The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (55 page)

“Yes, general,” the dybbuk replied. “They were the last
batch to graduate as paladins before the assault began, an accelerated training
program to be sure. This group was the most promising of that lot, and includes
a denarae who entered the training disguised as a human. I recognized the
danger of their strength as a group and had that one removed to try and
fragment them, but the rest of the Council insisted on forming the company of
denarae, and they stayed together. Gerard’s defense of the boy angered many,
and he was placed in charge of the denarae as a mark of shame.”

“Which he turned into a work of brilliance, of course,”
Malith murmured. Only Gerard could have crafted a unit of such strength. It
made so much sense, Malith wondered that it hadn’t occurred to him before.

“Continue.”

“The Red boy shows immense skill and promise, and the Yellow
and Violet are capable leaders, if nowhere near as potent,” the dybbuk said. “The
Orange is all but useless on the battlefield, but he is dangerous because of
knowledge.”

“I am only concerned about the war right now,” Malith said
sternly. “Let knowledge come when we remake history as Mephistopheles sees
fit.”

“Yes, general. The denarae is typical of his kind, but the
other danger is the Blue paladin, Danner de’Valderat. He is the nephew of the
Gray paladin who returned from across the Merging, and something about him
portends great power.”

“de’Valderat?
Birch de’Valderat
is the paladin who
escaped?” Malith said in irate amazement. Why had he never been told the name
of the escapee? “It seems my oldest comrades have now become my most bitter
enemies. To have had Birch in my grasp for so long and not know it…” Malith
clenched his fist in irritation. “Now more than ever I wish I had been placed
in charge of his manhunt. And you say this nephew of his is troublesome, as
well?

“Very well,” Malith said, not waiting for an answer. “I will
deal with them both in due time. If this nephew is as dangerous as you imply,
begin working on a ploy to keep him out of the way so I can trap and slay his
uncle. In the meantime, I will deal with Gerard Morningham personally.”

“If I may ask, mighty general,” the dybbuk hissed
submissively, “what is the progress of the drolkuls? I must coordinate the
Council on my end when the time is right.”

“I’m aware of that,” Malith snapped. “The Barrier is still a
formidable power, even weakened as it is under Mephistopheles’s will. With only
two of the
Ash’Ailant
felled, their progress has been slow, but it
should be mere hours before they create a breach. Fortunately, once they’re
through, the city itself should aid in their mission.”

Malith smiled mirthlessly, the expression terrible with his
chiseled features and ice-cold gaze. Then something intruded on his thoughts. A
question, a reminder, from Mephistopheles delivered earlier that evening from a
damned soul nearly incoherent from being brought personally before the King of
Hell. Sending a messenger, rather than contacting Malith directly, was the
demon’s way of reminding Malith of the price of failure. The gibbering,
terrified creature was Mephistopheles’s idea of subtlety.

“One thing more,” Malith said. “Has there been any word on
the Council of another powerful crossing between the time of Birch’s return and
the onset of the invasion? Mephistopheles still seeks the demon Kaelus.”

“There has been nothing reported at any time, O powerful
general,” the dybbuk said. “No word on the traitor demon.”

“Stay alert,” Malith said. “If he hasn’t yet crossed the
Merging, Kaelus may still try now that the Barrier has been so weakened. The
demons here should sense his presence, but if he’s managed to hide himself from
the King of Hell this long, he may elude us. Mephistopheles is still angered by
his sudden disappearance so soon after the paladin’s escape. His patience is
now as short for no news as it is for bad news.”

The dybbuk hissed, then fell silent.

“You may go.”

Malith considered his options. The mutated souls had
succeeded in overrunning the Barrier once and destroying two of the seven
Ash’Ailant
,
but the defenders had been disorganized and slow to respond. Now they were
expecting the attacks, their siege engines were operational, and they were
beginning to deploy forces outside the wall in addition to the devastating
Shadow Company. Perhaps had Malith ordered the original assault to continue
unabated, they could have kept the defenders of Nocka from ever establishing a
firm resistance, but instead he’d heeded the dybbuk’s request to place Shadow
Company outside the walls in an effort to break and destroy them. For that
oversight alone, Malith should have destroyed the creature, but it remained a
valuable tool, ensconced as it was within the Prismatic Council.

