The Devil's Deuce (The Barrier War) (57 page)

Gerard watched as the wedge breached the lines of damned
souls, making a beeline for Shadow Company. Just as they reached the front
edge, all of the damned souls rushed to pin down the flanks of the denarae
company, and the thirteen warriors sliced into Michael’s platoon like it was so
much butter. Denarae were swept aside like leaves and left broken and bleeding
on the ground.

With a howling curse, Gerard sped his dakkan toward the
ground as fast as the fire-scaled creature could go. At the last second Sabor
pulled up and swept upward into a steep climb, but Gerard was no longer in the
saddle. Just as his dakkan pulled upright, Gerard released himself from the
harness and rolled, back-flipping out and away from his mount. He glided down,
then dropped the last half dozen feet to the ground and landed with his feet
spread wide, his knees crouched, and shield point-first in the ground. His
sword was already in-hand, and he looked up into the eyes of the foremost
black-cloaked warrior, who had just broken through the denarae lines. The enemy
warrior held a sword with an ebony blade, and brilliant scarlet blood ran down
the black surface in small rivers.

Garnet, Danner, and Trebor had shifted over to help
Michael’s platoon, and with their help they were holding the other twelve
warriors at bay. Strangely enough, they seemed to fight with less ferocity now
that their leader was through the denarae lines and facing Gerard.

“Gerard Morningham,” the warrior said, and Gerard felt a
shock go straight through his body. He knew that voice. “I see I have your
attention.”

But it can’t be him,
Gerard thought.
He’s dead.

“Malith?” he asked in disbelief.

Malith chuckled darkly and lifted his visor, allowing Gerard
to see the familiar face within. Or at least it resembled the Malith he had
once known. Now his eyes were pure black, like deep pools of molten obsidian.
His face was harder, more pitiless and dangerous than Gerard remembered it
being.

“Surprised to see me?” Malith asked. “Alive?”

Before Gerard could reply, Malith leapt forward and swung
his sword, an attack Gerard easily parried. Malith clapped his visor back down,
and the two warriors circled each other. A denarae soldier, seeing Gerard
engaged, rushed Malith from behind to surprise him, but somehow over the din of
the battle, Malith sensed his approach and reacted. The black-cloaked warrior
spun lightning-fast and cut the denarae in half from shoulder to hip in one
swing, then whipped back around before Gerard could even think of reacting.

“Relay to all Shadow Company,”
Gerard thought,
putting as much force as he could so his soldiers could hear him; he didn’t
want anyone else slain during their personal battle.
“Concentrate on the
battle. Do not approach me or my opponent.”

Aloud, Gerard said, “What the Hell are you doing here,
Malith? And with their army?”

“Oh, I’m not just
with
their army, Gerard, I’m
leading
it,” Malith replied, confirming Gerard’s fears. “I was given a choice by my
master: to join him or be tortured and eventually slain. After a few months of
the latter, I chose the more promising option. It certainly sounded more
appealing than an afterlife of selfless servitude in Heaven. Now I am a Black
paladin.”

Malith attacked again, a blinding series of attacks even
Gerard could only just manage to parry. Against average opponents, and even
most so-called masters, Gerard could quickly batter past their defenses and
wound them at will. But this was no ordinary opponent – Malith was as skilled
or better than Gerard, which made him cautious. Gerard had to study him
carefully and bide his time to work past his sword. Malith backed off and
laughed maliciously. The sound echoed sinisterly in the confines of his helmet.

“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,” Malith
quoted the heretical adage, then added, “better to be at the right hand of the
Devil than in the path of his destruction.”

“And so it took mere months to turn you from a White paladin
of beauty into a Black paladin of sin,” Gerard said with deep scorn. “How did a
coward like you ever come to share the Red cloak with the likes of Birch and
me? He withstood their tortures for six years and never yielded. Your paltry
time was nothing more than an itch in his backside, you mewling weakling. God
must have been drunk when He made you a White paladin.”

