Twixt Heaven And Hell (13 page)

On the fifth night, the Gryphons camped within sight of the Patchwork Forest. It raised the horizon upon the north and gave them indication that they were covering ground after all, not lost forever in the grasslands. Some of his soldiers watched as Darius sat idly bouncing a pebble within his hands – except that each time he threw the pebble in the air and caught it, there was a flash of light and the pebble was suddenly in the other hand. Robert came and sat next to him.

“You’ve done it, sir?”

Darius smiled, momentarily stopping with the pebble. “Not quite, Robert. I’ve taken a very important step, though.”

Robert intrigued face asked him to continue. Darius did so, knowing that if he could communicate what he’d learned to Robert, then he could certainly make another wizard understand.

“I developed a way to duplicate teleportation when we were back in Bastion, but it was too difficult. Even with help, I could not refine it enough to make it a practical spell. That is why I decided to leave, and investigate the Enemy’s method more directly.”

He tossed the pebble once more, straight into the air above his left hand. The pebble reached its zenith and fell, and when it hit Darius’s palm there was a quick flash of bright white light – and Darius was rolling the pebble in the palm of his right hand.

“Balkan will be astonished by what I just did, Robert. Even to move a pebble an arm length required vast power. I knew we were doing something wrong; now I know what.”

Darius held up the pebble, a simple brown thing he’d found in the dirt near a campfire. “We tried to make the transport of the object a specific objective of the spell. Before it could complete and do its work, all of the necessary effort had to be supplied. The Enemy spell does not work as such. They simply open up a potential pathway, and allow their soldiers to step through it.”

Robert was confused. Darius had dropped back into the speech of a wizard speaking to a wizard. He tossed the pebble again, trying to think of a simpler explanation. “When the Enemy casts this spell of theirs, all they are doing is opening up a door. When Balkan and I experimented, we tried to force the stone through the door, without opening it first. The Enemy lets their soldiers walk through the door. We tried to make a pebble grow legs.”

Robert looked even more confused. Darius huffed, and tried something else.

“Imagine you are trying to move a boulder, Robert. You could roll it across a field, and that would take days and a great deal of strength and work. Or, you could roll it two steps to the top of a hill. Then the boulder will roll of its own accord, with much less work on your part.”

“So, you tried to push it across a field, and the Enemy rolls it down the hill?” Robert asked. Darius nodded. “But the boulder ends up in different places.”

“Yes, but with our spell, we are choosing the destination – and then shaping the path in between. Thus, with our magic, it is as if across the field and the bottom of the hill are the exact same place.”

Robert had come as far in understanding as it was possible for a non-magician. Darius thought his lieutenant would have made a fine wizard – which was about as useless an observation as saying an ant would have made a fine wolf.

Robert pointed to where the prisoner was lying, dead to the world from his diet of stale biscuits and numbing potions.

“What are we going to do with him, sir?”

Dropping the pebble, Darius didn’t look at the sorcerer. He plucked a stalk of grass and idly held one end within the fire, feeling the heat and flame feed as the plant died. “We’ll take him to Bastion, where he can be guarded properly. We’ll question him, find out why he betrayed his people. Find out what he knows. Maybe some of it will be useful.”

“He is a very powerful sorcerer, isn’t he?” Robert asked, a hint of unease in his voice. Steady as the big man was, magic – especially that of the Enemy – unsettled when used for the kind of displays the sorcerer had put on in the Shambles.

“I cannot say. What he did in the Shambles... it was not his own ability. He sacrificed that man, spilled his blood and reaped the escaping soul as fuel for his spells.”

Darius would not mourn the fate of the sorcerer who had tried to kill him, but the act was still reprehensible.

Darius’s words certainly didn’t reassure his lieutenant. Soldiers knew the words ‘human sacrifice’ only as some dark, terrible secret. To understand a thing, no matter how terrible, granted a measure of ease. Soldiers could not understand magic, any more than a man could understand childbirth.

A wave of murmurs came from his men, and when Darius and Robert looked to see what the fuss was about the soldiers were looking and pointing into the sky. Darius did as well, and smiled in relief. An Angel was coming, the white light growing larger and brighter as it mocked the stars with its brilliance.

“Why do they always come at night?” Darius wondered out loud. He’d meant the question to be rhetorical, and was a bit surprised when Robert answered.

“Because they look better in the dark,” his friend said. The answer struck Darius as cynical, but no doubt Robert had meant it to be a joke. To think that Angels were concerned with appearance!

When the Angel came to ground, all the soldiers that were still awake came with Darius and Robert to greet him.

Nearly one hundred years after the Forging, a wizard had penned a tome simply entitled, “On Angels.” The very first sentence read, ‘
To be in the presence of an Angel is to be comforted
.’ The book was thin, as not much had been learned about Angels at the time and there was very little that Darius could add to it two hundred years later. It wasn’t so much that Angels were secretive than that they were intimidating to those who might seek to ask questions. That first sentence, though, captured the spirit of the great beings well.

As the Seraph strode closer, Darius recognized the figure.

“Aethel!” he said, delighted. “Have you become our personal Angel?” Darius laughed at his own words, his spirits lifted enough by the Seraph’s presence to be mirthful. Some of his soldiers chuckled as well.

“I wished to see you and your men, Darius,” the Angel replied simply. “You have done a great thing – but some of you are injured. I will tend them before we speak.”

“I will wake the rest,” Darius said as he turned back to the camp. He was astounded to see that every Gryphon was already standing behind him, basking in Aethel’s glow.

“There is no need,” Aethel said. “I have done so.”

The Archangel removed his hands from the sleeves they habitually inhabited. He removed one glove, and those closest had to look away as the light of the Angel’s true form dazzled their eyes. Darius felt power gather, and Aethel lifted his ungloved hand. His wings spread wide and then swept forward as if meaning to embrace the soldiers in their glowing expanse. The Angel’s power washed over the men.

