The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (60 page)

Something Gerard had once said echoed in Garnet’s ears, as
though he’d only just heard it spoken.

“If I’m going to fall, I’m going to go down standing up,”
Garnet said, then spun on his heel. He strode to where he’d laid his sword,
swiftly belted the massive weapon in place, then walked away. Denarae parted
for him to pass, staring at him raptly in awe. Within a few steps, Garnet was
aware of Flasch and Michael on his left, and Danner, Trebor, and Marc on his
right. He heard a massive shuffling, and without glancing back, he knew that,
to a man, Shadow Company was formed up behind him in perfect rank and column.
He heard a snapping sound, looked to the side, and saw the Shadow Company
standard lifted aloft, tattered but waving proudly in the dawn’s early light.
The crossed white sword and shepherd’s crook seemed to glow against the black
banner, reminding Garnet of Gerard’s final moments.

“I know you’re up there,” Garnet murmured. “I’ll do my best
to see we’re all worthy of you. Of your sacrifice.”

- 5 -

Birch looked over the crowd from the top of the back wall of
the Barrier and saw Shadow Company walking through the ranks of defenders, a
wedge of respect carving the path before them and to each side. They had been
the first unit to face the wave of damned souls out on the plains, they had
borne the brunt of most of the assault, and they’d been the last unit left on
the battlefield after the sudden shift in the battle the previous day. And now,
after the loss of their guide and leader, they were returning to the front
lines to resume their role at the head of the war to protect the whole world.

Birch felt a deep and profound sense of respect for them
all, especially the Red paladin, Garnet, who now marched at their fore. It must
have taken a unique brand of courage and leadership to bring them all back to
the place of their loss.
 
Gerard’s death
was a blow to Birch as well, who despite their years of separation had still
considered the Red paladin one of his closest friends. Birch was immensely proud
that his nephew was among the men leading the group that carried Gerard’s
spirit and legacy.

The fighting had continued unabated through the night, but
there was now a lull as the demons reorganized and integrated themselves into
the lines of battle. There were now clusters of the mantis-like childris, block
formations of the monstrous drolkuls, and a few individual balrogs here and
there. Scattered amidst the damned souls were countless lesser demons that had
no true species and were little better than the mutated souls of the dead. It
had been the four-armed drolkuls that had bored through the ground and erupted
in the midst of the soldiers on the front lines. The demons were large and
strong enough to tear men apart two limbs at a time. The muscular, winged,
whip-wielding balrogs were the true leaders on the field, directing the efforts
of their fellow demons and the lesser souls of the damned.

But it was the childris that Birch most feared. A single
childris, with its lightning-quick reflexes, was a match for any paladin, and a
group of more than two or three was a death sentence. The few times Birch had
come across them in Hell, he’d hidden or run away from any groups larger than
these. Even with Sultana’s help, they’d almost been more than he could handle
at times. It was the childris that had ultimately deprived him of Sultana; his
noble mount had thrust Birch aside and took a childris spear in her flank that
should have cleaved Birch’s head in two. Even with that wound, she’d fought at
his side until she was too far gone, and Birch’s healing powers insufficient to
save her.

Sultana had given birth to Selti, somehow managing to hide
her pregnancy from Birch during their travels. Dakkans had a long gestation
period, but even so, Birch wondered who the fathering dakkan had been. As for
the apparent prolonging of her pregnancy, Birch could only assume it had been
due to the altered passage of time on the immortal plane.
[28]
Two years of time passed for every one
year on the mortal world, but during Birch’s twenty years in Hell, he’d aged
only the ten years that had passed at home.

Lost in his memories, Birch did not at first notice the
snarling and then whimpering from the courtyard below. It wasn’t until loud
shouting and cursing erupted that his attention was drawn to a crowd clustered
around two dozen of the mutated souls. The monstrous creatures were surrounded
by men with swords drawn and death written plainly on their faces. But the
damned souls were making no effort to harm anyone, and indeed were cowering
back away from those around them to avoid being harmed themselves. The behavior
was unusual enough for Birch to leap from the wall and glide swiftly to the
milling throng. He landed in the space between the creatures and two men
advancing with swords.

