I'm on TDY from Hell Page 2
First, he was a giant, a literal giant. The guards standing at attention throughout the golden hall were huge, but they paled in comparison to this man. He stood almost three times as tall, approaching twenty feet, and twice as thick. He was clad from head to foot in gleaming silver armor, which unlike the black armor of the guards, seemed to radiate power not drain it away. In his right hand, blade down, was a broadsword taller and thicker than Gerald. In his left hand, tucked into the crook of his elbow, was a helmet of the same gleaming silver metal inlaid with a golden crown.
Despite his impossible height, everything from the shoulders down on this man was normal.
Then Gerald made the mistake of looking at his face.
Gerald had seen the Frenchmen with their wigs, powder, and perfume arriving from Paris to engage in trade. The women swooned over them. They called them handsome, beautiful, and magnificent. Gerald had never liked those men, he’d always thought of them as weak.
This man’s face put those Frenchmen to shame. He made them look like dirt. Gerald had no qualms thinking this man could take any woman, despite her virtue, into his bed. The giant’s jaw was broad, his cheekbones as high as any English aristocrat’s, and his eye was the piercing gray of a stormy sea.
One gray eye was scanning the men and women assembled before him, while the other socket was empty and the space around it charred black.
Gerald quickly averted his gaze as the giant’s attention swept over his section of the formation. Once Gerald was sure the giant’s attention had passed he looked again.
Despite the burned out eye socket the man’s face was flawless. On top of his head was a small patch of raven black hair. It was not long, as was the current style. It looked like it was kept intentionally short.
Gerald would have spent more time wondering why a Lord was so out of touch with modern trends, but then his eyes caught what rose up behind the giant’s back. Rising above the smooth armor of the giant’s shoulders were tarnished, white wings.
Just as Gerald laid eyes on them the giant spread them out to their full length and smiled at them. The whole mass of men and women recoiled, not because the tarnished part of the giant’s wings was clearly dried, rust-colored blood, but because of the man’s smile.
Rows of sharp, jagged teeth grinned out at Gerald and the people around him. It was eerily similar to the teeth of a shark Gerald had seen hanging at the port of Boston.
“Behold, Prince Seere, Master of Thieves, The Great Dissenter. Kneel before your master!” The man who’d led them to meet this monster yelled as he prostrated himself on the ground.
Gerald quickly followed their leader’s example, and soon the rest of the formation did as well.
Prince Seere didn’t speak he just gazed out at them with his predatory smile.
“On your feet!” Their leader yelled.
Gerald hurried to obey. The giant was now seated on a throne of gold, and he was still taller than everyone in the room.
“Approach and enter our Lord’s service.”
Gerald did not envy the first man to approach the giant. The man was the biggest of the first line, half a head taller than Gerald, and he was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Slowly, and awkwardly, the man got on his knees before the Lord’s feet and gave one giant toe a quick kiss.
The tall man’s lips had barely left the Lord’s feet when the giant waved his hand in dismissal. The tall man stumbled getting to his feet. The Lord waved his hand again and the tall man went flying across the room. He hit the wall with a hard THUMP and did not get up.
Gerald gasped. Nothing had touched the man. He’d been picked up and thrown by the Lord’s gesture.
The Lord didn’t even glance in the broken man’s direction as an armored guard effortlessly scooped him up and carried him away.
“Next!” Screamed their leader, pointing toward the Lord’s feet with urgency in his tone and eyes. “Or starve.”
Men and women scrambled up to kiss the feet of Prince Seere. It seemed like hours passed as hundreds debased themselves before him. Occasionally, the Lord would stop a person and look them over for a moment before waving them away.
Finally, it was Gerald’s turn. He hurried up the stairs, careful not to trip. Still, he practically fell down to both knees and kissed the giant’s big toe.
Gerald had not heard of electricity yet, so he had no accurate way of describing the feeling the surged through every nerve in his body. If he had known, he would have been able to accurately describe electrocution.
He remained kneeling, breathing heavily, and waiting for the wave of dismissal. The Lord’s one good eye seemed to cut through Gerald’s body and into his soul, or whatever else was left inside of him.
A few seconds of coiled tension passed before the Lord waved him away. With a sigh of relief Gerald scrambled to his feet and ran to reform with the other recruits. He got back into line and found himself face to face with their leader.
The man had to look up to meet Gerald’s eyes, but that didn’t make the man’s sword-point any less frightening as he jabbed it into Gerald’s sternum. “Don’t think you’ll get any special treatment because our Lord likes you.”
Gerald didn’t have any idea what the leader was talking about. So he wisely kept his mouth shut. He didn’t feel like being impaled today.
“I’ll be watching you closely, meat.” The leader sneered before walking off to make sure the rest of the formation showed proper respect to Prince Seere.
