The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (71 page)

- 4 -

Marc hurried back to the conference hall where the remnants
of the Prismatic Council were just finishing off the demons that had so nearly
wiped them out. When Marc walked into the room, he saw a cloud of dust
spiraling on invisible wind currents across the floor, then it was gone.

“Is everyone here alright?” he asked. Only six members of
the Council, which had originally boasted three times that number, had survived
the surprise attack. Their aides were all slain, their bodies strewn amidst the
carnage in the room.

“We will be,” a Green paladin said, already working on his
fellow Council members to heal their wounds.

“What happened?” Marc asked. He spoke with an authority to
which he had no claim, but for a wonder the men did not react defensively or
reject his presence. Instead, they responded to him as though he had command of
the situation.

A Red paladin showing only a few scratches stepped forward
to respond.

“We were in session when Jackson said he heard something at
the door,” the Red began.

“Who is Jackson?” Marc asked brusquely, realizing he knew
none of the names of the men before him. With the exception of the Red who had
spoken, they were all newer members of the Prismatic Council, replacements for
the corrupted men Marc and his friends had hunted down and captured. “And what
is your name?”

“Paladin
Daevis
Schist, at your
service, brother. Jackson
Haerta
was the bastard you
just chased down,” the Red replied, his lip twitching in disgust. “He asked
Bart
Shivrey
to unbar the door, and as soon as it was
free the demons came crashing through and attacked us. One of the demons tore
Bart limb from limb while Jackson watched and laughed, then Jackson joined the fight
on the demons’ side.

“A lot of us fell in the first rush, and it was probably
only a matter of time before we were overcome completely,”
Daevis
said. “You came just at the right time and turned the tide. Thank you,
brother.”

The Red paladin saluted him, as did those Council members
not currently engaged in healing or being healed. All told, two Reds, two
Blues, a Yellow, and a Green paladin had survived the slaughter. All bore
serious wounds that had received minimal treatment from healing prayers – anything
more and they would likely need a healing sleep to recover, and none of them
had that luxury.

“What should we do?” one of the paladins, a Blue, asked.

“Scour the rest of the compound,” Marc answered when it was
clear they were still looking to him for answers. “Group as you feel safe, but
spread out. Meet me back at…” he gasped. “The trainees’ barracks!”

He spun and dashed across the room to the door through which
he’d first entered. He called back over his shoulder, “
Daevis
,
follow me. The rest of you, get going as soon as you can!”

The Red paladin was close behind Marc by the time he lunged
up the stairs to the barracks. Marc’s worst fears were realized when he saw the
door to the barracks broken open. He threw his shoulder against the shattered
wood and burst into the room, sword at the ready.

He saw Maki leaning against one of the bunked beds,
clutching what remained of his right leg. A huge chunk was torn from the flesh
of his thigh, and Marc could see the bone under a thick pool of blood.
Daevis
rushed past Marc and knelt at Maki’s side to provide
what healing he could until they could get the man to a Green paladin. Marc saw
with stunned detachment that Maki’s cloak had shifted to blue, indicating he
was now a full paladin.

The rest of the room dawned on Marc’s senses, slowly
unfolding the story from the scene of horror. Billy’s body lay in a heap on the
stone floor, his throat and face a hideous mess of blood. His cloak was now a
vibrant yellow color, but half the material was stained red with his own blood,
and it was immediately obvious he was already dead.

Across the room,
Jorgins
lay
sprawled across another body, and it took Marc a moment to realize his cloak
was not soaked with blood;
Jorgins
had, in the last
minutes of his life, become a paladin of the Red Facet. Tears welled up in
Marc’s eyes as he stared at the broken body of the boy he remembered as being
so fearful and timid.

“Gerard would never have believed it,” Marc said.

Then he realized that if the body beneath
Jorgins
was still there, it couldn’t be a demon. Which left
only one option. Marc rushed over and cautiously lifted
Jorgins
in his arms, then laid the slain Red paladin gently on the ground.