“What’s going on here?” Birch asked quietly, turning his
burning gaze on the two men so they blanched and backed away from him. Even in
the rosy glow of dawn, the fires in Birch’s eyes were unmistakable.

“We discovered these beasts hiding away in one of the back
hallways,” a man said, pointing toward a door in the wall. The walls between
each courtyard were thick, but hollow within, allowing protected movement of
forces to the arrow slits set all around each courtyard. The damned souls had
been found in a storage room, hiding in the darkness until they were discovered
by a group of archers looking for more arrows. When they were found, they
cowered back and didn’t attack the archers, but the soldiers summoned help and
the mutated souls were forced out into the courtyard at sword point.

“So they’re prisoners of war,” Birch said after the man
finished explaining how they’d been found, “and you want to murder them.”

“They’re not men,” someone yelled in protest. “They’re
monsters! They need to be destroyed before they turn on us!”

“Look at them,” Birch said, motioning to the cowering mass
of the damned. “Do they look like they’re doing anything more than desperately
hoping you won’t cut their heads off? They’re not a threat.”

“They’re monsters!” someone shouted again, and others took
up the cry. The crowd started to mutter angrily, and some started forward on
the other side of the damned souls from where Birch was standing. Birch moved
over and glared at them, his eyes flaring fiercely as he drew his sword. The
men backed off.

“These creatures are now under the protection of the Prism,
as per the articles of war and taking of prisoners,” Birch said formally. “If
you so much as spit on one of them while I am present, you won’t like the
consequences.”

The men in the crowd hesitated, looking at each other for
strength. Then Danner’s denarae friend, Trebor, pushed through the crowd and
walked up to Birch. Danner followed quickly on his heels, but no one else came.
Danner and Trebor drew their swords and stood apart from Birch, standing at
equal distances from each other so the three of them formed a triangle around
the cluster of the mutated damned.

“Someone said you needed some help, Uncle Birch,” Danner
called calmly over his shoulder. “Garnet spared us to stand with you.”

Birch heard a croaking sound from behind him, and he turned
to look in amazement as one of the damned souls tugged on his gray cloak.

“H…help us,” the creature said, its monstrous throat
mangling the words. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“What are you doing here?” Birch asked, kneeling down to
bring himself level with the stooped creature. Someone stepped forward, sword
in hand, but a single glance from Birch was enough to cause the man to drop his
weapon and retreat back to the safety of the crowd.

“We were forced to fight,” the creature said. “Our spirits
were twisted and given this form, since we refused to bear weapons against our
families and people, and we were made to attack. We acted like beasts, and we
couldn’t think. Then we came here, and all of us, when we saw the pillar of
rock sticking up from the ground, we were suddenly able to think clearly. We
broke away from the fighting and tried to hide, not knowing what to do. We
tried talking to two men who first found us, but they wouldn’t listen. They
tried to kill us.”

“What did you do to them?” Birch asked.

“We knocked them out and hid them,” the creature replied.
“They’re still in the room where we hid.”

“Birch, what’s going on over there?” Trebor shouted suddenly,
looking warily at the press of people around him, which was slowly growing
thicker. The mutters were growing louder as more people heard about the
captives, and soon the buzz of angry voices drowned out most of the sounds of
battle from beyond the Barrier.

“Can’t you hear?”

“The two of could be swapping recipes for all I can tell,”
he replied. “I can’t hear a damn thing over the noise.”

“Damn it to Hell,” Birch muttered. He doubted he’d be able
to convince the mob on his own, and they’d never listen to what the damned
souls had to say, even if they could hear them.

“Help us,” the creature said again. “We don’t want to go
back. We’ll become beasts again, but they’ll kill us here.”

“Not if I can help it,” Birch said grimly.

“Uncle,” Danner said worriedly. The crowd was closing in,
gaining courage in their press of numbers.
“Trebor, can you get us some help
here?”

