Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (79 page)

Paladins on
dakkan-back wheeled through the air and destroyed any fiend foolish enough to
come within reach of claw, tooth, or sword. Flights of angels unleashed waves
of glowing arrows that decimated the ranks of their victims, and they were in
turn lashed by volleys of cursed arrows and crossbow bolts fired from the hands
of both demons and damned souls.

Molekh watched
in satisfaction as a new threat arrived onto this scene of aerial chaos. More
than half a hundred long tentacles – six hundred, three-score, and six, to be
exact – writhed on a monstrous body clad in black steel plating and supported
by four wings that blackened the sky. The Heavenly Hosts called it a behemoth,
a flying monstrosity.

To the demons,
it was simply the Beast.

The last and
greatest of Arthryx the Bender’s creations before his untimely destruction,
even Molekh was awed by the destructive power the demonic creature possessed.
Unlike many of Arthryx’s creations, the Beast was crafted not from the flesh of
the damned – which was all too vulnerable – but rather from the combined flesh
of thousands of low-ranking demons of all sorts. One balrog of reasonable
intelligence and strength was chosen to serve as the mind that governed the
Beast’s existence, but most of the individual tentacles were controlled by the
demons whose flesh had been used to create them. Several ended in snarling
snouts and slashing teeth. The Beast’s demonic flesh was further protected by
plates of steel melded to the unholy skin. Since it was constructed from
demonkind, rather than from the flesh of the damned as had been Arthryx’s
abominations – which had failed spectacularly while attacking the Barrier in
the mortal world – the Beast would not fall victim to one well-placed
Tricrus
.
Were it to be marked with the holy symbol, only the demon inscribed by the
Tricrus
would be destroyed, and the Beast itself would continue on, unaffected by the
minor loss.

He grudgingly
gave credit to Malith for having conceived of the Beast, but Molekh would
prefer to have his eyes burned out by holy fire rather than openly admit any
respect for the Black paladin. To Molekh, he was a lackey and would always be a
lackey, no matter if he served God or the demon king. The bull-headed demon
followed Mephistopheles’s leadership reluctantly because of the dictates of
shaishisii
,
but he did not
serve
the demon king.

Molekh served no
one but himself.

The Beast flew
over the city and immediately began to wreak havoc on the angelic defenders,
who could no longer fly at will through the air. The Beast effectively created
a no-fly zone of death over a large portion of the city, and the demons used
this to their advantage as they fired arrows from under the monstrous demon’s
shadow or from its back. Angels fired hundreds and thousands of their arrows at
the Beast, but none of their attacks seemed to have a noticeable effect on the
demonic conglomeration.

With the skies
now effectively under demonic control, Molekh focused his attention on the
ground. For hours, the demons had been making steady progress toward the heart
of the city, but they still had a long ways to go, and resistance was becoming
more concentrated and desperate. Soon they would have the angels bottled up and
waiting to be slaughtered.

A disturbance in
the water to Molekh’s right warned him an instant before a wave of angels erupted
from the lake and charged into the ranks of his army. He had a brief glimpse of
the angel leading the charge, but it was enough.

“Uriel,” he
growled in anticipation. The Seraph was at the top of the list of angels Malith
wanted destroyed at all costs. His Archangels were responsible for some of the
heaviest losses in the war, and Uriel himself was responsible for the death of
Aesthma and possibly Azazel as well. He was certainly a force to be reckoned
with, but Molekh looked forward to the confrontation.

The Archangels
dragged steel ropes through the demons trying to cross the bridge they’d
created out of toppled buildings and swept an entire platoon into the waters
below. Two angels flew on either side of Molekh, but when the
āyus
-forged-steel
touched his flesh it melted and left only a mild welt behind on his chest.

An Erelim flew
too close, and Molekh reached out and grabbed the angel by the foot to drag him
back. He used his free hand to dig his claws into the angel’s face and all but
tore his head in half before casting him aside. An arrow pierced his shoulder
and elicited a grunt of discomfort, but he drew the missile out and cast it
aside.

Molekh looked
around for the commander of the Archangels.

