Chapter 9 Bees

War around Dust was a foretaste of hell. I had to ask what that was. It seems when the gods cast down the Titans they were more than a bit worried that they didn't die all the way, and might hold a grudge against their murderous children and created a prison to hold the dead. They called it hell, and filled it with every horror they figured they wanted to put between them and dear old mom and dad, to keep them safely in their metaphorical graves. Naturally when mortals sprang up from the spilled blood of the Titans mixed with the base mud of earth, those races began dying almost right away. With the faint traces of Titan blood, they too were bound to Hell. Various gods picked their favorite races, and gave the chosen among them the chance to serve them in realms they carved out of the universe to be their personal slaves for eternity. As an option to Hell this was supposedly a great reward.

We had a few races, and a more than a few cultures in our company, so Hell had about as many descriptions as we had members, but they all sucked. The war around Dust sucked. If you had a version of Hell, then we had something right out of it going on. The Dread Empire's Sorcerers cast spells of darkness that drove the peasant pikemen before them mad with fear, causing them to throw down their weapons and try to claw through the troops behind them in their need to escape. Holy Knights cast spells of light that bound their levies to charge forward in fanatic zeal, pushing themselves onto the spears of the Dread Empire troops just to drag down the spear and leave us disarmed for the next soldier to ram his great two handed pike into the off balance Legionary.

Our Knights would advance and their darkness was not the illusion of fear of the Centurions and Optio's of the line troops, but the withering darkness of the demonic hunger. It stole the life from those it touched, withering them into husks, sometimes draining them unto death, and others leaving them so feeble they could not rise, and letting them simply be trampled beneath the tramp of the advancing Legions. I hated this. It didn't just take the life from the Holy Knights peasant levies, it took the life from the land itself, the plants whose bodies we churned would survive our trampling and spring up again within days. The land cared little for our wars, except when magic was in play, then we created Hell on earth, and the earth screamed beneath us. The draining of the demonic consumption took the life from the grass, and from the soil. Worms died, insects died, bacteria and fungi died. Even the sleeping seeds and bulbs that would not wake until the next fire or killing cold, the promise of the future that kept nature returning no matter what happened to the surface, they too died in the demonic life draining.

You would think the Holy Knights magic would be cleaner. It was not. The gods of the light viewed mortals the same way they viewed fruit trees or wheat. A crop, a resource, a commodity. The Holy Knights countered the life draining magic of the Butcher's Knights with something just as terrible. They raised their hands to the sky and cried out to their god. Their heads were crowned with the sun, and the sky grew dark. The air vibrated and the truth of what came against us became clear. An insect plague. Every flying insect within fifty miles had gathered and now fell upon the XVII Legion of the Dread Empire.

Fifty miles.

I heard the screams of the Legion, and the black tentacles of my own people rose up, and the golden aura of compulsion that bound each of the insects failed as they approached our company. Alone among the screaming Dread Empire troops, our company was unaffected. The Knights and the Tribunes, the Centurions and even some of the Optios had enough cultivation to shield themselves with darkness that killed any insect that approached them. The rest of the insects would drive themselves to death to wound and kill the Dread Empire soldiers, attacking even after the soldier was dead. Attacking until they were dead.

Underneath me the land was dead, slain by the Dread Empire's demonic magic. Above me the air groaned with the weight of the insects, every possible pollinator within fifty miles was busy dying in our stupid little war. Was it not enough that we killed the land we made war on? Must we now kill all the land within fifty miles, as we caused all the pollinators that helped the plants to breed died, as all the insects that dealt with the corpses we made died. All the lands ability to heal itself from the damage we did with our war, died. I felt the land beneath me scream in a long slow wail that made my bones ache, and made my own company shift as their own newborn senses felt the wrongness, even if they did not have the words or understanding of what exactly was causing that intense feeling of violation.

