God's Demon

Chapter Thirty-One

To Hannibal’s eyes, the capital of Hell looked as if giants’ hands had swept the inner wards of its buildings, leaving only the gouge-marks of their colossal nails—its former twisted alleys and streets and avenues—upon the ground.

After the hard march through the Wastes, progress toward the Keep had been easy. Dis was a shattered city, the shards of its buildings few and scattered, the obstacles to a marching army nearly nonexistent. What few buildings had been found stood shaking on the fractured edges of its outermost wards. These had been summarily razed, their souls liberated.

Dense with the still-lingering, eddying dust and ash of destruction, the air grew brighter with the red-gold glow that emanated from the direction of the Keep. The terrain between Hannibal and the mountainous edifice was so barren and relatively smooth that it acted as a dark reflector of the dim fires of the Fly’s abode, making the ground look like the surface of a frozen lake. Only the swath of the great army that waited near the base of the new wall, now growing visible in the thick atmosphere, bespoke of any life upon the otherwise deserted plain. He turned in his saddle and looked into the red-tinged carpet of souls that was his army. Receding until they were tiny specks, the souls’ countless weapons, reflecting the fires of the Keep, sparkled like embers in the hanging ash. Breathtaking, he thought, a sight of unexpected beauty.

The plodding footsteps of the enormous Behemoths ahead shook the ground continuously, causing those waves of jostling souls closest to them to move forward in irregular clumps, but somehow Hannibal’s nimble steed managed to maintain its footing among them. The Soul-General was close—some thought too close—to the flanks of the advancing Behemoth line, but he felt that his troops should leave little open ground between them in the unlikely event that the giant creatures’ line was breached. And he knew that their bone-masked mahouts, in the unlikely event that the Behemoths panicked, would be quick to react. Protruding from each mammoth soul’s skull was the head of a long spike that ended inches from the soul’s brain; a sharp blow with the mahout’s hammer and the spike would be driven home, destroying the soul instantly.

Before him the new Keep Wall rose up, still distant but immense, ascending until it nearly obscured the Keep itself. Bathed in red, it was a sheer, solid expanse covered in an ever-changing net of glyphs that played upon the flat soul-brick surface like firelight through waves of blood. It was the product, he had been told, of Mulciber’s genius, and it was a marvel, built, Hannibal guessed, with such haste that it could only have been achieved with the use of every soul’s hand and body in Dis. He stared for long minutes as he moved forward, the layer of glyphs mesmerizing in its shifting patterns. Behind that floating shield, the wall was unbroken save for their goal—the single huge gate that lay behind a titanic raised drawbridge a thousand feet above the Keep’s base and no longer accessible by its wide bridge, which had been destroyed. Lying between the gate and the Second Army of the Ascension were not only the massed legions of the army of Dis but also the wide, bottomless moat of Lucifer’s Belt. Too hot and broad to traverse with any improvised barges, it would, unquestionably, prove a formidable barrier—a barrier that somehow needed to be crossed. Satanachia had already pointed to the gate as their objective, but the distance between the moat-edge and the gate above was too great to cast ropes. And no flyers in any great enough numbers accompanied them, all of their squadrons having been already committed to Sargatanas’ maneuver. For the moment, Hannibal could see no physical way of gaining their objective.

Even as Hannibal watched the advancing lines of demons ahead, an enormous bolt of red glyph-lightning, a curse he thought from the ground below, exploded into the ranks of Satanachia’s demons, pulverizing scores of them into a thick cloud of black dust that fell back down slowly. Was it sent by the Fly high above in his Rotunda? Was it just the beginning? Or am I letting my misgivings get the better of me? Hannibal had never been this skittish before a battle. Another bolt of lightning, this time closer, jarred him and made Gaha flinch and then more discharges began to burst upward and Hannibal knew for certain that they were not natural. The Fly had created a defensive perimeter and they were edging all too slowly into it. Hannibal would lose many troops to the lightning before they had a chance to engage the waiting army, but there was nothing he could do.

