Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (51 page)

“Caret, take
your squad out, I’ll follow on your right,”
Danner ordered.

Soundlessly,
Danner’s platoon slipped from the river in two squads and crept toward the
enemy camp. The cloud-like surface had taken on a sooty gray color as the taint
of the demons’ presence slowly infected the very ground of Heaven. The
constantly overcast sky had also darkened to a shadowy haze, which gave the air
a sickly, death-like feeling. Even as the sight left Danner nauseous, he was
thankful for the natural camouflage it provided for the gray-skinned denarae.
Danner and the other humans had darkened their skin so they wouldn’t stand out.

There was little
in the way of cover between the river and the main camp, but they used the
irregular cloud surface to their advantage as they spread out slowly toward the
camp. Danner nearly slipped on a slick patch of ground, and when he glanced
down he stopped and stared in wonder. Already crouched low, he reached out and
fingered a small patch of thin, greasy gray strands of some fiber sticking out
of the ground.

Grass?
He
wondered silently. He looked at Trebor, who shrugged. The substance left an
oily, unclean feeling on his fingers, so he quickly tore off a few pieces and
stuffed them in a pouch at his side. He spared one final glance for the strange
sight, then hurried forward to his position.

When Caret
reported his squad was in place, Danner ran a quick check with Brican and his
platoon, then reported to Garnet that all was clear.

Even his trained
eye missed most of the denarae from Red and Violet as they emerged from the
river and followed the directions of their guides. Danner nearly jumped when
Flasch tapped him on the shoulder. The Violet paladin flashed a set of white
teeth at him, then narrowed his eyes and turned his attention back to their
objective.

Ahead of them,
hundreds of black-steel cauldrons large enough to hold six men each were set in
orderly rows on platforms made of steel and stone. It was in these steel
chambers that Arthryx worked the most complicated and grotesque of his
transformations, and they were the secondary objective of the day’s mission.

Danner looked at
the sturdy supports and devoutly wished he had a sack filled with Faldergash’s
explosives. Oh, the damage he could wreak with a few of his gnomish friend’s
toys! Unfortunately, the explosives Faldergash had packed for Danner didn’t
react well to the Heavenly water for some reason – luckily, rather than setting
them off, it merely nullified the bomb’s potency, else their original test might
have ended in disaster rather than just disappointment. They were still working
on a water-tight solution to the problem.

 “Good
luck, Danner,”
Brican kythed to him as Danner’s platoon started moving
again. Green Platoon spread out and was responsible for marking and guarding
the path back to the river. They would dispose of any wandering creatures and
ensure a safe path for extraction.

Danner’s
platoon, meanwhile, was to take point the entire way in. They were the most
adept at stealth and would clear the way for Red and Violet platoons. Yellow
would then follow, and poor Marc stayed with his platoon to take their usual
role as rear-guard. While Garnet had been tempted to take Marc along so as to
have one more paladin on-hand when they confronted Arthryx, it was more
important to keep a paladin in reserve for anything that might happen to those
left behind.

“Here’s hoping
you have a boring day,” had been Flasch’s final comment to Marc before they
began their journey through the river.

Danner slipped through
the shadows at the base of a cauldron platform and gave mental commands to
advance cautiously. Everywhere the denarae passed, they left a wake of bodies
as they stealthily removed all of the damned they came across. Arthryx used
some of his creations to tend the cauldrons, but there were blessedly few
demons to deal with, and all of them lesser varieties. Danner dealt with these
personally and felt a small surge of satisfaction each time a demon crumbled
into black dust in his grasp.

Danner took a quick
survey of their situation and breathed a sigh of relief.
Still in the tent
,
he thought to himself. Then he redirected his thoughts,
“Caret, relay to
Garnet. We’re all clear here. Give the signal for Uriel to attack. End.”

Then he waited.