I marched forward, looking at the smug bastard sitting on his horse, beneath the Sun Banner, crowned with the glory of his god, smugly causing the death of a whole province, a famine that would devastate the land, and its peasants because no matter which empire won, no soldier or noble would miss a meal. This was the glory of his god. Obey or die. Submit or starve. This was the justice of the Holy Land. This was the cost of the Dread Empire's ambition. There wasn't enough difference between them to pass a sword blade. There was little doubt that not one of us truly deserved to live, but the land, the land and the goddamned bees had no part in our war.

We had the right to kill each other, but not the land. Not the land and not the goddamned bees.

"Not the goddamned bees!" I roared, and sent tentacles of darkness up into the sky, a web of night wove into the bright sky of daylight, and from each of my company, tentacles of darkness extended. Dozens each from my own squad, but at least a few from the least of my legionaries. The insects, freed from the spell induced madness, exhausted and confused, streamed away towards their hives, away from the wind, away from the storms of power that turned the air into a threat they could only flee from.

Too much had been lost. The land had been drained, it needed to be restored. I did not have the power. The lives of hundreds would be required. Hundreds. Hundreds like those who stood before us.

I took my spear and raised it, I put my will in it, and the bronze head blazed brighter than the false sun of those sun worshipping Knights, for it blazed with the pure golden will of my rage.

"The land thirsts, take all of these as sacrifice!" I hurled my spear. The heavy celestial bronze head and sung wood shaft weighed twice what a common spear should, but my body had been reshaped by years of training, reshaped and reformed into something far beyond what a normal human should be. I was no Knight to wrap myself in the temporary seeming of a demon. Each muscle and bone, each tendon and ligament, each nerve and even my eyes had been damaged and remade so many times that they operated at a level close to what those who used magic enhancements could borrow for a time. I was borrowing nothing. This was my power, this is how I trained. This was the strength I had put into every practice cast of my spear, so it flew faster than any arrow, faster than a bolt from a siege engine, and descended like a thunderbolt to shatter the shining magical shield of the leader of the Holy Knights, driving him from his horse, and pin him deeply to the earth. His blood seeped into the drained land, and his life with it. My spear burned with golden light, like a beacon, the anchor to a sacrifice to clean the land of the magics of both sides. A magic that needed to be fueled.

"Century will advance!" I screamed, drawing my bronze Xiphos, its blade blazing with golden light in the writhing darkness that cloaked my body. Around me, the bronze points of my century's spears lit in matching fire, even as the shadows blossoming from them masked their features. We were figures of darkness, man shaped darkness whose blazing weapons and blazing eyes made us more terrifying than the demons our Dread Empire's Knights and Tribunes summoned, and fought with the intelligence and ruthlessness of the Dread Empire's elite troops, not the pathetic suicidal fanaticism of the Holy Knights spear fodder.

The Dread Empire's XVII Legion had been ravaged by the insect plague, the Tribunes and Knights had used their own power to flee, leaving nothing higher ranked than a centurion on the line. Centurions who had no choice but to stand and die with no chance to hit back until one century threw off the insect plague, shattered the shield of Holy Light defending the Holy Knights who had been slaughtering them with impunity, and offered a chance to finally hit back. No one makes the rank of Centurion in the Dread Empire if their idea of problem solving didn't amount to some version of applied violence, and they were craftsmen at it.

Our century was the first to move, but the Legion, deprived of its politically reliable and magically gifted leadership, performed like the well oiled murder machine that it was. It advanced with us. The levies of the Holy Knights were not trained, they were protected only by leather armour, and their pikes were deadly in the charge, but useless when flanked or if an enemy gets close. Our century hit the mounted Knights as their magical shield fell, without the room to start the charge that would make their massed horses a weapon no advancing infantry could face. In the charge, heavy cavalry is invincible, standing still, with massed pikes to each side, and no room to maneuver, they were meat for the sausage grinder, and we were hungry.

