Chapter XXXVII

General Cory, the savior of Nihilus, as he was called now, was sitting in the center of the Nihilite army's camp on the outskirts of the March of Muri. The army was approaching the County of Xane almost unopposed, making Cory and Lorna suspicious of what the Arxians had planned, so they sent ahead scouts to check the path to the nearest bridges across the river into the mainland of Xane. In the meantime Cory sat on a throne in the camp, made from the remains of houses the Nihilites had destroyed during their campaign. The first two scouts had come back and reported the bridges destroyed, leaving Cory wondering how they were going to get across. The final scout came back to report that the one remaining bridge was heavily fortified, and protected by a great many men.

“So they want to force us into a battle for the bridge,” Cory said with a sneer.

“It can be avoided,” Lorna said. “We don't have to play it their way.”

“What do you propose?”

“We have laborers who can build a series of small, make-shift bridges themselves. We find the places where the river narrows and cross there, completely avoiding the bridge they obviously want us to fight them for. It will take a lot of time, but I'm sure I can motivate the men to work quickly.”

“That is a good way to get the army across,” Cory said. “You get the laborers working on that. In the meantime, I want to teach the Arxian dogs a lesson, make a statement about the kind of power they're really dealing with.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“Meriel kept holding me back, saying it was too soon for me to show my hand, but she was still using tactics intended to make the enemy fear us. I'm going to give a display of power so great they'll kill their own children rather than let them suffer at our hands!”

“Think about this carefully, Cory,” Lorna said. “If you do this, if you show them the power of Sulaiman's ring, they'll be coming after you from now on. The archers will know to train their arrows on you, assassins will fall out of the skies to get you, you'll never get a moment's rest.”

“Malkira and his legions will protect me, I'm sure of it. Meriel didn't have enough faith in me. If she had, maybe if she'd allowed me to be all that I'm destined to be from the start, she'd still be alive today. We have the power to make our enemies crumble before us. It's time we showed them that. There's no greater blow to our enemies' morale that we can make than this.”

“At least take a few soldiers with you for protection, just in case your daemonic guardians should fail.”

“You doubt Malkira's power?”

“No, I just think a little human help might be in order too.”

“Fine, for your sake I'll take a few soldiers with me. Thank you, Lorna, I didn't know you cared.”

Cory's semi-sweet, somewhat flirtatious tone almost made Lorna gag. In truth she loathed the man, and couldn't imagine anyone who wouldn't, but she also understood what a huge strategic advantage just having him around truly was. That and the fact that the daemons showed him so much favor that at times it seemed like it would be blasphemous to even wish for something bad to happen to him, which Lorna tried not to do.

Cory picked out three soldiers from his armies; two who were formerly Qenneth's and one who was formerly Meriel's, and gave them a brief idea of what he was going to do. “We're going to approach the bridge at night and hit the Arxians by surprise. I want them to see what they're truly up against. Once they see my awesome power I'm sure they'll crumble like...crumbly...crumble cake. I want you three to watch my back, just in case the daemons guarding me happen to miss something, which is unlikely but possible.”

“Understood, sir.”

For a fleeting moment Cory thought they were about to say “sirrah,” and his hand twitched close to his sword, but when he realized what they were really saying he just smiled to himself.

With Cory and his chosen bodyguards marching off so that he could boast and brag to the enemy about the gift Malkira had given him, Lorna turned her attention to her own soldiers and the laborers. “Start cutting down trees immediately, level and entire forest if you have to. We have to build some bridges that can be carried to the river and lain across. I want these bridges built before sunset tomorrow, understood? Move!”

With such a short deadline the laborers ran off into the woods as soon as Lorna said “Move!” and hacked away at the trees there. They all understood the consequences for falling behind in their labors. While Lorna was nowhere near as cruel as Meriel, she was still someone one did not want to cross. To Lorna the County of Xane was the most important place in all of Arx for them to cross, for it was here that their allies, who had been waiting in Arx for many years now, were told to meet up with them. They had lost many soldiers in Muri, too many, in Xane their numbers would grow again.