“Face me,
Uriel!” he bellowed.

“Turn around,
demon,” a voice said behind him, and Molekh turned just in time to see Uriel
sweep by. Fire and agony erupted in the demon’s head, and he howled in rage as
he saw his severed horn in Uriel’s grasp. A female Dominion charged at him from
the other side, but Molekh knocked her sword aside and crashed a massive fist
into the side of her head. The angel spun out of control, splashed into the
lake waters, and disappeared from sight.

He turned and
saw Uriel speeding toward him again, wings alight in white flame and a murderous
gleam in his eyes. The spear he carried was outthrust and within seconds of
piercing Molekh’s flesh, while the raised crystal sword in Uriel’s hand
glittered with the promise of destruction. Helpless to avoid the attack, Molekh
braced himself for the impact, which never came.

In between one
second and the next, he found himself removed from the battlefield and in a
dark tent. He glared about furiously until he recognized the inside of Malith’s
tent, but the mortal general was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he saw Azazel
standing cockily against the center pole.

“Greetings,
Molekh,” the demon prince said, sweeping him a low bow.

“Traitor,” the
bull-demon growled, taking a step forward.

“A moment before
you try to dismember me,” Azazel said, placing only the faintest emphasis on
the word
try
. “He said it would be useless to ask you, but I thought
perhaps for the sake of our mutual respect for each other, I should at least
make the offer.”

“What offer?”
Molekh rumbled. “You have been branded a traitor by the demon king himself.”

“I no longer
serve Mephistopheles, true,” Azazel allowed, “but I serve a greater master, and
I give you one chance to join me. Lotan has just joined us, and you are the
last of the demon lords here in Heaven.”

“Joined who?” Molekh
asked. “The other traitors? What is this madness?”

“Not madness,”
the other demon said, shaking his head. He smiled sardonically. “It’s a ploy –
a gambit, if you will – and through it we will gain more power than any of us
ever dreamed. We have all sworn our service to a different master, our rightful
one, and as I said, I give you this one chance to swear as well. Serve with us,
and glory in power.”

“I serve no
one,” Molekh said.

“Think on this,
demon lord,” Azazel said.

“I serve
no
one!
” Molekh bellowed. “Now be gone from my sight or face the penalty of
your apostasy.”

Azazel shook his
head in regret. “Very well, Molekh. He knew you would refuse, but I hoped you
had better sense. A pity.”

The demon prince
vanished immediately, leaving Molekh alone in the tent. He stormed outside and
grabbed a nearby gremlin by the throat and lifted it up to his face.

“Where is
General Malith?” he asked, squeezing slowly for the sheer pleasure of watching
the lesser demon squirm.

“He said he
received a summons from Mephistopheles, and the demon king translocated him
back to Abaddon,” the gremlin choked out. “He left not five minutes ago, my
lord.”

Molekh kept a
hold of the demon as he stormed through the remnants of the demon camp. His
severed horn burned with an agony he’d never imagined possible, and even
touching the sheared-off surface left a burning sensation in his fingers where
the Seraph’s heavenly blade had cloven his horn. The remaining stump was only a
few inches long, and Molekh supposed he was fortunate the Archangel commander
hadn’t taken his head.

He raised the
gremlin in his hands to eye-level and calmly ripped off one of the demon’s
arms. Molekh pressed the bloody stump against the burning surface of his horn
and nearly sighed in relief as the pain abated. Demon blood poured down on his
head and on his face, and he drank the stuff in as it touched his lips.

In an act of
uncharacteristic mercy, Molekh tore the gremlin’s head off rather than letting
it suffer in agony. Casting aside the corpse, he turned his footsteps back
toward Medina and hurried back to the besieged city. If Malith was indeed gone
and Lotan had turned traitor, then command of the army fell to Molekh, as would
the glory of capturing the holy city of Heaven.

I cannot, in truth, regret my life or the decisions
that have led me here, because I am
here
. I once told Hoil I would change things if I could –
as much as it pains me to admit it, this is not true. Had I done anything at
all differently, I may never have survived, and I might not be where I am now.