As the Legion closed on the ranks of the pikemen, the long pikes thrust out, blocking the shorter legion spears, yet our century was now among the knights, and their magics, the whips of holy fire, the lances of holy light, the dreaded Chains of Judgement all failed as they hit our tentacles of primordial darkness. The spells they used were like the molds we poured our bronze into. They were just that, god made molds for mortal power, inflexible and unalterable. My century had learned to begin to wield the golden power of their will, and to free the primordial darkness of the chaos woven into our flesh at birth. Our golden will was a living thing, it was our will, not an inflexible automaton like the spells of the knights. The darkness that wove from us was the primordial chaos, it was the endless potential from which all things were cut out by the will of the Titans, and they hungered to return things to that chaos. They met the god made molds of power, and without the will of a god behind them, without even the conscious will of the caster behind them, the molds failed under the chaos of our tentacle friends, and the holy power that should have made a hundred killing spells bled into the air, collected by the spear of sacrifice, and gave back that life giving light to the land the Dread Empire and Holy Knights both had ravaged.

The Knights panicked. Driving their chargers into the ranks of the peasant levies beside them, they fled the reaping spears and Xiphos swords of our century and forced their heavy warhorses to plunge through the pikemen massed to each side. As the pike formations shattered under the plunging hooves of the panicked holy knights, the massed pikes ability to fend off the threshing machine that was the Dread Empire's legion was lost. Once the Empire got past the heavy pike points, and into close range, its spear and shield turned the unarmoured pikemen into meat.

I felt the song more strongly than ever before, but I did not give myself to it. It was not enough to kill. If killing was all the dance could do, how was it any better than the Dread Empire's demons, or the Holy Knights callous indifference? No. I wove my will through that of my company, and I shaped the song. I shaped it, and I gathered the blood and power of all those that fought and died upon the field. I burned my own power like I had cut open my own wrists and felt my own life spilling from me as I sought to put back all that war had taken from this land. Restoring the life, turning the red murder we worked into the promise of a green tomorrow. If I was my mother dancing with the storm, the land would grow green and verdant under my feet, and everyone would throw down their arms and embrace as friends. That was her song. Mine was the dance of war, mine was the path of sacrifice.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I rammed my shield into the face of a horse, and as it lunged away from me, I rammed my Xiphos into back of the knee of the Holy Knight upon it, where the armour was leather not plate, punching through the joint, and half severing it. I slapped aside a thrusting spear and cut down with all the power of my arm, the golden light of my will blazing upon the celestial bronze of my Xiphos and I cut through the upper arm of the Holy Knight as if his armour was soft cheese and his flesh only water. The song was in me, the song of creation and destruction. I was like the tentacle friends that lashed out from me, eating magic, slapping aside arrows and thrown spears, and ripping open throats. I was unmaking life. I was spilling blood and life upon the earth to put back what was taken. I was not able to heal it, I was only able to reap the life that warred above the earth, and churn that flesh and blood, that spirit and soul back into the devastated and lifeless earth, returning the potential to the earth.

Mine was the taking of life today, for the promise of life tomorrow. This was all I could give, a slaughter to return seeds to the earth, a thousand souls torn asunder that there would be bees to carry life to the flowers grown from the blood I spilled. It would have to be enough. I won at last to the side of the Holy Knight I had killed first, and took back my spear and raised it to the sky. I screamed my defiance to the sky, and lightning lashed down in answer. All across the field, the Holy Knights fled, their levies broke by their flight, and now were being reaped like wheat before the scythe that was the legion. The battle was over. The slaughter was on.

My century served as marker. I shouted to my own century to dress off my position. I heard Gracie and Fuckhead roaring in Trollish to get their brethren in the centuries around us to fall back into line. Infantry can turn a victory into a defeat by losing their cohesion and spreading out. The Holy Knights were doing a good impression of terrified rabbits as they rode down any of their own troops who didn’t jump out of the way fast enough, but their shock at the failure of the magic, and the loss of their commander had broken their will. If anyone decided to rally them, then a few hundred heavy horse catching us spread out without our shield wall and spear fence would be enough to turn our victory into a costly debacle.

As we got ourselves back in order, we began reaping the formations of the Holy Land’s pikemen who were trying to march in good order after their banners. They had not been ordered to form square to defend themselves, they had simply followed their banners after the knights in retreat, leaving their backs to us. The rest, the broken rabble, infected the reserve formations with their panic. The bulk of the dying always happens once the line was broken, as terrible as our clash had been, less than a tenth of the enemy had fallen to our spear and sword.

