Hell and Damnation.

  The ‘sky’ above was the playground of a blind and criminally insane weaver, the tools of her craft spread and mixed together in the most hideous of shag carpets. He struggled to make sense of it, of a thousand sickly iridescent colors, each distinct and clear, each existing in a single unbroken thread, and yet he failed. It was no muddle, there was no blending and no contamination, and yet… His mind rebelled and he forced himself to look down.

  There was no pattern. Nor rhyme, no reason, not even so much of a fragment of order. No weft to warp about, but plenty of warping even so as every color twisted back and forth, to and fro, wiggling like demented worms…

  He jerked his mind away, as he had his eyes, focusing on the ground, on the now.

  And it wasn’t much better. Black and yellow fought for supremacy in a blasted, flattish plain of fire, acrid smoke and HaTe. The insane weaver god who wove the sky, took up painting for the earth below. And not just the image of it, his eyes and the back of his throat burned and itched already, while even his fellows were by turns washed out, fatter, skinnier, shorter or taller.

  The very light cast by the sky twisted his perceptions and made his gorge rise.

  For a few moments, then the seemingly empty plain, if he could ignore the scattered burning rocks, the geysers of oily, foul smoke, the- he stopped the runaway thought as the plain exploded into motion.

  Nasty skittering short, quick moving bipeds exploded from every crack or hole in the terrain. Here 2 arms, there, 5. Each with hands reversed, palms outward. Here fur and horns, their scales and bits of carapace. Claws or nails, tails or vestigial wings.

  Their legs had too many joints, and bent oddly before their owners launched themselves in a rolling, jumping gate that saw them bounding 6 or 7 feet in the air with every step. His skin crawled, and not just from the sheer ugliness.

  This was… familiar.

  Then there was no more time.

  “BRACE!” he bellowed, letting the Golden Order spring out and illuminate every man, hiding a grunt as the familiar drain hit him. Like being struck with a mental bat, if a light one. He ignored it with the ease of long practice.

  Shields and spears dropped, braced as the already formed walls responded nearly without thought. Training and discipline momentarily overcoming nausea, confusion and horror.

  Booom! The lines met as small bodies hurled themselves at tower shields and the men who wielded them. They struck true, and bounced back as the second and third ranks leaned into the first, offering support, and a sump to absorb the shock.

  A Decurion began it, a young one and for all that he was a bit hesitant at first, his voice rang out, loud and clear. “One!” By habit, the younger trainees struck out with a waist high thrusts, quick as they could manage, out and in. A neat, useful blow considering the 3 foot-ish height of their opponents.

  “Two!” More voices joined in and the men responded, following the familiar count and struck low for legs or feet, on a human at least, here it was still hitting torsos and the occasional groin.

  “Three!” The recovered spear followed the circular movement of the thrusting arm, pulling back, then up and back down in an overhead thrust.

  Ethan smiled and let the 8 count training drill ring out. It was a solution. Not the best perhaps, as the drill was meant to train blows, not to trap men into a particular readable, predictable pattern. But it worked here.

  Overcoming the alien with the familiar. He’d have to buy young Bertrude a drink later. Because as much as storytellers liked to pretend. The perfect answer was a rare thing in combat. And good enough was exactly that.

  So long as you kept an eye out for better, of course.

  “3rd Hunters, prepare to volley forward, 80 paces.” He called out easily, shifting his spear up and forward to provide the vector. He waited a few beats, then “Volley!” With the hash the light was making of his sight, he didn’t expect the men to be able to pick out targets, but then, high angle volley fire aimed at real estate, not individuals anyway.

  Three dozen bows twanged, releasing their loads to the twisted sky, and the resulting rain sleeted through a knot of approaching… creatures. He didn’t examine that thought too far, carefully calling out the shots, gentling his slightly spooked mare beneath him with his confident seat and a few neck pats, more heard than felt through the scaled barding and using his superior height to direct the quickly stabilizing conflict.

  It wasn’t perfect, and here and there men went down, flashing claws, biting teeth or even the occasional thrown rock sliding past shields, spears and armor. Sections of the line became unstable, shifting nervously beneath the alien light.

