The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (58 page)

“Trebor, contact some
of the paladins overhead,”
Garnet thought, his mental voice a roar of cold
fury.
“We’re surrounded and need an
evac
right away.”

Around Shadow Company, where the mortal defenders didn’t
have the benefit of paladins already in their midst, men were dying at a
terrible rate. Demons now swept down from the skies or rushed forward on the
ground, and the mortal forces were soon drowning in an oppressive tidal wave of
the immortal monsters that crushed in on them from all directions. Paladins
rushed to aid them, but they couldn’t get there quickly enough to save most of
the men. Gnomes piled people aboard their buggies and sped back toward the
gates, which opened long enough for the machines to speed through and then
boomed back shut again.

Whole companies tried to break away from foes they couldn’t
seem to harm. They turned tail and fled back to the walls, shouting out in
desperation for the gates to be opened. If the demons were not too close behind
them, the guards inside quickly obliged and allowed them entrance. At one of
the gates, however, the demons and damned souls were right on the heels of a
lone platoon of defenders, and the guards on the Barrier refused to open the
gates. Men were slaughtered right before their eyes, and the guards listened to
screams that would haunt their nightmares for the rest of their lives.

One of the other gates wasn’t shut in time, and a monstrous
demon gripped the edges and held them open until the tide of creatures behind
it could force the gates wide. Paladins rushed over from every available spot
on the Barrier to meet the breach, for they knew only their weapons could
prevail against the unholy brutes. Humans, elves, gnomes, and dwarves held the
demons at bay as best they could, but the press was too strong. The Stone in
the courtyard toppled to the ground as a demon, the same one who had held open
the gates, tackled the pillar of gleaming rock and brought it crashing down.
The demons let out a horrible cheer that changed to screams of pain as the
paladins arrived and drove them all back through the gates, which boomed shut
as the defenders inside slaughtered the remaining damned souls trapped within.

Out on the battlefield, Shadow Company was beset on all
sides by the demonic horde, and they were cut off from any escape to the
Barrier. They were holding their own against the press of demons and damned
souls, their fury over Gerard’s death fueling their bodies and driving them to
the limits of mortal prowess as they threw back wave after wave of
monstrosities that threatened to consume them at any moment.

“Where’s that
evac
?”
Garnet
asked, cutting down two smaller demons in one swing.

“It’s coming,”
Trebor kythed.
“I shocked the Hell out of
Danner’s uncle at first and had to explain what was going on. They’ll be here
in five minutes.”

“Trebor, I don’t know that we’ll last five more
seconds
,”
Garnet grated in his thoughts, but knew there was nothing he could do. Denarae
started to fall with more frequency around him as more demons attacked than he
and the other paladins could counter and destroy.

Just then a dark shadow fell over the company of denarae,
and Garnet risked a glance up to see what new threat had arrived. But he saw
only the gray scales of a dakkan and a long, thick rope that dropped to the
ground.

“Everyone grab on,” Garnet shouted, reinforcing the command
with a mental bellow. Ropes dropped in their midst as a dozen other dakkans
followed Birch, whose gray mount was tearing at flying creatures while trying
to maintain a hover. Denarae fell back and grabbed the ropes as best they
could, and the dakkans slowly began to gain altitude, hoisting more and more of
the denarae-laden rope off the ground as they rose. A dozen other paladins
circled their fellows, protecting the evacuation from the worst of the flying
demons and damned souls.

Garnet looked around and saw a squad still engaged, holding
off a press of damned souls.

“
Flasch, get your ass back here, we’re leaving!
” he
bellowed hoarsely, then bent and lifted Gerard’s body to his shoulders. The
last of the denarae broke away and grabbed the ropes, and Garnet grabbed the
last available space on Birch’s dangling rope. Gerard’s added weight and bulk
made it difficult, but he wasn’t about to leave their commander’s body behind.
Something attached itself to Garnet’s foot, and he saw a pair of damned souls
clawing at his ankle. Garnet couldn’t kick at them, lest he lose his precarious
grip on the rope, so he endured the clawing with a grimace as they worked their
claws through the joints in his armor and nicked the flesh within.

