Angelslayer: The Winnowing War (100 page)

In the street, Rhywder's powerful mount staggered, then went down on its front knees. Young Eryian was behind Rhywder, holding tight. Villas were collapsing. An ivory column rolled past them. Rhywder kept a tight rein as the horse quickly regained his feet. When the quake stilled enough to gallop forward, the horse leapt the crumbled side of a villa, then clattered across its wooden floors, over debris, and crashed through the timbers of the back porch, landing on a dock work.

Rhywder paused, searching. The boy held tight, his head tucked against Rhywder's side. The docking swayed as a wave slammed into it, washing over. Rhywder looked to sea and gasped. An Etlantian galley was sailing for them—but it was entirely aflame, the oraculum plating the only thing keeping it afloat. The oars were long broken free, the masts had crumpled, not a living being was left in control, but the ship was still gliding heavy and true for the port; the prow cutting white billows of steam to either side was going to crush a hole in it the size of a house. Rhywder looked over his shoulder.

“Hold on, boy!” he shouted, then slammed his heels against the flanks. The Galaglean horse raced forward. Planks bounced as the hooves clattered. Some broke away, but Rhywder guided the steed along the right edge, near the strongest bracing. As he galloped, wedging nails were being torn loose. Rhywder could hear the ship closing, roaring in flames as if with a hundred screaming voices, and the reflections of it left the waters below the dock bright and swimming.

Rhywder swore—the docking posts at the end were giving way. The whole structure was buckling. Any second the huge warship would impact. The Little Fox screamed and rammed the spikes of his boots into the warhorse's side and the horse surged forward as if it understood—it must either make this jump or die. They soared over purple waters and then there was a hollow thud as the hind flanks of the horse hit the stone edge of the far landing. Rhywder heard the horse's bones crack. Rhywder and the boy were thrown. Behind them, the ship collided with docking, exploding. Spinning chunks of hull planking soared overhead. The powerful Galaglean charger rolled to one side and seemed to have been sucked back into a sea of flame, but he had gotten them across; they had made it clear.

“Run!” Rhywder shouted, seizing Little Eryian's wrist, and they ran along the edge of a stone docking wall. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the rest of the Etlantian galleys still out to sea. The entire armada was aflame. He could not believe it. There would be no ships! What were they running for? There was no hope—and then he saw it: a single mast, a bull's head, full sail billowed out, smart enough not to even attempt the city's docking, but driving at full oar for the sandy beach north of the city.

When he reached the edge of the landing, he took the boy by his waist. Beyond, over the edge of the landing, was a canal, and beyond that, the stretch of sandy beach the ship was headed for, and on it, signal flags anchored, white cloaks. “Swim for those flags, boy!” he shouted, throwing Little Eryian into the sea, then dove in after him.

From where she galloped—tight within the center cluster of Shadow Warriors, with beautiful children who rode, terrified—Hyacinth could now see the shoreline. For a moment her breath was caught. It was an Etlantian sail, glittering full-out with the bull's head of Etlantis, always their enemies, but beneath that sail were the fire jets of Darke's own blackship peeling white sprays of the sea from either side of the prow.

Hyacinth lifted herself up in the saddle.

“That way!” she screamed to the warriors. “There! An Etlantian ship!”

The last warriors of the Daath surrounding the children saw her motion and turned, driving in a hard run for the shoreline where the ship was gliding toward them. Just above, the last of the Daathan's First Century still held a line against the western edge of the forest, but it was sundering and moments would soon become seconds before even Darke's ship could not escape this madness—but it was him, it was the captain. She could not see him, but who else would sail through a firestorm to repay a debt?

Satrina rode with one hand beneath the saddle and with the other she held the child tight against her. She could feel him breathe in tight, quick gasps. She searched for Rhywder, but there was no sign of him. Everywhere, there were fires. Fires crawled like living things across the grass.

Toward the forest of the East of the Land, only a thin line of battered and bloodied Daath still held. Beyond them, the Unchurians raged insane, driven to utter frenzy. She heard a Daathan captain screaming, “Hold! Hold, you bastards, for your children are behind you! By Elyon's Light you will hold this line!”

