Bellageist: Chains of a Demigod (Part 1)
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Bellageist: Chains of a Demigod
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Part 9 (coming soon)
The clubs consisted of stones bound in catgut which hung from sturdy branches. Hairy hands clutched grips of stripped, wrapped hide, raising the weapons in challenge and pounding them down to inflict pain and death.
Infantile minds too new to understand their circumstances swung these neolithic implements through the air at foes of equal incomprehension. Covered in fur and brand new to bipedal travel, these fledgling hominids knew little of natural law or even themselves, only that they must press on and through. The ever-present threat of searing light pushed them forward, forward. To halt or hesitate brought a punishment of electrical pain. Even one step of retreat angered the gods and caused one’s pelt to burst into flames.
Fear. Hate. Hungry, a young mind in the fray thought. Like the others, it knew not how it came to be here, what here even was. It possessed only the barest sense of self-awareness along with a passionate need to prove itself.
Like an injection that missed the vein, foreign vocabulary and strange muscle memory bubbled painfully in its brain. A great deal of knowledge resided in this gem of a mind, but all of it lacked context. It retained a superficial understanding of motion, action, and reaction, but the rest floated beyond comprehension like unbound pages swirling in a vortex. The operation of its body and the tool it held required conscious thought and guesswork, every movement requiring the mental consultation of unfiled blueprints.
Muscles bulged under heavy loads. Unpracticed hands fumbled with misshapen tools. Nevertheless, clubs arced and fell in a whoosh, clacking against other sticks, pounding the dirt, crushing bones. Meat, mountain, and forest merged, elemental floods competing beneath an atmosphere howling with pain and anger. The struggle chewed up cowards and the wretched weak then spat their corpses upon the ground in welters of blood.
Weak. Had the young mind learned contempt for weakness, or had it been born with it? It did not, would not, could not question the origin of the thought. It acted upon every emotion it felt immediately – anything and everything except the dread. All felt better than the fear of inaction, the simmering threat of invisible fire at its back.
Gnashing the teeth of its ape-like host, the young mind pushed a struggling comrade aside, seeking the foe, impatient to strike a killing blow. The young mind introduced itself to the melee with a gurgling shout, swinging its weapon in violence before it had yet learned to speak.
The raw piece of granite at the end of the stick smashed a brain in a spray of pulp. The still-standing corpse wriggled under the blow, grasping the haft of the club that had killed it. The young mind’s weapon remained lodged, the rock suctioned to an empty throat, riding the kill’s unhinged jaw like a saddle.
The young mind sensed its belonging to a faction. Their tribe tasted imminent victory; their mob of upright apes bolder, stronger, angrier than those that opposed them. The young mind sensed its fellows’ emotions of triumph and terror and shared them. The enemy wavered, falling back.
Weak, the young mind thought, its hatred burning bright. It dropped the club, useless to one so impatient, and leapt at another target, another ape. Its prey’s neanderthal brow rose in terror, forehead muscles almost flapping with fright above wild eyes bright and uncannily human. The prey tried to flee, but the young mind’s ape caught up to it, dragging the prey down.
They splashed into icy water, the battlefield crossing into a glacial river. The young mind had never seen water, knew not its complicated nature as both a source of sustenance and danger. The young mind knew only hatred and fear; it knew only the desire to act on its anger in avoidance of the terror. It jumped at its victim, hammered at it with its fists, bit at it, snorting blood and muck. The water grew deeper, swifter, corpses of the slain and injured bobbing, swirling, grasping, tripping those who still stood.
The young mind’s victim ceased its struggles. With one last chomp, the young mind ripped the corpse’s throat out, oblivious to the target’s death. The young mind stood its ape up, hooted, then howled. It witnessed other apes thumping their chests and imitated them, pounding clumsy palms against its breasts, noticing for the first time the squishy feel of its pectorals.
Mammaries. The meaningless word drifted through the young mind’s brain. It saw a handful of the other warriors sported a similar pair of fleshy chest growths, but most had flatter and broader torsos. Further thought on the concept fled the young mind’s brain, its lungs full again, expunged again, another thrilling, primal howl of triumph.
The sun disappeared beyond the horizon, fleeing the sky as if hooked and reeled by a fisherman’s line.
The mind existed in familiar darkness. Again. It recognized the black emptiness, a vague understanding it had been here before and would return in the future.
Congratulations, ten, dash, nine, one, one, four, one, seven, three, seven, a hollow voice spoke in monotone. You survived and know victory. Obtain knowledge as your reward:
You are female.
Your birth name is Nyl.
You slew two of the nameless. You survived where others perished. You triumphed where others met defeat.
You have not earned an epithet.
Your statistical chance is less favorable than the average at: sixty-point-two billion to one.
The young mind – Nyl, she supposed she should call herself – understood the definitions of the words it heard, but did not yet understand definitions. But she welcomed the accompanying, serene, pleasing sensation that the voice instilled, a gratifying feeling that shouted in subtitles over the whisper of barely grasped sound.
Defy the odds. Face destiny. Seize your legacy. Become “Basilissa,” your true namesake, still unearned.
Be born again, the voice said. Be victorious again. Be rewarded again.
The sun rose, slow and stately, tinging existence first blue, then a brilliant pink. Nyl beheld it, wondering at its beauty. The land she stood upon remained opaque – a shadowy suggestion of distant plains and mountains.
The sun accelerated. First a fireball, then a comet, then a stream of light. The land changed with every passage, mountains strobing in and out, plains flickering from forest to desert. Herds of strange animals sped beyond a temporal hill and came back transformed as beasts of burden carrying sticks rolled in hides.
An eyeblink later the sun warped to a halt overhead. Jungle trees sprouted from rocky ground. Vine-threaded limbs spread and knotted into a thick canopy. Sunlight poured through a break in the leafy green ceiling, framing a village of tents and campfires hidden in the trees a five-minute jog away.
Nyl looked left and right. She sensed figures cleverly hidden in the dark, many a thin and wiry hunter, their long hair bound with strips of leather wound with bone. Nyl rubbed her thumb against a hard stock, felt instantly familiar with the bow in her hand, a vague notion of its construction skimming the surface of her brain - wood, bone, and catgut, its curves lovingly shaped by steaming water and a craftsman’s patience.
