Thus all across the entire plain the horde of Demogorgon came, rolling down upon Vuron's position so that its center would strike with the flanks refused — for there, the ape-headed demonking knew, was where the greatest strength of the enemy was clustered. Into the very heart of the albino's line went the attack with the guard dusin corps leading. Both Mandrillagon and Demogorgon were with the roaring dusins, exhorting the demons on, using the force of the Theorpart to strike the foe, to counter any magic used against the attack.
When the wedge-shaped formation of Demogorgon's own struck the thin line opposing it, though, there was a sudden shift. The dusins struck at nothing. The enemy had been naught but illusion. Instead, the line that actually existed was a V-shaped one, and its base was packed with fesroo twenty ranks deep and stiffened by the grinning, bat-faced raloog company that served Vuron as the dusins did Demogorgon. With these greater ones of demonkind was the albino lord himself, wielding a Theorpart in counterpoise to that of the enemy, while nearby was the drow named Eclavdra, high priestess and bearer of the Eye of Deception.
Even as the two forces met with a crash and roar, Demogorgon understood the depth of his own folly, from the distortion of time to the drawing forth of his army. Perhaps he did have a horde that greatly outnumbered the one he fought, but Vuron had brought up fresh troops, packed the center, and then drawn Demogorgon into it. Two or three to one was all the superiority he had here, but the Eye of Deception worked unhindered. The Theorparts wielded by him and the sexless albino cancelled each other out, Vastyi countered Mandrillagon, and the flame demons were sufficient to match all of the greater ones who led his force here. Now Palvlag could thrust into his flank from the right, and Nergel from the left, for his own wings were far back and hardly moving. Giant Jaws were about to close on half of Demogorgon's army!
Two heads, two brains have their advantages. Demogorgon used that edge now. While his left continued to grasp and manipulate the flow of energies from the portion of the relic he held, his right sent a command back to the handful of lieutenants still behind. "Every reserve to me in the center, now! Then have the wings charge. Do you hear? Charge!"
"We hear and obey. Great Demogorgon," came a chorus of responses from the ahazu-demons.
Forgetting that, the twin-headed master of demons began a mental search for his ally, Infestix. Perhaps he had managed to extricate his forces from the trap, perhaps not. Only hard fighting over a long period would answer the question. Demogorgon wished to take no such chance, even at the cost of his pride.
Not now, not with the other Theorpart so close! If the wretched, puling daemon could be of use, why not? Infestix had promised much more than he had delivered so far. Let the rotting scum provide what was needed now.
"Lord of Hades. Master of the Pits, Nerull-Death, daemon Infestix," the right brain sent forth the call. "You must come now, now. I have locked the foe into an iron grasp, and they cannot flee." That was true, although it admitted nothing about the reverse. Demogorgon could not escape either from this duel to destruction. "Bring all force available, and the Theorpart of Graz'zt is ours!"
Demons and others of the lower realms shouted and snarled, screamed and howled as they struck and were struck killed and were slain in a terrible melee that soon stretched for miles across the featureless plain on this unnamed tier of the Abyssal microcosm. The two lines swayed back and forth, clotted, thinned, bulged one way or the other. Windrows of dead marked the changing positions. Fluid ran — bloodlike stuff, pale ichor, glowing phlogiston. Weapons glittered with those substances, the ground underfoot became a mire from the liquid. The attackers were decimating their foes, but in turn the forces under Demogorgon's command were being doubly killed. To the right and the left there was a bloody standoff. In the middle portion of the field, the mass of dusins and the other soldiers of the nether planes was being slowly compacted. The two arms were circling, mandibles closing. It was becoming more and more difficult to move within the cauldron there. Then reinforcements pressed in from behind, and the press was too great to manage.
Now the troops that had so proudly marched under the black and green flags began to die in waves of a hundred at a time, and so tightly packed were they that no return blow could be struck Demogorgon had no choice. He turned the force of his Theorpart outward, so that the battalions to either hand could force the jaws back gain fighting room. With his second brain, the great lord of demons sent forth energy to counter the Eye of Deception too, for that instrument was making it impossible for his lieutenants to find and counter the nobles of the enemy, and in the resulting confusion Vuron's powerful ones were slaying the lesser demons, dreggals, and cacodaemons by companies.