The ground, which looked so uniform from a distance, had become irregular with wide, bubbling fields of dark, cooling lava, making their progress difficult. The Soul-General had not heard of these lakes in his briefing and wondered if they had been churned up by Dis’ rampant demolition. He became even more suspicious when he thought he heard dull sounds issuing from within them. Through the shimmer of heat and steam he thought he saw strange shapes in the slowly swirling crust but reasoned that it was nothing more than his imagination fed by the tension of the moment.

Above, the cloud-cover over central Dis was dense, and Hannibal knew that Eligor and his lord must be well on their way, perhaps closer than he expected. The thought comforted him, but he knew that even while their efforts would shorten the battle to come, many souls would be destroyed and many demons would find out how much truth lay in the dread tales of Abaddon.

Suddenly, with a brilliant flash and a great rushing sound, a huge, circular glyph materialized before the Keep Wall hanging many hundreds of feet over Lucifer’s Belt. Surrounding its central sigil—Beelzebub’s pale green mark—were myriad smaller devices, each, Hannibal recognized from their forms, the sigil of one of Dis’ field commanders. He heard a collective hissing intake of breath from the surrounding troops of the soul army as the small sigils detached themselves and flew, arrow straight, into the pools of lava that lay at their feet in front, to the sides, and behind them. It was a Summoning!

Hannibal’s ill-defined suspicions had been justified. The bubbling pools he and his souls had so carefully been avoiding rippled and came to life as the gray crust burst apart, sending shards of cooled lava into the troops and revealing the super-heated magma beneath. There, kneeling, were rank upon rank of concealed incandescent figures that rose and began to surge forward, their steaming armor dulling to red and darkening, hardening in the air. Springing with halberds and swords at the ready onto the ledges of firmer ground before them, wave after wave poured forth, rushing to meet the surprised enemy. Hannibal watched as many of his stunned troops were cut down before they could react, some tumbling forward into the yellow-orange lava that had given birth to the demons who now struck them down.

Farther ahead, Hannibal saw that the fighting had spread to his demon allies and that the legions of Put Satanachia were as beleaguered as his own. A dozen massive gates—unseen for the radiance of the lava—opened out onto the Belt from the base of the Keep Wall, and from them wide barges carefully fashioned of pumice and loaded with more legionaries floated into view. They were ugly but effective vessels, and Hannibal watched with envy as the Belt was crossed quickly. Very shortly, the Fly’s unopposed legionaries were clambering up the bank, charging onto the battlefield to reinforce the legions that were already fighting.

The clamor of battle, the roaring of legionaries and the clashing of weapons, rose in Hannibal’s ears as the Behemoths in the front ranks crashed into the heavily armored troops of Dis’ Urban Legions. Great spumes of ash blackened the air as the troops of both sides impacted and were destroyed. The advance ground to a halt and Hannibal watched the cohesion of his and Satanachia’s legions disintegrate as they fell into a patchwork of enormous formations that attempted to hold off the still-gathering legions of Dis behind them as well as the already-engaged enemy legions from the front. Hannibal’s plans for a battle fought in any way resembling his past exploits were over; this day would be won only by the accumulated victories of each pocket of his and Satanachia’s troops—a reality that went counter to his instincts. Even with his misgivings, he knew that when a battle plan deteriorated, as this one had, the troops needed, more than ever, to see him in the fray, and with a roar he spurred his mount on into the thick of the fighting.

The sound of the two armies crashing together had been loud enough to take the breath out of Hannibal’s mouth, while the souls around him had looked at one another with wide eyes and shocked grins of amazement. Most had never before seen battle—in Hell or in their lives—and the newness of it was, to the majority of them, emotionally exhilarating. But that was fated to change.

