Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (45 page)

- Uriel

“Collected Accounts from the Pandemonium War”

- 1 -

Brad woke to the
sound of shouting and the clash of arms. He rushed out of his tent and saw a
wave of monsters charging through the gap where the garrison had been
stationed. They poured through the narrow defile like a dark stain that spread
over the pristine, cloudlike earth of Heaven. The advance wave had just reached
a line of paladins and elves who had hastily scrambled to meet the surprise
attack.

My first
fight!
Brad thought in excitement. He rushed forward and made it three
steps before he realized he was wearing neither sword nor armor. He skidded to
a halt and sped back to the tent he shared with Anolla. She was dressing
herself in a thick jerkin of hardened leather, and Brad noted sourly that her
sword was already girded at her side.

“Are we under
attack?” she asked. Her face was flushed with excitement, for all that she was
trying to maintain a serious demeanor.

“Damned souls,
it looks like,” Brad said, trying to sound warrior-like and knowledgeable.
“They didn’t look big enough to be full demons.”

Anolla nodded
and wordlessly helped him put his armor on over the padded tunic he already
wore. Brad’s armor was similar to his sister’s, but his had round, steel plates
beneath the outermost layer of leather, and each had a small spike that poked
through to the outside.

Brother and
sister both wielded short swords and wooden shields. The shields had an oak
field and a studded steel rim, with a fist-sized steel umbo set in the center
of the shield. Brad slipped his hand through the strap and grasped the
leather-wrapped grip in the center. Anolla’s shield was identical, except she
preferred her hand strap farther forward, so the shield covered her entire
forearm.

“Just think,
someday, once I’m a paladin, I’ll be trained to use one of their special kite
shields,” Brad said excitedly as he shifted about to settle his armor.

“We have to make
it home first, brother,” Anolla chided him. “Ready?”

“Let’s go.”

The twins
stepped from their tent and saw the battle was fully joined. No more demon-like
creatures poured from the gap, and a sizeable portion of those who had clashed
with the forces of Heaven were now twice-dead corpses strewn about the ground.
The bodies slowly faded into clouds of blackened dust that vanished seconds
later, leaving no trace behind.

Brad saw their
father and brother trotting quickly alongside Gerard Morningham, and they
hurried to catch up. They followed in the wake of the trio, listening to them.

“From any other
army, I’d call it a full out attack,” Garnet was saying, “but with this force…”
he trailed off, shaking his head.

“This is little
more than a sortie,” Garet finished when his son trailed off. “It’s a good
thing you foresaw this and had forces ready to respond.”

 “Malith is
just trying to irritate us,” Gerard growled. “He knows we were pulling back,
and he sent them just to give us the message that he could have brought
everything through and crushed us. He thinks he’s playing with us, but he’s
just showing his hand.”

“How so?” Garet
asked.

“He’s showing us
what he thinks of us, dad,” Garnet answered, “and how he’s going to structure
his war. He has so much contempt for an army the size of ours, and he’s so sure
of his victory, he’ll play us out as long as it’s amusing to him.”

Gerard nodded in
agreement.

“He’ll loom over
us, he’ll pick off chunks wherever he can, and he’ll waste huge amounts of
forces just to unsettle us,” Gerard said, “and honestly, he can afford to. I
estimate he sent about two thousand of those beasties at us, and it’s no more
than a drop in the bucket for him. Malith has nothing even resembling finesse
in warfare, but he makes up for it with brute strength and sheer numerical
advantage.”

Brad and Anolla
followed closely and stayed quiet, but the trio abruptly stopped outside a
large tent and the twins were caught in plain sight when their father turned
around to speak face-to-face with Gerard. Garet stared at his children in
consternation, then he glowered at them and rested a hand on the hilt of his
sword.

“And what, pray
tell, do you two think you’re doing?” he growled. Garnet and Gerard turned to look
at them.

“Well, we were
just following you, because, well, we figured, um…” Brad stammered.

“We thought,”
Anolla took over, “you might be headed toward the fighting, and we wanted to…
um… help,” she said weakly, faltering under her father’s dark scowl.