The shift he accomplished was so sudden and unexpected that Vuron was caught unawares. By the time the pale demon lord was able to switch the energies of his own artifact to attack Demogorgon personalty, it was too late. The trap had been forced open, and the attackers were able to gain room to defend themselves again. The battle resumed its former character, one of slow and terrible attrition. Vuron's army had inflicted appalling losses upon its foes. Demogorgon's horde now numbered no more than twice the smaller force, and many of his leaders and champions were dead. In the process, Vuron had used the Theorpart he wielded to deal great punishment to his two-headed antagonist.
"You will pay," Demogorgon snarled telepathically as he dampened the albino's attack with the power of his own relic.
"Will I?" Vuron shot back across the wild battleground. "We shall see, little monkey-heads. Soon now there will be none of your soldiers between us, and then I will come for you with my raloogs."
"Shoat! That would be like you. Too weak and sniveling to face me alone!"
"You fled from King Graz'zt, as I recall," Vuron jibed mentally.
"Eat honey!" Demogorgon spat, then returned his attention to matters at hand. He wouldn't be duped easily again by the albino. Even that brief exchange had been too dear. The Eye was working again, and the losses inflicted by it and the enemy troops had reduced his superiority by more than a trifle. At the rate the battle was going, when the enemy army was cut to half its original number, there would be scarcely more troops left in his own force.
If only the dogs like Var-Az-Hloo and Bulumuz hadn't gone over to Orcus! The big-gutted one and Iuz together. ... It was Demogorgon's alliance with Infestix that had brought that pairing about. Even demons have loyalty of a sort, and Demogorgon had made common cause with Infestix's force, the hated foes of demonkind, in order to gain parity with Graz'zt. Iuz, Orcus, and the others accused him of selling out the Abyss for the Theorpart. Well, let them! With the one he held, he would gain the second portion, and the two would bring him the last third. Then would Graz'zt be expunged, Orcus annihilated, and Infestix and all the daemons and devils too laid low. Tharizdun arise? Never! He, Demogorgon, would emerge as triumphant lord of darkness — a darkness that would cloak all. "Infestix!" he shouted telepathically.
"The moment is at hand!"
* * *
Something was certainly at hand. Leda sensed it. "We have beaten them, I think," she ventured to the nearby albino.
"No. Not quite. Demogorgon is sly and quick, I'll give him that. He managed to slip open the trap, so now the struggle will be long and very costly. We have better fighters, yet his horde is still more numerous. He is attempting something more," Vuron added, "but I can't pierce his screening energies. I can't tell what ploy he works on."
"Our left and right both stand firm. I use the force of the Eye there," Leda informed the albino, "so that the enemy wastes strength against phantoms while our own kill them in droves. We cannot lose now!"
"Can't? The Eye is worth a division, two perhaps. Yet I think you may be right in your assessment. Something impends. Let us trust it is the victory you speak of." He turned a corner of his mind to the others who commanded. "Palvlag. have you any reserve to spare?" The response was negative. The ancient protodemon had every demon committed to the fight on the left. The same reply came from Nergel, who was pressing ahead, grinding down the foe, but had no reserves. "Ah, if our liege only had a little more strength to spare us," Vuron sighed to himself. With a single fresh division he could have shattered Demogorgon's center. But it was not to be. There was a single company in reserve, rutterkin at that.
"Eclavdra," he sent, using the dark elven priestess's known name. "Cease work on the wings. Summon a raloog — any of the flaming ones will do. It will command the company of its fellows there when they follow me as I confront the two-headed one."
Leda looked to where Vuron had indicated. She saw the sneer-visaged rutterkin trying to conceal their fear with blustering and poses of bravery. She almost questioned the albino then, nearly asked if he was mistaken or perhaps losing his mind under the pressure of the dweomers sent by the enemy. Then she understood, for Vuron had preceded his statement by ordering her to stop spending force on the flanks. That meant she was to use the Eye of Deception elsewhere.
"I hear and obey. General," she sent. Then she located a towering raloog, ordered it close, and set her mind on the rutterkin. "Yes, commander?" the sooty demon growled a moment later. Leda nodded toward her right. The raloog saw a force of fifty of its kind standing there, glowering toward the battle. "Take them into the fight," she told the monster. "Stay with Lord General Vuron no matter what, or you shall feel the terror of Graz'zt's displeasure." The raloog nodded, then struck its head in salute. A few moments later Vuron strode forward. His soldiers forced an opening in the enemy front, made an aisle, and the albino strode into the carnage.