Gerard couldn’t tell if Malith was upset by his taunting,
but the Black paladin launched a furious assault that battered Gerard’s sword
and shield every which way as he attempted to block the blows. Malith’s sword
rang against Gerard’s armor, cutting into various pieces but not scoring
through to the flesh beneath. Gerard retaliated and succeeded in scoring
several similar hits, but likewise his blade came away unmarked by blood.

“You still don’t understand,” Malith said, his voice calm,
but harsh. “I was chosen to lead. I was
destined
to lead this army. All
my training in this world was only so I could serve Mephistopheles and command
his forces. He knew I was coming. He knew I would serve him, and he knew I
would succeed. It was all foreordained.”

“I thought only God could know the future,” Gerard
commented, suddenly attacking without a definite pattern, changing angles and
attacks at random. It was a tactic he’d used against Garnet quite often,
because it took an opponent several seconds to decipher the complicated attack,
which had some underlying logic and structure. The changes in form had to be
done by sheer instinct, but the attacker still had to be ingrained with what
attacks could be transformed into others and which were irrevocable commitments
of energy. Studied long enough, there were subtle patterns and relationships
that could be gleaned by an opponent. Garnet eventually no longer needed to
discern the pattern; he was able to see past it and turn the attack back on
Gerard in ways that even he could not defend against. Gerard knew Garnet was
now better than him.

The question now: Was Gerard better than Malith?

“So many things you don’t understand,” Malith said, stepping
back to recover from Gerard’s attack when he eventually broke off. The Black
paladin had suffered several minor injuries where he hadn’t been fast enough to
block Gerard’s perplexing assault. The two paladins circled each other warily.
“And now it’s too late for you.”

The Red and Black paladins attacked each other as only two
masters of the blade can. The standard forms of attack and defense were
ingrained as memories in their very flesh, but in the years since their last
duel, each had progressed and mastered different abilities. Malith attacked
with a skill Gerard had never seen before, perhaps not even in Garnet, and he
scored several deep cuts in Gerard, who in turn used every trick he could think
of and succeeded in blooding Malith almost as badly. After five minutes, Gerard
knew the answer to his question, and it filled him with despair and anger.

Malith was better, and they both knew it. He could
practically see Malith’s smile behind his visor as they broke away from each
other, both panting for breath. Gerard’s shield had a deep wedge cut in the
top, and the metal spike at the bottom had broken off during the battle.
Malith’s armor was stained with mud and blood, and several pieces of metal were
now missing where Gerard had knocked them free.

“I always wondered who was better, between us,” Gerard said
through clenched teeth. A deep wound on his thigh burned like someone was
holding a red-hot poker to his leg.

“Really?” Malith said, his voice betraying no hint of pain.
“I never doubted.”

I’m going to die,
Gerard realized in a detached sort
of way, as though he’d just decided to go to the market.

Malith attacked again with a seemingly endless supply of
energy, and Gerard forced his body to react and defend himself. He knew Malith
would kill him, but perhaps he could take the Black general with him. Gerard’s
acceptance of his own death brought him a strange sense of peace. Perhaps his
life had served its purpose for God, and now his death would serve its own
purpose
-
so be it. Gerard was
determined to face his inevitable death with the same courage he’d championed
and embodied his whole life.

I will not kneel and
accept death!
he shouted in his mind.
I
am a mean son of a bitch and I will die on my feet, sword in hand, screaming in
defiance!

As Malith finished a series of attacks that forced Gerard to
expend more energy blocking than the Black paladin spent attacking, Gerard
suddenly turned to the offensive, allowing the last attack to glance off his
shoulder. Malith was taken by surprise at the abrupt shift, and Gerard scored a
deep hit on his opponent’s sword arm. Without pause, Gerard attacked again and
again, knocking Malith’s shield aside and punching through the armor on that
side, narrowly missing the Black paladin’s left arm. Malith was visibly baffled
and confused by the sudden onslaught.

There was no longer virtue or vice, vengeance or justice, no
hatred of Malith or concern for Shadow Company. There was no fear of death, nor
hope of life. There was simply the determination to live this moment with the
same force of will and integrity with which Gerard had lived the rest of his
life. This instant was a distillation of every experience and moment of his
past, focused and concentrated as the culmination of his existence. There was
everything and nothing at once.