She nodded to her similarly armed comrades, and they nodded back, an instant understanding mutually arrived – the village in the light must be destroyed, and its people violently erased.
One of her new comrades stood taller than the others. Something gleamed at his hip – the dull shine of a dagger smelted from copper alloys. He shouldered his bow, pointed with his spear, and growled a command: “Shay woit en omboosh, flonk sham.”
Nyl bristled at this warrior’s hubris. How dare he give her an order! She considered shouldering her own bow, drawing her spear, running him through, and mounting his head high as a trophy.
If he saw her anger, he ignored it. He crouched low and slipped into the dark. The other tribespeople scurried after him.
Nyl bit her lip, hesitating. She felt the initiating tingle of the searing pain, its tiny reminder, knew how rapidly it could worsen. She leapt into action, cursing the pain; did it not know the difference between contempt and fear? The coward-slaying fire must not care, bothering not to discern. An unintelligent, ethereal hunter that punished the weak without thought.
Nyl grimaced and followed. She nocked a flint-tipped arrow gleaming with greasy poison. She held her bow low, almost touching the ground. Her leather-clad feet pattered over roots and vines and whispering leaves. She caught up to her tribe with a faint understanding of strength in numbers. Numbers the arrogant man could lead, for now.
The chieftain raised his hand in warning, and Nyl’s instinct told her to hide in place. The leader’s warning proved true; enemy hunters rustled in the distance. The chieftain pumped his fist in a circle, pointed his finger to the canopy directly above, signaling the tribe to climb. He shouldered his spear on its sling.
Nyl understood at once, shouldering her bow, climbing like the rest. If she was to follow, she was determined to be the first in place.
The enemy approached, then passed below. Their feather headdresses bobbed in a light breeze. They moved with the arrogance of hunters certain of a kill.
Nyl aimed her bow and drew her arrow on its string.
A tribesman climbed up next to her, saw what she was doing, slapped her bow down, then whispered: “Woet.”
Nyl glared at her comrade, followed his pointing hand. Hanging from a tree nearby, their chieftain held up a hand. His copper dagger gleamed from his hip as he urged his tribe to hold and wait.
Nyl looked at her comrade again. The man smiled at her, nodding, pointed to the village, and said: “Fotience. Shay gu, wa burn sha velleg.”
They wanted to burn the enemy’s homes while their warriors were away, Nyl realized.
She elbowed her comrade in the face, bloodying his nose.
She raised her bow, drew again, and let fly her arrow. Its jagged flint tip found home in a man’s throat. He kneeled, clutching the shank of wood in his neck, then crumpled in a heap. The enemy tribe heard his bloody gurgling and turned to watch him die, slow to fathom their ambush.
“Weak,” Nyl scoffed. She drew a second arrow. The canopy fluttered, creaked, and twanged, the question of attack settled after Nyl’s act. Two dozen more bows let fly shafts tipped with bone, flint, and shards of obsidian.
The enemy dropped left and right. The survivors among them unslung their bows to attack the canopy. But most seemed not to know from where their murder came. Some panicked, loosing at shadows. In blindness a few struck their own kin.
Of the twenty-one arrows in her quiver, Nyl put nineteen into another man’s flesh, and one into the dirt. Twelve enemies total perished by her hand. Saving her last arrow, Nyl shouldered her bow and unslung her spear. She grabbed a thick vine and gave it a testing pull – sturdy.
She watched the dying men below, waiting for the right moment. The ionizing sensation of inaction hazed her skin, the promise of its burn coalescing in threat. She ignored the energies that punished inaction, searching, knew she would have time before it truly burned. Finally, she saw suitable prey. A man fleeing in terror crossed into her path. She did not hesitate, leaping, swinging, sliding down her vine.
Nyl transformed herself into another arrow - legs splayed back in balance, spear held to her body, the vine she swung from slung tight in her armpit. Like a pendulum, she slammed into the fleeing tribesman, her spear erupting from his spine and trailing a lazy ribbon of blood. The haft of her spear broke at her elbow, and her momentum carried hunter and hunted in a whirl through brush and leaf.
Nyl let go of the vine, landing on her feet. Her spear and her prey, tangled as one in the vine now, drifted in the air for a moment, then swung back from whence she came. The last warrior of the enemy tribe fell dead not far away, a dozen shafts sprouting from his chest and back.
Nyl’s tribe hooted and hollered at the slaughter’s completion. They shouldered their bows and scampered down the trees. They hit the ground running and swarmed into the village, their voices howling blood-curdling cries of exultation.
Nyl joined the tide. The raiders withdrew burning slivers from the tent village’s campfires to toss them into homes. They kicked over cattle fences and tore vegetable gardens to shreds. As smoke filled the tents, people fled outside - wiry women, old men, terrified babes. Nyl’s tribe met them in the open, sparing none. Nyl reveled in the slaughter, pausing only once to paint her face with a dead woman’s blood. The ever-present simmering field of electricity at her back seemingly approved, allowing her to smear these weaklings’ vitae over her chin and eyes.
The destructive blaze grew, and the killing dwindled. Tribesmen searched left and right, high and low, slaying anything that moved, until eventually the villagers all lie dead.
The chieftain appeared and strode to the center of the village. Like Nyl, he had painted his face and chest with the blood of the dead and the weak. The chieftain raised his arms in victory, basking in the adoration his warriors offered.
All except for Nyl. Nyl had not witnessed it one way or the other, but she thought he looked fresh, like a man who had not fought.
He searched the crowd, seeking her. His grinning face met her glowering one, and he beckoned her forth. Tribesmen eagerly pushed Nyl forward. She gave them a look, then approached him weaponless; her spear broken, her quiver empty but for one arrow.
She need not have worried. The chieftain shouldered his spear and offered a bare hand in greeting. She reached out, and he swept her arm high into the air alongside him.
“Chompeun!” he shouted to his people.
“Chompeun! Chompeun! Chompeun!”
She glowered at these people, these… sheep. They are weak, she thought.
The leader let go of her arm, held her by her shoulders. “Ambroce mo, chompeun, ond sall mo yoor nome.”
