The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (68 page)

“The
Cthonis
,” Birch whispered. “No wonder it felled
Danner so quickly. With his immortal heritage, the unholy symbol might even
have killed him outright if he wasn’t strong enough.”

Birch stared at his nephew in concern, then looked up at
Perklet.

“We have to get him back into his wholly mortal form,” Birch
said with certainty. “It’s his immortal side being active that’s keeping him in
jeopardy.”

“How can we change him back?” the Green paladin asked
helplessly.

“Heal him as best you can, and maybe that will bring him
‘round,” Birch replied.

Perklet nodded, then placed his hands on Danner, creating a
circle around the wound with his thumbs and forefingers. In a low voice, he
prayed for healing, asking for divine assistance and picturing the uninjured
flesh in his mind. After a few breathless seconds, Birch saw some of the angry
festering fade from the injury. Still, the wound resisted
Perklet’s
attempts to heal it, and after a few moments the Green paladin broke off, sweat
standing out on his brow.

“That’s all I can do for him now,” Perklet said. “Let me see
to your dakkan while you try and revive him.”

Birch passed Selti over to the other paladin, who
immediately set to work healing the vicious cut in the dakkan’s wing. Birch
leaned over his nephew.

“Danner. Danner, it’s Uncle Birch. Can you hear me?” Danner
groaned in response. “Danner, you’re hurt, and we’re trying to help you, but I
need you to turn off your wings.
Dekint
them, Danner.
Can you do that?”

Birch watched in silence, then Danner’s wings flickered and
faded away. Birch looked up and saw Perky setting Selti to the side. The gray
drann was asleep, and his wing was whole, but there was a wide scar in the
membrane of his wing where the cut had been.

“I couldn’t prevent the scar, no matter what,” Perklet said.
“There must be something about the weapon that caused it.”

“Danner has reverted,” Birch said, drawing the Green’s
attention to his nephew.

“Good. Please give me room,” Perklet said in a businesslike
manner. Birch backed away as Perklet again knelt over Danner’s prone form. He
hovered over him for a few minutes, then when he leaned back, the wound was
gone. In its place was a small, round scar.

“Same problem,” the Green muttered. His voice sounded
exhausted.

Birch showed him the bolt and the unholy marking on the tip.

“It’s a cursed weapon,” Birch said. “Not just the
Cthonis
;
it was actually cursed by a demon at some point.”

“But they’re not even using them,” Perklet objected. “Why
would they have bothered to mark…”

A sudden uproar caused both men to look up, and finally they
became aware that there was no longer a crowd of people around them. Everyone
was standing atop the battlements of the Barrier or gathered before the nearest
gate. Birch looked around and only then realized they hadn’t landed in the
city, but in one of the courtyards. The orange
Ash’Ailant
was only a
dozen feet away, with a half-dozen paladins
-
one from each Facet
-
encircling it
protectively.

“Perky, get Danner and Selti out of here, please,” Birch
asked quickly. The Green paladin nodded.

Birch left his dakkan and his nephew in
Perklet’s
care and raced to the nearest set of stairs. He bounded up the stone steps four
at a time until he reached the top of the Barrier, where he ran into a thick
press of human defenders and a handful of paladins of different Facets. The
paladins helped open a path for Birch until he was far enough forward to see
over the heads of those in front of him to the plains beyond.

“Lord God, protect us all,” Birch whispered.

On the wide plain before the Barrier, Birch saw four
humanoid forms towering over the teeming mass of Hell’s army. Each creature was
easily more than eighty feet tall, and their bodies were more or less
proportional to a human’s. At first glance, their flesh also looked human, but
it appeared to have bizarre grooves and contours. It was only a careful study
that showed the creature’s skin was not a continuous entity, but rather it was
made from the bodies of hundreds of damned souls, all melted together to form
one conglomerate whole. The fingers were composed of two bodies together
back-to-front with their arms raised overhead and melted together so that the
two heads, which were partially melded as one, formed the fingertip of each
digit. The face had no real distinctive features, except two empty eye-sockets
set in a deep mass of melted flesh.

