Barlowe, Wayne - God's Demon

upon his blood-dark face and his eyes bore something aside from the normal film of resentment. Is it disappointment? Adramalik could barely repress his satisfaction.

'What, Chancellor General? Have you something to say?'

'Not I, Grand General. But our Prince surely will.'

Moloch snorted.

And then, almost to himself, the ex-god said, 'Even without the cavalry we have sufficient numbers to absorb casualties. We will overwhelm them and finish this ... in the name of the Prince.'

For a moment the two demons' eyes locked. Would it be so hard, right here and now, to order this legion to destroy him—to send him to the Pit where he belongs? They would obey me ... and follow me into battle. But, Adramalik reasoned, there would be too many questions from the Prince regarding his champion, too much suspicion. There were easier ways.

'This does not end here,' Moloch rumbled, thrusting the top of his baton into the Chancellor General's chest. Adramalik reflexively grasped its end and shoved it aside.

Perhaps not here, General, but soon.

A shrill cry came from high above them and both demons looked up simultaneously. Barely visible against the shadowed clouds was the large silhouette, lit along the sinuous length of its body by tiny glow-spots, of a cinder- fly. They were rare, Adramalik knew, and portended great events. A hissing flight of black arrows reached up from somewhere nearby and a moment later the Abyssal's winged body disappeared amidst the troops. Adramalik heard a cheer go up— the omens were good—and shook his head when he saw Moloch's fierce grin.

Pulling his Hooks from his belt, Moloch gave Adramalik one last look— smugness and disdain mixed—and shouldered past him on his way to the front of the legions. The Chancellor General heard him grate out, 'Keep your legion close, Knight.'

Moments later the braying of war horns echoed across the field, followed by Moloch's command-glyphs, and the hundred legions of Dis began to move slowly forward. Beneath them, in response to their relentless tramping, the ground flexed and rippled, making the footing for the marching troops less certain. But even with what was, undoubtedly, this further evidence of the enemy's battlefield-influencing invocations, the troops pushed forward and soon found themselves at the farthest limits of the range of the fiery javelins.

The wall was gone, dissolved into a broad line of souls, each holding the new weapon.

There simply had not been enough time for the battlefield conjurors to create counterspells for the new weapons; Adramalik saw, once again, the devastating effect the missiles had on relatively unprotected troops. But he also saw Moloch, in quick response, order all the many cohorts of his archers to race ahead, and despite large numbers of their ranks being destroyed, Adramalik saw sappers dig low, protective trenches, enabling the legions' archers to begin to let fly their arrows. Such was the discipline of the army of Dis!

Much to his surprise, the Chancellor General realized the sheets of arrows were finding their marks and the javelins' numbers were gradually decreasing. Such a simple solution! The cavalry had been a terrible mistake—a blunder of reconnaissance—but the unclean Pridzarhim had redeemed himself. Tangled piles of souls lay where they fell, pierced—a sight Adramalik thought odd. Souls—resource that they were—were rarely left unheeded when the life went out of them. But there they lay, and he had the strange errant thought that they were being wasted.

Behind them and barely diminished by the arrows stood a long, unwavering line of Sargatanas' veterans, heavily armored and not nearly as vulnerable as the souls had been. They were the phalangites of Adamantinarx under the collective command, Adramalik knew, of the Demon Minor Aetar Set. In count they numbered a full twenty-six legions, and each of their ranks bore a long pike that was leveled at the oncoming demons.

Moloch commanded the middle of his line—three legions of heavy halberdiers—to form up behind him into a thick wedge. Recognizing that there could never be an effective flanking maneuver with a defensive line as long and deep as Sargatanas', the general was clearly determined to reach the demon lord by ramming his way through the bristling wall of pikes.

Adramalik felt a sudden wave of envy for the general's bravery. As he watched the two armies converge, he knew that Moloch was going to do everything possible to shatter the enemy and that that was why he was so favored by the Prince. Moloch's unhesitating loyalty was at once naive and invaluable. And, Adramalik grudgingly admitted, admirable.

From a short distance the Chancellor General could see Moloch standing within a group of standard-bearing demonifers. Suddenly he rose up, tall upon his flightless wings, encircled in glowing bands of protective glyphs, and all the troops of the surrounding legions could hear him roar, 'Legions, for the Prince of Hell!'

Twirling his terrible Hooks, the ex-god leaped fearlessly into the wall of pikes, chopping them down with blindingly fast swipes of his hands. Raised up by his wing-stilts and twisting away from the pike thrusts, he was a whirlwind of movement. His height and agility made him a very difficult target for the stationary phalangites and their awkward pike-hands, and Adramalik, fighting not too far behind, saw that steady progress was being made. The tip of the wedge was now well buried within the deep line of pike demons, and it was forcing a broad and ever-widening gap.

As there was no art to an avalanche, there was no art to Moloch's unceasing destruction. And wherever he created an opening Adramalik and the legionaries would rush in, exploiting the opportunity. In a last-ditch effort to hold the line, Adramalik saw that the phalangites had been ordered to snap their pikes and use the new shorter weapons' rough, pointed ends as close-righting spears. But it was to no avail; the gap was too large and their cohesion was diminishing by the moment. Clouds of dust rose where the phalangites were being broken.

The phalangite commander Aetar Set, whom Adramalik found easily by his Demon Minor's sigil, strode forward, impressive with his glyph-lit antlers, a long fire-tipped lance in hand. He raised it in preparation for the combat with the approaching ex-god, but as its white-hot head leveled with Moloch's chest the grapplelike Hooks came up in a blurred, prismatic flash of diamond that was so fast Adramalik's jaw opened. Aetar Set dropped the broken lance, a look of shock upon his face. And then his body, ripping apart in six diagonal sections, imploded.

The Chancellor General saw Moloch laugh, snatch up the demon's disk without breaking stride, and move past the reeling enemy, springing over steaming mounds of their still-crumbling rubble, and on into the body of Sargatanas' army. While Moloch's hands moved with a fluid rhythm of their own, wielding the Hooks with an almost casual savagery, it was clear that his focus never strayed from the Seal of Sargatanas that hung some hundreds of yards ahead.