The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (4 page)

They nodded, then moved to their respective buildings to
wait.

Surprisingly, everything went according to plan. The paladin
was wary of Flasch’s spit-second appearances and disappearances, so he didn’t
approach Marc when he appeared. As Garnet had predicted, the paladin’s
attention was then drawn to Danner and Michael, and Garnet had no difficulty
moving in. A quick chop to the neck and a jab to the chin knocked the Yellow to
the ground, where he was quickly bound and gagged by Flasch.

“How many more of them do you think there are?” Flasch
asked. He stood up from his handiwork and nodded in satisfaction.

“Who knows?” Marc replied. “I’m much more interested in
finding out who’s in charge now that demon’s gone.”

Danner blinked. That was something he’d never considered.
The demon he’d destroyed had been slowly subverting paladins and corrupting
their minds and souls, and he’d been the obvious master of the group. The
paladins overseeing their clandestine kidnappings had worked diligently to
uncover as many of the unfortunate men as possible, and none of them was in
charge of the others or held any form of seniority they could discern. With the
demon gone, who indeed
was
in charge of the corrupted paladins? Or
what
was in charge?

“Did he know who he reported to, Trebor?” Michael asked.

Trebor shook his head. “He’s never seen him. He just knew it
as a raspy voice that claimed it spoke for the master. From what I could tell,
he didn’t even know the demon had been destroyed. Remember, I’m not very good
at deeply kything people.”

“Right. Well, let’s head back and get
some
sleep
tonight,” Danner said. “Garnet, he’s all yours.
Treb
,
can you keep an eye out so we can avoid other people? I really don’t want to
have to answer to the
deron’dala
[8]
what we’re doing with an unconscious
paladin trussed up and slung over Garnet’s shoulder.”

Garnet easily picked up the Yellow paladin, and they followed
Trebor’s directions back to the Prism’s chapterhouse where they lived during
their training.

“Anybody hungry?” Flasch asked. With several nods, he
clapped Marc on the shoulder. “Let’s go, Marc. Danner, you got the cloaks?”

“Yeah. Michael, mind coming with me to play lookout?” Danner
asked tiredly. The taller man nodded.

“I’ll go with Garnet and get our package to Morningham,”
Trebor offered.

“Just don’t get caught by the Nightman,” Marc warned.

“Please,” Trebor scoffed.

They broke up to their various tasks. In a while they would
meet back in their barracks for a quick snack and then to bed. They would be
woken shortly after dawn to resume their training, and Morningham would show
them no mercy. Even though they were working at his behest, he showed them no
favoritism and even seemed to grill them that much harder. The six of them
occasionally received extra instruction after the others were dismissed, often
in the form of briefings and debriefings regarding their nighttime excursions,
which Danner really didn’t mind, except that alienated them even further from
their peers.

Danner supposed it would all work out in the end. In the
meantime, however, he was exhausted. With a soft sigh, Danner set about picking
the lock on the cloak storage room.

Virtues cannot easily (or solely) be defined in words any more than a
man can easily be defined by his actions alone. They are the proper middle path
between many extremes, not just two convenient labels of vice, and practicing
them may be the only way to truly understand them.

- Introduction,
“An Examination of Prismatic Virtue” (801 AM)

- 1 -

The rest of the week passed by with agonizing slowness, at
least from Danner’s perspective. Gerard Morningham, the Red paladin in command
of their training, put them through hour after grueling hour of combat
training, alternating between armed and unarmed fighting. At least six hours of
every day was spent engaged in some form of combat and related training. Their
only respite, which could only be called such because they weren’t fighting,
came during classroom instruction. Another six hours of the day, they were
given to the care of Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, and Violet paladins for a
different sort of education that taxed their minds almost as much as Morningham
taxed their bodies. Danner estimated they spent a couple hours each day taking
meals, and usually they had two or three hours of personal time set aside for
individual study and personalized training as needed. Their instructors were
oddly insistent that eight hours be reserved solely for sleep time, which the
trainees essentially ignored, using some of that time for extra study and quiet
conversation when the Nightman wasn’t present.

