Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (59 page)

Garet’s yellow
dakkan was critically wounded and was only just able to remain airborne. Two of
the behemoth’s tentacles had struck Shelly while depositing Shadow Company,
tearing a chunk out of one flank and ripping a dangerous hole in one of her
wings. The trustworthy dakkan fought through obvious pain to keep her paladin
aloft. Garet’s healing powers were practically nonexistent, leaving him unable
to alleviate Shelly’s growing pain.

The denarae had
now succeeded in overrunning the positions not defended by childris, and
somehow they’d even managed to turn the behemoth around into what looked like a
slow retreat. The hulking monstrosity had already crossed most of the
battlefield by that time, however, and now it was ponderously making its way
back the direction it had come. They were almost directly over the lake now,
and there was still a lot of ground to cover. Garet knew his son would never
leave the beast until it was either destroyed or no longer a threat to the
battle, and so Shadow Company remained on the back of the behemoth.

One rank of
childris demons charged forward while a second hung back and threw their black
spears over the heads of their fellows. The spears fell among the denarae, but
Garet was too far away to clearly gauge the impact of the attack. The denarae
responded with a volley of arrows, then two platoons charged forward to meet
the childris head-on.

Moments before
they reached the demons, the denarae behind them fired another volley of
arrows, and the men in front suddenly dropped to the ground, allowing the
arrows to speed by overhead at a dangerously lethal range. Garet watched in
fascination and frustration as the battle raged, knowing there was nothing he
could do to help his son.

Finally,
Shelly’s subdued whimpers were too much, and he realized he had to land or risk
his mount’s life. They began to glide slowly downward, keeping a careful eye
out for demons who might take notice of the crippled dakkan and seek to finish
them both off.

A roar of fury
beneath him caused Garet to look below, and he watched with a sense of awe as
Uriel and Aesthma chased each other across the sky. They were both badly
injured, but the two immortals fought on with a loathing that spanned eons, and
neither was willing to concede defeat to their hated foe nor settle for another
stalemate. This was a battle to the death.

As Garet
watched, Uriel attacked first with one sword, then the other, then with his
daggers as he closed with the demon. He cut off one of Aesthma’s pincer claws,
but the demon reacted with blinding speed and struck Uriel a deep blow with his
tail, digging his stinger into the Seraph’s back with a piercing shriek of glee.

Uriel pushed
away from the demon and fell in a barely controlled descent. With a howl of
triumph, Aesthma rolled once in the air, then sped after the falling angel.

Garet’s
frustration and helplessness evaporated, and in a moment of clarity and resolve
he leapt from his dakkan and plummeted through the skies. Using only the barest
bit of control from his cloak, he guided himself unerringly toward the
unsuspecting demon who closed on Uriel with single-minded intensity. Somewhere
above him, Shelly let out a keening cry.

Without warning,
Garet struck the demon and wrapped his massive arms around the monster’s shell,
pinning his wings to his back. Aesthma cried out in surprise, then turned his
head and rattled his mandibles in irritation. Garet saw a blur of motion out
the corner of his eye, then fire erupted in his leg as Aesthma’s stinger ripped
across his right calf, cutting through Garet’s armor like it was paper and
laying the flesh open to the bone.

Aesthma struck
again and again, puncturing holes in Garet’s armor and striking the flesh
within with lethal poison. Garet screamed in pain but refused to release his
hold on the demon. The waters of the lake rushed closer and closer, and
Aesthma’s attacks began to take on the frenzy of panic. He clawed at Garet’s
interlocked hands, but the angle was too awkward for his limbs, and no matter
his immortal strength, he couldn’t get leverage enough to break the mighty
paladin’s hold.

The demon’s
wings stirred frantically against Garet’s chest, sending a vibration through
his body that threatened to rattle his teeth loose.

Aesthma’s final
scream was choked off as they struck the surface of the lake with a crack that
would have deafened Garet had he still been aware enough to sense anything.
Pain and poison had overridden every feeling and sensation from his body, and
for a time he knew the true definition of agony as the demon’s venom raced
through his flesh and stabbed into his heart. Then the blessed waters of the
Philion closed over him, and cool relief flooded the Red paladin’s body in his
final moment.

