Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) Read online

  Satan’s Gambit

  The Barrier War Trilogy

  Book 3

  A Novel of the Pandemonium War

  By

  Brian J. Moses

  Text Copyright © 2014 Brian J. Moses

  All Rights Reserved

  The Pandemonium War

  The Barrier War Trilogy

  Book 1 – Hunting The Three

  Book 2 – The Devil’s Deuce

  Book 3 – Satan’s Gambit

  The Demonic Jihad Trilogy

  Book 1 – Demon’s Wager

  (forthcoming)

  See www.pandemoniumwar.com

  for previews and updates,

  plus chapter-by-chapter

  author’s commentary on each book.

  Other books by Brian J. Moses

  The Karola Stone

  For my wife. Proof that some men get better than they deserve.

  For my boys. Every day they teach me more about a parent’s love.

  For Garet. I’m sorry, some sacrifices are just harder than others.

  and

  Special thanks to the team at

  www.damonza.com

  for the cover art.

  Table of Contents

  Map

  Interlude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Interlude

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Interlude

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Postlude

  Appendix D

  Appendix E

  Map

  Interlude

  Before Man encountered God – and Satan for that matter – how did he know right from wrong? Good from Evil? What happened to his soul when he died?

  - Janek jo’Yerit,

  “A World Touched by Angels” (107 AL)

  - 1 -

  “I never saw who or what it was that killed me, but it must have been one of the demons. That’s all it could have been. I was alive one instant, and the next I was gone. Whatever it was, it was faster and stronger than a man, and that means demonic. It makes sense, too, living in Nocka as I do… did, I mean.[1]

  “I don’t blame the guys for being wrong either. Danner and the others. I trained with them, you know, got my cloak at the same time. Anyway, they said that while we hadn’t won the war against the demons, Hell hadn’t come to overlap our world like we’d always thought. They said it had passed us by and gone on to Heaven. Here, I mean. Hell wasn’t trying to take over our world like we all assumed, it was trying to get past us to assault Heaven. They were right about that at least. I’ve seen that with my own eyes since I arrived. They were just wrong about the demons, I guess.

  “You see about two months ago, when the demons destroyed the last of the Stones protecting us and Hell passed by in that powerful instant of terror,[2] they told us there wouldn’t be any more demons in the world. They’d all gone to fight the war in Heaven, see, and I guess it seemed they were right. Certainly there wasn’t a bloody demon left in the city that wasn’t a pile of black ash. During the war, groups of demons came out of hiding all over the place in every region and every nation, but we didn’t hear about them until after it was all over for us. They terrorized remote communities and even a few good-sized cities for a few days, and they pretty much had free run of things unless there happened to be a paladin nearby who hadn’t made it to Nocka yet. By the time we heard about those incidents, simultaneous reports were coming in from all over the countryside that those demons were now gone. They upped and vanished as Hell passed by.

  “Soon after, we found out there were still a few pockets of demons left here and there, but still less than the numbers we saw even before the war came. No one knew why these were left behind, but they were pretty easy to clean out, and people loved seeing us come by and vanquish the little beasties. People of every race and in every land witnessed that horrifying moment of Hell transitioning through our world, and we gave them a sense of hope and restored peace.

  “Every day for more than a month, we paladins were praised everywhere we went and hailed as heroes to be remembered for all time. People assumed we won because we weren’t all suddenly enslaved and living in Hell. San, after a few weeks of that, a lot of us even sort of started to believe it. Winter slowly gave way to spring, so even the weather seemed to agree that the worst was behind us. Who’s to say we really hadn’t won, anyway? But Danner and the others with him all said no, it was much worse than anyone possibly imagined, and even the Prismatic Council agreed with them. So we all kept vigilant, even though there almost weren’t any more demons, certainly no powerful ones, anyway.

  “But what else could it have been that killed me? You know? Nothing else has that kind of power except an immortal, so it had to have been a demon, and a big one, too, based on the glimpse I got before I died. So I guess we were all a little wrong, and here I am in Heaven, fighting the war I began fighting on Lokka.

  “Hey, some say you traveled with Birch, that you were with his jintaal that went hunting The Three. I can only imagine what that must have been like. That’s one amazing man… an amazing family, really, him and his nephew Danner.

  “After the war, a lot of things were explained that we really didn’t know before. I mean, we all saw Danner flying around with angelic wings sprouting from his back, and I even hear tell he tore apart demons with his bare hands. But at the time we didn’t know it was him, right? So afterward the whole story comes out, at least to some of us paladins. Not everyone, I guess. It turns out he’s half-immortal, son of a human thief and a female angel, and he’s got a lot of that heritage in him. That was a sight to see him soaring around.

