Garnet leaned forward into their circle and put four rocks in a square formation on the rooftop.
“Here’s us. Danner, you and Marc go here,” he said, motioning to the stone that represented the building across the street. “Michael here. Flasch, you go to that building and Trebor and I will stay here. Trebor, stay here. You’re our lookout and coordinator. This is the tallest building of the four, so you should be able to see everything. Flasch, you move first, but don’t engage. Just scuttle around and unsettle him. Be ready for anything. Marc, you move in next; let him see you, but keep your distance. Danner, Michael, and I will all move in together, via Trebor’s directions. One of you should be distracting enough to keep his attention, then I’ll move in to take him.
“We don’t know how strong a fighter he is, even if he is a Yellow, so nobody engage but me or Michael unless it becomes necessary. Understand?”
They nodded, then moved to their respective buildings to wait.
Surprisingly, everything went according to plan. The paladin was wary of Flasch’s spit-second appearances and disappearances, so he didn’t approach Marc when he appeared. As Garnet had predicted, the paladin’s attention was then drawn to Danner and Michael, and Garnet had no difficulty moving in. A quick chop to the neck and a jab to the chin knocked the Yellow to the ground, where he was quickly bound and gagged by Flasch.
“How many more of them do you think there are?” Flasch asked. He stood up from his handiwork and nodded in satisfaction.
“Who knows?” Marc replied. “I’m much more interested in finding out who’s in charge now that demon’s gone.”
Danner blinked. That was something he’d never considered. The demon he’d destroyed had been slowly subverting paladins and corrupting their minds and souls, and he’d been the obvious master of the group. The paladins overseeing their clandestine kidnappings had worked diligently to uncover as many of the unfortunate men as possible, and none of them was in charge of the others or held any form of seniority they could discern. With the demon gone, who indeed was in charge of the corrupted paladins? Or what was in charge?
“Did he know who he reported to, Trebor?” Michael asked.
Trebor shook his head. “He’s never seen him. He just knew it as a raspy voice that claimed it spoke for the master. From what I could tell, he didn’t even know the demon had been destroyed. Remember, I’m not very good at deeply kything people.”
“Right. Well, let’s head back and get some sleep tonight,” Danner said. “Garnet, he’s all yours. Treb, can you keep an eye out so we can avoid other people? I really don’t want to have to answer to the deron’dala[8] what we’re doing with an unconscious paladin trussed up and slung over Garnet’s shoulder.”
Garnet easily picked up the Yellow paladin, and they followed Trebor’s directions back to the Prism’s chapterhouse where they lived during their training.
“Anybody hungry?” Flasch asked. With several nods, he clapped Marc on the shoulder. “Let’s go, Marc. Danner, you got the cloaks?”
“Yeah. Michael, mind coming with me to play lookout?” Danner asked tiredly. The taller man nodded.
“I’ll go with Garnet and get our package to Morningham,” Trebor offered.
“Just don’t get caught by the Nightman,” Marc warned.
“Please,” Trebor scoffed.
They broke up to their various tasks. In a while they would meet back in their barracks for a quick snack and then to bed. They would be woken shortly after dawn to resume their training, and Morningham would show them no mercy. Even though they were working at his behest, he showed them no favoritism and even seemed to grill them that much harder. The six of them occasionally received extra instruction after the others were dismissed, often in the form of briefings and debriefings regarding their nighttime excursions, which Danner really didn’t mind, except that alienated them even further from their peers.
Danner supposed it would all work out in the end. In the meantime, however, he was exhausted. With a soft sigh, Danner set about picking the lock on the cloak storage room.
Chapter 2
Virtues cannot easily (or solely) be defined in words any more than a man can easily be defined by his actions alone. They are the proper middle path between many extremes, not just two convenient labels of vice, and practicing them may be the only way to truly understand them.
- Introduction,
“An Examination of Prismatic Virtue” (801 AM)
- 1 -
The rest of the week passed by with agonizing slowness, at least from Danner’s perspective. Gerard Morningham, the Red paladin in command of their training, put them through hour after grueling hour of combat training, alternating between armed and unarmed fighting. At least six hours of every day was spent engaged in some form of combat and related training. Their only respite, which could only be called such because they weren’t fighting, came during classroom instruction. Another six hours of the day, they were given to the care of Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, and Violet paladins for a different sort of education that taxed their minds almost as much as Morningham taxed their bodies. Danner estimated they spent a couple hours each day taking meals, and usually they had two or three hours of personal time set aside for individual study and personalized training as needed. Their instructors were oddly insistent that eight hours be reserved solely for sleep time, which the trainees essentially ignored, using some of that time for extra study and quiet conversation when the Nightman wasn’t present.
The grueling schedule was made all the worse for Danner and his friends when they went on late-night sorties on Morningham’s behalf, and more than once he’d had problems staying awake in the relative calm of their classroom instruction as paladins from the Orange Facet, which represented the virtue of knowledge, drilled them on history and general knowledge. Danner couldn’t help but see these lessons as a form of personal torture. He’d never liked those sorts of classes in the school where his father had sent him, and he found he still didn’t much care for them. The others struggled through with somewhat better grace, but only Marc seemed to truly enjoy the classes or take anything away from them. His incessant reading gave him a leg up on the others, but he was always willing to help them study or to remind them of some obscure tidbit of knowledge they needed.
