by Unknown
The priests of Shaddai were preparing to face an army—one they knew was coming. This was why they had sent out the lion pride. This was why no guards had been waiting for them along the way—why no audible alarm had been sounded. A battle was going to take place, perhaps in moments and everyone involved knew it.
Gideon felt sweat evaporating upon his brow in the cool breeze which now reached them. As he and General Grimwald rode to a stop under the great stone archway, they surveyed the vast, empty training ground of The Order of Shaddai. Normally, priests by the hundreds would have been assembled in small groups, sparring with one another, training with bows or practicing sword techniques. But nothing at all moved.
His eyes darted across the expanse, but he could not locate one single priest. Gideon hoped that the priests had evacuated, but he couldn’t make himself believe it. The priests of Shaddai did not run away from a fight. He supposed some would have certainly escaped with the parchment scrolls so precious to their Order; however, the majority would be waiting inside, somewhere, ready to strike.
Grimwald looked over at Gideon, a smirk on his face. He looked almost victorious. “I would have expected more from warriors of your caliber, Gideon,� Grimwald said.
Gideon looked at him in disbelief as the General turned back to the hybrid army lined up behind them. “It appears the priests have taken advantage of our delay back in the forest and ran. Nevertheless, I want a thorough search of this entire complex. Any parchments are to be brought to the center of the courtyard. If you locate any stragglers, I want them brought to me alive.� He turned back to Gideon. “We can find out where they’ve all gone, one way or another.� Grimwald rode forward beneath the arch into the courtyard.
Gideon stared at the man as he confidently led his hybrids beneath the arch into the Temple. “Oh, I already know where they are,� he muttered. Demon hybrids backed up behind Gideon’s horse. “Get moving, priest. Don’t think you’re going to hang back and get away.�
Gideon regarded the hideous features on the demonic face and then turned in his saddle. He rode on after Grimwald and his army as they began to fan out in the courtyard. As they passed several training stations on his right, Gideon noticed that all of the weapons were missing—in this case bows and arrows. Another station had an empty wooden barrel, which he remembered usually had been filled with swords.
Gideon’s eyes ran across the courtyard, then beyond to the first sets of stairs leading upward into the higher levels of the Temple. He searched the terraces and walkways running through the rock face of the chasm. There was not a soul visible, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
He suddenly realized what was about to happen—what plan of action the priests would execute. He reached for the heavy shield attached on the right side of his stallion’s saddle. Gideon turned around as the horse continued steadily forward with the flow of traffic.
All of Grimwald’s army was now inside the courtyard—beginning to fan out toward the lower level archways on all sides of the field and the great stone staircases in order to access all of the higher levels of the complex. Gideon realized now would have been the time to—
Arrows fell out of the sky like rain, sinking into the flesh of hybrids all around him. Gideon barely managed to raise the shield above his head before several trembling shafts sank into the black leather bound to steel on the front side. Howls of anger and pain rose up from the army of hybrids as war cries echoed out from the terraces and walkways above the courtyard, on every side.
Gideon saw his fellow priests rise from behind the stone walls with bows—more than a hundred in all. Arrow shafts flew from quivers to bowstrings with dizzying speed as they continued the onslaught upon the hybrid army below them. Several arrows pierced his stallion, sending the animal into a wild panic. Gideon pulled his sword from its sheath on the saddle and leaped away with his shield as the horse tore through the crowd in terror. It plowed through hybrid soldiers before being cut down by the ever-falling hail of arrows.
The entire host of Grimwald’s army had now scattered in search of cover. Gideon ran among them, dodging here and there, bumping into demon soldiers, many of which had several arrows sticking out of their bodies like pincushions. Still, these otherworldly soldiers carried on, defiant of death despite what their mortal bodies cried out for.
Gideon had no idea what had happened to General Grimwald in the ensuing chaos down on the training grounds. It was every man, or hybrid, for himself now and the majority was running for cover to the arched tunnels on all sides. But as they grew near, more cries resounded from the darkened archways which led back into the rock.
Heavily armed priests streamed out onto the courtyard toward the fleeing hybrids. Gideon saw them and immediately spotted their first mistake. In the priests’ attempt to keep the hybrids on the field under fire from their archers above, they had now mingled themselves with the targets. Just as he suspected, the hail of arrows ceased as the priests on the bottom level clashed with the first of the hybrids.
The demon possessed men with their greater strength had not been cut down in number nearly as much as was necessary for this company of priests to take them. The jutting arrows from their wounds only seemed to spur them on in fury. They hit the line of priests like a tidal wave and quickly smashed through their line. Now the priests were surrounded, mingled among the demons. With their otherworldly speed and strength they cut down many of the priests very quickly.
How many, Gideon wondered? How many of these warriors were still in training as apprentices. Their first battle, utilizing half learned techniques, would be their last. Gideon tried to stay out of the fighting with the priests, but several times he had to defend himself from sword attack. He never struck back at the priests trying to kill him, but they still didn’t last long with so many demon hybrids on the field.