At this moment Nyl resented the ever-present, haunting electricity that castigated the weak. Why did it not strike these people down? Why did it restrain from burning her? What rules guided its punishments, was there no logic to it? Where would she find her next kill?
She tired of these people and their leader’s empty talk. Fine, she would give him his hug and tell him her name. They embraced like new lovers.
She opened her mouth to speak while she pulled her final arrow from its quiver. She told him: “Nyl,” and rammed the arrow’s tip deep into the chieftain’s eye.
The tall man’s arms reached reflexively for the shaft lodged in his skull. He gripped it in both hands, jaw slack with shock. He took one, two, three steps back, his fourth wobbly at the knee. The horror drained from his face, his grip on the arrow loosened, and his knees gave in. Then he collapsed.
“I am Nyl,” she repeated. “You are weak. I am not.”
Nyl bent down and looted the man’s copper-alloy dagger from his waistband. She plunged it into his neck, arterial blood spraying her neck and chest. Two dozen furious sawing motions later the chieftain’s head parted from his body.
His tribespeople watched in silence.
Nyl unshouldered her broken spear and rammed their leader’s head onto its point. She hefted her trophy high, the chieftain’s remaining eye wide, his jaw flapping in silent parody of speech.
“He was weak, and now he is dead,” Nyl said matter of fact. “If he had been strong, his blood would still pump in his veins, not into the earth.”
The tribespeople stared at Nyl, then stared up at the head. Her stolen dagger dripped with crimson, and blood from the dead man’s head trickled down her spear, coating Nyl’s arm, drenching her other hand completely red.
“Nel!” someone shouted.
“Nel!” another echoed.
“Nel! Nel! Nel!” the chant grew.
Nyl despised their stupidity, their weakness. But their adoration suited her. She accepted it.
The chant continued for several exhilarating moments. Then the sun burst into motion once more, fleeing the sky, and shrouding Nyl’s world in sudden darkness.
The unknown metallic voice returned with the darkness. Somehow, Nyl expected this, and unlike the last time, she discerned the words with conscious intent:
Congratulations, ten, dash, nine, one, one, four, one, seven, three, seven, also known as Nyl.
You survived and know victory. Obtain this epithet as your reward: Nyl the Impetuous.
Do you wish to be known as this?
Nyl concentrated on each word with such intensity that she did not recognize the question at first.
“Yes,” she said.
Nyl the Impetuous. You prevailed over eleven who are now nameless. You slew Tranix the Cheat. You slew Uran the Charmer. You survived where others perished. You triumphed where others met defeat.
You have not earned a title.
Your statistical chance is less favorable than the average at: two-point-fifteen billion to one.
Defy the odds. Face destiny. Seize your legacy. Become “Basilissa,” your true namesake, still unearned.
Be born again. Be victorious again. Be rewarded again.
The sun rose again. Nyl stood atop a thick wall built of ashlar stones. Tall banners flapped on the walls, and a breeze blew dyed-blue horsehair over her neck. She heard the clink and scrape of a thousand quiet soldiers standing to her left and right, mounted on ramparts and towers, stoic warriors staring out over an open field. She saw they all wore helmets with crests of blue, and assumed she wore the same.
Nyl touched herself in exploration, inadvertently bumping a heavy shield of bronze against a muscular chest plate of the same metal. Scratchy linen canvas layers padded her armor’s edges, all of which braced against wool undergarments. The wool reduced the chafe of her armor’s rigid corners, but likewise soaked her in itches and sweat. A skirt of leather straps flapped against her thighs and inflexible greaves, and her helmet hampered her breath while tapering her vision to a T.
In one hand she held a spear of masterful craftsmanship, somehow knowing it to be measured at 2.5 cubits, shorter than what would normally match her panoply – yet another example of a foreign thought in her mind lacking identifiable context or source. The spear had a smooth haft from top to bottom with a ball-shaped knob of bronze at its base and a long and thin blade of iron at its tip.
Nyl’s back felt arched and heavy, and, shouldering her spear, she could touch a long and heavy bag strapped to her back. She reached behind her head and felt the poke of a javelin’s pointed blade. She rolled her shoulder, sensing several projectile’s worth of weight, the load already threatening to inflict an ache on her neck and spine.
Lastly she carried an iron sword. Short and designed for stabbing, the weapon sat in a scabbard on her right hip, made to be withdrawn with a backwards pull in compatibility with a tight formation and a large shield.
A distant horn blast startled Nyl from her observations. She looked out over the field, at first only seeing a broad natural vista – a curved beach hugging a glittering ocean, a slow creek disappearing into a crevasse, grasses rolling to a breeze, and orderly rows of cypress trees that perhaps hid a villa or an orchard.
Wood and leather sandals rasped upon the rampart stones. Banners fluttered in the wind. Armor jingled, leather and canvas creaked. A few men and women sneezed or coughed. Thousands of eyes stared silently into the distance, but there was nothing to see.
The far-off horn sounded again, three blasts this time. Now she saw it – a line of spears cresting a distant hill. Hundreds of marching men rose up behind, a blur at this distance, glittering with yellow bronze, grey iron, and red dye. On the vanguard came, descending the hill, flowing over it like slow-moving lava, coating the slope in rich honey colors. Organized into squares, groups defined themselves under banners of red, each unit’s standard large enough to cast a shadow over a dozen men.
Adrenaline surged through Nyl as she watched more and more soldiers march over the hill. A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand – a forest of spears and armor consuming the land. The march of so many feet churned the grassy plains to dust, so not much could be seen beyond their front ranks, but Nyl stared hard, and caught a glimpse of the formation’s rear just as she thought they invaders must total a hundred thousand.
The distant horn blasted a note again and the invaders came to a disciplined halt. The simultaneous slam of every man’s heel cracked the air like thunder.
The two armies stared at each other for minutes at a distance too great to distinguish individuals. Nyl rocked on her heels, rolled her aching shoulder, shook her head, grasping at an instinct telling her to remain calm, to loosen the clench in her gut, to save her adrenaline for the inevitable fight.
“I thought we were here to prove ourselves,” a woman next to Nyl spoke, the first clear voice Nyl’s ears had ever heard besides the one in the dark. The woman’s voice sounded hollow under her bronze helm. “How can one’s strength be measured against the madness of such a host?”
