The Choice of Magic

by Michael G. Manning

  The remnants of Lord Fulstrom’s force waited, and soon the new arrivals passed by them and formed a new defensive line. Will counted the companies as they passed and tried to estimate their numbers. His best estimate was somewhere near two thousand soldiers. It was five times the size of the remnants of Fulstrom’s army, but nowhere near large enough to retake the pass. Is that all of them? he wondered.

  The Patriarch had at least three times that many that Will had seen, and there were potentially many more still in Barrowden.

  The commanders of the new and old forces met, and soon Company B was on the march again, continuing their retreat to Branscombe since they were in no shape to stay on the field. It wasn’t long before Dave resumed his usual commentary. “Look! They’ve got skirmishers—and archers. Aren’t they fucking fancy? Cavalry too!”

  “I’m just glad they’re on our side,” said Will.

  “We could have won if we’d had all that fancy shit,” said Dave sourly.

  Tiny broke in, “Technically, we did win.”

  Dave agreed. “Damn right, we did! They’re just the clean-up crew.” The ever-energetic thief jumped up and pointed back the way they had come. “The shit’s back there, boys! Go dig us a latrine!”

  Will grabbed the slender man’s shoulder, pulling him back into line. “Damn it, Dave! Don’t get me in trouble. It’s still my first day as a corporal.”

  Dave grinned at him, then gave an overly pompous salute. “Yes sir, mister Corporal, sir!”

  Sergeant Nash had already noticed Dave’s antics. “Corporal Cartwright! Put a leash on your idiot before I have to stop and build a stockade to put him in!”

  ***

  They made it back to the camp outside of Branscombe in the afternoon of the second day. Will would have preferred to find a bed and vanish for a week, but of course the army didn’t work that way. There was always more work to do. The only allowance made for their exhaustion was allowing them to retire as soon as their tents were pitched, but Sergeant Nash made it plain that they would be expanding the camp in the morning to make room for the reinforcements that were a day behind them.

  Will couldn’t just put his bedroll down and sleep, however. His curiosity was killing him. There was someone he wanted to see, so once his squad was settled, he left and headed for the medic tent.

  He found several things had changed when he got there. A second, much larger pavilion had been set up in the open space in front of the usual medic tent. It was already filled with the most seriously wounded of Fulstrom’s returning soldiers. Men were stretched out everywhere, some on cots and others on the ground.

  If she’s here, she’s probably busy as hell, thought Will. But why would she be here? She was only pretending. A figure moved by in his peripheral vision, and when he looked, he saw Isabel. She was clad in a loose, woolen robe that had probably been a clean gray earlier in the day. Now it was marked with numerous blood-stains.

  I shouldn’t be here, he realized. He started to turn away when he heard her voice call out to him. “William!”

  Turning back, he saw her face. She looked happy to see him. “Hello,” he said, feeling stupid for having nothing better to say.

  “Were you hurt anywhere?” she asked immediately, her expression shifting to one of concern. Her gaze searched him from head to toe.

  “Uh, no,” he answered. “I just came to see if I could help.”

  She stared at him curiously. “Do you know how to clean wounds, or sew stitches?”

  He nodded.

  Isabel frowned. “When did you learn to do that?” Then she paused, her face blank for a moment. “Oh, your mother. I should have realized.”

  Now it was his turn to be confused. “How’d you know about her?”

  Something flickered across her features. Embarrassment? Then she replied, “You told me she was a midwife last time. When your big friend had to be stitched up.”

  Will thought about it. No, I didn’t. He was certain she had lied, but he merely smiled. “Oh, sure.”

  Isabel shifted the topic smoothly. “Well, if you want to help, you’ll need to take that off and wash up.” She waved a hand at his armor.

  He did as she asked, and a quarter of an hour later he was back. Most of the wounded in the tent had moderate injuries. Most of those who had serious wounds had died during the retreat, and those with minor injuries had already been bandaged before they arrived.