Cory and his small entourage had arrived at an outcropping of bushes and trees not far from the bridge within a matter of a few hours, but it was important to Cory that they wait until nightfall before attacking the bridge, both because he wanted to hit the Arxians by surprise, and because he wanted the attack to be even more terrifying. Darkness had a natural way of playing with one's imagination, making ordinary sights unsettling, and unsettling sights outright terrifying. He could only imagine what the darkness would do to the already terrifying sight of a daemonic army coming to consume them.

They waited for several hours, sitting behind cover in silence. Then, as the sun set and darkness fell, it seemed that once again nature was conspiring to aid Cory in his theatrics. Last time steam was rising from the moat of Therion's castle, making it seem like Cory was a part of the mist. This particular night there was no moon, and dark clouds had gathered, blocking out much of the light of the stars. The torches lighting the bridge seemed almost as bright as day in that total darkness, but just outside the torches' light it looked to the Arxian soldiers as if the world simply ended, as if everything but that bridge and the fortifications around it had disappeared.

With darkness concealing them from sight and the roaring of the rushing river louder than their footsteps, Cory and his entourage approached the bridge, moving slowly and staying low. They crept down to the riverbanks, and followed the shore-line until they were directly under the bridge. In the blackness, barely visible, Cory smiled widely at his fellows before shouting as loud as he could, breaking the silence and startling all of the soldiers above, “Malkira! Show these idolaters the price of their God's treachery!” he held up his fist, with the ring jutting upwards, and daemons began to fly forth from around Cory. They floated up to the bridge, where the soldiers shrieked and tried to fight back. Even the paladins present were terrified at such a horrible sight. Daemons of all sorts unleashed their fury upon the Arxian soldiers. They devoured them whole, tore them apart, or flung them from the bridge. Those falling from the bridge were carried away swiftly by the rushing waters. They smashed into the rocks, because the bridge was built over a narrower part of the river, and where a river narrows its flow is strongest. Daemons bigger than a house appeared on the bridge, causing the stone to crack and the whole bridge to sag as if it were going to collapse.

“Don't flee!” Cory heard the Arxian's commander yell, just before the sound of something being pushed through the commander's chest.

Daemons were walking right into the bear-traps set out for the Nihilite soldiers, but the traps' teeth broke or bent against the daemons' skin. Arxian soldiers swung wildly with their weapons, to no avail, as daemons many times larger than them picked them up and slowly stuffed them into their mouths, full of teeth as sharp as knives. The paladins there were doing what they could, but even they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of daemons attacking. Normally it would have taken many legions of warlocks to conjure this many powerful daemons into one place, and since the Arxians knew the Nihilites didn't have anywhere near that many warlocks in their military they didn't bother preparing for a daemonic assault on this scale.

“Fall back!” Cory heard another officer cry, and he knew he had them. They were surrendering the bridge, he was sure of it. Maybe Lorna's laborers wouldn't have to build portable bridges after all. Cory loved the thought of the stories his people would tell about how he took the bridge single-handedly.

But it was not quite as Cory thought. The daemons were still on the bridge. Those who could not fly, who were forced to walk upon it were creating so much weight that the stone cracked and began to give. This gave the geomancers an idea, one that they brought up to the officer in charge. Once all of the surviving Arxian soldiers had gotten off of the bridge the geomancers all chanted together and the stone bridge collapsed, causing those daemons on it to fall into the river. More importantly, it forced Cory out of hiding as he ran out from under the collapsing bridge.

The torches were just close enough for Cory and his bodyguards to be visible in the darkness, and the officer in charge shouted, “There's the warlock! Archers!”