Of course, now that the enemy was in full retreat, and the Holy Knights had fled, along with their terrifying magic, our own Knights and Officers had suddenly remembered they were supposed to be leading us. Having skipped the dangerous part of the battle, they were back to take charge for the glorious and safe slaughter. There were new shadows born upon the field, now that the Holy Light had been drawn down into healing the land, the lesser shadows of the demon cultivating officers and the sorcerer-knights was being wielded to terrible effect. The fear casting used little magical power, but against troops that had been broken, whose leadership was already in flight, it was the most effective weapon possible. No blocks turned to face us, their backs absorbed wave after wave of arrows from blocks of archers who stepped between the blocks of advancing spearmen to ruin the retreating formations. The spear armed Legionaries had the leather armoured backs of the pikemen, and left the pikemen with the choice of walk slow with sixteen feet of pike, or throw away the weapon and run without it.

I could see the line being reformed as the Holy Knights under a new commander turned their cavalry around, and began to firm up the reserve pike formations, but with the mass of unarmed fleeing men crashing upon their front, the Holy Knights had two choices, retreat in good order, or let the panic infect their troops and lose the rest of the army.

I finally saw the Butcher. He wielded a sword so large he needed another horse to carry it. His armour shone with power, allowing him to wield it as if it was no heavier than a willow switch. I wonder how many days or weeks he had to charge his armour to pull that feat off? Would have been useful when the Holy Knights were kicking our ass across the field. While he had never faced the army when it fought, he made great slaughter among the fleeing and broken troops. He really was quite the Butcher. Ah well, a splendid victory to his name, and the land would recover. That was what was most important. He had his victory, he had broken the army that had the Queen of Pain and the XX Legion trapped in the fortress at Dust, and on the verge of losing it. He would have his glorious victory; his political star was on the rise. Surely he wouldn’t look too closely at the details. His ego was our shield, and I figured we were the most protected Century in the XVII Legion, if not the whole of the Dread Empire.

---Meeting of Legates, Fortress of Dust, War Room.

“What did you do Butcher? I warned you not to meet them in the field. That insect plague of theirs cost me one out of every three of my Legionaries, dead or injured, drove all of our horses too mad to think about using. Only the fixed sorcery defenses of the walls allow us to keep the damned things out, and force them to match their sorcery directly against our own. Then somehow, right when you were in the middle of losing a whole Legion to a threat you were already warned about, something was set loose upon the field that terrified my demons to the point of incoherence. I couldn’t scry the damned battle, I was reduced to using a hell damned spyglass from the walls, like a peasant at a bull fight. I could feel the magic being shredded, the blood sacrifice was so strong the LEY LINES BENT TO MEET IT. So I ask again Butcher, what in Yn’Tereth’s name DID YOU DO?”

The Queen of Pain in her armour was a figure of dark menace and beauty, but right now her face was transformed into a mask of something that looked a lot like rage striving to hold down fear.

The Butcher pushed out his massive chest and thumped his black and silver armour, tapping the silver skull of his emblem. “The Holy Knights magic failed in the face of my superior sorcery. I had the enemy champion struck down, and I guess when he died the whole spell unravelled. You see, that magic wasn’t so terrible. If you had the guts to stick it out a little more, you might have broken them in the field like I did, and not get chased back into the fortress like a little girls scared by a rat.” The Butcher laughed.

The Queen of Pain was wreathed in blood red flames and was on the Butcher before he could raise his own defenses. She raised him above her head by his neck and she hissed at him. Both sets of officers poised, their blades read to draw, their powers rising and ready to unleash.

“You fat lying little toad. Feel free to tell your paid bards and your patron senators whatever you like. I saw you run in terror, your Tribunes with you. I saw your knights fall back in somewhat better order, a long way back though, almost three bowshots from the rear of your Legion, and your legions were getting devoured by the insects just like mine were. Then there was a darkness that rose from one of your centuries, almost directly before the massed Holy Knights, a darkness so terrible that my scrying demons were driven insane, my linked mages bled from their eyes and cannot be made to speak even now. Then there was a flash of light that did not come from the Holy Knights, it shattered their magic shield in a way that it took my massed siege engines firing sorcery enhanced and rune powered darts backed by a full blood ritual to equal, and then the insect plague is just gone, the Holy Knights are trampling their own troops in their panic to flee. Tell me Butcher, WHAT DID YOU DO?”