  Those left had wounds that were too much for field medicine but not bad enough to kill them. Will assisted in cleaning wounds and stitching up deep cuts, and when he wasn’t needed for that he boiled water, carried clean linens, and in one instance helped dilute a concentrated opium tincture down to something that could be given to those who were in pain.

  Isabel walked up and touched his elbow. “When did you learn to use a scale?”

  “Mom taught me,” he answered. A lie for a lie. “What would you like me to do now?”

  The hours had flown past, and it was now well after midnight. Isabel wiped her brow with her sleeve, leaving a red streak across her forehead without realizing it. “There’s not much left to do now,” she told him. “Watch and wait. You should go rest.”

  “What will you do?” he asked.

  She smiled sadly. “I’ll wait. One of the soldiers probably won’t make it through the night. I’ll stay with him, so he isn’t alone.”

  “Let me do it,” he offered.

  “You can barely stand,” said Isabel. “You’ve probably been up since before dawn. Go get some sleep.”

  “Speak for yourself,” he shot back. “I can nap while he sleeps. You need to be free. There are dozens here asking for you every few minutes.”

  “Fine.”

  Chapter 52

  The man’s name turned out to be Tom Marcruse, a conscript from a farm outside of Branscombe. Isabel introduced them, and Will talked to the fellow briefly, but Tom kept drifting in and out of consciousness, partly because of the tincture of opium and partly because of his raging fever.

  Will considered sleeping, but Tom kept groaning even as he slept. Tom’s face was red and covered with sweat. He was a young man, and Will couldn’t help but draw comparisons. That could just as easily have been me.

  The soldier’s wound had been a relatively minor one. A bodkin point had pierced his upper arm, but during the march back the wound had turned septic. By the time they had gotten back to Branscombe it had been too late. Even removing the arm wouldn’t stop the infection in the soldier’s blood.

  Will’s eyes drooped as he watched the man, and his thoughts drifted back to when he had seen a young boy suffering similarly. Joey Tanner hadn’t been as far along, but the result would have been the same. I don’t have any herbs for this poor fellow, though, thought Will.

  But then, it hadn’t been the herbs that had cured Joey. They had merely been the start. It had been his magic replicating what the herbs did that had saved the child. Do I dare? Tom would die anyway if he did nothing.

  He scooted closer, so that he was right beside the fevered soldier, and he began studying the injured arm, trying to get a sense of the illness that had started there. Just as with plants, he could feel a certain sense of wrongness, but he couldn’t simply push his turyn into the wound. That would only make the man worse. He needed a reference, something like the herbs he had used before.

  Will examined the grasses growing around him, but none of them seemed right. A new idea came to him. What about me? He placed his hand beside the wounded man’s flesh, comparing what his magical sense saw in him and in the other man. After a while, he began to get a feeling that he could tell the healthy tissue from the sick, but it needed to be more direct.

  Unwrapping the bandage on Tom’s arm, he looked at the putrefying flesh, then he took out his knife and made a cut in the meat of his own palm. The difference in his blood and the fevered man’s blood was apparent to his eyes. Squeezing his hand into a fist, he dripped some of his blood onto the wound, then covered it wit
h his hands, letting his turyn seep into the diseased flesh.

  It needed to match Tom’s native turyn, and it also needed to remove the sickness in the man’s blood, making it similar to his own. Will spent several minutes tuning his turyn. The process was somewhat similar to what he had done with Tailtiu, when he had learned to give himself different kinds of night vision.

  He felt the rightness of it when the turyn came into phase with what he desired, and then he began to push, forcing his power into the wounded man’s arteries and veins until the flow of blood began to carry it throughout the man’s body.

  It took considerably more power than he thought he had spent on Joey, but he kept the flow of turyn slow, letting his body replenish his store from the environment so he wouldn’t exhaust himself. Time passed at a rate unknown to him, so deep was his concentration. At some point he heard the rustle of grass behind him, as someone walked closer, but he never looked up.