Archers took aim at Cory and released their arrows. As it turned out, taking along his three chosen bodyguards had been a wise move after all, for one of them stood between the archers and Cory, raising his shield and blocking the arrows. The archers who had fired at Cory soon felt many small daemons, about the size of a human toddler, eating their legs with razor-sharp teeth.

Cory laughed. “Your kingdom shall fall! And soon the army of Nihilus shall destroy all of Arx, all the world! We shall find your so-called God and kill him for daring to imprison us! Behold my power and despair!” As Cory boasted and taunted his enemies, the Arxian soldiers turned the ballista they'd set up at their end of the bridge towards him. “Oh, schyte!” Seeing the giant crossbow pointed at him Cory ran away, as fast as he could. There was a loud snapping sound as the weapon was fired, and Cory just barely managed to get out of the way in time. One of his bodyguards was not so lucky and took the spear through his gut.

Cory and his two remaining bodyguards had soon disappeared into the darkness and the foliage, and the daemons Cory had summoned vanished as well.

In the morning the Grand Duke arrived. Messengers had told him that there had been a major attack on the bridge. One warlock had all but defeated the soldiers watching over it, and a legion of demons had slain many of their men. The Grand Duke chastised the messenger for lying. When the messenger insisted that his story was true the Grand Duke chastised him again for believing such wild tales. But when the Grand Duke arrived at the scene he could think of no other explanation for the carnage he saw than a legion of daemons attacking. He still found it impossible to believe that one warlock had summoned so many, but at the same time he knew that no human army could accomplish the level of destruction he saw. Blood stained the grass around the broken bridge. There were parts of men's bodies, and scraps of their armor strewn about. A truly dark force had been at work here.

The Grand Duke approached one of the injured soldiers. “You look like you were in the thick of it.”

“Nay, otherwise I'd not be alive.”

“What did you see, soldier?”

“It was an army of demons...far too many for us to handle. Just before they appeared we heard a man shouting. He said a name...Mal...Mal something...Malech...Maleera...”

“Malkira?” the Grand Duke asked.

“Yes, that's the one!”

The Sacred Scriptures told of an ancient Nihilite king who had the power to summon the demon-lord “Malkira” because of a powerful ring. Malkira caused unparalleled destruction, and for a while all believed that the world would soon come to an end. That was, until God smote the evil king, causing the ground to swallow up his palace. If this lone warlock had somehow made a pact with Malkira, then the Arxians may not have a chance at victory, he thought. Perhaps this was truly the end. The Grand Duke's skin fell cold as he thought about the wanton destruction that such a demon would cause. Glancing around at his surviving men he couldn't help but feel he'd soon be burying all of them, or that he'd soon be buried alongside them. Worse yet was the thought that there would be no one left to bury any of them. He decided, though, that whether or not they had a chance at victory they would not go down without a fight.

Sadly, some of his soldiers were less optimistic than he, and upon hearing the name “Malkira” began to panic.

“Can it truly be?”

“The master of legions upon legions of demons?”

“The great destroyer? The very spirit of death itself?”

“Calm down, soldier,” the Grand Duke ordered.

“I'll have plenty time to be calm when I'm dead! This demon...if that warlock really can conjure him...there won't even be a Heaven to go to for much longer!”

“Silence!” the Grand Duke shouted. “You will hold your tongue and not speak such blasphemy!”

“It's not blasphemy! It's true! Everyone, we must flee! Maybe to the West! We cannot fight such evil! Maybe if we're not in the war he'll have mercy on us in the Void!”

“None of that, now!”

The soldiers all began to shout and argue.

“We have no hope!” the soldier continued. “The only way we'd be worse off is if the Queen of Demons herself were to arrive!”

The Grand Duke seized this man by the throat and shoved his sword through his gut. He twisted it inside and kicked him onto the ground. “Anyone else want to talk about deserting? The punishment for desertion is death, don't forget that! You think Malkira is terrifying? Pray you never suffer MY wrath!” It was not the law throughout the land that desertion was punished with death, but in the Grand Duke's army it was definitely so. He would not tolerate anyone leaving his army unless it was with his say so.

