Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (50 page)

Of course,
Perklet thought to himself.
Of course he’d come here to see her again.

Uriel remained
silent as he stared at Hoil.

Birch’s brother
bowed his head and whispered, “Please.”

Finally, Uriel
spoke.

“You must
understand, Hoil,” Uriel said in a firm but sympathetic voice, “what Alanna did
went against every rule and moral code we have regarding interaction between
mortals and immortals. Not only did she fall in love with a mortal, worse, she
bore his half-breed child.”

“Danner,” Hoil
said needlessly.

Uriel nodded.
“We hold nothing against you or your son, but his mother was held accountable
for her actions. Such experimentation and bonding between mortals and immortals
was banned centuries ago, and for good reason. The results are too dangerous
and unpredictable for all involved. The mingling of our two kinds is considered
a sin, and sin must be…” he trailed off.

“Punished,”
Perklet said softly, filling in the gap.

Uriel shook his
head sadly.

“Alanna knew
what would have to happen to her when her actions were discovered,” Uriel said.
“She genesed a mortal shell when she
died
so it could remain behind, and
she returned to us voluntarily to face her judgment.”

Hoil closed his
eyes. “And her judgment?”

“She was
executed for her sin,” Uriel told him. He paused, then said in a flat voice, “And
when the sentence was carried out, it was I who held the sword.”

Perklet expected
Hoil to assault the angel, or at least rail at him verbally in an explosion of
rage. Instead, the grief-stricken man simply looked up at Uriel through
tear-filled eyes. Unimaginable pain was etched into Hoil’s flesh, and he looked
as though he’d aged ten years in the space of a few seconds.

“Why?” he asked.
“How could you?”

Uriel stepped
closer and knelt down to clasp Hoil’s hands in his own. The Seraph’s wings
flared behind him briefly so as not to brush the floor.

“Believe me when
I say I was not myself, else I would never have slain Alanna,” Uriel said
urgently. “She was a Dominion and one of my Archangels, a companion and comrade
since before the days of the Great Schism. Centuries ago, we fought to put an
end to the last of such experiments on mortal-immortal bonding, and it was
finally ruled a sin and therefore beyond any angel’s judgment or independent
action.

 “At her
trial, Alanna presented no defense, no explanation for her actions,” Uriel
continued anxiously. “She simply told us she’d done what she felt she’d had to
do, and that she was prepared to face the consequences. I’ve never seen such
calm acceptance and courage before, but there could be only one outcome from a
trial for such an offense. Already, Maya’s influence had spread throughout
Heaven, and while I thought I was immune, I realized too late that even I had
succumbed to her pervasive will.”

Uriel gripped
Hoil’s hands tightly.

“She died because
I was blinded by my own self-assurance. When the order came to execute Alanna,
I didn’t hesitate to obey.” Uriel shuddered at the memory playing out in his
mind. “It wasn’t until the instant my blade struck her throat that I recognized
the true sin being committed, and from that moment on, I have remained
ever-vigilant against Maya’s influence. It was because of your wife’s sacrifice
that I was given the strength to resist Maya. Without that, I would have
retained the mantle of the Angel of Death and gone to Lokka in Mikal’s stead.
He fought and was selective, but had I remained inured to Maya’s will, I would
have wreaked more havoc than you can imagine on the mortal realm, all in the
name of Maya’s misguided dreams of perfection. Without Alanna’s sacrifice,
Kaelus might now be slain and this war over with us the conquered.

“That is the
only comfort I take from amidst the horror of my actions,” Uriel said with
quiet dignity. He stood slowly and stared down at Hoil. “It is all I can offer
you, Hoil.”

Uriel left the
room quietly, and Perklet was left behind with a bereaved Hoil. The Green
paladin stared at the door where Uriel had left and tried to grasp the
implications of what he’d just heard. He heard muffled voices outside, but he
couldn’t make out any of the words.

“Leave me,
Perky,” Hoil whispered. “Just leave me alone.”