- Birch de’Valderat,

“Memoirs” (1013 AM)

- 1 -

The crimson
barrier shuddered as the daemelan struck it again with a hammer that was
half-again as tall as a man and required three of the demon’s four hands to
wield. The black-steel mallet could crush a man in a single blow, and Marc
watched apprehensively as the demon reared back and struck the barrier again.
Two more struck nearby with swords about as tall as Marc and nearly as wide as
his shoulders. Their focused blows were having more effect than the more
general attack the demons had initially tried across the entire arc of Birch’s
barrier.

“Marc!” Gerard
barked sharply. “Do you miss that girl of yours so much you’re looking at the
demons in a new light?”

The Orange
paladin snapped his attention back to the task at hand and did his best to
ignore the monstrosity pounding on the barrier less than fifty yards to his
left.

“I know the
demon is pretty, but focus, boy, focus!” Gerard snapped.

Marc looked at
Gerard’s scar-covered face and thought sourly that the demon was about as
“pretty” as Gerard.

“What a
fascinating observation,”
Trebor kythed to him with a quiet laugh.
“Should
I pass it on to the good Shepherd?”

“You do and you
get to find out firsthand what happens when a soul dies,”
Marc replied. It
was something he’d actually been wondering about for quite some time. Where did
a dead soul go when it was slain in Heaven? None of the blessed dead who’d
“died” again had reappeared. He wondered if…

“Aren’t you
supposed to be focusing?”

“Shepherd’s
pet,”
Marc groused, but he finished looking over the denarae’s handiwork
and nodded in approval. He looked up at the massive steel door, thought about
the weight, and shivered.

“Done, sir,”
Marc called to Gerard.

“About bloody
time!”

A change in the
tone of the hammering behind him caused Marc to turn, and he saw the crimson
barrier flicker and at last crack and begin to fail. The daemelan armed with
the hammer redoubled his efforts as the others snarled and bellowed war cries
behind him. The daemelans had all bunched behind the three who had been focused
on cracking the barrier, and soon they would pour through whatever gap they
created to fall on the mortals lying beyond.

 “Trebor,
broadcast,”
Marc thought to his friend, hoping he was paying attention.
“Daemelans
are breaking through.”

The denarae
paladin echoed the warning, and Gerard immediately passed orders for everyone
to take their positions. Orange and Yellow platoons and two platoons of Halo
Company paladins slipped into the palace while the others retreated to the far
side of the entrance and formed a defensive arc with their backs to the palace
wall.

“Aerial
demons incoming,”
someone warned.

“Guilian,
take command of the archers and bring those things down,”
Gerard ordered.

Just then a
portion of the barrier crumbled and fifty daemelans poured through a large gap
in the shattered wall, which then flickered and disappeared entirely. The
demons were nearly twice as tall as a mortal man and proportioned with massive
barrel-chests and swollen muscles over every inch of their bodies. The weapons
they wielded were of every conceivable type, from pole-arms to hammers and
axes, some knives, swords, and even towering shields. The earth shook with the
force of their pounding hooves, and despite their long history and experience,
many of the denarae and paladins waiting in their path paled at the sight and
stayed in place only through sheer willpower and courage.

The first two
daemelans reached the gigantic doors to the palace and charged the group of
mortals waiting for them less than fifty feet away. So intent were they on
their prey, none of them noticed the slab of black steel falling toward them
until it was too late. The door had been doctored by Marc’s platoon and came
away in a free fall, crushing one of the demons instantly as it knocked two
more sprawling to the ground. Other daemelans tripped over their comrades and
soon the entire line of charging demons had stalled and slammed into itself.

The imps and
gremlins charging down from the sky, meanwhile, received volley after volley of
arrows from the mortals waiting below, and their ranks began to thin. There
were no airborne targets for them to attack and none of them could get close to
the ground without being raked by the waiting archers, so the demons spiraled
back into the sky and hovered just out of bowshot. Guilian watched
apprehensively as the store of arrows they’d brought with them rapidly
dwindled.