The Song of Roland Ch. 19

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The battle for the Cult's Village begins.
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Part 17 of the 23 part series

Updated 06/08/2023
Created 10/22/2016
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The Warrior stood, a grey shadow in the midst of dark edifices. His hand clenched about the vulgar blade he bore unfettered from his scabbard, a glittering shine dancing across its slitted contours. The thing moved with a micron's wobble, as though the deadly tip were balanced on a string by an unseen pendulum swinging high above the overcast fog. He turned, feeling the wind in his face and cold moisture on his flesh. A shallow snow was falling, getting heavier and descending from the grey and blackening sky in an ever-growing tumult.

The atmosphere was silent; the wind providing the only sound as it howled an alpine articulation, verbalizing the same chill that ran through the Warrior's body in climatic form. He was warm, protected by his dandyish dress, yet unnerved by the foreign tones that cackled in the night shadows.

Suddenly, a movement.

A small, grey shade leapt forward from the murk and snow. Its hands reached out, extending to slash at the Warrior's leg. He let it come close, within his guard. Just as it moved to slice his belly open, he danced backward, stepping with sure feet and thrusting his blade forth into its core. The hazy thing recoiled, impaled by the long limb of metal. There was a sickening sound of squishing flesh, and an inhuman screech.

The Warrior planted his foot against the Imp and pushed while dragging at his hilt. It twitched upon his blade, scrabbling at him with faltering arms and a slackening face. He jerked it free in one, swift pull. For a moment he held the blade up, staring at the red, boiling blood that coated it. It seemed to almost glow in the fading light. There was a second snarl, and he brought it back down into a guarded position.

From behind a nearby hovel two ran out, circling from each side of the building in an attempt to trap the Warrior between them. Instead of stepping back and having to face them from both sides, he opted instead to sprint towards one of them. They met at the doorstep of the house, a candle lamp hanging in the entryway as he heard another roaring sound from the horn inside the inner courtyard of the Cloister. He took a wild swing, but the creature ducked, snarling at him with a crocodile's snout of blackened teeth.

It leapt to him, slamming him against the wood pillar upon which the lamp hung. Using the force of its momentum, the beast swiped at him, raking at his clothing. The Warrior grabbed the horrid thing by the scruff of its wrinkled neck, ripping it off of him before it could find purchase. It kicked and snapped in futility at him, dangling as it was above the ground. By the time it reached up to claw his captor's arm the better half of the sword was sticking from its neck stump. The thing went limp, and the Warrior dropped his encumbered weapon, making a note to retrieve it later.

He pulled free the dagger at his belt, its excessive length a godsend once it was actually out from its sheath. He held it in front of him, close to the chest, keeping it between himself and the little red thing with the curling ram's horns and the baby face. The Imps eyes bugged out of its head, the look in its crimson irises one of imbecilic acrimony, mindless animosity given physical form. It's fat, disgusting prick stuck up past its potbelly in the air, as if aroused at the thought of inflicting violence and shame against another. It grinned at the Warrior, licking its wormy lips with a spiderleg-thick tongue, sliding it between its razor teeth as it flossed its bloody gums.

The Warrior feinted, lowering his head and jerking forward as if to strike. The Imp took the bait, leaping forth to skewer him as its legs propelled it in an uncontrolled burst of rage. His foe stepped aside, stabbing with extreme prejudice down into the monster's shoulder blade and skewering it from stem to sternum. The blade became a replacement for its spine, severed as it was by the harsh cut. The Imp screamed, its knobby arms reaching up to jerkily try to remove the fatal blade. The Warrior kicked it, sending it falling face first into the snow as it expired in rapid fashion.

His breath steamed out in the frigid air, the white contrasting in the light of the lamp. Looking around, he could see that lights were going out all across the village. It seems they had not been expecting to be attacked so soon. There was a long silence as he caught his breath, walking out to retrieve his sword first. Shouting arose in the distance, the sound of many people in a mixed state of worry and distress. No clashing steel, yet. No sign of a great wave of monsters in the darkness, though perhaps it was premature to expect it. As he pulled his sword off the Imp, the door behind the Warrior opened.