“Perhaps we are tested for luck as much as strength,” a man with a deep voice behind Nyl offered.
“How is it you speak clear language?” the woman said to the man in shock.
“It is common elsewhere, but rare in these earlier stages,” he replied.
Nyl knew not what they meant, though she recognized the woman’s use of the word “test.” She had understood the language spoken by others in her second test, though it had sounded foreign to her ears.
Nyl addressed the woman: “How many battles have you fought?”
“Another one!” the stranger mused, then answered: “Thirteen. All victories, though I perished in the last. I feared death and thought it the end. Yet here I am, returned.”
“I have fought in thirty,” the man behind Nyl said. “Each victory in a streak comes with more difficulty than the last. My triumphs are as common as my defeats, and I have died in many including the ones I won. I have learned much, but also little.”
The woman asked Nyl: “What of you? How much have you bled?”
“I am undefeated,” Nyl said.
“Then you are new,” the man behind her observed.
“I will never fall,” Nyl vowed, feeling the truth of it in her bones.
“We will see,” the man said simply.
Nyl sensed no disrespect in his voice. She turned to look at him, saw the flash of steely blue eyes within the darkness of his helm. He smiled at her, the blue horse hairs of his helm dancing above his brow.
Their stories of defeat and death led Nyl to question their strength, but she found that she appreciated their candor. She remembered the exultation she felt when the tribespeople had cheered her in the burning village and wished to feel such again: “Should you wish to survive today, you may lend me your strength. In exchange, I shall protect you.”
The woman blurted a laugh. “The confidence in this one!”
The man snorted a chuckle. “I like it.”
“We will lock shields with you…” the woman’s words trailed off into a question.
“Nyl, the Impetuous.”
“Nyl,” the woman said, testing the sound of it. “They call me Garuna the Quick.”
“I am Arcade the Steady.”
“Arcade. Garuna.” Nyl said. “I despise only one thing: weakness. Show me strength, and we can be friends.”
The word friend flowed from Nyl without conscious thought. Until moments ago, she had never considered the meaning of a friend, though the definition of it had lurked in a pool of information somewhere in her mind. She turned to the man on her left and asked: “What of you?”
The man ignored her, staring straight ahead.
Nyl bumped her shield into his spear arm. “Speak!” she demanded.
The man glanced at her in consternation and said: “Fucus. Bottle empands!”
Nyl looked to Arcade, seeking explanation.
Arcade shook his head. “As I said, those who can speak clearly are more rare in these earlier settings.”
Nyl searched for words, thoughts that took almost physical effort, reaching high into orbit to pluck at distant concepts. Brow furrowed, she clung to each word she found, assembled them, then spoke once more: “Are they real, like us?”
Arcade shrugged. “I do not know. I think so.”
“The voice told me I slew two of the named last time. One of them spoke strange words, like this one,” Nyl nodded to the focused man to her left.
“Interesting,” Arcade said. He seemed bemused and impressed. “How many did you kill in total?”
The distant horn blared a complex series of beeps and blurts, interrupting Nyl’s answer. A hundred strong arms beat drums of hide and canvas, an incomprehensible cacophony of signals and orders. More horns joined the first, each one unique in sound.
“They will organize first, then they will attack,” Arcade shouted to be heard above the din. “I have been here twice before!”
Nyl saw the truth of it. The red banners tilted in motion, some flowing left, others right. Some drifted closer, and some hooked to circle behind. Below each banner a unit of soldiers marched in a group a hundred strong, blocks of the army organizing into lines for the assault.
“Tell us what you know!” Nyl shouted back.
The question had been meant for Arcade, but Garuna answered first: “It is like the others. When the time comes, you know! But as to why some die while others live, I know not! Not yet!”
“Maybe it really is luck!” Arcade said.
Nyl’s eyes narrowed. “Strength, not luck!”
Garuna snorted loud enough to be heard over the clamor, and shouted: “Why does the voice tell us our odds, then?”
“The voice commands us to defy the odds!” Nyl yelled back, though she doubted the claim as she made it.
The din of drums and trumpets slowed, then stopped. While the companions spoke, the distant army had finished organizing, kicking up another great cloud of dust.
Nyl stared into it, willing them to get it over with. “This one takes too long,” she grumbled.
“You will hate many more with waits worse than this, then, should you survive,” Garuna said.
“Worry for yourself,” Nyl said with a smile.
“I really like her,” Arcade emphasized.
Garuna laughed joyously. She raised her arms and shouted: “Come at us, you cowards!”
Nyl’s smile widened into a grin.
As if in answer to Garuna, the invaders’ commanding horn tooted again, three brief bursts of noise. The drums followed, different this time. Instead of a cacophony of noise individual to each unit, the drums now beat as one, a steady rhythm to synchronize a hundred thousand marching feet. Their red banners flapped and streamed, picking up new wind as the army advanced.
“Shere ore su mone uf sham!” the man to Nyl’s left said, his voice aquiver. He took an unsteady step back, his eyes glued to the scene ahead with fear.
A man at his back thrust his shield forward, bumping the frightened warrior back into place. “Racoptoor yur monhood,” he said in castigation.
“They seem real, but not quite all there,” Arcade opined.
“Perhaps we were once like them,” Garuna said.
Nyl recalled the first experience of her waking life, and described it in few words to her companions.
“I do not remember that one,” Arcade said. “In the first I recall, men knelt in ranks and shot lead at each other with sticks of fire. I have advanced past that one and fallen back below it, twice now.”
Garuna shared next: “In my first memory I had wind in my hair while I cast spears from my horse. It feels like this morning, though surely it has been much longer.”
Arcade grunted in thought, then said: “The weapons and tactics increase in sophistication when a scenario is survived. Nyl’s earliest memories sound the most barbaric between us three. Perhaps she is special after all.”
“I wonder if it is possible for one to suffer a true death,” Garuna conjectured.
Arcade shrugged. “The concept of death exists in my mind, but each time my death came, I have returned to an earlier period I have seen before. Although this is the first… ‘exact’ repeat.”
“I will never know this death you speak of,” Nyl declared.
“This I hope,” Arcade said.
“Me as well,” Garuna agreed. “We will preserve Nyl’s virginity, at least today.”