  “Oh, you already heard about some of that, I forgot. But his uncle? And the demon Kaelus? The one called the Devil’s Deuce. That happened after you left us, brother. During the fight, the enemy general shows up in person to break the last of those angelstone monuments, and it turns out it’s Malith, one of our former brothers who went White and left for Hell years ago. We were told he turned traitor there, along with who knows how many of our former brothers. They’re all Black paladins now. It was Malith who killed Gerard Morningham, then Malith was in turn killed by Garnet, Gerard’s protégé. Poetic justice, that’s what I call it.

  “But before that… yeah, Malith also killed Birch. I swear by everything I hold holy, by the Prism itself, I saw Malith ram his sword through Birch’s heart, and I saw him die. He was down for quite a while, and there’s no way he was alive. Then suddenly he gets up, and there’s this demon shape above him. Kaelus, we were later told, a demon trapped in Hell who, if you can believe it, is actually good instead of evil. Don’t that beat all? Next
we’ll hear of an angel who’s really doing evil.

  “I’m kidding, of course. Who’d ever want that? But I always thought it was an angel’s nature to be good, and a demon’s nature to be evil. Guess even purely evil things can see the light. Redeem the demons. Redeemons. Hah!

  “At any rate, somehow this demon brings Birch back to life, so I guess he’s good at that. Turns out Kaelus has been hiding inside Birch this whole time, possessing him and using him as some sort of host or something. That’s why his eyes burn like they do, and I guess that’s why he’s got that gray cloak instead of a normal color. No matter how good the thing is, having a demon living inside you is bound to mess with things. I suppose Birch isn’t complaining though, on account of him being alive now and all.

  “What’s that? My death? Again? I already told you, I don’t know what happened exactly, just that it had to have been a demon. I was walking home – still in my armor, mind you – I caught a glimpse of something huge out the corner of my eye, and BAM, I was dead. No drifting slowly upward, no light in a tunnel, I just sort of suddenly realized I was standing outside the gates of Heaven next to a dozen or so of my brothers. There were a lot of other people there, all soldiers by their look, and some of them I even knew. Jack and Talik were both really good men, so I guess it makes sense they ended up here in Heaven. As for all the paladins, I guess there wouldn’t be any other place for us to go. I doubt any of us would go to Hell when we die, unless we were traitors like those Black apostates. So I wasn’t too surprised that we were all there.

  “Where else would a paladin go when he dies? And from what I hear, they need all the help up here they can get. Good thing we showed up.”

  - 2 -

  Dispassionate eyes gazed on a throng of seething mortality. Lives brief as candle flames fluttered about meaninglessly, some hurrying home, others shuffling to joyless employment. Elves, gnomes, and even a few denarae mixed with the overwhelming ocean of humanity, none of them aware of the death that silently observed them.

  Their lives are meaningless to their own purposes.

  Nothing prevented him from launching himself into their midst and slaughtering them, crushing them like insects. He tensed, poised to swoop down and sunder their fragile flesh.

  No, only those who can be useful. They must be studied. Culled.

  He fought conflicting urges warring for control of his will. He was no longer capable of not acting, and he focused solely on delaying and limiting himself.

  Need. They are needed. They can serve our purpose.

  Only the useful. I must be sure.

  It is necessary.

  I must remain unobserved. Subtlety. Isolation. Stealth.

  His need to act overrode his hesitation, but his caution kept him in check.

  It must be done, but only those who can be useful.

  He nodded to himself, then slipped carefully into the teeming throng, untouched by those who remained oblivious to his presence.

  I must remain unobserved.

  It is necessary.

  - 3 -

  Samah glanced over his shoulder in fear, his breath heaving in and out in monstrous gasps of agony. His side felt as though someone had stabbed him with a dagger and left the blade to grind around in his ribs as he ran. His neck burned, and he could feel a stale trickle of blood running down his chest from a gash beneath his right ear. Samah’s legs felt like lead, and it was only the ever-present sense of terror that kept him from falling to the ground in exhaustion.

  Something was after him, he knew.

  He’d had a brief glimpse of it for an instant, when only his instincts had saved his life. Some nameless impulse had prompted him to pause for a moment and peek carefully into a doorway in his home. Perhaps it was a soldier’s knack for sensing danger, acquired only after decades of battle and knowing when enemies were nearby. Perhaps it was something more, because whatever the thing was, it was fast! Barely had his head passed the door frame when a sword came whistling down out of the darkness and nearly decapitated him. Samah’s drawn sword had taken the blow, but still the fast-moving blade had scored a hit on Samah’s head even as it shattered his own weapon.

  Without a second glance or thought, he’d turned and sprinted from his house in a mad dash of panic. In the brief instant of the attack, he’d glimpsed a shadow of his attacker, and it was nearly enough to unhinge his sanity.

  “The demons are all supposed to be gone!” he panted in desperation as he ran.

