Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (61 page)

Nuse laughed
appreciatively, then looked at his friend in sympathy.

“Do you ever
think about remarrying?” the Blue said. “You’ve still got time and energy left
in you.”

James shook his
head. “I am remarried,” he said, “to the Prism. After Tab’s death, Vander and I
went on a six-week tour among the eastern nations that lasted six
months
and landed us into more trouble than I thought two humble paladins could bear.
By the end of it, though, my grief was behind me and I lived only for the
Prism. I don’t expect I’ll learn to live any differently in time to make a
difference.”

Nuse stayed
silent and let the matter drop.

“What’s the
total estimate from our little skirmish here?” the Blue paladin said after a
long silence.

“Four hundred
demons slain,” James told him. “A lot more than what chased us out of here
initially. They were guarding this place, but San only knows how they expected
to do more than delay us, what with five-to-one odds. Two thousand paladins
will put a hole in anything you throw against them, and against only four
hundred demons?”

The Yellow
paladin shook his head.

“So when do we
cross the Binding?” Nuse asked.

“Dusk at the
earliest,” James answered. “It’ll take the injured at least that long to
recover, and I’m not about to divide the group to cross, just in case there’s
more demons lurking out there.”

“Well, just
remember, there’s a few million demons lurking in
there
,” Nuse said,
nodding toward the cleft that led to the Binding, “and even that might be
underestimating things.”

James nodded and
looked pensively at the distant Binding. “We’ve had no word, and only the fact
that we’re alive and talking indicates Heaven still even exists. We could cross
and land on the doorstep of the demon army, for all we know.”

“Have faith, my
friend,” Nuse said, clapping James on the shoulder. “We’ll win this war yet.”

“It’s going to
take a miracle,” James said dourly.

“Then start
praying,” Nuse replied. He winked at James. “We’re close enough, God’s sure to
hear you.”

- 2 -

Garet slumped
wearily into his seat and stretched his long, thick legs out in front of him.
The chair was made of Heavenly earth rising out of the ground and molded to fit
his massive body. He glanced across the table and saw Garnet already seated and
looking just as subdued.

Oh, how he
longed for an honest hearth and a roaring fire. The thought sparked memories of
his youth, reading with his mother at night, waiting for his father to return
from some sojourn or another. As a grown man, Garet had countless memories made
before the fire with his wife. Sitting peacefully. Making love. Watching their
children.

I suppose
that’s all behind me now,
Garet thought heavily. He sighed.

Garnet looked up
at his father. His dead father.

“How’d the twins
take the news?” Garnet asked hollowly.

“About how you’d
expect,” Garet replied. “Leaking eyes, quivering chins, lots of hugging, Brad
promising to make me proud, Anolla a heartbeat behind him.” He shook his head.
“I just… I’ve always heard of people getting old and thinking about all the
things they never did and everything they wanted to accomplish; they should
have taken more risks, or they should have drank less and laughed more, or they
should have spent more time with their children. I was just getting to the age
where I should have started to worry about that, and now I’m suddenly through
that knot and beyond. Too late to worry now.

“I look back,
and I find that I don’t have those regrets,” Garet said. “I might have wished
for more time with Anolla and you boys, and God knows I wanted those
grandchildren you promised me, but none of my time away from home was spent
frivolously. I was serving God and defending the world my children would
inherit, and I can’t feel bad about that time away. My eldest son has followed
in my footsteps, which I think every father secretly hopes for, and what’s
more, he’s turned into a damn fine man.”

Garet saw a
sparkle of moisture in his son’s eye, but Garnet maintained a steady bearing.

“My other boys
are well on their way to becoming fine men, and my beautiful daughter is as
true and delightful as her mother ever was,” Garet went on. “It’s a bit after the
fact, but I can look back on my life and say it was complete. Of course I’ll
miss you and your sister and brothers terribly, and I expect I’ll be counting
the days until I see your mother again.”

He fell silent.
“You’ll look after her, won’t you? Your mother, I mean.”

“Yeah, dad,”
Garnet said. “She’ll still have Bronk for a few years yet and Anolla, too,
until some lucky, suitable man comes along. If he hasn’t already.”

