The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (42 page)

“That’s a little underhanded for paladins, isn’t it?” Hoil
asked wryly.

“Simple strategy, Hoil,” Gerard said. “If something’s in
your way, destroy it or go around it. I’d rather not destroy the Prismatic
Council, so I’m going to go around them.”

“Good point,” Hoil said. “When do we leave?”

“
We
aren’t leaving at any time,” Gerard said
pointedly. “Danner, Trebor, and I have a meeting with my company in a few
minutes, and we’ll handle it.
You
can stay here sitting on your ass. I
only came out to touch base with you all and to keep you and your elven friends
from doing something monumentally stupid around that army.”

“But…”

“Dad, I don’t want to sound rude, but you’d only be in the
way,” Danner said. “We’re trained for this sort of thing, and as good as you
are, there’s nothing you could do to help, and lots of things you could do to
jeopardize our mission.”

Hoil looked at his son in surprise.

“Now see here, Danner, just because you’re wearing that
cloak doesn’t give you the right to talk to me that way,” Hoil said with some
heat in his voice.

“No, but because he’s an officer in my company and knows
exactly what he’s talking about, he has every right to explain it to you
however he wants, you thick-headed lump,” Gerard said. “He said it a mite bit
nicer than I would have.”

“Hoil, they’re right,” Birch said. “Surely you remember
Gerard well enough to trust when he says you’d be a hindrance, and I trust
Danner knows his job well enough to say when something or someone would be a
hazard. You may need to start getting used to the idea that your son’s an adult
now.”

“Well then,” Hoil said grumpily. “Got that fancy
Dividha
deck of yours? Might as well pass the time pleasantly.”

“Sorry, I don’t have time to play,” Birch said. “I’m going
with them.”

“What?”

“Now wait, Uncle Birch.”

“Not a bloody chance in Hell.”

“Silence,” Birch said in a quiet bark that hushed them all
immediately.

“You have every right to override Hoil’s desire to accompany
you, Gerard, but I have precedence over both of you in this matter,” Birch said
firmly. “I am a member of the
jintaal
sent to destroy The Three, and
since James left me in charge of this particular group, I effectively have
command of the
jintaal
until he resumes control, which he can’t do from
inside while we’re out here.”

“That may be so, Birch,” Gerard said, his voice bleak, “but
the reason against Hoil still stands against you. You don’t know what you’re
doing, and we do. You’d only jeopardize our mission.”

“I realize that, and under normal circumstances, I’d agree
with you and keep my nose out of it,” Birch said. “But these are not normal circumstances.
You’re going in to deal with one of the most powerful demons from Hell, and I’m
the only one who’s faced one so far.”

“That’s not exactly so, uncle,” Danner said. “I killed one
of the others myself about two months ago. From what we gathered from James, it
was almost exactly the same time you faced yours.”

Birch stared at his nephew in surprise. “You’re sure it was
one of The Three?”

“Positive.”

“Then this is the last one, in which case I
must
accompany you, to see this through to the end,” Birch said. “I don’t know what
kind of mandate you have from the Prism for this company of yours, Gerard, but
you know a
jintaal
takes precedence.”

“I know.”

“But you still object to my going?”

“Absolutely.”

While they were arguing, Danner stared at his uncle and
asked Trebor mentally,
“
Treb
, can you get anything
about this from my uncle?”

“What are you looking
for?”

“I don’t know,”
Danner confessed.
“Just curious, I
guess.”

Trebor fell silent a moment.

“Danner, something’s
wrong,”
Trebor sent to him.
“I can’t
read a damn thing from your uncle. It’s worse than trying to read something
from you, because you don’t always intentionally block me, so sometimes things
slip through. But I can’t get the merest hint of a thought from your uncle.
It’s all locked away behind some fiery-red barricade.”

“Huh?”

“When I try to kythe
into your thoughts when you’re blocking me, your barrier is a sort of
blue-white color,”
Trebor explained.
“Your
uncle’s is flaming red.”

“You can
see
the barrier?”
Danner asked.

