The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (2 page)

His name was Malith, and his master was Mephistopheles, the
King of Hell.

Malith raised a gauntleted fist and signaled two men on the
hill well behind him. Each was garbed similarly to him, with nothing to
designate command or authority. There was no need. Everyone knew Malith – and
for whom he spoke – and none would fail to obey the general of Hell’s armies.
The men rose and left to convey his unspoken order.

On the lifeless plains below, Malith watched as a long snake
writhed its way forward. The snake’s scales were the armored hides of dakkans
and the burnished armor of the men who rode them. The snake slithered on
thousands of clawed dakkan feet and steel-shod horse hooves. Its tail was a
long train of supply wagons, guarded by men of faith bearing swords of blessed
steel and shields of lethal design. Over the snake’s spine flew more men on
dakkan-back, their duty to see from above what the snake could not see from
below.

The snake’s head was made up of six men, each marked by a
different color. Red. Blue. Green. Yellow. Orange. Violet. The six colors of
virtue worn by the Prismatic Order in the mortal world. The men were holy
warriors of God – paladins – and they’d come to Hell on the words of an enemy
hidden amidst those left behind in Lokka.

By Malith’s orders, his forces were concealed within, above,
behind, and beneath the cliffs on which he now stood. The denizens of Hell, be
they demon or damned, were poised to fall on the holy fools and annihilate
them. Others had argued about the wisdom of tempting the paladins to cross the
Merging and assault Hell directly, but Mephistopheles had held to Malith’s plan
and allowed The Three to prompt the attack.

Malith knew that in the mortal realm, the unholy trio of
demons had been about their individual missions. Malith had personally selected
The Three because of their unparalleled abilities in
shapeshifting
and mind control. Min had infiltrated the chapterhouse of the paladins and
subsequently corrupted several members of the Prismatic Council. Under his
influence, they’d ordered several thousand paladins, nearly half of all that
lived in the mortal world, to cross the Merging in an attempt to reconnoiter
Hell and perhaps lay siege to any city of power they found there.

Min’s brothers, Sal and Ran, had their own missions as well.
Ran had assumed a position of power in the country of Merishank, a militant
country run by a strict dictator. Under the influence of Ran’s guise as an
advisor, the country was to gird itself for war and prepare to assault Nocka
[4]
and keep other forces from reaching the
city. Malith knew all too well the heavy defenses that protected Nocka from
both sides, and a large army of men attacking on one side would weaken the
city’s defenses and chip away at her resources until Malith’s own army could
attack from the other side and grind the city to dust if necessary.

Sal’s mission was two-fold. He was to sew chaos in other
countries, specifically in the dwarven and elven nations, but also he was to
hunt down the one man who had escaped Hell where so many before had not. Malith
was convinced that if he’d been given command of the search, the escaped man –
he’d never bothered to ask the captive’s name – would have been recaptured.
Instead, Mephistopheles had left him training his men and had ordered Daella to
lead the search.

Malith snorted. Daella. The female demon was one of the
strongest creatures in this realm, but still her power was nothing to
Mephistopheles’s own. Malith’s master was the unchallenged ruler of Hell, and
he would lead the immortal plane to victory with Malith’s help. Mephistopheles
had been gathering his forces for centuries, but he’d had no definitive,
feasible strategy until Malith joined him.

After years of planning, Malith’s plan would finally begin
to bear fruit with the slaughter of the paladins below him.

Watching the snake’s progress carefully, he signaled again,
and two more men left from the hill behind him, running to deliver his silent
order and take their own places for the assault. The first pair had carried the
order to be ready. This pair carried the order to execute.

After a moment’s waiting, the ground began to tremble. From
his vantage, Malith could see the lifeless plains below vibrate and shiver with
the force of the quake, and he could hear the air itself hum with the violent
shaking. Men were thrown from the backs of their dakkan and equine mounts while
their comrades struggled to stay seated. Streaks of lightning struck without
warning from the molten clouds and struck a half dozen riders from the sky.
Their flaming corpses fell to ground in the middle of the column, creating
chaos and disorder in the ranks.