Shadow Company. Malith needed a way to break those forces
and make them nothing more than wasted flesh.

With no wooden resources to draw from in Hell ─ wood
meant trees, which did not exist in the immortal plane ─ Malith had no catapults
or other distance siege engines, and he had never ordered such engines built
from metal simply because he hadn’t expected to need them. Had Ran succeeded in
his mission, they wouldn’t have been necessary.

“The best laid plans of drann and dwarves,” he muttered,
lamenting his over confidence.

Where Malith had no wood, he had metal in abundance. For
whatever reason, Hell had mines of every conceivable mineral that were as yet
unexhausted. Many who worked the mines – meaning the damned – were of the opinion
that since Hell itself was infinite, so were the mines. Malith wasn’t sure, but
as long as they supplied him with metal to forge weapons, he didn’t
particularly care. Most demons disdained the use of weapons and preferred their
own teeth and claws in battle, but that suited Malith just fine. He had other
ways to use the metal to destroy his enemies.

“To break the rest of them,” he mused, “I need to use the
demons. More than that, I have to frighten them. I have to break up their ranks
and drive them back behind that wall for good – show them how quickly they can
be defeated.”

He turned to a messenger.

“Bring me Arthryx the Bender,” Malith ordered. The mutated
creature sped off on powerful legs designed for both speed and endurance.
Hell’s general stared thoughtfully toward the distant city, forming his plans
until the summoned demon appeared.

Arthryx was a nightmare to behold, not only because of his
grotesque flesh and warped frame, but because Malith knew the demon had
deliberately twisted his own body as part of his experiments. Arthryx had six
arms, two on each side and two sprouting from his back just above the waist,
where they were quite serviceable for reaching things behind him, but worthless
in front. To use those rear hands, Arthryx had implanted a third eye in the
back of his hairless head. A thick mat of hair ran in a strip down the center
of his chest to his groin in a parody of modesty, as the demon had no genitalia
nor would he have bothered with such a trivial, mortal concern. In addition, an
extra hand protruded from the middle of his stomach, but as far as anyone could
tell, the hand was completely useless. For sheer purposes of making himself
more horrid, Arthryx had added a second mouth directly underneath the first so
that his original jaw was the upper lip of the lower mouth. His uppermost teeth
were practically hidden behind a wicked
underbite
,
while the lowest jaw was tucked behind a vicious overbite. When he talked, it
was with a double voice like an echo. His flesh was almost human in color, but
there was too much red tone in it, and it was thick and scab-like. Despite all
the horrors Malith had seen in Hell, including the many faces of the domain’s
ruler, Mephistopheles, still he withheld a shudder at the sight of the Bender.

 “You summoned me, General Malith?” Arthryx said, his
voices overlapping.

“Awaken your abominations,” Malith ordered, letting none of
his horror show in his body or voice. “I want them ready to assault in two
days’ time.”

“How many?”

“Four should be sufficient,” Malith answered.

“Understood,”
Arthyrx
replied. He
swiveled his arms about until the two hands on his left side were clasped
together so that one elbow was pointing up and the other down, and he did
likewise on the right side. It was a habit of the demon’s Malith found
particularly disconcerting.

“Will there be anything else?” Arthryx asked.

“Yes,” Malith said in sudden inspiration. “How are your
bending skills this side of the Merging?”

Arthryx shrugged, pushing both sets of elbows in opposite
directions. “I have noticed no lessening in my powers,” the demon said, “but I
have not yet attempted to bend since we crossed.”

“Let’s test them,” Malith said. “Order whatever materials
you’ll need.” Quickly, he explained what he wanted.

“I’ll need Hellfire
[26]
brought through then,” Arthryx said.

“Do so,” Malith said curtly. “Begin setting up whatever you
need. I’ll find you soon.”

“Yes, General Malith.” Arthryx bowed low, exposing his
bizarre back and extra eye to Malith’s sight.