Hannibal urged Gaha on toward the denser clots of fighting. He wondered why, other than the Spirits, there were no cavalry regiments in Hell; the mobility and ferocity they would bring to the battlefield would be spectacular. Perhaps breeding Abyssals was too difficult; perhaps flyers took their place. It was a shame. The creature he rode was as fierce and well trained a battle-mount as he could have asked for, far more potent a war beast than any horse could have been. Rising off its shorter front limbs to its more bipedal fighting stance, Gaha needed only to be pointed at the enemy to create havoc. With raking sweeps of its taloned paws the nimble Abyssal cleared wide swaths, allowing its master to swing his sword and move easily from one salient of imminent disaster to another. In this way, and with shouts of encouragement, the Soul-General kept his troops’ morale high and his own confidence from flagging.

Chaos had been created upon the battlefield, but Hannibal knew that it was a chaos deliberately orchestrated by Beelzebub. The organization of its seemingly random elements followed a logic, Hannibal recognized, that most likely only the Fly could comprehend and control.

Far off in the haze of mist and ash, during a short lull, Hannibal saw the silhouetted forms of the giant soul-beasts seemingly motionless, gaining ground one difficult footstep at a time. The Urban Legions were tough, hardened troops, he had been told, accustomed to living in a harsh city formerly under that severest of generals, Moloch; they would not be an easy obstacle to pass over.

As Hannibal resumed fighting he occasionally stole a glance toward Satanachia’s position, and as time wore on he saw that the Demon Major’s forces were suffering considerable losses. A large salient of Rofocale’s troops was bulging deep within Satanachia’s lines, and try as the Behemoths might to stop the enemy from pushing forward, they seemed too few against the seemingly limitless waves of steaming legionaries that issued from beneath the Keep. Time and again Hannibal saw their massive hammers come down amidst the carpet of enemy demons only to see the pulverized foe immediately replaced by clots of aggressive halberdiers climbing atop the rubble.

The ten nearest legions, arranged in close formation, entered the fray, packed tightly so that they seemed a solid wall. The rubble from the destroyed demons of both sides was so extensive that both armies found their legionaries climbing up steep, irregular inclines to engage each other. With the ceaseless, mounting destruction the footing was becoming extremely unstable, and he saw as much damage incurred because of masses of falling soldiers as there was from actual combat wounds.

Slowly, the Behemoths began to gain ground and what had been a standstill turned into a rout. The Summoning of legionaries from the Belt finally abated and Satanachia’s legions fell upon the fleeing demons, leaving a field strewn with smoking rubble.

Briefly, Hannibal thought he saw Satanachia’s sigil floating against the brightness of the Belt just where he would expect it—over the line’s center. A swift flash of white might just have been his brilliant two-handed sword, but Hannibal could not be certain. A giant green glyph emerged unexpectedly from the summit of the Black Dome and with a terrible scream of energy the wall came alive. Enormous bolts sprang from it, each one targeting a different Behemoth and enveloping it in a fireball of destruction. In short, disastrous moments, only fiery pits remained where the Behemoths had stood and the crackling wall had resumed its shifting glow. And a new wave of demons seemed to be forming upon the Belt. The battle had turned for the worse, and Hannibal’s spirits sank.

He looked again to the Demon Major for any commands or for Azazel, and as Hannibal picked the standard-bearer’s gaudy form out of the milling legionaries a glyph rose into the sky from that embattled position and he knew without doubt that Satanachia was there. The fiery command streaked toward Hannibal, and when he had taken a moment to interpret its filigreed complexities the realization of what the Demon Major was asking of him nearly made him drop his sword.

Beelzebub was, Adramalik noted with some relief, in a state of rare and unexpected calm as he observed the progress of his legions. The Prime Minister, face burning from surveying the windswept battlements, stepped closer to the throne and saw something new in his Prince’s hand. Stripped of its flesh undoubtedly by Husk Faraii, Lucifuge Rofocale’s head had been ingeniously adapted by the Prince’s own hand to serve as a lens to focus upon the events far below him on Dis’ field of battle. Mounted on a short, gold staff, the once-defiant, proud head had been picked clean, broken apart, splayed out, and transformed into a dark contrivance, all inscribed bone with inlaid, functional gems and spinning glyphlets that covered its blackened length and breadth up to its gold-rimmed, circular eye sockets. Watching his Prince peering through Rofocale’s empty eyes, Adramalik had to marvel at the things his master could do, things that he found at once revolting and, despite himself, inspiring.

