Mother of Demons by Eric Flint

The height of the battle, the decisive moment, the turning point, the pivot of history, the opening of the Way and the salvation of the peoples, had been the Charge of Nukurren. The Kutaku of the Coil, as many chants called it.

Oh, glory and grandeur and triumph and hope!

Oh, valor and courage and heroism and nobility!

Nukurren the Mighty! Nukurren the Bold!

Nukurren the Champion!

Nukurren had heard the chants. Had been unable not to hear them, for all that the chants grated on her soul. During the long days after the battle, she had remained in the hospital at Dzhenushkunutushen’s bedside. Nukurren herself had suffered only minor mantle-wounds during her charge, quickly healed. But Dzhenushkunutushen had lain near death. He had not suffered any single great wound. But he had nearly bled to death, for it seemed as if his entire body had been flailed.

As, indeed, it had been. Most of his wounds had been received at the very end of the battle, in the last moments before Nukurren reached the little band of human warriors in the center. For, at the end, Yoshefadekunula had fallen, knocked down in the press of the fray by the staggering body of another demon, mortally injured. Unhurt, but helpless, the demonlord had been the target of all the remaining Utuku. At last, the cannibals had seen their chance to destroy the implacable demon who had been the most terrible of them all, and they had fallen upon him.

Or, had tried. But the cannibals never reached the black monster. Their flails never touched him. The assault of the Utuku broke against the demonlord’s companion, who stood over his prostrate form, unmoving, unyielding, accepting each blow of the flail and returning it with a stroke of the spear. And if Utuku flails tore the demonlord champion’s flesh, his spear split Utuku brains; if their flails spilled his blood, his spear spilled their lives; and if they gave him pain, he gave them oblivion.

Then did the cannibals falter, for the spear-strokes were unstoppable. If the white passion of the demonlord’s companion seemed mysterious to them, they had not the time to wonder at it. For the blue rage of their mantles was the palest of shades, compared to the color in the monster’s eyes. The demon’s white passion quickly vanished, covered with red blood. But the blue never faded from his glare, and it seemed, to the Utuku who faced him, to be the color of Fury Itself.

They faltered. And then gray death arrived, for Nukurren was there. The demonlord’s companion finally collapsed. But the demonlord himself had regained his feet, and took up his spear, and fell upon them. Black as night, implacable. Endless night, then, to the Utuku who had flailed his companion.

For days Dzhenushkunutushen lay near death. Indeed, would almost certainly have died, were it not for the strength of his body. Other demons in the hospital, weaker than he, did die in those days. Three of them. Two had been among the human warriors in the center, and they had died soon after arriving in the hospital, from terrible wounds.

The third was a female demon. Though many of the apalatunush warriors who had ravaged the Utuku right would bear scars, only two had been slain. Of those two, only one had survived the battle itself, to be brought to the hospital.

The female demon lingered for days before she died. Her name, Nukurren learned, had been Shofiyaburrunushtayn. She learned the name from the many demons who came to the hospital. All of the demons came, Nukurren thought, to sit by the side of their wounded and dying. Nukurren found the demon way of expressing grief, like so much else about them, to be messy, unsightly and grotesque. But she did not doubt for a moment that the water which leaked from their eyes, transparent though it was, bore the essence of brown misery.

The Mother of Demons herself came, many times, to sit with Shofiyaburrunushtayn and Dzhenushkunutushen. Nukurren was mildly interested to note that the Mother of Demons, alone among them, never wept (such, she learned, was the Enagulishuc word for that strange means of showing grief). She merely sat there, silent, still; her flat, armless face as rigid as bronze.