The opposing army looked like men, at least facial wise, but that was where the similarities began and ended. The demon-men, for that was surely what they were, had lean upper bodies like cheetahs that flared out into thick hoofed legs resembling the hind legs of horses. The demon-men’s arms were not arms at all but lengths of bone hard limbs of an ivory white hue that articulated at the elbow joints like human arms. The limbs ended in serrated points that were sharp as sword blades.
Their sharpened arms were the demon-men’s only weapons. The demon-men were outnumbered five to one, yet neither fear of numbers nor anticipation of battle played across their inhumanly placid faces.
The human horsemen, by contrast, belted out a battle yell that shook the sky and resumed their charge.
The demon-men stood their ground like ranks of statues and were just as eerily silent. At the last second, when the horsemen’s lances were a hairbreadth from making contact with flesh, the demon-men acted. They leapt like lions, plunging their limbs through the chain-linked armor of the horsemen. When the demon-men retracted their limbs, they were covered with blood and their victims were sprawled on the ground locked in death spasms. Weaving through the shocked Zanjiians with effortless ease the demon-men slashed and thrust with their dreadful arms. Zanjiian throats were ripped open, heads lopped off in single swipes, torsos spitted like chunks of meat.
A Zanjiian managed to hurl a javelin that caught a demon-man in the eye. A group of Zanjiians surrounded another demon-man and trampled him beneath their horses’ hooves before finishing him off with a succession of lance and sword blows. But those were isolated successes. The demon-men were too fast and nimble to be so easily pinned down. Plus, they proved far more skillful with their natural weapons than the Zanjiians were with the panoply of man-made weapons at their disposal.
The demon-men successfully countered javelins, lances and swords, responding with uncanny agility wedded to well-timed arm-attacks that invariably ended in death or grievous injury for the recipients. In a matter of a few short minutes the grass plain was sodden with blood and littered with the bodies and body parts of five hundred Zanjiians. The demon-men circulated among the dead seeking out the wounded whose throats they slit with workmanlike efficiency. The horses were not spared either. When the demon-men were finished with the Zanjiians they idled their time chasing down riderless horses which were dispatched in similar fashion.
When the slaughter ceased, Ajunge cast out the light that transported his precious soldiers into battle. The demon-men were captured in the light and vanished with its passing.
* * *
Queen Zara of Zanjii was as renowned for her brilliance as she was for her breathtaking beauty. Indeed, the wit and cunning she had to draw upon to navigate the poisoned brambles of treachery and deceit on her climb to her present position would have taxed less capable minds. Outlanders unfamiliar with the queen would not have been immediately aware of the fortitude that existed behind the delicate allure of her dark brown eyes. Nor would they have imagined the ruthless determination lurking beneath the comely richness of her ebony hue.
Zara’s mother and father were killed in a palace coup when she was twelve. Ten years later, the then princess rode into Zanjii’s capitol, Malawai, at the head of a conquering army after vanquishing her parents’ assassins on the battlefield. She had snatched a stolen throne out of the hands of thieves to inaugurate a new era of peace and prosperity. So she intended. Five years after her triumph, the demon-sorcerer called Ajunge appeared out of nowhere, his tower dominating an otherwise featureless landscape.
The sorcerer demanded that the Zanjii Kingdom submit to his authority and that its queen bow before him in a public display of that submission. Zara refused. Since that day, the demon-sorcerer cast a net of terror across the land which Zara was powerless to throw off.
Now, after a messenger conveyed word that her vaunted iron cavalry, the flower of Zanjiian arms, had failed to dislodge the demon-sorcerer from his lair, Zara sank into a deep, dark pit of despair. She knew what was coming next.
Time to take a lover.
The voice whispered into Zara’s ear; its sibilance almost calming. The demon-sorcerer possessed the power to project his words across distances. Zara shook her head furiously to shed the lulling effects.
Zara retreated to the far corner of her bedchamber, away from the terrace. Far from the terrace because the view was not to her liking. Ajunge’s tower loomed in the distance like a glistening needle. Even at night, the tower emitted an eerie luminance that defied the press of darkness. In the daytime it was a festering, incongruous scab on reality.
Time to take a lover, my queen.
Zara clamped both hands to her ears in teary-eyed anguish. But Ajunge’s words were not to be nullified for he spoke them directly into the woman’s mind. Once again you send an army to destroy me. Once again, I have cast that army into the well of oblivion. Now, an additional price must be paid. Another sacrifice to complete my victory on the battlefield.
“Damn you, wretched creature!” Zara screamed.
No, my Queen. Damn you for not having the good sense to know that you cannot defeat me. Enough delay. Take your lover now or see five hundred more perish by my hand. Mind you, the next batch of Zanjiians I eliminate will be children.
An additional layer of fear and loathing accumulated like settling ash in the pit of Zara’s stomach. Would the demon-sorcerer slaughter children? Need she even have doubted for a second that he wouldn’t?
Zara exhaled a slow breath to gather herself. She walked toward the terrace; her liquid eyes locked on the distant tower. How she longed to convert her gaze into a spear of flame. She would