Onto this scene of mayhem burst a horror such as few mortal
men could ever imagine. The ground erupted, and multi-limbed demonic horrors
emerged and tore men from their feet and ripped them to pieces. Demons that
seemed nothing but wings and teeth suddenly swooped down from the sky, lifting
men from their saddles and slashing their flesh viciously before they were
dropped to the ground. The paladins’ descents began to slow, instinct saving
them as they activated the powers of their blessed cloaks, but their slow drift
toward the ground left them easy targets for Malith’s archers and aerial
demons. Of the hundred men hauled into the sky, one in twenty made it to the
ground alive.

Meanwhile other demons were assaulting the column of
paladins on all sides. The long column had been pressed immediately from every
direction at once, giving the warriors no time to reform into a defensible
position. Childris, with their chitinous bodies and lightning-fast reflexes,
slashed with razor-sharp talons or threw wickedly barbed spears at their mortal
opponents. Tens of thousands of demons pressed against them in an overwhelming
mass of slavering fury; for every mortal heart that stood resolutely, ten eager
demons sought to rend them body and soul.

More of the monstrous, multi-limbed drolkuls stormed into
the fray, either charging into the vulnerable flanks or tunneling under the
ground to erupt in the midst of the chaotic column. The demons were half again
as large as any man, and their strength was terrible as they ripped men bodily
from their saddles before biting or tearing their heads off. The paladins
rallied to fight and even began to make a stand against their inhuman opponents
as decades of training forged them into a single, coherent force amidst the
Hellish chaos.

A battle cry rang out as thousands of paladins cried out in
one voice, “For God, for man! For life!”

Malith had anticipated this, even counted on it. Now it was
time for him to take a direct hand. Strike in their moment of greatest hope and
crush them to the depths of despair. He settled his helmet on his head with a
shiver of anticipation.

Malith leapt from the edge of the cliff and drifted swiftly
to the ground. His feet touched down a score of yards from the closest edge of
the fight. At his side appeared a dozen men garbed in same style of gleaming
platemail and black cloak as he wore. The swords they wielded were as black as
the cloaks they wore, Malith’s own weapon included, dark counterpoints to the
shining armor that so closely resembled their former brethren’s. With a
commanding flick of his blade, the thirteen men charged forward. The press of
demons parted for them, none willing to bar the path of Hell’s general and the
Black
Viscia
[5]
.

Then Malith was face-to-face with the paladins who led the
force of holy warriors: the snake’s head.

“Fools,” he said contemptuously, then split a man in half
from behind with a single sweep of his sword. His black-bladed weapon cut
through steel and bone like so much paper, and Malith reveled in the power it
gave him over a man he might have once called brother.

Malith’s handiwork was nothing short of slaughter. He slid
through the fray like a maelstrom, every touch from his ebony blade bringing
doom and destruction. The warriors at his side were nearly as terrible, and
they cut a wide path of carnage through the train of paladins. The leaders of
the holy assault were cut down without ever seeing their attackers. The next
dozen men at least had time to turn before their bodies were hacked to pieces.

When Malith at last stopped to view the destruction, the
battle was all but finished. He and his twelve hand-picked warriors had carved
through the entire length of the paladins like a scouring wave of black death.
The last paladin went down screaming as a press of demons surrounded him. Two
childris spears still protruded from his chest and leg when a drolkul lifted
the hapless human in its arms and dismembered him.

Howls of victory and inhuman bloodlust went up throughout
the Hellish army, and Malith smiled at the victorious carnage.

“That will
sate
them for a decade,
should it take that long,” he said to the warrior at his side, “but it will not
satisfy me. I will report to the master and find out how The Three have fared.
If all is going as planned, we may be able to assault Nocka ahead of schedule.”

“Have you any orders for us, sir?” the dark warrior asked.