By the time
Mikal swept through and dealt the fatal blow to Aesthma, Garet was already
dead.

- 3 -

The two paladins
faced the demon with a grim knowledge in their eyes.

“We go to face
them,” Kaelus announced. Flames crackled in his voice, and the demon clenched
his fist in anger. “I will not cower here and wait for destruction. We must
hold out as long as possible to give aid a chance to arrive.”

“Agreed,” Birch
said. Perklet nodded. “We ride out to meet them and either punch through or
hold until help arrives.”

“Then gird
yourselves for war,” Kaelus said, then he left the tent with Siran.

Birch whistled
for Selti, who slipped into the tent in his runner form. The dakkan took up
most of the space in the tent, so Birch retrieved the last few pieces of his
armor and told his gray mount to wait outside. Perklet’s dakkan followed suit,
and the two paladins quickly set about tightening their armor.

“I’m sorry I
dragged you into this, Perky,” Birch said. “You should have stayed behind with
the army where it was safe.”

“It was supposed
to be safe here,” Perklet replied, helping Birch settle his shoulders.
“Besides, if I hadn’t come, I might never have found out the truth. So much is
clearer to me now, just knowing what I’ve heard. If I die today, I will only
lament the lost opportunity to tell others what I’ve learned.”

Birch turned and
smiled at the Green paladin.

“You’ve really
changed since I first met you, Perklet,” Birch said, “and I think you’re that
much stronger for it. I’m proud to call you my friend.”

Wordlessly, the
two men clasped hands and stared intently at each other, and Perklet marveled
that he no longer flinched away from the flames in Birch’s eyes. Their
experience atop the now-fallen fortress had apparently anesthetized him to the
horrors visited on those who met Birch’s gaze.

They parted, and
Birch settled his helmet then lifted his shield on his left arm.

“Let’s go,” he
said, and he held back the tent flap for the Green paladin.

Siran’s elves
formed an honor row on either side of the tent, their weapons held respectfully
in a salute. Erelim and Cherubim hovered overhead in a similar display, and for
a moment there was absolute silence. The two dakkans waited at the far side of
the honor guard, and Birch and Perklet quickly made their way past the elves
and mounted their dakkans. Kaelus walked up and stood between them. The demon’s
head was on a level with Birch, and they regarded each other silently.

At an unspoken
command, they started forward at a trot with the Elan’Vital trailing close
behind and the angels keeping pace overhead. They moved at the resolute pace of
men determined to face their destiny standing and to sell their lives at only
the most exacting cost.

The nearest
group of the encircling demons was soon in sight, and immediately the angels
fanned out and began firing their bows as quickly as they could pick out
targets. Birch lifted a bow from Selti’s saddle and added several arrows of his
own. Perklet gasped in surprised when he saw that Birch wielded the same style
bow as the immortals and fired arrows of crimson power – Perklet had seen the
bow before, but taken little note of it. His arrows might lack the inherent
essence of the holy immortals, but the demon
āyus
inside him
provided enough power that the blows he struck were as lethal as any angel’s.

As they drew
closer, Kaelus formed glowing balls of blue fire in his claws and hurled them
into the oncoming ranks. Damned souls were reduced to ashes in an instant while
around them hundreds fell to the arrows of the angels. Still they charged
forward, ten thousand or more strong as they hurried to overrun the pitifully
outnumbered forces that defended the demonic commander of the Heavenly Hosts.
When Kaelus’s honor guard slowed to await the demons, Birch and Perklet quickly
dismounted and their dakkans leapt airborne.

The Elan’Vital
took the fore as the enemy drew close, and a wave of damned souls broke over
the elves and parted to either side. Quickly, the elves closed in to seal the
rear, and they formed a circle of protection around Kaelus, who continued to
hurl fiery death into the throng of twisted souls. In the skies above, dark
clouds of winged monstrosities swept down toward the angels, who unleashed
volley after volley of glowing arrows. Selti flew overhead alongside Perklet’s
mount, but the two dakkans stayed close to their paladins to keep them safe.
One dense cluster of gremlins slipped past the dakkans, but they were consumed
by a cloud of blue flame Kaelus breathed out as they approached, and only a
puff of black ash escaped the azure holocaust.