Alicia lay on the cold, stone floor in a pool of blood. Marc
let out a sob and put a finger to her throat even as he leaned his ear close to
her mouth, hoping to hear or feel some indication his sister still lived.

There!

Her neck pulsed once under his fingers, then again. Then
Marc felt warm breath stir weakly against his ear and he heard a rasp of air.
He sighed in fierce relief, then began inspecting her for serious wounds that
would need healing. Marc quickly discovered that she only sported minor
injuries, of which there were quite a few, but it was soon clear that nearly
all of the blood on the floor belonged to
Jorgins
,
who had apparently given his life to protect her. Marc turned and looked at the
silent body behind him with fresh tears in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said brokenly. “Thank you for her life,
brother.”

Belief creates its own reality.

- Orange Paladin Jason
Anterix
,

“Defining Reality” (856 AM)

- 1 -

Marc waited until the paladins of the Prismatic Council had
assembled in the trainees barracks before he made his decision. The Council
members had discovered two other groups of demons hunting the compound of the
chapterhouse and had annihilated them quickly. There was no way to know how
many demons had fallen during the assault, but of the fifty or so paladins
still housed in the Prismatic headquarters, only four others had been
discovered alive. The survivors returned with the Council members and met up
with Marc and the others.

Maki had recovered from his wounds, thanks to the aid of
Jatin
, the only surviving Council member from the Green
Facet. Including the new Blue paladin and the four survivors, Marc now had a
dozen paladins, including himself, plus Alicia, who had proven herself at least
competent with a blade. She would be unable to put the finishing stroke on any
demons they encountered, but she should be able to slay the twisted creatures
made from the souls of the damned.

“We can’t stay here,” Marc announced when they were all
together. The Council members still looked at him expectantly, which disturbed
him even more than it elated him. Marc already had a command, and it was to
them he intended to return, and soon.

“The demons got past the Barrier somehow, either by
tunneling beneath the city, which I didn’t think they’d be able to get this far
this quickly, or else they’ve breached our defenses and are now running rampant
in the streets,” Marc said grimly. “Neither option is encouraging, but we need
to know for sure. We’re going to move out from here immediately and rendezvous
with Shadow Company near the Barrier.
That
’s where the war is going on,
and
that
is where we need to be.”

He left his words hanging in the air as an unuttered rebuke
toward the Council members. While men had been fighting and dying on the walls
of the Barrier, they had been here with at least fifty paladins, nearly all of
whom were now dead from the surprise attack. The paladins looked downcast and
refused to meet his eyes.

“I offer no excuse for our conduct, save that we were not
strong enough to face our own faults,”
Daevis
said
finally. When Marc looked at him questioningly, he continued, despite the
worried glances from two of the surviving Council members.

“Bart and Jackson,” he said, “they were blackmailing most or
all of us into doing their will. What they had over my fellows, I can’t say,
but they cornered me with certain indiscretions from my younger days, and I
didn’t have the courage to face up and confront their actions.” He looked down
at his red cloak with a bitter twist of his mouth. He clenched his fist around
a spread of the material, and his eyes shut against an inner torment.

“It was they who pressured us into letting your company of
denarae
stand alone
against the demons,”
Daevis
said quietly. “We knew it was wrong, and some of us
threatened to put a stop to it, but none of us actually did a thing. None of us
said a word, and so Gerard and countless others died. We are no longer fit to
lead this holy body.”

And at last Marc understood. They looked to him because he
was a pinpoint of light in a dark sea of guilt and despair, because he had come
to them and turned certain death into survival; defeat into triumph, however
bitter. They followed his orders because they no longer felt themselves capable
-
no, they no longer felt themselves
morally
qualified
to lead.

