Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) (4 page)

Most troops would have run away by that point, but these guys were in some kind of berserker rage. They howled in frustration, and tore into the barrier with frenzied intensity. But they didn’t seem to have a counter for Cerise’s curses, so I kept my attention on the remains of the cavalry force long enough to finish them off.

Another few dozen explosive rounds and the ones I could see were all dead. They’d never even gotten close to us, and by then Cerise had dealt with her opponents as well.

“We should do it like that more often,” she grinned. “It was pretty funny watching them try to get at me. I guess these guys must be those andregi the wizards were talking about.”

I took a moment to study the bodies. I’d heard the andregi described as ape-men, but really they looked more like Neanderthals to me. Over six feet tall, which was a lot bigger than the local humans, with barrel chests and heavily muscled limbs. Their legs seemed a little shorter than normal, and of course they were so hairy you could almost call it fur. They had heavy brow ridges, big square jaws and no facial hair at all, which was an odd-looking combination. Something about the shape of their skulls was different, too. Wider than a human, with lower foreheads that had a pronounced slope to them.

Their equipment was interesting. Elaborate leather armor that provided full-body coverage, but no shoes. Leather helmets, and long leather cloaks that looked thick enough to double as another layer of armor. Dinosaur hide, maybe? Whatever it was, the workmanship was quite good.

They had a lot of magic about them, too. Necklaces of beads, runes sewn onto their armor, bone ear and nose piercings, all anchoring a host of weak but useful charms. Little spells of protection and enhancement, and a much stronger one that seemed to be some kind of berserker curse. No wonder they’d just kept attacking, even when it was obviously hopeless.

The odd thing, though, was that none of them had a scrap of metal. All of their weapons were that glossy red stuff, which was heavily enchanted.

“Guess so,” I said. “Any idea what those weapons are made of?”

Cerise bent and poked at one thoughtfully. The enchantments had been bound to their wielders, and were starting to come apart now that they were dead. The stuff started to soften, the angular shapes of the fallen weapons slumping towards the ground.

“Oh! I get it. They’re made of blood.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

I touched an axe that was rapidly becoming a puddle. Yep, blood. Still alive until recently, too.

“Seriously. Kind of an interesting technique, actually. They must have some big ritual where they bleed themselves to make their weapons, and then they’d have to feed them periodically. But it gives them a handy store of extra vitality, and I bet they can steal power from enemies they kill. Absorb their blood to heal themselves, maybe copy their powers, stuff like that. Good thing they didn’t know how to do much with the magic they were stealing, or I’d have had to work a lot harder to kill them.”

“Lovely. I hate competent foes,” I complained. “Why couldn’t they just be a bunch of dumb savages with sticks and stone axes?”

She snickered. “Aw, now what fun would it be to kill wimpy guys like that? This way we get a challenge.”

Our investigation was interrupted then by the arrival of a squad of Conclave war golems. They were one of the big models, standing twelve feet tall and probably weighing as much as a dinosaur. They had a hunchbacked appearance, with a seat on top for their commander, and their arms ended in huge maces and axe blades instead of hands. Only a few of them had riders, but I recognized the heavily armored figure on the lead golem.

“Daniel Black!” He called. “Just the man we need. I wasn’t sure you were still alive.”

“It’ll take more than an army of undead to finish me off, Leo,” I replied. “Do you know what’s happening?”

“The enemy came marching in right behind the storm, and caught the garrison with their pants down. A couple of their giant beasts smashed one of the gates open before anyone could get organized, and got into the city. The only good thing is they’re marching down the highway in a single column, so they aren’t arriving all that fast. But we need that gate sealed quickly, or we’ll end up losing the whole Trade District.”

“I take it that’s where I come in? Well, lead the way. I can throw a wall across a gate easily enough.”

“Assuming we can reach it,” he pointed out. “They’ve got several companies inside the wall already, and dozens of those giant beasts.”

“We’ll find a way,” I replied confidently.