Their time with the Violet paladins, who represented the Facet and virtue of piety, was somewhat more bearable for Danner, since he hoped it would tell him more about the immortals and the workings of Heaven. Given his unique nature, Danner had a special interest in the philosophies and teachings that supposedly came straight from God and His immortal angels. Michael, Flasch, and Trebor also enjoyed the classes in faith, but Garnet and Marc had little use for them.
Healing classes were perhaps Danner’s most frustrating. Not because he didn’t enjoy them, but rather because he couldn’t seem to understand why sometimes his healing prayers worked and sometimes they didn’t. Michael and Trebor could always make their prayers work, and Flasch was almost as successful, even though he rarely managed to heal more than a scratch. Marc and Garnet both seemed indifferent to their limited abilities. Danner, however, either met with astonishing success or absolute failure. Jon de’Serrika – Green paladin, sometime instructor, and a friend of Danner’s uncle – encouraged Danner, but sometimes couldn’t resist poking fun at him.
“Well, Danner,” the red-headed paladin said one day, “I think your best bet is to stick with the terminal cases. With your record, you’ll either cure them entirely or kill them outright. Either way, at least they can’t do any worse than you.”
The Yellow and Blue Facets combined their classes, which were largely a mystery to Danner. Instead of lecturing to them on temperance and justice, the virtues which the two Facets represented, their instructors gave them hypothetical situations and asked only that the trainees talk amongst themselves about the problems and try to develop solutions. Some were criminal cases, some involved diplomatic and military decisions, while others d
ealt with domestic disputes. There was no way of judging one’s progress or training in these classes, at least not that Danner could tell, but their instructors wandered around the room posing questions and noting arguments. Danner and Michael worked as a well-honed team in these classes making joint decisions, which Michael then explained and presented to the rest of their assigned groups. The others in their group of friends did moderately well, but as Michael once whispered to Danner, “You can tell it’s not really their passion.”
Nearly all of the trainees commented at some point on the feeling of haste that slowly pervaded the pace and atmosphere of their training. For the most part, Danner and his friends remained silent when trainees questioned them or offered half-thought-out theories and rumors.
It didn’t help Danner knowing the reason for their breakneck pace of training. With the departure of roughly half the paladins in the Prism into Hell, their instructors were eager to fill the ranks against the war that was sure to come. Few non-paladins had realized the ominous importance of the now-gone holy warriors or had any inkling of the imminent danger that was no doubt building on the far side of the Merging.
Danner glanced at the wall as though he could pierce miles of stone walls and see the Barrier itself, and beyond it the Merging. Just knowing that such a place existed, a place where the mortal realm overlapped with the immortal plane of Hell, made Danner’s spine tingle with suppressed anxiety.
“de’Valderat, are you listening?”
Danner jerked his gaze back to the Blue paladin hovering over his table.
“Yes, sir,” he replied a little too quickly.
“Well then, if you would, please summarize the arguments we just heard.”
Danner paled slightly, then resisted the urge to glare across the room at Ashfen Diermark. Ashfen was the de facto leader of his own group, simply because Ashfen was always the leader of any group he deigned to join. He was naturally charismatic, and people followed him whatever the decision he made, right or wrong. He was also quite jealous of the success of Danner and his friends, and he took few pains to hide his envy.
Danner struggled to remember the thread of Ashfen’s arguments, and to piece together the last few things he’d said while Danner was distracted.
The situation they were discussing was not hypothetical this time; instead, it was a real issue that had arisen centuries ago during hostilities between humans and a group of renegade dwarves. Men in one country had detained all the dwarves in the land, regardless of whether or not they owed allegiance to the hostile demi-humans. The dwarves were placed in small prison camps to isolate them and prevent any spies from reporting on human activities.
“Well, sir, the group had come to the conclusion that rounding up the dwarves was justified because they posed a threat to the nation,” Danner said. “Basically, because there was a potential threat – of which there was no evidence – it justified the nation’s army in rounding up all dwarves until the end of the war.”
The Blue paladin looked at him speculatively.
“You sound as if you don’t agree.”
“I don’t, sir.”
Ashfen glowered at Danner from across the room, but remained silent.
“Well then, would you care to offer your own arguments to refute those you so aptly summarized,” the paladin looked amused, but strangely intent.
Danner nodded.
“Well, sir, to begin with, I think it’s unjust to simply round up an entire people based solely on who their parents are, or for any reason they can’t control, for that matter,” Danner said. He shrugged. “So they were dwarves. From what we’ve read, most of them had lived in the country for generations, and they had no real ties to any of the rebel dwarves. There was no just cause for alarm on the part of the government to warrant such an action.”
“But a rebel dwarf looks much the same as a loyal dwarf, de’Valderat,” the Blue said. “How were they to know the difference?”
“A human sympathizer to the rebels looks much the same as a loyal human soldier, sir, but I didn’t remember the government locking themselves or their entire nation in those encampments.”