Then one of the paladins guarding the rescue rose beneath
them and cut the twisted creatures away, sending body parts spinning into the
howling mass below them. The lowest denarae on another rope was pulled free by
a tall demon before he could escape, and his body was torn apart by the
monster. Garnet’s stomach churned, but he gritted his teeth and looked toward
Nocka. Gerard’s body pressed down with more than just physical weight on
Garnet’s shoulders, and tears stung his eyes as they crossed the Barrier to the
safety of the city beyond.

When is a hero more powerful – in life or in death?

- Garnet
jo’Garet
,

“The Warrior Mythos” (1030 AM)

- 1 -

The fall of Gerard Morningham had placed a deathly pall over
the spirits of the denarae and officers of Shadow Company. Something of the Red
paladin’s spirit had been in every nuance of their tight-knit unit, and his
sudden removal left them all feeling like their heart and soul had been broken.
Without the Shepherd, the sheep were left aimless and wandering.

They retreated to a small, abandoned block of the city on
the fringes of the rest of the army of defenders. The streets around the small
buildings became like a shell, and they withdrew protectively for the night to
recover from their devastating losses, both physical and spiritual. Of the three
hundred denarae who had first answered Trebor’s call for help and volunteered
to fight in the war, half their number were now slain. Two dozen had been
killed during their previous encounters with the Merishank army, and before the
disastrous battle, only twenty-five had fallen during the last week of battle
at the Barrier. Only fifty men killed, and then twice that had died in one day
of fighting with the coming of the demons.

Still, they’d fared better than any of the other units, for
which Garnet knew he should be thankful. The knowledge was a bitter taste of
comfort, however.

Gerard’s body had been returned to the Prism’s headquarters
and was even now being prepared for cremation and burial, along with dozens of
other paladins whose slain bodies had been recovered. Ceremonies would wait
until after the war was over. No one mentioned the grim, ubiquitous thought
that none of them might survive to commemorate the dead and would instead join
their silent ranks.

Garnet assumed command of Shadow Company, as per Gerard’s
standing orders, but he didn’t have the first clue where to begin with them.
He’d studied tactics under Gerard and Robert Day, another Red paladin who’d
worked with Gerard during Garnet’s training. Bobby taught Garnet how to think
and feel during a battle and showed him how everything he learned about
individual combat could be used in a larger scale. Understanding how a single
warrior moved with the flow of combat gave insight into how an entire unit
might maneuver in battle. He taught him the theories and how they could be
applied. Some things he learned from Gerard about group tactics, Garnet
identified as being grounded in the theories Bobby advocated, so Garnet had
studied both men’s philosophies eagerly.

But in spite of everything Bobby had shown Garnet about
rationale and applications, it was Gerard who had sculpted Garnet’s fighting
and tactical thinking during combat. Gerard taught him how to control the
battle, how to make his enemy react to him and not the other way around. He taught
Garnet the way to attack without form, using standard conventions to inform but
not limit his overall assault. Gerard had taught Garnet everything the older
Red paladin knew about fighting, and Garnet knew Gerard was always the most
proud of him when Garnet had beaten his mentor.

In a way, Gerard was a second father to Garnet, and it is
one of a parent’s greatest wishes to see a child become greater than they.
Gerard’s other child was Shadow Company, and that sense of familial bond was
the only real comfort in the wake of their Shepherd’s death.

Garnet walked the dark streets, knowing that even with the
fall of night, the war still raged on only a mile or so away. Men were falling.
Damned souls were dying a second death. Demons were being obliterated. And all
Garnet could do was step slowly down a frozen street lit only by a few
flickering fires, burying himself in loss and despair. Finally he sat down on
the front steps of an abandoned house and watched a procession of snow ants
[27]
frantically adjust their path to go
around his boot.

The new leader of Shadow Company spent hours sitting on the
frozen stairs, his thoughts a tangle of grief and confusion. He knew he wasn’t
ready to take over the company.