“Your friend
Flasch?”

Garnet nodded.

“You’ll see
things stay honest between them.”

“Of course.”

The silence
dragged for a long moment, until Garet shook his head.

“Oh, I almost
forgot,” he muttered, turning away and rifling through a nearby pack. He lifted
a small, cloth-bound object and handed it carefully to his son. Garnet
cautiously removed the swaddling until he held a small, roughly carved, wooden
sword.

“I can’t believe
you still have this,” Garnet said, his thick voice nearly betraying him. He
turned the four-inch blade over in his hand and saw a crude “G” on the tiny
pommel. “I was what, six when I made this for you?”

“Give it to your
own son someday,” Garet told him, “and when he’s old enough, don’t make him
wait a year to get it. Be there for him, as much as God and fate allow.”

Fresh tears
welled in Garnet’s eyes as he lovingly returned the wooden sword to its cloth
and carefully wrapped it in the protective swaddle.

The tent flap
opened and Mikal entered, followed closely by Gerard, who was still radiating
fury from the incident the day before. The scars on his face pulsed with crimson
rage, and his right hand clenched and opened repeatedly as though he wanted
nothing better than to draw his sword and hunt down the treacherous,
sin-cursed, mother-loving, ass-faced, Satan-spawned, dung-eating, piss-drinking
bastard responsible for the loss of both Kaelus and Birch.

That was the
abridged version of Gerard’s latest tirade that had ended shortly after Garet
arrived at the tent, bearing a message for the Red paladin from his training
unit. Gerard and Mikal had left to confer in private, but really it had been to
give Gerard a chance to cool off and allow Garet a moment alone with his son.

“Are we all
feeling warm and fuzzy again?” Gerard asked. Garnet and Garet stared at him a
moment, and the harsh paladin had the grace to look away in chagrin.

“We’re all
frayed and on a knife’s edge,” Mikal said, radiating strength and resolve, “but
the important thing to do now is decide what we’re going to do. Without Kaelus,
I now command the Heavenly Hosts in truth as well as in name, and we have no
time to stop and lick our wounds.”

“Where is
Uriel?” Garet asked. “Shouldn’t he be here with us?”

“Uriel is
attending to… a personal matter,” Mikal said after a moment’s pause. “He will
be here soon enough.”

The Seraph
turned back to Gerard. “Our watery trap took a massive toll, but it was never
going to be enough. The plan was for that to teach them caution and delay them
further while we continued to harry them and enact further traps, but that
looks less likely now. Malith has lost one of his demon lords, yes, but he has
taken more than he lost. Gerard, you know him best, how soon can we expect him
to advance?”

 “I’m
surprised the bastard isn’t already leading a charge himself and laughing in
our faces,” Gerard said grimly. “We have hours, maybe a day or two at best,
then he’ll hit us with everything he’s got and keep hammering until there’s
nothing left. He knows our morale will be low, and he’ll do everything in his
power to keep us from recovering. The only thing that might slow him down is if
he stops to gloat over Birch for a few days before settling down to the
business of annihilating us.”

“Enough,” Mikal
said, cutting him off. “I recognize Kaelus’s value to us and he was my friend
as Birch was yours, but despair and fatalism can only hinder us now. We need a
decisive victory, something swift and sure, something unexpected, something
substantive. I want options.”

Garnet looked at
the map laid out on the floor and shook his head. The known locations of demon
lords and princes were marked, but they were all well behind enemy lines and
heavily fortified. Given the sheer magnitude of the demonic army, they weren’t
stretched thin anywhere, and there were no “weak points” for them to exploit.

“Striking down
another of the demon lords is the only thing decisive enough,” Garnet said,
frowning at the map, “but I don’t see how we can get to any of them on such
short notice. They learned their lesson from Arthryx and are staying away from
the rivers, and diverting one close enough now would warn them of an attack.”

“What about
shifting all three rivers closer in multiple locations?” Garet asked. “They
won’t know where to expect the hit.”

