Empire of the Worm (26 page)

Davril approached Jeselri, but the Avestine’s
attention was riveted on the battle. Jeselri’s guards noticed him, and in an instant
Davril found bristling spears shoved toward his throat.

“Hold!” he called. “Hold!” When the
spears didn’t impale him, he breathed easier.

Jeselri noticed. “You!” he cried. His
black eyes narrowed. For a horrible instant, Davril thought the Avestine would
order his immediate execution, and he didn’t have to wonder why. Someone
looking much like Davril had stolen the Jewel of the Sun, and now an enemy army
poured in. The attack both covered the theft and posed a genuine threat.

Jeselri took in Davril’s wounds,
then nodded. “Release him! It’s not the imposter.”

The spears retreated. Jeselri
returned his attention to the fight. He held a golden-covered shield before
him. Already a dozen arrows quivered from it.

“Where’s the Jewel?” Davril called.

“Taken!” Jeselri replied, when he
could. Sweat ran down the sides of his head, and his hawkish face was even
darker than usual.

“We must stop them,” Alyssa said.

Davril had another idea. Nevertheless,
he pitched his voice high and said, “Collapse the tunnels! Crush them!”

Wiping sweat from his brow, Jeselri
responded, when he had a moment: “They knew all our weaknesses, Husan. They
knew just where our collapsing mechanisms were, just where our most vital
tunnels are. Already our main force is divided into many. They strike from a
dozen points on different levels.”

“But how did they know? We rounded
up most of the Uulosans.”

Jeselri’s face darkened. “I believe
you had a friend known as Qasan?”

“Yes, but—you don’t mean . . .
had
. . . ?”

“He’d turned to the worship of
Octhus, hadn’t he? Well, it turns out that’s just Uulos by a different name.”

“Dear gods. So all of the
worshippers of Octhus were really—” Davril put a hand to his head. He felt
sick. “Where is Qasan now?”

Jeselri narrowed his eyes. “In
hell, most likely. I had my people exterminate all the Octhusites they could
find.”

“Poor Qasan . . .”

“Ha! He died swifter than he would’ve
had I been the one who found him.” The Patriarch turned back to the war, and Davril
was glad that his men had not resisted an Avestine’s leadership. Then again, Jeselri
had installed himself as second-in-command of the rebellion, on the basis that
more Avestines than Niardans had joined the cause; and an Avestine would be
better versed in tunnel-to-tunnel warfare.

Meanwhile, General Hastus urged his
troops on, and he had the aid of the Lerumites. Davril could not see them, but
he heard the long, twisted horns they’d brought with them. They blew strange
notes, and the hall shook, and the soldiers screamed. Davril clamped his hands
over his hears, and his blood ran cold with dread. It was all he could do to
stand. He didn’t know how the soldiers kept on fighting.

They did, but they didn’t do it
well. The General shoved the rebel forces back, at last forcing them from the
great hall into the tighter tunnels. Now the attackers had the advantage, and
the rebels gave ground quickly. Their bodies fell, slowing the attackers, but
not enough. Back and back Jeselri led the army, wearily relinquishing control
to Davril.

“Perhaps you can fight this General
Hastus,” he said. “You know how he operates.”

“Sound the gongs,” Davril said. “Summon
the Serpent.” When Jeselri looked at him blankly, Davril shouted, “
Sound the gongs
!”

Jeselri nodded shakily. “I will do
it.” He rushed off into the throng to summon the god-thing.

“What’s your plan?” Alyssa asked,
looking pale.

He had no time to answer. With some
help, he climbed onto the litter Jeselri had departed and barked out orders. His
earlier screaming had roughened his throat, and it filled with pain, but he
pushed past it. All was the ringing of metal and clamor of battle echoing off
narrow stone walls.

“Wedge B, SWITCH!” The tunnel was
only tight enough for one wedge at a time now.

Back he led them, as the Uulosons
pressed their advantage. Runners came, reporting on the progress of the other
battles, and Davril snapped frantic orders, calling on all to fall back to the
Pit of the Serpent. At times the hall widened to accompany more wedges, at
times it narrowed, and Davril rotated the wedges that took the brunt of the General’s
assault, giving each line a breather and ensuring they were fresh when they did
battle. At last he led the company down a broad, winding stairwell. The steps’
edges glimmered with gold, and their tiles showed fantastic mosaics, but the
gold and the mosaics ran with blood, and swords had chipped gouges in the jade
balustrades.

