by Joshua Ingle
As he waited for the meeting to begin, some lesser demons approached Balthior and asked for his version of tonight’s story. Balthior could scarcely remember how it felt to be so admired. Demons more reputable than himself often swatted him away from human prey in the city, but he was otherwise a stranger to attention from his peers, at least in the recent past. These dupes would follow me, the Rat. For no other reason than my association with Marcus. How joyous. Balthior absorbed himself in retelling his tale, and the others flattered him, eager for attention of their own. They left him, though, when Xeres’s assemblage began. Marcus, haggard and beaten, was escorted into the area for the sake of any questions that might be asked of him. Balthior listened as the demon leaders argued. In the brightening sky to the east, the Morning Star was rising before the sun.
“Maxentius should be emperor now,” one demon lord said. “His men outnumber Constantine’s. We should assist them in the battle. There is no choice but to let Constantine be slain.”
“Nay,” Xeres replied in his impossibly deep voice. “Your solution would be but temporary. The people hate Maxentius. If Constantine’s army does not kill him, someone else surely will, and soon.”
“And so? It is no matter. With both Augusti dead, other claimants will emerge, and the infighting will lead to more battles, elongating this civil war all the further. It is a good plan.”
“An unpredictable plan.” Om interrupted in Xeres’s defense. “We will have no control over the eventual victor. He could be a peaceful man, or a Christian. What good is three more months of war if our cause is smothered for decades to come?”
From the place where he was bound by four other demons, Marcus spoke, his voice just a whisper next to Om’s and Xeres’s. “My esteemed friends. Your cause is not lost. Let me help you with—”
“Silence!” Om yelled.
“Nay, let him speak.” Xeres moved closer to his former right hand. “What was your plan, betrayer? What would you have done with a Christian emperor once you had deposed me?”
“I would have killed him. The plan is already set to make him supreme ruler, so you should let him win his war. But at the same time, gradually instill hatred for him in the hearts of his men. If Constantine espouses Christianity and tries to spread it, coax one of them into assassinating him and usurping his position.”
“As you intended to usurp mine?” Xeres said coldly.
“I will help you kill Constantine to earn back my keep, if you allow it.”
Xeres frowned. “The damage you’ve done is too great. I cannot trust you.”
“Soldiers often pray to strange gods before battles. Constantine’s interest in the Christian God is but a phase. There was no lasting harm in my actions.”
“Constantine was to become a bloody tyrant! If he feels the Enemy saved him this once, he is not like to reinstate the old policy of state persecution, as I have planned for so long. Constantine was meant to seem tolerant in Britain and Gaul so the people would rally behind him, but now he may become tolerant, even in power. He will slaughter no Christians if he has a vision of their God in his memory, and when the Christians are not dead, their words may yet spread. We will all have less blood on our hands than we desire.”
“And you are certain that a Christian emperor would deliver less blood?”
As the great devils continued their bickering, Balthior noted the way the demon crowd watched Xeres. Fear was writ upon their faces, and along with it, admiration. Underneath these, though, lay envy. Balthior knew it because he felt it himself. If Constantine became the first Christian emperor and Xeres’s name was soiled, many would act on that envy, rushing to fill the void of power. To have a name as known as Xeres’s, to speak a command to any demon and have it obeyed, to be remembered across all history for my sheer cunning and raw might. Let them watch. Let them covet. All the power of Xeres will belong to Balthior one day. Perhaps one day soon. Balthior the Great.
The throng was so enamored of Xeres’s commanding voice and presence that it didn’t notice the dull roar in the distance. Marcus, who had once been so reserved, had grown quite heated in the last hour of the quarrel, and in retrospect it would be obvious that he was stalling. Om was the first to recognize the roar as a cavalry charge; the human battle had begun without the demon horde. A lack of demonic intervention now left the battle’s outcome to chance, and to the humans’ limited intellects.