How can I do this?
he wondered in despair.

- 2 -

Vinder Abram picked his way through the streets. A gnomish
contraption of some sort had crashed and destroyed most of a building, and the
rubble lay strewn about the stone streets. Something still burned inside what
had once been someone’s home, and the Violet paladin gave it a wide berth. He’d
been alive for nearly five decades, and no one lived that long without a
healthy respect for gnomish technology.

He passed a half-dozen more buildings before finding the
area he sought, or at least the individuals he sought. Still, even though he
came looking for them, he was startled when a gray-skinned form loomed out of
the darkness and challenged him. Vinder’s sword leapt free of its sheath, but
he immediately lowered it to indicate he wasn’t a threat.

“It’s okay,” called a dispirited voice. “Let him in.”

Vinder nodded at the denarae who’d challenged him, noting
the slump in his shoulders and the half-glazed look in his eyes. He clapped a
hand on his shoulder as he passed, but the denarae only scowled at him. At
least he wasn’t staring vacantly anymore, Vinder mused.

A young human stood up to greet Vinder as he walked forward.
He wore a violet cloak identical to Vinder’s own, and his face was familiar to
the paladin instructor.

“Flasch
jo’Keer
,” Vinder said,
smiling slightly as he waved the younger man back to his seat on a set of low
steps.

“Instructor,” Flasch replied.

“Please, we’re both paladins now, lad,” he said as he
started to sit. Vinder belatedly realized he still had his sword in his hand,
and he quickly sheathed it. Flasch noticed the nicks in the blade and the
well-worn grip before the weapon was out of sight. He sat down and made himself
comfortable on stone stairs.

“I didn’t expect you to be here on the front lines, sir,” Flasch
said. “You always struck me as well, more academic.”

“Ah, but in my youth I rivaled the best Red paladins on the
practice field,” Vinder said with a slight smile. “It was only an unfortunate
penchant for academic study that kept me out of the field. For a time I
compromised by journeying to remote villages to instruct the locals in the
virtues of the Prism, always secretly hoping to run into a few demons to make
things interesting. It’s only these last few years that I decided to leave
traveling to younger bodies and took up instruction.”

Flasch smiled half-heartedly, but the expression faded
before it even began. He hesitated, then looked at Vinder and asked, “I don’t
mean to be rude, sir, but why are you here?”

“I go where I’m needed, lad,” Vinder replied cryptically,
“and just now I’m not needed anywhere else.”

Flasch looked at him sharply. “And you’re needed here?”

“You tell me.”

The two men sat in silence for a long moment. Around them,
the denarae of Shadow Company huddled in loose clusters, as much for shared
warmth as for companionship and emotional bonding.

“Did you know,” Flasch said finally, “that death for the
denarae is usually treated as a celebration of the person’s life? The things
he’s done, the people he knew, the joys he shared.”

“An admirable way of viewing the end of one’s life,” Vinder
said, nodding. “Are you unable to look at Gerard’s fate this way?”

“I have a hard time looking at it as anything other than a
waste,” Flasch said darkly. “We were thrust into the jaws of death by the
people who should be protecting and guiding us all, and yet we survived in
spite of the odds. Everything we’ve done, everything he made us, and it wasn’t
enough. Gerard was cut down while fighting where he shouldn’t have been in the
first place. If the Prismatic Council is supposed to be the closest thing to
God’s authority on Lokka, I have to believe either they’re warped or He is.”

Vinder sighed glumly. It was a variation on one of the
hardest questions ever asked to men of faith, and that it came from the lips of
a paladin of piety made it all the more poignant. He allowed the grim silence
to stretch out for a moment before he responded to the younger man.

“What is faith, Flasch?” he asked, and out of the corner of
his eye, he saw Flasch’s head snap up.

“Didn’t we already have this conversation in class once?”
Flasch asked.

“We did,” Vinder confirmed, “and no one gave me an answer,
so I’m asking again. What is faith?”