Marc stared at
Daevis
and the
others for a long, hard moment. Faced with the men who had denied Trebor his
rightful place among their ranks simply because of his race, who had cast his
friends and loyal troops to the wolves and ignored their plight, who had stood
by passively while the world itself had begun to crumble around their ears…
Faced with these men, Marc did the most difficult thing he’d ever done in his
life.

He forgave them.

“Every man finds himself led astray at some point,” Marc
said quietly. “We all have a darker spirit inside that whispers to us, and
sometimes we listen to it. You’re not unworthy, and you’re not horrible
leaders. You’re human. And right now, you’re faced with a choice.

“There are thousands of men out there placing their lives,
perhaps their immortal souls, on the line for the safety of our entire world,”
Marc said in a tone he hoped would bring them courage and hope, “and what they
don’t need now is the tattered remnants of a body of leaders flailing about in
self-pity and remorse. What they need now is the surviving core of a great institution
to step forward and show them what it means to be soldiers of God. They need
leaders, not laggards.”

Marc paused and looked seriously at
Daevis
in particular.

“Show them the true meaning of courage.”

Perhaps Marc would have said more, and maybe
Daevis
or one of the others might have made some reply. But
just then Maki called Marc over to the window and pointed urgently toward the
courtyard below. Marc peered out the window and saw a lithe form running
through the open gates of the Prismatic headquarters. The figure – Marc was
finally able to identify it as a woman – stopped at the bloody carnage where
the Red paladin had been slain. Whoever she was, she carried an axe, and even
from a distance, Marc could see she gripped it desperately as if it was the
only thing keeping her alive.

Then she turned her face upwards, looking about in
desperation, and Marc recognized Janice. It was one of the few times he’d ever
seen her outside the confines of Aunt Delia’s gentleman’s club, but he
recognized her immediately.

“Follow me down,” Marc said quickly. “Maki, help Alicia, and
bring that bundle,” he added, pointing at a small roll of cloth he’d retrieved
from a storage room while waiting for the Council members to return.

With those instructions, Marc leapt through the window and
glided down to the courtyard.

“Janice!” he called from the air. She looked up, and by the
time Marc had reached the ground she had run over to him. Janice immediately
flung her arms around him. She inadvertently clouted him across the back of his
head with the blunt side of her axe, but neither one of them really noticed.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Oh, Marc, they’re all dead!” she said at the same time.

“What? Who’s dead?” Marc asked as fresh fears for the fate
of his friends welled up inside him.

“Hal and the others!” she cried. “They were taking shelter
in my home, and some creatures attacked us in the basement and killed them
all!”

Janice started sobbing into Marc’s shoulder as she tried to
describe what had happened, and Marc was finally able to put enough of her
story together to get a full picture of the horrific ordeal. As she trailed
off, the Orange paladin was dimly aware of the other paladins landing softly on
the ground nearby. Maki held Alicia carefully and released her as soon as his
footing was steady. The newly made Blue paladin looked reluctant to let her go,
and Marc withheld a grimace at the expression on Maki’s face.

“
Shh
, you’re safe now,” Marc said
soothingly to Janice. He spent a minute or so reassuring her and calming her
tears, then finally she wiped her eyes and looked up. Only then did she become
aware of the others around them. Janice started slightly and brushed her
disheveled hair back quickly. No matter how many times Marc had seen Janice in
all states of dress and undress, he thought at that moment she’d never looked
more beautiful, and his heart ached.

“Gentlemen, may I present Janice
O’Dela
,
a very special woman,” Marc said. “Janice, these are some of my brother
paladins. And this,” he said gesturing, “is my sister, Alicia.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Janice said nervously. “You’re the
one who likes his friend Danner, right? I know Deeta likes Flasch, and Sophie
likes Garnet, and Ruby’s totally smitten with Michael, and even Anna has a
crush on that pale one. They’re all staying somewhere together, except Deeta,
who’s staying with a cousin, I think. Oh, God, Marc, listen to me, I’m babbling
on and on, and I’ve just met your sister. What you must think of me,” she said,
her voice trembling slightly.