  Gradually, Tom’s breathing smoothed, and his groaning stopped. The man’s body cooled, and the redness of his skin returned to its normal color. When Will felt he had done enough, he stopped the flow of turyn. He needed to get up, to find a fresh bandage, but he stumbled as he started to rise.

  Strong hands caught his arm, steadying him. Isabel was beside him, her face worried. Will gave her a weak smile. “Hi.”

  “What were you doing?” she asked. “That wasn’t a spell.”

  “I didn’t want him to die.”

  “Do you have any idea how much turyn you used? You were at it for hours,” she said, disapproval in her voice.

  “Enough,” said Will. “I did just enough.”

  She turned him until he faced her, then put her hands on either side of his head. “Are you stupid? You aren’t a sorcerer, Will. You probably used up a year of your life. Don’t you realize how dangerous wild magic is?”

  He stared into her eyes, the same eyes that had haunted his dream. “But you didn’t stop me, did you?” She’s upset that I wasted her investment. A short-lived slave is worth less. He started to say as much, but then he was falling.

  ***

  Will knew something was wrong long before he opened his eyes. His surroundings didn’t smell right. The tent he shared with his platoon had a distinctive odor that one learned to tolerate only through constant exposure, the smell of iron and sweat. Wherever he was now had none of that. The air was fresh, and when he inhaled through his nose he picked up a variety of scents that had no place in an army tent—clean linen, roses, and—something else.

  His eyes flew open. He was in Isabel’s tent. What am I doing here? Will felt a wave of panic wash over him. The last time he had been there, he had been arrested.

  Remaining perfectly still, he turned his eyes to survey the rest of the room. It was much as he remembered it, except for the addition of a second cot in the center, a few feet away from the one he was lying on. The other cot was also occupied.

  “Sweet holy Temarah, mother of kindness and mercy, save me from this calamity,” he whispered to himself, repeating the prayer he had often heard his Aunt Doreen use. Isabel’s sleeping form was almost within arm’s reach, and the thick blanket she had wrapped herself in was tangled around her body. Her hair was loose and had fallen to one side, exposing the smooth curve of a naked shoulder. Farther down, one of her legs was entirely uncovered.

  I’m dead, thought Will. They’ll have my balls for this. Despite his anxiety, he didn’t move. He watched her breathe, studying her nose and lips. Will knew that people were never one thing or another, but he couldn’t reconcile the contradictory things he knew about Isabel.

  She wasn’t who she claimed. She was a noble, but she had none of the conceit he expected from those of her station. She was a sorceress, but despite the evil that was the source of her power, she seemed kind. How could someone so compassionate also live with the knowledge that they subsisted on the enslavement of innocent spirits? He was also nearly certain she intended to bind him to her in some way, though whether that entailed magic or simply mundane obligation he had no idea.

  “Isabel?”

  It was a woman’s voice, coming from just outside the tent. Isabel’s eyes shot wide, and for a second she and Will stared at one another in mutual horror. She sat bolt upright on her cot and her head whipped back and forth, searching for something. The neck of her gown drooped dangerously low as she did, but Will didn’t dare warn her.

  Isabel pointed at the desk on the other side of the tent, and Will answered with an expression that clearly said, ‘who me?’

  She nodded emphatically, pointing again at the space beneath the desk.

  He shook his head—‘no way.’

  “I’m coming in,” said the woman outside. “I better not find you hiding in there. If I do, I’ll be very cross.”

  Isabel jumped up from her cot and grabbed Will by the shoulders. He was so stunned he didn’t even think of fighting her as she shuffled him across the room and pushed him down under the desk. He pulled in his legs and folded his knees, but his mind was full of visions. He had seen things he was not supposed to see.

