A look of concentration passed over Asea’s face. Out of the darkness the ripjack pack emerged like thunderbolts. They raced forward, hissing and snarling, and began to swarm over one of the demons, sinking their teeth into its carapace, snapping at legs, clambering up over the creature’s back, looking for weak spots. It was a battle of savage primordial fury. The ripjacks were almost as large and almost as strong as the Spider God’s children and they were driven by a berserk terrified fury.
The Ultari reared trying to throw them off. It lashed out with its scythes. One of the ripjacks was not quite quick enough and was impaled. The blades passed right through its body and pinned it to the ground. Sardec was awestruck. Somehow, while working her magic, she had managed to retain control of the pack with some small part of her mind. He had never heard of any sorcerer doing anything like it. For brief moments the Ultari were thrown back.
Sardec readied Moonshade, determined that this time, he would not be taken unawares by an Ultari. Already the spider things were reforming and attacking the ripjack pack. He looked at the men and saw that they were scared. This was not a place where human courage could hold. It was too deep beneath the earth, too dark, too filled with alien sorcery. Their foes were just too powerful. The leading Ultari had smashed its way through the pack. Its brethren behind it were beginning to mop up the ripjacks. It was going to be on them in a matter of seconds.
Asea screamed a final sentence in an inhuman tongue. She pulled the stopper on the flask. There was a surge of intolerable heat. A pillar of fire rose above them surging upwards towards the ceiling, swooping and spiralling around in the air, a trail of sparks falling from it. For a moment all fighting stopped. Even the spider demons appeared to consider this new portent in amazement.
Sardec prayed that nothing had gone wrong with her spell.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“For thousand years Yagga bound,” boomed an inhuman voice. Rik was certain that it was as much in his head as in his ears. “Now Yagga am free.”
Rik heard Asea shout something in an alien tongue.
“You still live devil-woman. Yagga change that.”
Rik looked up. The column of fire was coalescing into something else. It was five times Rik’s height, the lower half was still fire but the other half resembled a human. It had arms, shoulders and a head crowned with curling goat-like horns. The light of its blazing body drove the last of the shadows from the room, fully revealing the disturbing sight of the pods on the wall and the things that writhed within them. It stretched out towards Asea with talons that dripped flame but something prevented its grip from closing. A look of frustration passed across the demon’s features.
“Yagga still bound.”
Asea shouted something else.
Yagga’s enormous head turned. The fires in his eyes blazed brighter. A look of dismay passed across his brutish all-too-human face. “Yagga imprisoned for thousand years and now Yagga must fight the Scuttler in the Shadows!”
Something about Yagga’s tone suggested a cosmic injustice was being committed here. Perhaps it was.
Asea shouted again.
Yagga shrugged. “If Yagga must, Yagga must.”
The column of flame swirled upwards and away. From Yagga’s massive hands came balls of fire. They exploded among the Ultari driving them back, setting them alight, making them scuttle for the shadows. The enormous demon god emerging from the portal looked up to see Yagga coming. A sword of fire appeared in Yagga’s hands. With a strange sinuous motion Uran Ultar’s massive centipedal body looped up to meet him. Webs of energy spewed forth from its jaws. Yagga sliced them with his blade. Battle was joined.
“What now?” asked Sardec.
“Yagga cannot prevail against Uran Ultar,” said Asea. There was something like fear in her voice, the fear of one enormously strong who had encountered something beyond her strength. “All he can do is slow down his manifestation. We must kill the sorcerer and close the portal. He is its one remaining pole.”
The surviving Ultari regrouped and began to advance once more. There were far fewer of them, and no more appeared to be freeing themselves while Uran Ultar was engaged, but there were still enough to slaughter the depleted Foragers.
Asea made the whipping gesture with her lash. A few sparks flickered from its tip.
“Damnation,” she said. “Totally depleted.”
Excellent, thought Rik. That’s all we needed.
Overhead demon battled demon. Sword of fire clashed with web of darkness. Massive mandibles bit into elemental flesh. Yagga’s fire seemed to burn less brightly but his blows were having some effect. Great welts blackened Uran Ultar’s carapace. Rik wished Yagga had possessed sense enough to kill a few more Ultari before engaging their god, but he doubted Yagga was the brightest of demons.
Rik watched the Ultari converge around them. It looked like the Terrarchs would not be much longer for this world. It was a pity that he would be following them shortly thereafter. It also occurred to him that they were the only ones with the knowledge and the will to close this portal. If they died, the Foragers’ chances of getting out of this place were exactly nil. He wracked his brain for some way of saving the situation. Short of killing Zarahel he just could not see one.
Asea had drawn her sword. Scarlet runes glowed along its surface. Sardec had his blade in his hand. “Forward men!” he shouted. “Kill that bloody sorcerer.”
A bellow announced that the Barbarian had decided to take him at his word. He raced forward towards the glow of the pattern, shouting curses. A look of berserk fury transfigured the Barbarian’s face. Behind him went Asea and Sardec and some more of the Foragers.
Asea’s black garbed servants threw themselves between their mistress and the first of the oncoming Ultari. The blades flickered out lightning fast. Their wielders attacked as a team. When the demon gave its attention to one, he backed off, while the other attacked. It was a tactic that might have worked had there been only one of the things. As it was, a second entered the fray and drove the bodyguards apart.
Zarahel was the key to the situation. The sorcerer very badly needed to die. The only question was how to do it. Shooting him from a distance had not worked too well. The only thing he could think of was to get closer. Unfortunately that meant somehow getting through the spider demons. He took one of Karl’s glass bombs in his hand and began to move out around the flank of the Forager force. Leon followed him and much to his surprise so did Weasel.
He was not going to object; having men he could trust in a fight nearby seemed like a very good idea. The rest of the Foragers were spread out behind them now. Most of them firing wild, aiming at the demons. A few had started to back off out of the hall, preparing to flee. Rik could see Sergeant Hef kicking their arses, literally pushing them back towards the fight.
The Barbarian had managed to get on the back of an Ultari and was driving his blade again and again into the beast beneath his feet, rising to his full height and then falling to his knees to plunge his blade home. The Ultari bucked and reared trying to throw him off but somehow the big man managed to keep his position until at last the beast crumpled below him. Unhesitatingly he threw himself clear, leaping from its back, aiming to bestride the closest in the same way. All the time, he raved and cursed like a lunatic. Unfortunately as he landed, his boots slipped and he fell out of Rik’s sight. The Ultari backed off, and its huge scything forearms rose and fell. When they rose again, they were covered in red blood. And that, thought Rik, was the end of that.
“Bastard,” Weasel cursed. “He deserved better.”
“Well, let’s do something to even the score.”