***
“Sir.” A familiar voice snapped Gerald out of his memory.
“Yes.” Gerald flexed his jaw and worked the rest of the kinks out of his body.
Now was not a good time to be stiff.
“The General requires your presence in the command tent.” Most people would give this information with a slight bow, but Gerald’s aide had been with him a long time. As long as they were in private they could drop the formalities.
And the rock outcropping that concealed his sleeping place was about a private as you could get out here.
“Tell him I’m on my way.” Gerald leaned his weapon up against the rocks and adjusted his armor.
The thick, black Infernal Iron would have crushed a normal man, but Gerald wore it with ease. In fact, he hardly ever took the breastplate off. Doing so was an invitation for anyone to stick a dagger into his heart.
He thought back to his first encounter with a member of Prince Seere’s Royal Guard and couldn’t help but smirk. The woman had been so intimidating in her full armor he had nearly wet himself. Now, the armor was something he lovingly embraced. Without it, and the Infernal power it stored and channeling into him, he wouldn’t have been able to achieve his current station.
“Have them prepare a SITREP on enemy movements before my departure,” he called after his aide.
The acronym was relatively new to Gerald’s vocabulary, but he found it appropriate. War was a constantly evolving organism, just as complicated as any woman. New meat brought new ideas into the legions. While some of those ideas were idiotic, some were invaluable and led to new tactics and doctrines that allowed Seere’s legions to conquer and maintain power.
In Hell, power was everything, which was the entire reason Gerald found himself sleeping on the side of a mountain watching the enemy’s forces draw near.
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Instruction
Gerald stepp
ed around the protective rock and emerged into the middle of an assembly area. Around him dozens of other soldiers occupied their time with assigned tasks or pre-battle rituals. A select few wore meager versions of Gerald’s breastplate. Others wore smaller bits of protection: gauntlets, chainmail made of dull metal, or just a simple wooden shield. Each man was armed and protected with what they’d earned in battle; which meant the thousand men on the mountainside, a full regiment, were a unit that hadn’t seen much action.
He eye-balled the drop to the ground at a thousand feet. Not that it mattered if anyone fell from the mountaintop. Every single soldier in this regiment had wings.
This was a regiment of what the younger soldiers called the “Airborne”.
Gerald didn’t love the term but it hit the unit description right on the nose.
“Sir Gerald.” Several soldiers stopped what they were doing, stood, and bowed as he passed.
Gerald waved them back to their tasks. He knew the value of the preparations, both physical and psychological, that the soldiers were engaged in. He didn’t want to disturb them.
But such a disturbance was virtually guaranteed. It wasn’t every day that regular soldiers saw an Infernal Knight walking among them.
Gerald stretched out his own charcoal gray wings to their full width which dissuaded anyone else from approaching. He had better things to do than speak with these soldiers. The general was waiting for him.
The soldiers around him took the hint. They returned to preparing for battle. Most were armed with crude spears or swords. Gerald spotted a small group gathered together who had pikes, battle axes, and broadswords. They were the veterans. Only time in battle could explain the armament.
Gerald watched them a moment longer before continuing to the very edge. There a winged man in a breastplate of Infernal Iron and armed with two short swords that formed an X on his back was gazing out over the desolate plains below them.
“Colonel,” Gerald greeted the regiment’s commander. “I’m on my way to see the General. Any final reports you want me to pass along.”
The Colonel, although technically outranking Gerald, bowed at the Infernal Knight’s approach.
It took something special to be a knight. In fact, there were exactly one hundred within the twenty-six, ten-thousand-man legions of Prince Seere. Gerald was no mathematician but one hundred out of two hundred and sixty thousand made him much more valuable than a single regimental commander.
“Sir Gerald,” the Colonel straightened from his bow. “I believe we have revised enemy strength estimates you can pass along.” He gave the man lying on the ground next to him a kick in the gut.
The low ranking soldier, whose wings were a dusty brown to match the mountainside, didn’t even grunt. He kept his focus on the sights of the long rifle he had nestled into his right shoulder. On the ground next to him were sketches of the battlefield. The paper contained everything from sectors of fire to range markers. The concepts were new to Gerald, but he understood their purpose and their tactical value to Prince Seere’s forces.
“Sir Gerald.” The soldier didn’t look up, but he addressed Gerald with respect. “I’ve revised the estimation of the enemy’s strength, with the input of my fellow snipers, to eight full legions of ground troops. And approximately half a legion of air support.”
Gerald took his eyes off the soldier, who identified as a scout sniper, and looked at the plains below. He drew a sliver of power from within himself and sharpened his vision. In the distance, less than an hour’s march from the mountain pass, was the black, undulating mass of the enemy army.
To the untrained eye that could cause fear or even panic, but Gerald was a veteran. He took it all in with cold calculating eyes and the certainty of victory. He would not fail.