Gideon noticed that the archers, unable to continue the fight from the protection of the stone terraces, had come down to entangle themselves in the struggle raging on the courtyard. He saw some of the brutes from Grimwald’s army falling, but not as many as he would have hoped. How he longed, right now, to join his fellow priests and strike down these abominable creatures, but the threat against his infant son remained foremost in his mind.
How long had the fighting been going on? To Gideon it already seemed like an eternity. So many men lay dead on the field now. In comparison, relatively few of Grimwald’s hybrids had fallen. Already, the brutes were pushing upward along the stairs, out onto the terraces, where they encountered more priests trying to make meager defenses. They only managed to cut down one or two before being overcome by the horde.
Despair gripped Gideon’s heart. He had lived in this place almost all of his life. So many happy memories stemmed from his time within these very walls. Now his betrayal was complete. He had led this army here and wrought the total destruction of his friends and fellows. But still his instinct to preserve the life of Sarah’s child burned within him. What else could he do, but watch and wait for it to all be over?
Something caught his attention then, as the battle seemed to wane—the last resistance to the demon hybrids already near failure. A man was running with a torch—one of the priests—half of his robes covered in blood running down from cuts to his face and head. He passed some of the brutes who took up a lumbering pursuit.
Gideon realized what was about to happen. He glanced upward at the rock wall encircling them all, reaching nearly a thousand feet into the air. He tore away from the courtyard as fast as he could manage. Already, the man passed beneath one of the archways on the lowest level with a dozen hybrids on his heels.
Gideon raced toward the closest archway he could find—to the only cover that would be available in a moment. Behind him, where the chase had ended, an explosion rocked the entire complex. A billowing
jut of flame erupted from the tunnel where, only moments before, the torchbearer had entered. Nearly every living creature in the complex turned to see what was happening—everyone but Gideon. He already knew.
For years now, a plan had been in place at the Temple of Shaddai here in the Thornhill Mountains. Should the Temple complex ever be breached, as unthinkable as it was, then the entire thing would be destroyed so completely that no one would dare attempt such a thing on a Temple again. In such an event, the complex would become a deathtrap for whatever invading army had managed to break inside.
Isaiah, the High Priest, had once shown Gideon a portion of the network of high explosives which could be lit by torch if needed. And only a select few priests had any knowledge of the bomb. Gideon had been amazed by the ingenuity of it all. Isaiah had told him about a network of secret tunnels winding throughout the Temple complex, tunnels which had long ago been packed with gunpowder—tons of it. The High Priest had told him, “If an army, we cannot repel, ever takes the Temple, our last act will bring down the entire mountain.�
How prophetic those words had become as Gideon sprinted across the bloodstained grass, hoping to reach the archway just ahead, a passage that, if he remembered correctly, just might lead him out of this conflagration. Behind Gideon, fire and thunder traveled in the blink of an eye from the bottom of the chasm to the uttermost reaches still hidden within the clouds. The entire tubular face of the chasm fragmented as jagged red lines of fire cut through the rock, scattering it for gravity to wrench it down, down on top of the waiting army of demonic hybrids searching frantically below for some place to hide.
The entire mountain shook like the world coming to an end. Massive chunks of rock rained down, in place of the arrows the demons had only been annoyed with before, to dash them in pieces. Gideon strained to reach the tunnel ahead as fragments of rock peppered him from above. He winced against the smaller stones embedding beneath his skin, white hot. He screamed and channeled the pain into a last burst of energy that shot him down the tunnel as the entire chasm wall came down into the training grounds behind him. The light which had filtered through the arch into the tunnel, a moment ago, snuffed out into darkness.
BLIND TEARS
A thunderous rumble cascaded down into the valley and over the hill where Ethan, Seth and Levi Bonifast now resided on horseback. They had been long on their journey back toward the Temple of Shaddai with news of their failure to locate Gideon. They all looked toward the not-to-distant Thornhill Mountains ahead. The booming sound reverberated again and again like thunder that sometimes bounced among the clouds long before ending.
Levi removed his spyglass and extended it to its full length before peering through toward the mountains. “I’m not sure…maybe smoke. I can’t really tell with all the cloud cover.�
“Is it coming from anywhere near the Temple?� Seth asked.
Levi lowered the glass. “Now how in the world would I know that?�
Ethan tried to see the smoke the captain had mentioned. Indeed, the cloud cover, which perpetually hung around the tops of the mountain range also providing cover for the chasm which housed the Temple, prevented them from really seeing anything substantial.
“Perhaps, cannon fire…it does sound similar,� Seth said as the noise began to dissipate.
Ethan surveyed what he could of Millertown, small and inconsequential, beneath the base of the mountains. “It certainly doesn’t look like anything going on in town.�
They started forward again. Whatever had happened, they still had to reach the Temple. News of Mordred’s preparations for war with Wayland could be relayed across the border by falcon to King Stephen. Whatever Mordred had planned, it wasn’t going to be good, or long before it happened.
