Chapter 33
Never before had Jagdish felt so mighty. He fought with the strength of ten of as he fearlessly led his army across the Nurabad Bridge. Demons fell before his sword. The Defenders’ Heart gave him might, but his own warrior heart gave him courage.
“Keep going! We’re almost there!”
Around and behind him, hundreds of warriors roared as one. “VADAL! VADAL!”
He’d picked the narrowest stone bridge to fight their way across. The Nurabad was barely wide enough to fit a single wagon, which had caused a lot of fights over the years as westbound carriages had met eastbound wagons somewhere in the middle, with no place for either to turn around. But that narrowness created a natural chokepoint, which made it so his men only had to fight one or two demons at a time.
As men died or became too tired to fight effectively, Jagdish brought up the next rank, and the next, and the next. Yards were steadily crossed, and the western shore grew closer, and more and more demons were killed or forced over the side to tumble into the roaring waterfall beneath them. Jagdish had rotated through paltan after paltan of exhausted warriors that way over the last few hours of brutal combat…yet he had never once left the front line himself.
Jagdish had no gods, but he believed in fate. And his fate was to be the kind of commander who never faltered, who never gave up, and who always, always led from the front. Fate was cruel, but she had must have decided Jagdish was to be the kind of warrior who they’d sing songs about for generations. For the first time in his life, with incredible Defender magic in his blood, his body was able to keep up with his warrior spirit.
Battle was terrible but magnificent. Awful but exhilarating. Jagdish was too excited to be scared. Too worried about his boys to worry about himself. This, this glorious instant, was what it meant to be warrior caste.
Until all of a sudden, fate—that fickle bitch—stabbed him in the back one more time.
A big demon was coming at them, seven and a half feet of angry saltwater-hell-spawned muscle and snapping teeth. Fifth Paltan was up, shoulder to shoulder, row of spears unwavering. Jagdish was among them shouting advice and encouragement. His loyal bodyguard, the Sarnobat fanatic Najmul, had never left Jagdish’s side, for he too had touched the Heart.
“Oceans, how many of these bastards do we have to kill?”
“I lost count,” Jagdish responded, before roaring at the Fifth with a voice powered by magic sufficient to be heard over the unnatural waterfall. “Keep those spears up! Don’t let it jump the line. Stick the chest and arms. When it’s entangled, second rank, hammers and axes against the legs. Let’s throw this salty son of a whore over the side! Let’s—”
Jagdish’s voice suddenly broke, and his throat felt torn and raw, as if he’d been shouting for an entire day, which he had. His armor had felt light as a feather, and now it threatened to smother him. Then the pain of every ache, bruise, strain, and scratch washed over him, followed by a weariness so profound that it staggered him. Hours of stored-up fatigue hit all at once and it took everything Jagdish had to not curl up in a ball of misery and die right there.
Najmul was staring at him, blinking in confusion, as if he too had suddenly been overcome by weakness. The best swordsman in Sarnobat stumbled, like an old man who’d had his cane stolen, until he grabbed hold of the bridge support to steady himself. “Karno’s magic…It’s gone.”
“Well, that’s bloody unfortunate,” Jagdish muttered as the demon charged.
It crashed against the line. A dozen spears stuck it. Not a single one pierced the hide, but between all the warriors shoving, they held it back. Claws tore, but for each shaft splintered, another took its place. Despite the demon’s ferocity, not a single man ran. They had nowhere to run. There were demons behind them and demons below them too.
Jagdish ducked between the spears and hacked at the demon’s arm. The fine steel bounced off uselessly. He nearly lost his grip from the impact. Fate had picked a fine time to screw him once more.
Spear shafts flexed and snapped, then suddenly the demon was among him.
Jagdish landed flat on his back, having never even seen the fist that had left a big dent in the side of his helmet. Through the blood running into his eyes, he saw the demon lift one foot to stomp him through the bridge. He rolled aside an instant before the impact.
Najmul grabbed hold of Jagdish’s sash and pulled him back through the line, as the demon was pushed back by more bending spears.
Jagdish called upon the healing power to find that it was no longer there, so instead of lying there useless he ordered, “Help me up, Najmul,” because he could not let the men see their leader lie down on the job. And once he was back on his feet, he used his bodyguard’s arm to stay upright, which was difficult since the entire world wouldn’t stop spinning. But as long as the men saw the colorful plume of his helmet, they’d know their phontho hadn’t abandoned them.