Here, in the wide open spaces of
the stairwell, Davril heard the shouts of General Hastus for the first time
since the attack began. Hastus roared for his rows to rotate
now
, or drive
there
. Davril winced every time he heard his voice. Davril imagined
Hastus holding Hariban’s feet by the ankles and dashing his brains against a
wall. He saw Hastus raising that heavy axe, bringing it down on Sareth’s small
neck. He felt Sareth’s blood spraying his face.

At last Davril led his troops in a
fallback through the wide, high halls surrounding the Avestines’ great place of
worship, where tens of thousands could gather. It had been here that Alyssa and
Davril had overheard the High Priest’s plan to betray the rebellion.

Davril’s troops met up with the
other companies that had been fighting the General’s secondary raiding parties,
and all the hosts of the rebels gathered in the hall of worship. Doggedly, the
General pursued.

Davril sent out runners to carry
out his orders. He was gambling all on a last, desperate hope, but it was a
plan he’d been formulating for some time. He had risked telling no one. Evidently
his caution had been warranted, as obviously spies in his midst (
Qasan, how could you?)
had been
informing to the Lady and the General for some time. Hastus’s brutal
persecution of innocent Sedremerans had merely been a sham to make Davril think
the enemy didn’t know his whereabouts. How many had died, horribly, so that Hastus
could seize such an advantage?

The seal over the stairwell was
open, Davril saw. Good. Jeselri had already started.

“Fall back!” Davril said. “Fall
back to the Pit!”

Swiftly, but not so swiftly as to
arouse suspicion, he led his men to the cavernous spiral stairwell and down it.
In the background, he heard the gongs.

The blackness closed around him,
lit only by the torches of his people. In their tens of thousands, they flooded
down the steps in as orderly a fashion as possible. Even so, some lost their
footing or were jostled too roughly, and fell, screaming into the darkness that
comprised the center of the spiral. But the stairs were wide, and the General’s
forces did not advance swiftly enough to cause a stampede, so Davril succeeded
in leading his men back and down. He no longer stood on his litter but was
carried on the broad shoulders of a high-ranking soldier. It was a rather
undignified position, but Davril with his bad leg could not navigate the stairs
fast enough and he needed to see the line of battle.

General Hastus exploited the open
spaces and the high ground to riddle Davril’s host with arrows. Davril ordered
his men to raise their shields, and for the most part the arrows bounced off. Two
score or more men did fall, however, and their bodies tripped up the defenders.
Davril ordered the bodies shoved off the edge.

Finally he led his men down from
the stairs and along the great hall, then through the high, obscenely-engraved
archway, past the massive doors, into the great Chamber of the Pit. Here he
consulted with his generals and made sure that the appropriate steps had been
taken. In the background, the beats of the gongs reverberated off the walls,
lingering on the air. The sound sent shivers down his spine, but they also made
him grin.

To make himself more visible to the
enemy, he ordered his litter brought near, and with some help climbed atop it. Alyssa,
whom he’d had taken to the rear, shoved her way forward.

“What do you mean to do?” she
asked. Tears were in her eyes, and he didn’t have to wonder why. Whatever
outcome came to pass, whether Davril prevailed or the General did, she would
have lost a loved one.

“I mean to end this,” he said. “Take
her through the passages behind!”

She protested, but the soldiers
grabbed her and hauled her away.

“There!” roared Hastus suddenly. “Drive
there!”

The General had seen him.

The hosts had rearranged the wedge
formations, spreading them a dozen abreast in the wide space of the Chamber. The
General—now on his litter again, as well—shouted to his men to drive toward
Davril, who had, quite intentionally, positioned himself in the center of his
line.

“Drive!” roared the General. “Push
him back to the Pit!”

Davril hid his smile. “Fall back!”
he said. “Fall back!” Hastily he gave directions to the center wedge to fall
back to the precipice. Behind the tiered daises, many soldiers and civilians
alike were pouring through the many doorways, where in olden times the members
of the Order of the Serpent would enter the Chamber from their quarters. During
the sacrificial rituals, the everyday Avestines would come down the stairs and
gather here, but the majority of their priests would be in the quarters beyond,
waiting, while their acolytes sounded the gongs. Only when all were gathered
would the priests emerge, the High Priest last. Davril knew the way well, for
those passages connected with his suite.