  And then the veterans were there. The double handful of Principus, old Bandsman who’d made the change, weren’t enough to form a real unit. But they made their presence felt anyway. Offering a word here, a taunt or an exhortation. Patting a shoulder, stepping into a hole in the line. Nor were they alone in it.

  Decurions stepped forward as well. Pulsing skills where they had them, offering direction and assurances, just by their presence and lack of panic, that all was under control.

  And over and above even that, were the command staff.

  A thrown spear pinned two jumpers together and launched them out of the formation in a throw Ethan would have sworn was impossible. Leo grinned savagely from the corner of his eye, reading Ethan’s disbelief easily from his shoulders and completely unbothered by anyone else’s definition of possible.

  Guile, laughing madly, paved a clearing to his left, great sword flashing out like a scythe at harvest, low, flat spinning arcs piled one on top of each other, the heavy blade never coming to a complete halt as he anchored its swings as much as he swung them.

  Behind him he could hear and feel it in the pulse of the battlefield. Adelbert was anchored the rear line. And he did it with style, killing a trio of leakers, then taking the opening provided with ease. Stabilizing not just the breach, but the men with a quiet launch and an utterly self-confident, and contagious. Ethan nodded. He was coming along quite nicely. Quite nicely indeed.

  All he needed was to get out of his own way, and a battlefield wasn’t a bad place for that. There was no time for self-pity or overthinking here. Only the adrenaline, the heart-pounding excitement that could be found few places else.

  Oh yes, it was settling. Shields were up, spears flashing out in organized, disciplined waves. Bleeding the tide, bit by bit. The specialty of the Legion. They could win this just so. Steadily, carefully grinding down the undisciplined surf…

  It would just take a while. And who knew what else might show up in that time.

  No, no.

  Not today. “Prepare to pass cavalry!” His voice pulsed out again, lining the Lancers behind him and the lines to his left in new light. The line and Guile beyond it, already surrounded by piles of bodies, and relieving the pressure from the line in the process.

  He squeezed Celer’s ribs with his legs, firming his seat as she started forward, giving her a step or two to build momentum, and feeling the heavy hoofbeats following him in turn. “You have the command, Squire Adelbert. Do me proud.”

  “Pass!”

  The 3 lines of men elegantly compacted small rectangles of six men deep, each with an open space between them. An opening the horrors exploited, for a brief moment, then the cavalry struck, at a lower speed than Ethan would like, but needs must. His spear struck out, but it was Celer’s flashing hoofs, each far larger than the heads he kicked in, that did the real work. Stomping over, and through the tide of chaotic cretins.

  “Contere! Contere eos!” The call rose in a wavery, bloodthirsty shriek. And Ethan added his voice to the call, even as his mind, that ever active beast disagreed. They weren’t shattering this enemy. That implied they had a form to shatter! The tide didn’t shatter, but their hoofs and spears evaporated it.

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  And that, that would do!

  Then they were through and into the open. Ethan whistled, loud and warbling above the noise of the crowd, his spear raised and shifting to point out a new line as they bent their course, then slashed back through the waves of the opponents.

  Massing speed and momentum, the two true weapons of heavy cavalry, and weapons that commanded battlefields for a reason. Combined with high-end Tier 2 troops, the amount of power projected in one place, a place that moved faster than even similarly tiered opponents could hope to redeploy, was nearly unstoppable.

  They rode them down.

  Never in frontal blows, but picking a new side, a new direction as their foes were fixed by the infantry, distracted by an insane knight with a two-handed sword, or fragmented by massed arrows.

  In 6 consecutive charges, he cut their enemies to ribbons, till even their chaotic madness couldn’t take it anymore and they broke. Running, releasing high quavering screams of fear and pain that reminded him of crushed glass or bone on slate.

  It was, nauseating. And so, he responded the only way he could.

  By killing them.

  Infantry stepped aside to present blocks of hunters, releasing volleys to order, timed carefully between passes as Ethan punished them with his greater speed.

  And if one monster in 10 made it back to their dens, then he wasn’t doing his job.

  Not that it helped them, with Philangites right behind, thrusting long spears into the holes and fishing about with bladed crossbraces.

  The field was theirs.

  And yet… He felt no elation.

  Only a familiar dread. He knew this fight. Had fought its kind for most of his adult life…

  He took a deep breath, glancing around to find the veterans staring back at him, equal disquiet in their eyes.