“I’m not really seeing
anything, just like I’m not exactly hearing your thoughts,”
Trebor kythed.
“It’s just how my brain perceives it. I
can’t explain it any better than that.”

“Can you get any hints
as to its source?”

“Whatever the source,
it’s obviously behind that wall where I can’t see it,”
Trebor replied.
“But if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say
whatever it is, it’s the same thing that makes your uncle’s eyes burn.”

Danner focused again on the conversation between Gerard and
Birch, putting Trebor’s revelation in the back of his mind for later
consideration.

Gerard was trying not to get angry, but the scars on his
face were beginning to turn red and pulse with his suppressed irritation. He
stared at Birch. “I’m asking you as a friend not to force this, Birch.”

“I’m sorry, Gerard, but I don’t have any choice,” Birch
said. “It’s my duty.”

“Alright then, I guess you leave me no choice,” Gerard said.

“I’m sorry,” Birch said again. “I’ll try not to…”

Birch stopped as Gerard stepped closer and delivered a swift
jab to his jaw, momentarily stunning him. Gerard followed in the same heartbeat
with a hammer-like blow from his right fist to the left side of Birch’s neck,
dropping the Gray paladin to the ground.

Danner looked down and saw that Birch had been knocked
unconscious by the blow.

“Look after the damn fool,” Gerard said to Hoil, then turned
away, “and get that Green paladin to him quickly, just in case. He’ll be plenty
angry with me when he comes to, but try not to let him follow us. That could be
even more dangerous than him coming with us in the first place.”

“I make no promises, Gerard,” Hoil said, his face angry. “I
don’t know that you needed to resort to that.”

“I do know,” Gerard said. “Trebor, Danner, let’s go. We’ve
got to hurry.”

Danner turned an apologetic look toward his father, then
hurried after Gerard.

- 3 -

Garet wheeled his yellow dakkan in a tight circle and sliced
the head off another monstrosity, then looked for another target. He found a
cluster of three winged creatures sweeping toward the defenders on the wall,
and he pointed with his sword.

“There, Shelly,” he told his dakkan.

Shelly let out a terrific bellow, caught up in the
excitement of the battle, and plunged toward the three beasts. As she tore into
one from behind, Garet leaned forward in his saddle and lopped a wing off the
second, then Shelly bit the third creature in half. The wounded creature Garet
had maimed shrieked and plummeted to the ground below, where Nocka guards
hacked it to pieces.

There was something terribly human about the creature’s
shriek that disturbed Garet. The flying monstrosities were vaguely humanoid in
appearance, but their flesh was mottled and leathery, and they had bat-like
wings. Their arms and legs were grossly twisted with over-sized muscles, and
the one or two that had survived on the ground limped around awkwardly until
they were slain.

But what most disturbed him about the creatures was their
faces. Whatever they were, the beasts had either once been men or else had been
altered to look like them, at least in the facial area. If a human being had
the leathery skin of a lizard and was totally hairless, his face would resemble
one of these creatures. Each was distinct, as no two men look exactly the same.
Their expressions were human-like, and they looked with horror and hatred on
the human defenders they were attacking.

The battle was absolute chaos with little coordination
between the units on the ground and those in the air. Even the companies
assigned to protect each of the courtyards of the Barrier were operating mostly
autonomously. The ranking officer on the Barrier had been torn apart by a pair
of winged monsters, and the subsequent attempts to reestablish the chain of
command were meeting with limited success. The city’s defenders were simply
unprepared for an invasion of such magnitude, the likes of which hadn’t been
seen in generations, perhaps not even since the original Merging War.

On the ground below, more creatures that perhaps had once
been men crawled about on four legs in an awful crouching position. They moved
with terrific speed and had been the first to reach and assault the walls of
Nocka. Before the defenders had fully assembled, the beasts had leapt to the
walls and hooked their claws into the stone. They swarmed up the walls like a
plague of rats and nearly overwhelmed the defenders in the first few moments of
the battle. Then the paladins had arrived, and the tide had turned in the
mortals’ favor, at least for the time being.