"Are... Are they gone, sir?" Said a voice. It was an elderly woman, wrinkled skin and grey, dull eyes. Her face was filled with fear, her gnarled hand clenched about a small fetish of the God of Fire Gosvin's holy symbol: a five pointed star whose connective lines were liquid flame. "We heard the horns, but then... the scratching-"

"They're gone. For the moment. And don't call me Sir." Roland grunted, wiping his blade clean upon the ground only after he'd retrieved his dagger from the lifeless corpse of his opponent. The horn blared again; lights were going out in windows all across the village. "Best get to the gate, yeah? Seems they were just a scouting party. More of 'em will be along soon."

"Can you help us, stranger?" She asked, "The night is dark, and the way isn't safe. My granddaughter-"

No. Roland said in his head, thinking of Kelsea and knowing that her presence would draw the filthy beasts' attentions like moths to a flame. Against his own instincts he gave a curt nod. "Aye." He said, cutting her off, "Be quick about it, though. More o' them things are likely lurking about."

"May the Spider's gaze fall upon you!" She said, breathing a sigh of relief. "Half a moment, we just need to hide our-"

"Ya got ten seconds, woman." Roland spat back, reaching up and ripping her lantern off the nail it had been hung upon. "Else I'm like to leave you and your granddaughter to the wolves."

Roland grimaced to himself as the old crone closed the door in a rush; the sound of something thumping could be heard inside. The red-maned man leaned against the hovel and put a hand against his forehead. His fingers massaged at the wrinkles that had built like lines of care upon his grizzled face. "Gods." He muttered, swiping the hand down to cover his mouth. He squeezed against his jaw, feeling the bristles of his beard as he tried to steady his racing heartbeat.

He could never get used to them. Despite a dozen run-ins with Imps over the years, Roland was as unnerved by their presence as he'd been the day he'd first laid eyes upon them; even the undead were better company than these monsters. All the evil that constituted a Demon dwelt within the malignant frames of those hellish beasts, stripped of any comforting familiarity. Their movements were inhuman, their facial expressions hideous and abominable. Every thought was of abuse, every action borne of malice. The way they looked at you... Roland knew the look. It was the same one that Kelsea wore, when the Mating Haze was upon her. She'd even borne the infamous expression just today, when her sickness had rendered her deranged and ravenous.

Roland let out a hefty breath, steadying himself against the comforting strength of the wall behind him. In moments like this, his old, cynical self resurfaced: concerns he'd thought he'd put to bed arose again to subsume him in their insipid futility. This is what she is, It said to him as he looked down at the dead Imp, Once you peel the skin off of her false face, this is what will be staring back at you. Roland matched eyes with the thing's upturned gaze: glassy and still filled with hatred, even in death. He spat on its corpse.

The two villagers filed out of their hut soon after, the old woman closing the door and locking it, as if such minimal security could protect their home from the ravenous rapine that faced them. The woman's granddaughter, a maiden no older than fourteen, bowed her head in Roland's direction. "Thank you, Brother." She said, intoning her gratitude like a prayer in his direction. "Without your help, and the seven good eyes of the Spider, we might have been blinded by the eighth this day."

"I ain't yer 'Brother,' and I'm not no fuckin' Sir." Roland said, sheathing both his sword and dagger one after the other. He lifted and lowered the latter with a nervous slide in and out of its holster. "And Demons don't care a whit for Gods and Spiders. So let's be off."

"I'm... sorry, if we offended you." The young woman said, shifting uneasily in her pale robes. Roland looked her up and down. She was a wiry thing, a pale faced youth of modest looks but fair complexion. He looked at her hands, dainty limbs with too few callouses. The world had not caressed her with its pernicious touch yet.

"You didn't. Hurry up." He growled, leading the way through the winding trail in the direction of the gate.

The commotion of the Imp attack, combined with the blaring of the horn finally seemed to have raised the alarm. There was a wide stream of people rushing towards the relative safety of the circular stone walls of the Inner Cloister. Roland was soon leading a small troupe of assorted parishioners, young and old in a concentrated mass towards the gate. Their reactions to him were a marked difference to how he'd initially been greeted earlier in the day: seeing a weapon in his hand, their judging eyes looked to him for protection rather than glaring in disdain. They swept themselves up in his wake, like clinging fish in a school, following a leader who didn't know where safety was any better than they did.