Nyl and Arcade shared a look, then laughed.
Garuna gave Arcade a look and the laughter died.
Arcade shrugged. His manner provoked another laugh from Nyl, and this time Garuna joined in it. It seemed all three only discovered the meaning of virginity when Garuna said it aloud, and it took a while for the connotation to sink in.
As her smile wore off, Nyl recognized again how much she hated this waiting. The conversation with her new companions seemingly ended, she focused on the enemy once more. They came close enough to be visible.
They seemed to be light infantry, mostly, dressed in linen and leather and wearing helms of brass. Each carried a heavy circular shield – small enough to wield overhead in a densely-packed formation and sturdy enough to deflect projectiles dropped or loosed from above. A wiry sprout of horsehair topped some helmets, but most skull plates simply tapered to a teardrop peak. Some wore metal braces, greaves, bangles, or heart protector discs hanging atop their chest armor, but they overall relied on the lighter protection afforded by layered canvas.
They clutched a plethora of weapons: short swords, short spears, axes, picks, and even a few clubs. Armed and armored light, these enemies came prepared for the exertion necessary for a protracted assault. Some groups of men carried bows or slings.
Before them they pushed a selection of the most basic siege equipment: wooden mantlets three quarters the height of a man, and hooked ladders by the bushel. It appeared they had not brought siege engines, like ballistae, onagers, or rolling towers. But three trains of men pushed forth covered battering rams, each log long enough to be operated by twenty men. The rams crept forward on wobbling wheels, and brass animal heads capped each – one goat, one bull, and one serpent.
A stentorian voice boomed from a battlement to Nyl’s left and she looked up to a towering man wearing a blue cape:
“Sha aname oppruechas! Angenaars, wotch sha morkars!”
Nyl barely understood the man’s speech, though she instinctively knew what the anonymous commander meant: engineers watch the markers. She searched and spied the objects he spoke of – colored stones bracketing the field beyond the walls, killing fields studiously pre-ranged for the siege engines in the towers. Nyl wondered if she should be operating an engine of some kind, but no such device seemed near, and she assumed her role was to simply wait and hold the wall.
She gazed out across the field again. The front row of the enemy host traipsed past the white-painted ring of stones.
“Lat fle!”
Taut ropes slackened, wound leaf springs uncoiled, flexed wooden beams unbowed. Machines kicked, shot, and hurled in a harmony of bangs and creaking tension. Nyl’s helmet crest fluttered to roars and whistles as mighty projectiles of iron, stone, and wood ripped their way through air overhead.
It took three seconds for the missiles to reach the markers. With the field pre-ranged, every single artillery piece struck to devastating accuracy. Ballista bolts skewered men one and two apiece and rocks sprinkled the ranks in a deadly hail. Unlucky victims found themselves pinned to the dirt or each other by splintering shafts as long as a man. Stones slammed through bodies, heads and limbs departing at their joints and leaving behind streaking blossoms of blood and brain matter. The screams of pain and terror melded into a rolling wave of sound that echoed off walls and towers.
Nyl marveled at the violent display, the impacts eliciting spraying welters of blood tall enough to be seen from half a kilometer.
“Beautiful,” Nyl whispered during a spot of silence. Then the air filled with the sound of war machines cranking back to ready positions.
Nyl looked at Arcade and Garuna, curious to see if they shared in her delight. Arcade’s face remained relaxed and impassive, while Garuna’s knuckles whitened with tension on the haft of her spear.
The engines cranked and coiled and creaked, reaching readiness in a staccato of weighty clicks and thumps. Stones rolled into stretchy couches, shafts rattled smoothly into slots, levers ratcheted, and wheels rolled, all while practiced hands made minute adjustments in torsion and elevation.
Nyl stared hard at the enemy again. The blocks of men in the front ranks had shrunk, one in ten men left behind, the dead’s torn and bloodied skins draping the grass like fallen petals. The host shifted into uneven squares, unit commanders attempting to recalibrate their formations. Despite this, all marched forward at an unhurried pace, a leisurely and disciplined walk to save their strength for feats at the wall.
They passed the yellow painted stones.
The death engines thundered to life a second time at the caped man’s command. Banners flapped at their passing and stones underfoot rattled to their might. A few seconds passed, and the gory display repeated. Mantlets shattered. Ladders shredded to pieces. Shields exploded to splinters, helmets caved deep into skulls.
Red-painted officers’ voices boomed in exhortation of the brave and castigation of the cowardly.
Nyl watched intently, the horrific destruction and violence a delight she found had no equal.
“Again! More!” Nyl cheered on in glee. She turned to her comrades again. “I have changed my mind. This is worth the wait!”
Garuna’s face paled to near bloodlessness as she beheld the distant carnage.
Nyl’s brow furrowed, and she surprised herself with worry, granting Garuna her first-ever instance of concern for another. She playfully punched Garuna’s shoulder with the grip of her spear and said: “What sickness is this?”
Garuna turned her head to Nyl, though her eyes lingered on the scene below. “I remember, now. Being down there, before I could speak. I remember the terror.”
Nyl rolled her eyes. Perhaps Garuna was unworthy of her care.
“Sucks to suck,” Arcade remarked.
Nyl’s responding giggle went unheard as the war engines whooshed to life again. Another volley sailed forth to meet the invaders at the pink-painted marker stones.
The deadly effects of the artillery increased as the enemy drew closer. Rolling stones reduced entire columns of men to trails of paste. Ballistae of smaller more rapid design shredded ranks to half their former number.
The mind of a warrior might be more resilient than his body, but even the will has its limits, and men began to break. Swords slipped from fingers white with fright. Shields clattered as they toppled to the dirt. Soldiers fled to the rear, tearing helmets from mouths suffocated by fear. Captains and veterans raised their voices in recrimination, but the shattered ones ran on, heedless of their anger. At a specific distance the punishing fire came for them, like it always did, burning the cowards to ashes and cinders, leaving nothing behind but empty helms and smoke-spewing armor to tumble over the ground.
“How can they be so stupid?” Nyl remarked, and none replied.
Some of the enemy ran, but most did not. A hundred thousand sandaled feet still marched to the beat of the drums, the brave and the stoic marching past the wounded and the dead.