“It’s on the way, but
they can’t get through quickly enough,”
Trebor replied.
“The crowds are too thick back there.”

“Great.”

“Listen,” Birch said, standing up. “These creatures are…” he
stopped, drowned out by an outbreak of shouting in the crowd. “Listen!” he
shouted, but even those closest to him were ignoring him now. Birch’s eyes
flared in anger and the nearest men cringed back, but few men saw him so it had
little effect.

Five men rushed forward, and Birch laid about him with the
flat of his blade. The men were trying to avoid him to get past to the damned
souls behind him, and Birch stood with his back pressed against the helpless
souls. Someone reached forward with a knife and cut one of the twisted
creatures, and two others lashed out and clawed the attacking man.

“No!” Birch cried, but it was too late. Now that their own
blood had been shed, even in self-defense, there was no stopping the crowd.
They overwhelmed Birch and the others to attack the damned souls. Birch felt a
sense of desperation wash over him as he watched first one and then another of
the creatures fall to the men’s weapons.

Rage boiled up within him with a fiery heat, and Birch’s
very skin felt like it was catching fire. His sword burned fiercely in his
hand, and he nearly dropped it in a spasm of agony. He roared wordlessly,
throwing his arms wide and bellowing up into the sky. The mob around him
suddenly screamed in terror and fled as quickly as they could. A red haze
formed above Birch’s head, but he couldn’t discern the shape.

From his vantage, Danner could see clearly what it was, and
his eyes widened in horror. The red outline of what could only be a demon had
spewed forth from his uncle’s mouth as a fiery mist. The demon was visible from
the waist up, his lower half a wisp of smoke trailing down into Birch’s lips.
His wrists were shackled with a few inches of blackened, broken chain dangling
from each manacle. The demon’s body was powerfully built, and his face was
almost human, except for pointed teeth and a pair of long, bull-like horns
sprouting from the sides of his head and towering above him. He had a dense mass
of black hair in a twisted patch atop his head, and thick, bushy eyebrows. It
was his eyes that attracted Danner’s attention most, though, because they
burned with a fire all their own
-
a
red flame Danner recognized all too well.

There was something oddly familiar about the demon. Danner
had seen him somewhere before, he was sure, but he couldn’t place it.

The demon mimicked Birch’s stance, his arms wide and his
head thrown back to the sky, and a terrific bellow shook the very stones of the
courtyard, nearly knocking Danner from his feet. Several men did fall, and they
scrambled away on all fours, weeping in terror at the apparition that had
appeared in their midst. There were words in the cry, but they passed too
quickly for Danner to understand any of it.

From beyond the Barrier, a distant howl could be heard as
though every demon on mortal soil suddenly cried out in one voice. It was a cry
of hatred and loathing that was quickly drowned out by the ghostly demon’s
voice, which built into a deafening crescendo.

The air pulsed with an unseen power, a steady, regular
rhythm like the beating of a heart.

The damned souls also looked on the demon with fear, but
then their grotesque expressions turned to ecstasy. One by one, they collapsed
to the stones, and Danner saw a ghostly image of a man or woman slowly rise out
of each body. The transparent figures stared with pitiful gratitude and mouthed
unheard words of thanks, then they drifted up a foot or so and vanished in a
gust of wind as if they’d never been. The crumpled bodies they left behind
crumbled into black dust.

The spirits had lasted only a few seconds, but those left at
the scene remained captive to the wonder unfolding before them. The pulsing
power continued, and Danner thought he
felt
words in the nameless power.

I am. I am.

Every word beat something unimaginably eternal and utterly
beyond comprehension.

Then the thunderous bellow stopped, and the demon shrank and
sank back into Birch through his still-open mouth. When the demon was gone,
Birch sank to his knees and had to put his fists on the ground to support
himself. His whole body trembled, and when he looked up at Danner, there was no
recognition in his fiery eyes. It was the gaze of a stranger looking out
through the face of Danner’s uncle. The eyes were the same as they’d been since
Danner had really known Birch, and they were the same he’d just seen in the
demon.