We mounted up again, but barely made it two blocks closer to the wall before encountering more of the enemy. This time it was a company or so of infantry armed with normal-looking spears and bows, cutting their way through a few dozen men at arms who had tried to slow their advance. Leo led his golems right into the melee, the hulking iron shapes easily smashing their way through the enemy. But the lines were too confused for me to risk any of my ranged attacks.

“Time to stash the bike, I think,” Cerise said. “We can’t ride it through that kind of mess, and we both fight better on foot.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right.” I dismounted, and approached the melee cautiously. There was a swirling red mist creeping up the sides of one of the golems, and a swarm of insects pestering another one’s rider. These guys had all sorts of magical tricks, didn’t they?

Leo pointed his sword, and a bolt of sickly green energy erupted from it to sweep through the enemy troops. The red mist dissipated, revealing a golem that was now pitted with rust and corrosion. Not enough to seriously affect such a large mass of metal, but ordinary armor would have been eaten through in that length of time.

Then the golem rider the insects were attacking screamed, and fell off his mount.

“Should I go looking for their mages?” Cerise asked.

“Not yet,” I decided. “Let me draw their fire, and then you can pick them off when they expose themselves.”

I drew Grinder, and thumbed it to life. A blade of violet plasma sprung from the stone hilt, filled with spinning blades of force shaped like buzz saws. A shriek like a jet engine split the air, and I strode into the fight.

It was completely unfair. Their spears and arrows couldn’t penetrate my force field, let alone the additional layers of protection beneath it. But Grinder cut through their wooden weapons and leather armor as easily as the flesh and bone underneath.

I stepped between two militiamen to stab an ape man in the face, and his head blew apart in a spray of charred gore. A step forward, and a sweep of my arm cut another one in half despite his attempt to block with a spear shaft. Grinder growled like a giant wood chipper as I swung it back and forth, cutting a path through the enemy. I’d have been covered in gore if not for my force field, and more than once I saw an enemy I hadn’t hit flinch back from the carnage.

They fell back before me, and I triggered a plasma jet. The violet beam was hotter than the surface of the sun, and dense enough to sear through flesh in seconds. More ape men fell, their chests and faces burned away to expose the bones and organs beneath. The beam played across the leg of a war golem for a moment, leaving the iron surface glowing faintly with heat.

Then a swarm of insects was swirling around me, finding their way in through the gaps in my force field. I crushed some of them with force magic, but a couple of the wasp-like creatures managed to sting me.

“Ow! Fuck, that hurts. Ah, damn it, I think their venom is lethal.”

Not that it would actually kill me, with my amulet constantly healing me. But it wasn’t a lot of fun, and too many stings in a short time period might knock me out. That would be bad. I sealed off most of the openings in my force field, and conjured fire to try to fend off the swarm.

“I see him,” Cerise announced from behind me, and leaped.

She was in full demon form now, with her whipcord tail and long horns fully visible as she drew on her stolen reserves of demonic power. Her foot came down on an ape man’s head, knocking him down as she pushed off to sail over the crowd. She landed somewhere in the middle of the enemy, and the insects suddenly lost interest in me.

I resumed cutting my way through the andregi formation. If I could get to that fallen golem pilot I might still be able to save him before the venom killed him.

That was our pattern for the next half hour. We encountered one enemy force after another, enough to make it clear that there must be a thousand or more inside the wall by now. Every group had at least one or two mages and several of the guys with blood weapons, and they often found some clever way to get a hit in on me despite my layers of magical defenses. But none of them could stand up to the sheer brute force of my magic, or stop Cerise when she went darting through the press after a target. A hit or two was all they ever got before they died, and that wasn’t nearly enough to overcome my magical healing.

Leo’s command didn’t fare as well. The war wizard was actually in better shape than I was, his enchanted armor proving impervious to everything that the enemy threw at him. But the other golem pilots in his command weren’t nearly as well protected, and the golems themselves took steady damage. By the time we came within sight of the gate he was down to two heavily damaged golems, and we’d been forced to leave all of his men behind with the garrison troops.