“Abominations,” Birch said, recognizing the creatures from
some inner memory belonging to Kaelus.

Men on the walls were firing arrows at the abominations as
quickly as they could load their weapons, and the ballistae were firing their
larger missiles as well. But none of the weapons seemed to have any effect on
the abominations, and even the ballista bolts just bounced off the enormous
monstrosities. Through Kaelus, Birch knew there was a demon somewhere inside
the abomination, and the damned souls had been melted onto his unholy flesh, so
the whole conglomeration was itself merely an extension of the demon’s skin.

Birch glanced down at the cursed crossbow bolt still in his
hand. He stared speculatively at the unholy symbol etched on the barbed tip,
then he looked up in sudden inspiration.

“You won’t be able to harm them like that,” Birch yelled to
a nearby ballista crew. He pushed people out of his way, ignoring their
protests, until he was at the ballista, which was being reloaded.

“Let me borrow your dagger,” he told one of the men.

“Why?”

“Now!” Birch barked at him.

He took the man’s knife and leaned over the ballista bolt.
Quickly, he scratched a
Tricrus
onto the metal head of the weapon. For
good measure, he also whispered a prayer to bless the weapon.

“Fire at the nearest abomination,” Birch ordered them. The
crew adjusted the weapon’s aim to compensate for its approach since their last
shot.

“Fire!” the crew chief bellowed, and the massive bolt leapt
from the weapon with a clap of thunder. The missile soared through the air and
struck the abomination in the chest. Unlike the previous shots, the bolt sank
into the twisted flesh and nearly disappeared into the massive bulk. The
abomination reeled in pain, but there was no outcry; the abomination had no
mouth.

“Hit it again,” Birch ordered, already scratching the holy
symbol onto every ballista bolt he could find, muttering blessings as he went.
“Only use these bolts I’ve marked,” he said. He looked over his shoulder and
called to a few paladins he could see. “Brothers, go to the other ballistae and
mark each bolt with the holy symbol, then bless the missile. It’s the only way
to stop those things.”

The abominations were already nearing the wall of the
Barrier, and Birch despaired that they would have enough time to stop the
massive conglomerations of damned flesh.

- 3 -

Janice peeked out through the curtains of her home
fearfully, using the light of the moon overhead to see out into the street.
She’d been locked inside her basement for nearly a week, living off the large
store of supplies she’d stocked before the demons had suddenly appeared and
assaulted Nocka. Some of her neighbors and friends had been living with her,
and their supplies were all stockpiled below in the basement as well. Hal and
his mother Ginger were out scrounging for more food, just in case the crisis
lasted beyond what they had the means to sustain, and Anne was asleep in the
basement.

They never all slept at the same time, in case something
should happen and take them unawares. It was a horrible way to live, always
dreading every noise that drifted down from the world above. Their basement
really was like another world, since it was carved into the rock by skilled
hands and in no way resembled the rest of her home. It was also the only place
any of them felt safe, which is what truly made it a world apart from
everything else.

Janice twitched the curtains to the side, allowing her to
see further down the street, and finally she saw Hal and Ginger returning. Hal
was barely ten years old and still looked small next to his mother as they
moved quickly from building to building, stopping every block to look around in
fear. Their concern was as much for demonic fiends as it was for the more
mundane type of danger. Looters and a few more violent criminals were taking
advantage of the absence of authority on the streets, which gave them free
reign amongst houses populated primarily by untrained or otherwise defenseless
men, women, and children. They hadn’t seen any of the thugs in a day, but the
nights were still rife with the screams of their victims. Janice hadn’t heard
any sounds of violence or terror tonight, which was as strange as it was
welcomed.

Hal and Ginger each carried a large box, which was
presumably laden with food and other goods, and Hal even had a sword in one
hand! At least they might be better prepared to defend themselves in the event
the vandals came back. They had one small axe, which Janice held now in her
hand, but that was their only weapon until now. The axe had been Janice’s
husband’s before he died.

