The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (34 page)

- 2 -

“The Prism permits the
killing of another mortal in cases of self-defense and protecting the life of
another, though non-lethal resolution is preferred when possible,” Gerard
replied offhandedly. “We’re protecting the city and all the innocents within.”

“You’re not my
instructor anymore, sir,” Flasch replied grimly. “I read that page in our
texts, too, and it sounds well and good. But we’re not holding a sword and
shield over some old lady being assaulted in the street. Hundreds of men have
died already, and you’re talking like killing them is a loophole, sir.”

Gerard regarded the
Violet paladin with a flat stare. It was easy to forget Flasch was an intensely
serious man underneath his antics and verbal flare. He was an inventive and
solid commander, and if he was questioning their role in this war, others would
be, too.

“No, Flasch, it’s not
a loophole,” Gerard said finally, shaking his head. “I admit, I have a special
place in my heart for Merishank, somewhere near rapists and men who beat
children. Had my life not brought me to the Prism, I would probably be a
commanding officer in the
Sellan
army, training
soldiers to defend their homeland against the next incursion from those greedy,
warmongering wankers. But like you, I was called to something higher, something
beyond the more basic desires of my past.”

Gerard gestured in the
general direction of the Merishank army.

“Somewhere out there
are tens of thousands of men, blindly following orders that risk the safety of
everyone in Nocka,” the Red paladin said. “Under other circumstances, and for
any other city, we probably wouldn’t lift a finger to stop them. The Prism has,
at times, offered sanctuary to those oppressed by an offending nation, but we
have never placed ourselves directly in the path of a nation’s might. Against
men, we have been ever the shield, never the sword.

“It wouldn’t surprise
me if the Merishank army never lifts a finger to attack the city itself,
despite their posturing and overt aggression. They don’t have to. Inaction can
be a weapon all its own, and all they have to do is keep reinforcements from
arriving. Hell, for all we know, the rank and file soldier has probably been
told they’re defending the city from some other, mortal aggressor, since only
an idiot would knowingly jeopardize the Barrier.”

Flasch nodded, and
clearly he’d had the same thought, or something similar.

“But we both know this
is different than anything our order has faced since its inception,” Gerard
continued. “The stakes are too high.”

“Are we compromising
our values to protect our values then, sir?” Flasch asked. “Danner once pointed
out that saving a nation by sacrificing what made it great defeats the purpose.
We are men of God, sworn to protect men of all races, and I have to ask if this
is really what God intends for us.”

Gerard shook his head.
“If God intended any of this, He’s got a funny way of telling people right from
wrong. If only all our enemies in this life were
demonspawn
,
the lines would be clear and we could lay down every night with a clean
conscience. It’s not often our calling leads us to raise arms against our
fellow men, and each time it happens we should question it.” He exhaled in grim
thought. “This little war is made by demons, but with the hands of men, and men
must bear the burden of setting it right. Sometimes protecting the innocent
isn’t just holding a shield over their heads, it’s stabbing the bastard who’s
attacking them.”

Gerard laid a hand on
Flasch’s shoulder and gripped it firmly.

“I’m not brushing
aside your concerns, Flasch,” he said, looking into the other paladin’s eyes.
“It’s supposed to be hard, and we’re supposed to question it, lest we grow too
used to the idea of killing each other. I’ve wondered myself if there’s not a
better way we’ve overlooked, some strategy or tactic, some magic word that
would bring them to their senses and avert a lot of needless bloodshed. You
know as well as I do that all the city’s envoys, including those from the
Prismatic Order, were either turned away without ever catching sight of an
officer or killed outright. Right now, words aren’t an option, but give me a
way to end this without killing another man and I’ll take it.”

Flasch nodded.

“Now leave me to some
rest. Sleep is a weapon, too, and one I intend to hone for at least the next
four hours.”

“I’ll pray on it,
sir,” Flasch said. He gripped Gerard’s shoulder in return, then turned away. He
paused at the doorway and looked back over his shoulder.

“Sir, may I ask you
something… well, perhaps personal?”