They reached the blue stones. More hell rained upon them; some squares thinned by another quarter. Some met total annihilation, and where this happened, the chunky formations shifted, men jogging forward to plug the gap and continue the deadly walk uncheckered, lines in the rear condensing to fill the vacuums in the center.
The army passed the red stones. More missiles fell. The screaming grew closer, louder. Cursing mouths spewed foul oaths at the wall, and the defenders hurled back mocking jeers.
Nyl added her voice to the uproar: “Run and burn, you daft cowards!”
The attackers passed the purple stones. Nyl reveled in another wave of violence.
Arcade said not a word.
Garuna keeled over the wall crenelations to vomit.
Nyl, intoxicated and sanguine at so much death, slapped Garuna on the back. “That’s the spirit! Give the bastards all you’ve got!”
Arcade erupted into laughter.
Garuna pulled back, shouldered her spear, then lifted her helmet to wipe her face. She found amusement in Nyl’s infectious gusto, too, her lips spreading in a trembling smile.
The enemy reached the brown stones, the final ring of markers.
“Roese shealds!” the caped commander warned before the artillery barked.
Nyl wanted to watch, but she obeyed the command, tearing her eyes from the next wave of death. She saw a third of the enemy infantry pause, bowmen drawing strings and slingers slotting lead shot, before she cut off the view with her shield.
The instinct proved wise, an object pounding into her shield hard. Arrows and lead balls scraped and plinked, mostly hitting the wall and its crenelations, the rest turned easily by shields and armor. A lone, painful wail sounded somewhere off to Nyl’s left, one lucky projectile biting unfortunate flesh.
“Orchars, fer ot well!” the tower officer ordered. Slingers with blue tunics raced to the crenelations and arrows spat from window slits carved from the towers.
“Bliep yoor shealds oop!” the commander bellowed the reminder.
Nyl wished to watch the carnage, but kept her shield up. She flexed her hands, alarmed how her arm already tired, wondering how long she must hold this position. One, two, then three more objects struck her safeguard, each a hollow ringing bang. A fourth strike hit hard enough to force her a step back.
“Steady,” Arcade warned, buffeting Nyl back in place with his own shield and living up to his moniker. “Don’t slip.”
“I won’t!” Garuna said through gritting teeth, mistakenly believing Arcade spoke to her.
Nyl flexed her fingers again. The shield grew heavier by the second. Another man screamed out in pain. Then a third. The deadly rain continued.
Nyl heard a chop and grinding sound from behind her, dared not look despite her curiosity.
“Draw your sword. Strike arrows from shield,” Arcade said.
Nyl understood then why her shield felt heavier. A fifth arrow slammed into it, its head poking a few centimeters through to her side. Nyl muttered under her breath, shouldered her spear, yanked her sword free, then hacked blindly at the front of her shield.
A few swipes saw shaves of fletching pile up at her feet. A sixth and seventh arrow rammed home, and she swiped her sword again.
“Stay behind your shield!” Arcade warned.
Something plinked off Nyls’ left ear guard, striking hard enough to bestow a kink in her neck.
“Aaah!” the man to Nyl’s right screamed, and she recognized she had taken a ricochet.
“Aaaaah!” he screamed again, looking in dismay at his mutilated hand. Two of his fingers had disappeared and his pinky dangled from the bloody ruin by a thread of bouncy gristle. The effect of slinger’s lead ball.
More balls and arrows pounded helmets and shields seeking gaps and careless postures. Nyl cringed behind her shield, yelled: “I do not enjoy this part!”
“Nope!” Arcade shouted back.
The screams of the man to Nyl’s left turned to gurgles. Distracted by his injury, an arrow slipped past his guard and slotted into his naked neck. He slumped to the ramparts, his horrified misery ended, his blood draining into cracks between the stones.
Nyl could not resist the urge to sink her chin deeper into her neck, and told herself as long as she held her shield up, there would be no danger.
“Worreurs, blapore messeles!”
Arcade, Garuna, and all the other warriors transferred their spears to their shield hands and reached back over their heads to pull javelins from quivers.
Nyl cursed, sheathed her sword, then copied them.
“Oem!” the commander ordered.
Nyl lowered her shield in search of a target.
“No,” Garuna said. “Don’t look. Shield high. Throw blind, strong and level.”
“Weak!” Nyl said, full of bravado. “Where is the joy in that?”
“You are guaranteed to hit something,” Arcade tried to explain, but Nyl already leaned over the rampart to look.
“Blou!” the commander gave the order to throw.
Several dozen javelins sailed out. Nyl made to throw. A lead ball ricocheted from her helmet once more.
“Bastard,” Nyl said, spotting the offending slinger in the sea of foes and readjusting her aim mid-swing. Up here where she could see, she realized she could easily track the dizzying path of the many thousand missiles, even through the narrow vision of her helmet. Despite buzzing every which direction like bees in a hive, she felt confident of her safety, so long as she did not blink.
She watched her cast javelin sail through the air. The hapless soldier who had hit her stared in shock at the one-and-a-quarter meter shaft splitting his heart in twain.
“Got him,” Nyl said. She singled out an arrow meant for her from a hundred yards and raised her shield to catch it, all while drawing another javelin.
“You killed an archer?” Garuna said in disbelief.
“A slinger,” Nyl corrected.
“Impossible,” Arcade said. “They are too far away. I know from experience.”
“I will do it again.” Nyl threw another javelin, slaying the man who stepped forward in line to replace her previous victim.
“You were foolish to stand there!” Nyl yelled joyously. She climbed up onto one of the crenelations to get more room for her next throw. She callously batted down a ball and then an arrow with her shield. She then hefted another javelin, chose a target, and let fly, killing a third.
“She is a madwoman!” Garuna said, breathless.
Nyl tossed again, and killed again.
“Rapal loddars!” the anonymous caped commander from on high again.
Ladders began to hit the crenelations.
“Kill the men highest up,” Arcade said. He unstrung his bag of javelins and deposited them at Nyl’s feet.
Garuna donated her javelins as well. “Give the madwoman your quivers!”
More throwing spears heaped upon Nyl’s chosen crenelation. She deflected one more arrow then put the shield down. She hefted up two javelins, swayed her head to dodge a slinger’s bullet, then threw both at once with force enough her toes left the ground.