“What do you propose we do, then?” one of the soldiers asked. “We no longer have a bridge to defend here, and the Nihilites are bound to find another way to cross.”

“Aye. In that case we wait for them to cross, and when they reach Dead-River Pass we attack them from behind.”

“What about the warlock, sir? The one who can conjure whole armies of demons?”

“As soon as he shows his face I want every archer's bow trained on him.”

Cory made it back to camp within a few hours, and found that construction of the make-shift bridges was well underway. He'd run almost the entire way, and just when he made it back to the camp his knees gave out and he collapsed. Scouts signaled to Lorna that Cory had returned, and she walked over just as her soldiers helped Cory to his feet.

“Didn't go exactly as you were planning?” Lorna asked, trying to hide her amusement.

“No...it went...well,” Cory said, between gasps. “Just...had to...leave...quickly...water! Water!” One of the soldiers ran off and returned with a small goblet of water, which Cory gulped down in a hurry. “More!”

Lorna wanted to say something to have a laugh at Cory's expense like, “So now they know that the most terrible thing we can do to them is hit them hard and run away like children?” but she held her tongue, remembering who she was talking to. Instead she said, “I take it they didn't surrender the bridge?”

“Of course not!” Cory said and gulped down more water. “But you should have heard the screams! It was hilarious! They screamed like little girls getting a beating! They'll surrender the whole country before long!”

Lorna didn't want to think about how disturbingly specific Cory's analogy was. She certainly wasn't going to ask how many times he'd heard that particular scream. “So confident of that, are you?”

“Or at least there'll be deserters, and many of them. They've realized now that they're in over their heads, there's nothing they can do to stop our march, and they know it!”

“We'll see what they do,” Lorna said. “But don't be surprised if it doesn't turn out like you expected. Sometimes when faced with certain doom people fight harder than they've ever fought before. They become like cornered animals. Your little display may have terrified them, but it may also have strengthened their resolve.”

“Pfff...” Cory rolled his eyes. “Have a little faith!”

Working all night, the laborers managed to complete their bridges by morning. The bridges were built in such a way that they folded up with a series of ropes and pulleys to hold them in place. When being lowered across a river, the ropes could slowly be released through the pulleys, allowing the bridge to extend across. The bridges were extremely heavy, and the laborers were exhausted from working throughout the night, so the thralls would be the ones to carry the bridges to the river.

Scouts reported that there was a patrol of Arxian cavaliers riding up and down the river, a potential danger should they attempt to cross. “Watch them, figure out their pattern and their route. Based on that we can find the biggest opening, the longest amount of time when they're nowhere near the river, and we can cross,” Lorna told them.

The scouts did as they were told, figuring out the best time of day for them to cross. They watched the cavalry patrols from a distance for three days to figure out the exact pattern, and on the fourth day they returned to Lorna and told her a specific time that was ideal.

The Nihilite army marched to the river, with that same great speed that they'd had in Muri that had kept them constantly ahead of the Arxians. Lorna had managed to time their arrival just right, for exactly the right time of day that the scouts had told her. The thralls set up the bridges, and the Nihilite army began its march across, moving slowly. Because the make-shift bridges weren't embedded into the shore on the other side of the river it was possible for them to teeter or fall. Thralls held tightly onto the ropes, with their combined strength keeping the bridges from moving.

What the scouts hadn't accounted for, though, was that just as they were watching the Arxian cavaliers during their patrol, so Arxian scouts were also watching them. These scouts had told the cavaliers about the Nihilites and together they formed a plan of attack. If they attacked the Nihilite army just as they were beginning to cross the river the attack would do, honestly, very little. The Nihilites would fall back and attempt to cross some other way, or at some other point in the river. But, if the cavaliers waited until the Nihilites had a significant number of troops across the river, then the Arxians could hit them hard and slay many of them.

