awareness that uncompromising annihilation lay in defeat. There would be no prisoners, no demons left standing to swear allegiance to a new lord. Astaroth had removed that conjured element—that possibility of shifting allegiances— from their seals of obedience. He had committed them that completely in his final cast of the die.
Eligor saw the distant Great Seal of Astaroth dimly through the pall and knew that beneath it that that lord was guiding his army. And for the thousandth time, he wondered how one as great as he could have let his realm sink so far. Turning his gaze behind Sargatanas, he saw his own Guard, lances and shields in hand. Five hundred strong, they awaited his orders with eyes trained upon him, gleaming eagerly.
Sargatanas broke Eligor’s momentary reverie. “I do not trust the air to my next command, Eligor. I must be beyond careful when facing Astaroth; he taught me so many of my command-glyphs. Fly to Valefar then, and to Karcefuge as well, and tell them to advance, to draw up the ends of our line.”
With a nod, Eligor took wing and sped over the five legions between the center and Valefar. He hovered beside the bone-armored Prime Minister, momentarily admiring his effortless handling of the giant soul-steed.
“Valefar, Sargatanas wishes you to begin drawing up the wings.”
“Is Astaroth where we want him?”
“Yes, if he does not alter his position at his army’s center he will be enfolded.” Eligor paused, looking out at the chaos of the battlefield ahead. “It will be sad to see him under these circumstances, Valefar.”
“True, but he will survive. I am to escort him back to Adamantinarx on Sargatanas’ orders.”
“It will be a quiet journey.”
Valefar looked down, frowning. “I had not thought of that.”
He shook his head and then, unseating his pike, spurred his mount with the two large spikes on the insides of his boots, and beast and rider leaped forward. Eligor raised his hand and waved Valefar on. The Spirits around him were whining, straining to break into a gallop, and in a few short strides got their wish.
Adramalik could barely see the rear guard of Astaroth’s army as it disappeared across the gray-olive skin of the field and into the haze, and while Duke Fleurety could have issued an order to keep up, he seemed disinclined. So began the betrayal. Just as well, reasoned Adramalik. There was no place for fat upon the bones of Hell. Astaroth, and what was left of his .army, would be absorbed by the urban body of Dis.
Reports had been coming in since the two armies had engaged each other. Sargatanas’ destruction of his own town—a bold move after the Demolishers’ elimination—had been a surprise, his ruthlessness commendable. And now, when he could have dashed into the unknown and attempted to overrun Astaroth, Sargatanas’ restraint was proving admirable. It would be interesting to watch him perform upon this field. The Chancellor General smiled inwardly; Sargatanas could be an enjoyable opponent if it ever came to it. But for now, at least, Adramalik knew the Prince had no interest in confronting him.
As he flew back, after conveying his lord’s message to Karcefuge, Eligor saw that the air had grown thick with the gyrating bodies of fighting demons. Both forces had waited until the sky was heavy with smoke to throw their flyers up into the air, an effort to conceal their true numbers. In Astaroth’s case it was a prudent measure; it seemed he could not field more than a legion of the winged soldiers, and this he broke up to create the illusion of greater numbers. But it was this very tactic that spelled their destruction as Sargatanas’ flyers chopped them into even smaller groups until they were no more, raining their crumbling limbs down upon the combatants below.
Nearing Sargatanas’ position, Eligor saw three winged forms drop down around him. He pulled up and saw that it was an officer—a Demon Minor— and his aides. They were in a grievous state, their wings tattered and weapons notched, but Eligor knew better than to think of them as anything but a serious threat. Even with his many battle-earned wounds, the officer—whose sigil proclaimed him as Scrofur—was an imposing demon bearing massive horns upon his shoulders and dozens of tiny, luminous eyes that spattered his face like blood-drops.
Eligor cowled the two small neck-wings about his head protectively and slitted his eyes, studying the two aides for a brief instant. They would have to be dealt with first and quickly.