They reached the southern gates of the Inner Cloister, whose toothy portcullis was still raised. The peasants immediately began to stream inwards, flooding the narrow gateway with people pushing and shoving to get into the unseen core of the Cult's settlement. Muted cries for "Sanctuary!" and muffled praying could be heard over the ruckus. With how many humans there were in the crowd of believers, the name of Gosvin seemed to be on everyone's lips. Seeing a set of worried looking archers standing in a line above the gate, Roland called up to them. "Oi!" He yelled, "Demons are comin'!"

"We know!" Called down the eldest of them, a hook-nosed bulk with greying hair and a frizzed black mustache. Roland could tell by the way he wore his leather armor that he was no warrior. The uncomfortable stance he took as he awkwardly tried to stand atop the battlements, the nervous way he fingered his sword at his hip... this was a peasant playing at soldier. The Cult of the Wounded Spider really was down to its final dregs. "We're trying to get the innocents inside." The peasant replied.

"-And when're you comin' out?" Roland asked. "The Imps have already sent out a scouting party, and the fog is rolling in. They'll be here any minute!"

"Almyra's command was to defend the inner gate." The man answered. "She instructed the congregation to stay within the inner walls. Our Priests and our Gods protect the Outer Cloister tonight."

"My fuckin' sword is 'protecting' you, tonight!" Roland thundered back. "And you cunts won't let me or my people inside the inner walls!"

"It's forbidden. You're an outsider." The Guard replied.

Roland was apoplectic. "An outsider who's saving yer people's lives, ya spineless prick! What are we supposed to do out here? The Outer Cloister's palisade won't stand forever!"

"Pray, brother." The man said grimly. "Pray to the merciful Gods that you might be granted pity from the pitiless one."

Roland turned hard on his heel, staring at the wooden gatehouse of the outer wall. It that was the focal point of the much larger, square perimeter of the Outer Cloister's less defensible palisade. He could see faces atop its battlements as well. These were the remnants of whatever force of arms that had once defended this place: staffed with old veterans and raw recruits. A half dozen of them stood in stony silence above him, notably facing inward rather than outward towards the night. Bows were in their hands, arrows in quivers set to their sides. A quick glance at the gatehouse stairs confirmed it: they'd barricaded the doors and sealed the gate. Roland was stuck, trapped in the valley between two plateaus of humanity in a sea of incoming fog.

"Fuck." He muttered, summing up the entirety of his predicament in a single, calcifying word. He had to find Kelsea.

He left behind the trickling stream of persons through the winding streets, making his way back towards the hovel, keeping the outer palisade to his left as he went. The crowds were getting much thinner now, only the unaware and the inattentive were still outside the protection of the stone walls, and even they were moving with all haste towards them. The fog had finally reached them; the lamps were on all across the Outer Cloister, tiny beacons of illumination amongst a sea of blackness, like little fireflies dotting the way. Roland got turned around once or twice making his way back, but at last he found the proper path, stepping between the footprints embedded in the snow to minimize slipping in the icy conditions.

He got within a hundred yards of the hovel, before the sky exploded.

Like night turning to blazing, hellish day, a burst of light arose from one end of the Cloister, on the outside of the flimsy barricades. A blue sun roared into being from the other side of the wall, just behind Kelsea's hovel. Blasting torrents of balefire licked their way up the pointed tops of the palisade, spilling up and over in a waterfall of fire that swept across the nearby houses, setting them all ablaze in the space of seconds. The wave of flame crested and peaked, moving like a lava flow in front of Roland as it sped across a chunk of the Outer Cloister, saturating the area like a flash flood.

Roland leapt back, his face singed from the sheer heat erupting across the ground. The wall was on fire, cracking and splitting apart, burning away in the space of seconds. The buildings all around were straw torches that went up like tinder, their heads pillars of blue flame as their bodies shuddered and crumbled. Nearly a third of the houses around were caught by the sudden blaze.

Roland turned his horrified gaze to where Kelsea's hovel had been, the pit in his stomach falling to the back of his heels. It had gone up just like the others: the roof little more than a roaring conflagration. He felt a wave of aberrant nausea, followed by a deep-seated panic. The heat was so intense from the areas that had been hit that the snow itself had melted in moments, revealing dead grass beneath that soon was itself consumed. The fire ate away at the floor and died, sputtering out in wide pockets, revealing charred dirt. As the fire abated, Roland leapt into the fray, heedless of the danger as he sprinted between the conjured infernos, touches of blue licking at his heels.