Gerard continued his furious assault, drawing on reserves of
strength he’d never before reached even as he felt his life bleeding too
swiftly from his body. It felt like he was tapping into the energy of his very
soul, and the feeling of living energy poured through his being faster than his
blood could drain it from him. The few people who could see the duel would
forever swear they saw Gerard start to glow with an inner light.

Malith’s sword was held low because of his damaged arm, and
his shield was too far on his off-side to do him any good. Gerard spun and
swung his sword at Malith’s neck. The blessed blade sang through the air, then
sparks flew as Malith’s black-bladed weapon suddenly blocked the attack,
causing Gerard’s blade to skip up. His sword clipped the top of Malith’s helmet
and tore the protective metal from the Black paladin’s head. Ignoring the
helmet, Malith brought his sword around, caught Gerard’s blade and swept it to
the ground. Without pause, Malith smashed his foot down and shattered Gerard’s
sword. Then he looked up at Gerard’s stunned face.

Malith’s eyes bored fiercely into Gerard’s. He smiled
mirthlessly. With a fierce calmness, Malith ran his black sword through steel,
through flesh and bone, and through Gerard’s heart.

- 3 -

Garnet cut down one of the black-cloaked warriors, another
Black paladin, and turned to see Danner engaged with two more nearby. Garnet
rushed over and lopped off one warrior’s arm before he knew Garnet was there,
then finished him off quickly. With only one opponent, Danner defeated the
Black paladin in short order, but Garnet was already looking for another enemy
to face.

He turned to look inward and watched in disbelief as Gerard
fought against the leader of the Black paladins. Garnet shook his head and
blinked rapidly, convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him – was Gerard
glowing
?
He gaped in wonder and saw Gerard swing in an attack that should have severed
the Black’s head from his shoulders. But impossibly quick, the blow was
blocked, and a second later Gerard’s sword was broken and the enemy warrior
buried his sword in the Red paladin’s chest.

“NO!” Garnet shouted in horror, the world contracting around
him. He rushed forward, shoving aside the mutated creatures that still hammered
at them from all sides. He bashed creatures with his shield and swept his sword
to either side, cutting off heads and arms without even seeing what he was
doing. Garnet had almost reached the Black paladin when the ground beneath him
started to tremble. Garnet lost his balance and fell to his knees.

Then the ground split open and a huge demon with four arms
erupted right in front of Garnet. He swung his sword and lopped off one of the
creature’s arms, then finished it with a chop to the neck. All around him,
though, demons began to erupt from beneath the feet of Shadow Company and the other
defenders of the Barrier. Garnet saw the denarae shift to react to this new
attack, but their weapons either bounced off the demons’ hides or else made
only shallowest of cuts, which were healed over a moment later.

Garnet sprinted the last few yards to Gerard’s body to find
the Black paladin already gone. He’d vanished between one heartbeat and the
next, while Garnet was distracted by the demon. Garnet knelt at Gerard’s side
and felt for a pulse, but the Red paladin was already dead. His face was remarkably
peaceful, as though the last thing he’d seen had not been the face of a mortal
enemy, but rather something he knew, loved, and trusted. The scars on his face
did not detract from the beatific peace, they only served to highlight the life
of pain the Red paladin had just left behind.

Then the moment of lucidity passed, and the war around him
crashed into Garnet’s awareness as a howling demon knocked him to the ground
and tried to maul Gerard’s corpse. A furious rage flash-boiled in Garnet, and
he shouted, “Get away from him!” and split the demon in half with one blow.

More demons came, and Garnet stood over Gerard’s body like a
guardian angel, protecting his slain commander from being desecrated. A moment
later, Danner and Michael were at his side, then Trebor, Flasch, and Marc
joined them. Then Brican and Caret, and a dozen more denarae. Within a few
minutes, all of those remaining in Shadow Company had formed a wide protective
ring around Gerard’s body, and they fended off all who came at them. Only the
paladin’s weapons seemed to work against the true demons; when one attacked,
denarae kythed for help, and the nearest paladin rushed over to cut the unholy
beast down.