Gerard nodded.

“What happened to your
face?” Flasch asked. After a long pause, during which Gerard stared impassively
at the other man, Flasch added, “Sir?”

“You asked,” he
replied emotionlessly. “I never said I’d answer.”

- 3 -

“Sir, it’s time,” Danner said, breaking into Gerard’s
reverie.

He looked up to see the Blue paladin leaning into the hut
through the small doorway. The command structure where Gerard usually stayed
was built high up in a tree and well-camouflaged, but was just barely large
enough for him to live in comfortably. His six officers could stand
shoulder-to-shoulder around the table that dominated the room, but beyond that
there was only one area large enough for Gerard to stretch out to sleep on his
cot. Two small candles burned in opposite corners, and a larger one stood in
the middle of the table, illuminating the map laid there.

Gerard nodded and blew out the candle on the table and the
smaller one closest to the door. The last would stay burning to guide him to
sleep when he returned.

- 4 -

Danner glided down from the skies slowly, his eyes intent on
the ground below as a half-squad of men drifted through the skies around him.
He watched the deployment of the denarae already on the ground even as he
stayed alert for any Merishank soldiers who might have spotted them and would
give the alarm. Twelve denarae glided silently to the ground using the dyed
training cloaks Gerard had confiscated, but Danner had a hard time picking them
out of the dark night sky. He hoped the sentries below would have the same
difficulty. The almost moonless night was essential to their mission, which
depended on absolute secrecy. If they were discovered, their work might be
suspected and their pain-staking efforts at sabotage would be corrected. Not
only that, the enemy’s siege equipment would be better guarded, too.

He touched down lightly and dropped to the ground, listening
for any sound of alarm. Danner heard nothing, not even the sound of his platoon
settling to the ground around him. They were perfectly silent, and after a
tense moment, Danner spared himself a brief, toothless smile. Then it was time
to work.

Overhead reconnaissance provided from Gerard, combined with
the mind-reading talents of Trebor’s platoon, had showed them where the siege
equipment was being stored near the outskirts of the camp. So far, it had yet
to be used because the Merishank army still occupied itself with settling in
around Nocka. They seemed to be in no rush to assault the city, and they had
not yet made any attempt at communicating with the defenders within. No
demands, no ultimatums, no threats. Aside from their violent rejection of the
envoys sent to treat with them, their presence outside the gates was their only
indication of hostility. They had built storage sheds, warehouses, and several
other structures from materials they had brought with them, but Shadow Company
had disrupted many of their plans for using the forests for more building
material, so the camp was only half-finished at best. Still, given the size of
the army, it was like moving through a large town.

“First squad, deploy
on the left,”
Danner ordered, knowing his squad leaders were attuned to
receive his thoughts.
“Second squad, hold
around me until first is in position, then advance and cover.”

Danner received mental confirmation from both leaders, then
watched out of the corner of his eye as a group of shadows detached from the
wall and slipped silently forward. Danner lost sight of them as they rounded a
corner, and he waited breathlessly for the squad leader to send him notice they
were in position.

“Moving out now, sir,”
the second squad leader
reported. Danner moved with them, weaving in and out of the shadows around them
with silent efficiency. The white snow had long since been churned into the mud
to create a dark, frozen, muddy sludge, so Danner’s face and hands had been
darkened with soot to resemble the natural camouflage of the denarae’s dark
skin. There was a running joke that he was just trying to make himself look
more like his soldiers to make them like him better.

The truth was, his men respected him as much as he did them,
and they would guard each other’s lives and secrets at all costs. The secret of
Danner’s parentage had slipped out, as Trebor had warned it would, but by that
time his men were all solidly behind him. If nothing else, they recognized that
it was no less a secret than the kything abilities of their entire race, which
Danner was already pledged to help protect.

“Sentry walking this way.”
Danner melted into the
shadows at the mental warning and closed his eyes to mere slits as he watched
the sentry stroll past unconcerned. Their job would be much easier to perform
if they could remove the threat of sentries (by removing the sentries
themselves), but doing so would negate the intent of their mission.