The grueling schedule was made all the worse for Danner and
his friends when they went on late-night sorties on Morningham’s behalf, and
more than once he’d had problems staying awake in the relative calm of their
classroom instruction as paladins from the Orange Facet, which represented the
virtue of knowledge, drilled them on history and general knowledge. Danner
couldn’t help but see these lessons as a form of personal torture. He’d never
liked those sorts of classes in the school where his father had sent him, and
he found he still didn’t much care for them. The others struggled through with
somewhat better grace, but only Marc seemed to truly enjoy the classes or take
anything away from them. His incessant reading gave him a leg up on the others,
but he was always willing to help them study or to remind them of some obscure
tidbit of knowledge they needed.

Their time with the Violet paladins, who represented the
Facet and virtue of piety, was somewhat more bearable for Danner, since he
hoped it would tell him more about the immortals and the workings of Heaven.
Given his unique nature, Danner had a special interest in the philosophies and
teachings that supposedly came straight from God and His immortal angels.
Michael, Flasch, and Trebor also enjoyed the classes in faith, but Garnet and
Marc had little use for them.

Healing classes were perhaps Danner’s most frustrating. Not
because he didn’t enjoy them, but rather because he couldn’t seem to understand
why sometimes his healing prayers worked and sometimes they didn’t. Michael and
Trebor could always make their prayers work, and Flasch was almost as
successful, even though he rarely managed to heal more than a scratch. Marc and
Garnet both seemed indifferent to their limited abilities. Danner, however,
either met with astonishing success or absolute failure. Jon de’Serrika – Green
paladin, sometime instructor, and a friend of Danner’s uncle – encouraged
Danner, but sometimes couldn’t resist poking fun at him.

“Well, Danner,” the red-headed paladin said one day, “I
think your best bet is to stick with the terminal cases. With your record,
you’ll either cure them entirely or kill them outright. Either way, at least
they can’t do any worse than you.”

The Yellow and Blue Facets combined their classes, which
were largely a mystery to Danner. Instead of lecturing to them on temperance
and justice, the virtues which the two Facets represented, their instructors
gave them hypothetical situations and asked only that the trainees talk amongst
themselves about the problems and try to develop solutions. Some were criminal
cases, some involved diplomatic and military decisions, while others dealt with
domestic disputes. There was no way of judging one’s progress or training in
these classes, at least not that Danner could tell, but their instructors
wandered around the room posing questions and noting arguments. Danner and
Michael worked as a well-honed team in these classes making joint decisions,
which Michael then explained and presented to the rest of their assigned
groups. The others in their group of friends did moderately well, but as
Michael once whispered to Danner, “You can tell it’s not really their passion.”

Nearly all of the trainees commented at some point on the
feeling of haste that slowly pervaded the pace and atmosphere of their
training. For the most part, Danner and his friends remained silent when
trainees questioned them or offered half-thought-out theories and rumors.

It didn’t help Danner knowing the reason for their breakneck
pace of training. With the departure of roughly half the paladins in the Prism
into Hell, their instructors were eager to fill the ranks against the war that
was sure to come. Few non-paladins had realized the ominous importance of the
now-gone holy warriors or had any inkling of the imminent danger that was no
doubt building on the far side of the Merging.

Danner glanced at the wall as though he could pierce miles
of stone walls and see the Barrier itself, and beyond it the Merging. Just
knowing that such a place existed, a place where the mortal realm overlapped
with the immortal plane of Hell, made Danner’s spine tingle with suppressed
anxiety.

“de’Valderat, are you listening?”

Danner jerked his gaze back to the Blue paladin hovering
over his table.

“Yes, sir,” he replied a little too quickly.

“Well then, if you would, please summarize the arguments we
just heard.”

