James Somers - The Sword of Gideon

For years now, a plan had been in place at the Temple of Shaddai here in the Thornhill Mountains. Should the Temple complex ever be breached, as unthinkable as it was, then the entire thing would be destroyed so completely that no one would dare attempt such a thing on a Temple again. In such an event, the complex would become a deathtrap for whatever invading army had managed to break inside.

Isaiah, the High Priest, had once shown Gideon a portion of the network of high explosives which could be lit by torch if needed. And only a select few priests had any knowledge of the bomb. Gideon had been amazed by the ingenuity of it all. Isaiah had told him about a network of secret tunnels winding throughout the Temple complex, tunnels which had long ago been packed with gunpowder-tons of it. The High Priest had told him, "If an army, we cannot repel, ever takes the Temple, our last act will bring down the entire mountain."

How prophetic those words had become as Gideon sprinted across the bloodstained grass, hoping to reach the archway just ahead, a passage that, if he remembered correctly, just might lead him out of this conflagration. Behind Gideon, fire and thunder traveled in the blink of an eye from the bottom of the chasm to the uttermost reaches still hidden within the clouds. The entire tubular face of the chasm fragmented as jagged red lines of fire cut through the rock, scattering it for gravity to wrench it down, down on top of the waiting army of demonic hybrids searching frantically below for some place to hide.

The entire mountain shook like the world coming to an end. Massive chunks of rock rained down, in place of the arrows the demons had only been annoyed with before, to dash them in pieces. Gideon strained to reach the tunnel ahead as fragments of rock peppered him from above. He winced against the smaller stones embedding beneath his skin, white hot. He screamed and channeled the pain into a last burst of energy that shot him down the tunnel as the entire chasm wall came down into the training grounds behind him. The light which had filtered through the arch into the tunnel, a moment ago, snuffed out into darkness.

A thunderous rumble cascaded down into the valley and over the hill where Ethan, Seth and Levi Bonifast now resided on horseback. They had been long on their journey back toward the Temple of Shaddai with news of their failure to locate Gideon. They all looked toward the not-to-distant Thornhill Mountains ahead. The booming sound reverberated again and again like thunder that sometimes bounced among the clouds long before ending.

Levi removed his spyglass and extended it to its full length before peering through toward the mountains. "I'm not sure…maybe smoke. I can't really tell with all the cloud cover."

"Is it coming from anywhere near the Temple?" Seth asked.

Levi lowered the glass. "Now how in the world would I know that?"

Ethan tried to see the smoke the captain had mentioned. Indeed, the cloud cover, which perpetually hung around the tops of the mountain range also providing cover for the chasm which housed the Temple, prevented them from really seeing anything substantial.

"Perhaps, cannon fire…it does sound similar," Seth said as the noise began to dissipate.

Ethan surveyed what he could of Millertown, small and inconsequential, beneath the base of the mountains. "It certainly doesn't look like anything going on in town."

They started forward again. Whatever had happened, they still had to reach the Temple. News of Mordred's preparations for war with Wayland could be relayed across the border by falcon to King Stephen. Whatever Mordred had planned, it wasn't going to be good, or long before it happened.

Nearly a day later, Ethan stood motionless-breathless. He could not believe what he was seeing. He, Seth, and Levi had now attempted four different entryways into the Temple complex-all unsuccessful. The river, which had made its complex circuit around the Temple, had backed up in one place and in another was now a damp bed of mud and polished stones.

"Someone has dammed the river downstream," Levi had observed.

They had finally come through the pine forest. Within, lying strewn upon the thick beds of dead needles, were the bodies of lions from the pride raised within The Order and the bodies of what could only be called vaguely human soldiers. Ethan had only been to see the pride once with Gideon. Over a hundred lions had resided in the covert kept especially for them.

Here, beneath the archway beyond the forest, they had stopped riding. Only a few pieces of the chiseled archway, with its ancient lettering still visible, remained. The rest had been pulverized beneath an insurmountable pile of rubble. The pile itself smoldered in the sun, which now shone bright upon the old ground of the Temple-direct sunlight, which until now had been prevented by the walls of the deep chasm into which the Temple had been established hundreds of years before.

The smell of gunpowder and rock dust hung heavy in the air. The wind blowing through the mountains now whistled across holes and crevasses in the heap of charred stone. Bonifast sighed. Ethan remained speechless. He glanced over at Seth. The blind priest had said nothing. Despite his inability to see, Ethan thought the man probably knew what had happened. Tears tracked down his cheeks. He turned to Ethan with a wan smile. "What do you see, Ethan?" The words came out choked.

Ethan wasn't sure how he could describe it. He had no words to express the pain within his heart. "It's…gone," he whispered hoarsely. Ethan looked back at what once had been the home of The Order of Shaddai. "It's just gone."

"How could this have happened?" Levi asked, bewildered.

"Mordred did this-" Ethan spat out the words.

"Yes, but how could he manage it?" Levi said. "It doesn't make sense."

"Mordred didn't do it," Seth said quietly. Both Ethan and Levi looked at him dumbfounded. "Isaiah once confided to me that The Order was prepared to defend the Temple to the death-to its complete destruction. Before traveling to Macedon, I had even served as a torchbearer-one of the few chosen to ignite a network of gunpowder reservoirs running throughout the entire complex."

Levi still looked perplexed. "But why would they do that?"

"Because they would not allow the Temple to be desecrated by invaders," Seth said. "The truth is that no one ever thought such dire circumstances would arise-the Temple having been so well protected for so long. But with the bodies in the forest and the pride lions all dead, I suppose that contingency finally came due."

"So they're all dead then: Isaiah and the others?" Ethan asked.

Seth turned to him, a slight hope present even in the stare of his blind eyes. "No. Isaiah was duty bound, as the High Priest, to leave the Temple. He would have taken some of the priests with him and the parchment scrolls of Shaddai's Word."

"But where would they go from here?" Levi asked.

Seth smiled a little, the hope growing in his heart. "Wayland," he said. "The Order has a Temple there as well. It's not as elaborate, or hidden away, but they've always had good relations with the Royal House there."

Ethan turned his horse, ready to look no more on the devastation here. "Then that's where we need to go."

Leaving the Thornhill Mountains behind them and crossing into the realm of Wayland, had been fairly uneventful. A small fortress, erected over the only road, housed several hundred men, cannon, horses, and the beginning of a signal fire network, to which speedy response could be made to any invasion through loyal militia scattered along the countryside. Apart from the fortress itself, Ethan and his company had found a defensive wall stretching out from the fortress on either side, both terminating into the last vestiges of jagged rock the Thornhills had to offer.