A noise caught his attention from the throne’s base. Adramalik noticed Agares for the first time, as the distorted demon tried in vain to suppress a bubbling cough. His appearance had so worsened that he seemed no longer a demon but now, wasted and raw, a detached part of the shadowed throne of flesh that he sat beneath.

“He is coming,” the Prince buzzed.

“Sargatanas, my Prince?”

“The Heretic!”

“Where is he, my Prince?”

“I cannot tell,” he said, never taking his many eyes from the skull. “He is clever, Adramalik. I only know that he is close.”

Adramalik looked up, past the Prince atop his throne. The dangling skins were in a constant state of agitation, creating a palpable breeze within the Rotunda and stirring the rank smells of its contents. The battle in the city below must have been affecting them.

“All is in readiness for him. We have fielded every last legion, and the Keep Wall is fully alive.”

“I think it will not be enough, Prime Minister. He is a determined heretic.”

Adramalik said nothing; there was little more that could be said or done than what his master had already implemented.

Adramalik never dreamt—that was for souls and beasts. But when he had returned to his chambers and laid down upon his pallet after his impossible exertions supervising the demolition of Dis, he had come close. Perhaps, he thought, what he had seen was more of a vision. Whatever it had been, it was brief and disquieting.

It had begun with him standing upon the wall, watching as countless gangs of souls hastily labored to finish its construction. He watched, too, how methodical their demon Overseers were as they efficiently prodded the shuffling, whimpering souls—most only recently able to move about again—into place while the soul-masons positioned them with precision. And he saw them transformed, course after gray course of them, into the heavy bricks that comprised the great, soaring structure. He looked down in his dream and saw their many thousand black, protruding orbs dotting the wall’s flat, curving surface and was amazed and pleased.

When he turned, it was with the expectation of seeing the Black Dome rising skyward just as he knew it, but it was not there and a clenching fear gripped him. In its place, when he peered in astonishment at where the Keep should have been, there was instead a gaping hole, frost edged and impenetrable in its darkness. He knew what the hole was; he had seen it for himself. The unforgettable stench of it filled his nose as he stared once again into the entrance to Abaddon’s realm, and now fear gave way to panic. From within that maw he could hear the distant sounds of moving bodies beyond count scuffling and scraping and also, most disconcertingly, their faint echoing cluttering cries. Suddenly an inward rush of air began to suck at the foot of the wall, breaking it apart and dragging chunks toward the Pit, and in seconds a spiraling maelstrom of soul-bricks was disappearing into the darkness. Adramalik took wing but to no avail. His wings could only claw futilely at the cold air as he was dragged down. Just when he was even with the icy lip of the Pit did he jolt awake, jittery and panting.

Only with some effort could he get the image of the Pit from his mind, and when he realized that he was not at its blasted, icy-rimmed edge but, instead, in the Rotunda, inattentive to his Prince, Adramalik swallowed hard.

“…is this not so, Prime Minister?”

“Yes. My Prince,” he said, and had no idea what he was so readily agreeing to.

The buzzing paused.

“And what of the Keep itself and its defenses?”

“Mulciber is locked away and embedded, maintaining the wall just as you instructed, my Prince. The four legions of Keep Janissaries are in position awaiting any potential breach of the gate.”

From the corner of his eye, Adramalik saw Agares shuffling slowly away from the foot of the throne and toward the sphincterlike threshold. Beelzebub seemed to take no notice. Probably on his way to his miserable chambers. And why not? He is of no use anymore.

“The Husk?” the Prince asked.

“He is one level below us with Knight-Brigadier Melphagor and as many of my Knights as I felt I could spare from the battlefield.”