The situation at the gate didn’t look promising.

A dome of crimson energy shielded the little plaza around the broken gate, deflecting arrows and the occasional bolt of lightning from the city’s defenders. What looked like a giant mutant tyrannosaurus covered in blood armor stood guard inside the dome, surrounded by dozens of ape men with blood weapons. They had mages there too, at least twenty of them, and a handful of especially big ape men who had armor made of blood in addition to their weapons. They had obviously secured the gatehouse, as the roof and wall overlooking the plaza were packed with archers.

Oh, and a fresh troop of triceratops cavalry was pouring in through the gates.

Experimentally, I tried lobbing a couple of explosive rounds at the dome. They didn’t even go off. As far as I could tell the projectiles just disintegrated when they struck the barrier.

“Any ideas?” I asked my companions.

Cerise leaned against my back, and I could feel her panting. “Dunno, but I can’t keep this up much longer. You were right, Daniel, I’m still weak from stabilizing myself. Your amulet keeps me from running out of mana, but my head’s getting too fuzzy for a serious fight.”

I put my hand on hers, and sent some healing her way. It wasn’t perfect, but I could banish her fatigue well enough to get her through one more fight.

“We need something big to crack the dome,” Leo analyzed. “Then a heavy assault spell for that large beast. It will probably take a dragon slayer to put it down, and we’ll need to lay down a heavy spell barrage on the rest of the enemy at the same time. I have one decent barrage prepared, but I’m afraid the rest of that is beyond me.”

“I don’t have anything on me that will crack the dome,” I admitted. “I don’t think we want to try walking through it, either. I’m sure it would do something nasty to us. Any chance of reinforcements?”

He shook his head. “The High Adepts are preparing to lay down a grand bombardment on the army, but they’re counting on us to seal the gate. The other golem squads will be driving back the enemy, and by now the nobles should have enough manpower mobilized to mount a counteroffensive. But we’re the heavy hitters here.”

“Damn.” I studied the enemy position for a moment, thinking furiously.

“What about the attack you deployed at the docks?” Leo suggested.

I shook my head. “That requires line of sight from my island. What if we back off and come at them underground? I can tunnel under that dome in a couple of minutes, and then we’ll be in among their mages.”

“Just the three of us? We’d be overwhelmed. Maybe if we can round up some elite knights, and another adept or two.”

Our planning was interrupted by a tremendous crash of thunder. The biggest bolt of lightning I’d ever seen struck down from the overcast sky to smash the dome, and for a moment all I could see was the afterimage. I blinked the spots away, glad that my amulet healed flash blindness just like anything else, and regained my vision just in time to see movement above the enemy position.

The red dome was gone.

A squadron of winged horses swooped low over the plaza, and dark shapes fell from them as they passed. Men. Big men in heavy armor, who didn’t seem bothered by a six-story fall. Most of them landed among the enemy mages, and began laying into them with axes and swords. The biggest of them held a long spear point-down as he fell, and drove it into the head of the giant tyrannosaurus as he landed.

The monster roared in pain, and fell. This was our opening.

“Follow me!” I shouted, and bounded down the road on a rush of force magic. Cerise followed at my heels, although Leo wasn’t quite fast enough to keep up. That was fine, these magical paratrooper guys were keeping the enemy plenty busy.

I opened up on the triceratops cavalry with explosive rounds, and ignited Grinder again. Then I was in among them.

I cut through a clump of spearmen, barely slowing my pace, and jumped onto the head of a dying triceratops. From there I had a clear shot to fire a couple of explosive rounds into the mass of troops that packed the gateway. Another force-boosted leap took me over a clump of enemies, and close enough to throw up a wall of force blocking the opening in the wall. The steady flow of enemy reinforcements immediately stumbled to a halt.