In the space of a moment, every man was hale and hearty. One man dropped the crutches he’d made and stomped his leg lightly on the ground with a great, silly grin on his face. The attention of an Angel always made one feel a child in the face of a great and undeserved gift.

Darius himself had had only minor scrapes and cuts, and the worst thing he’d taken from the battle in which half his men had died was a wretched soreness that had made walking painful – something he had been humiliated even to notice, surrounded as he was with wounded men. Now, at least, they had received the care they’d needed for so long, and their spirits too would begin to improve. Though an Angel could not heal the spiritual wounds outright, Aethel’s awesome beauty reminded the soldiers of what they fought – and died – to protect.

The soldiers voiced their thanks, which Aethel somehow acknowledged without words. The Gryphons returned to their bed rolls, leaving Robert and Darius with the Seraph.

“Thank you, Aethel. My men have had heavy hearts since the battle – we lost many friends, and with their wounds troubling them…”

“Yes, I could feel this. Great sorrow fills each of them,” The Angel observed. “But fear not. Beneath it their souls remain bright and strong, and soon enough they will shine again.”

Darius was not sure to what extent an Angel could read into a man’s heart – they always perceived more than you showed. “Thank you again. How went the supposed attack on Nebeth? Did Theodoric and his men get out safely?”

“The General Theodoric and his men are safe, and he believes the valley remains secret for now. He maintains hope that it may be used for the original purpose in the future. The attack on Fortress Nebeth, however, became a vision of the Old War.”

Chills went through Darius. The 'Old War' was the time at the beginning of Bastion's founding, shortly after the Aeonians had brought their War to the mortal world. In those early days, battles had been fought between Angel and Demon as often as men – but such clashes had rarely advanced the cause of either side. Men fled from such a terrible event. Sometimes the titans fought for moments only – and sometimes for much longer. A tome within Bastion recounted one battle that lasted for nearly a week before the Angels were vanquished. By that time, all mortal soldiers had left the field.

Aethel went on. “The Enemy took Makaelic’s appearance very seriously. Astaroth, a great Archdemon, came to face him. He brought with him two lesser fiends, and my brethren were called upon. Praised be Makaelic, who triumphed – but the Fortress was not retaken.”

“And the Shambles?” Darius asked. “Have the enemy taken the forts within?”

“Fist fell. Andreth stands. The Enemy have it surrounded and lay siege, but have not launched any assault. This is all I know.”

“It is far more than I knew. Thank you once more, Aethel. Your arrival was a great help to us. Is there anything you wish of me?”

Aethel bowed to him, a profound gesture from such a distinguished being and Darius was left somewhat embarrassed. “Your continued dedication, Darius. And yours, Robert. Both of you do much for the Light in the War. I thank you.”

Struck speechless, both men managed to squeeze out that the Angel was quite welcome. Aethel left then. His light ascended so high, Darius lost it amongst the twinkling stars.

Darius and Robert returned to the camp, humbled and thoughtful after speaking with the Seraph. Robert recovered first, commenting that they would make better time, now. It was not a joke, but Darius laughed anyways and did not answer, lying down and waiting for sleep to take him.

***

Mertoris Traigan rarely came to this place. Unbeknownst to the Warlord, the room housing most of the globes and their caretakers mirrored its counterpart in Bastion. Three sorcerers moved from globe to globe collecting the daily reports. There was a section off to one side where the ‘roving’ links were kept, globes carried by attacking forces and thus needing to receive more constant attention.

It was next to this section that Traigan stood, while a sorcerer listened and nodded along with an unheard voice. Every so often, that sorcerer would sneak nervous glances at the two Thralls that had accompanied the Warlord into the room, their eyes always burning with that Hellish fire. Traigan could see shapes moving within the globe, but could hear nothing. Because he was not a sorcerer, this method of communication always forced information to come to him third- or fourth-hand, which bothered him to no end. Who knew how many tidbits of value might be lost after being passed through such a chain?

Still, he’d ordered the man sitting there to contact him as soon as there were solid reports coming in from the assault. The man before him now spoke directly to Koya Nes.

“There was no enemy response from the northern camp,” the General said, and this was relayed to the Warlord. “But when Greven arrived at our position upon the road, he found the men scattered, with many slain. Padraig is dead!”

The surprise in the statement belonged to the globe operator alone. The sorcerers relegated to this task were young and with little talent, for the most part. Padraig had become a legend to such men.

“And Kray?” the Warlord asked.

The answer came back through. “Dead also, Warlord. They must have been ambushed – Padraig had had his throat cut.”

The Warlord’s mouth went from scowl to smirk in the space of that statement. Not nearly so upset by Padraig’s death as his subordinates were, he found humor in that. It was a fitting death for such a fool – killed by a common soldier, who probably snuck up on the man from behind as he concentrated on destroying those in front of him. Then the Warlord’s smirk disappeared.

“And Kray? Surely he was not surprised thus?”

It took a few moments for the answer to filter back through – the General must be questioning the men who’d come with the news even as they spoke over the globe. “No, Warlord. Kray was burned horrendously, and most of their men died by magic. It must have been a Wizard.”

“Any Enemy dead in the area?”

“None were found, sir.”

Yet
, the Warlord thought. He knew enough to put the pieces together. Their attack had gone well, except that their flanking force had arrived piecemeal and thus the main assault had suffered from the enemy’s undivided attention. They had taken Fort Fist, but losses had been far higher than predicted. He had ordered scouts to find out what had gone wrong with the attack from the west, but he knew what they would find. The enemy leader, Darius, was proving to be trouble enough to warrant more direct attention.