couldn't risk stopping. 'But where are all the harpies?' he thought.
Belial soon reached the far edge of the ragged demon column and had resigned himself to remaining ignorant of the details until he next returned to Dis. As he looked up from the ground a flicker of movement caught his eye. Sure enough, at the far end of a low valley he could make out a group of tiny flapping shapes. He spurred his mount to greater effort and it surged ahead, making up the distance to the other flyers which quickly resolved themselves into six of his own wyvern riders. The beast were flying slowly; two had flanks marked with horrible gashes and burns and another had wing membranes so shredded that Belial was surprised it was still airborne. The riders didn't look much better.
Count Belial! Aaesurnarthuse's tone betrayed a strange mix of surprise, relief, fear and exhaustion. The humans… it was a slaughter. Great flocks of harpies, torn from the sky or poisoned on the ground. Fire lances and iron pellets everywhere. Ikaarithanjuur went down on our third strike, they hit him with two huge fire lances… Beelzebub's forces started to retreat… I took command and ordered a withdrawal. It sounded better than 'I ran away', but not much.
It is Grand Duke Belial now. Are there any more of you? Did any others escape? These are all that are left? Belial couldn’t keep the shock out of his mind-voice. A niggling voice told him that Euryale would be furious when she found that her prized war-wyverns had been slaughtered. Furious and heartbroken, Belial thought and was surprised to realize that the thought of her grief saddened him
Belial's wyvern reached the formation and they automatically fell into a V behind him, the wounded beasts struggling to keep up. Mere hours ago he would have had the flight leader executed for cowardice, but after the events at Satan's palace he was beginning to understand what fighting the humans must be like. This wasn't war as demons understood it. It wasn't even the war he'd imagined, a decades-long conflict between dug-in formations that could be won by disrupting the human's supply of magic weapons. This was anhiliation, this was vengeance come swift and terrible to smash their strongest holdings and humble their greatest generals, this was… with rising horror Belial realized that this was exactly what the demons had done to hundreds of lower plane worlds, but with speed and efficiency the legions of hell could only dream of. If the humans could not be stopped, and after what he'd seen today that seemed like a very real danger, then the entire demon realm and every demon in it would be slaughtered.
I can't say my lord. I saw others flying away from the battle, but the sky chariots were on their tails. I fear only a handful made it.
Your two uninjured riders will fly a search pattern and round up any survivors. They are to return to Tartarus after four days at the latest. Your injured riders are to stay together and return at the best speed they can manage. Avoid the humans at all costs. With most of his prized war wyverns destroyed, the count was in no position to write off injured troops. You will escort me and tell me everything you can of the battle. These humans must have weaknesses, and we must identify them. He nearly added 'before it's too late', but there was no point further demoralizing his troops. Quite the opposite, if this continued the demon armies would need hope that the humans could be defeated at all, and he was the only one who could give them that. The secret of Palelabor could be kept no longer.
Chapter Seventy One
Dis-Dysprosium Highway, Hell
His army was disintegrating, dissolving into chaos even while he watched. It had sounded so easy, so sensible, to drop back to a defensible line where he could hold and block the human advance. Demonic warfare had few concepts for defensive operations, mostly the two armies just attacked each other, but defense was the only option he had. Or thought he had for it had turned out that the option existed in name only.
He had picked his defensive ground carefully, a low line of hills, steep on the face the humans would have to climb, gentle behind it. It had been good ground, a good defense line and the humans had got there first. While one of their armies had pinned him on the Phlegethon, another had outflanked him and already taken the position he had picked with such care. What was left of his army had crumpled against their gunfire. His last organized legions had been shattered by mage bolts and sky-chariots that had swarmed all over them
Beelzebub heard the scream that announced the arrival of more sky-chariots and cursed Belial. It was that pathetic minor lord with his wyverns who had given the humans the idea of using their sky chariots to attack forces on the ground. If he’d minded his own business and left war to the Great Dukes who were practiced in it, then his force would not be subject to these shattering attacks. Over his columns of retreating legions, two white sky- chariots made their pass, a stream of objects falling from their bellies and under their winds. The objects stopped abruptly in the air as their tails spread out, then they started to shed a cloud of small balls that dropped over the heads of his soldiers before exploding. By the time the smoke cleared, a gaping rent had been cleared in one of his columns, another legion savagely mauled.
Overhead, four more sky-chariots were already closing in, ugly, ungainly looking beasts compared with the sleek white creations than had just passed. They had flown overhead high up, then one had turned and dived, the others following their leader. They were slower too, much slower and Beelzebub briefly wondered where his harpies were, they could destroy beasts like that. Then he remembered, they were dead, wiped out by sky chariots and a magery to horrible to name or even envisage. His pride, his flock of harpies that had gained him his name of ‘Lord of the Fliers’ were dead, their corpses already rotting on the accursed field of the Phlegethon.
Beelzebub watched with resignation as the Sky Chariots got to work, pouring fire-lances into a mass of his foot soldiers that were clustered on the road. What was it for? His army was gone, defeated, destroyed, savaging the remnants like this made no sense at all. Then his spine started to bristle for two of the sky chariots had turned and seemed to be heading for him. He heard a weird noise that drowned out the wail of their battle-cry a rasping, crackling noise that coincided with fire burning in their nose. A few trident-lengths short of his, the ground erupted in a cloud of dust and broken rock, a cloud that raced across the stony soil of Hell and embraced him. Beelzebub felt the slam as the mage bolts tore into his body, felt them bite deep, spreading sickness and destruction permeate him. Without being aware of it, he had dropped to his knees, and he was too tired to move. So tired, tiredness he had never felt before, weakness that made him want to give up and sleep. Overhead, the other two Sky Chariots made their passes and fired two more fire lances. Had Beelzebub been aware they were called Mavericks, he might have appreciated knowing the name of his killer but he didn’t and their impact sent him spiraling down into the sleep that he craved.
Cliffton Council Estate, Nottingham, United Kingdom
It had been ten days now, ten days of being forced to sit here all day staring at the news channels until he had passed out from exhaustion. Even that brought little respite, the foul presence made sure that his sleep was uneasy and his dreams visions of fire and pain. The demons had relaxed their mental leash from time to time, just long enough to see to essential bodily functions, but Christopher was still unable to do so much as leave the house. Every time he'd tried the crushing pain overwhelmed him; after the third day he simply had no fight left in him. The presence did seem to change from day to day, as if different minds were taking control, but he hadn't been able to identify specific demons.
They'd made him watch Detroit burn and the feeling of glee had been even stronger than for Sheffield. The demons seemed certain that the destruction of humanity was inevitable and Christopher had despaired. But when President Bush had made his defiant speech promising swift retaliation, a flicker of hope had returned – not because of the man's inarticulate rhetoric, but because the echoes of harsh laughter in his head had rung hollow somehow. Finally the pictures had come, supposedly 'before and after' infra-red images of 'Satan's greatest stronghold'. The reaction from the hellish presence was difficult to read but seemed to be disbelief. Christopher could feel them prying at his mind, trying to use his own memories to justify the idea that the whole thing was a sham. Before the possession he would indeed have been the first to proclaim the reports a hoax, but now he took a bizarre pleasure in telling himself that it was the unvarnished truth. It was a small victory, but it seemed to be enough to make the demon presence lapse into a morose silence for the last day.
The low throbbing of a diesel engine became audible over the television before cutting off. Someone was coming, in a van by the sound of it. Christopher jerked his head around to stare at the front door, struck by a sudden mix of fear and hope. 15 Psyops group perhaps? There had been rumors of a British counter-possession unit