One javelin converted a man into a spit roast, impaling him from collar to groin. He toppled from the ladder and brought down ten other men with him in a shouting pile. Her other javelin punctured a shield and the man behind it, pinning his arm to his chest. He slipped from rungs and fell spinning to his death.
Nyl laughed with joy. “Too easy!”
Soon every man in view had brought their remaining javelins to Nyl. A hundred enemies likewise began to notice her feats, and when two more of her javelins struck men from atop ladders, a thousand more eyes saw her.
Nyl ducked and lifted one ankle, contorting and flailing to dodge a hundred incoming missiles. “Eee!” she squealed in strained delight, forced to hop down from her perch when the volume of fire became too much.
Nyl grabbed up two more javelins, said: “Excuse me,” to men in her way, sliding past them, her armor scraping stones. She leapt up onto a different crenelation, took aim, and killed two men further down the wall. Their corpses dragged another dozen fellows to injurious and deadly falls.
“We will all retire at this rate,” Arcade said. He and Garuna had become middle-men as more bags heavy with javelins were passed down the ramparts.
“Climb to your deaths!” Nyl roared in challenge, slaying ten men, then twenty. Fifty. A hundred.
“Nel! Nel! Nel!” warriors in blue chanted her name and thumped their spears all along the wall.
Nyl again leapt from a crenelation, sweat pouring from her body. But she felt like a ballerina on a holiday, a hundred projectiles buzzing past her ears and between her hopping feet.
Soldiers in blue shoved ladders away with ease, none of them bearing much weight, for Nyl had killed so many.
“I cannot wait to see how she handles the fire sticks,” Arcade yelled over the din, though none present understood his meaning.
One of the three covered rams had reached the wall. Stones underfoot shuddered as the machine battered the iron gate. Nyl leaned over the ramparts to look, but the blare of a horn from the tower stole her attention.
“They have abandoned the assault on this side,” Arcade said.
“Nyl drove them off,” Garuna said.
“Sha woll es sokan! Blass laft!” the blue-caped commander shouted.
“Yes, but also that,” Arcade said. “The enemy has topped the ramparts someplace else.”
“I have run out of javelins anyway,” Nyl said. A smiling man had gathered up her spear and shield, and passed them to her, a look of adoration on his face.
“Muv! Muv! Muv!” someone bellowed nearby, his face invisible in the shadow of a tall helmet.
Men pushed from the right, answering the call to move left. Nyl and her companions shuffled along with them. They did not get far before the traffic jammed to a halt.
Nyl hopped up and down, attempting to see over helmets and bobbing crests, for she was not as tall as Arcade and most other men.
“What is happening?” she asked.
Arcade answered: “Two men squeezed into the tower doors then fell back out chopped to ribbons.”
“That is one of the gatehouse towers, no?” Garuna asked.
“Yes.”
“Then we must hurry,” Nyl finished, handing her spear back to the adoring man and hanging her shield from her back. “Lift me up.”
“What?” Arcade and Garuna asked simultaneously.
“Lift me up, hoist my heels over the men in front,” Nyl reiterated.
“Who are we to argue?” Arcade said to Garuna. Other men nearby took the companions’ spears, and they promptly shoved Nyl into the air.
On the shoulder of a man in front Nyl placed one foot, then propelled herself forward from Arcade’s face with her other foot. Hands held high, she danced over the heads and shoulders of men in blue, each one at first flummoxed at her coming, then bewildered and stupefied at her departure.
“Nel! Nel! Nel!” chanted a hundred throats. Men ahead turned to see the crazy warrior woman’s approach, guessed her intent, then raised their shields overhead for her to run upon.
“Boost me up!” she shouted ahead to men waiting to force entry though the narrow door.
The men ahead thankfully understood, bracing for her arrival. Nyl leapt at them, and they heaved their shields up with all their strength, launching Nyl several meters up the tower face.
Nyl grabbed at the gaps in the stones before her momentum expired, propelling herself further up the tower like a spider. She rose another seven meters half by inertia before she had to dig in her fingers and toes to climb the rest of the way. She only had a few more meters to go from there. She could have climbed faster without the shield on her back, but worried she might need it.
A few grunts of effort and she pulled herself over the tower’s crenelations. None remained on its upper platform, not even the dead, but she arrived in time to witness the blue trail of the commander’s cape flow down the tower’s single stairwell. The leader disappeared into darkness as he pursued the iron clamor of fighting men.
Nyl landed on her feet and sprinted to the stairwell and down its steps. In the room below, the blue cloak disappeared around the bend of another stairwell, the man beating Nyl another floor down. Nyl pumped her feet harder in chase.
At the next floor she caught up to him – this floor transitioned from this tower to a gatehouse straddling the gap to a neighboring tower. Dead from both sides had converted the long room into a charnel house. Men with red crests fought off Blue Cloak and two poorly armed slingers the officer had likely sent down ahead of him. A pair of invaders cranked desperately at the heavy gate wheel, hoisting the portcullis inch by inch in an attempt to let the hundred-thousand invading army through.
“Stup sham!” the officer commanded needlessly.
Before Nyl could get close, one slinger caught a spear in his gut. The other slinger in blue gutted one opponent with a dagger right before another man in red hammered a war pick down upon his kneecap. The slinger fell to his knees with a gruesome high-pitched shriek. His wail lasted until the attacker swung again and lodged his pick into the slinger’s skull.
Nyl arrived to join the now-hard-pressed blue-caped officer.
“E hov sha bot!” he shouted without looking at her. He batted aside a sword with his own, then buried the tip of his weapon in the armpit of his attacker. He finished the man with a slash to the neck, then turned and gestured to the far corner with his blood-soaked weapon: “Huld sha stoerwall!”
Nyl understood he meant to secure the gate, so she should move to the stairwell. Trusting the big man to handle the two remaining men in red, she raced to the narrow passageway, reaching it just in time to meet men in red climbing up her way.
Nyl leapt and twisted at the hip, dodging a man’s spear thrust. She hacked the man’s arm halfway off with her sword, then leaned back at the waist almost ninety degrees, a second man’s spear thrust nearly scraping her nose. Nyl grabbed the spear with her free hand and pulled herself up, but was forced to let go or lose a finger, the man’s return pull too powerful to stop.