Arxian scouts watched as the Nihilites moved across the river, a little at a time, waiting for there to be enough of them across for the attack to make a difference. Once they were satisfied at the number of Nihilites who had made it across, the scouts ran back to the cavaliers and informed them that the time was right to strike the Nihilites.

The ground shook and a thunderous sound echoed through the valley as the Arxian cavalry charged in, swords and lances pointed at their targets. Those Nihilites who had first made it across were the poor laborers, who had been sent to better secure the bridges on the other shore, along with a small number of soldiers for protection. They had just about finished securing the bridges in place when Lorna saw the coming cavalry.

“Archers!” Lorna shouted. Her archers took positions along the shore and aimed their bows to fire just in front of the charging cavaliers so that they'd ride right into the way of their arrows. Cory wasn't satisfied that this would be anywhere near effective enough, so he ran up to the bridge and began to push his way across, squeezing in between those already there and rudely pushing them aside. “Loose!” Lorna called out. The archers loosed their arrows and the cavaliers rode right into the volley. Fortunately for them, their armor was far too thick for the arrows to harm them, especially at such a distance. A few horses were less fortunate. They took arrows to their legs and pitched their riders forward into the mud.

The cavaliers arrived at the Nihilite lines for the first ride-by, and the few soldiers who had made it across to protect the laborers barely managed to put up a fight. There were nowhere near enough of them to make a decent phalanx, and their long-spears did little to help them considering how many cavaliers bore down on them. The first ride-by was butchery, and the soldiers and laborers on the western shore were all but completely massacred, with only a handful of Arxian cavaliers falling in the process. Once they'd gotten through and put enough distance between themselves and the remaining Nihilite laborers to build up the momentum again, the cavaliers turned about and charged at the Nihilites again for a second ride-by. The archers again loosed their arrows, but to almost no avail, and more soldiers scrambled to get across the bridge to protect their allies, but those few who could make it across in time would provide little assistance.

That was, except for Cory, who made it to the laborers just as the cavaliers arrived for their second attack. With his life threatened like this, Cory didn't even need to call out for Malkira's help. Instantly daemons appearing like hideous women with bat-like wings, hawk-like talons for feet, and long, serpentine tails appeared. The daemons grabbed the cavaliers from the backs of their horses with their talons and tails and threw them back onto the ground. With the Arxian cavaliers on the ground and now disoriented, Ormond appeared and trampled all over them, crushing them into the mud with his hooves. Cavaliers would try to force themselves to their feet and reach for their swords, only to have Ormond butt them with his horns and break their frail, mortal bodies.

Cory walked through the field, full of the fallen cavaliers, and stabbed each Arxian he walked by as they lay on the ground to make sure they were all dead and not just injured. All the while he sang to himself:

“Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye.

Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked in a pie!

When the pie was open, the birds began to sing!

Wasn't that a tasty dish to set before the King?”

It was one thing to hear all the stories about how powerful Sulaiman's ring was, and another entirely to see what it could do with one's own eyes. Lorna was in awe at what Cory had done. He'd turned around a battle that they were horribly losing in a matter of seconds, and it seemed to not even faze him. Normally, summoning daemons through the Firmament was exhausting, even for some of the most powerful warlocks, but Cory didn't even so much as yawn. He happily skipped along, singing his childish song, as he finished off Arxian cavaliers who'd fallen during the battle. Furthermore, usually a battle like this ended in one side or the other retreating, Cory had utterly destroyed the Arxian force, slaughtered every one of them. Lorna now felt less tempted than ever to test Cory's temper or insult his pride.

Arxian scouts sat watching the whole affair from a distance, and once they were sure there was nothing they could do about it they ran off to spread the word. Rumors spread about a man with fire for hair, clad in the night sky, who could summon hoards of demons on a whim. They said the Void itself was inside of him, ensuring that he had no sense of mercy.