The Avestines and the rebels poured
into the Order’s quarters to the rear of the Pit, while Davril and his soldiers
delayed pursuit. Davril used himself as bait, drawing the General and the Uulosons
onward.

Davril’s men edged against the lip
of the Pit, and he glanced over his shoulders, over the side of the litter and
down into the endless blackness. Heat and darkness seemed to pour out of it,
and he smelled the familiar stench of the reptile.
It’s near.

“Set me down,” he ordered, and his
men lowered the litter.

“Hold fast!” he shouted to the
central wedge, drawing his sword and thrusting it overhead. “Hold fast!”

The other wedges quietly slipped
away into the rear passages. Only a token few remained to keep the General from
growing suspicious. But surely he could hear the gongs by now. Even he would be
frowning, wondering . . .

“Drive!” the General roared, his
words rolling clearly over the clatter of battle. “Hurl them into the Pit! The
beast comes, lads! We have no time to waste.”

“Hold!” Davril shouted, as much for
the benefit of the General as for his own men. He knew he was likely doomed,
and the men of the central wedge with him. But it was the price that must be
paid for destroying the General. Davril only wished he could’ve lived long
enough to carry out his plan against Uulos.
I’m
probably wrong anyway.

One by one the defenders fell in
bloody heaps to the ground. They slew many of the attackers, to be sure, but
there were too many of the Uulosons, and too many of the defenders had already
fled.

“Switch!” Davril thundered, and the
men in the first row fell back to the rear. There were pitifully few of them
left, and they were covered in sweat and blood. Had he been clean and in good
health he would have felt guilty for not fighting beside them on the front
lines, but as it was he was still more ragged and bloody than any of them, and
the stench of the gullet still clung to him.

Runners sprinted up to him, their
eyes bright. “It’s done!” they said. “All the General’s men are inside! All our
men are in place.”

Davril gave a tight smile. “Order
the doors sealed!”

The runners darted off, and the
massive main doors clanged shut, sealing the General and his men in the Chamber
of the Pit. Great wails rose from the Uulosons, and for a moment their advance
halted.

“Now!” Davril shouted. “To the
doors!
Out through the rear!”

His soldiers melted away, fleeing
around the gaping crater that was the Pit through the narrow doors that led
into the Order’s quarters. Some of the General’s men went after them, around
the Pit and the tiered daises, but the narrow metal doors slammed in their
faces after the last of the rebels passed through.

Davril and a handful of men
remained at the Pit to draw the General on. Afoot now, hacking and slashing
with his own blood-stained sword, General Hastus led his men against the
remnants of Davril’s wedge, until the last defender fell, twitching, spurting
blood, at the General’s feet.

Davril, covered in the blood of men
he’d slain—he had finally been forced to take up arms—as well as his own men,
stood panting before the General. Broad-shouldered and gore-coated, the Hastus
glowered down at his son-in-law and shook his head. Blood rained off the curls
of his glorious beard.

“This end comes well deserved,” he
said. “It’s because of you that all this happened.”

“Don’t foist this on me,” Davril
said.

“But it’s true.” Hastus sniffed. “To
think you could defeat me.”

“I will,” Davril said. “I have already.”

The gongs had ceased ringing, the
gong-beaters having fled, but they did not need to sound any longer. The
Serpent had heard their call. The being’s stench had grown very strong. Davril
thought he could feel the earth shake through his thin sandals.

To either side of General Hastus,
the Uulosons glanced about fearfully and muttered to themselves. They were
trapped. Only the General’s complete contempt and arrogance kept them from
utter despair.

“I fear no reptile,” Hastus
declared.

He thrust with his sword, meaning
to skewer Davril, but Davril leapt back, his bad leg burning with pain as it
took his weight. Hastus sliced at his head. He ducked, shoved out with his
sword. The blade scraped off the General’s armor. Hastus reversed his swing,
brought his sword down at Davril’s right shoulder, meaning to chop off his arm
and hack through his ribcage. Davril twisted, parried the blow, but his arm
went momentarily numb.