy standard-bearer. The effect of all of the massed vertical banners, topped as they were with their incandescent regimental glyphs, was like a shifting sea of lava, hardened gray and spangled with myriad specks of magma. The sound of kettledrums, arrayed around the chamber's periphery, was muffled and distant, providing a marching cadence familiar to the entering legions.
Eligor, standing near his lord, looked on from his higher vantage upon the dais, taking in the spectacle of the massed troops. Great wedges of soldiers, each separated by broad aisles, faced him, the sea of officers and their newly risen troops motionless and attentive. Before him, Sargatanas waited, head lowered and aflame in a blazing coronet of leaping fire. The top of his head had broadened out to accommodate six lidless and staring eyes. He carried, unsheathed, the new sword, which, Eligor had found out, had been forged of some of the most powerful souls, folded countless times, beaten into shape and tempered, and then sharpened. A strong shaft of Algol's light played down upon the dark blade, its shimmering red reflection briefly flashing upon Valefar and Eligor and Faraii, Bifrons, and Andromalius as they watched the last of the soldiers filter in. Finally the enormous room was filled.
Sargatanas, the focal point of thousands of eyes, raised his sword overhead and the drums grew silent. Glancing from side to side, he stepped forward until he stood at the top of the stairs, a dark, fiery figure, eyes intense with an inner fervor, flexing wing-stumps describing a vee. His sigil blossomed above his head, a full span across, a circular signet of fire.
'Demons Minor!' Sargatanas' voice boomed out through the chamber. 'Brothers in exile! You know what we lost so long ago and why you have been mobilized. For too long you and I have accepted our Fall, the terrible result of Lucifer's flawed dreams and leadership. We have accepted, too, the laws that have been imposed upon us regarding how we are to govern in Hell. We have adapted to the worst imaginable conditions, and somehow ... somehow we have thrived. But we have also paid a steep price for that adaptation ... a price paid in the currency of our consciences. I need not tell you how staying true to our inner selves while doing our mandated duty has taxed us. I will not say that we were cast down here unjustly. But I will say that we have served here long enough ... that we have paid for our transgression. Now I say ... enough!'
Eligor saw him pause and saw, too, the effect his words were having on the assembled demons.
'What we are about to attempt is something that no one in Hell's long history has ever dared. We are about to embark upon a journey of redemption and reawakening ... a journey Heavenward ... a journey Home!'
The gathered demons' murmuring grew in volume.
'Brother demons, this will be a war of remembrance. A war wherein we Fallen try to re-attain the grace that we once shared. Our enemy, content to wallow in the corruption of Hell, is mighty and outnumbers us many to one. But if we fight like the warrior-angels we once were, with that same, almost-forgotten, inner fire of purity, we
With that, Eligor saw his lord's giant sigil break apart into a thousand glowing comets that darted outward, each alighting above the regimental glyph of a different banner, each transforming into Sargatanas' iconic battle emblem.
A great cheer rang up and Eligor tingled with the auspiciousness of it all. He knew what this ceremony, this charging of the banners, meant. They were at war.
Amidst the clamor, Sargatanas descended the great flight of stairs followed by Eligor and the others. He would review his new army and make what last-minute suggestions to Faraii and Valefar might be appropriate.
At the base of the stairs stood five of Sargatanas' most trusted generals. Backs straight, heads held high, they looked upon their lord with a near-religious zeal.
'Generals,' Sargatanas said so that only they could hear. 'What I am ordering is nothing short of open rebellion. To free ourselves we will, if need be, storm the gate of Beelzebub's Keep itself! I tell you now: this rebellion will either break us or free us forever. Either way, we will be done with Hell.
'Through the course of this campaign we will be facing a superior force composed of those Demons Major and Minor who have willingly taken up with Beelzebub. Astaroth—the first—is little more than a puppet; his destruction will be a prelude only. Our legions are the best conjured in Hell, led by the best officers in Hell. They are obedient, disciplined, and, at your hands, brilliantly trained. Use them recklessly and we will be at an end before we start. Use them wisely and we will achieve something unimaginable for all these long eons. This campaign will be your last, the final demonstration of all you have learned. Be bold; be creative; be ruthless upon the field of battle. I, and my Guard, will be with you every step of the way. We will prevail because we share a single vision ... the vision of the Light that we once cherished.
The generals knelt as one, and with a vast clattering the entire gathered army followed them to their knees. The generals were smiling and Eligor saw the fervor flooding through them. He watched Sargatanas reach down and clasp each by the arm and as he did they, too, received a small token from his sigil.
The small party moved on past the general staff, on to Faraii's Shock Troopers, big, brutish, and very heavily armored. Each of their arms ended in a variety of crudely conjured cleaverlike blades, thick enough to easily split a legionary's torso agape. Their oversized, scarred heads were squat, and their feeding mouths were lined with thick, pointed teeth. When Sargatanas approached them, they turned to Faraii, almost as if looking to him for guidance as to how to behave before their lord. Unseen by all but Eligor, he quickly bowed his head—a signal meant to be imitated—and the troopers followed his cue. It was an odd moment, Eligor thought, odd that they would not immediately have saluted their lord, odd that they would look to the Waste wanderer for guidance. Eligor put it down to their obvious mental deficiencies; they were, after all, dim but effective fighting creatures, not reasoning demons.
Without warning a glyph soared from the arcades overhead. Eligor's keen eyes spotted the tiny running figure just as it burst from one of the arcades and was hooked by the closely pursuing squad of his Guard that flew above it. At that distance he could not see the web of chains that dragged what appeared to be a soul into the air, but as they approached, he did see the flailing soul tugging futilely at them. Eligor turned to see Sargatanas staring intently at the scene but, with some anxiety, could not imagine what the Demon Major was thinking or what the