  The demon, for it had to have been one of the immortal creatures of Hell, was the size of a large man, and inhumanly bulky. Something like wings had bulged under a black cloak, and a bizarre light shone from within the creature’s garment. It was a gray light, if such a thing existed. Samah hadn’t seen its face, but the sheer mass and otherworldliness of it gave away its Hellish nature.

  Only a demon could look and move like that.

  Samah had seen plenty of demons during the recent war, when he’d been stationed on the Barrier as a defender of Nocka. Since then, he’d gone back to his hometown on leave to spend time with his family and fiancé, Kelina. They were to be married in…

  A dark shape loomed ahead of him, lit from within itself by a gray light. Samah yelped in terror and ducked barely in time to avoid the slash of a massive sword. His attacker shouted something in an alien language and lunged after him, but Samah threw himself into an alley.

  “Help!” he screamed, sprinting away in terror with a new wave of fear-inspired energy. “Somebody help me!”

  He saw people ahead of him, a small crowd gathered where the alley intersected the next major street.

  “Help me!” he howled in terror.

  Heads turned toward him in concern, and several men made as though to get out of his way while others looked ready to slow him and offer aid. Samah passed six men before two managed to catch hold of him and arrest his desperate flight.

  “He’s behind me!” Samah screamed. “Help me! Stop him!”

  Swords were drawn as the men closed ranks behind him to guard him from the unknown menace, and Samah spun about in his helpers’ hands to see, but nothing came. No hulking shape loomed from the shadows, and after a moment the men dropped their guard.

  “Are you all right?” someone asked him.

  “He’s drunk.”

  “He’s cut,” a woman’s voice said in concern.

  “Take him to a physician.”

  “Or a paladin. A Green will help him.”

  “I don’t think he’s right in the head.”

  “Shush now, he’s obviously had a fright.”

  “Who’s that now?”

  Samah looked up and saw the shape walking slowly toward him. The men around him were ignoring it as if they couldn’t see the seven-foot creature in their midst. The gray glimmer of light was visible through gaps in the crowd, but the being’s face was obscured by the deep black cowl of its robes. Samah gibbered in panic as it drew steadily closer, and still no one seemed to be aware of its presence.

  He squirmed desperately, trying to escape the bonds of his unwitting captors’ hands.

  “Hold on there, we’re trying to help.”

  “I can’t hold him!”

  “Damn!”

  Samah broke free and shoved his way through the crowd. He tripped once as he pushed past the last of the people, but was on his feet before he could register the pain from scraping his hands on the stone street.

  He ran down another street, looking behind him every few steps in panic to see if he was still being followed.

  Why was this happening to him? He was a good man. He led a decent life, always trying to do the right thing. He’d have tried to be a paladin if his father hadn’t been dead-set against the idea. Didn’t want Samah mixed up with religious types, paladin or otherwise. Samah worked hard and was well-liked by his friends and family. Why then was this nameless menace hounding him so?

  Why?

  Several minutes later, Samah left the streets of his town and ra
n into the nearby woods where he’d played as a child. There he felt he could hide away and elude his hunter. He reached the edge of the forest and practically leapt behind a tree, then spun to a halt and faced the town, looking for signs of his pursuer.

  Nothing.

  Slowly working to steady his breathing, Samah allowed himself the first glimmer of hope that he’d escaped. Still, no sense in taking chances. He’d hide in the woods for the night and head back into town when he had the light of day to reveal any lurking creatures.

  Settled on a course of action, Samah turned in search of the game trails he knew would lead him to a safe place. A burning fire erupted in his stomach, and he looked down to see a crystalline sword blade protruding from his belly. He jerked his head up in surprise and saw the apparition slowly appear as its cloak parted and the gray light spilled forth.

  “Why?” Samah choked past a gush of blood bubbling from his lips.

  “Because,” said a hollow voice, “it is necessary.”

  Chapter 1

  Without the bond of a paladin, a dakkan will return to the wild. A very few – those with the strongest of bonds – have been known to die soon after their riders from grief alone.

  - “Care and Handling of Dakkans” (203 AM)

  - 1 -

  A gray pall hung over the mountains, veiling the expansive slopes with a misty shroud as breathtaking as it was oppressive. The light from the sun as it slowly climbed higher into the sky was visible only through the thick rain clouds that blanketed the horizon to the east, heavy with the threat and promise of a storm waiting to be unleashed. Thunder rumbled in the sky and occasional flashes of lightning were visible as they arced from cloud to cloud and swiftly drew nearer to the mountains.

  A few treetops were visible as they broke through the concealing grasp of the gray mists, the only visible evidence of the vast forest that blanketed most of the mountain slopes for miles in every direction. Small birds darted through the air, intent on their morning duties of feeding and caring for young ones left piping in the nest. They moved quickly from tree to tree, disappearing occasionally into the mists as they journeyed to the lush ground below in search of sustenance.