Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn found his vanguard, or at least part of it.
One of the Hunn dominants had lost the leash of control over his Fangr acolyte. They were busy ripping a pile of calflings apart as Scaroth emerged at the head of the Queen’s Vengeance, thresh a few quick strides behind him. In the village to the east the growls of another Fangr acolyte could be heard along with the screams of its victims being eaten alive. This realm smelled wrong. As it had before. Thresh had wondered last time what it was, and now, upon returning, the answer came to it in a burst of quickthinkings.
This world smelled like a giant foundry.
An entire realm of forged metal and bellows fire.
“Hold!” Scaroth roared, ignoring the hammering wings above him. Thresh cringed as it looked up toward the creatures in the air, wondering what they were, even as Urspite ignored them. The gaze of a great single eye blazing with a terrible fire traversed the field, passing over them, but without burning anyone. Urspite’s anger with his Hunn dominant kept him in place as the others cowered away.
The blood madness was on the Hunn dominant and his leash. A terrible second of disbelief followed for all who beheld the scene. It had been many eons since the Hunn had established their domination of the Fangr, and in all that time none of the inferior daemonum had ever disobeyed a direct command. It was not in their meat to do so. But so, too, in all that time, thresh knew, none of the inferior daemonum had ever tasted the scent of the old prey in its nostrils, either. Thresh had just enough time to wonder what Scaroth might do before the BattleMaster had already done it. Reached into the long quiver slung over his enormous shoulders, he withdrew a pilum with deliberate slowness, and not even bothering to line up the throw, he unleashed the shaft in one fluid movement. It streaked through the night and impaled one of the Hunn’s Fangr with a dull, wet crunch, affixing it to the ground, where it squealed once before shivering and going limp.
“Attend me, Hunn!” Scaroth barked to the errant daemon’s master.
The Fangr may have been lost to the killing frenzy, but the guilty Hunn had presence of mind enough to pull away from the bestial scene. It helped that one of the strange flying creatures turned its burning eye on the warrior and its leash, driving them away from the slaughtered prey. The daemon shrieked and snarled and leaped out of the circle of light. It stood dumbly for a moment, long ropy strands of skin and meat hanging from its jaws, and seemed caught between horror, humiliation, and giving in to the siren song of the bloodwine.
Humiliation won out. And fear of the inexplicable Drakon-like creature that hovered above them. Thresh could feel the Fangr’s distress as a hot empathic prickling under its own hide. Most compelling of all, though, was the force of displeasure emanating from Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn in malignant waves. The BattleMaster’s dark rage and disapproval was so intense that it caused thresh to moan softly. Thresh tried to shield its smaller, weaker mind from the fearful thinkings of Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn, but it was as pointless an effort as a grosswyrm trying to outrun a magma flow.
The massive shoulders of the disgraced warrior slumped, and it hung its great gnarled head in shame, approaching the Master slowly, with its surviving Fangr acolytes attending it in a series of small looping circles, as though torn between the need to approach and the desire to avoid the will of Scaroth.
The BattleMaster did not even deign to speak to the failed Hunn. To lose the leash over one’s charges was unforgivable. The Hunn dropped to its knees before him. Turning to the remaining members of its leash, it demanded that they bare their throats to the blade, which they duly did, becoming mostly still but keening a wretched death song. Three quick slashes and hot ichor spilled onto cold mud. The Hunn turned back and presented the blade to Scaroth, but even that mercy was not due him because of his failure.
When the BattleMaster refused to release him from dishonor, the Hunn plunged the tip of the long curved blade into his abdomen and ripped out his own innards.
He died hissing. In shame.
Thresh sniffed at the stink of it. Around the lesser daemon, its superiors did the same.
The scent of prey was much stronger this time with fresh blood in the air. There were many of them nearby. Some even crawling away from the bloodied pile of prey that had tempted the pathfinder and its leash into ruin. Their screams and high keening wails were a delight to the senses, but there was no time to indulge. The rest of the vanguard came pouring up out of the tunnels and into the night Above, fiercely scarred Hunn and their leashed Fangr claiming the clawhold in the realm of dar ienamic.
They were ienamic now?
Thresh had been taught to think of Men only as meat for the blood pot, and that only as a legend. When had it formed the idea that the calflings were anything as notable as ienamicae? Thresh worried that some mad apostasy had claimed its mind to dignify the creatures with the ancient and noble crown of dar ienamic. But then, the powerful magicks it had encountered on its last visit here were … powerful.
