Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3)
Page 45
Azazel stepped forward and Siran immediately attacked, lunging with his halven to spear the leather-winged demon in the chest. The weapon was marked with the holy Tricrus and had slain hundreds of lesser demons, but still it shattered on the demon prince’s flesh as though he’d struck a mountain.
Siran fell back and stared in disbelief at the broken blade of his weapon, which he nevertheless held at the ready as the demonic pair strode forward.
“The mighty Kaelus,” Azazel said mockingly as he looked down at the fallen demon. He ignored Siran completely. “Mephistopheles will reward us well for returning you.”
Succubus knelt beside him and reached out to grasp the black shackles on Kaelus’s left wrist. Siran leapt forward and was immediately thrown back as Azazel swept one leathery wing and brushed the elf aside like a stray leaf. The demoness gripped the manacle and whispered a few words in the immortal tongue, and suddenly both she and Kaelus disappeared.
“Kill as many of the mortals as necessary, but do try to take some of them alive,” Azazel ordered nonchalantly. “We’ll have some sport this evening.”
“Uriel, get out of here!” Birch thought frantically as clawed hands wrenched his arms behind him. “No heroics. Go!”
The Elan’Vital leapt to the defense of their captain, but the demons closed in and ruthlessly cut them down. Some of the elves were hauled away and subdued. Without the protection and support of Kaelus, the remaining elves stood no chance against such overwhelming numbers. The circle of the living slowly shrank until it was swallowed in a sea of demonic flesh.
Birch witnessed none of this. With Azazel’s demand for captives, the drolkul holding him struck Birch across the back of his head and darkness claimed him.
Interlude
History may record Camael among the worst of traitors, and I cannot dispute this claim of infamy – so long as he is remembered first and foremost among the greatest and most loyal in all the Heavenly Hosts.
- Uriel,
“Collected Accounts from the Pandemonium War”
- 1 -
James Tarmin looked at the aftermath of the battle and allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. True, the odds had been stacked in their favor, but less than a hundred paladins had been seriously injured and none had been lost. The Greens were hard at work repairing the injuries too grievous to be healed by the afflicted man himself, and a large tent had been hastily erected to shelter those who were already in a healing sleep. A hundred yards away, the air shimmered slightly as he looked directly into the cleft that housed the Binding.
A swirl of blue color caught his eye as someone approached on his right side.
“Feeling better, Nuse?” James asked without looking.
“Much,” the elderly Blue paladin replied. “I think that Green even managed to get rid of some of the arthritis that’s been slowing my shoulder lately. If only they could heal advancing age.”
“God wants you bald, my friend,” James said with a smile, “and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Not the hair, it’s the rest of the body. I don’t mind the hair loss, I expect it at my age,” Nuse said. “I mind that it started so damn early. A man shouldn’t start shining back at the moons while he’s still in his thirties. You have no idea how hard it was to find women my own age who’d actually believe I was my own age.”
James chuckled.
“I had the same problem, just in reverse,” James said. “Barkeeps asked where my parents were until I was almost a paladin. Thank God I’d grown a beard by the time I met Tabitha, or else she’d have spanked me as soon as kissed me. She made me shave it off after our second date, but it had already served its purpose.”
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 complet
e. 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.”
Uriel remained silent.
“I was consumed by unquestioning belief in the rightness – no, the righteousness – of my actions. I heard that Kaelus himself was besieged, and I left you and the Archangels, little caring about the outcome of the battle, and flew with all possible haste toward the demon general. I arrived just as the demons attacked, and I waited for the moment I knew would come.” Camael’s voice was flat and marked only by a heavy weight that pressed down on his every word.
“I saw the miracle of the damned as they were delivered from their torment, but I couldn’t hear his words,” the Power continued. “They were for mortal ears alone. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of damned souls were freed in an instant, and still I was deaf and blind to the truth. My ears were stopped by poisonous words, and my eyes were blinded by my own light.