He grasped his lance and threw it vertically as hard as he could. The three demons, jaws agape, stared up at it for just long enough for Eligor to raise his hands and create two destructive glyphs—glyphs that Sargatanas had taught him—which he fired into the bony torsos of the flanking aides. They each looked down in amazement as a livid fiery script from within burst them apart. With a snarl, Scrofur leveled his halberd and attacked, and Eligor, with the deftness and assurance of one well practiced, reached out and felt his descending lance slide into his waiting hand. Dodging sideways, he parried, evaded the other’s strike, and lashed out, feeling his jagged blade tear satisfyingly at the officer’s wings. It was not a painful wound, but it was a telling one. The Demon Minor lurched and spun as his wings tried to compensate for their sudden loss of effectiveness. He stabbed out desperately and caught Eligor under his cowl and behind the ear-hole, chipping the bone and causing him to wince and pull back.
Shaking his head, Eligor twisted back in and determinedly focused on his opponent’s wings, slicing and tearing while evading the hurricane of blows that Scrofur was dealing. As they fought they both dropped lower and lower toward the battling legionaries below, who reached up with their pole arms in a vain effort to hook the demons. Ribbons of slashed wing-flesh gathered and swirled around Astaroth’s officer as he tried to stay out of Eligor’s lance’s reach, but the inevitability of the fight must have been apparent to him. Wings beating twice as hard as his opponent’s, Scrofur’s breath came out in great, stentorian coughs.
With a move as graceful as it was deadly, Eligor whirled and severed one of Scrofur’s wings at the elbow- joint. Pulling his lance free, he stabbed again at the reeling demon, thrusting unerringly and deeply into the demon’s gaping heart-hole. Amidst a blaze of ruby light Scrofur began to collapse into himself, shrinking and compacting until he was nothing more than a hand-sized flattened disk adorned with his frozen face and glowing sigil. Teeth bared in a smile, Eligor snatched at the tumbling trophy and, holding it tightly to his breast, watched as it fused to his bone breastplate—a permanent phalera imbued with the powers that had been Scrofur’s.
Eligor paused, wings beating slowly, and breathed in deeply. A palpable ripple of pleasure warmed him, causing him to relax momentarily. As he dropped even farther, three heavy, hooked pole arms came up to greet him from Astaroth’s legionaries waiting below and he immediately flapped his wings hard, shooting upward.
Dodging knots of winged combatants, he flew back to his lord. The front line had slowly bowed backward, not, he knew, because of Astaroth’s legions’
ferocity but because Sargatanas had ordered it so. The mounted Spirits had curved around behind the enormous force of enemy legions and were driving them in upon themselves. Pushed irresistibly together, their formations mingled, losing cohesion. And facing them in the now-inflexible shield-wall of Sargatanas’ army, poised like an arrow at their breast, were Faraii’s troops, honing their ax-hands upon their rough greaves and bellowing in anticipation of the slaughter to come.
From a few hundred feet away Eligor spotted Sargatanas, falcata in hand, a dark form limned in the fiery light of his Great Seal, standing against a backdrop of fluttering banners. Watching with unwavering attentiveness the battle unfolding and without turning toward him, the Demon Major issued Eligor his flying orders.
He assumed his place at the head of a giant wedge of his Flying Guard and ordered them to drop down. The five hundred closely packed flying demons swooped over the middle of Astaroth’s confused legions, harrying them with their long lances from above. Eligor heard the shrill whine of arrows passing close to him. He saw a wavering sheet of another flight, poorly arrayed, arc up from behind the enemy legions only to bounce ineffectively off his and his demons’ shields. He could not tell if they had been aimed at his troops or Sargatanas’ but saw few gaps in his lord’s legions below.
Diving headlong, Eligor led his troops into a slashing attack designed to help the Spirits gut the rear forces of Astaroth’s middle legion. Stabbing lances and weighted sinew nets reached up from the enemy troops in a vain attempt to claw his demons from the sky, but the Guard was far too well trained to fall victim to these tactics and, with wings flapping furiously, darted into their midst. His lance connected with both a standard-bearer and a legionary with a satisfying jolt, impaling and lifting them as one, and he watched them crumble away into falling piles of rubble that tumbled onto their comrades. He hovered, seeing how the ash blown up from his wings, and the Guard’s behind him, disoriented the enemy legionaries, and taking advantage of their confusion, he proceeded to spear one after another. The smoking rubble grew in mounds, making the footing treacherous for the enemy troops.
