There were no banquets. There were no songs of victory. The bodies of the Blood Knights were not yet cold when Tancred's trumpets sounded the assembly.
"We march!" shouted the Duke, his face smeared with soot and streaked with tears of frustration. "Leave the heavily wounded to the surgeons. Whoever can hold a sword, in the saddle! Whoever has no horse, hold onto tails or run!"
The army of Bretonnia, which had just fought one of the hardest battles in its history, had to do the unthinkable: turn its back on the battlefield and run. It was not a retreat. It was a desperate race against the apocalypse.
Geneviève rode at the front, beside Tancred. She did not feel fatigue. Her spiritual connection with the Lady and her discipline provided a reserve of energy that went beyond human biology. But she felt Duraz's. The mighty dwarf horse, who had gored a Nightmare and charged through a wall of bones, was breathing heavily, foam staining his black coat. Geneviève placed a hand on his neck. Hold on, my friend, she thought, transmitting a flow of calming energy. Just one more run.
The march southeast, toward the border between Brionne and Carcassonne, was a journey through hell. The closer they got to the mountains, the more the landscape changed. There was no Mousillon rot here. There was Mutation.
The trees were not dead; they were wrong. Oaks bled red sap that smelled of sulfur. The grass had taken on colors that hurt the eyes: neon purple, pulsating pink. The animals they met along the road were horrors: hares with tentacles instead of ears, deer with skin turned inside out. Chaos did not destroy nature; it rewrote it.
"Don't look!" ordered Geneviève to the soldiers behind her, when they passed a farm where cows were devouring the farmers. "Look at the road! Only the road is real!"
On the second day of forced march, they met the first wave. Not monsters. The inhabitants of Carcassonne. Shepherds famous for their pride, sturdy peasants, minor nobles on their carts. Now they were a river of despair clogging the Shepherd's Way.
The army column had to slow down to make its way through the human tide. "Turn back!" screamed a woman with a child in her arms, grabbing Tristan's stirrup. "The sky is burned! The devils came down from the clouds!"
"Move!" shouted Tancred, heart broken but voice firm. "If you don't let us pass, there is no salvation for anyone!"
Geneviève saw scenes that would break the mind of a common man. She saw madmen gouging out their eyes so as not to see the demons anymore. She saw carts full of wounded with burns that were not made by fire, but by a magical frost that blackened the flesh.
An old sergeant of the town militia, with a summarily bandaged arm, blocked Geneviève's path. "Don't go there, knight," gasped the man, eyes wide with terror. "They aren't orcs. They aren't even dead. They laugh when you hit them. They split in two and become two smaller demons. It's the end of times."
Geneviève gently pushed Duraz forward, moving the man aside. "It is not the end of times, soldier," said the gravel voice, grim as a sentence. "It is just another Tuesday for those who carry iron."
But inside, Geneviève trembled. The descriptions matched. Pink Horrors of Tzeentch. Bloodletters of Khorne. The barrier between the material world and the Realm of Chaos had thinned to tearing point.
At sunset on the third day, the horses were dying. Many Bretonnian destriers had collapsed, hearts bursting from the effort. Dismounted knights ran, throwing away shields and helms to lighten their load, keeping only their swords. They arrived at the last ridge, the Hill of Sighs, overlooking the valley of Carcassonne.
Geneviève reached the top first. The wind that hit her was hot, dry, and smelled of ozone and copper. Tancred joined her a second later, dismounting from his exhausted horse.
And there, they stopped. Before them lay the valley. And in the center, like a jewel thrown into the fire, was Carcassonne.
The city was famous for its beauty. Concentric walls of immaculate white stone, blue slate roofs, tall towers defying the mountains. But now, the white was stained with red and black.
The city had not yet fallen, but it was burning. Columns of multicolored smoke—green, purple, black—rose from the houses of the outer burgh. And all around the walls, like a tide of mad ants, was the Horde.
There were no siege engines. Demons didn't need them. Geneviève saw Bloodletters of Khorne, red demons with serrated swords, scaling the vertical walls by driving their claws into the stone. She saw flocks of winged Furies darkening the sky, diving on the defenders desperately trying to hold the ramparts. She saw flashes of arcane magic hitting the towers, melting stone like wax.
And above all this, suspended in the purple sky swirling above the central keep, was an open portal. A wound in reality from which new monstrosities rained every second.
"My God..." whispered Tristan, falling to his knees. "They are infinite."
Geneviève sharpened her spiritual sight. Before the Main Gate, which was about to give way under the blows of a huge taurine demon (Bloodthirster), stood the architect of that destruction. It was not Be'lakor himself, but one of his favored Lieutenants. A Daemon Prince, winged, four meters tall, made of shadow and molten metal, wielding a scythe dripping with souls.
The defenders on the walls—peasants armed with longbows and a few remaining knights—were firing arrows that bounced uselessly off the demon's skin. Carcassonne had perhaps an hour of life left.
Geneviève turned to Tancred. The Duke was pale. His army was tired, halved, terrified. Asking them to charge into that nightmare was madness. But Tancred drew the Sword of Couronne. The blade trembled in his hand, but he did not drop it.
"We cannot win," said the Duke, looking Geneviève in the eyes.
"No," replied Geneviève, gripping Vesper's Light. The holy stone glowed furiously, reacting to the massive presence of Chaos. "We cannot win. But we can make them bleed so much they regret crawling out of the abyss."
Geneviève remounted Duraz. The dwarf horse puffed smoke from his nostrils, smelling the ancient scent of his fathers' enemies. She pointed to the burning valley.
"The city still breathes, Duke! And as long as it breathes, we are its shield! FOR BRETONNIA!"
Tancred turned to his men, three thousand ghosts covered in dust and glory. "FOR THE LADY! CHARGE!"
The exhausted army began the descent. It was not a tactical maneuver. It was an act of suicidal faith. And as they descended into hell on earth, Geneviève knew that this time, not even her perfect sword could save them all.