All this to defend our Hell, Prince, the Hell that you kept in line for so long. The Hell that, indeed, Sargatanas and his followers helped build and would now destroy. For what? His delusional aspirations? He is no heretic; that is where you are wrong, my Prince; he is simply a fool!

Adramalik looked up at the Prince and, not for the first time in recent memory, wondered what it might be like to be Regent of Hell. As this rebellion had grown Adramalik had, in the darkness of his chambers, considered the many ramifications of overthrowing his master. He had never gotten far in his speculations; the impossibility of the act caught him up short every time. Beelzebub was far too strange and unpredictable and powerful to attempt anything against, even as distracted as he was. And so Adramalik had never taken the time to seriously consider a period after the Prince’s destruction. But now, with Sargatanas banging upon the Keep’s gate, anything seemed possible and Adramalik frequently wondered what he and his Knights could do.

“Yen Wang’s Behemoths are being destroyed, Adramalik. They are falling, one by one.”

“Yes, my Prince, your design of the wall was flawless,” Adramalik said without conviction. “It will take more than a few lumbering siege-beasts to take this Keep.”

He saw Beelzebub’s finger trace the contour of Rofocale’s eye socket. “Leave me, Adramalik, before your patronizing words make me angry.”

Adramalik bowed as low as he could, and, with eyes wide, he backed away and out of the Rotunda, relieved that he was still afforded the opportunity. His mind raced as he walked quickly back to the parapets. Was he just that close to being destroyed for so inconsequential a reason? Was it time to go down to his Knights and throw caution to the winds? Time to reach for the throne and either win or suffer the consequences?

But a wave of true fear washed through him and, worse, the acrid, recalled smell of the Pit. And he knew with a sinking, bitter sensation of self-recrimination that, whatever his fate, it would not be linked to any attempted assassination of Beelzebub.

A jagged constellation of lights appeared faintly behind the lambent curtain of clouds that hung about the palace high atop the Keep. Eligor looked down as he flew and saw the new wall and the shimmering glow that it cast upon everything but the darkened, mantle-shrouded Keep within its confines. It is ever dark in there—but that will change. We will let in some light. He was finally growing fatigued and saw that the others around him were wavering as well, having difficulty maintaining the once-tight formations.

Sargatanas’ command, the briefest of flashing glyphs, came as no surprise as Eligor neared the dome. He immediately angled downward, followed by the hundreds of Flying Guard behind, lances, hooks, and hammers at the ready. Sargatanas did not actually expect any resistance on the Black Dome’s exterior but had made Barbatos and Eligor drill his demons in that possibility nonetheless.

As the dome drew nearer, Eligor saw nothing to indicate that any of the Fly’s troops were positioned to defend the regent’s palace. The great structure and its countless adjacent minarets were empty, and only a strong, buffeting wind seemed in place to defend the gigantic building.

Eligor’s hooks found the spaces between the yielding flesh-tiles and bit deeply in. Feet firmly planted on the dome’s hot surface, he folded his trembling, weary wings and turned to watch the dark clouds of his descending troops as a thousand hooks reached out and they landed without mishap. A vertical wind like a hot vortex was rising from around the Keep, and Eligor and the myriad other demons’ garments flapped violently, but the hooks remained in place and soon the heavy siege hammers and prying claws were brought to bear. Their sound deadened by the wind and the softer flesh-tiles, the demons’ tools worked at the dark swell of the dome for what seemed like an eternity to Eligor. Hammers rose and fell in a fury of activity—activity that he knew was echoed around the dome by Barbatos’ demons—but even after many minutes there seemed to be hardly any damage done. There was little Eligor could do but watch and wait for the thick vault to be breached.

Through the billowing ash of battle, Mago, who never strayed too far from Hannibal, saw the dark expression fall upon his face and did his best to fight his way on foot to his brother’s side. Mago was a deft swordsman and in short time he had cut a path to the center of the line. The souls’ losses were heavy, or perhaps it seemed that way to Mago—the demons left no bodies and he saw only the hacked and broken forms of Hannibal’s soldiers lying in deep ash and rubble. They were many.