Mandrillagon saw him first and sent a warning toward Demogorgon. It was sufficient to cause the great demon prince to quail. Vuron had told him before that he would come with his personal troop of raloogs to fight when the battle was nearly finished. The implication was evident. In fact, Demogorgon's demons and the other troops from the netherspheres shrank back at the sight of the alabaster-fleshed demon lord leading a half-hundred flame-demons forth to fight. Was the contest decided in favor of Graz'zt's dogs, then? If so, Demogorgon would not stay to die with the useless dunghills who had failed him! But no, the time to retire and re-form a new horde was not quite at hand. There was still an interval, still hope.
"Attack them!" the twin-headed demon king ordered, speaking to the demon who commanded the companies of dusins that formed a square around their master. The demon looked pale but did as ordered. As the square, heavy dusins fought the dusky, flame-limned raloogs, Demogorgon shouted loudly, "Come on, Vuron the Lily! Here I am awaiting you personally!"
"I accept!" The reply came clearly and from nearby. Vuron, clad in his silvered battle armor and bearing a long, crystalline spear, was suddenly almost face to face with his challenger. It was daring, for Demogorgon was almost twice as tall and easily four times more massive than the albino. It was the lance that Vuron carried that made him confident that he wasn't merely throwing away his life in accepting single combat with the demon king.
Wherever the crystalline point sunk home a netherbeing expired, but it was not Demogorgon who braved the peril. Even as the albino came forth to do battle, the towering prince of the Abyss was communicating with his chief ally, Infestix, at last. "The moment is passing!" the demon telepathically snarled. "Why aren't you here?"
"Hold fast, brave and clever ruler of demonkind," came the sarcastic reply from Infestix. "I am but seconds away."
"Then the day is ours!" Demogorgon sent back "for I have lured Vuron and his guards into the heart of my own formation, and the stupid fish-belly bears the artifact as he comes."
The boast did not disturb the master of daemons. He was quite familiar with demon claims. It was obvious to Infestix that Vuron was pressing the battle and Demogorgon was losing the fight. That was why Infestix was coming. The lord of the pits had kept close track of the whole confrontation. He had no intention of allowing the dual-headed menace to bungle things and lose the Theorpart that was Infestix's own. Neither did the greatest of daemons intend to allow Demogorgon actually to gain a second portion of the relic of deepest Evil. At a word, the Theorpart the ape-headed being held would desert the demon and send itself to Infestix's hands. A careful harmonic had been built within it to assure that. The portion of the artifact also had within itself the frequency of its fellow Theorpart, the one wielded by the albino demon lord. If the latter was joined to the former, then Infestix could indeed call both portions to himself. The wily emperor of the netherspheres had planned well. He could not compensate for the general incompetence of demons, though. "I am here!" The daemon appeared in his avatar, Nerull, as he spoke; and he stood beside Demogorgon as he did so.
"What?" Demogorgon was startled. Such transferences were not possible in the Abyssal planes, especially when great artifacts of utmost evil power were radiating disruptive dweomers in opposition. Of course, Infestix had used the very powers at play to do so. "How . . . ?" the demonking began, then switched his tack "Where are your troops? We need force to wrest the thing from the slug's grasp!"
"Never fear, Demogorgon," Nerull-Infestix said casually, watching the dusins die horribly, one after another, as Vuron came ever closer with his deadly, ensorcelled spear. "Help for you is at hand."
"I see none, you . . ."
"Faithful and brave ally," Nerull's rasping, wormchoked voice supplied in place of the invective the demon was undoubtedly about to use. "It is about to come with a bang, so to speak. It will surprise the enemy as much as you. , . ."
The "bang" came a second later. Demogorgon, even forewarned as he was, gave an involuntary start as what sounded like a tremendous thunderclap broke directly overhead and sent rolling echoes along the whole length of the plain. As the sound reverberated in the sky, there appeared the eight Diseased Ones fully arrayed for battle, and with these fearsome daemons were the whole of the plagante, NerullInfestix's horrid elite soldiers. The entire force numbered but a few hundred, but each of the plagante was equal to a greater demon, at least a match for any raloog, for example. Furthermore, the force appeared in the space just behind the position where Demogorgon stood, the place threatened by Vuron's advance. Without need of direction, the Diseased Ones rushed toward the advancing demons, and behind them stormed the plagante. Demogorgon bellowed in triumphant glee at the sight, and not far distant Mandrillagon too picked up the hooting as he observed the sudden turn of events.