"Kelsea!" He shouted as he reached the porch. "Kelsea!" He screamed, leaping at the door in an attempt to rip it open. He put a hand atop the metal handle and jerked it away, scalding his fingers. He kicked at the door, but the flames were too powerful; his face burned from the very presence of this evil balefire. It seared hotter than anything naturally made, save that of a furnace; simple proximity to the heat was enough to boil one's blood. Overcome, Roland staggered back, holding his arm in front of his face as he tried to shield himself from the worst of its effects.

He fought the rising panic in his breast as he desperately tried to think of a way inside the dying house. His mind worked in abject despair to rectify the situation. This was no mere cataclysm, nor even a Priest's spell. The fire was blue, as hot as the eighth helspire and astoundingly potent. There was only one explanation, only one place from whence the source of this thing could have come from.

The Imps had brought a Demon with them to play, tonight.

In the distance, from the direction of the destroyed palisade behind Kelsea's hovel, Roland heard something that made his blood run cold: the sound of footsteps. Hundreds of tiny, scrabbling feet. And laughter; lilting, sultry, feminine laughter.

______________________________________________________________________________

"Gosvin, God of Righteous Flame, watcher of the weak and bearer of the Fiery Crown: I pray for your mercy, and for your forgiveness." Kelsea could hear Almyra's voice, soft and wavering like a supplicant's faltered faith.

"Gosvin, Lord of the Guiding Heat, protect this sacred place with the warmth of your benevolence. Let your humble servants live to see the rise of your eternal, watchful eye. Let the flame of our passions burn away all doubt and fear. Guide us with your light, the everlasting torch that blazes in the darkness."

Kelsea stared down at the Priestess locked in prayer; Roland had gone, some time before. She did not know when he would be back, but she did not dare to leave Almyra alone in this place. She'd been like this for minutes now, bent-backed and irresolute in the face of the coming ordeals. It was unnerving for Kelsea to see her like this: the onetime human had always seen the Priesthood as the ultimate source of confidence and certainty in one's cause. Yet here she sat, wracked with guilt and indecision in the midst of great danger.

"Gosvin, Maker of the Spark: the Forgespirit that burns within us, help me. Give me the strength to endure this trial." She could see Almyra's clasped hands softly trembling. "Give me the s-strength to-"

A grave and lucid image swam to the fore of Kelsea's thoughts: memories of an earlier time, in the darkness of a fetid cave filled with agony and regrets. Grevich had been there, alongside his horde of barking, screeching brutes. The dark curve of his worm-lipped smile, monstrous and maleficent in the blue light of the balefire-lit cave as he condemned his sobbing, praying bed slave to yet another night in the Imp pens.

He'd even brought some of the creatures along with him, allowing them to jeer at her in her moment of horror as they surrounded her naked form, groping her body and scratching her flesh with their little claws. She'd laid, curled up in a ball upon the cold rock as Grevich grimly pointed down at the spot of muck she had failed to scrub away in his absence. Kelsea could not see what taint he pointed to, but it was irrelevant. She'd cleaned it, She had thought, having long ago lost her sense of self. She'd cleaned it all! She had! She had! She had! She'd been good, this time!

Even after her own name had died in her addled mind, the girl in the cave had remembered the name Gosvin, had kept enough of her humanity to pray for his mercy whenever she was alone, and the ears of her master could not overhear her blasphemous request. In the cave, there was no God but Grevich, and the only way to properly pray to him was...

A momentary, animalistic fear gripped Kelsea as she drifted to that lonely place in her mind, where the only voice that spoke to her was the one that even now was telling her to take the woman praying next to her as her plaything. She is yours. It said with his maddeningly condescending tone, She is weak. Make her your pet. Break her in, like I broke you. Kelsea shuddered.

It was only with great difficulty that she managed to reach down, touching Almyra's slender shoulder. "Your Holiness, we have to-"

Almyra roughly shook Kelsea's hand from her shoulder. "Do not touch me, Demon!" She growled, her copper eyes flashing as her brow pulled up in harsh denunciation. She looked half-mad, her wild dress almost shimmering in the low light. "Have you no shame, disturbing me in my moment of prayer? Will you give me no peace even now, even after you've sullied me?"