“Thank you, Colonel. Prepare your men. I’m sure they will be needed soon.”
A cruel, savage grin split the officer’s face as Gerald turned and walked away.
Gerald gave the gathered airborne regiment another glance, but this time he looked past the physical plane. He looked at the infernal power each of them held and what they were doing with it. Most betrayed their battle-naivety by pouring their allotted power into their weapons or defenses. Pumping power into your blade, shield, or body was a necessity for foot soldiers, but it was a death-wish for the Airborne. Gerald looked down at himself and watched as the pulse of his considerably greater reservoir of power was pumped into his wings.
Wings gave a soldier tactical mobility and the high ground, but they were weak, fragile things if not properly reinforced. Since Gerald received his orders to report to the front he’d been pumping power into his wings. By the time he joined the battle they’d be stronger than armor and able to cut and stab better than most swords.
Gerald looked over his shoulder with his extra-sensory vision and gazed into the shimmering veil that was blanketed across the mountainside. His Lord might not be physically present, but he’d lent his power to the battle. The veil warped the world around them and concealed their presence while being undetectable to the enemy. The regiment would have the element of surprise when it sprang to sink its teeth into the enemy.
With a smile similar to the Colonel’s, Gerald looked away, returned his vision too normal, and walked off the opposite side of the mountain. He savored the sensation of falling, of the wind whipping around him and through his short-cropped blond hair. At the last moment he unfurled his wings to catch the updraft. If any of the novices had tried that move their wings would have snapped and they would have plunged to their death. But not Gerald. He easily pulled out of the fall and effortlessly soared over his own army’s encampment toward a large camouflaged tent in the rear.
He pulled up near the entrance and allowed himself to drop the last few feet to the ground. He landed with enough force to shake the earth. In the service of his Lord, Gerald had grown larger, broader, and stronger than humanly possible. With the addition of his full suit of armor, the Infernal Knight looked particularly terrifying to any who opposed him.
That was a gift he savored.
The guards at the tent flap were properly intimidated. They both gulped and stumbled out of his way. Gerald used his wing to push back the tent flap. It was the smart way to go in because he’d rather take a surprise attack to the wing than his unarmored head.
Despite his status, one was never safe in Hell.
“Sir Gerald.” An annoyed voice called out from a mass of armored bodies surrounding a large horizontal map at the center of the room.
Most of the commanders parted before him, like the guards at the entrance, but once he passed through them Gerald came face to face with one of the only people who scared him. The General was bigger and broader than he had been on the first day Gerald met him, but still a foot shorter than the Infernal Knight.
Gerald would never forget his first day in Hell or the Now-General’s unkind words to him. But even more important, he would always remember how his first day of training ended.
***
After they’d knelt before their new Lord and Master they marched back through the beautifully carved door and along the entire length of the golden hall. Gerald had eyes for nothing but the man’s head in front of him. He didn’t dare step out of line after the smaller man’s threat. A threat he felt the man would have no problem following through with.
He’d felt it the moment his lips touched the giant’s feet.
Gerald felt more grounded now; heavier and with more substance.
Halfway down the hall the column of recruits was met by two other men. They barked loud, angry orders and the lar
ge formation split into three smaller ones. Unfortunately, Gerald’s section still marched under the watchful eye of the small man.
On the far side of the hall stood another set of doors. These doors were unadorned utilitarian looking contraptions. Two large blocks of metal lay across the door, each supported by three giant wheels. It took twenty of the largest men Gerald had ever seen, not including their Lord, to turn the cranks that moved those slabs of metal.
Unlike the rest of the golden hall these doors were midnight black.
The three formations continued their march out of the hall and into the dull light beyond it. Gerald took his first step onto the packed earth and felt all the warmth sucked from his bones. He immediately began to shiver at the sudden emptiness. He looked longingly over his shoulder at the discernable glow of the great hall.
“Eyes front, meat!” The small man snapped at them. Gerald wasn’t the only recruit missing the hall’s heat.
They continued their march through a city of rough huts made of wood and straw. There weren’t many brick and mortar buildings, and they were concentrated solely around the hall itself; which dwarfed everything else in sight.
Gerald looked up into a perpetually gray sky and felt his breath catch in fearful wonder. A tapestry of moving shadows danced across the gray. It was like Gerald was looking through a thin sheet of paper at something above him, but it was so far and so high he’d never be able to reach it. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
If the sky was bad, the sea the city sat next to was worse. The water was dark and thick with foam that hissed unnaturally as it crashed against the frozen shore. A never ending cloud of steam rose from where the sea met the land, casting a barrier of fog that restricted visibility.
It felt like they were on the edge of the world. Only a few steps away from oblivion.
“Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” The small man brought them to a halt in an open circular space in the middle of the city.