“Point taken,” the Blue said, smiling slightly. “But dwarves posed a more immediate and suspect threat. What about the safety of the entire nation to consider? If I read you correctly, you also object to the infringement of the dwarves’ basic rights, correct? Do the rights of the individuals then outweigh the overall rights and safety of the entire nation?”
Danner frowned.
“A country that’s saved at the expense of every basic principle of liberty really isn’t one worth living in, sir,” Danner said seriously. “Who’s to say what infringement the government will next decide is necessary? If they can do the one, why not another? At some point, an individual’s rights have to be subject to the good of the nation, or there’s no society, but where that line is drawn is the telling point that defines a free society from a repressed one.”
The Blue paladin said nothing, but nodded slightly in approval.
- 2 -
Later in the week, Ashfen tried to exact his revenge for having been shown up in class, not by directly attacking Danner, but by causing problems for his friends and stirring other trainees against them. Ashfen worked behind the scenes with several trainees who had known xenophobic tendencies, playing on their human-only beliefs and poisoning them against Danner’s group.
“You heard him in class the other day. He favors the safety of demi-humans over humans when there’s a war going on. He thinks they’re more important.”
“He spends his free time with a gnome. We’ve all seen him being dropped off in that buggy by the squeaky little demi-human.”
“He probably thinks denarae are equal to humans, too.”
Two nights in a row, Danner found offensive messages scrawled in human offal on the wall in the area where he and his friends slept. Rather than respond or retaliate in any way, they had Trebor find the supposedly anonymous perpetrator and left a bowl full of the waste scraped from the wall sitting at the foot of his bed. They never said a word about it, and everyone wondered how they knew with whom to leave the remains. After the second night, it never happened again.
Instead, Michael was tripped three times crossing the practice yard, apparently through clumsiness. Marc had drawers banged painfully into his side and chairs backed into him in the library. Twice people tried to sneak up on Flasch to pull some stunt, but the sharp-eared former thief heard them and found unobtrusive ways to deter them. Trebor’s towel and clothes were stolen while he was cleaning himself in the bathhouse, but he simply kythed to Danner, who brought him a spare set of clothes and an extra towel.
The only ones who remained unmolested were Danner and Garnet. Danner figured they were just too scared of Garnet to seriously consider acting against him, but it took him a while to figure out why he wasn’t the target of any pranks. Eventually he realized that Ashfen and the others wanted to drive people away from him by making it known that associating with Danner – and his friends by default – would lead to such treatment. Indeed, people seemed to go out of their way not to be seen as too friendly with Danner, a fact which pained him greatly.
Danner’s unique heritage set him apart in his own mind, and at the time when he most needed to be reassured he was still a normal part of human society, people were being driven away from him as if he were a plague. Normally it wouldn’t bother him, but for once in his life Danner needed reassurance that he was not something freakish, or at least not so different that he was ostracized. His friends provided him his only comfort. They stood mute in their acceptance of Danner, as though the idea of him not belonging was not even worth talking or thinking about. In the meantime, they bore the antagonism with stoic silence.
The one form of retaliation Garnet did suffer came late in the week, when rumors began circulating that he had criticized Morningham’s fighting and thought the Red paladin was too old to really fight. Because of their special con
nection to the Red paladin, Danner was sure Morningham would know the rumors were false, but from his reaction, Danner began to have second thoughts.
That Heptday, Morningham approached Garnet, bowkur notably absent as he carried a naked blade in his hand. Morningham’s face was horribly scarred over every inch of flesh, creating a crisscrossing web of red lines that pulsed with the inner fire of his fury.
“Trainee jo’Garet!” he bellowed, less than ten feet from the target of his fury.
“Yes, sir,” Garnet replied, disengaging from his opponent. The Red paladin he’d been facing was torn between anxiety at the look on Morningham’s face and relief that he wouldn’t be embarrassed again by facing Garnet. Most men signing up to join the Prismatic Order already had some level of combat training, and some even had a smattering of an education. Garnet’s father, Garet, had trained his son, and Garnet had taken that training and worked wonders. In only a few short weeks, he was acknowledged as the best swordsman of the trainees, and it was common knowledge that he could outstrip almost any paladin on the field.
But that reputation was working against him as Morningham threw himself at Garnet in a furious rage. Garnet ducked the instructor’s rush and dropped his weighty bowkur, then snatched up a blade of equally large proportions from a nearby weapons rack. Danner wasn’t sure he could even swing the weapon Garnet had chosen, but the mountainous youth wielded the blade with practiced ease.
No words were exchanged, and Danner glanced around to see if anyone was going to act to stop the madness unfolding before him, but a group of paladins held back the trainees and even a few other paladins who would have intervened. Those blocking had a knowing look in their eye, as if this was all staged and had been prearranged.
“It was,” Trebor said inside Danner’s mind. “Just not with Garnet.”
“Are you going to tell him that?” Danner asked urgently.
“No.”
Garnet met Morningham’s next charge with an upraised blade, but confusion was evident on the younger man’s face. He obviously had no idea why Morningham was attacking him with – at least on the surface – every intent of killing him.
The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) Page 3