“All clear.”

“Proceed,”
Danner ordered.

His platoon moved forward and within a few minutes they had
reached the block of warehouses with the materials that would soon be used to
construct siege engines. Danner surveyed the area quickly and found the group
of openings thirty feet up that served as ventilation to supply fresh air to
the workers inside. He sent a mental command, and two denarae stepped forward
on either side of him. Danner and the denarae pair each wrapped two long ropes
around their waists, then began examining the log wall for adequate hand- and
footholds. They climbed quickly but carefully, as concerned with making noise
that might reveal their presence as they were with scaling the wall swiftly.
Then they were in the openings, and they quickly and quietly drove anchors into
the inside and outside faces of the wall. When he was sure they were secure,
Danner ordered them to tie off their ropes and drop the ends to those waiting
below.

Denarae scrambled up the lines and dropped from the windows
to glide slowly to the floor below. Six denarae stayed above to coil the ropes.
When they were finished, they lashed the ropes to cleats secured to harnesses
they wore and lowered themselves a few feet into the room to dangle just below
the windows. They were now hidden from outside view, and they had no silhouettes
to reveal their presence to anyone still inside. When the time came, they could
easily raise themselves back to the windows and lower the rest of the rope to
their fellows below.

All this, Danner knew, was going on behind and above him. He
trusted his men to do their work, freeing him to concentrate on the matter at
hand – he received only a brief kythe confirming when they were all in place.
The remainder of his platoon slipped through the darkened warehouse and sent
him mental images of what equipment was stored there. Danner responded with
orders on which things needed to be sabotaged to ensure their handiwork wasn’t
discovered while maximizing the amount of damage to the people using the siege
engines. A catapult that flew apart when used could be a very dangerous thing.

They made short work of the warehouse, but it was still
taking longer than he would have liked. There was just too much equipment to
sort through, and they couldn’t plan on taking another night to come back and
finish their work. They had one shot at doing this. Any further attempts
increased their chances of being discovered and their work brought to naught.

Four hours later, they were just finishing the third out of
the five warehouses when Danner was forced to curtail their endeavors. They had
to start back with enough time to not lose the cover of darkness, lest their
presence be discovered. And just to be sure their work here was not suspected,
even should they be noticed, their extraction point was halfway across the camp
from their current location. Which was why they would soon be meeting their
guides.

Like a pack of gray ghosts, they slipped from the third
warehouse toward their rendezvous with Trebor’s platoon. Danner heard his
friend’s voice in his mind as they got closer, telling them where to go and how
to avoid most of the sentries they would come across. Soon enough, Danner was
at Trebor’s side and gripping his shoulder in greeting.

“Are you boys ready to
get out of here?”
Trebor asked him.

“Lead the way.”

“Fourth platoon,”
Trebor kythed so everyone would hear him,
“find
your designated partner in second platoon and begin extraction, two groups at a
time, four-minute intervals. Move.”

Denarae paired up and prepared themselves to move out.
Danner could only see a dozen or so pairs from where he was. The rest were
huddled in shadows within a hundred-yard radius so they wouldn’t be too densely
packed lest they be discovered. The first pair to move out was Brican Dok –
Trebor’s cousin and first squad leader – and Caret
Janah
,
who led Danner’s first squad. Brican was Trebor’s best sneak, had the strongest
kything abilities in their company, and could sense people’s thoughts at a much
greater distance than most other denarae. Trebor’s platoon had already mapped
out sentry locations and patterns for their path of extraction, but Brican
would send back any word of aberrations in those patterns. Caret was just as
intelligent and almost as strong a leader and would direct the movements of the
denarae once they were clear of the camp, leaving Brican free to continue
kything. Danner and Trebor were a pair, which in a lesser group of soldiers
would have been call for disaster to leave both leaders in the same location
moving together. But the two were a well-practiced duo, and if anything happened
to them, the denarae under them were more than capable of completing the
assigned mission and leading themselves to safety.