  Fuck.

  He took a deep, considering breath. Refusing to be rushed, and yet… It wasn’t really a choice. And waiting would accomplish nothing.

  “By Oath, Need and Imperial Will, I call the Exterminatus.”

  “Exterminatus!” The veterans barked back. No cheer, no bellow. Simply a determined, relentless promise. And they weren’t alone in that. Many of the younger Hastati chanted it with them. Men who’d served in the labor battalions on the front needed no explanation here.

  Only those picked up along the way looked confused. Riverlanders and those of the Great Forest. But they didn’t have to wait long.

  “We do not suffer the Demonic to live.” He offered softly, his voice carrying. “Let the reserves be called up, the levies raised and the rift ringed in trenchments. Let all grudges be put aside, let the great game be paused. Until this rift is broken.”

  “Until this rift is broken.” They repeated, to the man.

  And so it must be.

  ___

  “-missive to Magister Blake first. Then Sir Conner.”

  “Aye Milord.”

  “Good Lucious. But repeat it back to me, just in case.”

  “Don’t run, don’t separate from my squad and don’t be careless. A steady jog down the mountain. Stop at the guard tower to raise the Red on Black banner, then straight to the Stone proper. First missive, and a verbal report on the rift to Magister Blake. If we can flag Sir Conner down on the way, then report to both together. But the Magister comes first.”

  “Good enough. Take a drink and get a bit of rest. Shouldn’t be more than a half hour till the portal refreshes.”

  “Yes Milord.”

  Ethan nodded, then turned and walked away, giving the medics and the, thankfully few, wounded a glance. No deaths. And frankly, that left him waiting for Tycelus, she who controlled the flows of fate and fortune, to drop the other shoe. Not that he was ungrateful, he offered a quiet, heartfelt prayer under his breath, but it just made a man a bit nervous.

  But if there were no deaths, there were more than a few serious injuries. Including a tourniquet leg that would have to be amputated if they couldn’t get the man to Blake in the next hour or two and two others so severely concussed that they couldn’t stand up straight much less speak.

  Those… well, those were at Hectai’s mercy. A man with that kind of blow to the head might recover after a night of rest, or never wake up from the same. And unlike most other wounds, even magic could be a bit chancy with it.

  And beside that, two dozen more sporting clawed wounds of various types, and if he knew demons, each and every one was a septicemia outbreak waiting to happen. He shook his head softly, recalculating healing costs versus downtime and available troop numbers.

  At least it was a plane. Plenty of lovely room to maneuver. And with a fast, deadly cavalry core, not to mention a large chunk of archers ready to soften up hard targets, he would use and abuse that advantage all day long.

  “They might not be, you know.” Ethan bit back a startled oath as Leo appeared at his elbow.

  “Shii… Dammit Leo. Not now, and definitely not here.” He managed, paying the resource costs to keep the words private.

  Leo nodded agreeably, not that it meant much. Ethan wasn’t even sure he did it on purpose.

  But the glint in the man’s eye, and a long history between them of seeing the same, told him one thing. He certainly enjoyed it!

  And if most of two decades hadn’t discouraged the behavior, a few harsh words weren’t going to now, no matter how agreeably he looked.

  Ethan let his breath out and forced himself to let it go. It was a small price to pay for what he received in return.

  “They might not be.” The man repeated, nodding to a pile of demonlings, already being processed for usable materials.

  “Might not be what?” Ethan shot back, a bit shorter than he intended.

  Not that Leo appeared to care, Ethan knew better than to think he didn’t notice.

  Ethan took a deeper breath and gave the man an apologetic shrug.

  “Might not be demons.” The words hit him like the colors of the not sky above. Clear, perceptible, but utterly incomprehensible.

  “What now?”

  Leo raised a single finger. “Inspect says Rakshasa Spawn.”

  “All of them I expect.” Ethan fired back.

  “Yes.” Leo agreed easily.

  “So, random number of arms, nonsensical, non-efficient growth patterns,” Like palms pointing outward, he could see no benefit in that. It didn’t make claw attacks more dangerous; it didn’t make holding onto a weapon, not that they bothered, any easier. It just looked a bit scary. Well… that might be a purpose, but he doubted it. “Extra joints, alternating fur, scales or chitin, sometimes all three on one. Some with tails, others wings. Sounds like chaos to me.”