Hannibal saw Mago approaching but, at first, did not recognize him. Caked in sweat and ash and the black blood of his fallen comrades, he looked like all the other souls save for his distinctive weapon and demon-forged armor. To Hannibal’s eyes Mago looked tired, but his spirits seemed high. His sword was welcome; a bristling wall of Rofocale’s legionaries faced them and Hannibal had no time for greetings.

Gaha was down on all fours, swiping with its huge front feet and swinging its heavy head to part the solid line of infantry just ahead. Hannibal parried a jabbing halberd and split its owner’s head from crown to chin, and even before his blade was withdrawn the demon was crumbling into lifeless rubble. Another halberd immediately took its place, and another, and the two brothers silently chopped at the enemy demons, leading their troops as they had done so long ago, until the line finally buckled and the enemy fell back.

Breathing heavily, Mago said, “Brother, what is it?”

“My last order from Satanachia,” he said, leaning from the saddle and wiping his face. “It weighs heavily upon me.”

Mago pointed with his sword to another wave of gathering demons and Hannibal nodded.

“No one considered that the Fly would destroy his own city and the ancient bridge to the Keep. Foolish… it is what I would have done! Satanachia has asked me… not ordered, Mago, asked… to bridge the Belt with a ramp.”

“But what are we to use for this undertaking? We have brought no native stone to even attempt to ford the Belt!”

“Think about it, Mago. What have we got in abundance?” Hannibal paused. The word was not going to come easily. “Souls,” he said hoarsely.

Had this been part of Sargatanas’ plan all along—to take advantage of the souls’ presence, once again, as walking resources? To use him? Or, because the ground battle was always considered a diversion, did Sargatanas not care about its outcome? Hannibal would never know if the battle ended as his lord hoped.

“No.” Mago’s drawn face was now a reflection, Hannibal imagined, of his own. “A promise was made.”

“It is the only way… the old way.”

“You cannot give that order, Brother,” Mago said flatly.

“But I must. There is no other choice for me.” Hannibal’s gut twisted. For a moment, he remembered a fearful day long ago on the work-gang, a day when he had come altogether too close, himself, to becoming part of a ramp not unlike this one. Could he really order others to voluntarily do what he had been so afraid to do?

“Hannibal, after the Flaming Cut you promised us that you would not let them use us in this manner again, that we would fight as souls and not be sacrificed as bricks. This battle hinges upon Sargatanas, not us. You’ve said it yourself… we will probably never see Heaven. It is his rebellion; let him make the sacrifices.”

“If I—we want a voice here in Hell we have to earn it, Mago.”

“When we are done with this, who will be left to speak with this voice, Hannibal?” Mago said accusingly.

Hannibal turned to his first standard-bearer to issue the order and hesitated. How could he possibly explain how he was changing, what he was feeling, that sense that the mantle of destiny was his to don? But how could he betray their trust in him? Was he being selfish or realistic? And he suddenly realized that he did not care what happened to his souls so long as he was fulfilled, an emotion that had never been present in all his years as a commander in his Life.

He stared at the oncoming line of enemy demons, and as he watched, he saw Satanachia’s right wing of legionaries shift position preparing to fill the gap that his souls would leave on the field after he issued his order. Satanachia knows me better than I know myself. He knows I will do it. He knows ambition.

Hannibal looked back into his brother’s eyes and saw only the past—the past of his ancient human failures, the past of the Tophet fires and his eternal remorse. Mago, the brother who now served as a constant reminder of age-old pain, seemed to be pleading, hoping that Hannibal would do the human thing. Hoping he would cling to that despicable creature of the past.

He motioned to his first standard-bearer and crisply barked the order for his army to disengage and make their way to the Belt’s edge, to the bank where the soul-ramp’s construction would begin. He would not look back again at the life that once belonged to Hannibal Barca.