The Queen of Pain was older, wiser, stronger than the Butcher. He wanted to steal her victory, because politics was the one field he could defeat her in. Politics in the Dread Empire was half bluffing that you have a secret weapon, and your enemies had best not tempt you to use it, and half getting a secret weapon and immediately using it on whoever’s back looked least defended. The Butcher was here at the siege of Dust to win the real battle, the political battle for credit. He didn’t know what happened, but as long as SHE suspected he did, she would fear him.

Calling up his own power to knock her hands off his throat, the Butcher grinned.

“I have a prodigy among my ranks. This was his trial for Knighthood. He is something of a protégé of mine. I was letting him work his way up the ranks, earn the loyalty of the professional soldiers. Build his loyalty with the legions officers by sharing the dangers with them. I guess he was forced to unleash the powers I had been nurturing in him. It may have required a costly sacrifice, I’m sure you felt the blood magic, but as you can see, it is an effective sorcery. Yn’Tereth rewards those who dare to reach for power at any cost. He isn’t the only protégé I have been nurturing, but as you can see, he more than rewarded my instruction. He will be taking the trial along with the other outstanding soldiers from this battle, to take their place in the ranks of my knights.”

The Butcher beamed, letting her magic wash over him. He wasn’t lying. Every single Legionary was under his instruction. He fed them, provided officers to instruct and lead them, had quarter masters arm them, sorcerers teach them demonic cultivation. I may not know who it was who unleashed that abomination upon the battlefield, even my own demon was almost incoherent with fear, but whoever it is was in MY legion. That made him my protégé. I would be making all the centurions from that battle into Knights. I may now know who among them had that strange power, but I knew I wanted them under my direct thumb. Let that bitch read the truth of his words. He never said he knew who it was, just that they were his, and would be one of his knights tomorrow.

What could go wrong?

------Meeting of my century, XVII Legion camp, outside fortress of Dust.

I handed the scroll to Janice. She knew the Dread Empire’s Legions the way only an army brat could.

“You are summoned to take the test to Knighthood. You are to appoint your second to the rank of Centurion, and report to take the test for Knighthood at the Legion’s command tent.” She read. “You are so fucked. We are so fucked. We are so fucked I’m feeling morning sickness already.” Janice swore.

“If I become a Knight, I will be in position to take credit for any power oddities that we have to do to keep us all alive and our tentacle friends below the demon’s notice. I mean, knights are scary bastards who are busy hoarding secret powers as they try to backstab their way to Legate and then into Dread Empire politics to maybe even rise to Sorcerer-General. No one ever asks them to explain how or what they did. They just look mysterious and creepy. I can look mysterious and creepy. Hell, I have actual tentacles I can call on, not illusions, right?” I said honestly, looking at the bright side.

Grigori asked a question I had been avoiding. “Yeah boss, you can work miracles, you have even taught us to work a few, but we don’t do anything right. Hell, we can’t do almost of the basics they try to teach. We do better shit sure, but the Knight exam needs you to prove you can do that. It isn’t battle. It isn’t field expedient, whatever works. It is a freaking military checklist. Tick the box. Boss, you feed the papers to your tentacles or light them on fire, you don’t tick boxes. Can you even go invisible yet? I mean, supposedly dark magic is great at that, but my tentacle friends just shrug and haven’t a clue. Do you have a clue yet?”

I looked at my century and smiled. “Totally close. Almost got it nailed. Practically a done deal. I mean, the theory makes sense right? It will be fine!”

Fuckhead gave me a thumbs up. Gracie facepalmed. Well, half the trolls thought I had it in the bag. My human troops? They looked worried.

I had just crushed an army of Holy Knights lead by one of their own Captain-Generals. This was just a freaking exam.

What could go wrong?