  Leo shook his head, raising a second finger. “All of them had the hands. All had two legs. And no extra joints, just walking on their toes.”

  Ethan glanced at him, then down at the bodies on the pile. The legs, even with their owners dead, didn’t extend straight down. But forward and down from the torso, then hooked backwards after what looked like a boney, spiked knee to what he could now recognize as an ancle joint, then another foot of limb at nearly the same angle as the upper thigh, leading down to two large, prehensile toes, ones without toe nails or claws, but with an odd bony growth that looked nearly like a sock.

  The angles of the limbs were different, and some toes were longer or shorter. But as he kept looking the similarities started to stand out. It was still chaotic, but not… well not completely so. Variations on a theme.

  Damn… or Grace? Shit. He’d just as soon not be wrong on such a pronouncement, but at the same time, no one wanted a new front to the demon war!

  Leo raised a third finger. “The Portal said Malefic, not Demonic.”

  Ethan shrugged, less confident now, but this was less convincing than the rest. “Chaos doesn’t always follow the rules. A different archduke, a different name.” He offered easily.

  Leo shrugged, but held his eye for a few seconds, then dipped his hand to his belt and came up with a coin pouch. “Bet?”

  “Fuck.” Ethan spat, giving the scout a resentful glance. He wouldn’t win that bet. Few indeed did. When Leo offered, it was because it was a sure thing.

  Ethan glanced away, running the idea over in his head. He’d proclaimed the Exterminatus. It could not be simply pulled back with a Mulligan. The social cost…

  They were high. Not impossible, that was just his ego speaking. He had more than enough stored up respect to survive such a reversal…

  But.

  It would be expensive, socially if not fiscally. And was there a need?

  He lined up the costs of each path. On the right, eat the social costs of maybe being wrong. Stand down the messengers, leave the reserves where they were and leave the villagers to tend their lands. And so long as he could close the rift without additional help, it would merely become a cautionary tale of misidentification.

  If they could close the rift easily.

  On the left, lost progress in the fields, on the buildings, and excess stress on the reserves. They were on reserve to get a bit of a break after heavy duty. It wasn’t something he’d interrupt casually.

  Well, the costs were obvious. But what about the benefits?

  Benefit one: no risks, a certainty that they could and would close this rift. If it had the slightest chance of connecting to the demonic plane, he’d not risk leaving it. And with more men called up, his casualties would drop. Not a bad thing on its own. At the expense of less depth if an emergency cropped up… like this one? He hid a snort.

  He’d see how his people responded under a stress test. That wasn’t a bad thing. Even if it wasn’t needed now, it would be sometime. Finding out what worked and what didn’t could only be a good thing.

  And it would remind them, villagers, shopkeepers and armsmen, of why they needed to push themselves, of what lay just over the horizon waiting for those who slacked off. Of why they needed unity. There was always the chance of a demon rift appearing, or an Elder Tentacled type, or a High Fae… He shuddered at the thought. Please, Lady Tycelus, don’t let that be the other shoe!

  Maybe a demon rift wasn’t… He paused and turned the idea around to give it another look. Maybe this wasn’t such a rift. But he wasn’t alone in identifying it as such. It really was close… Indeed, it was close enough.

  To an outside observer.

  How would the Raven see this? A Baronett doing his duty, perhaps overly enthusiastically, but that was always better than the alternative. He would be following the Emperor’s, may his light ever shine on them, directives in spirit and in truth.

  Closing a demon rift… it would be a feather in his hat. Bragging rights amongst his fellows and that rarest and most valuable of currencies. Especially for a new noble.

  Legitimacy.

  All at what cost? A day or two of lost labor? A bit of stress on the system that would be repaid with experience?

  So be it.

  “Fine, I’ll bet my wine ration at the rift closure party. But not a word about it to anyone else.” Leo’s eyes lit up as he nodded rapidly. Fuck, that lovely [higher quality table wine]. But it was worth the cost. Leo likely wasn’t wrong, but he couldn’t allow him to be publicly right.

  Best to pay in private, acknowledge his insight in private. And publicly do what he must.

  It was possible to have your cake and eat it too. Ethan reflected. Then, more sardonically, if you bribed others with the wine that went with it.

  ___