Nearly a day later, Ethan stood motionless—breathless. He could not believe what he was seeing. He, Seth, and Levi had now attempted four different entryways into the Temple complex—all unsuccessful. The river, which had made its complex circuit around the Temple, had backed up in one place and in another was now a damp bed of mud and polished stones.
“Someone has dammed the river downstream,� Levi had observed.
They had finally come through the pine forest. Within, lying strewn upon the thick beds of dead needles, were the bodies of lions from the pride raised within The Order and the bodies of what could only be called vaguely human soldiers. Ethan had only been to see the pride once with Gideon. Over a hundred lions had resided in the covert kept especially for them.
Here, beneath the archway beyond the forest, they had stopped riding. Only a few pieces of the chiseled archway, with its ancient lettering still visible, remained. The rest had been pulverized beneath an insurmountable pile of rubble. The pile itself smoldered in the sun, which now shone bright upon the old ground of the Temple—direct sunlight, which until now had been prevented by the walls of the deep chasm into which the Temple had been established hundreds of years before.
The_Sword_of_Gideon
The smell of gunpowder and rock dust hung heavy in the air. The wind blowing through the mountains now whistled across holes and crevasses in the heap of charred stone. Bonifast sighed. Ethan remained speechless. He glanced over at Seth. The blind priest had said nothing. Despite his inability to see, Ethan thought the man probably knew what had happened. Tears tracked down his cheeks. He turned to Ethan with a wan smile. “What do you see, Ethan?� The words came out choked.
Ethan wasn’t sure how he could describe it. He had no words to express the pain within his heart. “It’s…gone,� he whispered hoarsely. Ethan looked back at what once had been the home of The Order of Shaddai. “It’s just gone.�
“How could this have happened?� Levi asked, bewildered.
“Mordred did this—� Ethan spat out the words.
“Yes, but how could he manage it?� Levi said. “It doesn’t make sense.�
“Mordred didn’t do it,� Seth said quietly. Both Ethan and Levi looked at him dumbfounded. “Isaiah once confided to me that The Order was prepared to defend the Temple to the death—to its complete destruction. Before traveling to Macedon, I had even served as a torchbearer—one of the few chosen to ignite a network of gunpowder reservoirs running throughout the entire complex.�
Levi still looked perplexed. “But why would they do that?�
“Because they would not allow the Temple to be desecrated by invaders,� Seth said. “The truth is that no one ever thought such dire circumstances would arise—the Temple having been so well protected for so long. But with the bodies in the forest and the pride lions all dead, I suppose that contingency finally came due.�
“So they’re all dead then: Isaiah and the others?� Ethan asked.
Seth turned to him, a slight hope present even in the stare of his blind eyes. “No. Isaiah was duty bound, as the High Priest, to leave the Temple. He would have taken some of the priests with him and the parchment scrolls of Shaddai’s Word.�
“But where would they go from here?� Levi asked.
Seth smiled a little, the hope growing in his heart. “Wayland,� he said. “The Order has a Temple there as well. It’s not as elaborate, or hidden away, but they’ve always had good relations with the Royal House there.�
Ethan turned his horse, ready to look no more on the devastation here. “Then that’s where we need to go.�
WAYLAND
Leaving the Thornhill Mountains behind them and crossing into the realm of Wayland, had been fairly uneventful. A small fortress, erected over the only road, housed several hundred men, cannon, horses, and the beginning of a signal fire network, to which speedy response could be made to any invasion through loyal militia sc
attered along the countryside. Apart from the fortress itself, Ethan and his company had found a defensive wall stretching out from the fortress on either side, both terminating into the last vestiges of jagged rock the Thornhills had to offer.
The guards at the fortress had seemed a bit on edge at the time of their passing, but they’d still been civil enough to outfit them with provisions: food and water and fresh horses. Those holding positions atop the fifty-foot block wall remained alert the entire time. Ethan had watched them carefully from a distance. Even Levi had remarked that these men all seemed to expect an attack at any moment.
Perhaps King Stephen had made preparations along his borders following their defeat at Emmanuel. Or maybe he knew war was imminent. Ethan and Levi had certainly seen enough preparation in progress within the white-walled city when they’d gone looking for Gideon. Giants housed on the training grounds and great engines of war stood ready, but logistically, Ethan couldn’t see them marched through the narrow and treacherous mountain pass to Wayland.
As they rode through the grassy plains Levi spoke up first. “I’m wondering if it’s in our best interest for you to seek an audience with King Stephen.�
Ethan looked back over his shoulder, puzzled by the statement. “What do you mean? Surely we need to find out if Isaiah has fled to Wayland with the Word. Besides, if he’s looking for an invasion then we can tell him what we saw in Emmanuel.�
Levi’s face twisted a little as though he weren’t quite sure he should say what he meant to say. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking, after our last encounter with the king, that he might still have a sore spot where the Deliverer was concerned.