“As you wish,”
Perklet said quietly, then left back through the door toward the makeshift
infirmary. There was nothing he could do for Hoil, but there were plenty of
physical injuries left that Perklet
could
do something about.

The war in Heaven was unlike any other in history or
any yet to come. Build a wall, and the enemy grows wings to fly over it. Kill a
thousand, and a million take their place. Watch a friend die, and wait for his
soul to fight on beside you.

       
- Danner
de’Valderat,

“Collected Accounts from the Pandemonium War”

- 1 -

Danner clung to
the rope and fought down the panic they all faced every time they utilized
Garnet’s stroke of transportation genius. Crystal-clear liquid surrounded him
and glowed with a soft luminescence, wrapping him in a warm cocoon of light.
The beautiful sight brought him no comfort, and was in fact the source of his
anxiety.

No matter how
many times you tell yourself you don’t actually
need
to breathe in
Heaven, your body never quite gets the idea,
he thought wryly to himself.

Shortly before
their first engagement in Heaven, Garnet had conceived the idea of using the
rivers of Heaven as a means of transportation. He reasoned that the
overwhelming aura of the rivers might mask the presence of troops, and
unfortunately – from Danner’s point of view – he was correct. Kaelus had
confirmed that even from a few feet away, he couldn’t detect the presence of
any but the most powerful of angels.

That answered
the question of immortals using them, and the blessed dead were just as easy to
test. Apparently a few decades of being dead was enough to eliminate the
instinct to breathe, and all those dead more than a century or so no longer even
simulated the experience. The problems began when Garnet wanted to transport
still-living, mortal warriors using the rivers. The instinct to breathe in was
overwhelming, and keeping a living man underwater for any length of time tended
to unhinge his senses for the first few attempts.

After some
practice, Shadow Company had begun using the technique regularly to slip past
enemy lines and attack from unexpected directions. Garnet liked the added
effect that they seemed to just disappear without their pursuers ever figuring
out how – another lesson learned from Gerard. Using angels to aerially insert
and extract troops sounded like a good idea, but to avoid being detected by the
demons, the angels had to fly extra high to avoid patrols and set them down at
too great a distance to be truly effective.

Thus, Garnet’s
watery roads saw almost daily use by units in the Heavenly Host who traveled
near the demonic army. It would only be a matter of time before the demons
figured out how the rivers were being used against them, so they were making
the most of it while they had the chance.

For transporting
mortals, Flasch had suggested using angels to drag long ropes behind them, to
which the living warriors could then cling. As long as there were no sharp
turns in the river’s course (and with Mikal redirecting rivers to suit their
needs this was never a problem), it worked surprisingly well. The angels
literally
flew
through the water and moved them about much more quickly
than they ever could have done on their own.

Now they were
using the waters of the Philion to insert near the main body of the demon army
on what any normal commander would deem a suicide mission. Gerard, Kaelus, and
Mikal, however, had used a different term.

“It’s damn near
impossible and dangerous as cleaning a faerer’s teeth with its own tail, but
damn it, it’s worth the risk to kill that mutated piece of rat vomit.”

Gerard at his
most polite.

The target:
Arthryx the Bender, the most diabolically clever of the demons at warping the
unliving flesh of the damned to create monstrosities. Arthryx was responsible
for the twisted creatures they faced on a daily basis, monsters that had once
been the souls of the dead condemned to Hell. He created nightmares by melting
the flesh of the damned and twisting them into whatever shapes his demented
imagination could conjure.

Arthryx had long
been a target of the Heavenly Hosts, but a recent shift in tactics by the
demons had made his elimination that much more critical. Danner still shuddered
at the mental picture conjured up by the description given by the only survivor
from an ambush two weeks past. The men who’d died had yet to be located among
the ranks of the blessed dead, so his was the only account available.

“They left a broken
angel on the verge of death to act as bait, and when we were all there, the
ground just split open under us,” reported the Red paladin who’d escaped. “We
were told the demons couldn’t stand to be wrapped up in the stuff of Heaven,
that’s why they could never duplicate the tactics we used against them. They
found a way around it, though. Dozens of demons and those twisted creatures
came pouring out of little caverns in the ground.