“Siran, tighten
on the left!” Birch bellowed, shoving a damned creature out of the way with his
shield and lunging with his sword to strike a drolkul standing behind it. An
elf to Birch’s right cried out and fell to the ground clutching his chest.
Without turning, Birch shouted, “Perklet, healing!”

He was vaguely
aware of the elf being dragged from his sight, and a minute later he looked
again and saw the same elf – newly healed – fighting beside him once more.

Their circle of
protection shrank slowly but surely as elves fell to the claws of the monsters
pressed around them. The elf on Birch’s right was hauled out of the circle by a
raging drolkul, and Birch knew better than to hope for the man’s life a second
time.

A damned soul
stumbled in front of Birch and looked up at him fearfully in the instant before
he split its head open with his sword. Another monster replaced it a second
later, and this one looked just as reluctant to engage the Gray paladin. For a
brief instant, Birch was reminded of the handful of damned creatures he’d tried
to save in the Barrier War and their reluctance to fight.

The damned!
Birch thought, spearing one of them with the spike on his shield. He twisted to
free the shield, cutting another creature down with his sword as he stepped
back to rejoin the circle of protection.

“Kaelus, look
around us!”
Birch thought forcefully, trying to contact the demon directly,
mind-to-mind as the immortals did. He’d never consciously tried to speak to
Kaelus since they separated, and he was pleasantly surprised when he responded.

“We’re
surrounded, Birch,”
Kaelus kythed back grimly.
“What do you expect me to
see?”

“Most of them
are damned souls,”
Birch replied.
“Free them. Free them as you did those
poor souls at the Barrier. They’re being forced to fight on behalf of a realm
where they were never supposed to be. Talk to them. Tell them the truth.
They’re free!”

“I’ll try,”
Kaelus kythed, his doubts obvious. Still connected to Birch, his thoughts
continued to stream into the paladin’s mind.
“No, I will not try. I will do
it. Doubt cannot exist. This is truth. I must convince them. Doubts will betray
me.”

Birch listened
to the demon’s monologue of thoughts and tried to maintain his focus on the
battle before him. Fortunately, the elves to either side of him were skilled
warriors, and they covered his occasional lapse.

“What?”
Kaelus’s surprised voice intruded again into Birch’s mind.
“Uriel is on his
way with the Archangels. Aesthma is dead, so is Garet jo’Meerkit.”

There was no
time for Birch to spare even a moment of remorse for his former companion. If
Birch fell today, perhaps their souls might still fight side-by-side.

“There’s too
many, Uriel,”
Birch overheard Kaelus’s reply.
“If we’re still overrun, I
want you to stay clear. There’s nothing you can do. No heroics, that’s an
order.”

Kaelus’s voice
fell silent a moment as he concentrated. Birch stayed alert for the demon’s
thoughts, knowing that if this failed they were all doomed.

 “I need
a soul,”
Kaelus told him, and Birch immediately complied. He speared his
shield into the ground, grabbed the nearest damned soul, then spun and
crouched, hurling the creature over his shoulder and into the waiting arms of Kaelus.
Birch whirled back, retrieved his shield, and continued fighting.

Kaelus grasped
the damned soul in his claws, careful not to injure the struggling thing that
had once been a human male. He rumbled something to the soul, which immediately
ceased its panicked attempts to escape.

In a voice that
could probably be heard halfway across the immortal plane, Kaelus thundered a
single word.

“WITNESS!”

Without warning,
the battle suddenly stopped as every damned soul ceased moving and turned its
attention to Kaelus. Demons gestured and roared in fury, but were ignored in
favor of the red-skinned giant who spoke with unassailable authority, and they,
too, eventually fell into a baffled silence. Kaelus began to speak to the
creature in his grasp, speaking in the immortal tongue and communicating
directly to the essence of its tormented soul. He spoke of freedom and of
choice, and of the beliefs that chained the soul to damnation. Slowly the fear
in the damned soul’s eyes faded and was replaced by wonder.