A Demon in the Dark Read Free Page B

Constantine at the rear of the battle, hiding on a horse in the bushes with his officers, observing from afar like cowards. And to think that just hours ago, I looked up to this man—this Christian —as a hero among the humans. A score of his guard surrounded the Augustus, but messengers and servants came and went, and the area was a bustle of activity. To Constantine’s men, Gnaeus was just another man bearing their standard.
    The demon horde had found Constantine too. They fluttered around him, screeching and bellowing and whispering as persuasively as they could, but while they had only voices, Balthior had feet. They watched as Balthior sent Gnaeus charging forward. Balthior made the man rip the flag off its pole, bring the pole’s pointed tip up, and hurl it toward the emperor’s chest.
    A flurry of arrows ripped into Gnaeus’s body before the improvised spear was halfway to its target, but the weapon was away. Balthior left Gnaeus as he died, and rose above him to watch the carnage unfold. Constantine’s horse reared at the last moment, so the vexillum’s pole hit the steed instead of its rider, and only glanced the horse at that. The sudden jolt threw Constantine, however, and he tumbled headlong into the thicket beneath him.
    The demon forces howled at the excitement, but Balthior grew distraught as he saw the Augustus survive his simple fall. I’m done for. I’ve ruined my chance. They will never see my glory now.
    But Balthior’s misgivings proved premature. As Constantine’s officers helped him to his feet, blood dribbled from his underarm. The battle was now safely in the distance, so they removed the emperor’s armor to find a huge twisted thorn protruding from his upper left ribcage, just above the area his armor had covered. Constantine grimaced as his men called for help, and he soon collapsed unconscious in the dirt by the blackthorn bushes. The blood trickled out faster now.
    The emperor would die. As this became obvious to the other demons, the air filled with cacophonous shrieks of victory. They see my glory! I have succeeded. I will be a demon lord after all. Balthior rose among his peers—no: his underlings. He rose higher than them. “Behold! I am Balthior, the Thorn of Constantine,” he proclaimed. “See my work.”
    Several thralls hurriedly prepared the doctors’ supply wagon and its herbs and elixirs. Constantine lay motionless. Three guards prodded at Gnaeus’s body with great care, trying to find any identifying mark, unaware of the demonic host circling above them, raining adulation down on its new hero—
    —adulation which ceased when Constantine abruptly stood. Balthior froze in place. Less than a minute had passed since the emperor fell, but surely the blood had drained out of him. Constantine’s flesh was pale as death, and his head darted to and fro, as if those around him were strangers. He appeared frightened, uncomfortable in his own body.
    “Take me to the doctors’ wagon,” he said, his usually crisp voice reduced to a thick mumble. He continued murmuring as his officers escorted him, one man under each of his arms. His words wavered between Greek and Latin, but at one point Balthior was sure the Augustus’s mutterings lapsed into a strange, foreign tongue that Balthior did not know. As feeble-minded as other demons imagined Balthior to be, he knew almost every language in Europe, so this new speech unsettled him.
    As Constantine’s men helped him into the wagon, he continued bleeding past the point at which the loss of blood should have killed him. The demons who had gathered were speechless at the sight of something so impossible, so out of their control. Could it be a miracle? A sign from the Enemy that He has not forgotten His war against us? Dumbfounded, Balthior sank back down to earth and contemplated the wagon and the emperor struggling to get inside. What has happened just now? What did we just see?
    Despite the apparent resurrection, the demons stayed