Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (4 page)

“Why are we
being forced to wait back here?” a voice grumbled somewhere nearby. “Taking
orders from a pup and his gray-skinned lackeys.”

Garnet laid a
calming hand on his father’s shoulder as Garet started to turn angrily toward
the paladin who’d spoken.

“I’ve got it,
dad,” he murmured. Quickly, but with a casual quietness, Garnet positioned
himself an arm’s-reach behind the Orange paladin in question. Garnet didn’t
know his name, but he vaguely recognized him as one of the paladins who’d
remained in the chapterhouse during most of the fighting on the Barrier.

“I assume,
brother,” Garnet said with deceptive politeness, “that you are referring to my
command.”

The Orange
turned and regarded Garnet with a barely concealed sneer. The depreciating
expression was marred somewhat by the paladin’s having to crane his neck up to
look Garnet in the eyes.

“As a matter of
fact, I was,” the Orange replied. “Youth cannot take the place of experience,
and I can name any number of paladins of higher caliber who are doubtlessly
more qualified to lead an expedition of this size, your father not the least
among them,” he said with a nod toward Garet.

The intended
compliment, if it could be considered such, fell short as the Orange paladin
noted the grim expression on Garet’s face. In point of fact, Garet
was
in charge of the double
jintaal
itself, but he followed Garnet’s orders
without question, knowing full well the feats Shadow Company was capable of
achieving and the leadership prowess of his eldest son. Garet’s acquiescence
effectively put Garnet in command of the
jintaal
as well, a fact that
clearly didn’t sit well with all of their fellow paladins.

Garnet regarded
the Orange paladin silently for a moment until the shorter man started to
fidget under the grim scrutiny. Anyone who had ever trained under Gerard
Morningham would have immediately recognized the expression on Garnet’s face,
and most of them would have turned and run away rather than come under its
stark bleakness.

“You are, of
course correct, brother, in saying that experience is all-important in a
scenario such as this,” Garnet said calmly – another warning sign, “but you of
all people as an Orange paladin should know better than to confuse age with
experience. As such, I might point out that while the recent war was underway,
until the demons attacked the chapterhouse you were, if I’m not mistaken,
hip-deep in books in the library searching for clues in a vain attempt to gain
insight into the tactics and intentions of our foes. I, meanwhile, was up to my
armpits in the blood of our brethren trying to defend the Barrier.

“While you
squinted to read books by torchlight, Shadow Company destroyed a powerful demon
and secured the aid of reinforcements from Merishank. While you pored over
poorly written texts for information
we
already knew, Shadow Company
spearheaded the defenses of the Barrier and accounted for more than ten times
the number of slain foes as any other two units combined.”

Garnet shifted
from his deceptively polite voice to the harsh tones he used when dressing down
soldiers in Shadow Company who had just failed in their training. Even so,
given their situation, Garnet’s voice never rose above a subdued growl.

“While you slept
on a bed at night, whimpering in terror as your nightmares made you cry out for
your mother, I stood on the wall and watched hundreds of men stand ashen-faced
before the coming horde and saw them fall, torn to shreds by demonic hands. You
had the luxury of time and the comfort of space around you. My
men
,
meanwhile, fought a thousand-to-one odds and held firm with more courage,
strength, and conviction than a hundred paladins of
your
caliber,”
Garnet said with a sneer.

“So from now on,
when you speak of experience, I suggest you first wipe your chin to clean off
the dried remains from that crap you just spouted. When you speak of
leadership, I must insist you first let go of your mother’s teat before you
think yourself qualified to comment on those who have proven themselves well
beyond your feeble abilities.

“And when you
speak of the men in my command, I
demand
you speak of them with respect,
brother, or I will, with all due adherence to propriety and Prismatic code,
beat you to a bloody pulp and leave you quivering in a broken heap on the
doorstep of the nearest temple praying to God for His forgiveness for your
narrow-mindedness and ignorance. The Orange Facet is the reflection of
knowledge and truth, and I find your bigotry in stark contrast to the virtues
of our holy order. I suggest you reexamine your prejudices, brother, lest you
find yourself fading from Orange to a more appropriate color.”