But as mighty and determined as they were, they were being massacred. The flank above them, east, had been overwhelmed, and they were hopelessly outnumbered. Though the beach was before them, though a ship sailed to reach them, the last of the Shadow Warriors were falling now, and when their line gave way, the Unchurians would overwhelm them all. Only a miracle could spare them time to reach the shore. Only the word of Elyon Himself could save them. But Satrina believed. She had not struggled with the Little Fox of Lochlain all this way for it to just end in massacre. Someone, someone would intervene. That was her faith, and she held it as tightly as she held the child that was the scion of the Daath against her.

The one they called Azazel, once the lord of the choir of the Auphanim, and his followers rode slowly into the circle of stone within the ancient forest of the East of the Land. It was a sacred path, this, one used by those who came called of Elyon. It passed through the East of the Land, along its border, and this ancient circle of stone still held a tissue of the power that had created the world called Earth.

Beyond, the battle would soon be ended. Azazel was riding to watch over the final moments, following the pathway ironically once cut of the Daath themselves, those who were to have been saviors of this age of men, the first age. The rest, the next aeons, would belong to them, to the oath takers, and this moment was choice above all moments in his long life that stretched through stars; through many worlds, this moment would shine. Azazel was about to witness the fall of the Daath, their armies, their might and mystery, and most of all, their chosen, their fabled seventy and seven that were said, by the weak prophecies of Enoch, to stand in the last hour of the first apocalypse of men.

Azazel had managed to shift time, to kill futures by flinging them from the sky, until now only his future remained. There was no hope left to them. Even if the young king showed up with his sunblade, the outcome of that meeting would be far different from when the boy had faced the weak and febrile Satariel. Why he had vanished, this scion, Azazel could not guess, but nor did he care. The sword called the Angelslayer meant nothing to him; he could destroy it with thought alone if need be.

His skin was the flesh of a mortal already, and surprisingly, strengthened by an overlaid multitude of spell bindings, it was stronger than his own given flesh—as was proven when the mighty Righel tried to use a sunblade to cut him down. Azazel could withstand the Angelslayer, Uriel's sword. In fact, given the time left the Daath and their king and their fabled blade of Uriel, it was over, for there was no chance, no possible future to which the Daath could escape. He even knew of the blackship of the Etlantian killer, Darke, the Tarshian. He knew all; his eyes had searched the sky and the land; his eyes had seen all there was to see. Except, curiously, this strange scion named Loch, who had utterly vanished—it was a mystery, but sooner or later it would resolve. Too late to change what was now going to take place.

Azazel moved slowly. He would emerge from the forest with a splendid view from high ground just in time to witness the slaying of the children—that was the moment of ending; that was when time would alter forever. The Earth and all it offered would become the breeding grounds of those who had performed the Oath of Binding so long ago on Mount Ammon. It had come full circle. Elyon's world was ordered and maintained by law and edict, by oath and by light, and Azazel, following his one given leader, the Light Bearer, the first to step down from the sky and lead his brothers against heaven, had used those very edicts, those very words that formed worlds of star matter, that formed universes of dark nodes as tiny and infinitesimal as a grain of sand. He had used them to bring about a future in which his sons and the sons of those who swore their oath seven hundred years before would own the Earth, would guide it past the eye of Daath and leave it strong, poised at the edge of all living matter where a heaven of their own would begin to form. Those who had come here in that day, in the day of Yered, they were Elohim, and they had sung in the choir of the first speaking, the
Holy-Holy-Holy,
which formed this existence—and they would soon bind it as their own.

In fact, it seemed already done, already finished, for Azazel could feel it now, all of it. He could feel the Earth; he could feel the sky like a part of his being. It was about to end, this prophecy of the crippled one, the one called Enoch. Azazel had plotted this moment for centuries, and he could taste it, feel it in the depth of his acquired skin.

What Azazel did not feel was the sword of the Angelslayer above him as its hilt notched against the capstone of the queen's temple—the hidden, cloaked star ship named Daathan, which, as brilliant and knowing as he was, Azazel had not sensed rising through the trees above him. He had not felt it there because it was cloaked in a skin of aganon and blessed of the light of the far mothering star, Dannu. It was invisible to his thousand eyes. Neither could Azazel feel the eleventh scion, the boy king named Lochlain, who now took his last breath as he angled the sword and set its tip against his heart where he knelt on the capstone of the temple.

“Amen-Omen-Diamon,”
Loch whispered, then let his weight fall forward, let the tip of Uriel's sword pierce his flesh, then deep, into the richest of his blood, the very center of his heart and there it drank full, lighting as it had not ignited in centuries.