Malith turned away and allowed himself the luxury of a
shiver of pleasure. If Arthryx could bend as Malith desired, the outside forces
would no longer be able to stand and hold against him, and with the
abominations on their way, the Barrier would fall soon enough.

And then the real war would begin.

- 2 -

Early the next day, Danner discovered the secret Faldergash
had refused to divulge. A small army of gnomes suddenly appeared in Nocka, not
as a fleet of vehicles on the ground, although there were plenty of those, but
as an armada soaring down from the skies. Apparently
Faldergash’s
reports to the home of the Dale gnomes in exile had warranted sufficient alarm
and action on their part to send such a spectacular force.

At the first sight of gnomish machines actually flying in
the air without crashing or exploding, people gawked in awe, and soldiers stood
at their posts with their heads tilted back in wide-eyed amazement. Four men
actually fell off the edge of the battlements because they weren’t paying attention
to where they were going, and one of those died before a Green paladin could
reach him to provide healing.

“Well,
Danno
,” Faldergash said,
his eyes twinkling as Danner looked up in amazement, “you surprised?”

“
Fal
, I don’t have the words,”
Danner replied in a hushed voice.

“Good, because there’ll be enough people doing more than
their share of talking about this in the days to come,” Faldergash said. He
shook his head sadly. “War or no, not everyone will be glad to see us
returning, especially after they thought us completely wiped out.”

The feelings of the populace were mixed, as the gnomes had
known they would be. Many who had felt pity for the supposedly deceased race of
Dale gnomes now felt joy that they were not all wiped out. Others – namely the
dwarves who had not entirely lost the racial animosity toward their
technological competitors – viewed their coming as a threat and grumbled about
not needing the help of a people who should have had the decency to remain
dead. By far, the prevailing opinion was one of stunned acceptance, as people
simply took the arrival of the flying armada in stride, having already seen
many astonishing sights in recent weeks. When waves of demonic creatures had
swept over the walls and faced the mortal defenders with terrifying features,
the sight of flying machines became somewhat less amazing than it otherwise
might have been. After the initial wonder wore off, people began to act like
the Dale gnomes had never disappeared at all and had always been a part of the
city’s defense.

All told, only four hundred gnomes arrived aboard various
flying and land-bound vehicles. The airships they rode were as varied as the
imagination could conceive. Some had enormous balloons filled with heated gas
and were moved by propellers that pushed the contraption through the air.
Thirty or so had large, fixed wings spread out in two layers from a central
chasse, which housed a pilot and another gnome in back with a supply of
explosives to be dropped on the enemy below. On the front of these machines was
another propeller, which spun with incredible speed and a deafening buzzing
noise and seemed to pull instead of push the machine. Gnomes flew past on
smaller gliders, some of which had motors and propellers, but most were
unpowered.

On the ground, the gnomes brought vehicles that seemed to be
nothing but metal plating on all sides with small slits through which arrows
could be fired and small explosives shot with compressed air through small
tubes. They were horribly slow, due to their immense weight, but still moved
faster than a man could walk ─ barely. Then there were buggies of various
designs, but nothing too deviant from what people had come to expect.

But perhaps the most mysterious of the gnomes’ creations they’d
brought were the anti-infantry devices. These included large containers that
could be strapped on a person’s back and from which emerged long hoses with
nozzles on the end. Faldergash told Danner these could actually throw a tongue
of flame more than two yards in front of the wielder. Long metal tubes called
cannons belched flame and projectiles that gouged the earth with explosive
force, shredding nearby enemies. There were also vats of chemicals hauled in on
large buggies, and Faldergash looked on these with sad eyes.

“Weapons of destruction, my boy,” Faldergash said when
Danner asked. His thick fingers pointed toward a covered vat with particularly
vicious contents. “War by means of chemistry, you could say. There’s compounds
there that will eat the skin off anything and one that turns into a vapor that
burns you apart from the inside. Things too destructive to ever be used against
another living soul. I don’t know if we’ll get much of a chance to use them,
but they’re here just the same.”