Rik had no time to think about it. The Barbarian raced past, his heavy blade flashing as he cut into the hill- men’s lines. Rik followed along with Leon, Weasel and Toadface. They formed up back to back, an island in a sea of fleshly chaos as the hill-men pressed home their attack.
The sound of shots filled the air. The stench of blood and sweat and sulphur and smoke and excrement assaulted his nostrils. He smashed the butt of his rifle down on a man’s head, feeling bone give like matchwood. Scarlet blood stained his hands, some of it his own, from small cuts he did not know he had picked up.
He jabbed with his bayonet at a man racing at the Barbarian’s back. The hill-man fell without a cry. The Barbarian lopped off his head with a backward lash of his sword, but to Rik’s horror, the headless body kept moving.
“Kill the bastard things hanging on their chest!” he shouted once more and drove his bayonet forward and down through the crawling corpse’s back. He thought he felt its tip pierce something for the corpse began to lash its limbs. He twisted his weapon cruelly and the thing was still.
He could hear war-cries now, and part of his combat-deranged mind tried to make sense of them.
“Die you fuckers!”
“Death or glory.”
“The Spiders! The Spiders.”
“Help! They cannot die! They cannot die!”
“Steady, lads! Steady!” The last was in the distinctive tones of Sergeant Hef. To his horror he realised that all the voices belonged to Foragers. Only occasionally did he hear the inhuman shriek that was the death cry of one of the corpse riders.
Screams of pain mingled with shouts of rage. The roar of ripjacks cut through the thunder of musket fire. Two brilliant flashes blazed across his retina. A stink of ozone and burning flesh assailed his nostrils. What the hell was that, he wondered, then realised that it was Asea’s lightning lash.
As quickly as it had started it was over. Some of the Foragers were in flight, retreating like an outgoing tide, leaving uncovered the flotsam and jetsam of battle: maimed bodies, wounded men, severed limbs, pools of blood, piles of broken flesh encased in torn cloth. All the corpse-men were dead. Here and there a spider-like thing scuttled very slowly away on long unsteady stick like limbs. Men bayoneted them or used them for pistol practise.
And Foragers were looking at each other with the wide-eyed fear-filled gaze of men surprised to find that they were still alive after passing through that maelstrom of violence.
Zarahel felt his servants die. The intruders were tougher than he had thought. No matter though. He had more servants. And nothing could stand against Uran Ultar reborn.
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.