  His hiding spot was far from perfect, though. The desk had four legs but no sides, leaving him clearly visible to anyone entering. To solve that problem, Isabel sat in the chair in front of him and threw her blanket over his head and her lap. She scooted the chair forward. “Come in!” Isabel called, answering the woman outside.

  Will heard footsteps entering, but that fact was secondary to the reality of his current position. Isabel’s knees were on either side of his shoulders. It was too dark under the blanket for him to see anything, but his mind had already mapped out a picture of where he was in relation to the rest of Isabel’s legs—and her hips.

  “So, you were in here. You should have answered sooner,” said the other woman. “What were you doing?”

  “I fell asleep at the desk,” said Isabel.

  Will couldn’t breathe—or rather—he wasn’t sure how to breathe. Through his mouth? His nose? What was the proper etiquette when one was trapped between a woman’s thighs? Either choice seemed as though it would lead to his early demise. He exhaled slowly through his mouth and Isabel jumped slightly.

  “You seem nervous,” said the stranger. “Why is your face so red?”

  “My leg went to sleep,” said Isabel, pretending to stretch, which led to yet more interesting moments beneath the desk.

  I’m a dead man, thought Will, even as something else occurred to him. What might he see if he used his night vision? No, I’m not doing that, he told himself firmly, then had to stifle a laugh, but what would Tailtiu do? He already knew what her answer would have been.

  “What brings you here?” asked Isabel.

  “What do you mean?” said the other woman. “I only came to this godforsaken place because you were here, but even though I arrived yesterday I still haven’t seen you.”

  “I’ve had a lot of work.”

  The unknown woman scoffed at that. “What? Taking care of soldiers? There are others better suited to that. You shouldn’t be working at all.” She paused. “Why are there two cots?”

  “I was using the other one to stack things on,” said Isabel smoothly. “You still haven’t said what you wanted.”

  “I want some company,” said the other woman. Will thought she sounded young. “I’ve never been so bored in my life. Father won’t even let me explore the town without an armed escort.”

  “It wouldn’t be safe otherwise,” said Isabel.

  “You don’t have a guard. That’s an even bigger shock. Your father would have a fit,” said the younger woman.

  “I do.”

  “Where?”

  “I sent him on an errand.”

  “Lucky,” said the other woman. “I could never get away with that. Yours don’t dare disobey you. Oh! I almost forgot.”

  “Forgot what?” asked Isabel.

  “Father wanted me to ask if you knew where that peasant boy is. No one can find him. They said t
he last place he was seen was in the medic tent last night.”

  Isabel sighed. “He should be resting. Did you check the soldier’s tents?”

  “Of course not. Father wouldn’t let me near them. Besides, he already sent someone to check for him there. They said you gave an order that he be given the day off.”

  “Well, he isn’t here,” lied Isabel. “Do you know why your father is looking for him?”

  “No idea. Probably something to do with the rumor that he’s a warlock,” said the other woman.

  “What? That isn’t true!”

  “I heard some of the knights reporting to Father,” said the younger woman. “They say he killed at least three sorcerers, but that’s not the strangest part.” She paused.

  “Spit it out.”

  The young woman’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “Their elementals were nowhere to be found. They just vanished! And that’s not all. He was sent to scout the enemy camp, and when they marched on the enemy the next morning, they found all the sentries unconscious at their posts. Most of the blood had been drained from their bodies, leaving them too weak to fight.”

  Isabel laughed nervously. “That’s just ridiculous.”

  “That’s what they’re saying.”

  “Well it sounds like jealous men trying to undermine the accomplishments of someone else to me.”

  “So, are you going to give me a tour of the town or not?” asked the younger woman, changing topics.

  “Later,” said Isabel. “Let me take care of a few things.”

  “Be sure to dress properly.” The other woman stepped closer and Will felt her tug on Isabel’s nightgown. “You were half out. If your father knew you were half naked in the middle of an armed camp, he’d cast you out for being a whore.”