Mikal shook his
head. “It’s hard enough altering the landscape and moving the rivers in the
first place, but doing so in the lands where the demonic taint has infected the
earth is far too tiring, and it’s useless besides. There is no place weak
enough for us to strike and accomplish anything without sacrificing our own
troops.”

“What about
there?” Gerard said. Garet looked up in surprise at the mild, thoughtful tone
in the other paladin’s voice. Gerard’s fury seemed to have settled into a cold,
calculating sharpness, and he gazed at the map with a fierce concentration. A
truly wicked smile tugged at the dead man’s lips, and Garet wondered what
Gerard had up his sleeve this time.

“That’s the camp
where Azazel is holding Birch and the others,” Mikal said. His emerald wings
shifted behind him, and he stretched the uppermost pair above him while he
shook his head. “It’s far to the rear of their lines, closest to Hell.
Impossible to reach by land with the entire army in the way, no rivers anywhere
nearby, and the demons would feel an angelic host moving in long before they
reached their goal and would fortify to counter them. That’s assuming they
didn’t kill our companions outright and render the operation pointless.”

“All well and
good, but I wasn’t talking about inserting an angelic host,” Gerard said, and
now the last vestiges of his anger had been replaced by ingenious cunning. “And
before you ask, Garnet, I’m not talking about Shadow Company, not alone at any
rate. That camp is too big even for our denarae elite. Too many demons for so
few paladins.”

Garnet looked at
Gerard and, for the first time since his father’s death, showed a spark of life
and spirit. Of them all, he was best-acquainted with Gerard, and he knew the
Red paladin’s expression heralded something provocative and utterly vicious for
their enemies.

“We’ve been in
Heaven for a few months now, and I’ll be damned if there hasn’t been something
missing,” Gerard said, smiling in anticipation. “I think it’s about time we saw
a halo around here.”

- 3 -

He knew he was
expected. His presence had long since been noticed… felt… Feared. There would
be no escape, no resistance. Only a confrontation whose outcome – no matter the
decision made – would reverberate through the ages until the end of eternity.

The cave he
sought was set high in a mountain of pristine angelstone, the white marble-like
rock used to construct buildings in Medina and the walls flanking the
Iridescent Gates. Light from Heaven beyond poured into the cave through a wide
opening. The mouth of the cave and the inner surface were perfectly smooth and rounded;
the cave was anything but natural and seemed to have been made solely as a
place to host the coming confrontation.

He set down
lightly on the stone landing and stepped into the cavern; his shadow fell
across the kneeling shape of another angel whose back was to the cave mouth.
The other angel’s body was composed of a sort of brilliant yellow smoke that
coalesced into a human-like shape, and his blue wings hung limply behind him
and spread out on the stone floor. His armor was stacked neatly to one side,
helmet atop cuirass and greaves. A bow and broad-bladed war spear had been laid
ceremoniously on the ground before the angel.

The bow was
broken neatly in half. The two pieces were arranged as though the bow was still
whole, but an inch of space separated them.

“I’ve been
expecting you, Uriel,” the angel said without turning around. “I knew you would
find me.”

“Camael,” Uriel
said grimly.

“How long did it
take you to figure it out?” the Power asked.

“Not long,” he
replied. “I knew you were no longer with the Archangels at the lake, and I felt
your presence after they took Kaelus and the others. I saw how Kaelus fell, and
when you didn’t rejoin us, I realized the truth. What I don’t know yet is why.
Why did you betray us? Betray me?”

“I didn’t think
of it as betrayal, Uriel,” Camael answered. “You of all people should know how
seductive is the voice of Maya, may she burn in Hell. I obeyed her as the Voice
of God, thinking I carried out the wishes of the Almighty. She ordered me to
see him fall, and I was ready to destroy anyone who stood in my way – even you,
my beloved commander. All in the name of God.”

Camael laughed,
a hollow sound devoid of any emotion save self-loathing. Uriel grimaced sadly –
that it was the first time he’d ever heard the Power laugh in all the ages
they’d been together. “Remember when I asked why you cast off the mantle of the
Angel of Death? You told me murder in God’s name is still murder. Evil is still
evil. I didn’t understand what you meant then.”