Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

moment Garnet thought the other paladin would
be foolish enough to take a swing at him. That would be nothing short of
disastrous for the much smaller man, and the Orange apparently thought better
of physically assaulting Garnet’s mountainous frame.
    Garnet spared
the white-faced paladin only another moment of his attention, then he turned
away with a swift motion that sent his red cloak whipping past the Orange’s
face. The other paladin flinched away from the cloak, then turned and stalked
away fuming.
    “Who was that
pompous ass?” Garnet murmured calmly to his father.
    “Alister
de’Kelenath,” Garet replied in a low voice heavy with suppressed amusement, “a
real pain in the ass. I remember him from my training days. He used to give the
two elves that trained with us a hard time, and it sizzled his stones when they
made full paladin a month before he did.”
    Garnet chuckled.
    “That was
eloquent,” Brican kythed to Garnet. “Are you sure we don’t need to
exorcise Gerard’s ghost out of you?”
    “Not now,
Brican,” Garnet replied. “Report.”
    “Red and
yellow are ready to assault, sir,” Brican told him seriously. “Green is
ready to move out on your order, and with the exception of your new friend over
there, the paladins all appear ready to move with us.”
    “Good. Have
someone send up a fake signal, and let’s get going then,” Garnet replied
briskly.
    “Understood.”
    Garnet received
a brief kythe when his two platoons first made contact with the demon sentries
around the camp.   In the distance, Garnet
thought he heard a low roar of a demon in pain, but he couldn’t be sure. A
moment later an arrow whizzed into sight and sank into the ground a dozen or so
feet from Garnet.
    “There’s the
signal,” he said loudly to the paladins loosely assembled about the clearing.
“Garet, form up the jintaal and follow us in. On my signal, Green
Platoon will break and let you through.”
    “Understood,
sir,” Garet replied crisply, saluting his son.
    “Let’s give ‘em
Hell, brothers,” Garnet cried and motioned everyone forward. “For God and for
man.”
    “For life!” the
paladins roared together.
    - 3 -
    The assault went
almost exactly to plan. When Garnet and the other paladins arrived under cover
of Shadow Company’s Green Platoon, the demons were pinned down and struggling
to hold back the denarae. Most of the demons were weak enough that Shadow
Company was able to destroy them without undue difficulty. Their weapons were all
blessed and marked with the holy symbol – a hard-earned lesson from the war –
but at least a dozen demons were slaked on human blood and had become too
powerful to be destroyed by anything less than a full paladin. The holy
warriors waded into the fray, cutting through unholy flesh and punching a hole
through the remnants of the demons’ defenses.
    The paladins
split up to engage their foes, following the tides of battle. A few minutes
into the engagement, Garnet received word that a large pocket of the demons was
trying to break away and flee the battle. Before he could even think of the
order, Flasch was already in position to cut off the retreat. The Violet
paladin slew the two more powerful demons while his platoon mopped up the
lesser creatures.
    Garnet stayed
out of most of the battle, preferring to direct his troop movements without
suffering from the fog of war that descended on a commander who allowed himself
to become personally engaged in combat.
    Twice during the
battle, something flickered at the edge of Garnet’s vision, but he was never
able to focus in on it. When he turned to look directly at it, nothing was
there. Garnet shook his head, hoping it was only the lingering effects of using
the shared vision and not something more sinister.
    Across the
battlefield, Garnet saw a blaze of azure fury and knew that Danner had defied
his orders and asolved [7] his wings. The blue wings were a gift from his immortal heritage, but lately,
Garnet