Garnet paused,
then smirked with a deliberate glance up and down the Orange paladin’s
comparably skinny frame. “Pink, perhaps, would be more fitting.”

Throughout this
muffled diatribe, the Orange paladin stood pale-faced and trembling in the
glare of Garnet’s apparent anger and disdain. His hands clenched as his lips
twisted in resentment, and for a moment Garnet thought the other paladin would
be foolish enough to take a swing at him. That would be nothing short of
disastrous for the much smaller man, and the Orange apparently thought better
of physically assaulting Garnet’s mountainous frame.

Garnet spared
the white-faced paladin only another moment of his attention, then he turned
away with a swift motion that sent his red cloak whipping past the Orange’s
face. The other paladin flinched away from the cloak, then turned and stalked
away fuming.

“Who was that
pompous ass?” Garnet murmured calmly to his father.

“Alister
de’Kelenath,” Garet replied in a low voice heavy with suppressed amusement, “a
real pain in the ass. I remember him from my training days. He used to give the
two elves that trained with us a hard time, and it sizzled his stones when they
made full paladin a month before he did.”

Garnet chuckled.

“That was
eloquent,”
Brican kythed to Garnet.
“Are you sure we don’t need to
exorcise Gerard’s ghost out of you?”

“Not now,
Brican,”
Garnet replied.
“Report.”

“Red and
yellow are ready to assault, sir,”
Brican told him seriously.
“Green is
ready to move out on your order, and with the exception of your new friend over
there, the paladins all appear ready to move with us.”

“Good. Have
someone send up a fake signal, and let’s get going then,”
Garnet replied
briskly.

“Understood.”

Garnet received
a brief kythe when his two platoons first made contact with the demon sentries
around the camp.
 
In the distance, Garnet
thought he heard a low roar of a demon in pain, but he couldn’t be sure. A
moment later an arrow whizzed into sight and sank into the ground a dozen or so
feet from Garnet.

“There’s the
signal,” he said loudly to the paladins loosely assembled about the clearing.
“Garet, form up the
jintaal
and follow us in. On my signal, Green
Platoon will break and let you through.”

“Understood,
sir,” Garet replied crisply, saluting his son.

“Let’s give ‘em
Hell, brothers,” Garnet cried and motioned everyone forward. “For God and for
man.”

“For life!” the
paladins roared together.

- 3 -

The assault went
almost exactly to plan. When Garnet and the other paladins arrived under cover
of Shadow Company’s Green Platoon, the demons were pinned down and struggling
to hold back the denarae. Most of the demons were weak enough that Shadow
Company was able to destroy them without undue difficulty. Their weapons were all
blessed and marked with the holy symbol – a hard-earned lesson from the war –
but at least a dozen demons were slaked on human blood and had become too
powerful to be destroyed by anything less than a full paladin. The holy
warriors waded into the fray, cutting through unholy flesh and punching a hole
through the remnants of the demons’ defenses.

The paladins
split up to engage their foes, following the tides of battle. A few minutes
into the engagement, Garnet received word that a large pocket of the demons was
trying to break away and flee the battle. Before he could even think of the
order, Flasch was already in position to cut off the retreat. The Violet
paladin slew the two more powerful demons while his platoon mopped up the
lesser creatures.

Garnet stayed
out of most of the battle, preferring to direct his troop movements without
suffering from the fog of war that descended on a commander who allowed himself
to become personally engaged in combat.

Twice during the
battle, something flickered at the edge of Garnet’s vision, but he was never
able to focus in on it. When he turned to look directly at it, nothing was
there. Garnet shook his head, hoping it was only the lingering effects of using
the shared vision and not something more sinister.

Across the
battlefield, Garnet saw a blaze of azure fury and knew that Danner had defied
his orders and asolved
[7]
his wings. The blue wings were a gift from his immortal heritage, but lately,
Garnet had come to regard them as much a curse as a blessing. Anger that Danner
had disobeyed him overrode any thoughts he may have had that perhaps Danner had
a valid reason for utilizing his immortal power.