Balthior rushed through the woods. The demon army came barreling out behind him into early morning daylight. They dithered as they absorbed the breathtaking sight of the chaotic battleground at the Milvian Bridge. Countless horses and men had already drowned in the Tiber, and though the Praetorian Guard were making a last stand on the far side of the Via Flaminia, Maxentius’s defeat seemed imminent. Constantine’s legions pounded the remnants of his foe’s disorganized army mercilessly. Maxentius had formed his lines too close to the river, with no path of retreat save the makeshift pontoon structure his army had constructed in the bridge’s shadow. Only five men abreast could fit across the width of this structure, but many hundreds now tried to dash over it, since the Milvian Bridge itself had been mostly destroyed before the battle to prevent Constantine from crossing the river. Constantine had been outnumbered two to one, and now he will be victorious. A clever one indeed, though not so clever as me. For if Balthior could save Xeres’s reputation by slaying Constantine, the lowly Rat would have a chance at becoming the great demon lord’s right hand.
Constantine’s new standard was the Greek letter chi crossed with the Greek letter rho, the first two letters in the name of Christ. Gold on crimson, this abomination stood strong and tall on nearly every vexillum across the battlefield. Balthior spotted Gnaeus running in circles, brazenly waving one of these emblems like a loon. From where he had gotten the flag, Balthior hadn’t a clue. He entered the man’s weak mind, made supple from years of comfortable possession, then made him turn and run away from the battle.
The field’s chaos was too great for Gnaeus to be noticed by anyone, including the other demons, many of whom now joined the fight, whispering confusion into the ears of Constantine’s soldiers, trying in vain to turn the tide against him. Balthior found 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.
T
he 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 with Constantine, whispering to him, willing his body and mind toward death, each hoping to be the one to push him over into the abyss. Balthior stayed behind. He could not hope to compete with such a multitude of spirits. He had been the one with a human slave—a presence in the physical world—and he had had his chance. And I took it. I killed him, or near enough. What brought him back? It was no demon nor angel; the demon horde would have seen such an action and ended it.
Balthior learned later that Constantine had bled still more when the thorn had been removed from his chest, yet he had ordered all attendants away from his presence. His staff had left him alone for hours in the covered wagon as he mixed medicines and tended his own wound. Were it not for occasional talk in unusual tongues emanating from inside, Constantine’s men would not have known whether he was alive or dead. When he finally emerged, sickly but alive, he commanded that knowledge of his wound be contained.
Balthior also learned about the demons who had been left on watch duty at both armies’ encampments while the main host of demons had met at the nest before the battle. These demons had been slain in the night, the remnants of their spirits set adrift near the river, floating in the air above the dead men. More demons had mysteriously perished during the chaos of the humans’ battle. Om was among the deceased. Some unknown force had not wanted the demons to intervene in the battle—perhaps the same force which now kept Constantine alive in spite of his grave injury. Yet no angels had been seen in the area, nor even in nearby Rome.
Maxentius was dead now, drowned in the river trying to escape. His pontoon bridge had collapsed under the weight of his fleeing soldiers, trapping the greater part of his army on Constantine’s side of the Tiber. The downtrodden demons took what pleasure they could as Constantine’s men defiled their foes’ bodies in various grotesque displays, an effort which culminated the next day when Maxentius’s disembodied head was paraded on a spear through the streets of Rome. Replete in stunning purple, underneath armor chased with gold, Constantine appeared the image of health as he rode past the cheering crowds. Balthior noticed the occasional grimace fighting Constantine’s curt smile for control of his face, but the emperor hid his pain as well as his clothing hid his wound. While the humans lauded him, the demon host plotted his demise—Xeres most of all, lest the emperor turn to the Christian God in thanks for his swift victory at the bridge. The lesser demons feigned celebration at the previous day’s deaths, their confusion and their uncertainty about the future thinly veiled.
Their thoughts mattered not, though, for their thoughts were not on Balthior. His efforts had been in vain, his only reward for his troubles the pain from the wounds Marcus had inflicted. I should have stayed in the city. Better to be a successful beggar than a failed lord. But he resolved again to find his own way to greatness. One day.