The demon got ahold of a warrior and ripped his head from his body. It smashed another two more over the side of bridge to drown in the raging Martaban. Fifth Paltan started to falter. If they lost their nerve, all was lost.
“Sixth Paltan up!” Jagdish bellowed, but his ragged voice was that of a mere human, not a roar of commanding thunder anymore. They couldn’t hear him over millions of gallons of plunging waterfall.
At the edge of a breakthrough, the demon stopped.
It froze in place, then slowly turned toward the west, where one of the great towers of the Vadal skyline was collapsing into an expanding cloud of dust. Even as warriors thrust spears into its back, the demon seemed too preoccupied to notice. Then it turned its blank head toward one of the mutilated human bodies that was dangling partially over the edge of the bridge. From the rags that had been some poor casteless, probably caught here and trampled during the initial chaos of the evacuation.
The demon flinched away from that corpse, seemingly more afraid of it than the hundreds of warriors it had been throwing itself against.
The entire bridge was covered in a cold mist from the waterfall, but there seemed to be a different, heavier kind of fog gathered around that dead casteless. Perhaps it was Jagdish’s blood getting in his eyes, but the fog seemed red.
Suddenly, the demon began thrashing madly about and clawing at its own face.
Jagdish had no idea what was happening, but he could tell this was their chance. “Push! Attack! Attack!”
Enough of the warriors heard him and acted that the rest saw them and followed, but before they could reach it the beast opened its mouth and shrieked. Warriors flinched. Even muffled by the steel and padding of their helmets, the noise was still deafening.
The demon seemed to be melting.
Chunks of black hide began sloughing off. Milky blood bubbled from the rapidly multiplying wounds.
There were other soldiers of hell on the bridge. When they saw what was happening to their brother, they promptly abandoned it, vaulting over the side of the bridge and dropping a hundred feet to disappear into the great frothing chasm that had opened in the Martaban.
The dying demon didn’t even try to escape. It staggered a few feet, went to its knees, and then sank down, head lolling forward, until its face slid off to splatter on the bridge stones. Steam hissed from its now visible skull as its body seemed to crumble to pieces. It lifted one arm toward the east, plaintively, until the limb snapped off under its own weight at the elbow.
“Forgotten save us!” Najmul cried. “What in the fish-ridden hell was that?”
“Halt!” Jagdish shouted, raising his fist high. He didn’t know if the men heard him, or they simply didn’t need encouragement to know not to interfere with whatever horror was happening here. “It’s got to be some kind of wizard’s curse. Don’t get it on you!”
They watched, awestruck at the gruesome death. In less time than it took his little pocket watch to click a single minute, one of the fiercest servants of the sea had been rendered into an oozing puddle with a skeleton lying in the middle of it.
Across the Nurabad Bridge all the other demons were either dying in a similar excruciating fashion or leaping into the river. In fact, as far as Jagdish could see in every direction, it was the same. He could no longer sharpen his vision like a hawk’s, but even mortal eyes could see the cursed demons were dying in agony, while the rest were trying to flee back into the water.
“They’re retreating!” a warrior cried.
The bridge was clear of demons. Fate had spared their lives.
The men began to cheer.
Hordes of demons were tumbling down the waterfall to vanish into the shelter of the hole they’d torn in the middle of Jagdish’s city. None of those demons appeared to be falling to pieces yet. The water must be able to shield them from the affliction that had frightened them away. He limped to the edge and looked over. Below could be seen a multitude of shadowy figures climbing down the side and swimming through the water.
Jagdish should have felt triumph, but instead there was only bitterness as he watched the demons get away.
Najmul walked up next to him. “Time to eat your words, Vadal. The Forgotten sent us a miracle after all!”
“As long as demons live to torment us again, it’s not enough.”
Najmul grew solemn. “Take this victory, Jagdish. It’s a miracle any of us are alive.”
“No!” Jagdish turned and shouted at him. “You fanatics promised us a final battle. Mark my words, should they live, they will return! If this is a victory, it’ll be a temporary one.”
“We can’t fight them beneath the waves, brother.”
Then Jagdish noticed movement on the eastern shore. A single figure in armor was sprinting with seemingly impossible speed up one of the riverside cliffs.
“We can’t…but he will.”
They watched as Ashok Vadal dove into the chasm.