“Let them do as they wish with the bodies, but send the
armor to be melted down and
reforged
for our use,”
Malith ordered. “The swords are blessed and will be useless to us; destroy
them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Malith took one final look at the destruction he’d wrought and
smiled in satisfaction. The mortal world would soon know terror like never
before, and that was only the beginning. He turned away and held one gauntleted
hand over his heart.

Then, in a wink of thought, he was gone.

Learn the rules well so you know how to break them correctly.

- Danner de’Valderat,

“The Family de’Valderat” (1030 AM)

- 1 -

Danner de’Valderat stepped to the edge of the roof and
peered down to the streets nearly a hundred feet below. Overhead, San shone in
full brilliance – the Harvest Moon dominated the slowly lightening sky, whilst
Sin was a barely visible sliver in the air. In the dim pre-dawn light, a light
mist crept slowly through the cobbled streets like a silent sentry on patrol.
The mist engulfed the few people walking at so early an hour, then released
them and passed on, apparently satisfied at their presence. A dozen people,
then two dozen passed on the quiet street while Danner watched, until finally
he found the man he sought.

Yellow cloak, check,
he thought to himself.

Danner’s eyesight, already sharper than most, adjusted to a
point beyond human capabilities and brought the man’s face into focus. The
cloak identified him as a paladin, but it was not that which identified him as
Danner’s quarry. There were any number of paladins of the Yellow Facet roaming
the city. Nocka was home to the main chapterhouse of the Prismatic Order, so
paladins of all Facets were a common sight here. Even White paladins were more
likely to be encountered here than anywhere else in the world.

Rather than relying on his memory, Danner pulled out a
sketch on a folded piece of paper and compared the face on it to that of the
man below.

Face, check,
he
confirmed.
This is our guy.

He leaned back from the edge, lest the other man somehow
sense his own presence. Too many men had the innate sixth sense to know when
they were being watched, and he couldn’t afford to put the man on his guard.
For nearly two weeks, Danner and his friends had been tracking down paladins
who had been corrupted by the presence of a demon in the midst of the holy
warriors’ chapterhouse. True, Danner and his five friends were only trainees in
the Prismatic Order of paladins, but Fate or chance had placed them in a unique
position, and they felt it was their duty to fulfill the role for which none of
them had wished.

Two weeks before, Danner had fought and destroyed one of The
Three: Min,
Ral
, or San, they still weren’t entirely
sure which. Danner was privately and inexplicably convinced it was Min, but in
the end, it made little difference. The unholy trio were identical in every
respect and even shared a sort of communal mind that made them dangerously
powerful – and terribly effective as spies in the mortal realm. They had
crossed over the Merging, the invisible barrier between the mortal world of
Lokka and the immortal plane of Hell, and immediately set about on tasks that
were still a mystery to the few who knew of their presence.

Danner’s uncle, Birch, had been sent with six other paladins
to hunt The Three, little knowing that one of the demons had been masquerading
as a paladin on the Prismatic Council and had no doubt sent the group into a
trap.
[6]
Danner still had no word on his uncle’s fate, or if he had accomplished even
part of his misbegotten quest.

Thinking about Birch brought Danner’s mind to his father, a
man as different from his paladin brother as two men could be and still love
each other as family. Hoil was a sort of master thief in Marash, the city where
Danner had grown up. Hoil and Birch were both large, dark-haired men, broad in
frame and heavy in muscle, but both men had a speed to their movements that was
almost superhuman. Danner had inherited his father’s dark hair and his speed,
both with his fleetness and sureness of foot and his lightning-quick reflexes,
but he’d gotten none of his father’s size. Danner was of below-average height
and had a light frame that people said was indicative of his mother.

Danner had never met his mother, except in the early moments
of life when they’d first pulled him from her body. He’d been told she held him
only once before internal complications had claimed her life. He had no memory
of her and no mental picture that didn’t come from paintings his father had
commissioned.