“You wanted,”
Garet said slowly, anger burning beneath his flat words, “to help. Help? You
two don’t know the first thing about
helping
in a situation like this.
This is not a game, and I’m ashamed to think you two would possibly endanger
yourselves by rushing out to fight. What would I tell your mother if something
happened to you?”

Brad felt his
cheeks burning and he stared at the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he
saw Anolla doing the same.

A man dressed in
simple peasants’ clothes hurried up and bowed subserviently to the three Red
paladins.

“Milords, they
asked me to tell you that it’s just about over now,” he said. His accent
identified him as coming from somewhere in the southern lands of Lokka,
probably from Merishank. “There’s just a few pockets of monsters to clean up.”

“Thank you,”
Gerard said, saluting. “Go find the angels Mikal and Uriel and ask them to
please meet me in the command tent.”

“Yes, milord,”
the peasant said, then hurried off.

“Even the
blessed dead who can’t fight can still help, at least until we get them
trained,” Gerard muttered. “I think we might be better off giving that one a
pitchfork instead of a sword. At least he’ll feel more comfortable with it in
his hands.”

Gerard looked at
the other two paladins.

“Let’s go,” he ordered,
but Garet didn’t move. Gerard looked back irritably, but Garnet cleared his
throat and motioned with his head to his two siblings.

“Oh, them,”
Gerard said. “Well, pull their pants down and spank them with the flat of your
blade. If they insist of acting like children, treat them like children. Just
do it quickly and meet me at the command tent when you’re done.”

Garet glared at
his children a moment longer, then he shook his head in disappointment.

“We’ll discuss
this later,” he said in a weary voice. Something in his tired tone wrenched at
Brad’s heart, and fresh, hot tears burned their way down his face as he refused
to look up at his father. “For now, I want you to go back to your tent, change
out of that armor, and wait for me to come back. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” they
answered in unison.

“Good.” Garet
turned to leave, but Garnet held back.

“Go ahead, dad,
I want to talk to the terrible two here for a second,” Garnet said, using one
of the twins’ old nicknames.

“Well, hurry up
or there’ll be Hell to pay with Gerard,” Garet said, then he left.

Brad looked up
at his elder brother miserably, his eyes stinging as he wiped away still more
tears. Garnet looked at his brother and smiled in understanding.

“I know just how
you feel,” Garnet said. “It hurts, feeling like you’ve let father down –
disappointed him.” Brad nodded.

“It’s not fair,”
Anolla said, stamping her foot. Her eyes were nearly as tear-laden as her
twin’s, but she looked more angry than hurt. “We’re not children anymore, and
we know how to fight. Why can’t we help somehow?”

“There’s more to
warfare than knowing how to fight,” Garnet said sharply. “There’s knowing how
to fight with others, as part of a team. If you two were to charge in the
middle of a line of battle, you’d disrupt the entire defense and endanger not
only yourselves, but everyone around you. Dad knows you can fight, he taught
you most everything you know, just like he did me, but if you really want to
help out, you’re going to have to work hard and earn it.”

“We do want to
help,” Brad said, drawing himself up straight. “We’re children of Garet
jo’Meerkit, and we want to do our part.”

Garnet laughed
and clapped them both on the shoulder.

“That’s my
brother and sister,” he said. “Now, I’ll tell you what. I happen to know that
we’re going to be preparing a force to work with all the untrained among the
blessed dead. Over the last few centuries, there have been a lot of honest
farmers and penniless wastrels who’ve nevertheless been good men, but they
don’t know a damn thing about wielding real weapons or fighting in a war. We
need their numbers, so we’re going to train them up as quickly and as best we
can.

“When we set
them up to train, I’ll tell dad I’m sending you two off with them,” Garnet
said, and he saw their eyes gleam. “It won’t be much fun, and you’ll be have to
sit through days and probably weeks of stuff you already know, but you’ll learn
a lot, and by the time you’re finished, maybe you’ll be ready to take a more
active role in things. What do you think?”