Nyl twisted her way past another spear thrust and slammed her sword across the second man’s noseguard. He cried out and dropped his spear, his face a bloody mess from the dent in his helmet.
Nyl remembered her shield and ducked, hauling it up as much as she slinked her way out from its strap. A third attacker swiped at her with an axe, but the right-handed man struggled with the wall and the weight of the dead man in front of him. His intended blow plinked harmlessly off the inner bend of the stairwell then hit Nyl’s shield with little force. Nyl suffered no such limitation, the stairwell to her right open by design. She stabbed forward before he could recover his floundering axe, catching him with his weapon arm twisted behind his shield, plunging her sword deep through his canvas breastplate.
The two dying men fell back in a heap against the surviving spearman. A fourth man in red charged up. He stumbled, his sandals slick with three men’s blood, pushing the surviving spearman forward. Nyl laughed while she parried the struggling spearman’s next thrust, and her sword swept his head from his shoulders.
A rapid spear thrust shot from behind Nyl and over her shoulder, plunging deep into the fourth man’s heart. The fourth attacker’s sword slipped from nerveless fingers, and Nyl stabbed the man herself for good measure.
“Thanks for coming,” Nyl said to the blue-cloaked officer at her back. She kicked the fourth man with her foot, freeing the caped commander’s looted spear from the dying man’s chest.
A horn blew panicked-sounding notes, a rapid series of toots, their meaning unknown to Nyl. The caped officer canted his head to listen, then raised his spear in salute to Nyl. “Wall fooght,” he said. “Wa pravoel.”
Confused and curious, she furrowed her brow, then turned her attention back to the stairwell, ready to stymie another assault.
The officer tugged insistently at her shoulder. She ignored it, but no more attackers came, and, bemused, she allowed herself to be dragged away.
Blue Cape walked her to a window slit. Out of the corner of her eye Nyl saw murder holes and levers connected to hoses in the center of the gatehouse. The stink of burning corpses rose from below. While Nyl had held the stairwell, the officer had clearly activated other defenses, setting the covered ram below aflame and converting it into a burning roadblock.
The two of them reached the window and Nyl squinted through bright light. Nyl saw it now, the hundred-thousand army in full retreat, vacating a field carpeted with their dead. The searing energies did not punish these cowards, another unexplained facet of its arbitrary punishments.
The panicked horn tooted notes again, and cheers went up from the walls.
Nyl reacted with anger. “No! I have only just begun!” she raged, searching the bodies on the floor for a bow and arrows, desperate for one more kill.
The sun fled the sky before she could find them.
“No!” Nyl, still angry, found herself laughing as well.
The sconced torches in the wall flickered out, heedless of her pleading and plunging Nyl’s world into darkness once again.
“Madwoman,” Nyl thought she heard someone say before reality faded away.
The dark and metallic voice spoke its words, as usual:
Congratulations, ten, dash, nine, one-
“Skip this nonsense! Nyl interrupted. “Take me to my next battle!”
The unknown metallic voice did not miss a beat and said: You have earned a new epithet as your reward: Nyl the Ardent.
“Yes, I wish to be known as that,” Nyl interrupted again. She liked this game.
“Nyl the Ardent, you slew one hundred and fourteen of the nameless. You slew Ixion of Stone, Hecheon Deadye, Yamaka the-”
Nyl grew bored, eyes alight and her blood afire. “Yes, yes. Send me more to kill!”
Very well.
Your statistical chance is more favorable than the average at: fifty-three-million to one.
Defy the odds. Face destiny. Seize your legacy-
“Become Basilissa,” Nyl said for the voice. “Will I see Garuna and Arcade once more?”
The voice paused a moment, then said simply:
Be born again.
The sun rose into the sky like a godly flare, but instead of blinding brilliance, it shined with sickly green.
Nyl stared at the ghoulish star, its radiance strangled in queasy murk. She heard insects chirp, frogs croak, and alligators hiss, plus a dozen less identifiable sounds.
Something strong and heavy swayed beneath her thighs. She looked down to find her legs spread over the broad back of a gallant charger she automatically knew to measure 20 hands in height. Nyl sat armored head to toe in the realm’s finest steel and carried a war lance twice the length of her steed. She caught her reflection in one of her greaves and saw her full helm sported a lofty and glorious fluffy mane of blonde feathers. A heater shield layered with metal, wood, and leather hung heavy from her arm, emblazoned with a golden image of the fighting griffon, and an arming sword with a jeweled hilt lay in an oiled scabbard at her hip.
Nyl looked left and right to her valorous companions. Dame Garuna the Swift, and Sir Arcade the Unwavering.
Each of them boasted a personal retinue of ten mounted archers riding speedy coursers. Three armored squires followed this, each mounted upon a caparisoned destrier. Two young pages completed the party, though they were too young to fight and hunched low over their palfreys.
“Thirty-one men, two ladies, and two children,” Arcade said, matter of fact. Then he nodded his great horned helm to Nyl and added: “But to slay a dragon, all we truly require is her.”
“Hah!” Garuna said. She spiked her heels and her horse galloped into action, its iron-shod hooves kicking up sprays of mud. “Not if I kill it first!” She yelled without turning, the winged decorations on her helmet aflutter.
“Hah!” Nyl shouted, starting her horse to a gallop as well.
Arcade smiled, turned to the men in their party, and said: “Well lads? Let us not keep the ladies waiting.”
Arcade set his horse into motion and the retainers thundered after him.
The crackling of a great fire could be heard from deeper in the bog. A deep and percussive whoosh rattled the branches of decaying trees, like a smithy bellows, a sound soon followed by a mighty, reptilian roar.
Bellageist: Chains of a Demigod
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8
Part 9 (coming soon)
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Amazing combat writing! This reminded me of the combat simulation training in Dan Simmons's "Hyperion" where soldiers in training face virtual simulations of battle scenarios in various historical time periods. I'm curious to see what scenarios might come next, like maybe the trenches of WWI, or maybe a battle against AI powered drones in an urban setting.
2001 meets Civ. Cool vibes!