Heirs of Empire

The surviving pikemen hurled away their weapons and fled.

Captain Ithun watched his company reel back as the Guard swept over the parapet. Its men wavered, shaken by the terror thundering about them and ready to flee, then stared in disbelief as Lord Tamman charged the enemy’s flank. The fighting step was wide enough for five men abreast, but there was no one beside him, for he’d outdistanced them all … and it didn’t matter.

Ithun gaped as the black-armored figure erupted into the Guardsmen, mace in one hand, ski

“Come on, Malagorans!” Ithun shrieked, and his men roared as they swept back up the fighting step in his wake.

It was over, Rokas thought remotely.

A line of fire ground down from the north in a haze of powder smoke, shattering everything in its path and crunching over the wreckage. No army in the world could advance like that, not without a single polearm, but the heretics were doing it, and his men refused to face them.

He stood numbly, watching the Host disintegrate as his men threw away their weapons and bolted, and he couldn’t blame them. There was something dreadful about that deliberate, remorseless advance—something that proved the tales of demons—and all of Mother Church’s exorcisms couldn’t stop it.

An aide jerked at him, shouting about withdrawal, and Rokas turned like a man in a nightmare, then gasped as a fiery hammer smashed his side.

The lord marshal fell to his knees, and the tumult about him had grown suddenly faint. He rolled onto his back, staring up at his panicked aide and the smoke-streaked sky, and his dimming mind marveled that evening had come so soon.

But it wasn’t evening, after all; it was night.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The stench was enough to turn a statue’s stomach.

Eleven thousand Guardsmen lay dead. Another twenty thousand wounded littered the Keldark Valley, whimpering or screaming … or lying silent while they waited to die. Another thirty or forty thousand (the count was far from done) huddled in shocked disbelief under the weapons of their enemies.

A miserable, battered third of the Holy Host was still ru

And horror it was. Sean stood beside a field hospital, watching the surgeons, and only his implants held down his gorge. Pardalians had a good working knowledge of anatomy and a kitchen sink notion of sepsis, but distilled alcohol was their sole anesthetic and disinfectant. There were no medical teams to rebuild shattered limbs; amputation was the prescription, and the treatment of men’s wounds was more horrifying than their infliction.

Sandy and Harry were out there in the middle of it. Israel’s facilities couldn’t have healed a fraction of the suffering, but Brashan had sent forward every painkiller his sickbay had, and the iron-faced “angels” moved through Hell, easing its pain and following the anesthetic with broad-spectrum Imperial antibiotics. Guardsmen who cursed them as demons fell silent in confusion as they watched them heal their enemies, and hundreds who should have died would live … and none of it absolved Israel’s crew of their guilt.

Sean and Tamman had visited their own wounded—blessedly few compared to the Host’s—but their responsibilities lay elsewhere, and Sean turned away to stare out at the torches and lanterns creeping across the battlefield. He shuddered as he braced himself for another journey into that obscenity, yet he had to go. He squared his shoulders and started forward against the steady stream of litter-bearers, and Tibold followed him silently.

He tried not to think, but he couldn’t stop looking … or smelling. The reek of blood and torn flesh mixed with the sewer stench of riven entrails, scavengers—some of them human—were already busy beyond the reach of the moving torches, and Pardal’s small moon added its wan light to the horror.

More people had died with Imperial Terra than here, but they’d died without even knowing. These men had died screaming, ripped apart and mutilated, and he was the one who’d pla

His vision blurred, and he stumbled over a body. His legs gave, and he sank to his knees before his lieutenant, trying to speak, fighting to explain his i

Tibold knelt beside him, brown eyes dark in the moonlight, and a hard-palmed hand touched his cheek. Sean stared at him, twisted by shame and guilt and a wrenching loss of i

“I know, lad,” the ex-Guardsman murmured. “I know. The fools who call war ‘glorious’ have never seen this, curse them.”

“I—I—” Sean gasped and fought for breath, and Tibold’s hands slid down from his head. The older man cradled him like a lover or a child, and Crown Prince Sean Horus MacIntyre sobbed upon his shoulder.

Tamman huddled close to the fire with his captains as aides came and went. Enhancement kept the outer chill at bay, but he hugged the fire’s light, refusing to think about what lay beyond its reach. The chainmail on his right arm was stiff with other men’s dried blood, his implants were busy with half a dozen small wounds, and he’d never been so tired in his life.

Branahlks whistled as some dragoons herded in more prisoners, and a messenger came in with a report from the troops Sean had sent to watch the fleeing Guardsmen. The messenger wanted nioharqs to collect another half-dozen abandoned guns, and Tamman cudgeled his brain until he remembered who to send him to. Another messenger trotted up on a drooping branahlk to a

The officers raised a tired cheer, and Tamman saw Sean wince before he raised a hand to acknowledge it. His friend’s face was like iron as they clasped forearms tiredly, and the two of them stared into the fire together.

Stomald closed two more dead eyes, then rose from aching knees. The captured priests and under-priests of the Temple would have nothing to do with him. They spat upon him and reviled him, but their dying soldiers saw only his vestments and heard only his comforting voice.

He closed his own eyes, swaying with fatigue, and whispered a prayer for the souls of the dead. For the many dead of both sides, and not for his own, alone. Pardal had not seen such slaughter, nor such crushing victory, in centuries, yet there was no jubilation in Stomald’s heart. Thankfulness, yes, but no one could see such suffering and rejoice.

A slender arm steadied him, and he opened his eyes. The Angel Harry stood beside him. Her blue-and-gold garments were spattered with blood, and her face was drawn, her one eye shadowed, but she looked at him with concern.