“I think you’re
the best brother in the world,” Anolla said, smiling brilliantly at him.

“It’ll also get
you away from Flasch,” Garnet said with a mock scowl. “Don’t think I haven’t
seen the two of you sitting together all the time.”

“Nothing’s happened,”
Anolla said quickly, and Brad thought he heard a note of disappointment in her
voice. Or he could just be imagining it; he knew how silly his sister was over
the Violet paladin and how worried she was that he didn’t think of her as
anything more than his friend’s baby sister.
Was she blind?

“Just see that
it stays that way, at least for now,” Garnet said seriously. “I don’t want him
getting distracted by a pretty face,” he said, knuckling Anolla’s chin, “and
I’m certain dad would be upset if he found something going on. We don’t want
that, now do we?”

The twins shook
their heads, and Anolla mumbled something that sounded like agreement.

Garnet turned
his attention to his brother.

“So how about
you?” he asked. “Think you can put up with this training camp?”

“I’ll do it,”
Brad said, looking his brother in the eyes. “We’ll prove to you and dad that we
can be a part of things. We’ll show you both we’re ready and worthy.”

Garnet nodded
seriously and reached his massive arms out to embrace both of them.

“Now get going
to your tent,” he said. “I’ve got to get to the command tent before Gerard
starts spitting daggers out his ass.”

- 2 -

The meeting was
already well underway by the time Garnet arrived, but Gerard did little more
than nod to acknowledge his presence. Kaelus motioned with one clawed hand,
then resumed speaking.

“Now that we’re
all here, it’s time we divided our forces and got this war underway the way
we
want to run it,” the demon said. “I’ve been conferring with Mikal and Gerard on
and off for the past few days, and we agree this is our best chance. We need
several groups, each with a distinct mission, each contributing to the larger
scheme of disrupting Hell’s advance and ultimately stopping them cold. If we
are to turn the momentum of this war, we must use our smaller size to good
advantage.”

He waved a hand
toward Gerard, who stepped in smoothly.

“We saw during
the beginning of the Barrier War how a small unit can have a major impact
against a much larger force,” the Red paladin said. “Shadow Company had a
devastating effect on Merishank and later held against impossible odds when
facing the damned souls. We need to expand that thinking and utilize it on a
much broader front without losing the essence of its success.”

Gerard motioned
to the expansive topographical representation of Heaven that dominated the
floor of the tent.

“As we’ve
discussed, we’ll be gathering a massive force of relatively untrained souls
here,” Gerard said, pointing to a broad valley well back from the front lines
of battle.

Kaelus rustled
his leathery wings as he resumed talking.

“I’ve asked
Gerard to take over the training of that force,” the demon said. “While I value
his tactical advice, he knows more about training than anyone else we’ve
identified in Heaven, and I trust him to get the best results in the shortest
period of time. We’ve gone over and over possible tactics, and I think Mikal
and I have a firm grasp of what needs to be done. Just to be sure, we’ll still
be in contact with the Red
teiranon
,
[23]
and I expect we’ll want him back here
much sooner than we can afford to remove him from the training.”

Gerard inclined
his head at the compliment.

“In the
meantime, I’m sending Shadow Company to do what they do best,” Kaelus continued.
“I saw through Birch’s eyes during the war just how deadly and effective you
are, and I can think of no one better to accomplish the sorts of things I need
done. We’ve discussed several assignments I’d like you to consider, Garnet, and
soon enough we’ll go over their respective priorities so you can plan
accordingly.”

Garnet nodded.

“El’Siran,”
Kaelus went on, directing his attention to the elven commander, “I regretfully
must keep you close at hand. In the weeks and months to come, I will be forced
to stay mobile. In addition to a force of angels that will accompany me, I
respectfully require you and the Elan’Vital remain close by to protect the
mobile command from sudden, unexpected disaster. If something goes wrong and we
encounter demons, I can think of no force better suited for this task than the
elite guard of the elven nation.”

Siran clapped a
hand on his fist and bowed low.

“It is an honor
to serve,” the elf said.