“I looked into
one and, dear God help me, the walls of the holes were made of the flesh of the
damned, all melted together and fashioned like a giant bubble. Arms and legs,
eyes and mouths, God save them, all melted together! The demons tore through it
like paper, and I could hear those mouths screaming in pain.”

It was hoped
that with Arthryx out of the way, such flesh-made caverns would no longer be
available to the demons, to say nothing of future monstrosities he might
concoct. Hundreds had volunteered to make the strike, but there was really only
one unit capable of such a strike, and everyone knew it.

Which is how
I ended up clinging to this damn rope trying to convince my lungs that they’re
really not on fire and about to explode from lack of air
, Danner thought.

“Quit
complaining, we’re almost there,”
Brican kythed to Danner.
“Recite some
of your training lessons on courage. That seems to be helping the others, for
some reason.”

Danner’s lips
moved slightly as he recited some of the more memorable lessons in his head.
After a few moments, the burning in his chest had subsided, either from a
lessening of his fear or simply because he wasn’t thinking about it.

“See? What’d
I tell you?”

“Stuff it,
Brican,”
Danner replied with humor in his mental voice.
“What’s our
ETA?”

“Two minutes.
Passing the word now.”

Danner’s pulse
quickened with fear and anticipation, and his arms tingled with suppressed
adrenaline. When the mental command came to release, he let go and felt the
drag of water as the rope sped past beneath him. The tail end of rope whipped
about and nearly clouted him on the head, and then it was gone. Theirs was the
rear-most group, so Danner didn’t have to worry about other angels tearing
past.

“Relay from
Garnet. Blue and Green take point,”
Caret sent to Danner.
“Red and
Violet will follow, Yellow and Orange are last. We’re still in the tent.”

“In the tent”
meant they were still operating according to the plans laid while safe and
secure in the command tent planning the mission. Every military commander knew
the best of plans was only good right up until the moment the mission actually
started, if even that long. Gerard and Garnet had both recently adopted the
phrase, which they’d borrowed from a general who’d died centuries before. Of
course, since the general was on-hand in Heaven as one of the blessed dead
helping with Gerard’s training group, they had it straight from the source.
[25]

Danner skimmed
the bottom of the river and approached the bank closest to the enemy
encampment, digging his hands into the spongy ground as he clawed his way
forward. The weight of his leather armor, while nowhere near as heavy as his
platemail, was nevertheless enough to prevent his floating upward.

Trebor swam at
his side. The dead denarae paladin had accompanied them on a few missions when
he wasn’t needed elsewhere. He was their liaison with various command elements,
but Trebor still liked to “get his hands dirty” when circumstances permitted.
He usually accompanied Danner’s platoon, and he willingly accepted a secondary
role in the company. They were all glad to have him around whenever possible.

The camp of
Arthryx and his entourage had not moved in over a week and was well behind the
front lines of the war. Their best intelligence indicated the demons had light
security – they still counted on their strength in numbers in all areas of war
– and that they still hadn’t caught on to the tactic of using the rivers to
bypass enemy patrols and sentries.

There was every
likelihood, then, that their insertion had gone unnoticed and would provide the
easiest access to their target.

“Blue go,”
Caret relayed directly to Danner, who replied with his own set of orders to his
platoon. Denarae peeked carefully out of the river and targeted the few
sentries who stood lazily on guard. The guards’ fields of view were estimated
and wherever they found gaps, bowmen emerged there and brought the sentry
creatures down quickly and quietly with a few well-placed arrows.

The ice-tipped
arrows Dem had fashioned, while generally effective, were unfortunately useless
in a situation such as this, a limitation of the aquatic insertion. Despite the
tendency of things to maintain a given state and temperature in Heaven,
[26]
the frozen arrowheads reverted to their
liquid state when immersed in the rivers, just as normal ice would, forcing
Shadow Company to rely on arrows marked with the
Tricrus
when
undertaking operations that involved Heaven’s waterways. They were less
effective than the ice arrows against demons, but they were still lethally
efficient against the damned.