It recognized the field into which it had emerged, an open wasteland on the edge of the village in which small fires and candle lamps burned. There was no sign of the minion in the ruins to the left, but the source of the heady aroma of man meat was immediately obvious. A small clutch of the creatures stood around their strange beastless chariots where thresh had fallen upon the filthy minion just before its nest mate had been slain by some trickster’s wizardry. Thresh stuck close to Urspite Scaroth as much for protection as anything. The Revengers crawled up out of the tunnels behind it, cloaked in sweet darkness, arraying themselves in a loose scythe formation. Fangr acolytes leashed to their Hunn dominants growled and snarled, eager to get to the kill. The Hunn growled in turn, quieting their inferiors but eyeing the cyclopean Drakon suspiciously, sniffing the air, and detecting the scent of sweet, sweet meat.
Thresh could not long gaze in the direction of the foe.
So they are foe now? Not food?
All of its eyestalks cringed away. There burned a great many lights in that direction, as though the men had established a large war camp in the red-roofed building with all the fires. As eager as Fangr and Hunn were to have at them, all shied away from the light and the promise of fire and pain that came with it. Lieutenants Grymm stomped and stalked, exchanging quiet thinkings on how best to put out the lights. Reaching a talon up, thresh attempted to gain the attention of the BattleMaster by tugging at its armor.
“What?” growled Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn, busy attempting to brute his forces into a formation resembling something from the war scrolls.
“The light, sir. The eyestalks water and squint from it, but it does not burn. Not if it is as it was before.”
Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn reached down and picked the tiny daemon up by its throat, all but choking it.
“Shall I throw you into the fire light and test that thinking, thresh?”
Struggling to choke out an apology for bothering the BattleMaster, thresh begged not to be sacrificed so. It had much to offer in the way of thinkings. Urspite Scaroth opened his massive claws and dropped thresh into the mud. It was thankful for the mud. The soft ooze broke its fall from such a prodigious height.
“If … if … I might … my lord. Your host is not yet used to the thinkings I have thought here about the harmless nature of such lights. And not having my lord’s vast intelligence or fortitude, they might yet be misled by poor thinkings. Perhaps if we were to head into the darkness of the village, where just a few fires burn?”
Scaroth appeared to consider the advice. There was a reason he was one of Her Majesty’s Chosen. Not simply a great unthinking mass of talon and fang, he obviously had the gift of slower thinking than one normally found in a feeding frenzy. He barked and snarled directions to the Hunn beneath him to dress the scythe moonward.
The amulets of the men flashed with some inexplicable magick, as if pleased by the spectacle.
Thresh had to concede that the sacrifice had been well made. It did return a good measure of discipline to the thrall. Thresh blinked into the terrible light where individual calflings appeared to be pointing toward them. It was difficult to make out what lay beyond the great river of colored lights in which the humans appeared to bathe without a thought. Chariots and covered wagons without beasts to draw them raced back and forth along the shining way, some of them even screeching to a halt. Thresh tried to identify the source of that loud, piercing screech, thinking that it must be the hidden beast that drew along the chariots, but nothing could it discern. And how did these wagons move about, lacking a visible beast to pull them? Well, that had to be the most arcane of magicks and so far beyond its meager thinkings that nothing was to be gained by pondering the matter.
Urspite Scaroth Ur Hunn was glad that the weak link in the chains binding his host had been broken so quickly. It served his purposes to lay a hard example upon the assembled warriors before they met the …
What? The enemy?
He still had difficulties accepting the idea of mere men as a foe. As a meal, certainly. But certainly not anything as storied and worthy of respect as ienamic. And yet … Her Majesty had been quite specific about the dangers of sorcery he might encounter Above. She still wondered at the role of magick in her long banishment beneath the capstone that had been sealed atop the UnderRealms.
“The Sky Lords surely sealed us beneath our rightful place, Hunn,” she had said to him in the privacy of her chambers. “But how did the Sky Lords come to intervene? Were they summoned by sorcery? Have men been perfecting this sorcery while we have remained trapped beneath their feet? This truth you shall seek out for me.”
Standing in the realm of the Above, reining in his unruly thoughts at the unexpected sights and smells, Scaroth knew it would not be as simple a task as raiding some piss puddle of a village and slowly eating the inhabitants’ smallest nestlings until they gave up the secret. As entertaining as that would be. He kept his eyes on the war party for the most part, beasting them into submission, but when he turned toward the lights where ever more men were gathered …
Why do they not flee?
… he could not help wondering what had happened up here in the long eons since the banishment of his kind, of all daemonum. Nothing of this place recalled the teachings of the Scrolls.
“What are those things, thresh?” he demanded to know, raising one massive arm and pointing at the bobbing points of light that seemed to attend each and every one of the calflings. “Are they the amulets of power? The ones of which you spoke? Are they all wizards in this village?”
The thresh poked its head around the giant trunk of Scaroth’s haunches. Grudgingly, the BattleMaster had to admit that the tiny thresh, not yet full grown, did not shrink away from the light as some of his warriors did. (He noted which ones; have no fear of that. They would thicken up the regimental blood pots if they proved themselves cowards on this quest.)
