The Conqueror's Shadow (46 page)

“That was completely uncalled for,” Davro told the corpse seriously, actually waving a finger at it. “I
liked
that spear.” Then, drawing his sword with a resigned sigh, the ogre tromped back toward the battle. Valescienn's pale eyes followed his killer in an eternal, empty stare.

“SOMETHING'S NOT RIGHT.”

Mithraem's head rose from the now bloodless body of another defender: a teenage boy whose primary duty had been to carry arrows to the bowmen on the ramparts. His eyes were tinged red with his victim's stolen life, and a thin trickle ran red from the corner of his lips, but his clothes were spotless as ever, and not a strand of his slick black hair was out of place. He looked like a nobleman dressed for a semi-formal event, not a participant in a brief and bloody siege.

Or at least, one that was
supposed
to be brief. But while the gnomes and his own Legions were doing their usual magnificent job of slaughtering the mortal fools who held the city, Valescienn's soldiers weren't
following the plan. The defenders were distracted; the wall should have been swarmed under by now. And yet, after the initial wave of attackers, there was no sign of the invading force.

And now that he listened—truly
listened
, with senses only vaguely comparable to what humans thought of as hearing—Mithraem could detect the sounds of a pitched battle on the far side of the wall.

Something had changed, and he needed to know what it was. The lower half of his body already dissolving into a pink-tinged mist, Mithraem's disembodied head spoke to another of his kind.

“The gnomes can handle this from here,” he said, fog pouring from his mouth as he continued his transformation. “Something's happening outside. Gather as many of the others as you can find, and follow.”

And then there was nothing human left at all, merely a serpentine haze swiftly whipping its way through the streets toward the main gate and whatever lay beyond.

“FOG!
Fog from the walls!”

With a bitter curse in his native tongue, Losalis smashed his enemy's blade aside with his saber and drove the razored edge of his shield into the soldier's throat. Then, ignoring the muffled thud of another body dropping to the thick snow, he looked toward Pelapheron with growing trepidation.

Losalis knew, thanks to Corvis's warnings, exactly what sort of inhuman creatures he might be facing that day, and he'd posted lookouts, men specifically ordered to watch for just this troubling sign. The problem, of course, was this: Now that he had his forewarning, what the bloody hell was he supposed to do with it?

“Fall back and form up!” he ordered in a bellow audible even over the din of battle. Inwardly, he winced. Letting up now would allow the Serpent's army to recover from the initial assault, and he begrudged every second his own men weren't pressing the enemy. But he knew, too, that what was coming was beyond the experience, even the comprehension, of most warriors. If they hoped to survive, let alone salvage
a victory, they had to fight as a unit, even if it meant giving the enemy opportunity to do the same.

“Defensive lines!” Losalis shouted, squelching his own doubts the better to deal with theirs. “Shield walls where terrain allows! Archers to the rear!” He stabbed an imperious finger at the ogres' commander. “Davro! Form up your people by the archers! You're floating backup!” Davro nodded and roared his own orders in the sharp, guttural tongue of the ogres.

Men dashed across open ground and crunching snow, hearts pumping, sweating despite the blue nip in the air, shivering with more than cold as voluminous clouds of mist, advancing against the prevailing wind, poured from the palisade. It frothed as it came, the leading edge splitting and tearing and bubbling in agitation, curling at the corners. A wave of malice swept ahead of it, unholy herald of its master's deathly advance. Here and there, not quite masked by eddies in the swirling fog, appeared blood-gleaming eyes or pale grasping hands. Several of Losalis's slower men vanished with a terrifying abruptness as the mists rolled over them, their fear-filled, earsplitting shrieks dragging on and on and on …

They began to emerge, then, humanoid shapes coalescing from the mists. Pale-skinned with reddened eyes, trailing streamers of fog as they walked, leaving infinite ranks of bloody footprints behind them in the snow. Mist took on the shape of shadow, shadow the substance of man, as they appeared, each after each, from the thinning mists, the ones in back stepping over the rent and bloodless bodies of the men they'd slaughtered. Tall and short, gaunt and stout—all manner of men and women, but all dark of hair and pale of skin.

In the ranks behind Losalis, someone whimpered, someone gasped. Even the general himself had to grit his teeth, clench his fist tight about the hilt of his saber, and command his feet with muscles of stone and will of iron that they
would not run
.

When Corvis, Davro, and Seilloah had battled one of Mithraem's minions previously, they were fortunate indeed to face it alone. Here, the Legion was massed. Massed, their power was dominant. The terror they rode into battle, bucking and lashing out in rage, was no mere
emotion but a physical thing, a foe no less real than the undead themselves. The men who stood, trembling as they held their ground, could no more have shrugged off that fear than could a young deer simply choose to ignore the instinct for flight at the sudden baying of the wolf.

He was aware, suddenly, of Seilloah beside him, her own face twisted in fear, though she, too, held her ground. Her fingers twitched, her lips moving silently. When the first of the enemy was a mere handful of yards away, she stepped forward and allowed a dull powder to sprinkle from a clenched fist, dusting the snow with a light coat of black.