“Danner!” he
bellowed, striding toward his friend. The angelic figure cut down a screaming
demon, then turned toward Garnet and regarded him with glowing blue eyes.
Danner was at best average in height, but when his wings were asolved he
emanated a power that made such considerations as physical size meaningless.
His short-cropped, dark hair was plastered to his head with sweat and blood,
and his youthful face was set in a fierce exuberance that faded as he saw
Garnet approaching.

When he was
close enough that no one would overhear the quiet roar of his voice, Garnet
growled, “By Sin, San, Satan, and God Himself, I specifically ordered you
not
to use your wings. Just what part of ‘No’ didn’t you understand? You will learn
to control you impulses or, by God, you will no longer lead in this unit. Do
you understand me?”

“Damn it,
Garnet, I…”

Garnet held up a
hand to cut Danner off as he received a kythe from Brican that nearly stopped
his heart.

“Garnet,
you’d better get over here,”
Brican kythed, his mental voice tired.
“We’ve
got four paladins down, and one of them’s your father.”

Distantly, Garnet
recognized the sound of voices being raised to pass him a message. Danner’s
wings flickered, then disappeared. A Yellow paladin ran toward Garnet. Even
knowing the message that was needlessly being delivered, Garnet’s chest froze
into a solid lump of ice, and for a moment he fought just to breathe. He saw
the paladin’s lips moving, but it was an eternal second before Garnet could
hear anything over the pounding in his ears.

“Man down,
Garnet. Man down.”

The body obeys the mind like the most obedient of
dogs. The mind obeys itself like the most fractious of felines.

- Knerry Raltin,

“Forms of Communication” (102
AL)

- 1 -

Danner followed
Brican’s mental directions and met up with Garnet and the other Shadow Company officers
a few seconds before they came upon the wounded paladins. Danner reverted to
his wholly mortal body and carefully avoided meeting Garnet’s eyes; he didn’t
want to see his friend’s anger, nor did he want his own irritation to bubble to
the surface. Instead, the five paladins and two denarae glanced at each other
to assess injuries, then immediately turned their attention to the four men
laying on the ground.

Of the four men,
it was obvious three were dead. One of the paladins, from the Blue Facet, had
been practically shucked out of his torn armor during the fight, and one of his
arms was missing. A Violet paladin was missing most of one side of his face,
and a Red had a gaping hole in his chest where his heart should have been. The
fourth fallen paladin was Garnet’s father, and Danner nearly gasped in relief
when he saw the massive Red paladin’s chest rise.

Garet was
covered with deep cuts and claw marks, and very little of his body was not
covered with his own blood. His customary chainmail armor had been removed,
presumably by the Green paladin already in attendance, and Danner could see
gaping holes where demonic claws had torn through the interwoven links,
corresponding to the injuries covering the Red paladin’s torso. Worst of all,
Garet’s right hand had nearly been severed from his wrist, and a tourniquet
further up his arm was the only thing preventing a fatal loss of blood. The
Green paladin was pale-faced as he held the partially severed limb, and it was
obvious from his face that he knew he wouldn’t be able to heal the grievous
wounds Garet had sustained.

Garnet stared
down at his prone father, his face a mask of inscrutability that told Danner
more than anything just how deeply his friend was shaken by his father’s
injuries. Garnet took in the sight of the despairing Green paladin and
immediately shifted his eyes to Danner.

“Dan…” he choked
off, his voice parched. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Danner. Please.
Please try.”

With a nod,
Danner moved closer and knelt down next to the blood-drenched paladin. All
question of Danner’s prior use of his immortal heritage vanished; whatever
irritation both men felt toward each other was washed away by necessity and
sympathetic concern.

Danner was, at
best, inconsistent when it came to healing. He either met with stunning success
or abysmal failure. It had been remarked that he should only take on the
terminally injured, because he would either heal them completely or kill them
outright, leaving them no worse off than they otherwise would have been. The
best healers in the Prism
might
have been able to save his life, though
not his hand, but none of the paladins present had anywhere near that sort of
strength. Having seen Garet’s torn body and felt the pain within him, Danner
knew there was no other hope for the Red paladin. If he failed, Garnet’s father
would die.