“I think so, my lord,” it confessed. “But again, I do not know that we must fear this light. Surely if so many talismans were invoked against us and were to have any power, we should have felt that power by now.”
Scaroth growled. It was a fair point for one so small and feeble.
The host now was fully deployed in a double scythe formation, oriented for the most part toward the dark lines of the village rather than the river of light and its immediate promise of slaughter (although the promise of immolation in human fire probably had something to do with that, too, he thought darkly). The Queen’s Vengeance, two reinforced Talon of Hunn and their leashes of Fangr, and, of course, the Lieutenants Grymm—there was no avoiding the arrogant scum—shifted and growled. The gutted carcass of the disgraced Hunn still had them in its power, but Scaroth knew he must act now: either attack the village as planned or make an opportunistic lunge at these curious calfling wizards with the glowing amulets. He would never admit it, for to do so was a terrible weakness, but part of him wished to consult with the thresh and even the Grymm to seek their counsel. The daemon inferiorae was the only one of his host with any experience in this realm, and the Grymm, he could not deny, were learned in the sacred war Scrolls.
But a BattleMaster of the Grande Horde did not keep his chariot with counsel. He maintained his grip on the reins by riding down on his enemies and driving them before him.
And Scaroth had enemies at hand.
“Turn daggerwise,” he roared, and the war party wheeled in the direction of the light, finishing the maneuver with a great single stomp and a clattering clash of blades on shields.
“HUNN ur HORDE,” they roared in unison, even the Fangr and Grymm.
That evoked a response in the calflings at last. Some even jumped in fear. Excellent. Others began to back away. This was how it should be. Things were finally making sense.
It was a gamble, but he could scent the musky fever of his warriors to be among the meat and blood, and for the moment that meant over there. In the light.
He bent down to hiss softly at the thresh.
“You are certain this unnatural bright glow is harmless, thresh?”
“Yes, my lord,” it replied, not at all certain.
“That is good. You shall lead us into it.”
At that moment, one of the Drakon dropped out of the sky. It smashed against the ground, flailing and shattering its wings, the bones of which flew into the assembled ranks of the Vengeance, cutting down Hunn and Fangr and even a Lieutenant Grymm. Thresh cringed behind its BattleMaster, but even as it soiled itself with its own pastes, its quickthinkings admonished the lesser daemon.
It had been wrong.
The flying creatures were not creatures at all.
Thresh turned its eyestalks on the fallen Drakon, and the thinking came upon it that … that what had dropped from the Above was not beast but … but chariot.
Some form of chariot, thresh was certain, and from which even now an injured and bloodied calfling crawled.
Around it, the Revengers thrall strained and thrashed on the very edge of disintegration. The discipline of the host was near the breaking point and might have failed if Urspite Scaroth had not whipped out his great blade and decapitated another of his less reliable Hunn as a lesson.
“HOLD!” he roared. “The Hunn ur Horde will HOLD!”
“Hunn,” a few of the warriors barked with unthinking obedience. “Hunn … Hunn …”
“Hunn ur Horde,” roared the surviving Lieutenants Grymm, which was very generous of them, and soon enough the entirety of the Vengeance had taken up the chant, calming themselves with it.
The BattleMaster turned his baleful glare on thresh.
“Did you witness these before?” Scaroth demanded to know in a low rumbling growl.
“No, my lord,” thresh replied, shouting over the death screams of the chariot beast. Inside the thing, yet another rider struggled to free itself.
“Then pray the Sky Lords send no more down upon us, thresh. Now. Advance.”
Thresh stumbled forward. It could not untangle its many thinkings and feelings.
It knew the fear of the unknown, of the uncertainty about the bright, hot light into which it would take the Vengeance. It knew pride that one so inferior might lead such a mighty force into battle. Thresh also knew that the war party was actually quite tiny by the standards of the Horde, especially the Grande Horde, but it had rarely seen the Hunn clan assembled in greater numbers than this, and never with the intent to have at a foe. It felt anxiety that it might falter and bring shame upon its nest just like the Hunn that had lost control of its leash. And as it slowly began to lope toward the light, stretching out its gait, accelerating toward the enemy lines, there was the savage exultation of which it had dreamed so many times. The blood frenzy was rising.
The muddy ground, broken and uneven, dried out and became flat, slipping away beneath it in a blur. The men, its prey, reacted to the charge, some fleeing, some climbing aboard their chariots, others holding the glowing amulets to their faces as if to hide behind the strange candle. As it closed with the calflings, thresh heard more screeching as human drivers reined in their chariots. It smelled a strange, alien miasma of scents, most of them completely unidentifiable. And it heard the most confounding sound.
The deep thudding roar that filled the skies.
It searched in the direction of the sound.
Skyward. And what it saw froze the ichor in its carcass.
There was more than one skyborne chariot.