The king gave a slight nod as he forked a piece of steaming meat from his platter. “Gentlemen,” he said to the priests, “you’ve not yet touched your food. Surely, you’re famished after so long a journey across the Azure. I hope you won’t insult my hospitality.”
“Of course not, Majesty,” Ethan said and began digging into his plate with a fork. Just as he opened his mouth, ready to shove the food inside, Gideon grabbed his wrist.
“The hounds,” he whispered urgently.
Ethan turned from his plate and saw the two hounds he had fed from his plate moments ago. They lay still, their eyes rolled permanently back into their heads. Ethan gasped, realizing he and Gideon would certainly have shared that fate had he not felt sorry for the poor creatures in the first place.
The king, who had been watching them expectantly, said, “Gentlemen, your manners are poor for priests. You’re still not eating.”
They looked at one another, then they made their move.
And the king made his. “Seize them!”
Several astonishing things all happened within seconds.
Gideon leaped up out of his seat and over the table to evade the soldier immediately to his left. He grabbed a silver candlestick holder in midair, brained the man seated across from Ethan, and took his sword as he fell stunned to the stone floor.
Ethan realm shifted immediately and crossed the room, trying to get to King Nichols where he stood, shouting orders for their capture. Ethan, so bent upon his strategy, only half noticed the cold tingly shiver running up his spine. As Ethan reached Nichols, preparing to seize the man as their hostage, a horde of demons flew through the walls of stone block.
The demons saw Ethan, but instead of attacking directly, they entered the soldiers present at the dinner. He knew what that meant. The demons would be able to see him whether he was in the spiritual realm or in the physical.
A demon-laden soldier went for Gideon. He did not seem aware as he was busy fighting other men. Ethan launched forward as though shot from a cannon. He pierced the veil between physical and spiritual and landed next to Gideon in time to hammer his attacker with a kick to the ribs. The soldier flew backward out of the way. “Demons inside the soldiers!” Ethan warned.
Ethan quickly armed himself with the weapon of one of Gideon’s victims and assailed to help his friend. The soldiers took on an almost immediate ferocity, as though animals freed from their cages and set to a feeding frenzy. Ordinary men leaped through the air at the priests of Shaddai as they fought back the tide of the enemy. The bright clothing, fashioned for them, quickly became soaked with gore.
“Hold on!” Ethan shouted. He immediately realm shifted and grabbed hold of Gideon. The priest slashed at his attackers, until Ethan, unseen, yanked him up and out of the melee. He released Gideon. The priest sailed back down to the floor on the other side of the room. Ethan appeared in a run beside him. “This way!”
He ran, with Gideon following, toward the great wooden doors at the far end. Ethan remembered the throne room on the other side of those doors. From there, lay a hall leading out of the castle through the main gate. The demon-possessed soldiers ran after them, much quicker than normal men could. They had mere seconds to get through.
Ethan reached the doors first and tried to push them open, but they would not budge. Through the seam between the two doors, he saw a great wooden crossbeam holding them fast. Gideon also reached the doors and tried, but to no avail. Ethan realm shifted once again and used his sword to divide the beam through the seam-a knife through butter. He appeared with Gideon again and they pushed their way through.
Once on the other side, Ethan and Gideon struggled to close the great doors again. “We have to bar it!” Gideon said.
“This half of the crossbar is long enough, I think.”
They hoisted it up with difficulty and set it upon the iron grooves where it should rest. The doors tried to burst outward as the demon-possessed soldiers slammed into them from the banquet room. “Get the bar in!” Gideon said.
The doors began to part again as the boys struggled to get the crossbar into place. “There’s too many!”
“I’ll stop them!” Ethan said. “You get the bar into place!” He disappeared into the spiritual realm and shot through the door with his weapon forward. As soon as Ethan cleared the door, he ran into a throng of demon- possessed soldiers. They saw him and reacted, but he had enough surprise on his side to take down a few first.
Ethan fought with unbridled anger and drove them back from the door enough to allow Gideon to secure it from the other side. He heard the crossbar slide into place with a dull thump. Before the possessed soldiers reorganized their attack on him, Ethan launched back through the door and found Gideon waiting.
He patted Ethan’s shoulder with a smile of gratitude as soon as he appeared. “Nice work, brother.”
Gideon began to run for the other end of the throne room. But Ethan hesitated the slightest bit. The acknowledgement gripped his heart. Gideon had never referred to him as brother before. He smiled and followed his friend.
General Hevas Rommil massaged the back of his meaty hand through the studded leather gauntlet. He savored the pain inflicted on some of his former soldiers-men who had failed him today. They had allowed Captain Bonifast to escape from the pirate’s ship still docked in the Macedon harbor. After facing Rommil’s wrath, his soldiers had faced the executioner’s axe.
Rommil peered through a brass spyglass toward King Nichol’s castle, nearly a half mile away, and smiled. He turned to his men lined up along the ridge and the new weapons they were preparing. A line of one hundred short, metal tubes stood propped at an angle on their own stands. A short pile of self-propelled explosive shells stood next to each mortar tube and the two-man team assigned to fire each weapon.
He paused to savor the moment. The pompous brat, Nichols, King of Macedon would soon breathe his last. Hevas had waited a long time for this. The charade of Nichols successful rebellion on Macedon had tarnished his unblemished record. Mordred had desired to use the man for exactly this purpose-a clever trap.
Now came the time to spring it and catch all the mice inside. Hevas raised his broadsword high. The men at each mortar station, along the ridge, prepared a shell at the mouth of the tube while their partners made any necessary adjustments to the angle of trajectory. “Goodbye, Nichols.” Hevas let the words roll off his tongue poetically. “King of Macedon.”
Levi breathed through his mouth, gulping at the air as though it might be his last. “Are you sure this is the only way into the castle?”
Seth crawled through the black slime in the dark tunnel ahead of Levi. He sighed. “Unless you want to assault the main gate, scale the sheer walls under fire, and battle through an entire battalion of soldiers.”
Levi thought a moment, shrugged, then pulled himself up the tunnel another two feet. “What is this stuff anyway?” He sniffed. “It smells like a sewer in here.”
Seth smiled in the dark. “It’s sewage.”
“It’s a good thing you can’t see the look on my face right now.”
“I have a good imagination,” Seth answered. “We do what we must in the service of the Lord, Captain, and to help of our friends.”
Levi sighed again. “True enough, but knowing that does nothing for the smell.”
The trip through the drain tunnel had been slow going over the last hour. Seth and Levi had to slog through the muck on their bellies almost the entire way due to the size of the tunnel.
Levi pulled his hand back suddenly. “Seth, I felt something wriggle across my fingers…what’s in this stuff?”
“Nothing harmful…other than that, I doubt you really want to know.”
Levi considered it. “You’re probably right.” He swallowed hard and then reached for the next handful of filth, pushing his fingers down several inches until he felt the slime covered grooves in the stones. These they used to pull themselves along inches at a time.
A draft of air filtered down the tunnel around them. Seth immediately stopped. Levi grabbed his shoe as he