Alex had been much older than Janice, who had only seen
twenty summers, but he had cared for her tenderly. When he died, Janice was
left with the house but no means to support herself, and so she had resorted to
desperate measures that sometimes made her feel ashamed of herself. Alex had
been the only man who’d ever made her feel good about herself… well, he and one
other.

At last, Hal and Ginger reached Janice’s house, and she
hurried them inside and quickly shut the door behind them without slamming it.

“We’ve got some great stuff,” Hal said in an excited
whisper. A muted glow light nearby cast shadows on his face that made him seem
slightly older, but the boyish smile on his face dispelled the illusion.

“Good,” Janice replied, smiling as she ruffled his hair.
“Let’s get it below and wake up Anne so we can all go through it. She’s due to
be up now anyway.”

The door to the basement was hidden behind a cheap, but
fancy-looking rug Janice had hanging on the wall. It was hand-woven by denarae
from some village to the north of Nocka, and her husband had brought it back
after opening a new trading route in that area. Alex had been a merchant of only
moderate success, but always he was able to give Janice anything she truly
wanted, except for a child.

Janice shook off the painful thoughts and led her neighbors
downstairs. She heard a stirring below and thought perhaps Anne had already
woken up.

“Anne, dear?” Janice called. “Hal and Ginger are back.
They’ve brought us some
supp
…”

Janice’s voice choked off as she reached the last step and
peered into the small cavern of her basement. Clearly illuminated by several
glow lights, Anne was still lying on the couch, but her neck was twisted
backward at an impossible angle, and she was clearly dead. Her face was frozen
in a mask of pain, and there were bloody marks as if a clawed hand had been
clamped across her mouth.

Standing over her was a four-armed shape straight out of
Janice’s worst nightmares. The demon was surrounded by a dozen leather-skinned
creatures that might have once been human, but now they were warped and twisted
by the cruelest of imaginations and nightmares. There was a large hole burrowed
in one of the basement walls that hadn’t been there before.

“Anne…” Janice whimpered.

Hal dropped his box of supplies and leapt forward with his
new sword in hand, and he actually managed to prick one of the smaller beasts
before the rest of them swarmed over him and tore the small boy to pieces.
Without thinking, Ginger rushed forward in an effort to reach her screaming
son. Two of the creatures quickly turned on her and ripped her throat out.

Janice backed slowly up the stairs, but the larger demon
snarled something in a horrible language and two of the small creatures broke
off to stalk her. Abandoning subtlety, Janice turned and fled up the stairs,
the two monsters fast on her heels. They bounded up the steps and closed the
distance all too quickly.

Fire erupted in a long line down the back of Janice’s calf
as one of the creatures clawed at her leg, and she screamed in pain as she spun
and chopped down desperately with her axe. Her first strike lopped a clawed
hand off at the wrist, and Janice just kept swinging away with the weapon,
blinded by fear and desperation. Her axe bit into the monstrous face and the
creature went limp on top of her legs.

Then the second beast was there, leaping and snarling over
the body of the first. Janice threw up her hands to cover her face, and the
beast bowled into her and knocked her flat against the stairs. She flailed
uselessly with her hands, and only after a moment did she realize the creature
wasn’t moving. Janice shifted it aside and saw that in its leap, the creature had
impaled itself on the axe, nearly cutting off its own head.

Hurriedly, Janice scrambled to her feet and ran from her
house as fast as her wounded leg would let her. Her only world of safety had
just been shattered, and now there was nowhere she knew where she could be
safe.

Unless…

With tears streaming down her face, Janice lurched down the
streets in search of a new haven.

A man lost in the desert does not beg for money or women.

- Denarae Proverb

- 1 -

Soldiers screamed through the night all along the wall of
the Barrier as the three remaining abominations swept their massive fists
across the battlements and either crushed men or sent them spinning to the
ground far below. One of the giant creatures lay on the plains, half a dozen
ballista bolts protruding from its chest and one from its left eye. It was not
dead yet, or else it would have vanished in a cloud of smoke in the manner of
slain demons, but with several bolts marked with the holy symbol stuck in it,
the demon within was paralyzed and struggling just to stave off destruction.