Once the parade ran its course and Constantine reached the Forum, the entire demon army descended to hear Xeres’s final decree regarding Marcus’s treachery. After finding Marcus in the tent, Balthior had thought him mad, for what else but madness would have caused him to entrance Constantine with a hopeful vision of the Enemy? But given the slain demon sentries from the camps, and Constantine’s impossible return from death’s door, Balthior wondered now if Marcus was not so mad after all. Was he merely making a common power play, as Xeres seemed to think? Or was he involved with the strange events of yesterday, and the elusive power that had caused them? When I walked into that tent with Marcus and his vision, what else did I walk into?
To the chagrin of the demons who called for Marcus’s execution, Xeres declared the Rule to be paramount—far more important than petty bloodlust. Marcus would live, but he was to be exiled to the Far East, beyond Persia. “If you are ever seen in the West again,” Xeres warned him with his booming voice, “whether a day from now or at the end of time, your death will mean glory for any spirit who kills you. Do not pass this way again.”
The crowd sneered at Marcus as he drifted through them, toward the nearest city gate. Several of Balthior’s familiars from Rome’s streets took it upon themselves to see Marcus away. These base demons saw glory in it; they could later boast that they had been the ones who ran the betrayer out of the city. Balthior had been one of them a few days ago. Now he was not sure who he was.
Distracted by these vagrants, Balthior was unaware of Marcus’s approach until he was nearly on him. “Rat,” Marcus called. Balthior tried to shrink into the crowd, but Marcus caught up with him. Then they were face to face, the two demons who had once been angelic brothers. The throng cursed and mocked and jeered at the disgraced demon, so none heard when Marcus leaned close and whispered to Balthior.
“I will remember this.”
Marcus held his chill gaze on Balthior for a moment, then paced away, his entourage of outcasts trailing behind. As Marcus departed, Balthior noticed Constantine riding with his company across the street, and though no other demon seemed to see it, Balthior would have bet his life that he saw the emperor look directly at Marcus—the invisible, exiled demon—then wave his thanks and smile. Marcus did not seem to notice.
In the years following, it was not Balthior whom the masses called Great, but Constantine. History recorded his divine greatness at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge—even that he’d led the first charge himself. Twelve years after claiming Rome, he defeated Licinius and became the sole emperor of both Western and Eastern Roman Empires, making him one of the most powerful rulers who had ever lived.
Fortunately, Constantine was no true Christian. Despite his Edict of Milan, his lack of conviction soon became apparent. He merely used the Faith to bolster his power and extend his empire. Nevertheless, demonkind’s work was devastated, for Christianity spread wherever Constantine’s power did. And strangely, all demonic attempts to kill Constantine failed. Xeres became convinced that the man truly had God on his side, though Balthior never saw an angel around him. Xeres became distraught over his failure, and often raved that if Christianity hadn’t seized the world’s psyche, something else could have—”would have!”—as other religions had done in the past. “F
or the human mind craves structure and answers, even if flimsy structure and incorrect answers.” Xeres came close to dominating Christianity with Emperor Julian and his Hellenism, but failed in that attempt as well.
For Balthior’s part in the deciding battle, he became known as Thorn, the demon who had almost saved the world from Christianity. Xeres was appreciative of Thorn’s help, and so allowed Thorn to aid him with famines and wars and other campaigns to regain his former glory, which took centuries. During that time, Thorn’s own conquests and achievements made him known again, though he never became a demon lord himself. The demon world slowly stopped caring how Thorn had earned his name, and who he had been before.
All stopped caring but two. On dark nights when Thorn traveled alone, or had no human to torment, the memory of Marcus’s voice haunted him like a waking nightmare. “I will remember this.”
Demons have long memories.
2
PRESENT DAY
Thorn leaped from the broken window to the huge loading dock door, placing himself between Shane and the exit Shane was eyeing. Thorn and the Judge had discovered to their dismay that the abandoned foundry had many exits. From outside, its towering brick walls lent it the appearance of a fortress, but once they’d cornered Shane inside, they found the foundry replete with back windows, back doors, staircases, overhead walkways, and even a cellar. The chase had lasted half an hour, and now they had him cornered by a pile of old sand molds. Shane was spry even for a teenager, bouncing from one foot to the other, ready to bolt as soon as Thorn or the Judge let his guard down.