Even the paladins were, in their own way, only adding to the
chaos at the Barrier. In limited groups, such as a
jintaal
, one paladin
was assigned command. No such authority had been bestowed by the Prismatic
Council as every available paladin in the city rushed to defend the Barrier,
although many of the Reds were naturally assuming command of the areas around
them. Still, there was no unified command structure or coordination among the
paladins any more than there was among the other defenders.

Still, the chaos among the mortals was nothing compared to
the roiling mass of Hellish fury that moiled beyond the Barrier.

The plain before Nocka was a dark mass of churning bodies
seething and howling with frustration as they fought past each other to attack
the city gates. Some of the beasts tore each other to pieces in their frenzy to
reach the Barrier. Normally Garet would have been pleased to see such
destruction in the ranks of an enemy, but the horrible glee that lit the
human-like faces as they shredded each other made the Red paladin sick to his
stomach.

As Garet watched, a man-sized sphere was hurled over the
Barrier from the inside, and it crashed down into the Hellish ranks and split
open. A thick liquid splashed forth, spraying and flowing from the cracks in
the ball. Everywhere the green liquid touched, it ate through flesh and bone
with astonishing speed. The Hell-spawned creatures screamed in agony as their
arms and legs dissolved in the vicious stuff. Some who had lost two or three
legs were still clawing their way forward with their remaining limbs, but these
were more often than not trampled under the over-eager claws of the other
creatures as they rushed to escape the lethal green substance.

Three more spheres were hurled over the wall, each taking a
terrible toll on the enemy as they literally ate through their ranks. A fifth
sphere was launched, but didn’t break when it hit the ground. A group of the
grotesque creatures snuffled and snarled at it a few moments before deciding it
wasn’t a danger, then they left it alone and continued their maddened advance
on the walls. Behind them, an unending wave of monstrosities stretched all the
way back to the Merging.

“How the Hell do you fight a force like this?” Garet asked
himself in horror.

Then he directed Shelly toward another group of flying
creatures. There wasn’t time to think about
how
to fight, just the
necessity to fight and to survive. Garet plunged downward and lost himself in
the swirl of chaos.

A true hero is a man like any other who steps forward and does
something momentous for no other reason than because it is required of him. To
raise a hero as something more than this is to insult his accomplishments and
belittle the rest of the world.

- Birch de’Valderat,

“Memoirs” (1013 AM)

- 1 -

“You’re still not happy about the way I handled your uncle,
are you?”

Danner turned toward Gerard and stared at the Red paladin a
moment. They had just rendezvoused with the rest of Shadow Company, which now
assembled in the same place for the first time since they had begun guerrilla
tactics two months before. The denarae were hidden in the woods, waiting for
Gerard’s say-so to begin their insertion into the enemy camp. Only a select
group would be entering. One squad from each of Danner’s and Trebor’s platoons,
along with Danner, Trebor, Garnet, and Gerard. This once, Gerard had insisted
on accompanying them on a mission.

“I understand why you felt you had to do it, sir, and I
probably agree that it had to be done,” Danner admitted. “That doesn’t mean I
have to like it.”

“You think I enjoyed it, Danner?” Gerard asked seriously.
“Your uncle was one of my closest friends back in our training days. I’ve
thrashed and beaten him many a time, but in practice. Fair combat. He may not
soon forgive me for this.”

Danner thought a moment, then nodded.

“To be honest, sir, I barely know him myself,” Danner
admitted, “but I think he’ll come around. Assuming we kill the demon and
survive, of course. If one of us dies, he might never forgive you, or himself.”

“And you say you barely know him,” Gerard said, shaking his
head ruefully. Then he laid a hand on Danner’s shoulder. “Now that we
understand each other, I think it’s time we moved. I don’t know if that
motherless fiend from Hell has to sleep or not, but its guards do, and they
won’t be expecting us. There’s been no indication they’ve noticed your
nighttime raids deep in the camp, so they’re probably not prepared for this.”