Instantly the fear lessened. Oh, certainly the men still gazed at the implacable foe with no small amount of consternation, but the mind-numbing crush of terror was gone, allowing Rebaine's army to think clearly once more. A protracted howl—heard not in the ears or even the mind but as a flutter of the heart and a chill of the blood—arose from the advancing horde. It was a call of fury, not despair, for if the vanguard of fear was indeed their first weapon, it was far from their last.

“Can you do anything else?” Losalis hissed anxiously.

“Not really.” Seilloah's voice, rock-steady when she cast the spell, now shook with the fear they all repressed. “I might manage one or two, but there's just so many …”

And then the Endless Legion was upon them.

They were fewer than they first appeared. As all but a few residual tatters of haze melted away, Losalis saw that these “Endless” soldiers numbered, in fact, only a few hundred. It gave him a brief, flickering hope that his men might stand a chance.

And then the first appeared before him, and there was no more time for thought or hope or anything but battle. She was a bone-thin woman in thick furs, with blood-reddened lips and a thin-bladed short sword clasped before her. Though not unclean, she reeked of blood and rot and things long gone and forgotten from the world of man.

The she-thing hissed, an angered beast, and Losalis blinked in surprise—apparently, the precise reaction she'd wished. With a gleeful cackle at the gullibility of mortal foes, she stepped forward in a perfect lunge, her thrusting blade seeking the fleshy vitals of the fool before her.

But Losalis, too, could feint and switch, and where the creature expected
a startled opponent and an easy kill, a heavy downward chop with his shield sent her short sword careering into the snow. A sharp cry of defiance, a stab upward and outward, and the tip of his saber slid neatly through furs and flesh, prying ribs apart with a wishbone crack and plunging deep into desiccated organs.

Screeching wildly in agonized fury, she thrashed about on the end of the sword, claws reaching hungrily for the man who'd dared do this to her. Blood—black, viscous, and thick with congealed and clotted chunks—belched from the wound to fall, steaming, to the frozen ground.

Nor was Losalis finished. With a grunt he pivoted on a single foot. The snow slowed him, threatened to trip him up, yet he muscled his way through. The saber, yanked free, whistled around again as he completed his spin and cleaved cleanly through the monster's neck. Her head, jaw sputtering silent imprecations, landed crookedly at his feet.

Even before the rest of the body hit the ground, it was putrefying into black, hideous sludge. Despite himself, Losalis retreated a pace as the thing he'd just slain decayed into a thick morass that refused to mingle with the surrounding snows.

A tendril of fog flowed from the rotting form, skimming low over the white-shrouded earth, and then shot arrow-swift to the nearest corpse, the bloodless husk of one of Losalis's own men. He watched, pulse racing, as the mist slammed hard into the body, sending the corpse tumbling and rolling. Another instant, and it ceased thrashing, rolling smoothly to its feet, eyes open, mouth quirked in a malevolent grin. Haze hovered beneath its feet as it slowly, deliberately, advanced toward Losalis, a familiar spark of hell in its eyes. Losalis saw the skin tightening across its bones, growing pale as the remaining blood in the corpse was consumed by the thing that rode it.

The Endless Legion. Finally, Losalis understood.

With no shame in his heart, Losalis called for a full retreat.

IT WAS NOT ENTIRELY A ROUT
, though. At least one advantage came from their first encounter with Mithraem's people.

Far from Losalis, fighting madly to hold the flank, Ellowaine's hatchets were a wall of razors, her hands blurring in complex and ornate patterns that delivered dismemberment and death to anyone within reach. Already two of the foul monstrosities had fallen to her whirling blades, only to rise again in the nearest corpses. Her assault did not falter, her axes did not slow, but a shroud of futility fell upon the golden-haired mercenary. Already to her right, the line was broken. The archers, unable to loose even a single volley of arrows before the Legion was upon them, would have been slaughtered to a man had Davro's ogres not charged in to fill the gap in the lines.

The creature she battled now was one of the most hideous of the lot. A twisted hunchback of a man, it stood but five feet tall, but it must have weighed upward of 250 pounds. The morningstar clenched in its gnarled fists bristled with heavy spikes, and its pale skin stood out markedly against the thick black cloaks that wrapped it.

Slowly, step by step, Ellowaine fell back. Despite her opponent's twisted form—or, perhaps, because of it—it possessed an iron strength that even its fellows could not match. Its hideous club smashed aside anything in its path. Still, she couldn't just keep retreating. Many more steps, and she'd open a hole in the defensive line through which anyone could simply saunter. If she-She yelped despite herself as her heel snagged on a root concealed beneath the snow. Her arms pinwheeled in a wild attempt to maintain balance, until she sensed her foe's sudden charge. With a grace more feline than human, she shifted her weight, allowing herself to tumble backward after all. Her back and shoulders smacked into the snow, and Ellowaine kicked both legs up as she rolled, going completely over and landing in a crouch. Though a simple tumble, it was, under the circumstances, an impressive feat that few on the battlefield could have duplicated.