- 2 -

Uriel received
the message with a fiery anticipation that he found hard to control. Finally,
after weeks of defeat at the hands of the demons, he had a chance to strike
them where it would hurt the most. He shared the frustration of his mortal
companion, Birch, and he felt sorry for the paladin that he would be left
behind during the day’s action. This was a job for the Archangels, however, and
a mortal – however gifted he might be – would only imperil their already
hazardous strike.

For a week,
Mikal had been exerting his power to slowly but surely change the course of the
Alethion to bring it nearer Arthryx’s base of operations, all the while
disguising its more noticeable changes as tactical necessities elsewhere in
Heaven. The shining River of Truth was now only a few hundred yards from the
demon’s camp, which already sat almost on the banks of the Philion. It was a
sad mark of the strength of the demons’ presence there that they were not
poisoned by the close proximity of both rivers.

Heaven was
slowly being overtaken by the demons’ taint, and if they didn’t find some way
to stop Mephistopheles’s army, the once pristine fields of boundless beauty
would be overcome by the shadowy taint of Hell. Uriel couldn’t stand to look at
the lands that had already been overrun, and even thinking about it made his
hands itch for his flaming sword.

His body keyed
for action and his very essence boiling in fury, Uriel passed the word to his
Archangels and exploded out of the Alethion with a roar that echoed for miles.
His sword erupted in blue flame, and a brilliant white light shone from his
body and pushed back the gray of the clouds with a holy luminescence. White
flames wreathed his violet wings, and the golden river water beaded on the
gleaming steel of his plate armor, shimmering in the light of his
āyus
like a million drops of mortal sunlight clinging to him for warmth and
protection.

Today, the
demons would know who they faced. This was Uriel – the Fist of God, come to
rain justice and divine punishment on the brows of the unholy. Behind him flew
the Archangels, the scourge most feared by the demons, who remembered their
wrath from the days of the Great Schism.

The Archangels
cried out as one, a thunderous cry that shook the very ground, “
An’Deios!
An’Uriel
!
”
[27]
and surged forward behind their beloved commander. A handful of demons were
caught nearby as they gaped up at the sky in wordless fear, and a flurry of
lightning-swift arrows destroyed them in an instant, leaving only a smear of
black ash behind as the Archangels swept forward unopposed.

The demons and
their damned minions responded quickly, and dark swarms of shadowy creatures
circled down from the clouds and launched from the ground to confront them. As
soon as targets were visible, Uriel ordered the Archangels to open fire. Their
range was as far as they could see. Their accuracy: perfect.

The results:
devastating.

A virtual storm
of arrows raged forth with unerring aim and struck down hundreds of winged
creatures. If one arrow didn’t fell a target, another and another struck until
the monsters were sent screaming to the earth. Once grounded, few rose again.

Demons were
stronger, tougher targets than their accompanying legions of the damned, but
they were also usually protected by a screen of mutated flesh that flew in
front of them like a shield. A concentrated hail of arrows could puncture the
wall of flying decoys to catch the demons unaware, but most were too wily and
survived the onslaught.

As the demons
drew nearer to the Archangels, Uriel ordered half his angels to continue firing
their arrows to provide cover. These he placed under his second, Camael. The
Power quickly assumed command of his force and directed their aim with deadly
efficiency. The remaining hundred angels followed Uriel as he led them into
melee combat.

Uriel’s sword
cut a wide gap through the ranks of the damned, and within seconds he’d claimed
his first demon. The Seraph wove a deadly pattern in the air, cutting a path of
mayhem as he avoided all but the most glancing of blows from the Hellish swarm
that engulfed them all. A dozen tormented shapes fell to his sword, then a
dozen more as he twisted about.

The attacks of
the damned were as nothing to him and could be shrugged off. Any strike that
landed from a demon’s claws or weapon, however, was potentially more damaging,
although in most cases it would do more harm to the one who struck him than to
Uriel himself. His
āyus
was powerful enough that only a demon of
equal or greater power could attack him with impunity. A lesser gremlin charged
directly into Uriel’s chest and clawed at his unarmored face only to watch in
horror as its talons dissolved at the first touch. Before the gremlin could
flee, Uriel reached in with his free hand and crushed its head with a burst of
holy fire.