Danner paled slightly, then resisted the urge to glare
across the room at
Ashfen
Diermark
.
Ashfen
was the de facto leader of his own group,
simply because
Ashfen
was
always
the leader of
any group he deigned to join. He was naturally charismatic, and people followed
him whatever the decision he made, right or wrong. He was also quite jealous of
the success of Danner and his friends, and he took few pains to hide his envy.

Danner struggled to remember the thread of
Ashfen’s
arguments, and to piece together the last few
things he’d said while Danner was distracted.

The situation they were discussing was not hypothetical this
time; instead, it was a real issue that had arisen centuries ago during
hostilities between humans and a group of renegade dwarves. Men in one country
had detained all the dwarves in the land, regardless of whether or not they
owed allegiance to the hostile demi-humans. The dwarves were placed in small
prison camps to isolate them and prevent any spies from reporting on human
activities.

“Well, sir, the group had come to the conclusion that
rounding up the dwarves was justified because they posed a threat to the
nation,” Danner said. “Basically, because there was a potential threat – of
which there was no evidence – it justified the nation’s army in rounding up all
dwarves until the end of the war.”

The Blue paladin looked at him speculatively.

“You sound as if you don’t agree.”

“I don’t, sir.”

Ashfen
glowered at Danner from
across the room, but remained silent.

“Well then, would you care to offer your own arguments to
refute those you so aptly summarized,” the paladin looked amused, but strangely
intent.

Danner nodded.

“Well, sir, to begin with, I think it’s unjust to simply
round up an entire people based solely on who their parents are, or for any
reason they can’t control, for that matter,” Danner said. He shrugged. “So they
were dwarves. From what we’ve read, most of them had lived in the country for
generations, and they had no real ties to any of the rebel dwarves. There was
no just cause for alarm on the part of the government to warrant such an
action.”

“But a rebel dwarf looks much the same as a loyal dwarf,
de’Valderat,” the Blue said. “How were they to know the difference?”

“A human sympathizer to the rebels looks much the same as a
loyal human soldier, sir, but I didn’t remember the government locking
themselves or their entire nation in those encampments.”

“Point taken,” the Blue said, smiling slightly. “But dwarves
posed a more immediate and suspect threat. What about the safety of the entire
nation to consider? If I read you correctly, you also object to the
infringement of the dwarves’ basic rights, correct? Do the rights of the
individuals then outweigh the overall rights and safety of the entire nation?”

Danner frowned.

“A country that’s saved at the expense of every basic
principle of liberty really isn’t one worth living in, sir,” Danner said
seriously. “Who’s to say what infringement the government will next decide is
necessary? If they can do the one, why not another? At some point, an
individual’s rights have to be subject to the good of the nation, or there’s no
society, but where that line is drawn is the telling point that defines a free
society from a repressed one.”

The Blue paladin said nothing, but nodded slightly in
approval.

- 2 -

Later in the week,
Ashfen
tried to
exact his revenge for having been shown up in class, not by directly attacking
Danner, but by causing problems for his friends and stirring other trainees
against them.
Ashfen
worked behind the scenes with
several trainees who had known xenophobic tendencies, playing on their
human-only beliefs and poisoning them against Danner’s group.

“You heard him in class the other day. He favors the safety
of demi-humans over humans when there’s a war going on. He thinks they’re more
important.”

“He spends his free time with a gnome. We’ve all seen him
being dropped off in that buggy by the squeaky little demi-human.”

“He probably thinks denarae are equal to humans, too.”

Two nights in a row, Danner found offensive messages
scrawled in human offal on the wall in the area where he and his friends slept.
Rather than respond or retaliate in any way, they had Trebor find the
supposedly anonymous perpetrator and left a bowl full of the waste scraped from
the wall sitting at the foot of his bed. They never said a word about it, and
everyone wondered how they knew with whom to leave the remains. After the
second night, it never happened again.