Uriel spared a
fraction of his attention to feel for the presence of his Archangels and was
relieved to note that all of them were still flying. Several were injured,
three seriously so, but the wounded had retreated under the cover of Camael’s
arrows and now had replaced swords for bows once more so they could continue
fighting.

Warfare among
immortals was vastly different than that of mortals, who knew mostly
ground-based melee combat. What aerial combat they engaged in was conducted on
the backs of flying beasts and machines. They knew nothing of true aerial
combat, flying under your own power and striking down foes flying under their
own. Ground warfare often relied on mobile walls of mortal flesh and steel as
battle lines clashed, a luxury of two-dimensional mentality. The added
dimension inherent in flight made such conventions impractical, if not outright
ridiculous. Aerial combat was much faster and more confusing, because attacks
could come from any direction and a lone warrior especially had to stay on the
move whenever possible to prevent enemies from flanking him or slipping in
behind.

The Archangels
were trained to create seemingly random patterns so their foes couldn’t predict
their flight path and plan accordingly. No matter how an individual angel dove,
wheeled, or climbed through the air, however, each member stayed in constant
contact with the others and followed an overall directive that maintained unit
cohesion amidst the worst chaos of battle. Gerard, and later Garnet, had tapped
some of this ability with their denarae, but wordless communication had been a
part of the immortal heritage since the dawn of time, and there was no
substitute for eons of experience.

Uriel broke free
from the press of battle and soared unengaged for a moment while he surveyed
the conflict. He was pleased with the performance of the Archangels, who had
been itching for a chance to release their pent-up frustration and righteous
anger. A part of him felt sorry for the damned souls who bore the brunt of that
holy power; after all, most of them had been tortured and forced into the war
against their will.

Who would
choose
to live in Hell and fight willingly for these monsters?
Uriel wondered with
a wry smile. Then he remembered Malith, and the smile disappeared.

He was just
wheeling to begin another charge when a demonic presence tickled the edge of
his awareness and absorbed his attention. He focused in on the presence and
peered with a raptor’s gaze into the din of battle until he located the source
of the power he felt.

“Aesthma,” Uriel
growled with true hatred. The sword in his hand blazed with renewed fury, and
Uriel screamed the demon’s name as he hurtled forward.

Aesthma’s
segmented body wove gracefully through the air like a giant wasp with armored
plates covering the pieces of his torso. His multi-faceted eyes were set on the
sides of his head like a bug’s, and his left eye was ringed with scarred and
blackened chitin that would never truly heal. Monstrous mandibles sat beneath a
large, flat nose, and tiny holes just beneath each eye served as his ears. Long
antennae curled out gracefully from the top of his head, while six gossamer
wings beat almost invisibly from the center segment. A long, sinuous,
scorpion’s tail lashed angrily behind him and struck any angel that came within
reach. Aesthma’s victims screamed in agony and fell from the skies where they
were immediately swarmed by land-bound demons and damned souls. Two long,
spindly legs dangled down from his body; a foot higher, two arms stretched out
and ended in wicked pincers. Another pair of human-like arms dominated the
demon’s upper body, and he wielded a pair of swords that dripped unceasingly
with a viscous black liquid.

“Aesthma!” Uriel
screamed again to get the demon’s attention. Uriel closed to within a few
yards, cutting down any creature foolish enough to challenge his wrath. Even
though the demon hadn’t turned to face him, Uriel knew better than to think
Aesthma hadn’t taken note of the angel barreling headlong toward him. Aesthma
could see in almost every direction at once.

At the last
second, Uriel pulled out of his dive just as his demonic foe whipped his tail
about to attack where Uriel would have been. He slashed with his sword, but the
tail moved too fast as the demon recoiled it back to safety.

Now Aesthma
turned his face toward Uriel and the mandibles parted in a hideous grin.

“Uriel returns
to finish what he started?” the demon taunted as he lurched back to avoid another
stab of Uriel’s sword. “My eye wasn’t enough for you?”